by Lee Bond
The sound of the mortars launching their pacification payloads drew Griffin’s attention back to the playing field. Ten sonic warheads landed in a neat little daisy ring around The Museum and exploded, washing the entire facility in an invisible wave of sound designed to knock even a God soldier flat on his ass.
A combination of vertigo-inducing super-frequencies, the ‘brown note’ and a few other tricky sub- and super- resonant chords that affected different portions of the brain hammered The Museum remorselessly, a sound squall that would’ve surely rendered every man, woman and child within completely immobile.
The exterior of The Museum -a mangled jungle of shattered concrete and twisted duronium formed a natural barrier- caught and neatly bent the psyche-destroying harmonics, sent them shearing off at right angles instead of radiating smoothly inwards to collide in the center of The Museum.
Through it all, the duronium sang.
Those poor terrorists subdued and left unconscious where they lay by Garth took the blast full brunt, knocked so senseless by the sounds it would take days for them to string a sentence together with any coherency.
The same went for the God Squad; when the reverberations smacked them to the ground, they fell under the severe illusion that God was talking to them. Rescued well after the affair ended, they each wound up in The Peak, sequestered from other inmates for the rest of their long, religiously ecstatic lives. The Latelian government well knew religion was as catchy as a disease and had no desire to see people –inmates or not- become so afflicted.
Seconds later, a solo thump and high-velocity clatter from the sole remaining sonic warhead filled the heavens. As one, the bored God soldiers and their commanding officers tracked the quickly moving object along its course with the aid of advanced cybernetic implants or tactiSheets.
Griffin examined the tactiSheet readout for this final deployment and chuckled. According to idiot-protes and military command as well, possibility of success was high. Even though they’d all failed to take the new layout of The Museum into account for the deployment of the ten sonic missiles, the failure by no means upset Military Command. After all, they did have one final shot in their gun, so to speak.
This particular missile would deploy its payload while still in the air. It would enter The Museum through the destroyed dome and detonate before reaching the filanet strands. The tactic meant reducing the efficiency of the blast, but everyone on board with the sonic attack felt quite confident that –even though much reduced- the ill effects would be more than sufficient to deal with a bunch of rowdy Latelian insurrectionists. Not necessarily rendered deaf and unconscious, the insurgents and their hostages would nevertheless be more than controllable. They probably wouldn’t need to send in more than a half-dozen Goddies.
“Doesn’t think afore doin’ anymore?” Griffin demanded angrily.
xxx
Garth stuck a fake-but-solid finger in his even more fake-but-real ear and wiggled it around, twisting his head back and forth, opening and closing his jaw frantically.
“What are you doing?” Naoko demanded.
“You hear that?” He switched fingers and ears. The keening, singing noise was a spike into his brain. “I mean, seriously. You hear that noise?”
“I don’t hear anything. Look!” Naoko pointed a finger to the devastated dome above them.
Garth turned his eyes skyward, still digging in his ear. He grimaced and cursed foully under his breath.
He knew what the keening sound in his ear was: duronium, exposed to a sequence of sounds, almost achieving metamorphosis into quadronium. The only thing worse than Latelians getting hold of properly tuned quadronium were Latelians laying their hands on mistuned quadronium. That stuff made Hand of Glory missiles look like firecrackers at a kid’s birthday party and the Latelians wouldn’t realize how dangerous it was until their planet had blown up around their ears.
Aided immensely by the technical-idiot savant lurking in his subconscious, Garth rapidly calculated a fair estimate of duronium used to construct The Museum. Hands flying across his prote, he arrived at an answer that wasn’t pleasing to see; with a 10:1 transformative ratio, the resultant refinement and enrichment of duronium into quadronium would yield somewhere in the neighborhood of a ton of the ultimate metal. A ton of quadronium was more than enough for anyone with a background in metallurgy to work with.
A ton of quadronium was enough to vaporize the planet.
