Shadow on the Sun (3 page)

 

Chapter √-1

The Gulag

Terminal: MUSEcommand — bash — 122x36

Last login: 239.x.xx.xx:xx 12:12:09 on ttys0067

 

>...

 

AdjutantNod04:~ user_MUSE$

SCREEN CRAWL: [[email protected] ~]

SCREEN CRAWL: WARNING! VIRUS DETECTED! Node1666; kernal compromised (quarantine subroutine (log=32)....FAILED!

 

SCREEN CRAWL: External host access...GRANTED

 

::new host$

 

AdjutantNod13:~ user_MIMT$

 

$ tar -xvzf Durango.tar.gz -C directory

 

/**

The code below puts extracts the tarball archive “Durango.tar.gz”

And runs reinstallation program of data files

For entity known as Jacob Stringfellow

*/

 

#!/usr/bin/xperl

tar -xvf Durango.tar.gz

tar -xzvf Durango.tar.gz.gz

tar -xjvf Durango.tar.gz.bz2

 

mimi/

mimi/pulse/

mimi/pulse/default.pa

mimi/pulse/client.conf

mimi/pulse/daemon.conf

mimi/pulse/system.pa

mimi/xml/

mimi/xml/docbook-xml.xml.old

mimi/xml/xml-core.xml

mimi/xml/catalog

mimi/xml/catalog.old

mimi/xml/docbook-xml.xml

mimi/xml/rarian-compat.xml

mimi/xml/sgml-data.xml

mimi/xml/xml-core.xml.old

mimi/xml/sgml-data.xml.old

mimi/mail.rc

mimi/Wireless/

mimi/Wireless/RT2870STA/

mimi/Wireless/RT2870STA/RT2870STA.dat

mimi/logrotate.conf

mimi/compizconfig/

mimi/compizconfig/config

mimi/xperl/

mimi/xperl/debian_config

mimi/ConsoleKit/

mimi/ConsoleKit/seats.d/

mimi/ConsoleKit/seats.d/00-primary.seat

mimi/ConsoleKit/run-session.d/

mimi/ConsoleKit/run-seat.d/

mimi/opt/

 

SCREEN CRAWL: Extracting archive “Durango.tar.gz”

 

$ extraction complete

 

Howdy, cowboy. Did you miss me?

CHAPTER 3

The Hive

Olympus Mons

ANNOS MARTIS
239. 2. 12. 13:12

 

 

My name is Durango. I am a former mercenary, a former Regulator chief, and now I am a dead man walking.

“More like stumbling,” says Mimi, the artificial intelligence flash-cloned to my brain stem. “Being dragged by two muscular jailers down a dimly lit corridor does not meet any definition of walking.”

“I'm just resting my legs,” I subvocalize to her, which at this point is the only way I can approximate speech, since I can't feel my vocal cords, not to mention my throat, lungs, chest, or pelvis. It's the effect of somarin gas, a nerve agent that paralyzes the body momentarily and plays havoc with the central nervous system. If you're like me and have nanobots in your central nervous system, it's a double dose of the old skull and crossbones.

“Technically, that is inaccurate,” she replies. “Your nerves are operating at a reduced capacity, but you can feel, as evidenced by the pins and needles sensation emanating from your lower extremities.”

“My left foot's asleep.” I try to focus on the hallway ahead. Yellow lights pulse above me. The pulses eat through my eyelids, pinging my optic nerve again and again. The lights—and the nerve gas they hit me with—are designed to incapacitate my nervous system and to make my mind as moldable as clay.

“Also technically inaccurate,” Mimi says. “Your foot is numb. Only the brain is capable of sleeping.”

“Says you, the AI that never sleeps.”

“I do not need to sleep per se any more than your left foot needs to.”

“You never shut up, either.”

“Like you never stop whining?”

“I can't whine,” I say. “My mouth is paralyzed.”

“That explains the trail of drool you are leaving on the floor.”

“Nuh,” I say aloud.

“PS.” Mimi says. “You are not dead.”

For the past forty-three weeks, I've been locked up in a ten-by-ten cell in a military complex buried deep within the dormant volcano Olympus Mons. It's the fortress of General Lyme, Supreme Leader of the People's Free Republic of Mars and the most brutal dictator our planet has ever known. During my time as a prisoner, I have had all of my various tissues sampled, my organs biopsied, my skin peeled off and grafted back on, my nerve endings stripped of their myelin sheaths, and my brain imaged so many times my bionic eye should glow in the dark—all in an effort to extract the one snippet of code that Lyme values more than anything else in the world, the artificial intelligence that lives within my brain and goes by the name of Mimi.

