by Lee Bond
Taking a deep breath, Alyssa Doans tried to settle down. Iron fury and duronium calm warred in her soul. She was isolated from the First Main. It was inconceivable to believe Vilmos Gualf had possessed the foresight to work at this level of prevention alone and Doans regretted sending Ashok back to The Peak. This Sigma-deflection had to be on him.
Alyssa shook her head defiantly. It didn’t matter. She would go to the First Main and manually enter the string codes directly into the ancient system. When that happened, it wouldn’t matter how pervasive the impossible delays were. The entire netLINK system was built on the back of the First Main and it would tear through everything. Alyssa was of a mind to deny her loyal citizens access to the ‘LINKS for quite some time as punishment.
Hurrying out of the room, Alyssa closed her eyes briefly when she heard a heavy, grating voice echo from the Screen, “Well, Trish, I can call you Trish, right? Well, Trish, it’s like this, y’see; everyone here … well, not the terrorists, mind you … are innocent of wrongdoing. It’s a wrong place, wrong time kind of thing. It’s not their fault this asshole is using Trinity tech. And me … oofff… holy fuck that hurt, take that you bastard, and me, I’m all about the people. I ain’t gonna let these people die, no matter what anyone out there thinks.”
xxx
Naoko smiled at a young woman cowering behind the seat next to her. “The Chairwoman is leading me right to the Engine.”
Conspiracy theorists and hackers the system over spent years –sometimes their entire lives- looking for the First Main, sometimes for nefarious reasons, sometimes not, and here she was, essentially being brought right to the ancient machine’s doorstep.
Naoko could barely contain herself; even though it was definite that the Chairwoman would be able to override her relay hack with the press of a button, there was still the very real fact that she’d know exactly where the Engine was! No one else. Her. Naoko Kamagana. Theoretically, with the failed command issued, it was a simple trick to isolate the address from the string of code. Through Garth’s prote, she should be able to hack the Engine the moment Doans’ proteus got within range.
xxx
The ‘big’ newsroom of the News4You main channel was hardly more than a glorified closet; there was enough room for the two primetime anchors to sit at a desk while they covered stories that comprised the life and times of Hospitalis. Nine-tenths of the work took place out on the streets, where hordes of roving reporters ‘got the scoop’ and fed their make-it-or-break-it stories back to home base.
Analytical avatars processed the story, shunting it through the ‘LINKS to the proper editing and post-processing facility for N4U. From there, a story either wound up making it to the ‘big’ newsroom or it was shuffled off to one of the smaller satellites; there was such a glut of newsworthy events during Game time that more than half the accounts covered were simply aired on one of the hyperSheet channels in raw format. Very few people were interested in human-interest stories, or anything, truthfully, beyond Game coverage anyways.
The ‘goings on’ at The Museum, though, trumped anything and everything that was happening, not just on Hospitalis, but the entire system. No one in the technical department could figure out how the thousands of data streams were rushing through the netLINKs to their servers, but they were more than willing to ignore the impossibility of what was happening so long as those glorious feeds kept coming. Everyone working their assess off to maintain the connections were already emotionally prepared for the issuance of a Sigma to destroy their coverage, but until that came to pass, Tricia Takanawa and Gary Hombert were taking the news to the people.
Naturally, everyone on the planet was aware that some kind of military action was taking place in Central’s heart, but what sort, and the severity had –until the feeds ripped through their Game coverage with shocking ease- been a mystery. With several dozen reporters already vanished to The Peak and a wall of God soldiers preventing anyone from sneaking closer to The Museum, it’d been business as usual. No one wanted a story so badly they were willing to risk The Peak. Not now, not ever.
To listen to the gravelly, rough voice of Harry Bosch, though, was to hear a tale of terrorists gone mad, evil Trinity science deployed against helpless Latelian citizens, and one man’s desire to protect the innocent.
It was gold. No, platinum. No, better still: it was the most expensive and rarest element of all. Tricia had no clue what that element might be, but talking to Harry Bosch while he was whacking away on God soldiers was definitely it.