If by some miracle they realized that the product they held wasn’t perfect, if they forestalled the atomic-level chain reactions that would arise the moment they began testing, there was always Latelian curiosity. Aided by the copiously extensive coverage of both military and media avatars, someone would eventually realize that the transformation had come about following the failed sonic bombardment and they’d attempt to repeat the experiment.
Garth knew he couldn’t let the Latelians acquire that quadronium. It could spell the end of the essentially peaceful reign of the Trinity AI. And as much as he was loathe to admit it, the machine mind governing most of Humanity was doing a fairly decent job.
Garth sent a text to Herrig, pushing Odin’s netLINK abilities to the utmost by shuffling the message through hundreds of relays before finally routing it through the UltraMegaDynamaTron’s mains. He was just going to have to hope that investigators missed the ‘origin’ of his text when he was blatantly stuck in The Museum. It was simple and to the point: ‘Buy every restoration company in Central that you can. Start making offers for Museum contract.’
The missile dropped.
xxx
When the missile fell through the roof and was diced cleanly into pieces by the filanet wire instead of knocking everyone on their asses, Vasily broke one of his tactiSheets in half and threw it at Salm’s head. The colonel dodged in time, but Harredad, absorbed in the task of discerning why ten sonic missiles should explode and one should not, missed the motion and took a corner of the Sheet in the ear. He staggered back, clutching his bleeding ear and doing his best not to look venomously at his OverCommander. U-Ito completed Harredad’s search, groaning miserably at the results.
She read aloud, “The x-40 Digital Encryption Chip, a major component of the LINK-controlled operating system for the 3-ton sonic bombardment missile, was designed by the Guillfoyle Aurity Division of Guillfoyle Incorporated.” U-Ito continued, ignoring the frosty silence building in the tent. “I have here an annotated report from Port investigators going through the remains of the netLINK system over there. They’ve found pieces of corrupted x-30 DEC everywhere. It’s highly likely that…”
“That the x-40 DEC is also compromised.” Vasily finished irately. He didn’t care what kind of agreement Alyssa had to make with Guillfoyle to get a full list of what he’d done. They needed to put a stop to anymore surprises before they happened. Such tomfoolery would not stand.
If Alyssa failed in her negotiations –or torture, or threats, or whatever she was doing- he wouldn’t hesitate to demand assistance from various … organizations … inside Trinityspace to deal with Ashok Guillfoyle.
Stony-faced, Vasily confronted his staff. “Compile a list of all weapons and systems using the x-30 and up. Check our mothballed units and see how far we have to go before we start running into materiel developed by Solus Standard Weapons Design, then see if any of that antiquated scrap still works. I want a situation report from the hacker team working on the orbital plateau. For their sakes they’d better have gotten further along than they were or they’ll find themselves floating through space. I told the Chairwoman they’d be a half an hour. Contact the heavy transpo carrier and ask the Proctors if their … if their charges have an x-series DEC. If they do … make sure the Proctors are tranquilized before we deal with the Gunboys.” He looked around the tent at the chastened faces. “And for the love of Pete, someone call a medic for Harredad. I may have punctured his ear drum.”
xxx
In his life, Ashok Albertus Guillfoyle had only ever flown by mi
litary jumpship twice: once each way from The Peak. While he waited for Chairwoman Doans to finish making her entrance he vowed he would never fly that way again; moving four thousand miles in six minutes was not enjoyable. Even his dour Goddie escort looked put out by the journey. If they forced him to return the same way… Ashok was certain he’d rather die.
It was gratifying to see Doans drawn and haggard. Evidently, the day’s proceedings were proving tiresome. The political and social fallout from a prolonged inner-city military engagement was one of the things he’d set his teams on the moment they’d designed the first of their anti-Goddie weapons systems, so he was intimately aware of what was happening around Central.
Doans was juggling everything from news blackouts to civilians trying to sneak in to a drastic elevation in riots and crime in every arm of Hospitalis’ continent-sized city.
Sandwiched nicely between were complaints from financial movers and shakers throughout Hospitalis, each man or woman howling to the moon that their very livelihoods were on the line. If the Chairwoman didn’t want riots in the street, she needed to deal with each serious complaint as and when it happened; using the carte blanche powers of her office to make the problems go away wouldn’t work in this situation. At least, not well.
