Chapter 5: Great Salt Lake Desert Storm
From /Signified ---- Book Two of 2084 Quartet
PLEASE NOTE: The following material is intended for mature readers only.
A Note on Language
It is inevitable, in a work of speculative fiction, that futuristic technologies, technical terms, and even everyday slang appear in the course of the narrative. For the convenience of the reader, the first time each of these neologisms appears in the story, it will be marked in boldface and hyperlinked to the Glossary of Terms and Slang, where you will be able to find a definition. Additionally, on occasion a non-English language will be used in the dialogue among characters. While no direct translations have been provided, never fear. The reader will be able, quite readily, to discern the meaning of these utterances within the context of the story.
Quick Plot Recap
In Chapter 4, Oak turns megalomaniac after the Wobblies take control of BoiCity. He creates his own fiefdom of “Wobbly,” its capital being “OakCity,” and himself being its sovereign ruler: “Grand Pooh-Bah of Wobbly.” Thus, while the Terds who have been exposed to Brand’s powerfully messaged “taste”—the “Best of All Possible Worlds”—are turned against the Crats to ally themselves, instead, with the Servs, the Servs have little real trust in the Terds. Servs have suffered too much for too long at the hands of the Crat-Terd coalition to believe that anyone is genuinely on their side. Still, Mall is doing everything she can to feed Brand’s mind-changing advert corporate-wide, that is, to all the Terds of TexArc. If that piece of internet infiltration can be managed, TexArc might be brought to its knees. Toward that end, Mall decides it best to get Brand out of OakCity and into the safety of Mountain Home ArcAir base. Meanwhile, Bleached Wheat continues his increasingly risky game of allowing the Wobbly rebellion room to maneuver. In the end, he hopes to turn the EVe-inspired uprising into a propaganda boon for his plan to start a war with the European commonwealth.
Chapter 5
Great Salt Lake Desert Storm
Enron stands staring out the south window of the Eye. Behind him, sitting around the triangular conference table, is Oak’s Wrangle Ministry, grousing amongst themselves. Enron suddenly raises his voice.
“How many days and nights that shit been runnin’, now, Chevy?”
Chevy, one of Jiplap’s top deputies, has a face almost sun-worn to leather. He admits, “Fuckin’ four.”
“And is it scarin’ the shit out of the meg, Chevy?”
“Christ almighty, En. You know damn well it is.”
“And these are just holocasts, boys. Comin’ off an airborne source. I’d say they’re flyin’ a dozen or so of their Superheavy Airlifters way up high around the clock, projectin’ this shit for us to see. They want us shittin’ our britches before they come for us. And make no mistake, boys. They’ll be comin’ hard before too much longer now.”
“I ain’t goin’ back to shitubin’,” Jiplap declares. “No fuckin’ way.”
“They ain’t interested in you goin’ back to nothin’, Jip. They’re only interested in all of us bein’ dead. We crossed ‘em, boys. We’re outcorp now. We’re the damn ragheads. There’s no comin’ back from that.”
“You sayin’,” grumbles another minister, “that we’re bone-up-the-ass done for, Enron?”
“Yep, Skol,” nods Enron, still gazing out the tall triangular window. “Pretty damn much.”
The holocasts are monstrous 3D panoramic apparitions running the length of the southern horizon. They screen like film across a colossal canvas. Day and night. Tanks rolling over rubble and corpses. House-to-house combat. Civilians hauled into streets—hands on heads, ragged, screaming, terrified. Men forced to their knees and summarily shot at the base of the skull. Women raped in front of their children. Children tossed in the air to come down on bayonets. All these people are ragheads—various shades of black to brown to olive to tan. Coming at them, in wave after glorious wave, are TexArc CorpTroops. Marching under the fluttering banner. Big white star inside thin red circle on deep blue background. Many among them are Christer Soldiers. Holding aloft a Gold Cross. TD righteousness on the advance.
“They ain’t fuckin’ around, neither, boys,” Enron adds. “This is real vid they’re showin’ us. I know. I recognize it. I been on these falls to some of them cities. This is what we do to ‘em. This is what ya get for bein’ a damned outcorp raghead.”
“Let ‘em come,” snarls Jiplap. “We can give CorpTroops a damn run for their money.”
“First off, Jip, no you can’t. No offense. Ain’t a damn coward in this room, boys. Don’t get me wrong. You took this meg down hard. You boys are fightin’ sons-of-bitches for sure. But GaterPol and Pyramid Guard just ain’t like CorpTroops. Ain’t no comparison. But you know that for yourself, right, Oak? You was trainin’ CorpTroop for a time.”
All heads at the table turn to Oak at the peak of its triangle. He’s staring out the western window. He makes no indication that he even heard Enron speak to him.
“Second of all, Jip,” Enron resumes, “they won’t be sending Ground after us. Air neither. The Terds in them branches can’t be trusted now since we turned Mountain Home for us.”
“So what the fuck does that mean, En?” asks Chevy.
“They’ll be sending Net, boys. Strak hooya Netsmen fuckmothers. Terds they know no one can touch. Terds that never turn against corp.”
“And what’s that mean?” says Skol. “Exactly?”
“I have no goddamn idea. No one does. That’s my point, boys. Only people that know what ArcNet gets up to is ArcNet and the big cheeses that hold their chain. One thing’s certain, though. They’re gonna unleash hell on us.”
Being thick nanoglass and nuke-proof, the Eye of a Pyramid can become very silent very quickly. The Wrangle Ministry sits in this silence for some time.
“So we’re fucked?” Oak finally speaks. He nods at the southern window. “We just wait for them to do that shit to us? Is that what you’re advisin’ us to do, Uncle?”
“Nephew, I ain’t advisin’ nothin’. I’m tellin’ you to do what I said before. Stay put inside the meg. Fortify it like hell. When they come, fight like hell. Buy Wobbly more time.”
“Be dead heroes?”
“Better than dead cowards. Them’s our two choices right now.”
“This is them EVe bitches talkin’, you pusswhipped son of a bitch. They been fuckin’ us over from the get-go.”
“Without them EVe bitches, nephew, you’d still be in your lollchair jackin’ your yank.”
Oak pushes back violently from the table to stand with his minimister drawn. Enron casually reaches behind his back to bring out a stout killknife.
“Them pellets won’t slow me down enough, nephew, to stop me stickin’ this up through your chin.”
The two stand ready to go at it. Jiplap breaks in.
“Damn it all, Enron. Just let us march out there and meet ‘em head-to-head on the southern flats. If nothin’ else we’ll have numbers on the bastards. We don’t want ‘em gettin’ into OakCity. We fought too damn hard to take this place to see it go wrack and ruin.”
Enron answers without taking his eyes off Oak. “I know it’s a temptin’ idea, Jip. I know that for sure. But that will be the postmod battlespace out there, brother. That’s somethin’ you just ain’t ready for. Nobody is. Ever.”
“What in the hell is that you just said?” Skol asks sourly.
“Postmod battlespace?” Enron slightly tilts his head. Stares a touch harder at Oak. “That’s where bots and mechs decide who dies, Skol. No human at all involved in the decision-makin’. And bots and mechs decide in a damned eye blink to kill you. And then they’re on to killin’ a dozen or so more before you even hit the damned ground. Believe me, boys, I seen it. I seen the postmod battlespace wipe out five, six thousand raghead troops in minutes. The numbers you throw at them don’t count for shit.”
More numb silence. Oak puts away his minimister. Enron, then, his knife.
“Dead heroes for fuckin’ what, uncle? Tell us fuckin’ that.”
