The Northern Star Trilogy: Omnibus Edition

by Mike Gullickson

= = =

  The lion heard the footsteps as it lay in the cool mud, gnawing on the ribcage of a kill. The gazelle stared up at the sky, its mouth frozen in its final gasp. With its tan eyes, the lion scanned the dry brush that waved around it, looking for the source of the sound. It was a deep sound, felt more than heard. A boy, small and skinny, appeared, and for a moment, the lion forgot about its meal as instinct took over. The boy’s hand came up and pointed to the right of the lion. The lion watched, unconcerned, undecided. The boy made a series of noises. “The hunter said it came from that direction.” But the lion didn’t hear the words, only the pitch.

  Behind the boy, a small tree shook violently, and the sharp sounds of brush crashing made the lion wince. The movement, graceless and thumping, indicated something large and threatening. It reminded the lion of a stampede.

  Raimey reached the boy. From his vantage he saw a male lion twenty yards away laid out near a small watering hole, chewing on a gazelle. The lion emitted a low cry to announce its presence. Raimey was unconcerned.

  “Chinelo, you shouldn’t get too far ahead of me. It’s dangerous out here.”

  “Everything is afraid of you. Even the elephants.”

  “But they aren’t afraid of you. And I don’t want to have to deal with your mother if something goes bad and you have to hop on one leg for the rest of your life.”

  Chinelo smiled. This was the closest that Raimey came to a joke.

  Chinelo continued to lead, and Raimey followed close behind. Raimey’s grace came only with speed. When he was forced to walk slowly, trying not to destroy things, he moved awkwardly, like a jet taxiing on a runway. He avoided a small sapling, only to stomp down a bush instead.

  Along with his extreme height, Raimey was as wide as a semi-truck and weighed six tons. His head would have looked remarkably small for his frame, but he had been a big man before the accident that took his limbs, and that came with a big melon. His friends, the soldiers in his squad, used to say it was the biggest target on the battlefield. Raimey’s eyes lit up at the pleasant memory. They were such assholes. The light went out. All gone, now. All gone.

  He slept as much as he could. He had no dreams of his past; just dark silence. His waking moments were when his terrors would haunt him. Those he had killed, friends who had died, mountains of fresh meat, and he the butcher. His wife, his daughter. Both dead, his noble sacrifice a folly after all. Cursed with life, but dead inside. Sleep was for comfort as much as for practice. Every night he hoped it would never end.

  Raimey saw a plane off in the distance at the center of a scorched field. It was big and old, used back when John had just started in the military. A stealth bomber.

  What is that doing here?

  “What do you see? What do you see?” Chinelo jumped up and down, but the grass was too tall.

  “There’s a plane.” Raimey would have sent Chinelo back, but they were too far from the village, and he remembered the lion. “Follow right behind me.”

  Like a mirage, the plane seemed never to get closer. It looked huge when Raimey first saw it and that didn’t change. It was a gigantic black wing, alien in this landscape. Around it smoldering earth twisted the air and made it look like it had been raised from Hell.

  Finally, Raimey and Chinelo made it to the field. It had been flash burned to make a runway. Chinelo stepped around a burnt wildebeest carcass. Other unlucky animals were scattered about. Vultures circled, calling their brethren.

  Chinelo hopped up and down from the heat. Raimey opened his hand like a chair and Chinelo climbed in.

  They were fifty yards away when the belly of the plane opened up. A hydraulic lift lowered to the field. Jeremiah Sabot was on it.

  The drive chains around Raimey’s waist began to accelerate. Chinelo flinched away from them—they were like hackles on a dog—and the child in his hand was the only reason John didn’t run forward and destroy the man and the plane.

  “What are you doing here?” Raimey growled.

  “Cynthia sent me.”

  “She’s alive?”

  “Yes. Just.”

  Raimey stared through him. Sabot stood, frozen, aware of the danger.

  “Things aren’t what you think,” Sabot said. His hands were out, like those of a negotiator talking a gunman down. “Please. We need to talk.” He glanced nervously at Raimey’s drive chains. Raimey had Chinelo close to the ground, ready to drop him and charge.

  “Vanessa’s dead because of you.”

