Transcendence (75 page)

“
Is this another trap, Nadir?” the man asked.

“
If it is, we’ll be meat any moment now.” Nadir glanced up at the sky, but it told him nothing. A few aircraft raced past, but they could have been passenger liners as easily as spyplanes. Paolo stood at attention beside his Boss, proudly unafraid, his rifle across his chest.

“
Boss,” Tilden 3-verded, “there’s no feed going in or out of War Command.”

“
What?”

“
Nothing. No one’s home.”

“
Bullshit.” He opened the allband BW. “All units, we’re breaking into War Command, one unit at a time. Let’s not make a mess of the place. It has historic significance, you understand? Just find the generals or CEOs or whatever they call themselves and take them prisoner. No killing unless absolutely necessary. We need to squeeze some answers out of those bastards before we chew ’em up. Got it?”

He cut off the deluge of affirmative feed just as it began to hit him and opened a line to one of the Sotoi Guntai unit commanders. “Just go in through the front door, got it? Keep a line open and let us know if it gets heavy in there.”

The man agreed and cut off feed. Nadir watched a small group of deep blue uniforms run toward the massive front doors. They reached the portico, seemed to stand still for a few seconds, then the doors opened. Nadir heard the delayed report of weapons-fire just as the last men entered the building.

When no word fed from the unit after half a minute, he sent one of the crack EarthCo Assault units inside with the same orders. The subbs commed him as he entered the foyer, and opened a 3VRD pov-feed for Nadir to watch the progress.

“
No sign of struggle,” the subbs reported as his men’s boots clattered across the curled wood-tile floor. The room’s walls were dusty white, and dead rodents littered the corners. Inside, the building seemed wrong to Nadir, who had expected War Command to be huge and paneled with rose marble and quartz pillars, bristling with armed guards.

But what he watched rush past him as the pov soldier worked deeper into the Pentagon was small, filthy room after small, filthy room. Occasionally, he saw a framed piece of art still hanging on a wall, or a battered desk, but dust seemed to be the primary inhabitant of the place.

“
All units,” he commed on the allband, “all units, enter War Command through the front door and explore wherever you don’t see tracks in the dust. Don’t shoot at anyone! He’ll probably be part of your army.” Soldiers began streaming inside.

Ten minutes later, Nadir finally received a 3-verd from an EarthCo unit: “Boss, we got something here.”

They submitted a pov feed that Nadir tapped. He saw nothing much, except a dusty room with an outside view of an overgrown garden. At the center of the room stood a desk, and on that desk sat a holo generator. What looked like a manual server I/O port—all finger keys and fivesen pads—sat to one side of the cylinder.

“
What is it?” Nadir asked.

“
Watch,” a soldier said as he depressed one of the pads, “I’ll set it up.” A holo-face that appeared within the confines of the cylinder. It was a man, familiar in a distant way.

“
Who are you?” the face demanded. “How are you shielding your movements against me?”

“
My name’s Hardman,” Nadir said through a 3VRD. “Who are you?”

“
You know damned well who I am, you traitor!” the man yelled. “And now I know where you are. My name is Luke Herrschaft, Director of Feedcontrol. You are a non-value-added commodity. Your whole unit is NVA.”

The holo flickered and vanished. Nadir pondered for a moment.

“
All units, immediately evacuate the Pentagon building. This isn’t War Command; it’s only a monument. We’re heading for EarthCo Feedcontrol Central to find a man named Herrschaft.”

A few concerned 3VRDs appeared before Nadir, each about to ask the same question. He averted it: “I know what you’re thinking, but don’t you see? The betrayal came from above. And who’s on top? Herrschaft and his people.”

