The Northern Star Trilogy: Omnibus Edition

by Mike Gullickson

  Pull it together, Lindo said.

  “I’m fine,” Kove said. “Can I have a second alone?”

  Anger brewed in him, rising from the depths of what had been—for so long—an empty well he had tried to fill with booze. He didn’t love her—even the notion made him uncomfortable—but she had made him feel fine. And now she was gone, and he was reminded by the soldiers who kept their distance from him that he was a leper among the well. China Girl hadn’t once blinked. She had taken him for who he was, disfigurement and all.

  I want them dead, Kove thought. He envisioned his fist crushing Raimey’s armor. The giant flailing trying to adapt to his speed, the gears grinding down as they continued to get pummeled. And then, finally, the body breaking, and Kove curb-stomping Raimey’s head into the ground. And then Glass, too.

  She had died for no reason. She died for a cause twenty-five years too late. The world had moved on, and these fucks were scraping at the scars, getting back the blood.

  I want them fucking dead.

  Good, Lindo purred. It’s about time I got the Kove I know back.

  = = =

  Glass escorted Justin through the deep shadows of alleys and side streets, scouting ahead of him twenty to forty yards, checking for civilians and soldiers alike. Justin could see him move, but he couldn’t hear him. A few times Glass came from behind him, or from above, somehow scaling a wall. Justin was always within earshot or within sight, but he’d still lose track of Glass. The bionic would vanish and reappear like a specter.

  Justin didn’t see any soldiers, but the glut of skyscrapers carried the sound of the choppers miles away, still searching the ground.

  Cynthia is dead, Justin thought in disbelief. He was still shaken by it. How anticlimactic, how unlike her. She must have seen it coming; she must have known. She didn’t know about the Northern Star until it was too late. True. She was human. Her reputation had gilded that truth, as it had for so many others—no different than calling Evan a god. They were flesh and blood. Human. A remarkable, imperfect machine, prone to mistakes. That Evan and Cynthia had made so few was a sign of their greatness. But in their greatness, each mistake carried massive consequence.

  Where does that leave us? Justin wondered. With Cynthia, he had felt they could win. She had always laid out her plans like an engineer laid out a road. And as smart as Justin may have been, he wasn’t as smart as her, not in strategy or future-think. He was just a glitch in the human genome, his brain jelly optimized for a task that wouldn’t have existed in any other time except now. He was exceptional by coincidence.

  He watched Glass scamper ahead, using the walls and ground as if they were one and the same. A mechanized skeleton, an ancient giant, and an idiot savant were the instruments for Cynthia’s last salvo against the wrongs set in motion by her own hand.

  One fucked-up trip to Oz.

  “We are a block away from Yoshi,” Glass said in his cool, stripped voice. He had somehow ended up behind Justin. “Stay here. I’ll retrieve him.”

  “I need to explain to him what’s happened,” Justin said.

  Glass said nothing for a moment, his metal face expressionless, just armor mimicking the real thing. His eyes, the diameter of a soda can, stared dumbly back, the milky green of them rising and falling, rolling into itself like fog. He was finding words. “I’ll bring him . . . here . . . for you to explain,” he finally said.

  Glass went to move Justin into a dark corner, but Justin shoved him away. “Don’t touch me!”

  Glass’s head spun like a swivel searching for a threat. Satisfied, he settled down.

  “I’m sorry for what I did,” Glass said. “I saw those memories. That me felt nothing, but watching it from my eyes, I knew it was wrong.”

  “A sorry doesn’t change anything,” Justin said. “In fact, don’t apologize. Take it back, because you’re a psycho, and the way you look and what happened to you is fully deserved.”

  The eyes rolled in green.

  “I’ll bring Yoshi back.”

  And then he was gone.

  = = =

  Raimey was old. Cynthia was old. Sabot was old. Glass was old. Yoshi was sixteen. He was born nine years after the civil war. For him, the Northern Star was a fact of life, no different than Stalin to a Soviet son or daughter growing up in the early-to-mid twentieth century.

