by Lee Bond
When he was within practical range for polite negotiations without delivering any insults –intended or otherwise- Minister Yuudai bowed respectfully first to Minister Kouki, who had seen better days if the vomit ringing his magisterial robes was any indication, then to Babel Sinfell, the rogue Specter. He dipped his head in recognition of Kouki’s honorable response and frowned when the enemy in their midst did not.
“Babel Sinfell, you are guilty of many things this day, beginning with the theft of Imperial property and ending with the cold-blooded murder of seventeen Honorable Guardsmen of the Phoenix Battalion. Under normal circumstances, this would be punishable by death, but we are willing to negotiate for the terms of your surrender.”
It took the weary Specter a long second to realize the older Minister –with the snowy ring of hair surrounding a bright shiny patch and insanely hilarious potbelly, the man was the perfect representative of government as far as Babel was concerned- was gabbling away in EJ. He looked at Kouki, who was licking his lips nervously. He snapped his fingers.
Kouki blinked. “He, ah, he wants to negotiate. For your surrender. He plans on arresting you for murder, theft and, once he figures out what you did to us, undoubtedly mind control.” Then, to Yuudai, in their local dialect, “Babel Sinfell requires assistance in some as-yet unmentioned difficulty, Minister Yuudai. We respectfully request that you and everyone else on Delicate Heron provide him with as much aid as each individual can possibly muster. There is no greater purpose to which we can be put.”
Minister Yuudai let loose with a scornful laugh and began chattering away, but Babel was no longer interested in dealing with the fat man in the fancy robe. There was something in the air, something that had deeper senses –senses quirked into overdrive because of the Soul-HUD- shivering in the wind.
Guardsmen Taichi was watching their commanding officer, Babel, like a hawk. For all the man looked like a thief –was in fact a thief, having stolen away their free will, but no matter that- he had the senses of a superbly trained soldier. The way the man was looking this way and that, licking his lips, tilting his head to one side … it was almost as if … Taichi shrieked –not like his little girl, not at all- and pointed his weapon at the stranger that’d quite literally appeared out of thin air.
A self-satisfied and entirely smug smirk crossed Babel’s lips. Because of course this wasn’t going to be an easy day. He took the newest arrival in the ‘Let’s Fuck Babel Over’ Day of Wickedness with a well-trained glance, heart sinking somewhere down past the molten metal core of Delicate Heron.
“I can tell by the downtrodden frown on your face, Babel Sinfell, that you realize your predicament better than these idiotic EuroJapanese cosplayers.” The gleaming metal robot, mostly just a skeletal frame with a few visible weapons for show and tell, turned lamplit red eyes this way and that, taking in the paltry crew of brainwashed samurai soldiers and the two ministers, all of whom were busy shouting at one another in their native tongue. “They’re asking you what they should do, Babel. Shall I tell you what you should order them to do? We’ve got a few minutes before the hundred arrive on the scene.”
Yuudai pushed himself forward, bodily interjecting himself between the … the … metallic intruder and Babel, loudly announcing all the various ways in which he, a Minister of the highest order, had far more legitimate and pressing claim to the Specter in their midst.
ADAM’s vessel grabbed the doughy Minister by the jowls and hoisted him sideways right through a fairly spectacular swirl of cherry blossoms. “Damn, that was pretty. Wasn’t that pretty? Like something out of a Tarantino movie, though you wouldn’t know what the hell I’m talking about.”
Babel had already had enough. He didn’t know how the robot had appeared like that, but he knew two things for certain; it was a robot, and he had a bunch of antsy-in-the-pantsy soldiers who’d been conditioned to help him. Wordlessly, he pointed his rifle at the machine and opened fire. Less than a second later, his personal army followed suit, turning the skeletal-looking chrome-dipped automaton into so much slag.
Kouki danced a little from side to side, unable to take his eyes off the … whatever it was. “We should … are you certain … that is …”
One of the guardsmen shouted an incoherent warning as another robot stepped forward, this one out of thin air; the cherry blossoms swirled around the gleaming intruder’s metal body, forming a pattern that –under other circumstances- would have prompted one of the world’s greatest poets to write a haiku like no other.
