by Lee Bond
After a few more moments of ancient thoughts and deep regrets, Vasily tapped his way through the Sheet’s command protocols, loading the avatars onto his proteus. He would burn his arm to ash and cinders to see this day through.
When he was certain no more tears would fall, Vasily summoned his team.
After a minute, the command staff was fully assembled. The OverCommander –once more in control- turned, saying, “This Sheet is loaded with avatars designed to counter the infiltration. Go to the six command stations that are running data for this op and load them up. Ensure they don’t broadcast the new kernels to their connected ‘LINKs. Await my signal before activation. Inform every commanding officer that there will be a one-hour window before units running these codes destruct. During that time, our communication lines and equipment will be off Vilmos’ radar. We will be free to act. I expect revised attack plans the moment we switch over. We cannot waste any time. Final go will be issued when we are all ready, and will be issued by me alone. It is imperative that until we are go that all comm is done verbally. Vilmos can’t know we have a workaround.”
U-Ito held the Sheet skeptically between her fingers. “Who was that … that old man.”
Vasily flared his nostrils. “What man?” He fixed each of his staff with an iron stare. “I have been alone this entire time, considering the practical applications of the Sheet you hold in your hands, a Sheet loaded with avatars designed by us, in this room, after an intense brainstorming session. Are we clear? Go. Harredad, stay.”
When the others were gone, Harredad presented himself to the OverCommander. “Yessa!” he saluted crisply.
“You are to be in charge of the purification?” Vasily wasn’t looking forward to what had to happen next; he’d always intended on securing Garth Nickels’ survival. Trinity’s warnings about what would happen had been extremely succinct. Adding another to the list increased the risk.
“Sa, yessa! It will be my fourth.” Harredad knew he was uniquely qualified for cleansings; an extension of having no family worth mentioning was that the people around him hardly felt real at all.
Vasily flashed two images to Harredad. “Memorize these faces, soldier. These two people do not go before the firing line.”
“Sa? Rules of engagement …” Harredad felt the howl that wanted to escape his mouth issue forth as a squeak; the OverCommander was incredibly strong, and that man was suddenly squeezing his throat very tightly. “Sa…” he gasped again when the pain doubled.
“Listen very carefully, Harredad.” Vasily whispered. “You are a good soldier. A fine colonel. A willing and loyal Latelian. There are things in this Universe bigger and greater than all of us. You will do well to remember that when I tell you to do something. I am much bigger and much greater than you. This man,” pressing his prote against Harredad’s eye, gouging a cut into an eyebrow, Vasily continued, “and this woman are to live. The fallout from their deaths will be substantially worse than both Ashok Guillfoyle’s treason and Vilmos Gualf’s terrorism. Our worlds will burn if they die. Are … we … clear?” He released Harredad.
“Sa. Yessa!” Harredad saluted, and then started alternately massaging his throat and tending to his eye. Of course, he’d instantly recognized the man on the OverCommander’s prote as Garth Nickels and supposed he understood the reasons behind that man’s safety, but the woman … the woman appeared to be nothing more than your average Latelian.
“Such a loyal man, Harredad, will either receive rewards or punishment, depending on the accomplishment of the task and the secrecy afterward.” Vasily fired off a salute. “Now go and do this, for your country and for the Chair.”
Harredad stomped his feet together and delivered a perfect salute before hurrying out of the command station.
World-weary to his very core, Vasily dropped into his chair. All he wanted was to be happy in his work and to spend time with Alyssa without worrying about anyone catching them at it. Had he remained a Technical Specialist and she UnderSecretary, such a life could have been theirs without too much struggle and effort. Difficult at times, but impossible? No, not impossible.
As the two most powerful people in the entire system?
A fool’s dream. Their lives were no longer their own, and if they failed to keep their deepest secrets during their long journey to expansion, those public lives would be taken from them in the most televised event in the history of History Itself.