If the crisis wasn’t stopped, and soon, it was entirely likely that the news would spread to other planets, Sigma Protocols or not; there were illegal comm-networks out there and it wouldn’t take much for them to be set ablaze with news of a failed military campaign in the middle of Central. Once news of the destroyed Museum was added to that conflagration? Well, the system would burn, Ashok was sure of it.
That a hundred men and women armed with Trinity weapons was keeping the entire assembled might of the Latelian God Army at bay was a soothing balm to his querulous guts. Everyone deserved everything that was happening.
Ashok started typing on his cheap, Peak-issued prote. A short time ago he would’ve killed himself rather than submit to using such a piece of mass-manufactured garbage, but he was no longer on top of the world and immune from harm. He was pathetically eager for conversation, even one as stilted and awkward –and undoubtedly filled with threats and imprecations- as the one he was about to have.
“I would rise to greet you properly, Chairwoman Doans, but I haven’t showered.” The intentionally mistuned, very digitized voice was a knife on every exposed nerve in his body.
He’d fallen so low.
Alyssa seated herself. Much of Ashok’s former sheen was gone. The Peak was nothing if not persistent. If the man played ball and she got what she wanted, he would dream of his time there for the rest of his life. Every time he closed his eyes, he would be there.
She grimaced at the hideous voice. “You must have programmed that little bit of charm during the flight.”
Ashok pushed the ‘yes’ button. The terrible voice bounced off the walls.
“Have we hit the wall on your loquacious proteus already?” Alyssa enquired sweetly.
“No.”
“Let me hear another gem of Guillfoyle ingenuity before we begin, if you please.”
Smiling poisonously, Ashok pushed another button. “Please, I cannot take the abuse. I am a man. This is morally and culturally deviant.”
Alyssa clapped her hands, delightfully amused. It sounded to her as though the other inmates had become smitten with the dark-skinned traitor, but alas, there was no time to enjoy the fruits of his punishment. There were things that needed doing. She motioned sharply. She’d tired of the man’s astonishing immunity to the pain and anguish caused by the Traitor’s Tongue and was about to set things down a path that, ironically enough, Guillfoyle’s brother was demanding. It was a shame that Vilmos was going to miss this.
Ashok tried to struggle free of the three agents holding him. He’d learned quickly in The Peak that when someone held you down, something drastically unpleasant was en route.
A masked man entered the room carrying a large case, which, when opened, revealed the purely torturous device known as Second Tongue. Ashok’s attempts to struggle to freedom redoubled in intensity and the air soon filled with the squeaking of the mute man that he so hated in himself.
Alas, there was nothing he could do; the agents under Doans’ direct supervision received implants and augmentations that were available to no one else. Trying to fight them was like trying to knock a tree unconscious with his head. The masked ‘doctor’ held the Second Tongue up into the light so Doans and Ashok could gaze upon it.
Ashok groaned and then groaned again as his Traitor’s Tongue permitted the sound to pass unaltered out of his mouth. The Second Tongue! Damn Vilmos Gualf. Damn Garth Nickels. Damn them all!
The Second Tongue was a lamprey-like device that attached itself directly to the subject’s throat area. In the case of a man, it used the Adam’s apple as a guide to the larynx. Once ‘mounted’ on the victim’s throat, the Tongue drove needle-sharp diagnostic devices right through the skin and into the larynx, where they registered vibrations and transformed them into easily understandable words. They were bestowing the ability upon him to speak whenever he felt like it, but the cost of that new freedom would be immense, possibly greater than he would want to bear.
The doctor waited until the men pulled Ashok’s head back so far he worried they’d break his neck; it seemed even here, in the very offices of the Chairwoman, needless sadism had a home. Deftly, the doctor removed the First Tongue –a clunky device fastened to his neck- and handed it off to a flunky. The ‘medical professional’ gingerly placed the Second Tongue on Ashok’s Adam’s apple and stepped back.
