by Lee Bond
The crowd sat there woodenly, afraid to move, afraid to think. Some knew –even understood- that Latelian politics was cutthroat, but the Reign of the Sigma … that was a dark, dark stain on their lives. To hear that Doans was responsible sent a chill through the room. The children caught the mood and some few started crying though they didn’t know why.
“Were those manipulations for personal gain?” Vilmos demanded rhetorically. “No, citizens, no. They were not. Doans is a visionary. She knew the Regime couldn’t stand under the pressures of Scottsdale’s epic mismanagement; even today, you still see evidence of that man’s wanton greed. Doans’ work, her vigilance, her willingness to stand on the backs of her people and to do what needed doing brought us back from the brink of self-destruction. If she hadn’t pushed Scottsdale as she had, we’d all be dead and buried. But … we’re not all the way there, oh, not by lightyears, but we can do it, under her Reign.”
“I don’t have time for this.” Alyssa snapped. Nevertheless, she didn’t end the call. She was interested in hearing what Vilmos had to say, in learning how far into madness Vilmos Gualf had descended.
Vilmos nodded again. A very rough outline of the policies and institutions that Trinity would insist upon installing immediately after taking proctorship of Latelyspace replaced the Sigma List.
With an apologetic bow, Vilmos flung a hand up to the Screens. “I know a lot of what’s up there is confusing. It took me months to understand even a fraction and I am by no means a slouch. Everything that is up there is something that the Trinity AI will demand we accept when It comes to our door. We will lose so very much of our personal identities in return for It ‘saving’ us from ourselves. And we do need saving, friends, badly. Only fools think otherwise.”
Vilmos paused, eyeing the Sheets with exaggerated interest. “What I want to know is this: why doesn’t Doans just do the job herself? She’s better at it than the nearest qualified person. She could save our system in the blink of an eye if she but used the powers of her office as they were meant to be used. And we few revolutionaries are here to prove that.”
The terrorist leader looked pleadingly out at the audience. “I don’t want to do this, citizens. I’d rather be at home watching the Game with my family, like you. I can’t, though, not when everything we’ve grown up with is on the verge of being wiped out. That’s what Trinity does, you know; what It doesn’t want It pretends never existed, and It takes a long view. It is patient. It can afford to be. In a thousand years, what makes we Latelians unique will have never existed. Therefore, if Chairwoman Doans wants to stop me, all she needs to do is be the Tyrant. I’ll,” he indicated the other terrorists, “We’ll fight her, because that is what revolutionaries do, but we will lose because might makes right, and there is no one as mighty as our beloved Chairwoman.”
Vilmos pushed Doans’ face back onto the Screens. “And if Chairwoman Doans chooses to ignore us, to allow us our day of violence and bloodshed, her weakness will give those of us who survive the day enough fodder to push her out! From the ashes of her defeat, a new Chairperson will arise, someone more suited to rule!”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Alyssa snorted. “Idealistic moron! Is that what you really want? A display of power?”
The crowd gasped as their Chairwoman swore. Vilmos -used to Doans’ foul mouth from their closed-door war sessions as they plotted Scottsdale’s glorious demise- nodded appreciatively, grinning. “Show us your might, Chairwoman Doans. Let them see their leader is a leader. Or step aside so someone who is at least willing to fight like a Latelian take charge. We deserve nothing less.”
“You were never capable of seeing the larger issue, Vilmos. Where you look at years, I look at centuries.” Doans said calmly, though her eyes still blazed with wrath. “There is more at stake here than your tiny brain can possibly imagine. Very well, Vilmos. Prepare. I will show you a leader.”
Alyssa disappeared. Vilmos’ eyes gleamed with triumph even though his stomach churned; what had the Chairwoman meant by ‘centuries’? Regardless of her cryptic utterance, the Chairwoman’s presence and volatile explosion had had the desired effect; people in the audience were weeping, aghast at who-knew-what turmoil their fevered imaginations were creating.