As it was, the robot punched him in the head hard enough to dent his brain pain, so … no haiku.
Babel danced back out of the way, personally witnessing fifteen more robots literally teleporting their way in to the cherry blossom orchard, walking through violent amber portals that crackled and sizzled as they did so; he was unashamed to leave the remaining guardsmen to open fire while he … retreated to a more tactically sound position, Minister Kouki huffing and puffing right behind him. The wondrous park was lit up with weapons’ fire, lambent sparks from the soldiers’ weapons setting the floating blossoms ablaze. Fiery trails of sizzling cherry blossoms, floating through the air …
If this wasn’t a life or death situation, it’d be fucking poetic.
As the robots fought, they shouted after the fleeing Sinfell. “You know … you think you know who I am, and while you’re wrong, you really should just give up now, Sinfell. I have infinite resources. I will win. I will capture you, and I will discover what makes you tick!”
Hiding behind a dense copse of cherry trees, Babel typed furiously. “Unlock this machine. Give me access to your accounts.”
Kouki took the handheld and did as he was commanded without hesitation. He handed it back, questions escaping him. “Who is that, what is this, where are they coming from? What is going on?”
Ignoring the frantic Minister’s rapidfire questions, Babel dialed into the orchard’s camera system quickly, nodding to himself.
The guardsmen might never have had to deal with anything more serious than the occasional training drill, but they were acquitting themselves fairly well on the impromptu battlefield; there were a few dead soldiers being slowly buried in fresh blossom-graves, but the majority of his team had backpedaled to locations better suited for firing upon their enemies. They were doing well enough against the small handful of gleaming menaces, but it was as the voice had said:
He did know who this was, and the enemy did have unlimited resources.
Babel pulled out of the local feeds and located the nearest surveillance cameras to the cherry orchard, intent on locating the arriving actual army-sized … army, a surge of hope rising through the bleakness.
They were already arranging themselves on the rooftops of the surrounding buildings!
As Babel watched –Kouki still screaming questions into empty air- the Specter nodded approvingly as one man –this one all in black- began issuing orders.
On the small device, the samurai army began deploying quickly and efficiently, spreading out further across the nearby buildings. Good. The man in charge was at least peripherally aware that the real enemy was somehow able to appear wherever they wanted on the battlefield and was making every effort to cover the entire park.
“Come now, Babel Sinfell, don’t make this more difficult than it needs to be. Surrender yourself to my forces, spare these idiotic soldiers dressed up like ancient warriors their lives. It won’t curry any favors with me, mind you, but don’t you think you should try to have a little less blood on your hands?”
Babel ignored the voice echoing from the handheld and focused instead on locating anything that might resemble … ah. There. An actual broadcast system, hidden amongst the treetops. No doubt weird people dressed in fancy robes came here all the time to speak poetry to the trees or something crazy like that. Babel didn’t understand that kind of traditional thinking, mostly because he would’ve tried to sell tickets to such lunacy.
Kouki shrieked loudly and passed
out the very moment one of the invaders stepped through a crackling ocher portal right beside him.
“Do you think that’ll work?” ADAM wondered, watching with interest as Babel began accessing the PA controls. “I confess, I’m all aflutter. Will your powers translate through machinery? Can you imagine the possibilities?”
Babel looked down at Kouki. The man was an inert lump. Probably dreaming of glutinous rice balls. He flashed the robot a blistering smile and –making damned certain the words coming out of his mouth were barely audible, even to himself- he whispered, “Go fuck yourself.”
The ADAM-drone registered the gentle force rumbling forth from Babel Sinfell’s mouth through sensors designed for the task; what ring of teleporting ninja robot kidnappers wouldn’t prepare themselves for any sort of physical trauma that might arise from the voluble force of Babel Sinfell’s positively magical powers of persuasion?