  Sabot shook his head slowly. “No. Please. It’s important that we talk.”

  Raimey put Chinelo down. The boy ran fifty yards behind him, as he had been trained. Sabot’s eyes went from the boy to John.

  “Then talk,” Raimey said.

  “Your daughter’s alive.”

  The words hung in the air. She had died twenty-five years before, during the civil war, when MindCorp had destroyed the Derik Building, the main bionics lab. Raimey had found his way back from the Congo to save her, to finally be there in her hour of need. But he had been too late.

  Raimey cleared his throat. “What are you talking about?” Almost every cell in his body screamed to attack. Sabot had long been a man he had dreamt to one day corner, but a small flame of hope flared up. This man had not flown across the world to the plains of Africa to die. That they still had a plane and the fuel to fly it here showed a tremendous allocation of resources . . .

  Raimey’s drive chains slowed to a crawl.

  “It was a cover, set up by Lindo to get Vanessa. He always knew that she had something more. Just like you and your amazing aptitude to handle the first primitive implants. He tested her. Back when she was young, when you were in the hospital. Do you remember?”

  A murky memory bubbled to the surface of John’s mind. His daughter sitting on his bed next to him, the cripple. The useless cripple who couldn’t support his daughter. The useless cripple who took his wife’s life and threw it against the wall. A young Dr. Lindo, short, fat, bearded to hide a soft chin, square-rim glasses—finishing a test with him with a device called a Mindlink. Vanessa asked what “that thingy” was, and Dr. Lindo said it was to test her father for something special. Vanessa said that her dad had said she was special. Dr. Lindo ruffled her hair. “I bet you are.” John was there, but not really; he heard it, but he was looking out the window.

  Feeling sorry for myself. Yes. Then and always. His smiles were muscle movement. The few jokes from his mouth were meant only to ease the crowd. Vanessa had asked to be tested and, on a whim, Evan did. But John didn’t see the way Lindo’s eyes lit up. He didn’t see Evan quickly shut down the program, pull the Mindlink off his daughter’s head and apologize for the “malfunction.”

  It was an old memory. It had had time to warp, but he knew it was true. Straight and true.

  “Yes,” Raimey said, his throat catching. “I remember.”

  “He got a two-for-one that day, John. He got you, the most powerful Tank Major ever designed. And he got her.” Sabot paused. “The Consciousness Piece of the Northern Star cannot be young. The young are only good for Multipliers—extending the signal. She had to be an adult for it to work the way Dr. Lindo intended.”

  “God, don’t say what you’re going to say,” John said.

  “He kept her under his close supervision, acting as her mentor while you were fighting. He had her handle certain software programs and projects that would strengthen her mind in the way that would suit his future need for her.

  “She turned twenty-one on August 12, 2068. The day before you were deployed from South Africa to the Congo.”

  “No,” John groaned, shaking his head.

  Sabot continued. “Best case, you would be unaware of the coup and out of the way. Worst case, Packard would kill you. But General Boen tipped us off to what Evan was planning—that’s why Boen was killed—and Cynthia connected the dots to the Northern Star construct. We got ahead of Evan: the Northern Star wasn’t quite ready to go online yet. It needed one more essent
ial component. So Cynthia shut down cyberspace and we went to war.”

  Now it was Sabot who shook his head. “The Northern Star is massively powerful, but without a guide, it’s stupid. The Pieces are conditioned under Forced Autism to serve the Will. The Will is Evan. But another component is needed: the Consciousness Module. It makes the Pieces feel loved. It feeds them memories. It keeps them on task. They tie their loyalty to it as if it were their mother. Your daughter was perfect for that role. We fought to save her. Evan fought to take her. And we lost. On August 24, the Northern Star, as it is now, went online. It took over everything. Governments, MindCorp, people. Everything.”

  “The Derik Building,” Raimey murmured.

  “That was when we first knew Vanessa was important to Evan. That was our first battle to save her. She wasn’t in the building when it blew up. A Tank Major, Kove, detonated the bomb. Not us.”

  “I saw her grave.”

  “It’s empty.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Yes you do.”

  “Why tell me this?”

