by Lee Bond
“So you had Scoom and Veo here pick me up just to prevent some ass-kicking? Don’t see why, we were in a hospital.” Garth saw his glib answer fell flatter than a pancake, so he relented. “All right, fine. Thanks very much. I’m sure they’d say the same if they but knew how much help you were to them. Crisis averted. Now we got that out of the way, what do you mean ‘intentions’?”
“Precisely that, sa. Your intentions. What are they? If we take away your impossible attempt to open The Box, or to even survive the Final Game, what is it that you want here, with us?” Alyssa felt no qualms about speaking so openly with Garth. The man had a duronium-clad ego and a superlative ability to ignore anything he didn’t like. “I haven’t forgotten your diatribe against the evils of Trinity, but beyond a coincidence in passions where Trinity is concerned, it strikes me there is little here we can offer you. As you well know by now, I am … I am talking with Trinity representatives concerning the state of this system, so we are under … a certain amount of scrutiny. There are sectors in Trinityspace where entire centuries pass without anyone even seeing a Trinity vessel. Even by Trinity standards, your wealth is vast. You could go anywhere and live in any manner you chose. There’s no need for you to live here, amongst what you see as backwards, uneducated, and unenlightened people.”
“Aren’t you worried I’ll tell someone you just called your people inbred yokels who can’t tie their shoes without help?”
Veo laughed unexpectedly, then choked as he slammed his mouth shut.
Alyssa smiled languidly. “When you met with Terrance, you quite correctly pointed out that many people in this system feel no love for me. At last reckoning, I am the least popular person in history. I cannot, however, be gotten rid of through impeachment processes, there is no need for me to resign in disgrace, and no social scandal will cost me my position; the last item could make my job more difficult, but nothing short of being ousted by Noble Opposition will get rid of me. Riots or civil war will strengthen the OverSecretary’s position against me, true enough, but until that happens, the people of Lately are stuck with me. Whether they like it or not, what I said is true for more than eighty percent of the population.” Alyssa’s smile turned bitter. “So I ask again, why here, why us?”
Funnily enough, Garth had an answer. Being stuck in a hospital with nothing to do except harass and be harassed by Doctor Sullivan –fun as that was in the short run- left eighteen hours a day that needed filling. Awful daytime soap operas and even worse sitcoms took up some of that, but when the lights went out and the cleaning crew stopped playing poker with the lucky Offworlder, only one thing remained: introspection.
Bravo, or dreams of Bravo, had brought him to Hospitalis. That was a fact that he couldn’t deny even if he wanted to; the urges to find it and open it were as strong as they’d ever been. Moreso now that he’d been on the planet for a month. It was doubtful that would change, at least until he either succeeded or died.
Beyond that singular, seemingly all-encompassing goal, though, there was more. Immersing himself in the history of his adoptive home had revealed glaring –to him, at any rate- problems. The entire Latelian system, not just Hospitalis, suffered. Insular, xenophobic and paranoid, they’d driven themselves into the ground. Dire mismanagement by the Chair, crippling cross-directives, an ever-growing army of mutant God soldiers, absurd over-population … Latelyspace was on it’s last legs.
In order to get out again, they’d need help. Help that he realized, thanks in no small part to Lisa’s timely warning that he was being subtly –and not so subtly- manipulated by Bravo itself- he was willing to give.
Scratch that. He needed to give it. Success in winning his way through to Bravo meant success in opening it, and when that happened, the entire system would suffer in ways he couldn’t readily explain. With the system teetering on the edge of implosion, there were people out there who’d well and truly lose their minds over Bravo –their glorious Box- being opened, and he was sitting across from one of them right now.
Strictly speaking, there was very little time between now and then, but Garth was learning to look forward. If he could funnel enough cash into Latelian banks, if he could employ enough people, if he could bring to them reasons and means to forget about The Box or to see past it’s opening… The spiritual and psychic devastation of seeing their five thousand year old relic popping open on systemic television might be reduced to the point where millions wouldn’t simply die from shock.