Smiling viciously, Vilmos turned to his runner. “You heard the woman. Intercept James. Pass the word. Get everyone to switch his or her rounds accordingly. The Goddies will be on their way sooner or later.”
xxx
OverCommander Vasily gave the woman he loved a calculating look. “That was terribly close, ‘lyssa, to telling them … telling.”
Alyssa rested her head on Vasily’s shoulder. She was glad –and embarrassed at the same time- he’d broken protocol to come stand with her in the office while she made her decisions. “I know. I’d forgotten how frustrating he is. He’s still so idealistic! It’s ridiculous. Someone as smart as he is should’ve seen the answers, especially with his unbelievably cautious searching through the years. It’s staring him right in the face.”
“Did you really force Scottsdale into all of these?” Vasily flashed the list to the nearest Sheet and gazed ruminatively at the damning evidence. “I thought that one was a SpecSer operation gone wrong. I would have gone to my grave believing that prostitute’s story.” He ran a hand through his hair. The woman he loved was remarkable. In a very serious way, her mastery of the art was frightening.
“Vilmos isn’t lying, dear heart. I am the greatest tyrant this system has ever seen.” Alyssa flashed her request to Vasily. “But it does seem he’s forgotten how good I am at lying.”
“Your orders then, my Chairwoman?” Vasily gave Alyssa’s request a cursory once-over.
“God soldiers. At your discretion, OverCommander.”
xxx
From the moment a God soldier strike is issued, commands ripple outward from the OverCommander’s prote at the speed of light. Avatars push the necessary requirements through the usual channels, bypassing and overriding standard government requests with ease. Different avatars send warnings throughout the strata of local and Central agencies tasked with keeping the peace, informing everyone even remotely involved of the activity.
In the case of The Museum Hostage Crisis, police officers on the scene and in the process of arresting unruly reporters and early-out spectators of nearby establishments stopped what they were doing and pulled back to a hundred meter radius. They simply yanked everyone they’d been arresting down the road with them and began the apprehension process all over again. As those agencies began receiving orders, civilian agencies issued warnings to citizens –instructions to remain in their homes, regardless of how exciting it all seemed to be-in affected areas. Following that was a cavalcade of penalties and punishments and so it was only the clinically stupid or reporters that would risk their lives.
While all this was going on, Army leaders bent to the task of solving the problems of the Chairwoman. Wise heads collaborated with scenario-avatars and a strategic plan was quickly developed. Orders were pressed, volunteers accepted, armaments handed out, squads deployed.
With the ease of seasoned professionals, prepping for The Museum took less than five minutes.
The fallout?
Much longer.
Trapped
A rapid succession of banging noises drew Garth’s attention from his immediate goal of sneaking into The Tomb; it sounded like someone was chucking grenades into The Museum. If Doans had released the Army, then he could go back, join the rest of the captives and await rescue. That actually sounded like a lot of fun, now that he thought on it as he reoriented himself. Rescued instead of rescuing. Plus, he’d get to see some God soldiers beat the shit out of people not named Garth Nickels.
Getting to the outer circle of hallways was simplicity itself. The runners were focusing on passing information to sentries inside the second and third series of corridors; with the entrance gates locked tight, no one was getting in without Vilmos’ permission. There just wasn’t any reason to
post guards where there were no people. Garth padded silently into the main lobby of the museum, oddly hoping it was soldiers pulling gates off hinges or something equally ‘heroic’.
Except this wasn’t a fairytale. This was real life.
“Dammit!” Garth hissed, slumping against a solid duronium plate. From where he slouched, he could see that every arch from here to Heaven and back again was now sporting a plate at least a foot thick.
Unspoken armistice against destroying The Museum there very well might be, but someone had gone to great lengths to ensure that one of their national treasures remained well protected against spastic Gameheads and terrorists all the same.
It was obvious that none of the great and wise heads or their damned avatars had ever even imagined that someone would actually seek to occupy the damned thing. Effectively shut off from the outside world, they might as well be on another planet.