“For the Wobbly cause, Oak. What else we got? What else we ever had?”
“Wobbly’s a damn fake. Made up shit by libby slits.”
“Wobbly’s the only thing I ever seen make corp blink twice. Hell, you know it, too. Any time all summer they coulda come down hard and termed our butts good. But they held off. Why?”
“Hell if I know.”
“And that’s just it, ain’t it, nephew? All our lives we always know why corp does what it does. Because it damn can. Because there’s nothin’ or nobody to damn stop it. Only now, corp can do something it does usual in a heartbeat—but it ain’t. It’s holding off. Why? To my way of thinkin’ that means they might just be in some trouble. Somethin’s gone wrong for the bastards and we just might have an openin’ to make it go more wrong.”
“What you mean?” asks Skol.
“The water withhold I said we should do. It’s workin’. SaltCity is parch already. There’s Parker riots goin’ on there. A day or two more and that meg might go Wobbly, along with one or two other IMS megs.”
“What good that gonna do us?” protests Oak.
“Aw, get your head outta your butt, Pooh-Bah. The more trouble for them the less trouble for us. We get more megs to go Wobbly and corp’s got a shitstorm on its hands. That gives Mall and them more time to get that taste out of theirs. The one that turned the Air Terds our way.”
“Them Terds is with Mall and the bitches,” Oak snaps. “They ain’t with us.”
“I seen that AirColonel turn, Oak. I was fuckin’ there. I saw ‘em all turn at Mountain Home. And then they came and saved our butts here.”
All true enough. Oak sits back down at the conference table. “So we just sit tight and wait to take it up the butt?” he asks caustically. “That Mall’s plan?”
“Nope. I rounded up all the runaway CorpTroops I could find. Us and what’s left of the EVe fighters will be headin’ south.”
“To do what, En?” Chevy worries. “You runnin’ out on us?”
“Course not, Chevy. We’re goin’ huntin’. After Net.”
“What? You gone nuts now?” says Jiplap.
“May be, brother,” Enron laughs. “May be. No, I’ll be leavin’ some of the CorpTroops at Mountain Home, to help protect it. That ArcAir base will be the first thing corp wants back.”
“That where you gonna be?” Oak asks, nasty. “Safe and tight at Mountain Home bonin’ Mall from behind?”
“I can still put that knife up through your skull, nephew, you don’t watch that shit flow mouth of yours.”
“Where you gonna be then, En,” Skol asks quickly, “if not down at the base?”
“I’m takin’ my bunch a few hundred klicks southeast. Out on the salt desert that used to be that big lake. Net’s been droppin’ in steady there for a few days now, massin’ its forces.”
“How the fuck you know that?”
Oak’s tone is still nasty. Enron snorts back at him.
“How the fuck we know anything around here, nephew? The damn dykebitches down at Mountain Home are trackin’ corp’s counterstrike. That’s how. Someone’s gotta have their head not up their ass. That sure as hell ain’t you.”
Oak’s up again and shouting.
“I’m in charge of this damn meg! I’m runnin’ the damn show! Everybody’s gotta do what I tell ‘em to!”
Enron is already descending the lift out of the Eye.
“Nephew, you’re the clown in this damn circus. You boys arm every Wobbly you can and hunker down. Whatever comes at you, you give it holy hell. But do it from inside the Gater District wall.”
**********
The desert floor is white. In some places it runs level for over one hundred and fifty kilometers. That makes visible, at the horizon, the curvature of the earth. Jagged salt crystals cover the ground. Daytime temperatures top 60C. The glare can sear retinas. The air is so thin it looks washed white at the horizons. But as it rises overhead, the sky quickly intensifies into a robin’s egg blue. Nights are silent and cold. No atmosphere seems to intervene between you and interstellar space. The last briny waters evaporated from these basins decades ago. Mountains jut spiny in the distance. The sail fins of leviathans dropped dead in their march a million years past.
<Everybody in poz?>
Enron’s display lights all-go. Force set and ready. He’d never wanted to be corpsuited up again—and especially not aligned in to a RHex. But without this gear they stand no chance at all. Luckily they found plenty of CorpTroop supplies stockpiled at Mountain Home.
<Listen up, fellas,> Enron talks calm and smooth. <When your RHex goes it’s gonna smart like hell. Go ahead and shit yourselves if you got to. No shame in that. Just recover quick as you can and start firin’. That’s the ticket here. Start firin’ and then keep damn firin’ for as long as you can.>
Playing pop-up is the shit. Pure crap shoot. You never know what you’re popping up into. He’d sooner go house-to-house. That’s the shit, too, but at least you feel like you have some control over things. With pop-up everything depends on the filter overload.
<On their way,> comes the forward report.
<How many?>
<Too damn many.>
That figures. When Arc does something on the cheap, they do it by the many. What else is massprod for?
<ETA?> Enron asks.
<Don’t step out to lunch.>
Their trek into the wastelands has been marked by nasty surprises. The worst was discovering an ArcSpace base nobody knew about just west of the Lakeside Mountains. Aerial recon couldn’t pick through the masking. They only saw it when they got a scout and his RHex up on top of Desert Peak. That meant their taking a wide detour to set up this bushwhack well to the northwest of the base. Far into the Newfoundland Evaporation Bowl. That’s where they’re all lying now, buried in salt.
<Fuck me dry,> comes another forward report.
Twelve hundred Strykers roll soundlessly across the basin. They’re formed into individual battlediamonds. A layer of eight around a core of four. An armada of one hundred such diamonds travels in the aggregate shape of a giant spearhead.
<Aw, Christ,> comes more forward chatter over comm. <Not these yanksuckers.>
<Wait for it, boys,> Enron soothes. <Let ‘em get on top of us.>
Mechs scare the hell out of you. Even just being around them. You never know what they’re going to do. Strykers are fat, high-riding 8-wheelers of about 16 metric tons armed to the gills. They’re used for ground probes into Indian Country, and CorpTroops are damn happy for them so they don’t have to do that gruntwork. But once you’ve seen a Stryker in action, almost literally filling the air with lead, dicing ragheads by the score, it sticks with you. Luckily, a Stryker isn’t too smart. Its LADAR scan emits and snaps only about 200 pics-per-sec. That’s too many to overload—but not enough to deal well with the overload. You can confuse these things. Their brains are also well protected from the front, but not so much from underneath or the rear if you know what you’re looking for. CorpTroops know all the sweet spots on a Stryker. These Strykers, being so far away from objective, might also be running in half-mind transit mode to conserve circuitry and drybattery. If so, that would give the Wobblies a crucial firstsecond advantage.
The mechs are rolling over them now. Enron tries to moisten his lips before speaking. He gets only salt. He says hoarsely: <Go!>
Three thousand RHex units pop up from nowhere off the salt. Their human partners remain hidden, guiding each of these small bots to target. The firstsecond luck is with them. Only half are blown to pieces. After the thirdsecond, only half of those are in-op disabled. That gives seven hundred and fifty RHexs time, during the fourth- through the seventhsecond, to orient and scramble to glom on. Of those, half make it to targetpoint and self-detonate. Before the skirmish is ten seconds old, three hundred and seventy-five Strykers rupture into orange fireballs. Collateral damage flips another twenty-five or thirty. Roughly four hundred down and eight hundred to go. A promising start.
The screams are thick over comm from all the RHex disconnects. Enron just has to wait it out. They’re CorpTroops. They take the pain. They’ll be back doublego in a tick.
<Now!> he instructs at the fifteenthsecond.
