Transcendence (72 page)

Damn
, he thought.
Damn, damn, damn. I let success and movement blind me
. He opened the BW he and the Sotoi Guntai commander had set up as their instant-access priority line, secure from anybody except whoever was responsible for the blackout they were operating under.

“
Yes?” the Chinese man asked, his 3VRD equally calm.

“
We have trouble. Are you keeping track of that ARMCo armored battalion?”

“
Yes.”

“
It seems that their general contacted the police here in Tripoli and told them our army is a terrorist unit. . .”

“
I understand.” The face barely reacted. “I will have my recon specialists trace all communications through the feedcontrol center we have captured. Nothing will leak out of this city.”

“
What’ll we do about those rats, er, those ARMCo one-man tanks? I don’t want to see any more slaughters.”

“
Let me handle them.”

Nadir didn’t like the ominous tone in his co-commander’s voice. Still, he knew extreme measures might have to be taken, and the Sotoi Guntai would be less inhibited than he.
I’ve got to toughen up
, Nadir thought,
but I’ve seen enough death. Dammit! All those tanks!

He nodded to the man, who promptly disappeared. A boy soldier near Nadir, dark-skinned and thin, turned his head a little until he caught sight of Nadir, then hurriedly looked away. Sweat streamed down the sides of the soldier’s head and neck. His sand-camo helmet slipped to one side since its straps weren’t snapped together; in fact, Nadir noticed a general slovenliness about the soldier. By comparison, the Sotoi Guntai were a magnitude more disciplined.

Nadir’s aiming eye began to twitch as he wondered what would happen if his other allies turned against him as the ARMCo general had. That forced him to think of more immediate dangers, of the new twist engendered by the info leak, of 120 rats moving among his army. Potential fifth columnists.

“
Ah, Valentine’s,” he grumbled. “Blast them to hell if they don’t understand. Damn!” He opened the BW to the policeman and, at the same time, a general short-range band that the soldiers around him would feed.

“
I’ll give you one minute to surrender and stay free men. After that, we’ll be taking prisoners. What—”

The gas guns opened up all at once, smashing the white plaster tiles that covered the walls. Chips of plaster and underlying concrete and wood exploded into the hallways, knocking out light strips overhead and drawing blood from the NKK men.

“
Well, defend yourselves, goddammit!” Nadir 3-verded.

The firefight heated up again. Nadir shook his head as he watched the dozen young men stick their rifles out into the line of fire without looking—using the weapons’ pov sights—and let loose like children playing a game. All this noise yet no casualties, Nadir thought. He ducked as enemy fire from the connecting hall worked its way along the wall toward him, studied the pattern the police had cut into the smashed wall, then picked the proper moment.

He launched himself on his belly, sliding into the middle of the adjoining passage to get a clear view of the enemy. NKK plasma-bursts were making a real mess of the walls and ceiling, turning plaster and lumnistrips into smoke and dust and fire. Four heads occasionally peeked out of doorways—
They must not have pov sights
, Nadir decided as he sighted and fired, sighted and fired, sighted and fired. Two uniformed police and one plainclothesman sprawled on the floor as NKK bursts continued to shred the walls. The fourth head poked out. Nadir pulled the trigger. The police squad leader crumpled to the floor. It struck Nadir that the man would never again transmit his staticky 3VRD.

“
Stupid bastard,” Nadir said. His eye began to twitch again. He sent out a trace-locator and couldn’t ID any more police, though that didn’t mean much. He couldn’t trust anything EarthCo had supplied him with.

“
Hold your fire,” he commed. “Casualties?”

As the first boy reported, Nadir felt more than heard a heavy whump travel through the floor. He stood. A ball of smoke rolled out from an open doorway that bore the symbol of a staircase. Before Nadir had a chance to react, the Sotoi Guntai commander’s 3VRD appeared.

“
The ARMCo tanks have surrounded the feedcontrol building,” the man stated. His face revealed anger and frustration. “I apologize for not moving soon enough.”

“
No apologies! Just keep them from ruining what we’ve taken.”

Nadir opened an allband BW. “All units, we have a problem with the ARMCo one-man tanks that joined us last night.” Another shell hit the building, then another. Then the pounding became constant, like rolling thunder.

“
All units engage headcard defenses. Units inside feedcontrol building, move toward the center. Outside units
. . .
destroy any ARMCo tank that won’t surrender. Don’t offer quarter unless requested.” Damn. “Try not to mark any civilians!”

The lights went out and red emergency spots flicked on near the staircase doorways. Dust billowed through the air. Nadir felt the floor shake beneath his chest and pelvis. He began to feel useless. That wouldn’t do.

Nadir rose to his feet and ran back toward the auditorium. Inside, he encountered pandemonium. The plastic chandeliers had fallen, most of the ceiling now carpeted the floor, and dust glowed dull red as emergency lights set it ablaze. Nadir 3-verded Tilden, the net tech who was trying to access the center’s ganglia.

“
No way!” she said. “They sabotaged all the machines that serve the ganglia with some crazy virus. Crashed the card of my best tracer. My guess is this place will be useless to us for at least 24 hours.”

Damn
. Not only weren’t Nadir’s plans flowing smoothly anymore, they’d ground to a halt like gears trying to mesh in desert sand.

A long crossmember ripped loose in the ceiling, and Nadir barely had time to shout out a warning before it crashed to the fivesen-equipped seating. Metal and hardware shot through the air as people screamed in anger and pain.

But when the sound died out, Nadir realized the shelling had ended.

He opened the line to his partner. “How do we stand?”

“
Only nine rats surrendered. Take a look.”