The biggest story of all time.
Gloriously, it was hers. More importantly, it wasn't that asshole Gary's, which was fantastic. She was going to be so much more famous now.
“So let me get this straight for our viewers at home, Sa Bosch…” Tricia manipulated the data streams until an avatar found a feed coming from someone inside the Viewing Room who was making a concerted effort to record Harry’s actions; his prote appeared to be the only one not transmitting raw footage.
With his size, shape and speed, the man was obviously an ex-Goddie himself, but he was heaving through a surging horde of fellow soldiers with unstoppable abandon, knocking them left and right with a faintly glowing mace. Perceptively, Tricia deployed an avatar to identify the mace; her reporter’s instincts told her she should recognize it but could barely spare half a moment to think about insightful questions for Harry.
The offending forces were helpless against Harry, who appeared laser-proof and immune to pain; the Goddies weren’t sitting still while Bosch attacked, but their laser blasts looked like they were being absorbed and he just shrugged off punches and kicks. In the foreground, terrorists were shooting everything in sight; in the background and off to the left, a pale, raven-dressed maniac was busy firing a weapon no one on the technical staff –or their avatars- could identify, sending devastatingly blue jolts of energy around with brutal accuracy.
It looked like something from the Screens! It was mayhem in there.
“Oh, you can call me Harry.” On the feed, Harry pivoted on one foot and whacked a Goddie with an uppercut that sent him flying straight up into the air. As the soldier fell into a pile of Goddies trying to mount a rear attack, Harry drove the mace into the stomach of another soldier.
Tricia smiled. “Harry, then. Are we to understand you went to The Museum today just to look at the art?”
“More or less, Tricia.” Harry smacked a laser gun out of a warrior’s hand and kicked him in the head. “Since leaving the Army, I’ve been,” Harry took a laser shot to his own head but kept on going, “I’ve been disaffected, know what I mean? Lost. Yeah. Lost. Didn’t know what to do with myself. I got in with, sonofamotherbitch. Hold on a second, I, uh, I need to … concentrate.”
The brave Latelian citizen recording Harry’s activities took an errant seven-shot to the head and fell to the ground; the last decent shot from the poor man’s prote was of five or six very angry Goddies swamping Harry Bosch in an avalanche of augmented flesh.
Tricia masterfully surfed through the iconic thumbnails until she found another prote-feed covering Harry. From the new angle, the whole world watched in silent amazement as the Goddies proceeded to kick, punch, bite and stab Harry Bosch with anything they could bring to hand. It was clear these God soldiers had had enough and were taking their frustrations out in true Onesie style. Awe-inspiring survival or not, the self-appointed hero of the Museum Hostages wasn’t -couldn't be- invincible.
Tricia made ready to announce Harry Bosch’s tragic demise, brought on by his sincere desire to protect innocent men, women and children when the Goddie on the top of the pile suddenly launched skyward. More soldiers followed in rapid succession, bellowing like confused herbivores as they went flying through the air. Each man –weighing a thousand pounds or more- crashed into stadium chairs a loud clatter. Morosely, the Onesies picked themselves up off the ground, resolutely trudging back into the fray.
Harry Bosch caught sight of a citizen recording his efforts and w
aved cheerily to his adoring fans. Then he hurled himself at another knot of soldiers, these, held at bay by a nasty looking gun turret, went down quickly enough that the Arbalest targeted him the moment the last soldier fell. Tricia’s jaw dropped as, again, Harry Bosch didn’t seem to notice the rapid-fire bullets stippling his impenetrable skin.
Who was this man? Reports always trickled in from the darkest of corners, hinting at new technologies producing better, more efficient, more powerful soldiers. Stories like that –whether they were true or not- were always discounted. The Chair was reliable in the way it managed the curtailing of divulged secrets and Tricia liked essentially everything there was about living.
Staring at Harry Bosch -as he proved to be unassailable- was to be confronted by one of those secrets. Could Harry Bosch be one of the whispered Fivesies? It seemed likely. Tricia blinked away her musings as Harry’s voice came back on line.