Vasily’s eyes were drawn to Naoko Kamagana’s face. His niece was beautiful. Too beautiful to suffer inside The Museum as she had to be suffering. He hoped she was still among the living; Tomas would not believe a story about falling under fire before the God soldier’s assaults, no matter the forensic proof they provided to the public. They had used that lie a million times already down through the centuries. Even the people who claimed to believe it did not truly believe.
“Let us hope,” Vasily whispered sadly, “that Harredad is successful.”
A few minutes later, his prote received announcements that everything was ready. Thankfully, his commanding officers had retained enough presence of mind to keep their confirmations to utter brevity; Vilmos wouldn’t know until it was too late.
Sheet forgotten in his hands until then, Vasily hit the ‘go’ button, imagining Tomas’ avatars shrieking like dervishes through the electronic landscape of their world, ripping and tearing control away from the terrorists in a matter of seconds.
It was a fitting image.
xxx
Vilmos stared morosely at the pile of useless tactiSheets. Five minutes ago, a command had passed to every God soldier and commander in the area; the Commlines were infected, word of mouth only.
All that time and effort into laying the perfect plan, assisted by Ashok’s cunning guile… all of it, rendered worthless by his brother's cowardice. The loss stung, to be true, but a burning brand of raging hatred was trying to course through his veins. As intelligent as the masters of the God Army were, there wasn’t one amongst them smart enough to plumb the depths of his younger brother’s treachery.
Yet, no matter how hot the anger in him tried to grow, it was quenched at every turn. Vilmos knew people incarcerated in The Peak.
To a one, they were hollow, broken shells. The daily rituals of punishing chores -humorously labeled ‘Loyalty, It’s Good For You’ and other, similar jokey names- were calculated efforts to break a person’s entire identity down until there was nothing left but what the Chair demanded. And that was just what happened ‘above boards’.
Vilmos had heard horrific stories of what the guards did to the prisoners, what those few incarcerated men and women did to each other … The Peak was a madhouse run by madmen. He couldn’t blame the operators of The Peak for doing as they did. The Chair had given them their orders. Without The Peak, their worlds would be full of traitors, maniacs, lunatics … all seeking to undermine the power of the Regime with their every breath.
Were there easier efforts to make someone over again? Of course there were. Vilmos knew Ashok himself had designed quite a few loyalty modification programs that could literally rewrite a person’s experiences, but the Chair preferred to do things the old-fashioned way whenever possible.
The Peak wasn’t about ‘reeducation’. It was about punishing traitors, and as much as Vilmos loathed admitting it, his younger brother was one of the worst. Oh, he’d managed to ignore it, willfully using Ashok’s connections, inventions, and genius for his own purposes, but when you got right down to it, everything the youngest Guillfoyle had done, he’d done for himself. Ashok was the perfect candidate for The Peak if there ever was one.
As far as survivors went, Ashok wasn’t a very good one. When the Guillfoyle family name had fallen into the dirt, five-year-old Ashok had fallen into a catatonic state so profound he’d spent a year in the hospital, monitored and watched day in and day out. The Peak would be a nightmare for someone who’d been trapped inside his own mind once before.
So. Ashok had revealed the Tro
jan. No matter. There was very little the Army could do with the knowledge. All it meant was a standoff until the God Army could do something to rectify the situation. Vasily wouldn’t continue making arrangements on compromised equipment.
Doubtlessly he was awaiting shipments of ancient proteii from the cities so he could reorganize. By then it would be too late. By the time OverCommander Vasily prepped his men for the final conflict, word of the prolonged terrorist action would’ve reached people with the wherewithal and the moral obligation to spread his simple, selfless demands to the other planets.
In his mind, the other worlds raged at the Chairwoman’s weakness. Her failure in not being the greatest Tyrant Latelyspace had ever produced was an assault against the very nature of their lives. Simple citizens would rise up and demand that the Regime make their choices for them.
It wasn’t an unreasonable demand. The small amount of reformation she’d made by instituting the unwieldy and all–too-clumsy bureaucratic process were all very well and good, but the gains she could achieve by becoming a more brutal leader would surpass those few bits by leaps and bounds.