The man linked Nadir in to the pov of a circling whirlyjet. Tripoli was a city changed. Now it looked like everything else Nadir had created:

A dozen tall buildings smoldered from craters in their sides. Between the towers, ground armor burned with the energy of ultrahard plastics hit with high energy. The streets were blackened and littered with rubble. Human figures lay strewn near building entrances, unmoving. As the pov continued to take Nadir through the city, he saw a whirlyjet projecting from a wall of shattered glass, fire raging all around the accident scene. Shattered treetrunks and smoking foliage were all that remained of one tree-lined boulevard; seven ARMCo rats blazed amid a moonscape of heavy plasma-hits and rocket blasts. Everywhere, light personnel cars burned.

Nadir flicked off the feed.

“
How much did we lose?” he asked. His wrists hurt, and when he looked down, Nadir saw his hands were clenching his EMMA so hard the knuckles gleamed orange in the weird light.

The commander began a litany of damages and casualties. Nadir felt himself slipping away, considering how simple it would have been, how many lives he would have saved, if only he had ordered his army to crush the rats last night. But he hadn’t, and their general had sent messengers ahead, and the city had set a trap. Nadir had led his men right into the jaws of that trap. His trembling increased faster than he could control.

Something snapped within him. Nadir found himself long seconds later, his throat raw from screaming obscenities at everything from EarthCo War Command to everyone whom he had watched falter in action. He stood gulping dusty air. A large portion of the wall collapsed beside him, and he only watched.

“
All units,” he 3-verded, somehow finding enough calm, “time to move onto our objective. Infantry battalions A and B! Have you secured the shipping ports? Report.”

“
Yes, sir!” a snappy EarthCo Warrior’s 3VRD responded. “No casualties, sir! Three big hoverships at dock, and one waterscrew-driven cruise ship.” He laughed at that, but only for a moment. “Several dozen smaller vessels good for high seas, or so our P-Navy Captain says. We knocked out an ARMCo cruiser’s server before they knew what hit them. Sotoi Guntai are boarding now.”

“
Good, good. All units, prepare to board vessels at port. Home in on Infantry A and B.” He narrowed his band and singled out the net tech.

“
Are we still in blackout?” he asked.

Her 3VRD nodded. “Yeah, us and the whole city. Far as I can tell, every server within a hundred kilometers of here is deaf and mute to the outside world. How are you doing it?”

“
It’s a secret,” he said. He shut down the BW and opened the secure line to his co-commander.

“
Will you please take over for a few minutes? I’ve got to get my head together. You know the plan.”

“
Yes,” the Sotoi Guntai said. The 3VRD face tilted and the eyes squinted. “Did you hear that we are at war?”

“
What?” It didn’t make any sense to utter that.
Of course we’re at war!
War against the establishment.

“
We located a detachment of EarthCo Warriors who landed last night by airship from Berlin. Seems EarthCo and NKK have declared a war between all units of all planets and every vessel between.
Real
war.”

Nadir began tracing his steps out of the auditorium, toward the main exit. “Are they misinforming you because they see you as enemy? What does this mean? How did it start?”

A sudden misgiving hit him in the gut:
What if we started an interplanetary war?
That was the last thing he had intended. He could hardly breathe.

“
The feed I studied seems unadulterated. It seems there was an exchange of nuclear atrocities between EConauts and Neptunekaisha forces at the edge of the solar system. All of Earth and Luna are battling as we speak.”

Nadir stepped past rushing soldiers into a smoke-filled staircase and began descending to the main floor. A hole in the wall cast a cloudy beam of white light into the shaft, and Nadir looked out at what appeared from this pov to be a city at peace. He felt numb. Automatically, he powered up the audio program; shouts and collapsing architecture transmuted into orchestral cacophony. That didn’t soothe him much, so he turned the volume down a bit.

“
We’ll never get across the Atlantic,” Nadir said as he started back down the stairs. “No matter if we’re blacked out, visual imagery will pick us out as soon as we launch. Our—”

“
I’m not prepared to abort the mission,” the commander said. His face went hard and emotionless.

Nadir watched the 3VRD float beside him down the steps like a ghost—that of a bloodthirsty Sotoi Guntai somewhere outside, waiting for him to falter, poised to swoop down and devour the weak and take over to fulfill his own objectives.
Well, dammit
, Nadir thought,
he won’t see anything weak in me
.

“
We’ll have to cross at intervals,” Nadir said. “No communications between vessels. Make sure no vessel is carrying too critical a number of men. . .”

As he continued detailing the strategy, Nadir stepped out into broad sunlight. He had to squint. From ground-level, Tripoli looked like any of a thousand battlefields Nadir had observed during boot-camp. He marched out toward a dust-storm created by the Sotoi Guntai whirlyjet he had ordered. To protect his eyes, he shut them and pointed his rifle ahead, using its pov camera to guide him to the craft.

Just before he boarded, Nadir was struck that no one had questioned him since the rat attack. Even NKK soldiers who knew their masters had declared war against EarthCo were doing as he said.
Of course, we’re planning to invade the US,
he thought. A shiver raced through him as considered the depth of his treasonous intensions, but he wouldn’t doubt himself anymore, not until the moment of his death, not until he’d executed justice on behalf of two hundred murdered villagers and his own soldiers lost to entertainment.

The whirlyjet’s crew opened the craft’s door. Its roaring exhaust sounded like a whole section of bassoons as his program made music of the sound of death.

One foot on the craft’s well-worn step-rung, Nadir halted. He reached under his uniform shirt, whipping in the downdraft, and removed another medal from the vest. Two to go before he was free of them.