Garth told Doans as much, elaborating areas he thought made him sound like a Grand Samaritan and Uber-Benefactor, glossing over the ones made him seem megalomaniacal and patently ignored everything and anything to do with civil insurrection, law-breaking, martial-law inducing experiments and general acts of mayhem.
“You say you want to ‘help us out’?” Alyssa couldn’t believe her luck. It was one of those rare moments where she was actually stricken by the uncomfortable possibility that there was such a thing as God.
“Well, kind of.” Garth shrugged. “Haven’t had too much time to think about it, mind you. Been busy getting blown up and not dying and all that fun stuff.” He thought about showing her his arm, but again, it was healed up and she’d already seen it and hadn’t been impressed.
“So your requests for Conglomerate status aren’t merely for show?”
It was hard to miss that the worrisome undercurrents floating through the room had disappeared. Puzzling it out quickly enough, Garth had to keep from calling Doans out; obviously, she wanted to hear from the horse’s mouth that he had no immediate plans to rush out and resume the methodical destruction of her fair cities, but that was only part of it.
In true dictatorly fashion, the Chairwoman was looking for financial support; as Latelyspace was in over it’s figurative head, the coffers were nearly always empty and as much as he hated it, he was basically a walking bank machine. And the Chair was looking for cash. Maybe not for her specifically, and maybe not in any way traceable back to him, but she wanted money. Probably lots of it. Regardless of Doans’ greed, his decision in hospital to make a serious go of Conglomerating was the right thing to do.
Triply so if it got the woman off his ass; he still had the tricky tasks of setting Huey up and busting into The Museum to get working on. Sadly, he’d been about to get into current history –the last hundred years or so- right around the time he’d decided he wanted to leave Sullivan’s care, which meant he still didn’t know a good goddamn thing about The Museum of Latelian Natural History.
If money got him less interference, so be it.
“Like I said,” Garth replied with his best shuck-and-jive face, “I’m all about the people. You’re all in a messy way out here, and I’ve taken a liking to the place. If I can help, I’d like to.”
As good as the meeting was going, Garth figured mentioning that he planned on insisting that he be granted the right to bring Trinityspace materials through the Q-Tunnel as part of his agreement to funnel cash into society was a thing that wouldn’t fly very well.
“Well.” Alyssa said, nonplussed. “Well. Well.” Things had gone so smoothly between the two of them that she had to resist the urge to count her fingers and toes. Regardless of how the meeting had gone, The Chairwoman still felt Garth was about as trustworthy as she was. This was to say, not at all. Humanitarian leanings or not, the ex-Offworlder was still a highly trained, phenomenally successful, utterly ruthless soldier who had mopped the floor with an augmented soldier and was, no matter how impossible it was to prove, directly responsible for the evisceration of their Spaceport. “Was there any specific area you were thinking about getting involved with, sa?”
“Not really. Again,” Garth smiled weakly, “been busy. I’m sure something’ll come up. When it does, the old avatars and whatnot can handle all the finagling and legal requisites, eh? No need for the two of us to be seen together. Especially not after what happened to Terrance. Like you said before, those bastard reporters are tricky and willing to go that extra mi
le. Hell, they prolly got pics of you, the OverCommander and Terrance coming to visit me in my hospital room. Telling the mass media you were there to visit the only survivor of the Port Disaster’ll calm the fires, but I’m sure you could name a couple guys who’d piece together Terrance’s sudden departure from office to that visit pretty quickly. I’m bad luck for high profile people.”
“Indeed you are, sa, indeed you are.” Alyssa said quietly. Louder, she began, “Now, as to those very same reporters: the quicker you Conglomerate, the quicker you can begin steps to legally force them into pre-approved interviews only. If the motions are approved, relay station avatars will deny any non-designated cameras, proteii or other recording devices from transmitting data. It won’t stop some of them from trying, but you’ll be freed from the most irritating groups.”
“What about that pop star?” Garth asked, feeling the meeting was at end.