  “Because two days ago a battle took place in the Middle East that knocked out a Northern Star Multiplier. And Dr. Lindo, for just a flash in time, had to reroute. During that flash, your daughter sought Justin-01 and told him to find you, to save her. Your daughter is alive, John! And she’s aware. The other Pieces of the Northern Star—if you pull them out, they’re vegetables. They’re done. But the Consciousness Module cannot be manipulated. She’s alive. And if you find her, she can be freed.”

  = = =

  Sabot went back to the mining village with the giant and the boy. The town was small, a couple of hundred smack in the middle of the Sudan. Raimey could have gone anywhere. This had been a choice.

  John quietly excused himself. “I need a moment to think.” Sabot noticed a trail of tears drying on his cheeks. Raimey went into his shed.

  Chinelo followed, and a moment later he came out with an old dog.

  “That’s his?” Sabot asked.

  “His name is Bones. I need to walk him.” Bones was an ugly mutt with patchy brindle hair and pink splotches of skin where years of dry, snaggly brush had torn it away. It wagged its tail and came right over. Sabot scratched its ears.

  “Not much of a guard dog,” he said.

  “Mr. Raimey found him years ago, out in the fields. It was all alone and something had attacked it.”

  “It wasn’t wild?”

  Chinelo shook his head. “Mr. Raimey thinks a hunter let it loose.”

  Sabot walked with Chinelo and Bones. Bones sniffed around the village on his own hunt for the truth, leaving his marks and moving on. Men and women openly stared at Sabot as they walked. He stuck out.

  It didn’t take long to get from one end of the village to the other. A few hundred yards past the town was a canyon. Sabot leaned over and looked down. Excavating equipment at the bottom chewed and dredged for precious metals that kept the CPU world alive.

  “How long has the mine been here?”

  “A year before I was born. Fourteen years.”

  “What are you mining?”

  “Monazite.”

  “What’s that for?”

  Chinelo shrugged; he didn’t know. They headed back to the town.

  “What made Mr. Raimey cry?” Chinelo asked. “I’ve never seen him do that.”

  “He thought someone he loved was dead.”

  “And they’re not?”

  “No.”

  “Shouldn’t he be happy?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “Why not?”

  Sabot nodded to the dog. “Imagine Bones got caught up chasing a bird and fell over the edge of the mine.”

  “He doesn’t chase birds.”

  “Work with me, Chinelo. You think he’s dead. For the next few days you mourn, you wonder what you could have done to stop it. Maybe he should have been on his leash. But you start to feel okay.”

  “Okay.”

  “Now imagine a friend came to you and said that Bones is alive, but he is stuck on a ledge halfway down to the bottom. You might be able to get him, but you might not. And if you don’t, he’ll suffer and die. If so, for you, Bones will have died twice, and you will have failed him twice. Does that make sense?”

  “Sorta.”

  They got back to the shack. A stern woman was waiting. She looked Sabot up and down and then turned to Chinelo. “Breakfast is waiting.”

  Chinelo handed Sabot the leash. “Tell Mr. Raimey I’ll be back in an hour and I didn’t get a chance to feed Bones.”

  = = =

  Sabot and Bones sat next to each other outside Raimey’s shack. The silence didn’t bring peace. He pictured Glass standing over Cynthia, pulling apart her life support, killing his helpless beloved. Or Justin-01, after Cynthia revealed that the creature chained to the gurney was Glass, unable to control his anger and doing the same. She had been so strong that her motivation, energy, and brilliance had made the people around her better, including Sabot. But now her strength was only in spirit. Her life was a wisp that could vanish in the wind.

  Bones let out a whine of protest and circled to bed. Sabot almost knocked on the door to ask Raimey where the dog food was, then he realized the idiocy. Instead he rubbed Bones’s belly and waited, because that’s all he could do. The plane had enough fuel to get home, and that was it. There would be no second trip; there were no second chances. A drop of fuel was worth more than a pound of gold. And so he waited.

  = = =

  Memories. The blessing of them. Our own private channel we can tune in to at any time and recall the precious moments that made us happy, the good deeds and good times that formed us into the people we became. Memories. The curse of them. Our regrets and failures always at our fingertips, a putrid stink that can ruin a day. Our shames, our humiliations, our own private curse that constantly reminds us of how fucked up we are, how far we fell from the ideal. Why we deserve hell.