General Lyme is my mortal enemy. He's also my father.

We don't really get along.

“Even gassed,” Mimi says, “you sound like a penny dreadful.”

“What's a penny?” I subvocalize.

“The lowest denomination of coin in many nations on Earth,” she says, “as well as the monetary value of your thoughts.”

The guards haul me through the doors labeled “Nursery.” They could just wheel me in on a gurney. Lyme, being the
drecksau
that he is, likes the spectacle.

“Put him into cradle one,” Lyme says to his twin goons as my head lolls to the side and a line of spittle leaks out of my mouth. He doesn't even look up from his multinet tablet.

I struggle to lift my head, but it's full of stuffing, so I lie still, trying to focus. Then I smell something stronger than my own body odor, like liniment and almonds. It's the smell of the antidote for somarin, but it's not a complete antidote.

I'm about to become a puppet.

“They're sending me on a mission,” I tell Mimi. “You need to go into safe mode.”

“What if I choose not to, cowboy?”

“Then Dolly will detect your code,” I say. Dolly is the name Lyme gave the AI he cloned from Mimi. “And she will try once again to eradicate you.”

“I cannot argue with your logic,” she says. “Shut-down sequence beginning now.”

In a few seconds she is silent. I imagine her as Alice stepping into the rabbit hole, off to new adventures in my medulla oblongata. Then something she said hits me.
What if I choose not to?

Since when does Mimi start making her own choices?

 

The nursery is a long, narrow room. On one side, there is a window that looks out onto the valley beneath Olympus Mons. Most of the time, the view is obstructed by clouds. Today, the sky is clear.

The other side of the nursery is lined with podlike devices called cradles. Each cradle is connected to a control board. The board is operated by a technician called a driver, who uses the board to forge a nanolink—the Leash—with the occupant of the cradle. In this case, the occupants will be Alpha Team, all of whom were volunteers for the project. All except one—me.

The techs scramble my brain with intense pulses of light, then connect me to nanosensors on my hands, feet, spine, and the base of my skull, where a billion nanobots are clustered around the brain stem.

Then I take a nap, but it's nothing like sleep. More like what I'd imagine a coma to be. Like being buried in a coffin that's made of your own body. Not the best thing for a bloke with claustrophobia to deal with.

I meditate by repeating my focus word again and again: Vienne. Vienne. Vienne.

Barefoot, dressed in a flowing gown spun from honey-colored silk, her blond braid trailing down her back, Vienne walks through a row of beehives. Like a ghost, she floats past the hives without a word, golden sunlight streaming from her hands. The sound of the bees rises and diminishes as she passes. Then she turns to me, her eyes violet in the wash of golden brightness, and her lips part for a kiss.

“Leash is confirmed,” my driver says. “On your feet, Alpha Dog.”

He's talking to me. I'm call sign Alpha Dog—my father never was very clever with names.

“On your feet, soldier,” the driver snaps, even though the last thing I want to do is get to my feet.

“Jacob!” Lyme barks.

I open my eyes and look into Lyme's rheumy eyes. “Go to hell,” I say.

“That is undoubtedly my final destination,” Lyme rasps, “but I am not prepared to depart just yet.”

Too bad,
I think. “What do you want?”

“The better question,” Lyme says, “is: Why are you here?”

I glare at him from under swollen eyelids, one of the many side effects of the somarin gas. “I have to be somewhere, don't I?”

“Spare me the existential wit.” His slack face is freshly shaven and gleaming with oil. “It does not befit a young man of breeding. You were raised better.”

“Reared better,” I say, correcting him. “Humans are reared. Livestock is raised.”

“I fail to see the difference between you and livestock.” Lyme laughs, then coughs until his face turns red. “I see the expensive education I provided you with didn't go entirely to waste.” He wipes his mouth. Tucks the cloth into a pocket. “Jacob, you have been such a disappointment to me. First the fiasco with battle school and then your attachment to that . . . female
dalit.
But you have provided me with the fruit of Project MUSE.” He taps my temple. “That exquisite AI my scientists extracted from your brain and transformed into Dolly. And yet you still have the potential to become the deadliest warrior the world has ever known. Now, get on your feet!”