  He didn’t even know about the Northern Star until four years ago. Like most civilians, he thought Evan Lindo was President. (Funny, really. There was no voting.) It wasn’t until he started to Sleep that he had any idea of the mechanism behind Evan’s total control. And more than anything, it fascinated him.

  Yoshi quickly became a history buff for anything Mindlink or Northern Star. History was written by the winners, and that held true with the Northern Star as well. It was difficult, even dangerous, to dig up certain information. But Yoshi got good—really good—at being a crafty mouse in the cupboard. A nibble here, a nibble there, and over a few short years he had built an unparalleled account of the rise, fall, and rule of the digital world. He had also developed techniques to stay hidden from the Northern Star. Techniques that had never been used before.

  Yoshi had no grand plans; he was just a kid with nothing to do. The rush for him was when he found an egg of information that made him say “No way!” These eggs were why he swung through cyberspace without a net. An older Sleeper had given him the moniker Yoshi.

  The safest and most fun way to retrieve information was through first-person accounts. There were still hundreds of thousands of first-generation folks online who’d had direct contact with the inner workings of MindCorp and even Evan Lindo himself. Yoshi would meet with them and just let them talk. Him, a sixteen-year-old Chinese kid with his hat turned backward; them, older folks with a thousand-yard stare, reminiscing about a world before the Northern Star. A world that sounded like lies.

  Cynthia reached out to Yoshi by piggybacking on the tail of a woman he was talking to—an employee of MindCorp who had been there the day the military had stormed their headquarters. Piggybacking was something only a very powerful Sleeper could do.

  “We didn’t know anything was wrong,” the woman had said. Even in cyberspace the woman sat in a wheelchair. “We heard things—on the news, and we’d talk at lunch. But we never thought it would get as bad as some people predicted.

  “It was just a normal day. Then out of nowhere a team of those small bionics was in the building, pointing their guns at everyone and telling them to get on the ground. One of the big ones stood outside.”

  Yoshi was mesmerized. She was talking about the first Tank Majors and Minors. “What did the small soldiers look like?”

  Yoshi was sneaky, but not incredibly powerful as a Sleeper. Still, when he really focused on his subject, he could see their memories—if they were at the top of the subject’s consciousness. And as the woman’s eyes drifted toward the ceiling, thinking, images of the soldiers storming the building flickered like a reflection on the water.

  “Human,” she said. The image lost its ripples and solidified. He was watching the memory with her. “But in that ‘uncanny valley’ sort of way. Up close, you could tell they weren’t quite right. Their faces were normal though.”

  Yep, back then they’d still used the person’s head and skull. Except for one, Yoshi thought to himself.

  “We thought Cynthia was there, but she wasn’t. They had captured her—YOSHI, YOU ARE ASKING A LOT ABOUT ME—that morning out at a lake.”

  The woman saw that Yoshi’s face had change from attentive to serious. He was about to disconnect. The Northern Star had found him.

  “What is it—THIS IS CYNTHIA. I WOULD LIKE TO MEET YOU—dear?”

  “Nothing,” Yoshi said. He didn’t want to interrupt the woman’s story. “What did they do with all the employees?”

  “They took us away in trucks—GO TO THE OLD CHOCOLATE FACTORY TOMORROW AT—to a government building west of there. They interrogated each of us, asking us questions while wearing
a Mindlink—NINE P.M. SABOT WILL BE THERE.”

  Yoshi politely ended the conversation and disconnected from cyberspace. The next day he met Sabot; and he had worked for Cynthia ever since.

  Yoshi daydreamed from the second story of his apartment. He heard a scratching sound at the window and turned. A giant owl looked in on him, its head upside down.

  That’s not an owl.

  A spidery hand appeared from above the frame and pointed down to the main entrance door.

  Shit, shit.

  It was a Tank Minor. A weird one.

  He thought about running, then decided it wasn’t worth the stomach cramp. He was five-seven, a buck twenty-five. He wasn’t getting away. He walked down the stairs, wondering what was about to happen. He had a distinct feeling, from his research, that the owl head staring at him was Mike Glass. And that was not good. That meant Evan had found out what Yoshi was doing.