“Like me, Indra is a public figure. We sign our intimate lives over for mass consumption. Unlike her, I don’t care what people think, so long as they do as I tell them.”
“Mama knows best?” Garth nodded quickly at the sudden glint of iron in Doans’ eyes. They might not ever be friends, but he expected they’d respect one another. Doans turned back to her work, leaving Garth with Scoom and Veo.
Garth stood and made his way for the doors, putting his arms around the two agents. “Ever been to The Palazzo? They got the most amazing food. When we get there, I’ll hook you up. Lunch is on me.”
Black Ops Squad Reduced
Reywin duFresne hated The Palazzo. Hated everything about it, from the way it pampered to the rich to the way it just sat there, exuding more authority than any mere hotel should ever possess.
But most of all, she hated The Palazzo because she’d been staring at it for the last week; hospital reports, hard to come by in their … reduced status … had made it necessary to simply ‘wait it out’ on the roof of an adjoining building. That rooftop vantage point made it easy to keep an eye on the comings and goings of the rich and powerful and although she learned more in twenty minutes of watching who went in through the front door –enough to earn a lifetime of relaxation- there was only one man she was interested in.
Garth Nickels.
When she got bored, she tried to pronounce his last name and never could. A sure sign that all wasn’t … all wasn’t right with the ‘man’.
Reywin stiffened with excitement. At long last, the bastard was returning to The Palazzo. She nudged Bolo awake with a toe and nodded at the surveillance monitors. It’d taken some doing, getting spEyes directly into his room without being caught by hotel security or Doans’ agents. She’d nearly been recognized by Sa Veo Harns on the way out, but it’d been worth the effort; Palazzo internal security was devilish to be certain and there was absolutely no way to hack into their netLINKs without eventually gaining unwanted attention. Bolo was good, probably the best in the system, but The Palazzo’s systems were daunting, making infiltration the only possible way, seeding the man’s room with spEye’s the only logical course of action.
Trinity religious freaks had a word for a man like Garth Nickels.
It was Antichrist.
It was a word Ashok Guillfoyle had bandied about quite a bit after upon being arrested and after looking the word up, the concept behind the word fitted. He was evil, utterly, absolutely, one hundred percent the evilest man this or any world had ever seen. The destruction of the spaceport was his fault, the deaths of all those innocent people rested on his head.
As did Trumann’s death and Gorton’s probably fatal wounding. That confrontation had been the ugliest sort of affair, leaving Bolo with a nearly useless left arm and Gorton with a slashed throat; the older agent was in a hospital under an assumed name and out of the game permanently, even if he did recover.
Still, after Trumann’s reactions to Nickels’ interrogation techniques, everyone should’ve something. They should’ve anticipated that her hatred would eventually override the fantastic sum of money on the table.
But they hadn’t and they’d wound up paying for it.
Even had they been aware of the silently growing mutinous thoughts, none of them, including Reywin, who’d been the woman’s lover for more than a year, could’ve known the depth of Trumann’s training and skill. Beyond being the team’s crack-shot sniper and arms specialist, in the last few moments just two days ago Trumann had displayed absolute mastery of four martial skills and a vicious streak of purified rage.
Had she not delivered a badly estimated snap kick at Bolo after nearly destroying his arm, all three of them would be dead now and Garth Nickels would be the property of the Latelian government.
Except, it hadn’t gone that way. ‘Thankfully’.
Thanks to Garth Nickels, Gorton was in a hospital or probably already dead, and beautiful, graceful Trumann tossed into a still-smoldering exhaust vent at the spaceport.
Hopefully, Regime investigators trying to track them down after OverSecretary Terrance’s fall from grace would assume that the entire team was gritty ash.
Being dead would make their job easier; hunting Garth down and killing him would be all that much simpler if avatars scouring the netLINKs in turn weren’t hunting them. It’d almost be like being Sigma’d except they’d still need to be careful; just because the systems and investigators wouldn’t be actively looking for them, using the wrong passwords or false identities in the wrong place would have them cooked for sure.