  Raimey sat in his chair hunched over. His giant hands were folded one over the other, as if in prayer. Tears dripped to the ground, plumping dots into the dirt floor and then vanishing. He couldn’t wipe them away—a gentle brush from one of his fingertips would cleave through his skull—so he tasted the salt.

  The memories bubbled up. He was thirty-five. Three years earlier, when the Coalition—China, the U.S., and the EU—began invading oil rich countries to hoard the oil, terrorism had exploded around the globe. Raimey now ran a clandestine anti-terrorism unit that shuttled from mega-city to mega-city, attempting to cut the heads off the hydra. But that night he was in Chicago. He came home in the early morning, three a.m. The day had been filled with gunfire and bombs. A memory flashed quickly to an old friend, Bao, who had died that day. His vacant stare fluttered through the other memory as if two pieces of film had overlapped in a projector. Bao’s pale visage receded out of frame, and then it was just the memory of John sneaking into bed next to his wife. These were “the good times”—though he would only know it later, when things got so bad. Back then, the present was blinded by a glowing future. It was the cost of ambition, and the folly of youth, to think that the next day was a given and that it would always be better than the one before.

  But now, crying in a hut, a metal giant, Raimey knew that back then, things had been fine. They had been more than fine: they had been perfect. He could feel her body against his, her warmth, so consistent and predictable and wonderful. She wrapped her arms around him, her slender frame surrounding his bulky one. And it was the safest he had ever felt. She pressed her mouth against the back of his neck and kissed him, leaving her lips planted a moment longer than the kiss, and for a torturous second, the weeping man could feel it thirty-five years later.

  “I’m so happy you’re safe,” Raimey whispered. But it had come from her. He had fallen asleep with a smile.

  Morning bleached the tan curtains white. Behind his eyelids, John sensed movement. He heard the slight clang of silverware. He creased ope
n the eye closest to the pillow. Vanessa, eight, moved comically slow with a tray in her hand, trying to be silent, but was outed by a fork and knife crisscrossed together.

  She froze and looked at her dad to make sure he wasn’t awake. She didn’t see his eye watching back. After ten seconds, with the exaggerated steps of Bugs Bunny sneaking by a sleeping foe, she made it to the bedside table. Raimey fought the smile, but it won, and she saw it.

  “Dad!” she squealed. He opened his eyes completely, and Vanessa put the tray down and jumped on him. He caught her and pulled her close. Her perfect skin, her little nose. Her newness. She crawled into the bed with him and Tiffany, who had propped herself up on a pillow to watch her husband and daughter reunite.

  “How are ya?” he asked.

  “I’m gooood. Did Mom tell you about the algebra test?”

  “He got in late, honey. I saved it for you to tell,” Tiffany said.

  “I got an A plus,” she emphasized. Vanessa was three years ahead of her classmates in math . . . and in pretty much every other subject. Present-day Raimey shuddered at this.

  “That’s great!” Raimey said and kissed her on the cheek. He had never been a student, just a soldier. It was his way out. It was his way here.

  “How are we going to celebrate?” Raimey asked.

  “Ice cream? Not now, of course, but later?”

  “I think we can manage that,” Raimey said with a smile.

  Vanessa hopped up and brought the tray over. She had made eggs, bacon (undercooked, but he ate it), toast, and juice.

  “I’m glad you’re home, Dad,” Vanessa said as she rested the tray next to him.

  “Me too. I missed you guys.”

  He still did. Three years later, the UN bombing—where China and the U.S. were supposed to put aside their escalating cold war—took his arms and legs. Six months later Tiffany was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. And John became a thing.

  He had spoken to Vanessa only twice after that. The first time he didn’t see her. She was twelve, and his wife wouldn’t allow it. He had just become the giant, a creature of nightmares, especially to a little girl who called him “Dad,” and so he spoke to her through a curtain. He told her how much he loved her, how he had to do what he did for the family. The torment of those words chewed at him, knotted him up, and Raimey howled.