by Lee Bond
The men laughed loudly and stamped their feet. They really wanted to get this shit over with before the rain started pissing down on them with a vengeance; they’d been standing outside in the weather for most of the day, missing the Game, missing the Game recap, and now they were missing the motherhumping evening Game. Every single motherhumping idiot inside that Museum was going to have their faces smashed in for choosing a very bad day to go suicidal.
They roared their approval.
Vasily checked his prote. It was heating up, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. Not yet. “We have … fifty-five minutes left at most before our gear goes tits up and we’re fighting blind. I don’t know about you fellows, but I would sincerely prefer to be home before that happens. I’ve got a lot of money riding on today’s fights, and if I miss the late-night N4U coverage of the day’s events, I am going to be pissed.”
The soldiers hoorawed even louder, their cries heard for miles in all directions. They stamped their feet and brandished their guns. They were ready to go. If the OverCommander wanted to get home in time to see if he was a winner, then that was what was going to happen.
Vasily checked his prote again and looked confused. “Well? I see fifty-four minutes left, but what I don’t see is you storming the Museum. Get to it lads, kill ‘em all.”
There is nothing in the Universe like standing still while four thousand soldiers ran by at full steam. It was invigorating. The landscape moved, the heart pounded fiercely, and there was just the tiniest frisson of worry that one of the God soldiers would trip and fall and cause an avalanche of human meat wrapped around metal.
The OverCommander shut his eyes and let his men swarm around him, each one moving twice as fast as the quickest human being, their implants and augmentations revving their response time and muscle strength up and up and up… The God soldiers were on the move! All hail Latelyspace!
His prote rang, pulling him out of the reverie. It was Harredad. “Yes?” Vasily demanded calmly. He was relatively certain Harredad wouldn’t call to announce failure.
“I’ve done it. The … the best I could, sa. The targeting programs have been updated. But…”
“Yes?” Vasily turned to watch the soldiers advance on The Museum. Hundreds of them were already swarming up the sides while others were placing explosive charges; Vilmos no doubt imagined that he wouldn’t send men through the roof because they had no means of dealing with the filanet. The man was a smart terrorist, but he wasn’t a soldier.
As long as the monofilament mesh was connected to the walls of the museum, all they needed to do was blow holes in the walls below the most logical placement for each mounted spike. If they were lucky, the falling snarl of filanet would do half the work for them. “What is it?”
“I … I’ve received word from the Chairwoman’s office. While you were giving your speech, sa…” Harredad trailed off for a moment, trying to find the right words. “It’s … it’s this Harry Bosch, sa. He’s warned the Chairwoman that if we carry through with the cleansing, it … he … will broadcast it all over News4You. He … I think he implied that he’ll fight our soldiers if he must.”
“Now that,” Vasily replied with absolute sincerity. Trying to imagine a single person –ex-Goddie or not- lasting more than ten seconds against such a horde as he’d unleashed on The Museum was invigorating. “Is something I should like to see, Colonel Harredad.”
A hundred feet away, portions of The Museum were expertly blown away. The smoke cleared, revealing holes large enough for the Goddies to stroll through; tactically, they planned to sweep through each of the main areas leading up to the Viewing Room, then they would go up and down, securing each level whether it was occupied or not. They wanted no terrorists sneaking up behind them as they delivered the coup de grace.
They didn’t want to give Vilmos Gualf any chance to escape, bullshit statements about dying for his cause or not.
xxx
As soon as the first of the filanet mooring spikes popped loose with a loud twang and the sound of shattered concrete, Vilmos realized his mistake.
Ashok’s equipment and Intel had made him cocky and they were going to start paying for that cockiness almost immediately.
There wasn’t enough time to do more than shout a warning to any of his people who were using the central area. The rest of the mooring spikes popped loose and the whole filanet rig came crashing down, the individual wires snarling and hissing as they rubbed against one another the whole way. One side of the filanet mess collided with a Sheet, slicing it into massive, deadly chunks.