“As I was saying, Trish, I was disaffected and felt like I had no real purpose in life. I got in with a real bad dude. You might have heard of him? Ashok Guillfoyle?” Harry bopped a Goddie on the head and kicked another one in the face. The two Onesies collapsed like poleaxed steers.
“You worked for Ashok Guillfoyle, the Traitor himself?” Tricia couldn’t believe her luck. She felt Gary’s stare of pure outrage on her back and ignored it gleefully; the poor bastard was stuck doing a play-by-play commentary on the other apparently non-partisan combatant, some sort of Offworlder cyborg who was killing his way through his three hundredth God soldier. At least her man seemed to be doing his level best to incapacitate his victims rather than outright killing them.
“Sure did, Trish.” Harry ducked a lightning fast sweep of a Twoesie’s ceremonial sword and planted a love-tap from the mace right on the guy’s kisser. He fell down with a thud. “And lemme tell you about that motherfucker…”
xxx
Gary wasn’t a man who suffered from jealousy. He was the number one male news personality in the system. He got invited to all the right parties, knew all the right people, and had all the right contacts. He was system-famous, a perfect example of everything that was right and good. His fan base told him so all the time.
To his way of thinking, the one-on-one with this Harry Bosch fellow was his right, his story.
But no, the insane ex-Goddie himself had rebuffed all attempts at preempting Tricia’s coverage, demanding Takanawa and no one else. Now he was stuck in the role of trying to figure out who in the hell the maniac cyborg was while mindlessly commenting on what he saw. Gary hadn’t done sports commentaries in fifteen years, but his agent was pleased to hear and see that the man hadn’t lost his talent.
Gary wasn’t ordinarily prone to jealousy. The Museum Crisis was something out of a fantasy, though, with larger than life characters and a truly awe-inspiring level of intensity. Out of the two maniacs causing so much mayhem, Harry Bosch was more interesting. It was evident the man he was covering was some sort of radical Trinity freak, making any newsworthy events even more likely to be squashed by a Sigma. Knowing how Chairwoman Doans operated, it was entirely likely he, Gary Hombert, would be swallowed up in that Sigma simply for doing his job.
“And our mysterious guest dodges a blast from a terrorist with consummate ease, sis and sas. He dances to the left and delivers a crushing blow with that arm of his! Look at that extremist fly through the air! Here comes a Goddie, intent on turning the cyborg’s head into a badly shaped can holding what little remains of his brains. Goodness, gracious me oh my, I would dearly love to know what kind of gun he’s using; it’s blown a hole right through that trooper and knocked down two more greenskins in the process! What a devilish maniac! Look at him jump thirty feet straight into the air … what’s he doing now! He’s just dropped some kind of grenade and FUCK ME WOULD YOU LOOK AT THAT, sis and sas! He’s just disintegrated fifteen Goddies in a haze of what I can only assume is some kind of plasma explosion! This man is evil, sis and sas, a true desperado. I can only imagine how angry the OverCommander is getting over all of this…”
xxx
Vasily was watching the News4You coverage, his extremities numb. His left eye was twitching independently and he was vaguely aware that a nearly silent litany of filth was pouring from his mouth independent of any conscious will.
The members of his command staff -Harredad, U-Ito, Salms- all stood at a respectful distance, absorbing everything they saw coming from the news channel as well. They, too, were … dismayed. What they were seeing had never happened. Ever.
In all fairness, the battle would be at a very different stage right now were it not for Harry and Chadsik. Granted, many of the terrorists had switched to using RPG’s and other explosive weapons and a number of previously disinterested civilians were picking up weapons from dead terrorists –presumably because they were frightened out of their wits and didn’t want to die- but the situation would have been easily containable.
The Army had the numbers and the training to wear the terrorists and confused civilians down with an endless tide of greencoats. After all, although everyone was armed with slug throwers filled with bullets capable of crippling and killing God soldiers, it was very unlikely that Vilmos had a billion rounds of ammunition.
