But now… now he had something back that he thought he would never have again. A body. He’d once had to accept that his human shell was gone forever. Then he had to understand that meant never having a body again. Then he threw himself deep into the work of the Pantheon if just to forget that he could never be… real again. Accepting his fate and focusing on a dream to forget what had been taken. That too had been part of survival.
“What am I now, Maestro?”
There was no delay in the reply. It came as though the question had been expected, and Crometheus wondered if everyone who’d gone through this process… the receiving of a new body… if all those before had all followed the same pattern of asking the same questions as their minds, coming out of whatever Frankensteinian surgery Maestro and whoever else involved had cooked up, followed some algorithmically predicted pattern of questions to keep their sanity in check. Everyone predictably arriving at the same place sooner rather than later. Asking their same lawyerly questions about their current state of bodily affairs, and daring to think of the future as it had now just been reshaped.
“You are, technically, a cybernetic organism,” said Maestro within Crometheus’s mind. “You are composed of mostly genetically modified biodegradable material with a shelf life well beyond the original chassis, your human body, upon which this model was based… the Animal frame as it were. But you’ve also been integrated with machine parts, such as the microframe processor currently running your HUD, and other advanced combat systems. Your muscular system is rated to lift one ton, but with an adrenal boost micro-pump you can go as high as two tons, if needed. Your enhanced nano-ceramic bone structure can withstand impacts that would have broken the bones of your old fragile body, and is capable of a certain amount of limited nano-repair at the molecular level. All your major organs can also self-repair, and of course no sustained injury… let’s say to your purification system, respiratory system, lymphatic system… will be fatal. That’s not to say that you can’t be crushed to a pulp or blown into several bits in the course of your duties as an Eternal… but you will not die from those injuries. As long as the brain survives you can be rebuilt several times over, either by us, or, given enough time… yourself. Just like the combat chassis you occupied after the shedding. This body is as strong as the armor system you occupied during the battle of New Vega. Stronger even.”
An uncalled-for whistle erupted from Crometheus’s lips, and he began to laugh uncontrollably. He was still lying in the bed, and its frame shook with his happily delirious convulsions. He felt endorphins flooding his system in a way the Pantheon had never been able to reproduce. He felt alive. He felt young forever. And he could be rebuilt time and time again and again.
Eternal youth.
Immortality.
A god at last.
“But we wouldn’t just send you into battle naked as a… jaybird, I believe is the old Animal expression. Wait, Master Cro, until you see the new armor we’ve prepared for the first assault on Spilursa.”
Crometheus’s mind suddenly flashed on Miss Cyber Saigon and the bacchanal of Sin City. And specifically their own exertions within the Olympus suite. Was that all gone? Was that lost now? Only available to those still plugged into the life racks as a brain only? Was he cut off from the Pantheon? He felt his body break out all at once into a cold-turkey heroin junkie sweat.
“Will I still…” He hesitated. Did he even want to go back in there? To Sin City. The drugs. All the other pleasure realities he’d spent so many debaucherous years of his existence in during the long flight times to other worlds.
Did he?
He needed to. Needed to like a junkie needs the next fix. Nothing scarier than cold turkey, Bad Old Self hooted from the side of the midnight barn. Jug in hand and gustily slurping from it beneath the moonlight. Might as well not quit. Death is easier… right?
“I anticipate that you’re are indeed wondering, Master Cro, if you can still interface with the Pantheon. The answer is both no, and yes. No as of this moment because we are conducting a secret operation against the rest of the Uplifted. And then, once we return from Spilursa… yes. In fact, it will be highly encouraged so that the Eternals might spread and download the Unity Virus across the rest of the Uplifted tribes. But all that will be explained in your Eternal training program uploads where we will introduce you to your new advanced armor and weapons systems. Are you ready to begin now, Master Cro?”
Crometheus swallowed. His mouth was bone-dust dry.
And that too was amazing. And wonderful in its own way. Even fear tasted good.
