Subversive Elements (Unreal Universe Book 2) Read online

  Barnes hated to interrupt the Chairwoman, but he did so anyway. “I’ve made myself aware of those reports and my recommendation still stands, Si Chairwoman. Armed with such a rich source of information as Bolobo, the Offworlder al-Taryin poses a grave threat to systemic security. Commander Vasily has already placed thirty-five percent of worldwide God soldier battalions on high alert in preparation for anything Chadsik might get himself up to and the OverCommander as shut Penzengraaf down over the Hand of Glory missiles. Directly, Densen is now close to full capacity. MoE is having a difficult time monitoring the situation already and the man’s only just arrived. We need to reduce Chadsik’s impact on our world. Short of killing him, the only way to do that is to remove access to equipment that can keep him off our radar, and the only way we can do this effectively is by re-encrypting everything. Or …”

  “Or killing this Bolobo person.” Doans supplied kindly but sternly. She hadn’t seen Barnes in this state for more than ten years. “Find them, kill him, let Chadsik run free. I will handle MoE and their concerns.”

  “At your command.” Barnes ended the call, unhappy that he’d failed to spare Bolobo’s life. Unless the Chairwoman had made herself intimately familiar with all of Hollyoak’s work through the decades, she’d never realize she’d just authorized the destruction of a truly invaluable resource; Bolobo was the last of forty deep-proteus enhanced humans. A scientific side project similar to the ones that’d yielded God soldiers so many thousands of years ago, Bolo was wired along the central nervous system and into areas of the brain with the very same technology that allowed protean computers to be so powerful. With these augmentations, Bolo was able to hack directly into computers without the need for a prote at all.

  What Doans could never know was that Hamilton Barnes himself had -through forged papers and electronic sigils- authorized the crazed military scientist called Hollyoak to resurrect the project that’d given him life. For a long time, he’d been the first and only human being thusly augmented, and he’d grown tired. So very tired. Once he knew the true depth of his talents, Bolo was to’ve been his … replacement.

  Obviously, the man hadn’t discovered his talents yet, though with the grievous nature of his wounds, he may soon do just that. As it stood, his intuitive nature in hacking systems was unparalleled. Bolobo would’ve been the perfect replacement and the loss of an invaluable resource was devastating. If Doans knew about Bolobo’s dubious origins, she didn’t care.

  Barnes tucked the portable laser back into its heavy carrying case. He wrinkled his nose at the stench of burnt flesh and made a note on his proteus to find a different company for his oxygen recycling gear. If he could detect the odor through his mask, some unsuspecting Latelian walking by outside would most definitely smell the odor of charred flesh and either investigate themselves or call the police.

  Satisfied that the major body parts were ash or less, Barnes fished a cylinder no larger than a thumb from a pocket and stared thoughtfully at it for a moment, lost in past exploits.

  The Regimist ghost op estimated the rough center of the room and wedged the slender explosive into a crack in the floorboards. A few diagnostic tests later and the programmable grenade had the blast radius. Upon detonating, everything inside a specific space would be vaporized, making it very difficult indeed for police and forensics to piece together what had happened. He’d gone to the effort of using the laser on the major body parts because although the fire grenade could do the whole job, it’d wind up taking the building along with it. The key was subtlety. Even a drug-addled buffoon like Chadsik al-Taryin would notice one of his few resting spots burning to the ground and they couldn’t have that.

  Unremarkable in form and face, permanently invisible to relay stations and cameras, Barnes exited the dingy room and made his way outside without fear or hesitation of being caught or recognized. He had no family, no mother, no father.

  He was Elite. He existed to serve the Latelian Ideal.

  Barnes vanished into the crowd.

  Chadsik is unimpressed by the competition

  Chadsik and Bolo watched Barnes disappear quickly and easily into the crowd of excited Latelians.

  “So you say that fella’s dangerous?” Chadsik played an image of Hamilton Barnes across his retina. “Don’t look all that much, hey? You sure you’re not ‘avin’ a lark at me expense, is ya?”

