The Northern Star Trilogy: Omnibus Edition

by Mike Gullickson

  The second time she was sixteen. Tiffany was dead and Vanessa had agreed to meet him. Raimey had hoped to salvage whatever vestige of his former life he could, but Vanessa wasn’t interested. She never wanted to see or hear from him again. Fate had honored that wish.

  But now, twenty-eight years later, she was calling to him. She was forty-four, imprisoned in a monstrosity, and she needed her dad. She had always needed him, and he had never been there.

  Late is better than not at all.

  = = =

  Lunch came and went. Bones smothered Sabot’s lap, tongue out, panting. Earlier, Chinelo had come by with food. Sabot thanked him, but told him he didn’t eat. Chinelo looked confused. Instead of explaining, Sabot took the plate, and when Chinelo was out of sight, he gave it to Bones. They had become fast friends.

  The door to Raimey’s home opened, and Raimey walked out. His eyes were red and his face was grim.

  “She’s alive?” he asked quietly.

  “Yes.”

  He cleared his throat. “And we can get her. You think we can get her?”

  “I don’t know. But Cynthia thinks so. She thinks we can win.”

  Raimey nodded thoughtfully, slowly. Finally: “Okay.”

  “Okay?” Sabot stood up.

  “Okay.”

  Chapter 5

  -Chicago-

  While the Northern Star burned as a sentient sun in cyberspace, its tendrils were embedded in the real world, grown over the bones of what had once been the Coalition. The decades of forced occupancy in resource-rich third world countries, military bases integrated into every mega-city to combat terrorism, the bionic age—together, these things had created a global military superstructure. And when the Northern Star took over, the coup was quick and painless. To the average citizen, very little had changed.

  There was still oil. It was controlled by the Northern Star and rationed out to civilians based on societal needs. Farmers had access to it, as did trucks, for distribution from rail. Certain manufacturing industries and medicine had an allotment. But the majority of it was hoarded for the future. For the Northern Star’s armies, there was a one-thousand-year supply.

  China Girl arrived in Chicago by plane three hours after Glass disappeared with Justin-01. Before China Girl, it was always Glass who had been Lindo’s guinea pig for the latest bionic advancement. Part of the reason for that was loyalty—Evan did, in some small recess of his being, have that gene—but most of it was ability. Glass’s mind, for whatever reason, could handle modifications that would kill other soldiers. The power. The incredible speed. The composite body that was biomechanically divergent from a human’s. The FLIR optics that processed images at five hundred frames per second and allowed him to see miles away. These advancements couldn’t be mass-produced. Apart from Glass, and a few others around the world, the Minors’ ability capped out at Level 6.

  But Glass’s most important attribute was now failing. His brain had been manipulated, erased, and modified too many times. Brain scans showed pits and holes. The threads were bare.

  China Girl was his replacement.

  If he had thought of things in these terms, Lindo would have marveled at his luck, at how chance and preparation had leaned so heavily in his favor. He barely had to look for exceptional subjects—they were placed at his feet.

  Raimey was a one in two million possibility. His first implants, especially the ones that required the mind to comprehend the possibility of inhuman power and alternate tasks, were hideous in their complexity. Once it was connected in, the mind became a mouse in a maze, searching for the cheese, trying to bring A to B. Most minds failed. But after a few hiccups, Raimey got through every time.

  Glass was even more exceptional: one in ten million. Evan concluded that his psychopathic behavior had helped him adapt.

  Vanessa—and it was no coincidence that she was related to Raimey—was one in thirty million.

  It should have taken longer for Evan to succeed; there should have been more failures. But there weren’t.

  China Girl was incalculable in her rarity. She wasn’t Chinese—black, actually—but Lindo was into David Bowie at the time he found her and had had the Thin White Duke’s library of songs cycling through his head while he sought knowledge, turning over molecules in his mind, diving through the history of scholars and applying new formulas to understand the endless possibilities of compounds he could manufacture. Biomechanics, how he could strengthen electrostatic tissue. The stars, monitoring the others planets and their orbits, examining the concept of dark matter. This time period, layered with a thousand topics as if he had a thousand genius minds, was weeks long. And through all of it, he listened to Bowie. “China Girl” was his favorite song, and when he found this unique girl and stripped her of her bones, her lungs, her heart—and, in the process, her soul—he named her as such.