  It was weird opening the door to a man you knew was going to kill you. The world slowed, and it almost felt like cyberspace: where every detail was so vibrant, every sense sucked in so easily. Glass filled the doorway, and he looked like something pulled out of a drain. He wore a strange, shredded suit.

  Yoshi thought about closing his eyes, but curiosity kept them open. He wanted to see the blade slip out from Glass’s wrist. If he was going down, he wanted to feel the blur across his neck.

  “Yoshi?” it asked.

  Yoshi nodded.

  “Wait here.” It brushed past him and went through the house.

  What is it looking for?

  It came back, satisfied. “I need you to come with me.” Then it grabbed his hand and pulled him along, staying—as always—in the shadows.

  = = =

  Justin heard them approach, and when they came into the alley, he saw why: Yoshi’s bare feet were slapping against the wet pavement. Yoshi was young, and that immediately sent shivers down Justin’s spine. Justin had only been twelve when he was taken away. Glass immediately broke away from them and monitored the entry points of the alley.

  “You’re Yoshi? The Yoshi that Cynthia knew?”

  Yoshi paused. That wasn’t a question to answer lightly. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Justin McWilliams.”

  Yoshi made a face. “Did Cynthia put you up to this?” He looked down the alley past Justin. “Sabot?”

  In a blink Glass was there. “No yelling.”

  “And you’re Mike Glass?”

  “Yes.”

  Yoshi put his hand into Glass’s ghillie suit. Glass didn’t move. Yoshi’s hand touched a thick, cold column. To Justin: “You’re him.”

  “If you mean Justin-01, yes.”

  “But I’ve never found anything on you. How?”

  “Cynthia hid me. Listen, we don’t have much time. She said you have equipment that can be used with a Data Sump.”

  Glass wisped away. Yoshi hitched a finger in his direction. “Are you his hostage?”

  “No, but we need to go now. I need the gear. The three of us need to get to the Sump.”

  “Three?”

  “Raimey.”

  Yoshi jumped up and down. “John Raimey!”

  Justin grabbed his arm. “Seriously, kid. Cool it.”

  Yoshi got himself under control. Kind of. “John Raimey’s here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t Sabot come?”

  Justin paused for a moment. “They’re dead.”

  “I just spoke to Cynthia two days ago.”

  “Cynthia couldn’t move; she was too ill. And Sabot stayed and fought to give us time. Apparently they had rigged the room with explosives.”

  = = =

  Yoshi’s knees went soft, and he sat in a puddle and cried. He’d liked Cynthia. He’d never met her in person, but it had been cool talking to her. She’d always piggyback someone else’s tail, and it became a joke of theirs. He’d be talking to some hot chick in a chat room and suddenly it’d be her. Sometimes she’d take his masturbatory fantasy into an awkward realm just to mess with him.

  “Do you want to get it on?” he’d say to (insert name of hot girl who was probably a dude, morbidly obese, or as plain as a sheet of paper).

  “Sure, but only if my dad can watch,” hot girl/dude/morbidly obese/plain girl would say.

  “Hey babe, whatev—wait, what? Cynthia?”

  The hot girl would smile.

  “What are you doing, Yoshi? You’re just a kid. Sabot needs to meet you to . . .”

  Cynthia had successfully killed his virtual love life.

  Sabot wasn’t a father figure to him, but Yoshi thought that if they had spent more time together, he could have been. Yoshi, for all intents and purposes, was an orphan. His dad had split before he could crawl, and his mom was a cyberspace addict who would only disconnect for food and the john. Sabot was the only adult who had taken time to talk to Yoshi in person. He may have been ranked as one of the baddest men on earth (and yes, there was a site with such a ranking), but he had such a kind, patient demeanor.

  Once Sabot even took him out to eat—a dangerous excursion, in retrospect. That night, Yoshi had said he wanted to be like him.

  “No you don’t, young Yoshi,” Sabot said. His eyes always held a bit of sadness. “You see me as an action figure and my life as a cool story. Neither is true. I’ve done bad things with a good conscience, but I hate it all. People talk about the visual—I have those memories too—but no one talks about the smell of someone who has been torn open. No matter how old I get, or how long ago it was, I can’t shake the smell. I remember all of them by it.”

