by Lee Bond
Looking at the man, Gregroy rather imagined that the warnings had been for their benefit, not the other way around. Anger and other indefinable emotions seemed to be spilling from the Offworlder like a raging torrent of energy.
A final spark of rage bubbled through his icy calm exterior and for a heart-stopping moment Garth could feel his hands closing on the closest Goddie’s throat. He needed to get into Bravo, and quickly. He shoved his way through the front doors, Gregroy hot on his heels.
Angrily, he turned to confront the poor man once he was inside. Doors wouldn’t prevent the Goddies from coming through, but they couldn’t see through walls. “And that means what, exactly?”
Good Christ, the foyer was an absolute shambles. From appearances, Guillfoyle’s security guards must have figured a way out of their various places of incarceration just in time to engage the God soldiers with whatever they had to hand.
Gregroy’s forehead wrinkled. “As I understand it, sa, much of the equipment on the premises is both very expensive and dangerous. Our presence is to deter would-be criminals and looters from putting their lives at risk. As I understand it.”
With both the Portsiders and The Devil’s Nuts effectively cauterized, any other groups making a run for the building, would, by their very nature as low men on the pole, be less than successful. “This happen?”
“Several times, sa. Uncoordinated, poorly planned, but nevertheless, attempts to breach this facility have been made.” Gregroy swallowed nervously. His answers weren’t pleasing Nickels at all. The anger pouring from the man was considerably less inside the building than it’d been during the walk by the soldiers, but it was still a palpable thing. “The … current condition? Of the building … is such that undesirables imagine they can sneak in and out, sa.”
“It’s a fucking wonder you all didn’t decide to blow the place up and blame that on Guillfoyle too. Jesus.” Garth made up his mind. “Fine. You guys stay here and do your jobs. Until I hire my own security. When I get the netLINK systems up and running, I fully expect that you’ll give me access to your personnel roster.”
“No.” Gregroy said quietly, suddenly feeling very lightheaded and not at all well. He couldn’t remember having a backbone. It’s why he’d gone into Intelligence, and more to the point, why he’d never gotten very far in that organization. Why would his backbone grow now? What was wrong with him?
“No?” Garth took a deep breath. He reminded himself that he was in a poor situation at best and steeled himself accordingly. “What do you mean 'no'? Look at this fucking place! You guys fucking demolished it. I paid jillions for it, and it’s barely even a building anymore. I don’t know how you managed it, but in some places, the duronium shell is fractured. Do you even know how much persistent damage that requires? I bet you don’t! I’ll tell you how much! It means that one or more of your fucking God soldiers stood outside these walls and fired rockets at the walls for an hour! For no reason! I need to know who and where those God soldiers are every minute of every day, and you’re going to tell me.”
Gregroy shook his head. “No, I won’t. I can’t. If this was a civilian detail, I would allow you those courtesies, but this is a military operation. Chairwoman Doans and OverCommander Vasily are both very concerned about the level of sophisticated anti-personnel weapons built into this building’s infrastructure, sa. Until they are convinced that the equipment inside won’t be used against the public, my directives are clear: we are guarding Hospitalis, not your building. If the soldiers are required to enter, you will be informed, just as I expect to be made aware of your comings and goings.”
“Fine.” Garth replied, a chilling edge to his voice. Inwardly, he was fuming at the man’s orders. The command and the safety measures being taken were sensible and logical. The rage faded. Finally.
The building was dangerous and until it was under proper control and guarded with the right sorts of security personnel, Hospitalis was, at least theoretically, in danger. Garth couldn’t imagine that any of the viruses and other horrific tech Guillfoyle had been working on still existed, but the machinery, the equipment… that was all still here. “Move your men to a twenty yard perimeter around the building; that’s where the property line ends. Until or unless there’s an incursion, that’s where they stay. If your men need to enter this building, you get my permission first. I will be available at all times for that. Are we clear?”