Wave after wave of randomized little decoys they call bottlerockets fly up into the air. This gets the mechs aiming high.
<And go!> he orders by the twentythirdsecond.
Three thousand AWOL CorpTroopers, now Wobbly loyal, pop up from camo-poz to sight-and-fire their Stingers quick as they can then pop back down. They wait for a two-count. Then they pop up to do it again. And so on. Kia after the first pop-up is three hundred. After the second it’s two hundred more. A good sign. Killrate going down means killbots are going down. Aboveground is thick with spraying lead. The fewer their number, the more ammo Strykers spew. The mechs are still confused by the bottlerockets, giving CorpTroops extra moments to laser-guide their fire. But extra moments come at a cost. Arms, legs, hands, feet are flying off. The bender-shield on the helmet and torso armor keep the killshots out. But the carbon-fiber compos protecting the extremities can’t handle this bullet traffic. The dicyclopentadiene liquidfix simply can’t keep up. After his fourth pop-up—and after taking out four mechs—Enron is bleeding from both arms and one thigh. He checks his mission signflash downright. CorpTroops down to two thousand. Strykers down to five hundred. This shit is working. Time to jack the volume.
<Time to roll-and-go, boys! Shoot-and-scoot these fuckmothers!>
Enron pops up and rolls two meters left where he stops sights squeezes then rolls again. Across the wide salt basin two thousand—now eighteen-fifty—CorpTroopers do the same.
<You’re up, Cardinal!> Enron comms private as he’s rolling.
*Ja! Yes!* she confirms his request. Then she private-comms to Pernod and Migros strategically triangulated with her position on the battlefield. *Doppelgänger!* she shouts.
Suddenly among the Strykers, hundreds of EVe fighters materialize off the shimmering heat of the salt. These fighters are sprinting, leaping, firing their weapons. Without the support of adequate surround-sensors, the mechs take vital seconds to distinguish these holospoofs. They might hit an image four or five times before processing the zero-effect and rectify to ignore. During these vital seconds of misdirect, dozens more Strykers plume into black smoke and wreckage.
Cardinal decides to pop up from her poz. She finds herself in shadow. Parked on top of her is a mech. She reaches up to stick the emp-grenade. She rolls back over and hunkers, knowing she’ll only get a little singed. After the blue pulse she pops back up to gauge the field. She’d wanted to be brought into the skirmish from the start. She sees now that Enron was right to hold her fighters out for the opening minutes. EVe bodyarmor is not nearly as resilient as CorpTroop. The Wobblies needed to hack down mech numbers to maximize Cardinal’s bag of tricks. The more killbots, the faster their collective sensor array can calculate to overlook spoof and morph. As their numbers dwindle, those remaining become more susceptible to misdirect. Cardinal estimates there to be only a few hundred mechs left at this point. But she sees the horrible price the CorpTroops have paid. Thousands lay mangled across the salt. Many are completely shredded—great swashes of blood flecks splattered over the canvas of the desert floor. Bullets graze her shoulder. She puts her head down, sprints, rolls, and comes up throwing. The emp sticks and pulses the same instant. She goes on to take out three more Strykers in this way. Each fizzles like a cheap toy. The mechs no longer target her first wave of holospoofs. Time for the next trick.
*Pernod! Migros!* she comms. *Die Gemeinschaft!*
No reply from either fighter. Cardinal tries to raise them again.
*Jetzt machen wir! Die Gemeinschaft! Migros! Pernod!*
Cardinal knows the risk involved in releasing The Community. The decoy uses a controversial technology. Only her fighters know they brought it with them into TexArc. But the situation is extreme.
*Cardinal,* comes back Pernod, voice weak. *Migros ist...tot.*
*Nein. Scheisse,* swears Cardinal. But even down to just two fighters, they must stay mission. *Wie geht es dir?* she asks.
Pernod takes a long time to answer how she’s doing. When she does, she sounds tired. Distracted. Abstract in her thinking. Likely she’s bleeding out.
*Geht...nicht...so gut,* she reports.
*Die Gemeinschaft,* Cardinal speaks tenderly. *Wir machen diese zusammen. Ja, Pernod? Zusammen?*
They must release The Community together. At about the same time. At least two batches. Otherwise there won’t be enough. They’ll get disoriented and scatter away. No reply comes from Pernod. Cardinal thinks, after a while, she’s lost her, too. Along with Migros. Then comes a whisper.
*Ja. Jetzt.*
Pernod is releasing them now. With any luck, she might be releasing Migros’ batch, too.
*Ja. Jetzt,* Cardinal confirms, knowing her words likely are the last Pernod hears.
From her slim rucksack Cardinal pulls a slender cylindrical tube. She pads in a number series along its side then can twist open the top. The Community emerges. Hundreds of thousands of them. Nanomorphs. They flock upward quickly to disappear into the harsh blue sky. Two CorpTroops come running. One has an arm over the other’s shoulder and is dragging a leg. A Stryker smashes between two burning mechs to open fire. One Trooper loses an arm, the other a leg. Cardinal emps the killbot and scurries to change her poz. Surviving the next few minutes of deconflict will be a challenge. The Strykers have upgraded mode from fortified to seek-and-destroy. Two more mechs are rolling her way. Then diving from the sky are a pair of sleek strike aircraft. All Strykers instantly aim skyward.
<Take the clearshots while you can, boys!> Enron can be heard shouting over comm. <Hop damn to it!>
More than a hundred mechs are obliterated while focusing on the aircraft. The jets dive and bob and weave overhead, but strangely never fire a shot. This interface holds not quite a minute before the Strykers, as one, cease fire on the aircraft and concentrate again on the ground assault. At that instant the planes vanish and seconds later six Panzer tanks appear in the battlespace, drawing more Stryker fire. As a result, more killbots blaze up.
<What ya think, Cardinal?>
*Ja, Enron. Yes. Do it!*
In under thirty seconds, the Strykers hold fire on the Panzers. Those vanish and a hundred more CorpTroops appear around the field. Those get fired on for ten seconds. Then full attention locks back onto live targets. But by then it’s too late.
<Hit the deck, boys! Inbound!>
Falling perpendicular from the high skies are twelve Uninhabited AirVehics from Mountain Home. The real items. These low-observable strike UAVs can loiter subsonically for days over a region, awaiting instructions. Now that the EVe nanomorphs have oversaturated the Stryker Observe-Orient-Decide-Act loop, Enron calls them into the fray. His plan, his desperate hope, is to lose none of these planes. Wobbly resources are bleakly finite. They all know it. Fortune favors them today. The mech OODA disregards entirely the hostile aircraft. Even after a first pass destroys nearly a third of them, the killbots maintain fire only on the ground forces. Two more unopposed passes wipe out the Stryker force. The UAVs bolt skyward like they were never there, heading back to Mountain Home. Left on the salt flats are about five hundred CorpTroops, A&A. Alive-and-Ambulatory.
<Sorry, fellas. If you can’t walk, you best slap ‘em. No use baking out here in the sun.>
Enron checks his own medstat signflash downleft. BP thumbs up. Blood loss thumbs sideways. Selfpatch thumbs up. More than good. He slaps the adrenaline patch on the outside of his right thigh, just above the knee. But nothing else. No poppy. He wants nothing that makes his head feel fat.
<Everybody mobile come to my poz,> he tells the A&A. <I figure we got a few minutes before we need to skedaddle.>
On his upright digimap, he watches the green blips that start to move toward him. Not a bad count. It’s nice as hell to see all those red blips gone.