  Thinking about guts, Yoshi put down his burger. “What could you have done differently?”

  “That’s the thing. I got on a road where there were no other choices. Maybe early on I could have yanked Cynthia away, but I doubt it.”

  “Did you try?”

  Sabot smiled. “Is this for your encyclopedia or are we just talking?”

  “Only the good stuff gets in,” Yoshi joked. The image of guts passed, and he ate the rest of his burger.

  “I was too scared to try. I thought she’d choose MindCorp over me.”

  “Would she have?”

  Sabot bobbed his head up and down. “Oh, yeah. But by then I loved her. I’ve been around a lot of powerful people, and the one thing they all have in common is that their strength is also their weakness. For Cynthia, her relentless drive and obsession is what got her to where she was, but that same drive was why she could never let it go. People don’t know when to hang it up.”

  Sabot put a hand on Yoshi’s shoulder. “Including me. We think we’re free-thinking creatures, but we really aren’t. Most of us are very predictable. In the military, we train for that. In high-stress environments, most people act the same way. And as you get older you’re bucketed in by your own choices, and that’s where you stew. But you . . . you’re still so young.”

  Yoshi squirmed. He didn’t like being singled out for his age.

  “It’s not an insult. It’s an opportunity! Today you have thousands of choices. Talk to the girl, don’t talk to the girl. Talk to another girl. Leave Chicago. Go to school. Shake your mom awake and go to lunch. You can do anything. I urge you to try. Because I only have two choices now, and one of them is unfathomable: do I stay or do I go? And I could never go. One of my strengths is my loyalty, but it’s also my weakness. And on top of that, I’m in love. I understand your love of this history—I do—but I’d rather be anonymous and happy than dead and immortalized.”

  = = =

  Yoshi realized that Justin was trying to pull him to his feet. “Get up, come on. I know it sucks. But we need to get the gear and leave.”

  Yoshi wiped his nose. “You need someone to monitor the breakers.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Sixteen.”

  Justin shook his head. “Kid—”

  Yoshi poked him in the chest. “Don’t call me ‘kid’! I built the damn things. For the last three years I’ve
helped Sabot and Cynthia gather supplies. Where have you been? Maybe if you had been around twenty years ago this wouldn’t have happened!”

  Justin looked at the fiery little Asian. Beyond them, two Coke-bottle eyes were pinned in their direction.

  “Maybe you’re right,” Justin said. “I need someone on the outside?”

  “The breakers create multiple entry points into cyberspace that your tail jumps between. They protect you from a Sleeper attack or even the Northern Star, because as soon as one breaker is attacked, I can switch you to another. But they have to be controlled from the outside.”

  Justin didn’t even know what Yoshi was talking about; Justin’s power was raw, built-in. He grimaced. He didn’t want to bring the boy. But Glass couldn’t do it, and certainly not Raimey—Justin pictured him crushing the breakers with one finger as his brain boiled under the intense scrutiny of the Northern Star.

  “Go get changed. Something dark.”

  Glass must have been listening; he arrived to escort the boy.

  “How heavy’s the equipment?” Justin asked.

  “Each breaker’s about twenty-five pounds. I have five,” Yoshi said. His jaw still quivered and his eyes were red, but now they were filled with anger. He was no wallflower, Justin thought.

  “Mike, can you carry that?” Justin asked.

  “Yes.”

  The kid and the skeleton left Justin alone in the alley, and the moment of solace was the last thing he needed. He had just recruited a boy into a journey that would surely lead to death. And he wondered about himself, and Glass, and his past: when were the sins justified? And the part deep down in all of us that knows right from wrong in the absolute, the part we smother with reason when it goes against the grain of our desires, said the truth quietly: You should walk away. The world has moved on.

  And Justin ignored it. Evan deserved to die.

  = = =

  For two hours Raimey sat by himself, and for the first time in a long time, it felt good. His head was silent. He grabbed pieces of basketball-sized debris that had fallen from the roof and casually tossed one on top another, like a kid throwing pebbles.