Subversive Elements (Unreal Universe Book 2)

by Lee Bond

  Garth wrinkled his nose. That was heavy-duty stuff, way out of range of terrorists. Purest Trinity military hardware. How in the hell had Vilmos gotten hold of this crap? “What color are they?”

  “Dark blue. With green lettering on the sides in a language I don’t understand.”

  “Makes them probably either IndoRussky or FrancoBrit.” Garth mentioned off-hand, furious at Doans and her pet OverCommander for bringing Trinity weapons into the system in the first place. He couldn’t imagine why either of them would’ve thought funneling the extremely high-tech weaponry into Latelyspace was a good idea, especially since roughly ninety-percent of the stuff in use everywhere else these days made their guns and armor look like kiddie toys.

  It got even more confusing when he took into account their slow courtship with Trinity. After a few seconds of trying to puzzle things out, Garth turned his mind back to the infinitely more pressing problem of the guns. “They sound like fully autonomous gun turrets, prolly Arbalest series One or Two. You sure the letters are just green? Not, like, neon green?”

  “Would it make a difference?”

  “You bet your a… yes. For certain.” If the letters were neon green, that’d make them Arbalest 3’s, turning them from simply efficient killing machines into deadly dangerous and artificially intelligent. He prayed. “Can you check again?”

  “I am positive the letters are normal green.” Naoko said with absolute confidence.

  “Good. Good.” He released a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. Arbalest Series Ones and Twos were good, but not the best, and for once, the Latelian’s rigid abhorrence of all things artificially intelligent was working to his benefit.

  Bereft of a guiding intelligence, whichever version of Arbalest now running sentry for the Viewing Room could –theoretically- be tricked. It was all down to timing; the unintelligent programs running the Arbalest continually monitored and graded everything around it on a scale of intent, toggling things up or down as various situations grew more or less dangerous. If several ‘high threat level’ events occurred at the same moment, it was possible that he could fool the Arbalests into disregarding him altogether. There was no worry that the terrorists had managed to cobble together an avatar to work the turrets. They were IndoRussian programmed machines, and the ridiculously bizarre Austro-Cyrillic coding they used was essentially untranslatable for someone not from a Trinity-based IndoRussian world.

  Conning the guns was ‘simply’ a matter of attempting to break back into the Viewing Room at the same time as a God soldier incursion, hoping to God all the while that the sentinels decided that one single dude running into the room wasn’t as dangerous as a bunch of dudes attacking people.

  Technically, that wasn’t really the problem. He could handle being shot two or three times without slowing down. He hoped. No, he wasn’t concerned about himself at all.

  Arbalest 1's and 2's were poorly made. Even the manufacturers of the Arbalest admitted they hadn’t done a good job on the first two in the series, which was why they’d released three iterations of the gun in fewer than ten years. Sometimes, when confronted with an overwhelming majority of ‘conflicting’ high priority events, they just went batshit insane and fired on everything around them until all threats were vanquished. If you didn’t care about who got killed, you could buy Arbalest Ones and Twos from the manufacturers at ridiculously low prices. Spend enough and they’d ship them cross-system for free.

  Garth pushed that last worry out of his head. The impending descent of God soldiers would surely outweigh his entrance into the Viewing Room by a massive scale. All the programs would concentrate on the Goddies and that was that.

  “I need for you to keep your head down, Naoko. Those Arbalests are dangerous. Keep yourself small and uninteresting. And … and when I come in, don’t pay me any attention, no matter what happens.” If for whatever reason the sentinels targeted him, they’d also automatically direct their attention to anyone offering him aid. They were stupid, not morons.

  “I … will try and do as you have asked, Garth. This … this is very hard for me.” Naoko admitted sadly.

  “I hope it always will be, Naoko.” Garth was amazed at the softness in his voice.

  His time in SpecSer had changed him as readily as the neural sheaths were mutating him into something capable of dealing with the God soldiers on even terms, yet he was relearning how to be human after all. Hospitalis was driving him crazy, but he was getting better. Thank God. “I’ve gotta go. By now, the woman who came across me and the others is probably gearing up for a major assault.”