What would it be like? he wondered. What would it be like to feel Miss Cyber Saigon’s long painted fingernails on his chest once again? But for real. Not just what the Pantheon was telling him to feel. Pleasure. Always pleasure of course, unless they needed you to feel pain. And then you’d feel that in ways you never knew it was possible to feel such a thing. But never mind the end user agreement and all the fine print… what would it really be like? To feel her.
And what about all the secret places he’d kept from the Pantheon? And Maestro. Lazer Command. They’d made him burn it down. Symbolically delete it. But could he rebuild it? Or had this latest upgrade just given them total control over everything? Like when Maestro had taken over not just his HUD but his mind, running through menus at the speed of light. Beyond Crometheus’s comprehension. Like he was being taken by some card shark at three-card monte along the streets of New York City. That had probably been done by Maestro not merely to show him that he could perform tricks like play dead, but to make him aware that they, that Maestro, could take control of him at any time that they, that he, wished. Chose to. Needed to.
And… who were the “they” this time around? Commander Zero and Lusypher. Were there more? Did the cabal lead to the Xanadu Tower? That was the question that had never been answered in all these long stellar crossings from one world to the next. From one invasion to the next. From Reno to Rome. Who were “they”?
Who was really in charge all along?
Who was the real they who was really in charge of this too-long voyage into the future? And where had they been headed all along?
Crometheus wondered about that. Wondered about all those layers within layers of enigmas wrapped in riddles that were probably far more complex than just an onion. All those conspiracies that might just be one large conspiracy that had been there all along. Playing them. Guiding the whole show of a mass exodus from Earth of several thousand utopia seekers, tribalized, to this ultimate conclusion of total domination in the final war for all the marbles of the galaxy. For control of everything and the shape it would take as the future unfolded. Animal, or Savage.
And what, he thought suddenly… what of her?
Would she be waiting for him just as she always was?
At the end.
Holly Wood.
“Cro?” prompted the AI.
“Yes, Maestro.”
“Again, my algorithms are predicting exactly what you’re thinking about right now. With a ninety-eight-point-six-percent probability of being correct, we are estimating that you are currently thinking about the training you are about to undergo. The difficulty level, specifically. The time it will take. And what are the repercussions for failure with respect to the cabal. Is that correct, Master Crometheus?”
He was safe. His secret worlds, the ones he would build again, and the ones he would build anew… were safe from them. Unguessed at. Hidden from view.
“Yes, Maestro. That’s correct. I’m very excited about what comes next. In fact… I can hardly wait.”
Gods: Chapter Twenty-Three
“Sixty seconds to atmospheric insertion!” cried the Uplifted pilot over the static-washed comm of the captured Animal freighter. Re-entry turbulence was already incredibly violent as super-heated oxygen began to scream across the falling ship’s hull.
“Co
mbat mission filters in place, Eternals!” shouted Commander Zero from the front of the lead assault stick. Her command-indicated mission downloads were in place. A second later Crometheus had his assignment, lane, and objectives for the operation. The neural processor that had been synced with his new body and brain made the transfer of information near instantaneous; it was downloaded, unpacked, and installed within his brain in the blink of an eye. His mind accepted all this as though it were his own cognition. Six months of intensive training in everything from commando assault techniques to demolitions training had been acquired in the same fashion. All of the best training pirated from the most elite military training schools Uplifted Intel had been able to access by subterfuge and theft from the militaries of the Coalition worlds. Spilursan Ranger CQB. Britannian Sapper School. Espanian Indirect Fire Support Courses. Umorian Asymmetrical Warfare Operations. All of it, along with pro athlete muscle memory sports conditioning and techniques, had been downloaded into each Eternal, post-body acquisition surgery. All of it within two quick minutes, including specializations in training-specific tasks, after Maestro had asked each of them if they were “ready to proceed.”
Crometheus had been assigned to a thirty-person forward assault squad within the Eternal force now inbound on Spilursa’s northern pole. The objective was tagged by the Animals as Ice Station Hades.
