Big Brother rose from the river, and Justin could barely take it all in. At first he thought his vision was spotting from the stress, because Big Brother looked as if it was covered in fleas. Justin realized they were Lindos. They kept Big Brother maintained, like pilot fish pecking the parasites off a shark.
The ground shook as Big Brother walked past, uninterested in the little people below. And as the deep impact of his retreat rattled the earth like a kick drum, Justin thought about John Raimey and Mike Glass, and about Cynthia Revo and Sabot, and how, if they had not gone on this mission—if they had kept their heads down and their backs covered—they could have lived a little bit longer. It was a life none of them wanted, but it was still life. And there was no way they could win a fight against creatures like the one he saw before him.
Big Brother needed no boatman or gold coins to cross the River Styx. It could wade across on its own just fine, thank you.
“We never had a chance,” Justin said.
“No,” China Girl replied. She fired up the truck and drove Justin to his final destination.
= = =
It took Raimey an hour and a half to reach the city. Glass rode on his shoulder, scanning for any threats, but found none: two-thirds of Lindo’s bionic forces had died at the Sump, and the rest had moved on. After all, Evan had gotten what he wanted: the King Sleeper.
Glass kept Raimey updated on Justin’s position. Halfway into the run, Justin was in the air heading toward Washington, D.C.
The sheer distance between Chicago and Washington, D.C. seemed an insurmountable obstacle. Raimey was old enough to remember when this wouldn’t have been an issue at all. But there was no fuel, few vehicles, and almost nothing that could carry John’s weight. The train wasn’t an option.
And then an idea came to him.
Raimey charged his batteries at a power grid, and then he and Glass headed north—where no one would expect them to go. Now Raimey waited, prone, behind a rusting helicopter. Glass separated from the shadows. The sky had begun to pink.
“Justin landed,” Glass said.
“You know where?”
“Within a meter or two.”
The Northern Star. Now they knew where it was.
“What are we up against?” Raimey asked.
“Ten Minors. One Tank Major that appears to be broken. There are two pilots in the infirmary. One is useless—half his face is covered in burns. The other has shrapnel wounds, but appears mobile.”
John nodded.
“Hydraulshocks and ammo are in the building to the north. There’s jet fuel and a tanker truck to the south.”
“Good. Get the pilot. I’ll handle everything else.”
Glass coalesced into the shadows. Raimey rose to his feet. Only a few helicopters could carry Raimey, and none of them had the range. And even if one did, Lindo would see it and shoot it out of the sky. But Raimey knew of a plane that could hold his weight—a plane that had the radar signature of a sparrow. Sabot had used it to fly him here from Africa. All it needed was a pilot, fuel, and a destination.
Raimey felt his wife watching him. Her smile on his back felt like rays of sunlight. His waist chains spun up and he rumbled toward the base.
= = =
The Minors in the barracks were playing cards, and it never occurred to them that they could be under attack; so although they heard the rumble of Raimey’s approach, they dismissed it as a far-off freight train. But when the card table began to hop like the possessed puck of a Ouija board and the jackhammer pulse grew, they raised the alarm. But it was too late.
Raimey ducked a shoulder and barreled in through the wall of the concrete structure. Rubble fell onto him and tumbled off, and his chains spun furiously, taking in debris and spitting out dust. The concrete fog coiled around him like smoke.
The Minors stared at him. None moved. One slowly laid down a pair of jacks and junk. Even the Tank Major stayed in his maintenance chair, knowing that whether he lived or died was not his choice.
“Who here was at the Sump?”
A few raised their hands.
“You know who I am?”
All of them nodded.
Raimey felt a tug on his foot. He looked down and saw that he had trampled a Minor. John lifted his leg and the Minor crawled against the opposite wall.
“Do you any of you think you can take me?”
They all shook their heads.
“Good. You’re going to stay here. Play cards, I don’t give a shit. But if I see you after this little meeting, I’m going to kill you. Do you understand?”
Slow nods.
“Say it.”
“We all understand,” they said in unison.
Raimey pointed to the Major.
“Where are the hydraulshocks?”
“They’re in the ordinance shed.”
“Anything around five million foot-pounds?”
“No. The highest is three and a half.”
“Who here understands munitions?”
The Minor he had trampled raised his hand.
“You’re coming with me.”
Raimey turned back to the Major. “You stay down. If I see you up, I’ll assume you’re a threat.”