Garth Nickels was the Antichrist and he deserved whatever Jordan Bishop’s assassin was going to do to him. Personally, Rey hoped that the assassin was going to eat the man like an Hors d'œuvre. Reywin smiled as she imagined the Antichrist being cannibalized.
Bolo grunted unhappily as he moved to a better position. Yes, there he was, live and in color, wandering around his hellaciously expensive Ultra suite, singing weird old songs and clapping out improbably fast riffs on his belly. Remarkable. He’d been blown up and found lying unconscious in the Spaceport and he was now, just two weeks later, pretending to be a human interest story.
It wasn’t fair.
His left arm still burned fiercely. The security specialist reckoned he could kiss his paramount skills at hacking netLINKs farewell; their cheap medical scanners -barely able to identify human tissue- had nevertheless managed to identify extensive nerve damage to his wrist. fingers and shoulder. Further elaboration from a free Hospitalian med-avatar suggested his type of injury would require immediate, extensive and expert assistance within hours.
That’d been two days ago. He’d be lucky if he could still use that arm to jerk off. Bolo brought up going to the doctors every few hours or so, but only half-heartedly; he knew he couldn’t take the risk of leaving Reywin alone.
After everything that’d gone down and her sudden exuberant interest in all things Garth Nickels, his boss and friend was exhibiting the classic warning signs that she’d go over the edge into madness. Without someone keeping a very close eye on her, large swathes of Hospitalis were at risk every second she was left unattended. Someone with Reywin’s skills could cause an awful lot of damage to people that didn’t deserve it.
Besides, with half of four million dollars heading to his bank accounts, Bolobo was kind of planning on never having to do anything harder than lifting a drink to his face or pronging beautiful women. A demolished arm could easily be replaced with cybernetics. All he had to do was hold on and grit his teeth against the pain.
Reywin’s voice was sharp in the air. “What the fuck is he doing?” She pointed imperiously at one of the Sheets. The images were, against all rationale, moving. “Please tell me I’m losing my mind.”
Bolobo almost told her that she’d lost her mind the moment she’d killed Trumann, but shrewdly kept his opinions to himself. Of the three, only Reywin remained uninjured. He’d stand no chance against a raving senior agent. Instead, he ran a couple diagnostic tests and waited for the results. He pursed his lips when they started coming in.
All eight Sheets were describing the slow, steady departure of all their spying equipment out of the room. In a few seconds, Hotel systems would detect the illegal recording devices and that’d be that. Avatars would dispatch armed guards to locations surrounding The Palazzo designated by those avatars as prime spots for surveillance; The Palazzo’s security Head was no dummy and he’d know immediately that blackEyes required constant control, severely limiting the distance and range they could be from the main control units.
At nine hundred feet from The Palazzo, Reywin and Bolobo were pushing the boundaries. If the man’s avatars didn’t automatically identify their location as one hundred percent likely, the Security Head would. They had very little time before The Palazzo’s highly trained guards rained fire down on their heads.
“Checking … checking …” Bolobo shook his head. The man was a genius. “Environment control. Damn, this guy’s good.” Luckily, Reywin missed the admiration in his tone or she’d’ve punched him in his wound.
Reywin started shoving their equipment into bags while keeping an eye on the stairwell. It was their only escape point since having to ditch the aircar for being too noticeable. If they didn’t get out soon, they were going to have to fight a pack of irritated Hotel guards. At the moment, Reywin wasn’t too sure her side would come out unscathed. “Explain that to me in small words while you pack your shit up.”
Bolobo went to work as fast as he could, doing his best to ignore the shooting pains and eventual wetness trickling down his arm.
“These fancy hotels put very pricey environmental controls in all the rooms. Don’t ask me why, but someone thought it’d be a great idea if they could adjust everything from temperature to humidity in each of the rooms. He hotwired the programming somehow and is literally using air to push our spEyes out into the hallway. I know spEyes better than anyone. How much pressure do you think those microscopic cameras can withstand?”