“Instituting in-game parameters to keep everyone motivated!” called out Zero as the turbulent atmospheric effects across the freighter’s hull began to subside.
The Eternals were no longer synced with the main body of Pantheon forces. Maestro had them officially routed as attached to another Uplifted tribe intent on taking some new world. For the moment the small yet elite team was operating on its own, outside the collective of the Path, a rogue detachment intent on staging a palace coup. Yet Maestro and the Eternals’ command staff believed that keeping the Pantheon’s “in-game” filters for combat would help smooth out some of the body-brain sync problems the Eternals were currently experiencing. As Uplifted marines they’d fought several wars in a massive online combat arena that awarded them points, scores, and kill streaks in order to keep the battle, or game, rolling. Or such had been their perception, and thereby their truth. In another reality, one without filters, their physical frames had fought physical enemies in real combat. That other reality had been the same reality, with different brushstrokes applied, an artist’s rendering, each reality as real as the other, one in body, one in brain, but the perceptions… different.
Perception is everything.
So now, even though the Eternals were fully armored and combat-capable, physically perfect and trained in accordance with the best special forces units of the Animal worlds, there were still some interfacing problems that needed to be ironed out. Problems that ranged from slight headaches to occasional sync drops in at least thirty percent of the combat force currently smashing its way through Spilursa’s upper atmosphere, inbound on Objective Hades. Even full-blown psychosis had manifested in just under five percent of the new Eternals. This had been dealt with. Those troops experiencing dangerous levels of psychosis had been assigned to a shock trooper element that would be coming in via orbital drop. They would contribute to the cause by drawing the majority of defensive fire coming from the three battalions of Spilursan infantry currently defending Ice Station Hades, the Spilursans’ state-of-the-art cloud storage farm secreted in the vast polar nether of that harsh and unforgiving world. One hundred percent casualties were expected, according to Maestro, among the shock troopers. So the loss of those suffering psychosis affliction was mitigated to some extent. They would have had to have been put down either way, Maestro had assured command.
And this was mere secondary diversion. The primary attack came from the bulk of the Eternal force now diving through the atmosphere at dangerous speed aboard the captured Animal freighter. Their danger-fast velocity was a requirement of this operation and the only way success could be achieved.
“Don’t worry, Eternals!” said Maestro over the general comm. “Safety parameters for this vessel were designed for the weaker Animal frame. Obviously, no one encased in our advanced-reflex armor system, which you are currently kitted with, has anything to fear. Diverting forward deflector shields to maximum… please brace for severe impact!”
The starship, a captured freighter, had disappeared more than thirty years ago according to humanity’s colonial ship registry as administered by United Worlds back at New Houston. The ship had gone overdue and then finally was declared missing out along the Spinward Drift of the Orion frontier, as it was then known. Unbeknownst to humanity, the crew of the freighter, the Servia’s Gamble, had actually been captured by the Pantheon when they attempted to board the old lighthugger they’d found drifting in a dark system. Their unreported salvage operation quickly turned into a nightmare.
Captain Jane Servia had been in command of the scout commercial freighter operating along the Spin. Her first officer was killed in the boarding action, as were half the crew. The chief engineer was later devoured after winning six matches in the gladiatorial games held in Sin City’s Pleasure Dome. Upon losing, the engineer’s body was unhooked from the meat racks and sent to reclamation with a special reservation for Player Thorr, a former tech executive and early member of the Uplifted. A victory celebration, a re-creation of a Viking winter feast, in which some of the more choice cuts of the engineer were served specifically to Thorr, followed.
When the Savage invasion of the core worlds began in earnest, Captain Servia was still alive within underworld harems. Her failing body was in fact still hooked into the meat racks and would be consumed for nutrients a mere three days before the Legion’s invasion of New Vega. Her mind, on the other hand… well, it could still be enjoyed as a plaything, whether she liked it or not.