Providence arrived as large pieces of Sheet fell down on top of the deadly mesh as the impossibly thin wires continued downwards in a screaming, snarling mess of wiry death. Only three terrorists lost their lives to the gruesome filanet collapse before those chunks of Sheet slapped the web firmly to the ground.
Laser fire filled the air immediately. The Goddies were using the holes blown into the walls as makeshift sniper’s nests! Chaos! However they’d gained the technical edge, the God Army was proving themselves infinitely more capable!
By the time his snipers oriented themselves properly and started sending the enormously stronger seven-shot rounds through the stone, killing the first round of Goddies instantly, more than forty civilians died. Not a complete rout but, as he scurried for cover, Vilmos found himself actually praying that no more Goddies would come through that way!
Still scurrying, Vilmos couldn’t believe how quickly they’d lost supremacy. If the Army’d been given authority from the very beginning, their foreknowledge wouldn’t have mattered at all!
This wasn’t going the way he’d imagined, not at all. Responding slowly to the now dealt with rooftop threat, more of his personnel were moving to better positions so they could fire into the walls as well.
“Don’t bother!” Vilmos screamed into his prote. “With your weapons, maybe one in fifty of your shots will penetrate the thick walls. Leave that work to the snipers. The Goddies can’t see them. If any more of those overgrown imbeciles show their giant heads up at the blown-out dome area, by all means, open up, but until then, wait for soldiers to come to you!”
xxx
Up in the stands, Garth Nickels and Chadsik al-Taryin watched one another coolly while be-gunned citizens clutched their fake weapons in trembling hands.
A gun turret clattered to life and started firing madly down through the archway it was supposed to protect. The sounds of heavy grunts and shouting curses reached Garth’s ears. All around him, terrorist crazies were doing final weapons checks and ordering civilians with real weapons into better ‘firing’ positions. Snipers were still sending intermittent septus-ball shots through the upper walls of the Dome in an attempt to discourage another attempt at enfilade. Garth turned his attention from the assassin to the terrorists nearest to him. They were eying the archway nervously, trying to see through the haze of smoke.
Abruptly, all the turrets burst into life with a chatter of gunfire and reticulated gunports. Sadly, each turret had nearly forty thousand rounds. It would take some time before the Goddies got in through the halls.
“Naoko? We ready to go live?” Garth nodded encouragingly to a terrorist who looked over his shoulder, suddenly and obviously terrified. He shouted, “Just sunk in, eh? God soldiers, the whole bit? Great big freaks of nature, built and trained to kill? Fucking idiots. Dying for a cause seems totally awesome … when you’re not actually dying.”
The terrorist opened her mouth to say something, but the gun turret nearest her suddenly shrieked, a high-pitched whine blotting out any other sound. High-speed weapon jam!
Acting on pure instinct, Garth scooped Naoko up in one massive hand, tossed her over his shoulder, and leaped for all he was worth to the left. Midway through his leap, the gun turret exploded in a deadly haze of shrapnel and seven-shot, obliterating the terrorists standing nearby. Twisting like no one in the entire world before or since, Garth barely managed to maneuver Naoko to his chest before a rai
n of hot metal turned him into a porcupine. His mind automatically deferred the fact that he could feel the slivers of metal in his illusory back to some moment in time when he wasn’t busy keeping people alive.
xxx
Missed in the sudden confusion, a flickering of lights precipitated the arrival of the Curator. Though artificial, the look in his eyes was unmistakable; a shrewd, calculating thought crossed the aged ‘Latelians’ wrinkled face. “Neural sheathing: 25% intact. Memory block: 75% intact. Theoretical Kin’kithal Armamentarium: 10% access. Extra-dimensional manipulation is increasing beyond tolerable limits. Commands?”
Another volume of silent information rippled from the command base.
The not-man nodded. It would wait. It would watch and assess, as it and the others had done since Garth Nickels’ arrival. It’s commanders had maneuvered this moment into being, and they would learn much about the Kin’kithal warrior Garth N’Chalez.
Then they would punish him.
Then, they would command him. Garth would follow.