“Phew!” ADAM stepped over Kouki’s inert body and held out a hand. “Gotta tell ya, Babel, there were … concerns over this ability of yours. I mean, I sure as fuck couldn't know my teleporting ninja robots would be immune to your … powers of persuasion, right? They are thinking machines, after all. Thankfully, not so much. And secondly, well, I saw what happened in the ship, there in the cockpit. Thanks so much for whispering. You might have rattled … ouch!”
Cradling the handheld clumsily in one hand, Babel shot the robot in the head and ran away through the copse of trees, finally understanding why it was that Garth always got up to a lot of freestyle running during a fight. Now, running with a rifle and a handheld was a lot more difficult to pull off than he imagined, so Babel dropped the weapon as he pushed his way through a thick swarm of blossoms. Looking behind him, the only thing worth seeing as far as his eyes worked were pink flower petals.
Not that it mattered. The enemy could be anywhere.
It was time to do the thing.
He accessed the PA system and screamed, “Defend me.”
The demand rolled across the cherry blossom park like thunder.
***
“But … he made that demand in NorthAMC.” Eddie said, nonplussed.
“And yet.” ADAM agreed.
“They’re fighting on his behalf, even though he asked for help in English. None of them speak English except for Kouki!” Eddie couldn’t believe it; the hundred soldiers aligned on the roofs of the adjacent port buildings were now actively targeting ADAM’s troops, specifically sniping any robots that appeared anywhere near Babel, efficiently destroying anything that got too close.
Giving Babel time to do … something. Footage from the remote cameras clearly showed that the small Specter was no longer as panicky as he’d once been, and why should he be? He had more than a hundred well-trained –if green around the ears- soldiers who now had extreme motivation to do all they could to keep him alive.
“Preliminary models suggest that it’s not so much the spoken words that carries the bulk of the impact, but the emotive.” ADAM was in awe of what Babel had become under Lady Ha’s expert control. The man had transformed into something quite unexpected. “Of course, the chosen language does set up the verbal framework, the … skeletal system of the man's needs, if you will.”
Eddie nodded, understanding, gesturing at a handful of soldiers who, though they continued fighting, looked less than pleased at what they were doing. Some were downright confused, even as they pulled triggers. “These other men are fighting the conditioning. He’s not hooked deep enough into their minds.”
“This is fascinating stuff, no?” ADAM asked pleasantly. “And here you thought dealing with me would be like before, but here we are.”
Eddie made to rise, saying, “Yeah, this is all very well and all that, but I haven’t seen anything worth getting all wet over just yet. I mean, come on, ADAM, we already saw him do this kind of thing before. Hell, what he did aboard my dau … Ha’s vessel was more impressive.”
“You want impressive?” ADAM’s voice went all wry. “Impressive? I’m not sure you can handle the remainder of this little experiment, Dad. It’ll make you regret your choice altogether, because let’s not forget. Babel Sinfell is a viable subject that, with further testing, may become even more than he already is. Your daughter, on the other hand, is a dead woman walking.”
Eddie clenched his hands into fists tight enough for fingernails to dig half-moons into palms. Riding the wave of pain that jolted up through his hands, the Emperor-for-Life Etienne Marseilles replied with utmost civility. “Of course I am interested in seeing this experiment through to its conclusion, ADAM. I would not have said so otherwise.”
“Hm. We’ll see about that, dad. Okay, here we go. I’m gonna fast forward a little bit because for the next minutes, it’s just Babel running around and away from my robot army. Hmmm … where, ah. Yeah. Okay. This is the good part. Here is where more stupidly-dressed samurai soldiers arrive. They’re the vanguard of Delicate Heron’s remaining security forces. Hey, when this is done, can you do me a favor? Can you, like, just call up the rest of these so-called heritage worlds and tell them to stop doing this kind of thing? Because I gotta to tell you, Emperor-for-Life, when Kith Antal and his Harmony soldiers arrive in Trinityspace, worlds like this are just going to burn.”
Emperor-for-Life Etienne Marseilles said nothing, but his eyes glittered and spun like shiny copper pennies.