Why couldn’t Doans see it? Had she been so thoroughly blinded by the Trinity Artificial Intelligence that she could no longer see her own power? They were the oldest Human civilization in the Universe! They’d remained untouched and undamaged by countless Dark Ages. It was their right -and their right alone- to rule with the fist, the knife, the gun! In all of reality, in thousands of solar systems stretched across hundreds of billions of light years, Latelyspace was unique.
Trinity had to fear that … uniqueness.
Vilmos shrugged. He wished he could know Doans’ thoughts. He knew she wasn’t stupid; no one made it to the Chair by being blind to those particular realities. He wished she’d explain … to him, no one else. Whatever her reasons were, they had to make some sort of sense, had to be of some impossible-to-conceive benefit to Latelyspace. Whatever they were, he wouldn’t tell anyone. All she had to do was tell him and he’d willingly end the farce.
However, that would never happen. Ironically, Chairwoman Doans retained just enough authoritarian brutality to refuse explanation. Vilmos knew her ‘democratic’ staffers demanded clarification on a daily, hourly, basis, and that she howled, snapped, and threatened should any one of them persist too long. Vilmos knew there was something more going on and it was driving him mad, but no matter. Whatever it was, it wouldn’t work, not now. Chairwoman Doans had broadcast her weaknesses to the system the moment she’d handed the reins to the OverCommander. Every Latelian would rage at her indecision, would be disgusted by the horrors, her inability to act the Tyrant had caused.
If she’d simply destroyed The Museum and everyone inside, whatever foolishness she’d been planning with Trinity would’ve been finished, leaving the outrage displayed by the citizens a momentary thing soon smoothed over.
Letting things go this long accomplished the same thing, only with greater side effects. They couldn't hide the coming purge nor could they disguise it as something else. Thanks to this mess, Trinity could find cause to end their ‘relationship’. Only this time, Latelians the system over wouldn’t forget, wouldn’t be cowed. They’d rise up.
“I win no matter what happens now, Alyssa.” Vilmos said triumphantly, ordering a functionary to deactivate all the cambots. They’d been nothing more than a diversion to lull Vasily and the others into thinking their feeds were the sole source of external information. “’Building a better Latelyspace’ indeed. When I am done with you, you’ll be drenched in the blood of thousands. You will build your better world on the bones of your victims or you will perish.”
Vilmos realized he still gripped one of the tactiSheets in his hands. He’d been routinely checking on it since the Army’d stopped using them for anything but the most innocuous orders in the hopes that someone would forget, or disobey: portable washroom locations, civilian monitoring, etc. still washed across its screen. Before his eyes, the Sheet’s flow flickered violently, a hiccup of data abruptly transforming into a blizzard of data-hash.
Vilmos stared incredulously at the multicolored storm of dead air. He knew he wasn’t in Ashok’s league when it came to netLINK systems, but even he knew that this was unexpected. Lurching from his chair, heedless of the rain falling from on high, he scrabbled through the pile of twinned tactiSheets.
They were all the same. No information was coming through at all now, not the location of bathrooms, not the number of civilians headed for The Peak.
Nothing. They were off.
Dead air.
That was not good. Vilmos thought furiously, trying to figure out what was happening. Either Vasily had ordered the complete dismantling of their portable netLINK system -absolutely unthinkable without a replacement system already up and running- or he’d somehow figured out how to bypass the x-DEC hack, which was ‘impossible’. Vilmos had spent long nights listening to Ashok go on and on about the impregnability of his x-hack, and how bloody stupid everyone in the military was.
Vilmos raised his head and started shouting orders. He immediately demanded that all surviving hunt teams returned to the main Room. People hastened to follow.
Vilmos tasked the person nearest him –someone from his original group- to bring the final cases of dummy guns up from the subterranean loading docks.
They probably didn’t have a lot of time left before the Goddies came through the walls, but by damn, when they did, they were going to get what they deserved.