<Help your brothers,> he reminds them. <Kick ‘em as you come.>
Enron steps to the nearest downed CorpTrooper whose hand isn’t already resting by his right knee. He gives that spot a kick. Injecting the morphine overdose. Just in case. All the CorpTroopers coming toward him are performing the same rite. Cardinal finds him. They remove their helmets and go off comm.
“You by yourself now?” he asks her.
“Jawohl,” she nods.
“I’m sorry.”
“Thanks you.” They watch the soldiers reeling toward them. Cardinal speaks evenly, “You CorpTroops stupid brave.”
“That we are,” Enron nods, then shakes his head. “That we are for sure.” He points to the three rod-shaped tubes Cardinal holds in her hand. “Damn neat trick,” he says. “You folks stealth the best I ever seen. Hands-down. They all come back okay?”
Flitter nanobots are non-lethal. They flockform into whatever you program. Still, they’re KMD. Highly precarious GNR. Cardinal took a risk discharging them into such a bizarre environment. No telling how they might have reacted.
“I have luck, yes. All are here.” She looks Enron in the eyes. “We not tell Mall. Okay? She be sehr mad.”
“Mum’s the word,” Enron agrees. “You got it.”
Cardinal is grateful for the collusion. When it comes to the new technologies, Mall is a Luddite in the extreme. They stand another few moments, appreciating drawing breath. Then it occurs to her to ask, “And so where go we now?”
Enron scratches his head. He rubs his chin. He hadn’t expected to survive this.
“Back northwest,” he decides, “just fast as we can.” He points at the Troopers moving toward them. “We’ll string these boys and another couple thousand in a first line of defense along the south Sawtooth Forest. Between Cache Peak and Jackpot there’s good mountains. Good overlooks and hiding for ambushes.” Enron pauses to scan the southeast horizon, worried that something might be coming soon from that direction. “I figure we keep the other three thousand CorpTroops where they are now. There at Mountain Home. To help protect that base. What with that and our air power, that ought to give Sinalco and Mall more time to work. We just might keep Net off BoiCity for a time, too. What ya think?”
“Good,” says Cardinal, very much approving this strategy. Then she tells Enron, “I go all way back to meg. To keep eye on the little shit Oak.”
Enron can’t help but chuckle.
“Damn. You and me both, sister. It’s like we’re dancin’ the two-step now.”
Cardinal doesn’t understand the reference. The sentiment she grasps. Enron speaks into his helmet, hopping back onto comm for a moment.
<Leaving in one,> he announces.
Cardinal studies the rallying Troopers as they approach, kicking their fallen comrades at the knee. Even if someone just before them has kicked, they kick again. Just to be sure.
“I hear always CorpTroops no man are leaving behind.”
After he works out the syntax, Enron clarifies, “We don’t leave nobody behind alive.” His voice sinks from grim to lost. “That’s the one promise CorpTroops know will be kept. That’s because we’re the only ones makin’ it.”
**********
“Just what the hell am I looking at, ArCommander?”
The giant face of subceo Wells fills the main screen. Situation-Ops. Hill ArcSpace Base.
“This is our satellite image, sir,” replies Prana. “Twelve hundred Strykers on fire.” His even and respectful tone signals well his sarcasm.
“You think this is funny, ArCommander?”
“I think it tragi-comic, sir. Sending a spearhead out rolling like that on half-brain and minimal sensor array.”
“They were a long way yet from anything.”
“Apparently not, sir.”
In the bottom right-hand corner of the main screen is a small square showing the live images being fed to Wells. ArCommander Prana watches the face of the subceo study those pictures for a moment.
“Not your concern, ArCommander. This operation is strictly ArcNet until such time—if any—that ArcSpace gets called in.”
“Thank God for small blessings, sir.”
Wells ignores the bait. “How did this happen? Do we know?”
“Look closer, sir.”
The Sit-Ops main screen fills with the battle scene, indicating the same screen Wells is now inspecting. The subceo pans over it quite thoroughly.
“Who the hell do you suppose they are?” Wells ponders.
“CorpTroops, sir.”
“CorpTroops? That’s impossible.”
“Who else do you think has the ability to do something like that, sir?” Prana’s disdain turns to challenge. “Who else has the balls?”
Wells scoffs at the idea. “Deserters would need access to sophisticated equipment.”
“Which Mountain Home stockpiles in abundance in their underground depots...” he adds tardily, “...sir.” Prana lets the implications sink home. “Or had that slipped your mind?”
Wells grunts. Deliberates briefly. Replies, “No matter. There’s at least a couple thousand kia scattered around out there. So much for Wobbly CorpTroops, I’d say.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure, sir. My buddies in ArcGround have been grousing for months about their AWOL rates going up. Lots of well-trained Parkers have been going over the hill lately.”
Wells’ giant face comes back onscreen.
“ArCommander Prana. Are you telling me that you don’t think ArcNet can deal adequately with irregulars?”
“With run-of-the-mall asymmetrics, of course you can, sir. That’s what ArcNet does best. But these aren’t run-of-the-mall asymmetrics. Are they?”
“How do you mean?”
“You saw them, sir. You can imagine—just a little—what those men had to submit themselves to in order to take out those killbots. That’s some serious steel gonads on display, there, sir.”
“So?”
“These are CorpTroops with a cause, sir. Fighting for themselves now. Fighting for their own. We force them to undergo unimaginable hardships in order to carry out unspeakably repugnant tasks. And they die in droves doing our bidding because we give them no option. But can you imagine what these men will be willing to do—and by training are capable of doing—when their motivation isn’t our cause, but theirs?”
Both the subceo’s face and his silence are long and stony.
“I see your point, ArCommander.”
“I doubt you do, sir. I doubt Crats can.”
“Be careful now, Prana.”
“Oh, I am, sir. I’m carefully telling you that if ArcNet tries to rambo this situation, like it rambos everything else, you’re heading for poochscrew. There’s more than simple defiance going on here.”
Wells smiles. Perfectly white teeth fill the big Sit-Ops screen. The subceo laughs.
“Good Lord, Prana, how you’re overthinking this. Simple power only generates simple defiance. It’s because of our simplicity that ArcNet never falters, never fails, never strays in fulfilling its task. We kill shit. Noncompliance equals term. There is no other page in our playbook.”
“So you’re confident that you’ve got everything under control, sir?”
Wells becomes amiable. “Like I said, if it turns out that we need your help, we’ll certainly let you know. In the meantime, ArCommander, just keep your space-based eyes on the ground, as you’ve been doing. It’s most helpful and, I can assure you, most appreciated here at CorpHQ. Otherwise, yes, I’ve got everything under control.”
“If you believe that, sir, fine. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“I’ll sign-off with our motto, ArCommander. As a reminder to you. Never fuck with Net.”
Blankscreen.
**********
“Just what in the bloody fucking hell are those?”
Mall’s eyes are wide and locked onto the main viewscreen.
“MEMS,” AirColonel Bacardi tells her. “Micro Electro Mechanical Systems. Sensor nanobots about a millimeter across. Lots of them, as you can see.”
Millions hover in the sagebrush just outside the southeastern corner of the perimeter fence. A postmodern biblical plague.
“Can they bleeding kill you?”
“No, ma’am. Non-lethal flyflocks. ArcNet uses them for reconnaissance.”
“Of course the wankers do.”
Hours after the Strykers were destroyed, Mountain Home’s UAVs disappeared without a trace, making reliable recon hopeless. The next day, Mountain Home lost contact with the defensive line of CorpTroopers Enron had deployed along the Sawtooth Forest. Comm just went dead without a peep late yesterday afternoon. Now, early this morning, these swarms of bots appear at the ArcAir base.