Of course she’d gone mad long ago.
The Servia’s Gamble, that long-ago captured scout freighter, was now being piloted exclusively by Maestro, as the Uplifted pilot had surrendered final descent control for maximum success during insertion into the area of operation. The ancient freighter was carrying a complement of over four hundred Eternals when it slammed into the icy waters of Spilursa’s Northern Polar Sea beyond the Carson Archipelago. Three kilometers east of the Great Crater Lake that occupied the northernmost point on the globe of that world.
The downed ship sank quickly. A normal starship would have gone to pieces all across the surface of the ice-swollen sea, but the Uplifted engineers had refitted the ship with heavy-duty one-shot forward shields that boosted to max nanoseconds before impact, allowing the ship to smash through the surface of the lake and sink down into the midnight dark bottoms below. Now alarm bells rang out as the ship’s old damage control lighting shifted on internally. External floodlights switched on as well as the ship drifted toward the rocky floor of the arctic sea, her engines and hull sending up steam and massive bubbles in the wake of their fall through the icy waters. Almost instantly the bulkheads were cracking and leaking, numerous hull breach alarms resounding through the upper decks and the vast cargo hold of the old refitted freighter.
All of this was according to plan. Of course.
“Remain locked in your racks until we come to rest on the ocean floor,” cautioned Maestro to the Eternals, some of whom were already pinging to be released. “The floor is at a depth of two hundred meters. We are passing through one hundred meters. Stand by.”
Crometheus ran through his section’s assignment as the ship groaned titanically.
Egress Hull flashed across Crometheus’s HUD the very instant the impact rumbled along the belly of the hull. One of the main landing gears suddenly collapsed and the ship sank down onto one side causing more bulkheads to give way and sending torrents of icy water rushing in to flood compromised sections.
Crometheus’s mission was as follows…
Proceed along the seafloor to a passage in the pack ice at a depth of
three hundred meters.
Infiltrate Great Crater Lake beyond the passage.
Assault and breach lower decks of Ice Station Hades in order to access the Spilursan R&D cloud in order to upload the Unity Virus. Hold the decks above the main reactor until the combined Uplifted fleet arrives in Spilursan atmosphere and official Grand Alliance combat operations begin.
But, known only to the Eternals… the entire combat operation against Spilursa was a ruse… within a ruse.
Officially the plan was for the combined Uplifted fleet of the Grand Alliance to attack another world, Espania, en masse. Just as it had New Vega. No less than five massive colony ships and their entire combat complements had been designated as a major strike force sent against that Animal world.
But the real attack would come against Spilursa.
Espania was just a feint.
Uplifted Command was hoping that the sudden appearance of a major fleet over the skies of Espania would draw reluctant Coalition forces into a battle there. But within hours the Uplifted fleet would jump away from Espania.
Destination: Spilursa.
But the ruse within a ruse came from the Eternals, who were not officially in play yet. Officially they were attached as a complement of Pantheon marines currently hitching a ride on the allied ship Shang Ti ready to participate in the official ground game against Spilursan military forces.
This secret operation, the strike against Objective Hades, wasn’t even sanctioned by the official governing councils of the Pantheon, much less the Uplifted Command of the Grand Alliance. This gamble was coming solely from whoever was really calling the shots for the Eternals. Whether that was Lusypher, or Maestro, or some new cabal within the Xanadu Tower acting in its own interests, this was a play for power. Big time. This was a chance to introduce an info-plague, the Unity Virus, into the collected Uplifted forces soon to descend on Spilursa. In other words, this was an attack not just on the Animals, but also against their own… the rest of the Uplifted tribes the Coalition called The Savages. The cyber-plague would enable control and influence, by a small faction, over the rest of its Uplifted allies. Over time it would predispose all affected Uplifted to the suggestions of a secret ruling council within the Pantheon.
Gods & Legionnaires (Galaxy's Edge: Savage Wars Book 2) Page 22