Or he would perish.
xxx
Landing as best he could amidst a horde of petrified civilians, Garth lowered Naoko gently to the ground and looked to where they’d just come from; the three terrorists foolishly close to the gun turret were little more than unrecognizable bits and pieces on the floor and chairs. A fresh batch of gun-wielding maniacs hurried up to take position by the doors, foolishly believing they’d be as useful as the now-obliterated Arbalest.
The civilians, watching Garth’s insane leap through the air, had followed suit by diving to the floor. Beside a few bumps and scrapes, everybody was still fine.
“What happened?” someone asked Garth.
“Weapon jam. Those bullets go through at damn near the speed of light. If something goes wonky…” He supplied distractedly. Garth cupped Naoko’s chin. “Are we ready to go live?”
Naoko nodded, barely aware that she could’ve died. Her eyes were still on the data flowing from Odin onto her prote. “Yes. Tricia Takanawa is waiting to interview you. News4You is already receiving simultaneous data streams from everyone’s prote. The p2p encryption-linking software you have is … extraordinary. You say you got it from the other people in The Museum? I wonder who…”
Garth kissed Naoko on the forehead. Then he waggled a finger at everyone near him. “The shit is about to hit the fan, boys and girls. To give yourselves a slight chance at living, drop your guns. They’re as fake as Indra Sahari’s boobs.” A young woman made to comment, either about the guns or about the system-famous singer’s allegedly real breasts. “Look, I know what the dude said, but look around… I think he’s a little on the busy side. He ain’t going to care.”
He bounced up and away, Allyn Devince’s force mace glowing.
Everyone did as he suggested.
xxx
With the filanet gone, the fifty soldiers lined up around the lip of the dome were doing their best by casually shooting anyone who got into range. There weren’t many, because they were all using their handguns, but those idiots who did try to climb to the highest levels for better aim got their heads melted right off.
That being said, the Goddies on roof patrol were having a rough time of things. The snipers were well entrenched and, as apocryphal as it sounded, were probably as good as some Army one-shots. Two of the snipers were creeping their way slowly and professionally to better vantage points, leaving the Goddies with a choice; they could abandon their efforts at killing stupid terrorists or they could jump right down the middle and just shoot everyone.
After all the shit that’d happened, none of the Goddies was really excited about that. As weird as it was, Goddies were dying at the hands of terrorists, and that was bothersome.
Their choices were stolen from them a few seconds later. A flash update from some of the hall troops hit their protes. A gun turret had exploded, killing a bunch of people and allowing some of their brethren to establish a decent beachhead closer to the action. They were having a hard time of things because a cluster of idiots with guns was doing a passable job of holding the archway. They were demanding remote targeting from anyone situated on the roof.
The fifty debated amongst themselves for a few seconds before grumpily switching to their targeting equipment, muttering loudly at having drawn what was obviously shit duty; they hadn’t killed nearly enough terrorists and now it looked like their tally for the day was over. The smartest amongst the fifty parsed a brief announcement to their Twoesie that they were making an on-the-fly adjustment. The Twoesie flashed that message to the other second-in-commands, who in turn communicated to their Onesies that targeting data was going to come streaming through their protes any time now.
A few seconds later, the handful of terrorists holding the archway died, aided immensely by the targeting data provided by those on the roof. Each of the fifty started angling their scopes to track new targets. Goddies started slowly shifting into the Viewing Room.
Then -when one of the fifty remembered that people were coming up to shoot them- they asked -as politely as Batlang allowed- that the ground troops hurry the fucking shit up because while they were busy targeting, they couldn’t fire at anyone killing them, pointing out in the process that the bullets being used against them hurt.
Responses came back green. Troops on the ground understood the situation and were going to assist the moment the man hitting them with the power mace either died or got bored. Chatter seemed to indicate that it was probably going to be a long time till either thing happened.
xxx
Vasily, listening to the chatter, hammered his desktop with a solid fist. “Goddamn it to hell.” He muttered. He started trying to think of something to do, some way to convince Harry Bosch –who he still believed was Garth Nickels, regardless of the mountains of evidence to the contrary- to stop beating on his men.