“They’ve been probing us,” Bacardi decides. “These tiny guys are regrouping for pickup. Time to scramble and get airborne. We don’t want the 366th getting caught with its pants down.”
Mall encourages the AirColonel by saying, “Audentes Fortuna Juvat.”
Bacardi appreciates this EVen knowing their Wing motto. “Well,” he smiles somewhat sadly, “we’ll see, ma’am.”
The AirColonel exits Ops in a hurry, issuing orders as he goes. Mall goes back to studying the viewscreen. A shiver runs down her spine at the very thought of flyflocks. Suddenly Sinalco is behind her, peering over Mall’s shoulder at the loitering MEMS.
“Cute. Non?” she asks.
“No,” says Mall. “Not in the bloody least.”
Mall turns her back to the viewscreen, unable to look any longer at those awful little things. GNR is a particular bugbear of hers.
“Do not worry,” Sinalco reassures her. “They hurt no one.”
Mall changes the subject. “I worry more that we’ve been unable to make any headway slicing our spots into the Terd feed. I imagined the military hardware down here would work to our advantage. But you and Brand seem to be stymied. Are you?”
“Someone very good counter-slice us. Yes. I play the mouse and cat. This Simulacrum is not so easy, you know, the deeper in we go.”
Sinalco’s justifications sound off to Mall somehow. She can’t quite put her finger on how.
“But yesterday Brand seemed convinced that you two were on the verge of breakthrough. She said as much over lunch.”
“Ah, yes, maybe so,” Sinalco replies noncommittally. “I show her some new ways into their firewall and let her think these ways are her ideas. That she is the genius about the ArcNet. But I let her think this just to make her encouraged.”
Again, Mall doesn’t know what to do with these statements. She changes topics again, asking, “By the way, have you seen Brand this morning, by any chance? I can’t seem to find her anywhere. Obviously, we need to get back at work. And quickly.”
“Ah,” says Sinalco, offhandedly. “I send her to the BoiCity last night. For keeping safe.”
“You bloody what?”
“Not a worry, my pet. Cardinal and Enron go with her. I tell them what to do.”
Mall isn’t believing her ears. “But we need Brand here. To work on slicing our feed. And you bloody well know better. There’s no telling what that tosser Oak might get up to. What in the bloody hell—”
“Ah merde,” Sinalco says quickly to herself. Her eyes are fixed over Mall’s shoulder, watching the main viewscreen. She pirouettes and sprints out of Ops, vanished in a blink.
At that same moment every ArcAirman at every Operations station bursts into mad chatter, shouting over comm. Mall turns back to the viewscreen. Her jaw drops. She sees men bounding, at impossible heights and angles, over the high perimeter fences on the west side of the base. Hundreds of them. Not men, really. Something terrifyingly more. She grabs a fistful of sleeve and speaks into the ear of the nearest Airman.
“What the yank?” she demands.
The Airman frantically minds his screen, pads his console, snaps instructions out on comm. As he can, he answers Mall in a desperate tone. “NetExos, ma’am!...Exoskeletons!...I didn’t know they really existed!”
“Explain.”
“HPA suits, ma’am!...Human Performance Augmentation!...That’s all I know!”
Mall lets go his sleeve and watches on the viewscreen the base autodefense doing its job. Salvo after salvo of mister fire target and spray these figures. Instead of turning them into cranberry vapor, though, they’re only knocked slightly off their vector. Lunatic. These men look to be outfitted in nothing more than a helmet-and-visor and sleek coveralls. The feats they perform, however, are other worldly. Aside from defying gravity and being impervious to fire, some carry enormous backpacks. Other wield heavy weaponry as though toys. They have unthinkable agility. Before the base knows what’s hit it, the tarmacs have been captured. More of these supermen are leaping along Phantom Avenue and Bomber Road, driving for the heart of the installation. CorpTroopers come shouldering into Ops. About fifteen of them, misters up.
“It’s a shitstorm out there, boys!” one of them yells to the Airmen at their stations. “Keep them defenses goin’! We’ll try to keep the leap-froggy bastards off ya!”
With unnerving synchronicity, three of the leap-froggy bastards come crashing down boots-first through the ceiling. Concrete rubble flies. Dust plumes the air. Misters open up all around the room. Airmen boil into red steam. CorpTroop armor holds marginally longer. Mall just has time to witness the fabric of the NetExo suits transform instantly to nanoarmor when taking fire. Just has time, that is, before she’s enveloped by a whirling maelstrom. A swirling cocoon. Teeming about her in a twisting gyre. At first she thinks this is what it’s like to be vaporized by mister fire. Then she thinks that she wouldn’t have this time to think about it. Then she notices the curious throbbing that thrums in her ears. Then a faint odor of petrol is reaching far up her nostrils. Then all of it is gone.
Sinalco stands beside her, more or less holding Mall upright.
“Ça va? Ça va?” she asks until Mall responds.
“Oui. Ça va bien,” Mall finally replies, almost heartily. Giddily. Like she’s just polished off a bottle of Beaujolais.
“On y va,” Sinalco tells her. “We go.”
“Oui. On y va,” Mall agrees gamely, with no idea why she’s answering in French or where they might be going. She sees three dead NetExos on the floor. The sight makes no particular impression on her.
Sinalco wends them through underground passageways to the northeast corner of the base. Explosions and gunfire are constant overhead. They emerge aboveground at the corner of Gunfighter Avenue and North Mellen Drive, near the medical center. Bodies of CorpTroopers lie everywhere. Vehicles are overturned. Buildings partially destroyed. Sinalco picks Mall up in her arms as though Mall weighs less than a feather. She whispers into Mall’s ear.
“We must go very fast now. Tellement vite. Have not fear.”
Brightly, Mall nods her assent. She grasps her wrists behind Sinalco’s neck and presses her cheek against Sinalco’s shoulder. With Mall in her arms, Sinalco comes out into the street and runs due east. In moments, she’s taking quickening approach strides. Then she’s jumping them over the tall fence along Perimeter Road. At this point, six or seven NetExos are in pursuit. They jump the fence as well. They sprint after them through the tall sagebrush. They’re not firing their weapons. Soon Sinalco outstrips them. The NetExos disappear behind them in dust. Several more minutes of running and Mall’s head begins to clear, a touch. She has the oddest impression that Sinalco’s feet are not even touching the ground. When she looks down to see, in fact they are not. In fact, at the moment, most strangely, Sinalco has no feet at all. Nor legs, either. In fact, the lower half of Sinalco is a blurring whirl propelling them across the sage flats. Mall’s voice is interested but unconcerned.
“Say. Just what in the bloody fucking hell are you?”
Sinalco half-smiles, the morning sun above the Cheney River Plain warming her face.
“Not anything I seem, my sweet.”
**********
Two days ago, four battalions of NetExos had taken a wide flanking route to the southwest coming out from their staging area near SaltCity. That put their approach to Mountain Home from due south. One of the battalions—one thousand men—remained behind to deal with the ArcAir base. The other three sprinted northwest along the Cheney River until they came to Marsing, due west of BoiCity. From there they would launch their assault on the meg. The two forces attacked at the same time on the same morning. The battalion entering Mountain Home came from the west in order to secure first the runways. In under twenty minutes—from first leap to last summary execution, as NetExos like to say—the ArcAir base was secured. No one on base was allowed to live. No one. Airmen, women, children. This action came on the direct orders of the big bossman himself. Just before the battle, Bleached Wheat told the battalion commanders over secure-comm: <Corptraitors have no business drawing TexArc breath. Are we clear, gentlemen?> The four ArcMajors chorused their reply: < Crystal, sir!> The three battalions entering BoiCity would not enjoy quite the same good fortunes of war.