If he couldn’t force Alyssa into being the Iron Tyrant, he was going to make her bleed.
xxx
Garth wanted to track the location of his would-be assassin, but a sudden, desperate surge of activity down below distracted him. Dozens of casually clad terrorists were hauling ass up the stairs, each carrying a look of distinct concentration on their faces. Garth pursed his lips speculatively.
“What’s happening?” Naoko asked worriedly.
The sight of so many guns in the hands of people who knew how to use them was nerve-racking. The whole day was foggy, even those moments when hundreds of people had lost their lives. Garth’s predicament –which he continued to play off as unimportant or intentional, depending on his mercurial mood- was the only thing keeping her rooted to the moment. Naoko could hardly credit that this was still the same day. It felt like they’d always been in The Museum, held captive by Vilmos.
“At a guess?” Garth shrugged, twiddling the ceramic needle over his knuckles. “It’s probable Vasily copped to the whole Guillfoyle angle. That whole time when Vilmos was down there looking all pissy and cranky? Probably has a lot to do with him not getting any Intel updates from compromised systems. Now? Now I’d say they’ve switched to a new system or have just decided to go for it. Either way, Vilmos having a heart attack down there tells me the cavalry is about to come tearing through the walls, looking for blood. They’ve been out there all damned day and it’s raining pretty hard. I gather God soldiers don’t like standing around.”
“Oh.” Naoko nodded. Then, “Oh!” She gripped Garth’s arm tightly. “There … there may be … a slight problem. With … with the … them coming in here.”
“Oh?”
“From what I understand about the Chair’s policy concerning this kind of Trinity exposure …” Naoko trailed off uselessly.
A young couple sitting two rows front of them turned around, their faces ashen as the conversation’s implications was understood. The man, barely out of his teens, nodded grimly. “Yeah. We’re all going to die.”
Garth felt Harry’s eyebrows beetle in absolute confusion. Maybe the solid hologram was affecting his brain, too. “Say what now?”
The kid nodded again, close to hysteria. “It happened once before, this bad, something like twenty years ago. Some rich guy and a thousand of his friends got permission from Doans to do a tour of Trinityspace. They came back with all these inventions and things no one around here had ever seen before. I think he was planning on copying t
hem and making a fortune. Would’ve worked, too. Except … except Doans decided the things he brought back were detrimental to Systemic Mental Health or something. They … vanished.”
He laughed, a high, warbling laugh. “This guy Vilmos and all his weapons makes the whole fucking ‘Hail Latelyspace’ thing a pile of horseshit. So no, the Chairwoman and the OverCommander can’t afford to leave any witnesses. If everyone in the system realizes how weak we really are … chaos. Chaos.” His girlfriend started crying. They turned to stare dully back at the empty GigantiSheets. There was nothing else to do but wait for cleansing. He whispered once more, with awful finality. “Chaos.”
Garth stared into Naoko’s eyes. “Will she really do this?”
“I…” Naoko dipped her head, splashing tears onto her arms. “Yes. It is so very easy to forget that Latelyspace is and always will be a Regimist system. Hospitalis is different from the others, Garth. My world is the one people from Trinity look at, so it is ‘better’ than the others in terms of how we live, what we are permitted. I am certain it is all a part of Chairwoman Doans’ plan to convince Trinity to absorb us into Its culture. The rest of Latelyspace isn’t like this at all. The living conditions are … deplorable. That young man is right. No matter the liberties we’ve been given, we have them only because they further Chairwoman Doan’s goals. Exposing Trinity as the absolute power It is will be absolutely detrimental to her designs. The other worlds will rise up in terror and fear and attempt … I don’t even know. I just know that the hysteria of suddenly having to deal with the fact that we seem to exist at Trinity’s sufferance will be overwhelming. The new OverSecretary will suddenly find himself with a number of powerful backers who want to get rid of Doans, and they will use her poor judgment in trying to ally with Trinity as all the reason they need. I can assure you, the ascension of a new Chair is not … smooth. What comes next will be much worse. Properly speaking we haven’t even recovered from the Chairwoman’s rise.”