  Bolo shook his head furiously. He regretted not being able to tell Reywin to her face that, in fact, he hadn’t been very confident on his hack at Densen. Driven to hurry because of Chad’s advanced arrival, there’d been no time to set up the hack ‘properly’. In his haste to get the both of them processed and onto Penzengraaf, he had to’ve left a trail a mile wide. Not that it mattered; with Hamilton Barnes on the case, the trail could’ve been a micron across. The man was … the best. “No. No ‘lark’. Barnes is the last person I wanted or expected to see.”

  “Wot does that mean for uz?” Chadsik asked. “An’ for that matter, where are we goin’, my son?”

  “It means,” Bolo turned, angling the two of them down a side street, “that the Chairwoman knows you’re here. To make matters worse, she probably knows you’re working for Jordan Bishop on some ‘undisclosed but vitally important matter’. Between her, Vasily, and Barnes, the three of them are smart enough to figure out who you’re here for. And that is the bad part.”

  “Wot, they know I is an assassin?” Chad demanded, astonished anyone would figure out what he was just by looking at him. He could just as easily be a seamstress. A devilishly handsome seamstress with a mind-boggling drug addiction, but people had their hobbies.

  “We do have Intelligence from Trinity, Chadsik.” Bolo steered the clanking cyborg down another, thinner, less-used side street. “They know you’re an assassin from Trinityspace right enough, and shall we say the presence of Glory missiles has them shitting themselves backwards? Since we prefer to deal with our own messes,” Bolo ignored Chad’s explosion of laughter at the unintended entendre, “there is absolutely no other person you’re here to kill. Think of Barnes as a non-drug-addicted version of yourself, except he has the resources of the entire system to draw on if he feels it necessary. And with you, he will almost certainly come to that conclusion. When Barnes finds you, us, he’s going to kill us both.”

  “Wot?” Chad pulled a RPG launcher off his shoulder rack and peered down the tube. “You fink ‘e can beat me, does you?” Chad pointed the launcher at Bolo’s head and made rocket noises until Bolo shook his head in dismay.

  Bolo shoved the RPG cannon away from his face. “He doesn’t even need to come within two miles of us, sa.” He pointed up to the heavens. “You saw the orbiting missile plateaus, I’m sure. He could drop missiles in the general area where we might be and then come look for the bodies. And there are things here you don’t even know about that can kill you. He has access to all this and more. You should be honored! Barnes hasn’t done anything major in nearly a decade. Rumor has it he just makes things disappear.”

  “Crikey.” Chad clipped the launcher back to his rack, oblivious to the fact he croaked like a crow for a solid minute. “You lot are as paranoid as I am, and just as in love wiv fings wot goes boom. But you ain’t answered question number two, son: Where is we ‘eaded?”

  Bolo answered matter-of-factly. “A few years ago I ran a sting operation on someone in a position to know he was being watched if things weren’t done perfectly. In order to catch him, I had to pull off a very improbable stunt or seven. When all was said and done, I made some of the equipment vanish.”

  Chadsik mulled that over. “An’ you din’t tell your boss-lady wot I was usin’ as a hand puppet about this, hey?” He smacked Bolo on the shoulder. “You is all right, my son, you is all right. So we is ‘eadin’ to this secret storeroom o’ yours. Then wot?”

  “Then? We try and find out what Nickels has been doing. And try to keep Barnes off our backs.” If everything worked out perfectly, Bolo was hoping he’d be able to sepa
rate himself from Chadsik al-Taryin soonest. It was going to be difficult, but Bolo had no other choice.

  Motherfucking Hamilton Barnes. He’d have an easier time keeping God from asking if he’d like to pray for forgiveness.

  Fame … Nauseating as Hell

  Up in his hotel room, Garth admired the artisanship evident in the new stairway. If he hadn’t specifically ordered its addition earlier that morning, the wrought iron and wood spiral staircase could have been there for years. He trotted up to the second floor, farcically pleased to own a spiral staircase finally; as a child, he’d seen one on a television show and that had been that.