  In the design of Glass, Evan chose to mimic a human; but with China Girl, he didn’t even try. When Lindo designed her he was fascinated with predator insects, the durability and efficiency of their designs. The praying mantis and spider he appreciated the most, and after a millions of calculations, he determined that the combination of the two would make for an exceptional design. So China Girl was a cross of their most advantageous traits. She was charcoal gray, six feet long, and stood five feet tall. Her eight limbs could function as either arms or legs. Like Glass, her body was a long, articulated spine, and when she walked she curled the front third upright and used the front limbs as arms and the back six for propulsion. Eight onyx eyes were evenly spaced around her head. She was a Level 14 Tank Minor, but leaps and bounds ahead of Glass in processing power. Lindo had never come across someone like her before. So he made her special.

  From the base’s airstrip, she moved as the crow flies, scuttling over buildings, slicking through the alleys, causing the same chill that pedestrians felt when Glass passed. At the truck, the six bionics still lay where they had died, untouched. Every rifle was accounted for. Civilians knew to stay away.

  It was Glass’s work. She didn’t know him personally, but Lindo had sent her everything on him. The kills were surgical, not even a centimeter off the mark. China Girl connected to Lindo, and he used her eyes to confirm this.

  Dump the bodies and get Kove. I’ve begun my search, he said.

  No ceremony, no salute for their service. China Girl threw the soldiers’ bodies into a nearby dumpster, carrying two at a time with the ease of holding groceries, her back legs the scurrying wave of a millipede.

  She got in the truck and headed to Tank Major Alan Kove’s residence. Unlike Glass, China Girl had been left with a tinge of curiosity. She was interested to meet Kove. She had heard so much.

  = = =

  Kove was not outside as Lindo had said he’d be. China Girl got out of the truck, and a hover-rover the size of a Frisbee whirled off her back. It shot over the one-story warehouse that housed Kove. She was on the outskirts of the city, where all of Lindo’s special soldiers resided. This perimeter distribution allowed the soldiers to quickly converge and surround any conflict within.

  China Girl found her target. Nine feet tall and five thousand pounds was easy to find. She could see the heat signature from his human frame embedded in his Tank chassis. He was alive.

  She scurried to the door and went in.

  = = =

  A message from Lindo woke Kove up.

  “Get out of my head,” Kove slurred. He had passed out in the middle of the room. He heard a noise and tilted his head. Janie, a vagrant, was asleep in the corner. She was a drunk too, and they had a pretty good arrangement: if she fed him the booze, she got half.

  Kove took a whiff of air. He was pretty sure she had pissed herself.

  China Girl is waiting for you.

  “OUT OF MY HEAD, EVAN!” Kove yelled. Janie stirred but settled back in. She had heard him scream before.

  Your charge is low.

  Kove sighed and sat up. Evan wasn’t going to leave. He was like a nagging m
om. Kove could feel the disappointment, but he had learned simply to not give a shit.

  Five percent.

  “Yeah, I know.”

  Kove didn’t remember the last time he’d charged up. He didn’t remember much these days. He gathered cues from around him: it was night. He got that from the window. He’d drunk a lot of booze. He got that from the dozens of bottles of vodka that were scattered around his apartment.

  He tried to stand, but the room wobbled. He sat back down.

  “Another hour,” he murmured and laid himself out.

  Chao is dead.

  “Good. He was an asshole. Let me sleep.”

  During the civil war, Chao and Kove had been the most advanced Tank Majors ever designed. They were a hybrid that had both a Tank Major’s brute strength and a Minor’s speed and agility. Their skeleton and armor were constructed of the same osmium/depleted-uranium alloy as Raimey’s, but instead of hydraulics, chains, and gears, they had mounds and mounds of electrostatic tissue. They were as fast as a Level 4 Tank Minor and equal in strength to an old Heavy. Their hydraulshocks were scaled back, more compact, but they had thirty cartridge-less rounds per shoulder, and they could still knock over buildings and puncture the thickest armor.