Garth continued when the lieutenant nodded. “Work crews are going to start showing up within the hour to start fixing this place up. Don’t interfere with them in any way or so help me you’ll wake up every morning for the next hundred years regretting it. Follow?”
Lieutenant Gregroy Smith didn’t have a chance to agree or disagree with Garth’s demands. The man stalked towards an elevator muttering about the mess and something or someone called ‘Bravo’.
On his way out of the building, Gregroy placed a call.
“What is it, lieutenant?” Major Scottsmith asked.
“I …” Gregroy calmed himself. “I’ve just been introduced to the new owner, Major. I think … I think there could be a problem.”
A muscle below Scottsmith’s left eye twitched briefly. He was on board with a bit of the Nickels situation. Everyone above captain was at least peripherally aware of Nickels and the possible threat constituted against the Latelian people. “What sort of ‘problem’, lieutenant?”
“The … sa in question is … quite … quite hostile, Major. I’ve … I’ve never seen someone so angry. He really does look like he could kill a God soldier, sa. There’s going to be trouble down here sooner or later.” Gregroy filled the Major in on Garth’s requests, embellishing somewhat on the Offworlder’s behavior to drive the point home.
“What would you like me to do, Lieutenant Smith?” Scottsmith asked his youngest son angrily. “Come down there and hold your hand? You’re a soldier, for motherf… you have thirty Goddies at your disposal. We’ve destroyed planets with fewer men. There’s nothing he can do to them that they’d even notice, and if, by some massive stroke of foolishness, he decides to try anything, all you have to do is point them in his general direction. The scenery will shake for a bit and then all will be well. Acquiesce to his demands concerning their redeployment to property’s edge. He’s well within his rights but no further. And call your mother. She’s bothering the daylights out of me over you being in the Army. Woman thinks you’d be better off coding for a living. Scottsmith out.”
Gregroy motioned for his soldiers to deploy to the twenty-yard line as demanded. He didn’t want to call his mother because she was right: as a lieutenant, he was a much better programmer. He glumly watched the herd of God soldiers lumber to their new defensive positions, and then hurried to get back to his command post. He got back just in time to catch the highlights of the parts he’d missed while dealing with Garth.
xxx
Garth had no desire to go through each of the floors cataloguing the extent of the damage. Not only would it piss him off further, it served no purpose; his plans for UltraMegaDynamaTron were of a different sort entirely. Besides, following the undoubted rout of Guillfoyle’s disheartened security teams and the man’s own capture, it was pretty unlikely they’d seen the need to do any further destruction. The only upsetting thing was the likelihood that the interior weapons systems were gone; it was a solid bet any God solider teams sent to capture the traitor had destroyed them without hesitation.
No matter. He hadn’t been fond of the idea of traipsing around laser cannons and other weaponry anyhow. As long as the labs and manufactories were still intact, he’d be cool as a breeze.
xxx
The long hallway leading into what had once been Ashok Guillfoyle’s power base did indeed show signs of heavy conflict; many of the internal defense systems were no longer there, torn out of the walls by rampaging God soldiers.
Thankfully, the inner offices had gotten off lightly. Once the rampaging Goddies had got past the defenses, Ashok must’ve
lain down and waited to die. Much of the damage proved superficial the closer he got for inspection. Good. Garth grinned wickedly to himself. It looked like things might finally go his way.
Being given time to think about how he planned on proceeding towards his goals … it was … refreshing. The only pall on his success was Huey, still trapped deep within his AI brainbucket. The sooner he turned his resources towards locating Lady Ha, the better.
For everyone.
“First things first.” Garth headed over to the main and logged on; the moment the paperwork on his ownership status had gone through the proper channels, automated government systems loaded protocols onto every local netLINK, allowing him the luxury of using what he owned right off the bat.
Garth immediately went in search of data left in the deep storage systems. Unsurprisingly, all he found were manuals on the various high-tech machines he now owned, as well as a lengthy –and freshly written- document concerning the legal uses of a land-based Quantum Communication rig.