The same went for those murderous citizens launching rockets everywhere. Their ammo had to be running out, and soon. Knowing that, being prepared for all the dangerous Trinity weapons and arms in The Museum had meant accepting the reality of both God soldier casualties and a longer sortie than was usually seen in a situation like this, but still; over four thousand God soldiers should have made for a simple crush and run.
Only, that wasn’t the case. It wasn’t ‘just’ terrorists and ideologues armed with Trinity weapons. Oh no, not by a long shot.
Vasily couldn’t even remember a full-scale war where they’d needed to deploy this many Onesies. Ever. And ... and they were losing. Against a cyborg from Trinity and someone who probably wasn’t a cyborg at all. In the entire history of Latelyspace, from the moment they’d discovered the secret of duronium and how to make proper God soldiers four thousand years ago, they’d never once faced such a critical loss of life.
It was … unconscionable.
At least Harry was thoughtfully articulating his motives for the entire solar system. To listen to the ‘ex-Goddie’, his only interests lay in protecting the lives of innocent civilians, men, women and children with absolutely no desire in going to the media with wonderful stories of amazing Trinity technology.
That very minute, he was explaining how exceedingly unreasonable he found it that there should be any kind of mass culling over The Museum Incident, though he did understand why such tactics would need to be employed from time to time. To listen to the gravel-voiced Latelian speak with such eloquence while beating the ever-loving shit out of God soldiers with impunity was disturbingly hypnotic.
He also pointed out with deliberate caution that he wasn’t intentionally killing Goddies; in between fights, he indicated his extreme care in using non-lethal force, going on to announce system-wide that he was already deeply regretful if any of his noble brothers and sisters died because of his actions. Harry Bosch deftly deflected all questions concerning both his weapon of choice and his already well-displayed immunities to physical damage.
Vasily howled low in his throat. Unbelievable. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing or hearing. Of course, he’d instantly recognized Allyn Devince’s mace being wielded with expert skill and was waiting to hear just how anyone –let alone Harry Bosch- could’ve rediscovered how to power the fucking thing. That entire branch of science was the domain of the Regime, buried under thousands of years of secrecy and silence. There was no way, none at all, for anyone to rediscover those methods. Yet the truth was plain as the mace bashing soldiers unconscious with every broad sweep.
The OverCommander struggled with the urge to harass the Chairwoman yet again over the disastrous news feeds. Her last words to him had been … chilling. Alyssa was laboring mighti
ly to retain her calm and the last thing Vasily wanted was to be responsible for unhinging the Chairwoman.
Also, lest he forget, News4You was mercilessly displaying his greatest error in judgment fighting right alongside Harry Bosch!
No one in the command room could figure out why the cyborg was doing any killing at all, let alone why he’d chosen to remain in The Museum; as appallingly powerful as the Trinity assassin was, Chadsik could have clearly left at any time.
He hadn’t left, though, making him their worst problem by far. His actions, the methods and weapons he was deploying against anyone who got in his way, easily outstripped anything Vilmos had done or would conceivably do if he lived to be a hundred thousand years old. So far, the Offworld cyborg was evincing a terrible immunity to every weapon employed against him as well as an unusually adept talent for mowing down dozens of Goddies with a bewildering array of weapons they’d not detected once during the FrancoBrit’s travels around Hospitalis.
Making matters worse, every byte of footage thus far showed that Chadsik al-Taryin was talking to himself in at least two different voices, both of which seemed to be enjoying the carnage immensely.
Sandwiched between Harry Bosch, Chadsik al-Taryin and terrorists, his ground troops were being decimated. All but a single entrance into the Viewing Room were stuffed full of unconscious or dead Goddies, forcing reinforcements to try for a mad dash through the remaining entrance; only three or four out of every ten men rushing the door made it through, only to meet their end at Harry or Chad’s hands. Thankfully, terrorists were focusing the majority of their firepower on the roof, desperately trying to eradicate the Onesies who were targeting them for Goddies who were trying to deal with the main body of opponents.