Driven by programming, The Second Tongue used the very same needles that would eventually find their way into Ashok’s throat as a guide, tip tapping its way around like a hideous metallic spider until it located its target.
Moving with obscenely delicate grace until it was directly over top, the horrid machine hissed, a dreadful sound that filled the air. Ashok cringed for all he was worth. The anesthetic had been applied and soon, terribly soon, The Second Tongue would move. As soon as the tissue went numb, the horrid machine used the four dozen micro-sharp hooks on its belly to dig into the insensate skin. A second later, it drove the twelve diagnostic needles into Ashok’s throat.
While Ashok gasped, struggled and tried to scream, Alyssa spoke. “You should be thankful, Ashok. Each Tongue is specially designed for the wearer. Using your many public announcements as a template, I had an avatar design a voice program for you. Sadly, it lacks emotion, but when you talk, it will be as yourself. Joyous days! As you well know, it will deliver a shock every time you speak. Not enough to seriously harm or incapacitate. Just enough to remind you it’s there, unless, of course, you lie. Then, as you know, the pain will be unforgiveable. The people around you will see the lie in your twitching, screaming form and either wait for you to tell the truth or lie some more. You cannot remove it nor can you kill yourself. You may choose to lie or tell the truth as before, though this time, the repercussions will be keenly –and more swiftly- felt. Again, as you know, the wondrous thing about this, your new Tongue, is that you will never grow accustomed to the pain. Each agony will be a fresh one. But you can speak as you will, now. The Latelian Regime is nothing if not fair.”
Ashok stopped struggling. There was no point. He’d designed the Tongue to be irremovable. Once in place, it was there for life. It also made the growth of a new, organic appendage impossible by quickly destroying any remaining nerve endings. Even if he were to somehow survive The Peak, to win freedom, the Tongue would be with him until the day he died.
As he sat there, feeling the awful, itchy probes extending the tiny filaments that did the actual vocal reproduction, he wondered if anyone outfitted with a Tongue could vomit. He certainly felt the need.
Nevertheless, now that he could speak ’freely’, Ashok was beginning to feel somewhat like his old self. He cleared his throat, adjusted non-existent collars on his Peak-issued clothing and crossed his legs. He s
miled cordially at Chairwoman Doans and waited for the doctor to leave and for the agents to retake their position between him and their leader.
A buzz and a click deep in his jaw was the final confirmation that the Second Tongue was firmly in place and that when he spoke, it would be ‘normal’. He cleared his throat a second time and looked Doans right in the eye. “Aren’t military engagements a bitch?”
“Not as much of one as I am, Ashok Guillfoyle. I am the Big Bad in this system, you traitorous worm. You were sent to The Peak because what you’d done at that point was relatively small in the world of lies and deceit. A few billion credits? We recovered the lost money and then some and with all of your data and test results on God soldiers destroyed, you are hardly a threat. In point of fact, with your ‘research’, we are far more aware of flaws in the God soldier system and are working to correct them. I was more than happy letting you rot in your cell until the end of your days.” Doans fixed him with an iron glare. “What is going on now, with your brother … this … changes my mood. It makes me angry enough to consider you for Hollyoak. The insights he will glean from your body…”
Ashok blinked very slowly, once. Hollyoak was the Army’s resident cybernetic genius. He was also quite, quite mad. Hollyoak did things in the name of progress that he and his design teams had absolutely refused to even consider…. He said nothing. There was nothing to say. The threat –and the fear it caused- was expected.
Alyssa continued without hesitation, warming up to the role Ashok had unwittingly cast her in. “And your daughter, your wife. Your sole surviving uncle on Seregas. Your design teams, your security guards, the woman you used to buy your sex from and the secret lover you put up in Northon. It will be Hollyoak’s sole job in life to ensure that you witness their transformations into whatever his cracked mind can envision. I will authorize any amount of cash, any level of barbarism and atrocity. They will retain enough intelligence to remember you as the cause of their transfiguration. Are we clear, Ashok Guillfoyle? I want to know everything, and now.”