“
Boss,” Paolo said, “that’s just talk, that Herrschaft isn’t any more than Feedcontrol Director. He—”

Nadir barked a single, humorless laugh. He spoke on the allband: “Herrschaft’s got all you EarthCo Warriors so conditioned that you see him as god. Crash that! He’s just an old man, and we’re safe from his hypnotizing as long as we stay under blackout. He still thinks we’re just one unit. Don’t tap into feed anymore, anywhere, until we’ve reached Kansas. When—”

A flash of light and static cut him off. Nadir shut down the feed and looked with his eyes. He saw a shaft of blue light—barely visible and only so when it cut through clouds or smoke—stab down from the sky into the Pentagon. Its angle shifted only gradually; Satellite weapon, Nadir deduced.

“
Evacuate now!” he commed. “We’re under attack!”

Whirlyjets and heavy aircraft began to land again as soldiers exited the Pentagon in a mad rush to avoid death from above. Nadir looked up at a blue sky flecked with white clouds, innocent looking, ignorant of the violence it concealed. Only a matter of time shielded Nadir’s army from other satellites being trained where they were certainly programmed not to aim, from aircraft and spacecraft descending upon them.

“
Whoever you are,” Nadir commed to his unidentified ally, “you’d better keep helping us out. If we’re caught on visual. . .”
We have to be gone by the time the first craft spot us
, he thought. Or else destroy all witnesses.

Casualty info began feeding as the last survivors spilled out of the now-burning building. Nadir hardened himself against the numbers, which were small considering they had breached the place billed to all the world as EarthCo War Command.

His whirlyjet landed and Paolo tugged at his sleeve, leading him inside. Nadir faced outside just as he stepped up, reached into his open shirt to the vest beneath, and removed another medal. His face twisted into a scowl as he hurled the sharp fragment of his past as hard as he could at the Pentagon, where it clinked against the old stone and fell into manicured grass. Slowly, his face relaxed. The fingers of his right hand touched the growing bare spot on his chest. Closer, he had taken one step closer to fulfilling a bargain with the world. Paolo slammed the door shut.

The whirlyjet launched up and west. Nadir looked through a grease-smudged window at the smoldering ruins of what he had thought was his government—the final betrayal, one less directly sinister than that in Africa, though perhaps just as poisonous to the spirit.

Then he turned away and opened a line to the forward pov camera. He fired up the audio program full-volume to drown out any thoughts or doubts. The craft raced toward a mythical city of power and electronics, one no man had ever seen without being invited to gaze upon it, EarthCo Feedcontrol Central.

We’ll see it
, he told himself.
We’ll see it, because we’re blazingly alive
. He nurtured the vessel of hate seething within his chest and felt destiny close and heavy upon his skull, like a wild animal full of claws and teeth, muscles trembling with anticipation for his blood, a black destroyer lurking not in a place but in the jungles of time. Savoring this certainty of his impending death, Nadir felt his every nerve tingling with the spark of life.

Channel #183620.7, raw feed to Feedcontrol Central. EarthCo Luna Base Descoberta, Moon’s Farside:

>>A distant thump. Two atomic scientists lose their 3VRD connections and find themselves not within a skyscraping blowup of plant schematics but instead in a dark, silent feedchamber. “What’s happened?” one asks. His first thought is of his contract partner and daughter, in bed two tunnels away. “The war,” whispers the other, who swallows in a suddenly dry throat. Seconds later, a faint hiss cuts into the stillness; the hiss grows to a roar, and within a minute, both have torn their fingertips to the bone trying to pry open the sealed airlock and its emergency release. Then there is no more air to hiss.<<

Channel #183620.7, prepared live subscription offering from Feedcontrol Central:

>>A distant thump. In a small, featureless room, red emergency lights flash to life and illuminate two atomic scientists wearing the most curr outfits from Jakk and Pompeux. “What’s happened?” one asks, drawing his GE Stunlash pistol. He cocks his head and hears footfalls in the adjoining corridor. “Those NKK mannequins are attacking us!” the other cries, also pulling her weapon free—this one is a Hewlett-Packard Pulse. “But why?” asks the first, who moves into position near the doorway, pistol near his face, its crystalline barrel glinting in the red light. “We’re a scientific holding.” “Because they’re damned NKK, that’s why, they’re gunsel.” The running feet bang closer. Just as the white beams of flashlights shine into the feedchamber, our heroes throw themselves into the corridor with guns blazing. The blood of five snarling NKK soldiers flows through gashes in their armor before the scientists fall. Subscription continues feeding as the remaining seven NKK fall upon the barely alive woman and gang-rape her bloody and limp body. Their faces are patchy with filth and unkempt hair, their teeth crooked and brown. Saliva dribbles from their lips as they pant above her. The other scientist is only conscious enough to wetly gasp breath and watch the atrocity.<<