  Now he owned one. Well, sort of. Well, there was one in the room where he slept. It was the same thing, in a way. Except he couldn’t take it with him.

  Out of deference to his size, the carpenters had used Trinity-normal specs, so anyone in the Latelian-normal range of girth would find it difficult to get to the second floor without stooping or bending themselves in half. The ex-SpecSer chuckled. If, for whatever reason, he found himself being chased around the Ultra Suite by God soldiers, he could just run up the stairs. Of course, they could take the elevator, but that probably wouldn't dawn on anyone chasing him. Problem solved.

  Garth gave the second floor a cursory glance before heading back downstairs; seeing as how he’d already spent a few nights –pre and post port apocalypse- without even knowing about the second floor, the downstairs visitor’s quarters were more comfortable to him. The fancy stairwell hardly took up any room at all and he really liked the idea of staring at it while he tried to sleep. He went back into the main ‘living’ area.

  It was a visceral shock to see regular sized furniture. Only on the planet a month or so and he was already settling in to how Latelians lived. Garth ran his hands along one of the leather settees before heading directly for the primary.

  There was a momentary surge of panic when he saw that the bulky machine had moved from where he’d left it, calming down after realizing that the workers had shifted it out of the way to continue working. They’d been extremely cautious in moving the machine: the Sheet loaded with the recommendations for ‘healing’ Huey was still propped against the monitor.

  Garth chuckled even as he felt relieved. If a single carpenter or repairman had been curious –and a programmer, of which Hospitalis seemed to have billions- … the arcane and complex math on that Sheet would’ve brought an airstrike to The Palazzo in under five seconds.

  Cheered by the renovations done to his suite and the presence of normal-sized furniture, Garth plopped his ass down on one of the new, comfortable couches, started hunting through Screen channels until he came across one of the Big Channels -namely News4You- and settled in to watch …

  xxx

  One hour thirty-five minutes later, Garth was so nauseated he wanted to throw up out of his eyeballs.

  “Oughtta be illegal.” He whined at the chair next to him. It sat there in mute retrospection, no doubt astonished to be sitting in the same room as the greatest being to ever draw air into tiny non-Latelian lungs. “How in the hell can they make a guy they’re supposed to hate look so … so … fucking awesome. Shit, this is a fucking nightmare.”

  N4U had done the absolute reverse of a hatchet job. They blew right through his time in the Hotel Hospitalis, ignoring in the process that he was provably responsible for the death of a fellow contestant four minutes after walking through the front door! Who ignored that? Self-defense, sure, yes, fine, but he had killed a dude less than two hours on the planet!

  Throughout, they’d kept a rotating, holographic image of his Game body scans rotating on the screen. An entire solar system staring at his semi-naked ass…

  They hadn’t even mentioned the bozo he’d tossed into the laundry chute or Injiri Katainn, though they were still trying to figure out how the Yellow Dog assassin had exploded himself like that, and why. Even if they had brought up the two seemingly unconnected deaths, Garth stormily knew they’d paint both men as invading conquerors vanquished by a noble hero-errant.

  N4U highlighted his fighting skills, interviewed a few of the people associated with the Game –Sa Robret made a brief cameo appearance, stammering out his admiration for him before looking unusually green around the gills- and talked with each of the Lightweight combatants he’d brutally kicked the crap out of before being reassigned to the heavyweight augmented category.

  Not one of the contestants he’d beaten like a redheaded stepchild proclaimed him a foreign devil. Four of them, including the guy who’d spat his teeth out like Chiclets, hinted around the fact that they thought he was at least partially Latelian from the way he took to the Game like one born to it. Unbelievable!

  Garth knew that people should trust him because he totally was trustworthy, but if he saw himself walking down the street, he’d hide his wallet, keys and cellphone. And have his gun ready. And have a spare Hand of Glory missile prepped and ready. Just in case.

  As soon as the scripted proclamations of Garth’s Latelian heritage through cosmic chance were done burbling out of well-paid mouths, Tricia Takanawa and her forty billion gigawatt smile erupted into a smarmy oration that was purified boilerplate patriotic bullshit.