  “I believe you are correct.” Naoko answered. “A woman arrived a while ago looking very agitated. She is leaving now, and she does not look happy.”

  “I wouldn’t either, if it was me I had to go up against.” Garth said cockily. “Talk to you soon.”

  “Bye for now.”

  Garth confronted Allyn Devince’s mummified remains. “You poor bastard. You had no idea that they’d dig you out of the ground one day and put you on display for a bunch of morons, did you?”

  Ally Devince -first Game winner and mummy- had nothing to say about the current state of affairs. Clutched in his hands was the mace that, according to the Sheet, was the weapon he’d used to win the First Game.

  The Sheet went on to say that the use of powered weapons in the ring had been outlawed less than a thousand years ago when a God soldier with an energy discharge unit built into his hands electrocuted most of his opponents into burnt crisps. That hadn’t stopped him from winning, but the man’s victory had changed the rules in a significant way. The irony there was that all the competitors were in themselves ‘powered weapons’.

  “Foreign devil, subversive element…” Garth smashed his elbow against the thick glass a few times until it shattered, “grave robber.”

  He removed the powered mace from Devince’s hands. His Harry Bosch hologram started flickering as Odin attempted to correct the visual inconsistencies.

  Tossing it back and forth to get a feel for the weight and to give his prote more data, Garth examined the weapon.

  Engravings on the handle identified Devince’s weapon as a ‘Force Repulsion Mace’. Garth’s intimate knowledge of sciences outside Latelyspace told him every system under Trinity’s control had no reason to mess around with the tech; beyond the AI’s prohibitions on the subject, anything using force dynamics was too unpredictable and too power-hungry for reliable, continual use.

  The tech was still popular across-Cordon, but again, they had none of Trinity’s deadly restrictions and had the sorts of outlawed power sources that could easily fuel such things. With the bloodily violent debacle bringing about the abandonment of powered weapons in the ring, Garth wasn’t surprised the entire scientific field had petered out in Latelyspace. Probably the only avenue of research still in use was that relating to transport engines. With the Latelian propensity for bigger is better, their massive vessels could easily house the necessary engines.

  As expected, the batteries were dead. There wasn’t a battery in the Universe that would last for three thousand years.

  There was a loud chime, and the prote finally finished manipulating its holographic fields; comically, Odin had ‘reasoned’ in absolutely unintelligent fashion that it was easier to map a tiny weapon into his hands than something more realistic. Harry Bosch now wielded the smallest of saps. Garth snorted. He missed Huey.

  The mace was just the sort of weapon he needed; not as immediately threatening as the guns and anything else both the terrorists and the God Army intended on using, it would keep the Harry Bosch incarnation from being associated with bloody carnage. Hopefully –seriously hopefully- Garth-as-Harry’s antics in protecting the hostages would eclipse Garth Nickels’ Latelian superstardom with the finality of a supernova.

  The problem was that, unpowered, the mace would be about as effective as a whiffle bat against pretty much everyone in the room

  The idea Garth was circling aroun
d like a myopic bumblebee was theoretically quite dangerous in that –unlike the prote creation machines in UltraMegaDynamaTron- it was extremely improbable that the Force Mace had anything remotely resembling safety protocols.

  If his blood -or more accurately, the neural sheathing giving him his abilities- proved too powerful for the Mace, he could wind up a very messy spot all over everywhere.

  Hell, the only reason he was considering it as an option in the first place was because everything in Latelyspace was so bloody advanced. The mace was a true historical artifact and over three thousand years old. Therefore, it was made of sterner stuff and, unlike the protean machines, almost probably maybe wasn’t full of nanotechnology.

  “So many maybes.” He was desperate enough to give it a try, even with the grim possibility that the idea wasn’t his at all, but Bravo’s. Now that he thought about it, there was every goddamn chance the poor decision-making skills that’d led to him slathering blood over the ridiculously dangerous protean machines to see how badly they’d blow up had been the ship’s doing as well. There was just no way of knowing.