They were all stuck in the Museum until the God soldiers tore their way through the blast doors and windows, and when that happened, they’d have half a berjillion tons of upset cybernetic warrior to contend with. Collateral damage would probably be … ‘high’.
Garth wondered if the same brilliant geeks who’d originally come up with duronium had also devised the most efficient method of breaking the alloy down when needed. Back in the day, powerful sonic cannons had been a main component of every army base. Five minutes work from a sonic cannon and a foot thick door of alloy turned into a nice pile of dust on the floor.
If Latelian scientists hadn’t perfected the process, there’d be quite a show; towards the end of the process, there would be a neat little explosion that’d have everyone caught in a metallic dust storm.
On the other hand, if the Latelians didn’t have the cannons, the level of firepower required to beat down the doors would blast the ever-loving shit out of their preciously boring Museum, which would in turn piss off diehard lunatic Latelians. Those same freshly cranky Latelians would get all riled up and start joining in the protests. Doans -who hated that kind of crap- would respond in force.
It was a nicely laid out Domino effect of people getting angrier and angrier at one another until everyone was so thoroughly pissed off that nothing short of war would get ‘em to see the light of day. Excitingly, he was smack dab in the middle.
OverCommander Vasily would most definitely not drop his soldiers through the roof in the middle of the Museum; as simple and as easy as that would be to do, even the stupidest soldier would realize that was unsafe, even if Goddies were nigh on invulnerable to harm. You couldn’t trust terrorists not to have tricks up their sleeves. One of the things so-called revolutionaries were good at was coming up with revolutionary ideas to particularly difficult problems. Vasily wouldn’t risk the lives of a single soldier in such a way, not if he could help it.
Besides, a ground-based assault looked better on television.
“Balls.” Garth pushed off from the wall, frustrated. What had he done to the Universe to deserve this kind of treatment? All he wanted was a nice quiet life. Preferably, much of this new life would contain being shot at as little as possible. If that wasn’t possible –which it probably wouldn’t be- he’d murder for a simple date with a beautiful woman, maybe a date with some kind of kissing action at the end.
But nooooo, he had to be stuck in a Museum held captive by batshit insane Regimist ideologues who wanted Doans to turn into a bloody-handed Tyrant. Vilmos' goals still didn’t make any sense and was actually really goddamn irritating.
Angling away from the now heavily fortified outermost ring of arches and back towards The Tomb, Garth’s eyes fell on the one-two whammy explosive pack nearest him. His balls shriveled. Why the one he’d apparently wandered right past hadn’t turned him into gooey red paste all over the nearest duronium plate was beyond him.
Insanity in the form of an urge to wiggle his hand in front of the obvious sensor on the device rolled through him like a freight train and for a brief moment, Garth actually watched his Harry Bosch-hand reach towards it.
“Fuck me.” Bravo. It had to be Bravo. He loved life way too fucking much to be this moronically suicidal. Still, being reminded that he was covered in a hologram suggested an explanation; the sensor on the explosive device was –out of necessity- small, and therefore almost definitely not the best on the market. With that being the case, it was also probably not smart enough to identify him –as Harry Bosch- as anything worth exploding over.
Garth examined the dangerous concoction, worrying at the inside of his lip with a tooth, squashing the urge to test his theory with a massive burst of willpower.
What he saw was unexpected and very, very lethal.
The first charge was your standard deconstruction pack designed to shatter concrete walls or other large, breakable objects into easily movable chunks. Garth had used them hundreds of times to break people out of prisons, to take down walls, that sort of thing. Fun and easy to use, they were ‘slap, stick, run’ bombs.
As with any ‘good’ explosive, they had uses far outside the scope originally intended by the developers. When deployed ‘incorrectly’, they handily turned people into blobs of goop on the pavement.