  By the end of the show, Garth was certain Chairwoman Doans would have no choice but to announce him the Prodigal Son and First Coming of the New Latelian Deity of Horsecrap because goddamnit if Takanawa didn’t paint him in the rosiest-red glow the light of day had ever seen. N4U’s number one reporter had come achingly close to outright blasphemy in the way she treated his survival, and had actually used the word miracle in direct reference to his short stay in the hospital.

  The only thing worth watching in the entire crapfest was an amusing shot of Si Mijomi trying to shove her way through the crowds of people to get to the camera before a sound technician -unfortunate enough to be the only one in range- tackled her to the ground. The rest of it? Disgusting. Nauseating. Embarrassing. If anyone in Special Services caught sight of this shit, they’d either laugh themselves to death or ask permission to come over to Latelyspace and kill him for being a complete retard. Ex-Special Services people weren’t supposed to seek out the limelight. Technically speaking, ex-SpecSers were supposed to be buried on alien planets far enough down so the zombie would have a hard time digging it’s way to freedom.

  They most definitely weren’t supposed to be plastered across every form of interactive media in an entire solar system.

  “Come on!” Garth shouted at the Screen, which asked if he wanted to replay the show from the beginning or if there were a particular scene he’d like to revisit. “I blew up the spaceport! Well, not really, but I blew it up! I killed people! I framed Ashok Guillfoyle and plan on stealing your number one artifact! Jesus! Fuck is wrong with you all?”

  The ironic thing was, N4U had pretty much handed him one of the best covers he could’ve ever asked for; there were times across The Cordon where he would’ve literally killed to be so cherished and here he was, angry that no one would look askance at his actions, even if he were caught eating kittens. In the nude. In the middle of the street. During rush hour.

  It was because he liked Hospitalis. Garth facepalmed morosely. He was beginning to like Hospitalis, and the idiot Latelians who lived there. They were big goofs and he liked them.

  “Crap.” He stuck his tongue out at the Screen.

  The Screen bounced N4U into a PIP to make way for an incoming call.

  Fuck me.” Garth moaned. Nothing was going the way it was supposed to be! Si Alixia van derTuppen was on the phone wanting a pat on the back and a ribbon. He tried to find some semblance of mellowness.

  She smiled knowingly when Garth picked the call up. “Sa, how are you doing?” she asked cordially, perennial cigarette clamped firmly between her fingers. Alix was flush from a job well done.

  “Super-duper.” Garth muttered. “Saw the show.”

  “Wasn’t it amazing?” Alix flicked her cigarette but didn’t put it to her lips. “I gu
arantee people are talking about you right this minute. I especially liked the part where Trish suggests you might be half-Latelian…”

  “But I’m not!” Garth bellowed. “And you lied.” He hissed the word out.

  Alix pressed a hand to her chest, affected a look of grieved sorrow. “Honey, again, you misunderstand the nature of the business. I do not lie to my clients. Ever. As to what that media whore said? Implication, darling, implication. She made no statement of fact. If you were paying attention instead of getting hot under the collar, you’d realize it, too.” She fixed Garth with a stare. “I can assume then that you didn’t care for the show?”

  “You’re goddamn right!” Garth bellowed again, working up a head of steam. “I relented to the whole media exposure thing, but that piece of crap show makes me look like I’m a … a… a nice guy. That guy whose teeth I broke? He should hate me until the fucking day I die! I cost the Game millions of dollars by demanding to be re-evaluated right in the middle of the day! I’m … I’m … I’m from Trinity, for crying out loud!”

  In order to minimize the detrimental effects to the system when he stole The Box, he needed to be of as little interest to the public as possible. By being their most favorite and cherished rock star of headcrushing … well, that’d make things so much worse. If they hated him, so much the better! The Latelian society wouldn’t crumble like a soggy cookie if they wanted to kill him for stealing their Box; they’d band together and hunt him down. Try to hunt him down.