**********
At dawn, the intensity of the holocasts along the southern horizon increases dramatically. The 3D images are taller, their colors more vivid, the violence depicted more extreme. For the first time, a soundtrack is provided as well. Somehow playing over the entire meg, at ear-splitting volume, is the HeavyNano tune “Burn, Fuckmother, Burn!” This scenario runs a full hour before the line of NetExos, three thousand long, comes bounding in from the west, leaping through the Nampa and Meridian Parks, heading straight for the Gater District. They are not much interested in killing Parkers. Servs never are a threat. Their target is BoiCity Terds. Crats, too, for good measure. Anyone who might have been exposed to the rogue revoevo taste. Eradicating all trace of that feed is the priority mission.
Surprisingly, no irregulars wait to engage them outside the District wall. Ragheads normally make that mistake—and get slaughtered easily out in the open. Instead, the rebels look to be well dug-in inside the District. A pity. Street-to-street it will have to be. Job one is retaking The Pyramid. That’s an unprecedented task in TexArc. No Pyramid has ever slipped out of corp hands before, and the structure is a palace of selfdefend. Not enough MEMS can even penetrate the building to report back usable intelligence. Like ants hunting sugar, NetExos swarm the four massive triangular faces of The Pyramid. They find no chinks. If Netsmen in HPA suits can’t break through, how the hell did the Wobblies get inside? That’s what ArcMajor Ovo, commander of the second battalion and of this meg raid, is asking himself when subceo Wells comms through.
<Status, ArcMajor.>
<Inside the District. Enemy well prepared. Pyramid airtight, sir.>
<Commit your battalion to finding a way inside. Start the other two killing everyone in TerdTowne. And I mean everyone. Maybe that will get the attention of the Wobbly bastards up in the Eye.>
<Roger that, sir.>
The terming is appalling. As well-armed and well-placed as the Wobblies are, they’re no match for the capabilities of NetExos. Southwest of the Brown Belt, Terds start to die by the hundred. SuperSmackdowns raze blocks in one pull. SuperMisters vanish thirty rebels with one spray. At this rate, everyone inside the District will be dead within the hour. The butchery mercifully derails, though, after about ten minutes. As one, three thousand NetExos get a swift kick in the head. ArcMajor Ovo is consulting with his six ArCaptains when it happens.
<There’s got to be a secret way into this fucker, gentlemen. The exterior defenses are seamless, and—hey! What the yank?>
Three of his ArCaptains simply keel over. Ovo and the rest begin to reel. NetExos clinging to the side of The Pyramid slide off. Any leaping at that moment swerve wildly then crash hard to the ground.
<Report!> Ovo shouts over comm, tottering.
All battalions report the same. Extreme erratic HPA behavior. It’s like the Netsman inside is sober...but the suit itself is drunk.
**********
ArColonel Bacardi cruises his Wing high and invisible above the plain between the base and the meg. He’s looking for a non-suicidal way to engage his FotoFighters in the combat below. He’s most wary of loyalist ArcAircraft swooping in out of the blue. The 366th would put up one hell of a fight, but they easily could be overwhelmed by numbers. Bacardi is amazed, in fact, that ArcNet hasn’t brought in air cover yet. The bastards must have something worse up their sleeve, some kind of trap. The possibility makes him cautious to risk his Wing. At the same time, if Mountain Home falls—and it looks like it will—the 366th will be left with only bad options. High-tail it—but to where?—to run out of fuel and fall from the sky. Or go out in a blaze of glory. He knows his pilots will opt for the second. They’ll flatten their own base before they leave it in the hands of yanking Net. But not quite yet. Bacardi has one hope remaining that makes him tarry at altitude.
*Allô? Monsieur Bacardi? You are there?*
<Boy, am I glad to hear you, ma’am. Are you safe? Do you need pick-up? Are you alone?>
*Non, non. I am okay. No problem. And I have Mall with me.*
<Good to hear, ma’am. Is the base lost?>
*Yes. I fear so.*
The ArColonel swears under his breath. <Well, no surprise there, ma’am. What needs doing? Say the word.>
*You are sure?*
<If it weren’t for you, ma’am, the 366th wouldn’t even be in the air right now. What can we do?>
The NetExos had them dead to rights on the tarmac. Before a single FotoFighter had dusted off, the bastards came sailing in fast and hard from the west. The entire Wing was about to be destroyed on the ground. Then Sinalco popped up out of nowhere. In some kind of blur, she kept the Netsmen off them long enough for Bacardi to get his aircraft safely away. He caught only glimpses of that action. Bacardi has no idea how she did it. But whatever this EVen is, the ArColonel has never seen anything like her.
*You fly then to BoiCity. Help them there. Yes okay?*
<Ma’am, these fighters are no match for ArcNet. As soon as we commit, they’ll counter overwhelmingly. And even our fire can’t penetrate those exoskeletons.>
*The jumping suit now no problem.*
<Why’s that? What have you done?>
*Logic bomb into their ArcNet. For a little time these jumping men are useless. But you must go fast.*
<Roger that, ma’am. On our way. But...>
*Yes?*
<I’ve got to ask, ma’am. Are you getting that feed out corpwide? Are other Terds tasting it? Do we have a shot at this?>
There’s hesitation on the other end. Or maybe it’s static.
*Someone very good counterslices us every move we try. But Brand is in BoiCity now to do another trick. This one I know will work.*
<Our attack is buying her more time?>
*Yes.*
<Roger that, ma’am. Over and out.>
There’s a tug on Sinalco’s shirt. She looks down at Mall still in her arms, still being sprinted east across the sage badlands.
“How much of that is lies?” Mall asks.
“Not all.”
Mall says nothing more. Her head has cleared. But she’s yet to ask a single question about what’s really going on. About what Sinalco really is. About where they’re going. Sinalco tries a bit of humor.
“Tell me, sweet. Who is this ‘Roger’ man these TexArc guys keep talking to?”
Mall’s having none of it.
**********
Bacardi’s FotoFighters work to clear the meg from The Pyramid outward. Downtown, the NetExos make easy targets. They’re isolated and behaving erratically. They display no motor skills that make any sense. Their nanoarmor functions randomly or not at all. Often only portions of their suits transform to shield them from attack. The results are eccentric and gruesome. Extremities fly off a torso left whole. Bodies cleave at peculiar angles or transmogrify into odd swirling patterns. There’s no logic to it—as Sinalco intended. Before long the center meg is clear.
When the 366th fans out to the west over TerdTowne, pilots find a very different battleground. Instead of a target-rich environment for their nose-cannons, hostiles mix with friendlies in huge, furious bundles. Thirty or forty Wobblies gaggle around a single NetExo probing for ways to take him down. With the HPA suits so unpredictable, this makes a hazardous game. A Net mister might fire suddenly, taking fifteen Wobblies with it. A SuperSmackdown could go off, and there goes four buildings and a few hundred people. A suit might decide to jump the Netsman high up into the air, carrying with him several Wobblies clinging for dear life. At the same time, Wobblies kill the Netsmen any way they can. Poking pistols through the shifting fissures in the nanoarmor. Hacking with hatchets and knives. Clubbing with rifle butts. Even when the Netsman inside is dead, the suit keeps performing, fitful and lethal. Whenever there’s a clear shot, a FotoFighter picks off a NetExo or two. In the main, Bacardi flies low above the District, gazing down at the horrible melee, increasingly astounded by Wobbly courage. He had no idea. No real idea at all.