He grinned at that: someone in Doans’ office –probably the ironclad bitch herself- was no fool. Ownership of a Q-Comm rig, especially in light of Guillfoyle’s remarkable usage of it, was an unbeatable masterclass move.
Even the software used to run the more expansive features of the office’s fancy-dancy holographic emitters was gone. That was a bit disheartening. He’d put some effort into generating a full body hologram of Harry Bosch and really didn’t relish redoing all that work. No matter, though. Now he’d done it once, he could do it a second time easily enough. Hell, now he wasn’t in a hurry, he could refine and improve on good old Harry.
Doans had strip-mined all Ashok’s electronic assets as well as those lining his pockets. No matter. Everything Garth needed was sitting in the car’s hard drives. It was just a matter of reloading all the missing data, and with the way Latelian hardware and software worked together, it would be like nothing untoward had happened to the building at all.
Garth slotted his Sheet into the network and began loading the antiviral programs his old proteus had possessed, indiscreetly labeling them as ‘Ripley’, ‘Helsing’ and ‘Vorhees’. There wasn’t anyone on the planet that’d be able to associate any of those names with the killing of unwanted pests, and with Ripley running in the background all the time, he’d be alerted instantly if someone attempted to access the files or remotely activate them. He set the remaining two antiviral programs to root through the roots, as it were, looking for any Easter eggs left behind.
Within the first five minutes, the trio of avatars located twelve different programs that weren’t really viruses but what Garth thought of as backdoors spiders and cookie monsters. The cookie monsters made copies of everything and the spiders spun one-sided webs that held the data in the ‘cracks’ of the data drives. Operators working outside the building didn’t even need to enter his networks to get hold of what was being working on because the spider webs turned one-sided the moment there was anything ‘significant’. No one working on an UltraMegaDynamaTron system would be able to see them, but anyone knowing where to look would find them just fine. Not only would they be able to see what was being done, they’d be able to interfere.
And that was unacceptable.
Garth had Vorhees slice the programs up into a fine mesh of code, then let Helsing begin the process of integrating them into the systems. It’d take some time for the whole thing to complete, but it was well worth the wait. Once the trio was finished, Doans’ spyware programs would be under his control, allowing him to manipulate them.
Now he was on solid ground and not floundering around like a maniac, all the sons of bitches were going to be schooled like it was grade 3.
While all this was going on, Garth started building an internal network of passcodes and security checks more circuitous and labyrinthine than was necessary; he wasn’t any good at this kind of programming, so he was certain he was taking more steps –probably hundreds more- than anyone else would take.
Any hacker coming across the insane maze would automatically assume that whatever was ‘on the other side’ of all that encryption was worth the effort. In the middle of the maze, Garth dropped a particularly vicious malware avatar thankfully provided by ex-OverSecretary Terrance. Hackers, governmental or otherwise, would find themselves in seriously deep trouble when confronted with the beastie; the Hack-o-Taur would rip the shit out of their base netLINK, flinging copies of itself to any system connected to the original source, whereupon it would begin the mayhem all over again.
Chuckling at the fun he was having, Garth scripted an avatar to run through firewall trap. In an hour or two, he’d receive a breakdown of its efficiency. If it was too hard for lookee-lous to navigate through, he’d fix it. He wanted idiots to tunnel into the middle. Sooner or later, word would pass that Garth Nickels’ data was off limits.
Leaning back to admire his handiwork, Garth grinned. Subversive element indeed. If Scoom and Veo knew what was happening, they’d shit their pants. Since all of the system’s resources were now engaged in various duties, Garth called up a schematic of the building on his Sheet and started looking for one of the four Prote-O-Matics he owned.
“Seventh floor, Cybernetic Assessment Testing Facility, room 601.” Garth patted the network on his way out. “Yeehaw.”