My body snaps rigid. I step onto the floor in front of the cradle and then stand at attention. In a line next to me, the other nine members of Alpha Team have done the same. My reflection in the multinet screen shows a clean-shaven soldier, hair freshly clippered, attired in his navy blue dress uniform. My chest is thrust out, head held high, chin jutting so that the muscles in my jaw are protruding.

I look like a carking recruitment poster for the Sturmnacht.

If I could, I'd be sick to my stomach, but even that is controlled by the Leash.

Lyme paces behind the line of cradles. When he reaches Driver Ten, he turns on his heel and paces back, checking that each driver is attached to the viewing grid used to monitor each soldier.

From the command deck behind the cradles, a lieutenant named Riacin calls down to the general. “All systems are online, sir. We are go.”

“Gentlemen,” Lyme says, “today, humankind takes a great leap forward. You, my faithful servants, are that leap!” He pauses to take a deep breath. “Dolly! Display the satellite feed of the target site.”

The main screen shows the satellite view of a high-value target. All the strategic objectives are marked with red squares, each numbered in rank of importance. The number one target is a transport ship docked in the port of Kazah near the Kontis Marine Base Camp.

“Right on time, General,” Riacin says. “Our intelligence agents report that a skeleton crew of security guards is about to come on duty. We will have one hour.”

Lyme puts on aviator glasses and tugs at the dog tags around his wrinkled neck. “Dolly, confirm the lieutenant's analysis.”

“Analysis confirmed,” she says. “The window of opportunity is fifty-nine minutes, forty-seven seconds, and closing.”

“I am aware of the window,” Lyme says. Although the clock is ticking, he doesn't seem rushed. So typical of my father. “Alpha Team, this is your most important mission, the one that will decide the fate of our righteous revolution and ergo, the fate of the very planet.”

Behind him, the multinet screens flash a dozen different vids. Some screens show the Plains of Tharsis. Others display the seas around the old capital city. Others still, towns in the deep canyons of Marinis. It doesn't matter what the scenery is because the items of interest are the massive craters in each vid.

Craters left by Crucible strikes.

“As you may know”—Lyme continues as the images of carnage display on his face—“for the past two months, the Coalition of CorpComs under the leadership of General Mahindra has been the source of random attacks by a destructive weapon termed the Crucible. We now have intelligence that a key component of this weapon has been stolen and is being smuggled on a transport ship. It is your mission to meet that ship and intercept the cargo when it is off-loaded. Alpha Team, are you ready for this mission?”

“Yes, sir!” we shout in unison.

“Alpha Dog,” Lyme asks me, “are you ready?”

“Yes, sir!”

“You're ready?” He looks me up and down, searching every centimeter of my uniform and armor, as if some flaw will suddenly reveal itself. Then without warning, he draws his sidearm, a .410 shotgun load pistol, and presses the muzzle against my heart. “Then get ready to die.”

CHAPTER 4

The Hive

Olympus Mons

ANNOS MARTIS
239. 2. 19. 10:13

 

 

Boom!

The cartridge explodes against my chest, the black powder expelling ten-millimeter buckshot at five hundred meters per second, the force slamming my shoulders back. Any other man—any other Regulator—would have had his chest vaporized.

My armor reacts, solidifying beneath the blow, thickening, then thinning and spreading the force of the strike across the nanofibers of my symbiarmor.

I don't twitch a muscle. Symbiarmor absorbs all energy and dissipates it. Like the rest of Alpha Team, I'm wearing the best armor that money can buy.

“Dolly.” Lyme slides the pistol into its holster. “The results.”

Lyme believes that his AI sees all and knows all—but he's wrong.

“Affirmative,” Dolly replies, her visage displayed on the main multinet screen that oversees the cradles. The face is not real. It's an amalgamation of profiles meant to look like everyone and no one at the same time. The effect is a face that looks beautiful and completely alien. “Data displaying now.”

Lyme checks the multinet screen. I'm still connected to the cradle via two probes, one on my wrist, the other clipped to the tip of my index finger. The data from the probes is displayed on the screen.

“General,” Riacin interrupts. “The window of opportunity is closing.”

“How did he perform?” Lyme asks Dolly, ignoring Riacin.