“Dude, I’m not going anywhere.”
Glass was there. In his arms was the pilot. The man’s leg was broken. The Minors turned their attention to him.
“You’re letting them live?” Glass asked. The Minors shrank back. Raimey took a long look at them.
“They won’t do anything.”
The Minor that Raimey had trampled was named Jenkins. He hopped on his good leg like a pogo stick, the strength of it still three times stronger than that of a normal man. He led them to the ordnance locker and punched in the key code, and they went into the large shed.
Jenkins pointed to group of pallets. “The hydraulshocks are there.” He sat down at a workbench designed for reloading.
Raimey walked over and lifted a six-hundred-pound pallet. He set it on the table. The Minor took two hydraulshocks out and proceeded to crack them open.
“What are you looking for?”
“Seven million.”
“Whoa.” Jenkins uncorked two three-point-five-million foot-pound shells and dumped one into the other, doubling the load. “At least I won’t have to do math.”
“I need fourteen of them.”
“It’ll be thirty minutes,” Jenkins said.
Raimey stood there.
“Sir, you can stay here if you want, but I’m not going to fuck with you. I know who you are.” He added, “This isn’t my war. Shit, I was army reserve.”
Raimey smiled. “College?”
“Yep, came from a farm town. Just wanted a free education.” Jenkins pushed the finished hydraulshock over and cracked open two more. “IED changed that. Can’t even get out when you’re blown to bits. They don’t tell you that.”
“Nothing’s free,” Raimey said.
“We are,” Jenkins replied. “What are you gonna do if you win?”
“I don’t know. Where’s the fuel depot?”
“South, near the runway. Can’t miss it.”
Raimey found Glass at the fuel depot. He was filling the tanker truck. He stood in front of it like a bodyguard.
“The pilot’s inside the truck,” Glass said as Raimey passed, never taking his eyes off their surroundings.
Raimey leaned over into the driver side window. The pilot was inside, scratching his leg uncomfortably.
“You can fly a stealth jet?”
The pilot scratched his leg as if it were his head, thinking. “I’m a Sleeper pilot when I fly, so I should be able to, but what you’re doing is insane.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“I know, sir, and I’m not trying to make you angry, but I’ve heard what D.C. is like now. It’s a black hole. It’s the closest thing to the Northern Star living and breathing in this world.”
“Why the hell do you think I’m going there?” Raimey asked, bristling.
“Where would I land, sir? Pilots are told to keep a two-hundred-mile radius from Washington, D.C. because of Big Brother. It fires first and figures out what the fuck it shot down later. I know you can kill me, but I’m dead if I fly you, too.”
The pilot had a point. Raimey stood up and thought about what he had said. Any place to land down there would be maintained by Evan. And even if the bomber had the radar signature of a bird, it wasn’t invisible. Raimey didn’t know Big Brother’s capabilities, but it was possible it could detect the ninety-year-old stealth plane. He looked over at Glass, who continued to survey the area. They had to get to the ground safely. If they did, they had a chance.
The pilot remained quiet, a very good survival response.
An idea came to Raimey. It wasn’t his idea, but he smiled at the memory. The whole thing is circular, he thought. This was the end, and that was the beginning. If it worked, and Raimey lived, it would be a punishing irony.
He leaned back down.
“You’ll live, son. I promise.”
The hydraulshock rounds, wildcatted to twice their normal pressure, were finished in thirty minutes, just as Minor Jenkins had said. Raimey asked about the piece of gear that would get them to the ground safely, and Jenkins directed him to it. What he saw would do. When Glass saw what Raimey held in his arms, he understood how they would land in the dead zone unscathed. It was simple. It would work.
Glass, Raimey, and their temporary prisoner rumbled out of the base, pulling the tanker behind them. The Minors and the Major tentatively walked out of the crumbling barracks as the truck passed. Lindo hadn’t connected to them, and as a group they chose to remain dark. An army of highly trained bionics had been sent to the Data Sump and hadn’t come back. Nor had Kove, one of the most powerful giants every created. But these two had—storming the base as if they were walking into a mall.
The bionics understood that it was foolish for their companions to have gone to face them. That numbers didn’t matter against them. That nothing could overwhelm them. The canyon lines and torment on Raimey’s face, the emotionless well of Glass’s eyes . . . these were men who had gone into the most hostile recesses of the world and made it theirs. They were the teeth that gnashed in the night.