  Mano a mano against nearly any Tank Major, Kove would win. There’s was only one Tank Major who might give him a challenge, but he was gone, somewhere in Africa, guarding the material mines that the Northern Star needed to maintain its systems and circuitry.

  Hell, he’s old. He might be dead, Kove thought. His head pulsed with the start of a wicked hangover. And of course there’s Big Brother. But Big Brother doesn’t count.

  Kove cared for none of this. He just wanted to be numb. He was disfigured, an addict. Lindo knew about the addictions, but ignored this flaw. During the civil war and the wars after, Kove had served him well. He was used only occasionally now.

  Kove was missing his entire lower jaw. The injury had occurred nine days into the civil war. MindCorp had taken control of the Tank Minors and was using them like puppets to stop Evan from retrieving the last component of the Northern Star: Vanessa Raimey. Kove had been sent to the Derik Building to retrieve her. He still remembered the unfinished bionics shattering the windows and pouring out of the five-story structure in a waterfall of limbs. They tore apart the softy soldiers that had come with Kove, and in the chaos of their clawing hands, they had somehow unlatched his helmet. He stamped them down, retreated, and blew up the building. But by then, Glass had arrived.

  Kove didn’t know about Glass and Vanessa, but at that point it didn’t matter. Orders were orders. But that damn helmet. Glass hit him with a steel rod, knocking it off. The next strike turned off the lights and took his face.

  A rubber prosthetic now covered the disfigurement, and it looked about as real as it sounded. When it was on, his unattached tongue would slop against his fake face, souring his throat with the taste of rubber. When it was off—when he drank—Janie got the whole view: a pink slug and its cave. He couldn’t enunciate, so an electronic voice box was wired in to his Mindlink implant. He spoke with his mind, and the voice sounded like him. Miserable.

  Kove heard the door open and tilted his head back. Upside down, he saw a metal spider walk into the room.

  “Alan Kove?” it asked. Its voice was cold; it used an electronic voice box too.

  Evan, seriously, Kove transmitted.

  She’s the most powerful Tank Minor ever built, Evan responded proudly.

  Why don’t you cure cancer or something? Kove lurched up. The room rocked as if it were floating on the sea, but then it settled into a gentle pitch. God, I want a drink. He scanned the bottles on the ground. He thought maybe he saw a glint of glass in Janie’s hand.

  NO DRINKING, Evan demanded.

  “No drinking,” the spider repeated.

  “Great, we’re linked.” With effort, Kove stood. His head was almost to the ceiling. His shoulders were as wide as a third of the room. The spider was tiny beneath him.

  “Your charge is at five percent,” the . . . thing said. Its voice had a subtle feminine quality. “Standard protocol is to charge at fifty percent.”

  “What’s your name?” Kove glanced at Janie again. There was a bottle cupped in her hand.

  NO DRINKING.

  Get out of my head, Evan. I swear to God, I’ll jump in the river and sink to the bottom.

  “China Girl.”

  “That’s a stupid name.”

  “It’s my name,” she responded without offense. “Are you . . .” She searched for the words. “Drunk?”

  “I wish. Hung over.”

  “Can you function?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Are we going to the base first?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re a girl?”

  “I believe so, yes.”

  Kove nodded. She looked like a . . . whatever. Evan’s fancies were beyond him. He loaded his hydraulshocks, grabbed a crate of extra munitions, and threw his helmet on top of it. Then he followed China Girl out as if he were helping her move.

  Chapter 6

  After hammering Glass with the crowbar, Justin had left. He didn’t care about Cynthia’s explanation, didn’t care about Glass’s redemptive journey; this wasn’t a movie, this was life. If he could have, he would have killed Glass right there.