If every NetExo can be destroyed, the ArColonel can dare to hope—to plan—how this might all work out. They defend the meg. They retake their base. The Wobblies last long enough for Brand’s taste to slice corpwide. Terd revolution. Long overdue. All riding on the persistence of Sinalco’s logic bomb.
**********
Hill ArcSpace Base. Situation-Ops. Giant face of subceo Wells filling the main screen.
“Yes, sir?” says Prana. His tone indicates being unsurprised by the priority summon from CorpHQ.
“Urbicide, ArCommander. Immediately.”
“Are you sure, sir? I know that’s a nasty logic bomb they threw in, but won’t ArcNet resolve it soon?”
“Nasty is not the word for it, ArCommander. Pretervirtual is more like it. Call down GLASS. Now.”
Prana can’t resist drawing this out just a little longer. “You are quite certain, subceo? After all, this is a Dmega decision. Is it an order coming down from the very top?”
“Do not piss me off any more, Prana. Launch now.”
Blankscreen.
**********
GLASS.
GLobal Area Strike System.
The crown of TexArc destruction.
GLASS is the space-based amalgam of High-Energy Lasers (aptly known as HEL), Kinetic-Energy Weapons (KEW), with hundreds of low-earth and high-earth orbit Persistent-Surveillance Satellites (PSS). Together, these monitor and master the globe. When needed, GLASS can send down Trans-Atmospheric Vehicles (TAV) as well for highly surgical stealth strikes. The kind no one ever knows happened. Through GLASS, ArcSpace sees all and can do all. Supervised tightest, of course, is TexArc itself. Security, after all, begins at home. For weeks, ArcSpace FarWest sector has operated on high-alert. Whenever a Wobbly farted, PSS picked it up. Now, at last, ArcSpace has been let loose to do what it does. What it should have been allowed to do weeks ago. Deal down death.
ArCommander Prana orders standard urban barrage. Something ArcSpace has executed hundreds of times around the globe. No need to get fancy. Although BoiCity will be the first TexArc meg to undergo GLASS, Prana is quite convinced it won’t be the last. He’s surprised, in fact, that this kind of unrest hasn’t risen up sooner. CorpHQ, in his estimation, has been growing increasingly soft. Crats talk the big game. But when it comes time to bring down the steel fist, only mil-Terds deliver. Bombardment commences with an initial wave of KEW—to focus minds and soil pants. Descending invisibly and penetrating at hypervelocity are thousands of fléchettes and high-density rods. A rain of metal death. Around the Gater District, thirty thousand are minced or skewered in an instant. More than half the FotoFighters are shredded out of the air. Over the next five seconds, the HEL constellation precision-targets the remaining FotoFighters, frying them where they fly. Then a second wave of KEW. Thousands more Wobblies and Netsmen die while gawping terrified skyward.
Then nothing more.
No coup de grâce.
The attack stops as suddenly as it started.
**********
Bleached Wheat stands alone dead center on the big white star surrounded by the thin red circle. He’s just thought off the agreeable Top80 tunes playing in the Eye of the Waco Great Pyramid. He’s just told ArCommander Prana to stand down the purge of BoiCity. He had to add, in effect, an “or else” to that conversation. The ArCommander adamantly disagreed with the order. This hooya shit can get taken too far, particularly by the top mil-Terds. Bleached Wheat makes a mental note to switch out Prana. And soon. Then he thinksays to Fargo, <Tell me again what’s happened. Slowly.>
<Somehow the taste got through, sir. To Portland. The whole of TerdTowne was turned.> Fargo is one floor down, in the CorpControl Center, ready at a moment’s notice to ascend the platform lift up into the Eye. <They threw open all the gates of the District wall. Parkers were waiting outside. Thousands and thousands of them. Evidently completely Wobblyized. Now, as we speak, sir, CratVillage is being plundered and the Pyramid is surrounded.>
<And GaterPol?> Bleached Wheat asks immediately.
<Fighting alongside this new Wobbly uprising, sir. Only the Pyramid Guard inside weren’t infected by this new round of taste.>
Fargo stops there, having completed what he was asked to do. After an unusually lengthy silence from the big bossman, though, he ventures an opinion.
<Whoever is slicing for them, sir, is too damned good.>
<The dykebitch is not capable of this depth of slice.>
<No, sir. Agreed. This has to be EVe expertise at work.>
<That signer who created Wobbly?>
<Most likely, sir. Satellite intel has someone escaping on what moved like some kind of hoverbike from the ArcAir base during the attack. Wells has his people in pursuit.>
<All right. Be sure to tell that idiot Wells to find that someone and to bring that someone to me. Alive. Understood?>
<Completely, sir. I’ll let him know.>
<Now patch me through to the BoiCity Pyramid. I want to talk to whatever clown thinks he’s in charge there.>
<Yes, sir. That will take a moment, sir.>
Bleached Wheat knows he’s been in quite a slice-duel with someone very good. So very, very good. But this good? To end-run a roguefeed around him like this—and into the yanking PC? The one place he absolutely didn’t want their taste feeding? Shit. This is dancing on the edge indeed. There’s more than a tangible risk in this situation. Things are approaching teetering on a brink. That’s potentially advantageous—or catastrophic. Either way, how long has it been since he faced a situation like this? One that could go either way? Bleached Wheat can hardly remember. Or, rather, he’s selected not remembering. So he does now: he remembers. And there it is. The old tickle of excitement. That once familiar sensation of not knowing how things might turn out. Remarkable. He savors the anxious, blood-sport tingle for a moment or two. The past. Then it’s time to rebury. He’s got important things to do. He has to get his hands on that dykebitch. More imperative, he has to get his hands on that signer from EVe. Bleached Wheat, after all, has that intercontinental war to start.
**********
“Hello in the BoiCity Pyramid!”
A face of a slick-looking man fills the large vidscreen in the hardroom. Oak stares at this man’s pampered features.
“What’d I tell ya, boys?” he brags to his Wrangle Ministers sitting around the conference table. “All ya gotta do is tug on their nuts a touch, and these sons-a-bitches come runnin’.”
“I say again, BoiCity Pyramid: hello! Please enable your vidaud. I’d like to see who I’m speaking with.”
Oak nods to Brand, sitting in the far corner of the hardroom at its bank of computer consoles. She nods back nervously and, by prearrangement, pads on voice only.
“You’re talkin’ to the Grand Pooh-Bah of Wobbly, fuckmother. Out of the Gold Butte of OakCity. Who the yank are you?”
The man is confused for a moment, but then quickly regains his manners. “My name is Fargo. I’m the subceo of Security. I’m calling from CorpHQ—”
“You the big bossman, fuckmother?”
“What? Well, no—”
Oak runs his finger across his throat and Brand instantly cuts the feed. “We don’t talk to no one but the big bossman. Right, boys?” The boys growl their rough consensus. Moments later a new face appears on the vidscreen. A stark blond wedge. Unmistakable.
“The Grand Pooh-Bah, is it?” says this new face. His voice carefully balances amusement with respect. “That’s an office title, I take it, and not a given name?”
Oak waits a while. Then nods to Brand. Enron is standing beside her.
“And now who the fuck are you, mister?” Oak sneers, well aware he’s being made fun of.