And so this group of bionics—who were so powerful compared to a normal man, the elite of the elite—instinctively clumped together as the tanker grew small. They sought quiet comfort in each other, because they had shared a moment when absolute Death had looked down on them and given them a momentary pardon. They would live more days, but these days would not be like the ones that had come before; they would not be lived with the bravado of a bully. The hierarchy of their world had shifted, and the bionics now realized that were merely shih tzus who thought they owned the yard, who ruled the squirrels and the butterflies in it—until a coyote lumbered down from the hills because it could take the yapping no more.
Chapter 12
Blast doors large enough to swallow a jetliner opened like the arms of a prophet, and mountains of dirt pushed to the side, sickly trees churning within it. The entrance had been buried.
China Girl walked Justin toward the growing entrance of The Northern Star. The sea of Lindos followed, but then stopped in a perfect line as if there were an invisible force field preventing their entry. Their home was the wasteland.
Somewhere far away, Justin heard the bellow of Big Brother.
China Girl led Justin, and fifty feet in, a deep groan rattled the air and the blast doors slowly swung closed. Justin turned; the Lindos were walking away, back to wherever.
They reached an open lift the size of a city block. It hung at the edge of a precipice, a long descent to the bottom.
A hint that Lindo was always watching: the gate to the platform opened to greet them, just as the bunker doors had done before. Justin felt Lindo’s eyes, but there was no indication of cameras or sensors either on the ceiling or the walls. The gate closed behind Justin with a thick hydraulic lock, and the platform slowly descended.
“You can take off the radiation suit,” China Girl said.
Justin did. “How long?”
“To the bottom? Thirty minutes.”
“What are you going to do to me?” Justin yelled to the space around him. The chasm echoed his question to infinity. “Forced Autism? Is that it? What Piece is failing that can I amend?”
The secret eyes were no match for the secret speakers. Evan’s voice filled the metal cavern as if Justin was in the belly of the beast.
“WHY BE MAD, JUSTIN? DID YOU THINK IT WOULD NOT END LIKE THIS? SO MANY PEOPLE LIVE AND DIE WITHOUT LEAVING A MARK ON THIS WORLD, BUT YOU ARE SPECIAL. ESSENTIAL, IN FACT, FOR THE WORLD TO CONTINUE ON. IT’S BEYOND A PRIVILEGE, DONT YOU SEE? IT’S YOUR DUTY. SOLDIERS ON THE BATTLEFIELD TAKE SOLACE IN THIS WHEN THEIR RATTLING BREATHS QUICKEN, WHEN THEIR HEARTS STOP, WHEN WHITENESS BLEACHES OUT THE WORLD AROUND THEM. THEIR DUTY GAVE THEM VALUE, HOWEVER FLEETING, AND THEIR SACRIFICE HAD PURPOSE.
“IF YOU COULD WAVE A MAGIC WAND, WHAT LIFE WOULD YOU CHOOSE? ANONYMITY? ONE WHERE YOUR GIFT WOULD NEVER BE REALIZED? OR ONE OF INDIVIDUAL POWER, WHERE YOUR GIFT COULD ONLY BENEFIT YOU? BOTH ARE CORRUPT.”
“And what have you done that’s so different, Evan?” Justin shouted angrily.
“BY THE ACT OF WHAT I’VE BECOME, I HAVE SHOWN THAT IT WAS MEANT TO BE. I’VE ESTABLISHED FATE BY PRECEDENT. ON A LOWER LEVEL, MY DESIRES ARE MY OWN, BUT THE SCOPE OF MY INFLUENCE TAKES ME BEYOND YOUR BELITTLING QUESTION. I’VE SHAPED THE WORLD, JUSTIN. THERE IS NO PLACE I DO NOT TOUCH. AND THE WORLD IS BETTER FOR IT.”
“Then why do you need me?”