  There was also the chance that it wasn’t Bravo…

  Life in SpecSer made a man crazy, pushed, tricked, conned, and cajoled him into taking risks no ordinary person would ever dream of accepting. It was the only way to survive, the only way to accomplish Trinity’s goals of expansion and submission. Moreso in his own case, what with Trinity intentionally pushing him as far as he could be pushed. The rotten, suicidally insane things he was doing could just be his own special brand of psychosis.

  Maybe he wasn’t as sane as he thought. Maybe his ‘time alone’, abandoned and presumed dead for all that time … maybe it hadn’t brought him out of the darkness. Maybe it’d driven him further in. Bravo or not, it explained an awful lot about his actions since entering Latelyspace.

  Hospitalis wasn’t Franchese, wasn’t Illholm, wasn’t Shoemacher. He wasn’t subduing or coercing violent Offworld species deep inside The Cordon, nor was he ‘convincing’ irascible components of Humanity that it was in their best interests to join Trinityspace.

  He was simply trying to find out who he was and since coming to Hospitalis, he’d taken more risks –some of them so stupid even Zurich would frown- than in virtually any single official undertaking as a Specter.

  Hospitalis was driving him mad and if he weren’t careful, he’d wind up dead. How in the hell could you find out if you were insane or not? Was it simply a matter of doing as he had been doing since his dreamtime discussion with Lisa? Did all he need to do was wonder about his actions, weighing them against the likelihood of Bravo interference to see if his response made sense when held against simple things like ‘does blowing this building up because I have to wait in line’ seem rational?

  He didn’t feel crazy but then again, he’d known crazy people who didn’t feel that way. They felt that what they were doing was the sanest thing ever, even when what they were doing was eating a human leg, raw, in front of other people.

  Garth sighed. All he could do was trust Naoko. She wasn’t insane. She was smart. She wouldn’t hitch up to a crazy man at all.

  He stared down at the Force Mace in his hands. Some of what he was feeling had to be Bravo inspired. It just sucked enormous balls that there was no reliable way to thread out which thoughts were his and which came from the ancient ship.

  Still, there was nothing he could do; Naoko and everyone else was still in trouble, still held hostage and everyone was waiting for the moment when the God soldiers rolled in and started squashing people. Insane or not, pushed by Bravo or not, rescuing them from certain death was the right thing to do.

  He genuinely hoped his idea didn’t blow him up.

  Locating the slot where the batteries were supposed to go and opening it up, Garth examined the inner workings of the mace. The design was pretty standard. Shrugging at his stupidity, he propped the end of the mace up between his knees, found his knife, and made a small incision along the ball of his thumb. The cut bled for a few seconds into the battery chamber before slowing. Garth put the knife away and then reassembled the mace.

  “When I am king of the Universe, someone else gets to take all the risks.” He muttered miserably to himself. The mace sat there propped between his legs. He chuckled at the imagery before switching it on.

  The mace jerked slightly between his legs. Half terrified, he chuckled again at the imagery and took some deep breaths.

  Two precious minutes were spent waiting for the thing to look like it was going to explode, one hundred and twenty seconds worth of time wondering what would happen to Naoko if he was blown up, what would happen to The Box without him, whether or not Huey would survive.

  He didn’t blow up. The mace sat there humming deeply between his legs. Beyond that and a slight orange glow along the ridged knobs on the mace’s head, there was no sign it was operating.

  Garth tried to put himself in the minds of the men who’d ‘installed’ the neural sheathing in him so many thousands of years ago. Had they known that there’d be this kind of side effect? Was it something they’d even considered? It was hard to guess.

  Picking the mace up in his right hand and swinging it in a wide, experimental arc, he chuckled when Odin turned it back into a sap. A grin split his face; Allyn might’ve been strong, but he must’ve also been handy around force repulsion labs! Powered, the mace in his hand weight less than two pounds.

  Grinning wildly, Garth looked around the Tomb for something to smash.