Channel #3347.19, raw feed to Feedcontrol Central. Martian Defense Force cruiser,
Okie
, 9300 kilometers above Mars, near the moonlet, Phobos:

>>A reporter too stunned to say anything watches the battle progress through the pov cameras the cruiser’s captain let him access. Yet another wave of NKK automated fighters flashes out of the depths of space, “Triggered by that damned
Bounty
,” as the
Okie
’s captain said. Most of the manned MDF vessels have been ripped open. Claustrophobia drives the reporter to switch pov to a ground-based camera, but this is, perhaps worse: The lens points crazily, feeding mostly an image of Mars’ dull rust and purple sky, obscured by sheets of smoke. The lower portion of the pov shows the top of a shattered ultraglas dome that had once housed 400 Martians, EarthCo-Citizens born on Mars. The inside surface of the dome has been opaqued by soot, yet green lightning still flashes bright enough to shine through. The reporter flicks from pov to pov, but everything he can access on the surface of Mars reveals only waste and destruction. One electric eye, inside a residential dome near the Rhoteus industrial center, stares at the puckered and blood-frothed face of a
. . .
man?—he can’t tell—frozen by its own fluids to a scorched silver wall. On the wall, beside the oblate face whose eyes are black pits, smiles a framed holo: Husband, wife, and four children from infant to teenager, holographed in their clear dome against the rugged backdrop of a Martian rockfield. A shaggy, green rug covers the red cement floor where the children are seated; mom and dad stand behind, grinning proudly. The reporter clears his throat and cuts off the monotonous BW. He opens his feedback line direct to Feedcontrol Central, back at Earth, and begins a narration: “Greetings from high above Mars, fellow Citizens. This is Henrich Ludermeier reporting.” He grafts in various pov shots as he speaks. “What you see hovering around you are manned EConautics fighters and other spacecraft, destroyed by unmanned NKK drones and long-range missiles. The
Okie
’s captain tells me that the enemy must have seeded Mars space with these tiny weapons long ago, far enough away so they’d not be noticed. They’re coming out of nowhere, coming and coming. . .” He takes a breath to calm himself. “A hundred ships burn off the coast of Mars, and soon there will be none left to defend what remains of our presence on the Red Planet. I cannot promise to feed much longer, so here is my assessment. Get ready, my friends. Earth is next—that is, if it isn’t already this bad back there. The war is really gaining momentum. This is beginning to appear the final act of Man, and the star-spangled curtain is about to fall. I—” Feed shuts down as the
Okie
’s propulsion system explodes from a well-placed laser blast.<<

Channel #3347.19, prepared live subscription offering from Feedcontrol Central:

>>Pov-pans merge together to form a spherical 3VRD centered on the cruiser, which seems to be a cylinder occupying the same space as the subscriber—s/he is the ship. “Hovering in space around you,” a reporter on board says, “is a halo of shattered enemy vessels, their hulls like gutted carcasses, smoked and ready for our heroic defenders to feast upon. Let’s watch a replay of this great victory. . .” <<

Pehr and Janus awake bathed in a lake seething with the color of memory. When he looks closely, Pehr sees only blackness. Yet when he simply feels himself upon it, when he floats in the tepid waters without examining in detail, every shade and tone of every color he has seen in his life spring into being: the deepest red of a young man’s blood coagulating in the night; the warm color of Megan’s skin; the oranges, yellows, and greens of a northern Minnesota autumn; the darkest violets and purples of that moment between sunset and blackest night.