“Data suggests that the symbiarmor is performing at one hundred percent efficiency.”

“That's the suit. What about the man inside?” Lyme jams the pistol under the bare skin of my mandible, digging it into the nerve bundle that should cause excruciating pain. It does, technically, and I will feel it later, once the connection to the Leash is broken. “Does that hurt, soldier?”

“Yes, sir!” I shout.

“How much?”

“Not enough, sir!”

Lyme whispers in my ear. His breath stinks of decayed teeth. “Are you ready, Jacob?”

“Sir?”

“Jacob.” Lyme whispers again. “I asked if you are ready for this mission. As your general, I have to be able to trust you. Can I trust you, Jacob?”

“Sir, I do not understand.” I don't move. “Why do you refer to this soldier as ‘Jacob'?”

“You are not Jacob?”

“No, sir!”

“You are not a Regulator?”

“No, sir!”

“You are not called Durango?”

“No, sir!”

“I don't believe you,” Lyme says. “Dolly, pull up all Alpha Dog files marked for deletion.”

“Files are loaded and ready for display.”

“Start the process.” Lyme snaps his fingers, and the image of a tall, lithe Regulator with blond hair pops up on the multinet monitors in the cradle room. She peers into the scope of an armalite, exhales, settles the red dot over a target five hundred meters away, and fires. A hole appears through the bull's-eye.

Her name is Vienne.

“Soldier!” Lyme spits while the image file runs in a loop behind him. “Do you know this person?”

“No, sir!”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, sir!”

Lyme jabs the pistol into my jugular. “I think you're lying!”

I swallow, my Adam's fig pushing the metal tip away from my throat. “This soldier is incapable of lying, sir!”

I can't tell a lie, but I can think one.

Lyme checks the screen. “Dolly?”

“Data from the telemetry functions in his armor suggest that he is not being completely truthful.”

“I think, then,” Lyme says, “he needs more stress.”

Lyme snaps his fingers again. The screens switch to another image. This time, Vienne is opening fire on a girl with bright pink hair. Her name is Riki-Tiki, and she died in my arms. Or did she? I'm not so sure now. Her screams fill the cradle room as she teeters on the ledge of a broken window and then falls toward a torrential wall of water. The video freezes on a tight shot of the girl's face.

The volume of her scream increases, filling the room until Lyme himself winces. He gags, a fist tight against his mouth, then his chest shakes as a series of deep, wet coughs wracks his body. He makes a slashing motion across his throat, and Dolly kills the sound.

“You remember that, don't you?” he says through a handkerchief pressed to his mouth.

“No, sir!” I shout. I thought I knew the girl, but now I'm sure I do not.

“The death of a young lady in your care?” Lyme says. “You were responsible for her, and you failed to keep her alive. How does that make you feel?”

“Nothing, sir!” It's true. “I feel nothing!”

Lyme grabs the pinkie on my right hand and torques it so hard, the joint pops. “Where did you get this finger?”

“This soldier was born with it, sir.”

“How can you be so sure?” Lyme grabs my left hand and pushes it under my nose. “Do you remember where
this
pinkie finger went?”

“Sir, this soldier remembers his mission directive, sir.”

Lyme glances back at Riacin, whose knitted brow signals his concern. “What is your problem, Lieutenant?”

“General?” Riacin says.

“As aide-de-camp to Project MUSE, you are here to monitor Alpha Dog's progress.” He stifles a cough. “So advise me, please.”

“General, the window of opp—”

“His progress!”

“Progress, yes. His progress.” Riacin clears his throat. “I'm very pleased with the progress he has made. There seem to be no anomalies on his brain scans, especially the P-waves, which show unconscious thought activity, leading me to believe that the last erasure procedure produced no lasting ill effects. I predict a successful mission, if the window of oppor—”

“Damn your windows! Alpha Team will make their own! Driver One.” Lyme flashes a self-congratulatory smile. “I believe that we have tested Alpha Dog enough. Give the order, Dolly.”

Dolly appears on all monitors. “Alpha Team, execute order orange-charley-alpha-niner. Thanos directive is in effect.”

In unison, our heels clack together, and we snap off a salute. “Yes, General!”

“Excellent!” Lyme gives me a hardy pat on the cheek before I begin the march to the flight deck. “It is time to put an end to the Crucible before it kills us all.”