  His eyes fell on the fake Box. Irrationality won out.

  He hefted the mace and took a swing.

  The glass exploded into a blizzard of microscopic glass particles. Harry Bosch sputtered under the onslaught as Odin attempted to compensate for the drastic increase in geometries.

  Garth pushed a button to stop the recalculations. The ungainly-looking Odin was starting to get warm. He’d known from the start that running the Harry Bosch simulation on high definition for an extended length of time would push the wunder-prote to its upper limits. Too much more and Odin would overheat, something he couldn’t afford to have happen when there was still so much going on.

  The terrorists and the religious lunatics needed taking care of and in a very high profile manner if Hieronymus ‘Harry’ Bosch was going to supplant Garth Nickels as the number one idol in the system. If he were seen transforming from Harry into his poor-ass self right in the middle of the conflict … well, he’d be fucked. They’d label him Savior right there on the spot and that would be that.

  ”Let’s get this party started proper.” Trinity’s commands that he not recreate anything else from the pre-Exodus decades notwithstanding, Garth wished he’d had the time and foresight to recreate one of the old rock songs from his era. Something like ’More Human than Human, maybe, or something with a really awesome guitar.

  As always, Garth wondered why Trinity had taken particular exception to rock and roll music. The accidental time traveler had a hard time believing that the AI shared behavioral tendencies with the angry dad from Footloose.

  Mental ears swelling with the opening hook of that long-dead song, Garth swung the mace with all his might at the side of The Box nearest him, that ancient song rolling through his mind.

  The ‘noise’ was very ‘loud’.

  xxx

  Three minutes later, an advance squad of terrorists arrived in the Tomb to find out what in the hell was going on. Whatever it was that’d happened had rung throughout the entire Museum!

  Having forgotten the oh-so-important physical law concerning opposite and equal reactions and the other one about letting go of stuff, Garth shamefully picked himself gingerly out of a jumble of mildly broken fourth millennia corpses and rushed the invading Latelians before they had a chance to properly assess the situation.

  Seeing as how he was the only one stupid enough to be gunless, the first thing he did when the terrorist squad advanced into the room properly was to start shouting loudly and incoheren
tly. While they were preoccupied with figuring out what was happening –thankfully, two thirds of the ten-man unit was staring openly at the shattered remnants of their most important icon with a potent mixture of confusion, doubt and fear- he charged through the crowd, mace swinging wildly.

  Picked up off their feet by the multiplied kinetic field, people went flying everywhere, screaming madly at the sudden, shocking change of events.

  Garth felt a few of the deadly seven-shot whistle above his head but didn’t stop to thank his lucky stars that they were aiming for the wrong head.

  Garth swung around for another charge, this time bellowing loudly about free-will advocates being given the choice of having their free will taken away rather than having that decision made for them. The gun-toting maniacs missed by the first charge found the sense to take aim at the charging lunatic and opened fire.

  Abruptly remembering he wasn’t invulnerable to bullets, Garth dropped to the ground, sliding nicely along the hyper-polished marble floors that were a mainstay in any first-rate Museum. The razor sharp glass dust and equally pointy shards of the broken phony Box didn’t slow or otherwise impede his progress towards the surprised terrorists, but they sure as hell found enough time to work into his clothing, slicing him here and there with tiny, irritating cuts.

  Garth whacked the nearest terrorist in the shin and sent her flying into the person standing next to her. The two of them fell into a dazed heap next to a very fat mummified contestant. Still whooshing across the floor, Garth’s next swing caught an unfortunate fellow in the testicles, repulsor field launching him high into the air where he caught his head on one a slow-moving fan. Momentum spent, Garth flipped to his feet just in time to smash a gun wielded expertly at him into tiny bits; the young man who lost his weapon looked very confused at the sight of a teeny-tiny sap destroying his gun before finding his head conked by that selfsame ridiculous weapon.

  Garth cast his eyes on the bulk of the terror squad as they stirred to consciousness. He flexed mightily and brandished his sap menacingly at the fallen terrorists.