The young, impressionable runner standing beside him gasped and backed slowly out of the room.
xxx
Chadsik tossed his fake gun away, choosing instead to pull a carbine energy rifle from his leg. Then, because he had nothing better to do for the moment and because he really wanted to see what The Job was up to, started shooting at the God soldiers Garth missed.
xxx
Chairwoman Doans stared at the Sheet.
Her mouth was somewhere down on the floor, her eyebrows somewhere near the moon. She barely heard Tricia Takanawa officially begin the interview. The Chairwoman for the Latelian Regime was engrossed, literally absorbed, as thousands of individual proteus feeds dominated every News4You channel they had available to them. Sidebar data indicated that the other channels were picking up News4You run-off, blindly and willingly sacrificing their own stories for this … this motherlode. It was an unprecedented onslaught of information and it was filling the air.
The Screen bristled with torrential activity, each and every prote-feed an uncontained debacle of the terrorist/Goddie conflict. With the click of a button, a swipe of a finger, the wave of a hand, any thumbnail was instantly resolved into clear, high-definition real-time coverage of the war going on inside the museum.
This was live, this was raw.
Trapped civilians jabbered madly into their protes, telling loved ones everything would be okay, promising children that someone would love them and care for them, forgiving and forgetting and being so wondrously human that even Alyssa was humbled. Not one of the men and women had any clue that their faces, their voices, their hopes and dreams and regrets and sorrows were going out live across the planet, live throughout the entire system. Yet they cried and raged and loved.
It was wondrous. Alyssa had never seen it’s like before. Her people were strong, resilient, and unbelievably brave in the face of death and danger and every moment they fought, spoke, or wept, someone, somewhere was drawing strength from it.
It was pandemonium. A complete and utter fiasco.
It wasn’t going to last, though. It couldn’t be allowed to last.
&
nbsp; For the second time in a single day, Chairwoman Doans entered the complex passcodes that would activate the Sigma. Her avatars would be unleashed all over the News4You netLINK systems and that would be the end of this insanely improbable coverage; her technical advisors had absolutely no idea how any of this was happening and hovered on the brink of a firing squad for being so interminably inept at the one thing they were supposed to be geniuses at.
When the dust settled and Alyssa Doans was certain that no one would be stupid enough to mention The Museum War again, News4You would vanish off the face of the earth, it’s employees spread to the furthest corners of Latelyspace.
Alyssa stared at her prote.
Nothing was happening. The codes weren’t being accepted. The familiar sounds of the First Main being accessed hadn’t sounded, something that made no sense; she was always careful around the ancient machine. There was no reason for its ... behavior.
Furious, Alyssa went looking for answers.
A bolt of shock ripped through her, nearly stopping her heart. Three hundred and eighty-two governmental relay and repeater stations had been locked into triply layered data control! Impossible! Governmental relays were automatically configured to allow any ‘legitimate’ concern –i.e. government business- priority access. Wearing of the Prometheus Device didn't simply 'guarantee' access; it assured it by pushing thousands of users out of the system to heed her demands.
If necessary, the Prometheus Device could kick every man, woman and child out of every netLINK on the planet to achieve her demands. Was it possible that the News4You coverage was corrupting her connectivity? The volume of raw data flooding the airwaves was certainly large enough to suggest such a possibility.
Reading the avatar assessment as it rolled onto her screen, Doans shook her head, mystified. The bandwidth around the center of her power was down to a mere two petaflops a second! That wasn’t enough access to connect her proteus to the outside world, let alone to get the command codes to the Sigma Engine. It wasn’t even enough to connect properly to the affected systems so she could use her ultimate user authority to purge them of the triple-scan each byte of data was receiving. Her prote gave her a brutally unrealistic wait time based on the number of transactions currently held in transfer-limbo. If everything stayed as it was, Alyssa could look forward to issue her Sigmas sometime in the next decade.