******
Babel’s eyes twitched to the handheld: an alarm was going off and while he couldn’t really spare the time to see why, he also knew that if the handheld –which was still tied in to the port’s security-minded AI systems- was announcing something, it was probably important.
The feisty Specter risked a glance.
The Specter hastily choked down a curse, his stomach sinking again.
He couldn’t believe his luck! Or lack thereof.
More troops, pouring in from the North entrance, armed and ready for anything; unlike the soldiers already present, these guys were packing some serious heat and were ready to fuck shit up.
Shit that'd include one Babel Sinfell, on account of these guys weren't on the Word Train.
The Specter followed one General Hikaru Yuuki's movements through the handheld, wondering what in the fuck he'd done to become a General, because from what he was seeing, it hadn't, you know, been 'go to military school'; rather than put his men on the roofs to support the fifty remaining men already up there, Yuuki was rolling the additional three hundred men out through the doors, on the ground, right into the very goddamn heart of the conflict! Hundreds of men, rolling through thick white smoke and burning cherry blossoms.
Babel shook his head, hoping to Christ that motherfucker hadn't picked such a balls-out stupid approach because it was pretty.
He was tired, his throat hurt and he knew it was only get loads worse before it got any better.
The stress of keeping his words to himself in the middle of this confrontation was punishing; tactical commands were literally trying to claw past his throat and the pressure of remaining silent was becoming a discernible, physical discomfort radiating through his entire goddamn skull.
He needed to get out of here. Needed to be back on the Shriven ship, running the fuck away. He didn’t know how Trinity had found him so quickly, or why the machine mind was doing what It was doing, but he did know Delicate Heron’s security teams didn’t deserve what they were being put through.
Hell, they weren't even good soldiers. They were just dudes in costumes being killed.
Because of him.
Running wasn't an option, though, not unless he also spontaneously developed the ability of flight or teleportation on demand; there were at least thirty gleaming robo-soldiers parked at each of the park's entry/exits, making a quick dash to freedom more of a leisurely round of target practice. They were just standing there, a mute robot retinue, silver chassis gleaming wetly with the reflected fires of the burning cherry blossom trees.
A loud boom echoed through the park, overriding the s
ounds of battle.
Babel peeked around the tree he was … gathering intelligence behind to check on Yuuki’s progress.
Another battalion, somewhere around fifty men, had created a tactical entrance along the Western wall, using –if Babel wasn’t off his game- old-fashioned c4, yet another thing this fucking heritage world needed to fix if they were ever going to be anything more than a doormat for Lady Ha’s eventual invasion force.
The Specter cursed silently.
He should try making a break for it. He had some guns, he could take down enough of the robots standing there, maybe make a big enough hole to slide through in the chaos. From there, he’d be banking on the fact that Trinity’s robot Tunnels couldn’t work through walls, or, at the very least, that the pinpoint accuracy would be out the window long enough for him to make it back to the Shriven ship.
Unless, of course, Trinity expected that. The AI probably did expect that. For all he knew, there was a half a million more robots lounging against the stolen ship, all of them casually waiting for him to make his stupid escape attempt.
Shit. Shit and damnation.
He could … he could use the turmoil in the cherry blossom park to his advantage, make an escape over the walls and into the city, where he’d be able to hide long enough to figure out what to do. Yuuki’s troops were making a dent in the robot army’s numbers, but that quite frankly didn’t mean very much at all.
This was Trinity they were fighting against. Trinity Itself.
Babel pressed the handheld against his head. Too many variables. Too many things going wrong. Too many things that could go wrong. What was he doing? Was he doing the right thing?
The short Specter shut his eyes, tried ridding himself of the echoing sounds of death and destruction. He thought about Ha, thought about his friends, thought about the things that their captor intended on doing, on the power she had and the power she sought. She was going to hack the Universe. Babel didn’t know about that, didn’t even want to consider the possibility that the vast place in which they all lived had a code that could be altered by the whims of a mad cybernetic woman.