From previous experience, Garth knew well enough that if they didn’t kill a God soldier outright from excessive damage, it was entirely likely they’d die anyway. There were very few types of cyborg out there that could survive having ninety percent of his/her/its skin blown clean off.
Killing or violently disabling a God soldier wasn’t the only thing the packs would do, oh no; with the way the outer rings of The Museum had been designed, the explosion would pull down several thousand tons of rock and rubble, sealing any particular entrance with finality.
Very smart, very well thought out.
What made everything unexpected and lethal was what someone had done to the explosives after the fact.
The bomb staring at him –and therefore every other bomb- had been altered, converted into a shaped charge with an unfamiliar type of explosive that he instinctively knew was equal to the task of shredding one or more Goddies as they hoofed their massive asses through the arches, and that made his balls shrivel to raisins.
The bright liquid-red token-sized bomb was unlike anything he’d seen, and without being too egotistical, that was saying something. Accustomed to the form and feel of both Human and Offworld design patterns, warning bells clanged their way through Garth’s ruminative thoughts. The second explosive charge was almost certainly non-terrestrial in origin, and that was troubling indeed.
Vilmos’ platform was stupidly pro-Latelian. The likelihood of such a man tolerating the use of Offworld munitions to accomplish his goals was so beyond unrealistic that Garth’s brain hurt every time he considered it.
The shining red charge couldn’t be defused. Garth knew that automatically. Any lunatic willing to slap a second explosive atop already in-place demolitions was the sort of person who knew what they were doing. They were also the sort of person who wouldn’t want their ‘fun’ cut short.
There was neither the time nor the need to check the other arches for additional modified charges. It was easier –and far wiser and more time-effective- to assume the worst and proceed from there.
Doans and OverCommander Vasily weren’t stupid. They were the two most powerful people in the system and had been dealing with notoriously vehement uprisings for their entire careers. They undoubtedly realized that Vilmos would ensure that entrance into The Museum would cost lives and react accordingly.
What the Latelian Dynamic Duo couldn’t know was that -for a change- someone other than Garth Nickels was up to no good. A someone in possession of Offworld technology, a someone with a disturbing sense of humor and a complete lack of sanity.
As much as he hated the notion of tipping his hand, Garth knew Doans and Vasily needed this information. In his self-adopted role of protector, failing to issue a warning was just that: a failure. He headed towards a washroom, running what he was going to say thro
ugh his mind.
Wasn’t Doans going to be surprised?
Why Doesn’t Anyone Believe Him?
OverCommander Vasily shrugged. He wasn’t giving up, he just didn’t know whether or not they were being told the truth; the God Army database was in particularly desperate need of an overhaul, making positive identification of any soldier no longer in the Army a nightmare.
Many of their problems could be traced directly back to Chairman Scottsdale and his rampant use of the Sigma Protocol. It wasn’t just indiscretions or dead people that he’d swept away. Terrified at the loss of power, the maniac had Sigma’d more living men and women from history than any other Chair. Once Sigma’d, it was impossible to re-enter people so afflicted back into Latelian databases. You couldn’t even give a Living Sigma a new name. Somehow, the machine knew.
There were garrisons populated with loyal soldiers out there that simply did not exist, could not exist.
It was theoretically possible, then, for there to be an ex-God soldier in The Museum, one who had somehow discovered some way to turn his permanent erasure around. If that were the case, Vasily was mightily impressed. Sigma-affliction turned you invisible to the ever-present eyes of the machine world in which they lived and that made life hard indeed.
Alyssa hated mysteries. And enigmas. And surprises. There was already one person on the planet who already qualified for all three plus a few more choice words, and he had the fourth strike of being a bloody Offworlder hanging over his head.
There was no room in Alyssa’s life for another human being who defied handy explanation. “You say your name is Hieronymus Bosch. There are no records of such a person. You say you are an ex-God soldier, but there’s no proof beyond the fact that you appear to be one, and that is something you can accomplish with a little money and a great swathe of insanity. Why should I believe a single word you say?”
“Because I say so?”