Naoko Meets With Her Old Friend Morgan the ‘Dead’
Naoko looked up at the forbidding plaza of Sa Morgan the Dead, fruitlessly wishing there was another way learn about Garth. Old Man Sa, as lovely any geriatric Gamehead could be, hadn’t known and hadn’t been able to find anything … secretive … out about their newest citizen, forcing her to rely on someone she’d promised to avoid for the rest of her life.
But there was no other way. Sa Morgan was her only choice, now.
With the obliteration of the spaceport, she’d lost all the processing power she’d used as Lady Ha. Until the government constructed a new port or Penzengraaf was officially designated as a civilian institution, she couldn’t get around the fact that Lady Ha was dead. Even then, it would take a long time to familiarize herself with the new systems, to inveigle her way within. What she needed to know about Garth she needed to know now.
With Ha gone, there was very little she could do to save Garth Nickels from himself.
Without help from the last man she’d ever willingly choose to see, Garth would surely die. Some instinct, some … whisper … told her it was dreadfully important that the strange Offworlder survive.
Lady Ha. Through that pseudonym that Naoko had met Morgan the Dead as a child, yes, but it was through her status as an unparalleled master of Game Avatars that he had come to her, offering to take her as a student. Her skills as a disciple of both the Game and the inner world of the ‘LINKs, where people lived and died with what they stole and traded had drawn Morgan to offer everything and anything until she’d finally relented.
Naoko despised Morgan. He typified everything that was wrong with the world. He was rich, conceited, unbearable. A malignant tumor. He used wealth to get everything he wanted, and where that failed, he relied on the might of his father –a powerful politician and just as bad as his odious son- to achieve the same ends. It was men like him, sitting at the very top of a tremulous society, that threatened to destroy everything around them.
Not Offworlders, not Trinity. ‘Loyal’ citizens.
Naoko’d seen through Morgan’s façade quickly enough, and had left the man’s ‘employ’ to create the mighty Lady Ha, a foil against the truly criminal underground populated by people like him.
Once –at the very beginning of their working relationship-, she’d tried to force Turuin into bringing down Morgan’s empire of flesh and vice, using the promise of her great skills as the price. Turuin had very nearly called the authorities on her; no matter how disgusting, how unnaturally gross the sybarite was, he supported Chairwoman Doans to the fullest, financing her campaigns and throwing his weight into her corner when it was needed. BCUs were bred for loyal
ty, honesty, integrity to one person and one person only.
It was the first and last time Naoko asked Turuin for any favors.
It gnawed at her that Morgan had the contacts and power that she needed so desperately. There were other people in Latelyspace she could reach out to, but not as Naoko Kamagana. Without the massive netLINK of the port, adopting the Lady Ha guise on any other main anywhere in the world would open her up to investigation, identification, capture. She hadn’t even accessed ‘Lady Ha’ files stored on her own prote for fear that she’d be caught.
Naoko steeled herself and walked up to the front door. Before she could knock or otherwise make her presence known, a liveried servant opened the beaten bronze door. The semi-clad young boy beckoned wordlessly for her to follow, a half-smile on his lips and a glazed look in his eyes. Naoko followed, heart thudding in her chest.
She was entering the lion’s den on a ‘feeling’ she had for Garth Nickels. Visiting Morgan now … visiting Morgan now was rife with possible danger. Who was more mad?
On paper, Morgan was one of three major shipping magnates, making a third of the vessels plying the interstellar depths between planets –along with the occasional foray into Trinityspace- his; like the other two men in his caliber, he’d been hit hard by the destruction of the spaceport. He was likely to be in a poor mood. The girl hoped quite sincerely her offer would be enough to entice the man to trade, their final encounter some time ago notwithstanding.
Beyond Morgan’s legitimate trade and mercantile business efforts, Naoko had long suspected Morgan of using his considerable influence to bypass the rigorous Customs procedures to hide a personal smuggling operation. As Naoko Kamagana, she’d never been able to find proof. As Lady Ha, she’d never dared; powerful as her alter ego was, at the end of the day, Lady Ha was little more than a hacker.