“Come now,” says the man. “You know exactly who the fuck I am. The real question here is who the fuck you are. That’s what I’m quite eager to know.” The man grins effortlessly. “Why else would I be calling?”
“You’re callin’ because I got you by the nutsack, mister. No two ways about it.”
“Precisely, Grand Pooh-Bah. You do have me ‘by the nutsack,’ as you call it. I’m so happy to know that we understand one another.”
Oak looks from face to face of his Wrangle Ministers. Some shake their heads. Others nod. Oak nods a second time to Brand in the corner. Visibly upset, she reaches out to enable as well the vid. Cardinal steps in to put a hand on Brand’s arm, preventing her from pushing the pad. Respectfully, Enron removes Cardinal’s hand, nodding to her that it’s all right. Cardinal looks back at him confused. Oak nods again at Brand, this time sternly. Quaking slightly, Brand pads on the picvoice.
“Ah! There you are,” says Bleached Wheat pleasantly. “So good finally to be able to put a face to this Wobbly movement of yours. You’ve been a stick poked up my ass for months now.”
“You ain’t exactly been kind-hearted yourself, mister. ‘Specially not here lately.”
“Again,” says Bleached Wheat vibrantly, “it’s so refreshing to negotiate with someone who grasps the situation right from the start.”
Oak turns even more cautious. “That what we doin’, mister? Negotiatin’?”
“Well, I assume so, Grand Pooh-Bah. Why else would you accept my call and risk identification?”
A collective sinking feeling overtakes the hardroom. Oak looks around his conference table again, as if to share the blunder. As he does, Bleached Wheat can count the approximate number of other Wobblies in the room, offscreen.
“Wat,” Oak says, looking back at the vidscreen. “Oak Wat.”
“Mr. Wat. Very good. That will save us a bit of time. So pleased to make your acquaintance. Oh, I see here in your profile that you left our CorpTroop training program a bit early and under some unfortunate circumstances. My, you are a bold and desperate fellow, aren’t you, Mr. Wat?”
“You can cut the horseshit, bub. What the fuck ya want?”
“Simple. To know what the fuck you want, Mr. Wat.”
“That ain’t hard to figure. Get the fuck outta my meg. Leave us the fuck alone. We can’t have these fuckin’ Crats cheatin’ us blind all our damn lives anymore.”
“Simple as that, Mr. Wat?”
“What ya mean?”
“Negotiations, Mr. Wat. What might I get in return?”
“What ya fuckin’ need?”
Bleached Wheat’s smile is perfect, his tone sincere. “You are a natural at this, Mr. Wat.”
“Cut the happy noise.”
“Well, Mr. Wat, what I need isn’t ‘hard to figure’ either. I need that Terd dykebitch who’s probably sitting in the hardroom there with you right now. Maybe over in the corner at the tech console, running your show?”
Oak can’t stop himself from smirking. He glances over at Brand. She freezes in horror.
“That might be a possibility,” says Oak. “That it?”
“Now you can cut the horseshit, Mr. Wat.”
“What else ya got in mind?”
“The infiltrators from EVe, of course. What else could you possibly have, Mr. Wat, that I’d let you squeeze my nutsack over?”
Oak thinks about it, then nods. “I do see your point. You gotta know, though, that most of them bitches is already dead.”
“They are women?” asks Bleached Wheat, surprised by this information.
“Most of ‘em, yeah. Real dykebitch pains in my ass, too. Believe you me.”
“Oh, I can sympathize with you there, Mr. Wat.” Oak eyes Brand again in the corner. By now she has both hands covering her face. “But if these women are dead, Mr. Wat, I don’t really see a way clear to our striking much of a deal. Do you see what I mean?”
“Didn’t say they was all dead. Some’s still above ground.”
“That’s interesting to know. Tell me, Mr. Wat, by any chance is their signer still alive?”
“The bitch like your bitch that makes shit up and puts it on feed?”
“Yes, exactly, Mr. Wat. I couldn’t have said it better myself. Is that EVe bitch still alive? Do you happen to have her there with you, in OakCity?”
“Could be.”
Enron signals by a subtle nod. Three of his biggest CorpTroopers seize Cardinal from behind, just as she’s drawing her killknife. Two of them secure her arms. The third gags her mouth. Her eyes go wide with rage.
“No happy noise intended, Mr. Wat, but you really are a natural at this.” Bleached Wheat flashes once more his winning grin. “Shall we meet, then, face-to-face, to work out all the details?”
“What, have us a little powwow, you and me?”
“Why not? My place. We’ll do lunch.”
“Just like that? I drop by? All by my lonesome?”
“Oh, bring your top advisors with you, if you like, Mr. Wat. By all means, the more the merrier. That way, all of you can thoroughly air your grievances about the Crats out there who’ve been cheating your people blind. I want to understand the situation fully, Mr. Wat. After all, I am the ceo. Everyone’s care is in my hands.”
All of Oak’s ministers emphatically are shaking their heads no.
“We’d need to do us a trust swap.”
“Fine. And what’s that?”
“If you gonna have us there with you, we gotta have someone of yours here with us. You know what I mean. So we know we can walk back outta your place alive.”
“I see. Of course.” There’s hardly a moment’s pause. “Tell me, Mr. Wat, how many of my Netsmen are left alive in your meg right now? Roughly?”
“You just killed most of ‘em yourself.”
“I know. The fog and the fortunes of war, Mr. Wat, and all of that. Tragic. But about how many?”
On Oak’s immediate left, Jiplap mouths a number. Oak repeats it to Bleached Wheat. “About seven hundred. Give or take. We stripped them damn killing outfits off of ‘em.”
“There’s your collateral, Mr. Wat. Your trust swap. Those are highly trained men in very expensive fighting suits. I propose that your people hold onto them while you and your advisors visit us here at CorpHQ. How about it?”
Oak’s Wrangle Ministry again shakes its head no.
“Sure thing,” says Oak.
“And you’ll be bringing my dykebitch along with you, Mr. Wat?
“Yep.”
“And we’ll be able to discuss the possible location of the bitches from EVe who remain alive? And in particular that signer?”
“You bet. I might even be bringin’ along a bitch or two of ‘em with me.”
“Choice,” beams Bleached Wheat. “My people will make arrangements with your people.”
**********
The hardroom vidscreen blanks. The Ministers erupt in protest. Enron uses the uproar as cover to grip Cardinal’s face in his hands.
“This ain’t what it looks like,” he whispers zealously to her, their foreheads nearly touching. “No one’s turnin’ you over to them assholes.” Cardinal’s eyes beam hatred. “This is all some big plan of Sinalco’s to take them bastards out. She put me up to this.” Enron tilts his head to indicate the CorpTroopers restraining her. “Now listen good. These three boys is goin’ to outfit you with whatever you need. Whatever you damn want. No joke. Then they’re gonna take you a good ways north of here, way up into the wilderness area. Then they gonna let you go. I damn promise you, they will.” In unison, the three men nod at Cardinal. She recognizes each one of them as a survivor of the Stryker battle. “Then you just keep goin’. You damn hear me? Way up north as far into them wheat fields as you can get. Yeah?” He nods at her, hopefully. “Net can’t track you hard up there. There’s too damn much nothin’. And anyways, you know how to keep ‘em off ya. Yeah?” he nods again at her. “Yeah?” he nods again. Finally, she nods back. “Good. Good. The whole damn thing is, just get yourself as far away from this yanking place as you can. In a day or two, BoiCity is gonna be shitstorm. Yeah? You don’t wanna be nowhere near it.”
Enron is good for his word. Cardinal disappears north.