  The elevator took him up to the ruins of a Data Core. The high-tech gadgetry that fueled a universe was dark, and mostly shards. A battle had taken place here long ago—maybe one of the first that had triggered all that had happened since. Cynthia had survived underground all this time, biding time, waiting for a crack in the seam of the Northern Star’s rule—a seam that might be made into a tear.

  Justin stared up at the Data Core. Midway up it was shattered. A million fiber lines hung loose like guts, and the metal plate of the Data Crusher interface—the interface the local Sleepers would use to read, program, and manipulate data—hung outside the fuse, rocking back and forth like a tetherball.

  Five years before, Xinting had told him not to go. Ted, her husband, had worked his way to manager for a timber harvesting company, and a few years prior, he had given Nathan—Justin—a job felling trees.

  “I have to,” Nathan/Justin had said.

  “Why? You can live here without worry. There are girls here—Bethany likes you. You could have a family.”

  Justin laughed. It was morning. Ted had gone out to hunt. “Great, I got three girls to choose from . . . and one of them’s a hooker, by the way . . . ”

  “Nathan!”

  Justin shrugged. “It’s true. How can I have a family when I can’t even tell someone my real name?”

  “A name isn’t who you are,” Xinting replied. “You know that. What do you think you’ll accomplish going down there?”

  “I think I can control it. And if I can contr—”

  Xinting slammed her hand down on the table. “YOU CAN’T! They will find you, and they will do what they did all over again.”

  “Like you did.”

  Xinting reeled back as if slapped. Anger and hurt radiated from her. “I was your friend, Justin. I didn’t bring you there. I was a subordinate. I did what I could.”

  Justin felt bad; he knew he shouldn’t have said that. He knew the sacrifice she had made for him. “I’m sorry, Mom.”

  Xinting put her hand out and rubbed his cheek. Even in his forties, he took it. It felt good to be loved.

  “This is how it should be. The way things are now, down there . . . it isn’t right. People create the realities that suit them and then never leave.” Xinting rapped the table with her knuckles. “This is reality. The cabin should be drafty. We should get colds. We should have times when we’re bored or unhappy or lonely. What’s going on down there is a drug. People live and die, and they don’t even have enough friends for a funeral.”

  “But I don’t want a normal life, Mom. I’m special—I have a gift. A real gift. And here I’m a nobody.”

  “You don’t know wh
at you’re saying,” she said quietly.

  She had been right.

  The stairs to the surface spun up the perimeter of the Data Core, and they looked sound. But instead of racing up those stairs, leaving, going as far away as he could, Justin sat down and cried. There was nowhere he could go now where he would not be found. He didn’t want to be special anymore. He wanted to be married; he wanted children. He wanted a job he could come home from and not think about again until the next day. He wanted the monotony of stability, the subtle magic of steady love. He wanted to see the spark in his kids’ eyes when they learned something new.

  And there was only one way he could get that.

  Win.

  So he came back. And, like Cynthia, he quietly waited for Sabot and Raimey to arrive.

  Justin was sitting on a crate marked “explosives,” eating a reconstituted meal, when the monitor flickered on. “Justin, I need your help.”

  He looked up at the monitor. “What do you need?”

  Cynthia’s avatar looked embarrassed. “I can’t clean myself, and I need to be rolled over to prevent bed sores.”

  Justin grimaced. Across the room, he could see the end of the bed and the upturn of a thin blanket, covering Cynthia’s feet.

  “Please.”

  Justin put down his rehydrated beans and went over. He had never met Cynthia in person, but he had seen videos and photographs. Her hair had been a fiery orange; she was short and thin, business-pretty. But what lay before him now was a melted wax version. She had modified her skull for a high-bandwidth Mindlink. Metal contact patches surrounded it, and in between, wiry gray hair grew in strings. Her skin, which had previously been milk white, was now the color of dishwater. Justin didn’t know if she had gained weight, but the litheness of her youth had deflated into the mattress. It was sad.

  “What do I need to do?”

  “I’m very embarrassed,” Cynthia’s avatar said. “I thought Sabot would be back by now.” In that sentence, he heard more than embarrassment; he heard worry.