“MY HUMAN FORM IS BREAKING DOWN. BY MY CALCULATION, I HAVE ONLY TWO YEARS LEFT TO LIVE. THE OTHER PIECES ARE DYING AS WELL. SLOWLY, BUT ONE BY ONE WE WILL ALL GO. AND YOU THINK, GOOD. GOOD RIDDANCE. BUT THAT IS A SMALL, SELFISH EMOTION. WHO WILL LEAD? WHO WILL MANAGE WHAT IS NOW MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE PHYSICAL WORLD? WHO WILL MANAGE THE CITIES’ INFRASTRUCTURE? WHO WILL MAINTAIN TRANSPORTATION? CURRENCY? WHO WILL MAINTAIN PEACE? THERE IS NOTHING ELSE THAT CAN TAKE MY PLACE. IDEOLOGIES HAVE FAILED. DEMOCRACY HAS FAILED. RELIGION HAS FAILED. ALL BELLY UP BECAUSE OF THE INSTANT WISH FULFILLMENT EXPECTED AND DEMANDED BY MODERN SOCIETY. THE WORLD CAN NO LONGER HANDLE ADVERSITY. IT MUST BE SPOON FED AND PETTED. WITHOUT ME, IT WILL FALL INTO CHAOS.”
Justin predicted what Evan’s next words would be, and his breath left him.
“ALL THE PIECES WILL BE ONE, JUSTIN. IN YOU. YOUR MIND IS EXCEPTIONAL. NO ONE ELSE WILL DO. AND IN YOU I CAN LIVE ANOTHER THIRTY YEARS—WHICH IS SIX THOUSAND TO ME. AND THEN I’LL BE FREE. I’LL SOLVE THE MORTAL MYSTERY THAT PLAGUES US ALL, THE INEVITABILITY THAT TAKES OUR LIFE’S ACCOMPLISHMENTS AND REDUCES THEM TO BULLET POINTS ON AN OBITUARY PAGE. I WILL LIVE FOREVER.
China Girl pinned Justin down when he tried to jump over the rail, but she didn’t cover his mouth while he screamed. She was instructed to not damage the next Evan Lindo.
= = =
When they reached the hangar, the injured pilot used Glass as his arms and legs, directing him around the plane for the refueling and prep. The pilot had never flown a stealth bomber, but he connected into the interface with the Mindlink control at the front of the aircraft, and when he re-emerged he said that he could. Most of the controls of the stealth were actually handled by onboard computers.
“It’s an old plane. The interface feels like I’m playing a video game,” the pilot said.
“Well, don’t crash. We’re out of quarters,” Raimey responded. The pilot didn’t get the reference.
The cargo bay was large, but Raimey still had to crawl inside to sit. A few minutes later, with the pilot ready to taxi, Glass tossed his hard case up into the bay and climbed in after it. The belly closed, and they were off.
Over the first hour of the flight, Glass prepped John for battle. In the old days, a mechanical engineer and software technician would comb through Raimey’s gears, chains, hydraulics, electric engines, belts, battery system, implant software, and, of course
, the hydraulshock, to make sure there were no ghosts in the system. But Glass didn’t have that training, and anyway, Raimey hadn’t had that service in twenty years. Glass simply removed the foreign debris that had accumulated in Raimey’s gears and between his joints. He extracted strings of electrostatic tissue out of Raimey’s hands—the mashed remains of Kove and others that had come in the way of John’s mission. One string was a blood-riddled, milky-white ligament. Glass stared at it, his misty green eyes twirling like a night-vision snow globe.
“What?” Raimey asked.
“I don’t think in terms of life,” Glass said, twisting the ligament in front of his face. “Do you?”
“I think about Vanessa. I think about Tiffany. Some old friends who are gone. But no, not really. I’ve been in war too long. How could I value life when I’m constantly tasked with taking it away?” Raimey gritted his jaw. “The root’s dead. The chance to change is gone. And I’m fine with it, I really am. A butcher can’t do his work when he mourns the cow. I just want her free. I want, once, for me to not be a fuckup who left her behind.”
“I want to change,” Mike said.
“That won’t help where we’re going,” Raimey replied.
“Did you know about Vanessa and me?” Glass asked.
“No. I didn’t know much about Vanessa’s life after I became this.” Raimey gestured to his body. “That was the deal. We had just started talking again when she die—when Evan took her.”
Glass continued the maintenance. He removed and emptied Raimey’s shoulder clips, replacing the existing hydraulshock rounds with the seven-million-foot-pound wildcats.
“Will you survive these?” Glass asked as he loaded the thick brass into the magazines.
“This is the last time I’ll ever reload. As long as I get Vanessa out, I really don’t give a shit if my arms fall off.”
The Northern Star Trilogy: Omnibus Edition Page 88
