Ocean in the Sea Page 32

  “I don’t understand it,” complained the farmer. “Aircraft do not simply fall from the sky for no reason. It must be the Americans. Yes! They must have a new weapon. Perhaps they are testing it!”

  “Does that thought worry you?”

  “Of course it worries me. Does it not worry you?”

  “If the Americans attack us, they will fight against those who fight back. Will you fight back against them?”

  “I am a simple farmer,” said the man. “I have nothing to fight with. But if there is war, there will be famine. It is for my family that I fear.”

  “No harm will come to your family.”

  “How can you know that? Who are you?”

  They had not exchanged names. There had been no reason. “I am Zhang Lin,” said Senjiita. “Accept my humble apology. My words were intended to ease your fear, but you are neither ignorant nor a child. You are correct. War brings famine and destruction to all of us.”

  Senjiita wished, for a millionth time, that he could target his interface more accurately, but he could not. If he could know a Japanese soldier from a Chinese civilian by their auras, he might be able to free these people, but his power was limited. He could scour this entire world clean of simulant life, killing them all, but he could not do so discretely. There was little he could offer the people of his host. Freeing them would require years of concentrated effort, and in the end it would only result in a recalibration. There was no point.

  “I am Yang Shi,” said the farmer. “If I may ask, elder, why do you travel to Daging?”

  “I am searching for friends.”

  “Family?”

  Senjiita chuckled. “I suppose you can call them that, yes.” They were the closest thing to family he had. And they did care for each other. They had to. No one else would care for them. They were orphans of the ring, and what better family for an orphan than other orphans?

  “There is something ahead.” Yang Shi sounded worried. “There is a line of traffic. Guards are out. They are checking everyone. You have papers?”

  About to answer that he did not, Senjiita suddenly detected a collection of fast-moving auras come from the east. Six people clustered together and low to the ground. At this speed, it could not be a helicopter. It was probably a transport plane full of soldiers. Opening his host’s eyes, he searched the eastern horizon and spotted the black dot. It was an odd looking plane, much like the older Nazi stealth bombers. Perhaps that’s what it was. The Japanese did purchase weapons and arms from the Germans. If it was, then they’d raised the stakes to a new level, throwing a larger investment into solving the mystery he’d provided them. This was not unusual. In fact, it was typical. From here forward, he could expect worse.

  Targeting the auras in the plane, Senjiita pushed and blew them out.

  Extraction

  Senjiita’s directive of death slipped through the windows of the X-423 like the silent scream of windless hurricane. There was no defense and no forewarning, only the swift merciful termination of the sub-thread binding an instantiated object’s mentality to its corporeal existence. Captain Q and Major P collapsed in their chairs. Their bodies – still rendered by the system’s matter simulation routines– engaged their terminal protocols, ending heartbeat, respiration, and allowing cellular activity to fail slowly in a long process of individual death and decay.

  “Contact,” said Arsus. With a push of his interface, he phased Major P, letting gravity pull his body through the belly of the plane. Taking the evacuated pilot’s chair, the Deputy Director toggled the autopilot and grasped the yoke, ensuring they maintained altitude. So swift were his actions that the plane’s pitch and yaw remained completely undisturbed. “Beloris,” he called over the mic. “The canaries are dead. Go now.”

  “Da. On my way.”

  Canaries. Lewis clenched his jaw. So they’d meant the pilots. What an asshole. Glaring angrily toward the cockpit, Lewis climbed to his feet. Garibaldi couldn’t have cared less about the ‘mission-necessary expenditure of resources,’ but the man Lewis Herman had once been squirmed at the unwarranted betrayal. These were allies and warriors who would have fought and died for them, worthy of better than this. Shuffling forward, he stopped behind Arsus. “You let them die,” he said accusingly.

  “Yes, I did. Are you planning a morality lecture?” Flipping several switches, Arsus closed the bomb bay doors and activated the rearward belly-cam. “You do understand that they’ll both be back when recalibration completes? And that their memories of this will be erased?”

  “I… yeah,” grumbled Lewis. “I get it. That doesn’t make it right.”

  “If you’re worried about right and wrong, then you should concern yourself with Senjiita. With his jump-timer reset, we could lose him forever, and whose fault is that, Lewis?”

  What a prick. “What about this guy?” Lewis put his finger on Captain Q’s neck, checking for a pulse. There wasn’t one, not a trace.

  Ignoring the question, Arsus pointed to the instrument panel. “There goes Beloris.” On the central display screen a blur dropped toward the muddy farmland below. Curled around the metal case, the big Russian fell with momentum borrowed from the plane and hit the ground hard enough to shower dirt for a dozen meters. Bricked solid by his interface, he bounced and skipped over the fields several times before slowing to a halt. Incredibly, he came out of the roll straight to his feet and began walking.

  “All he has to do is follow the breadcrumbs,” said Arsus.

  “You mean the corpses.” Lewis curled his upper lip in disgust. “Is this some kind of sick policy you guys have? Senjiita murdering people so you can find him?”

  “They’re only simulants.”

  “So am I,” said Lewis. “I’m no different than they are.”

  Arsus’s helmet shook to either side in disagreement. “You’re deluding yourself, child. You are a one of us. If you had come from this simulation then its recalibration would restore you, but you didn’t and it won’t. You may not be Paradisian, but we share the same rules, the same strengths, and the same weaknesses.” Changing the screen’s view back to the downward facing belly cam, Arsus paused in thought and looked back, covering his mic. “I know you’ve been talking to Jenny. What are your intentions, Lewis? After this is over? I’m well aware of her growing discontent. She is not my daughter or my kin, but what is that anymore? I care about her. What will you do?”

  “I don’t know,” admitted Lewis, somewhat surprised Arsus would admit to caring about anything other than capturing Valon. The bastard was a killer, a thief, a liar, and as Godless as the old Lewis. Yet, despite its repugnance, Garibaldi’s leaking memories inferred that he was not this man’s judge. It was not his place, and everyone deserved a chance. Sometimes good people did bad things to prevent worse things from happening to better people. “Jenny wants us to stay together,” he said in the deep voice of his host. “She wants a human companion. I think that might be good for me too. I’m… not who I once was. I need to find myself.”

  “Self discovery. Cute. I can see that as a motivation, but…”

  “IT IS NOT CUTE,” snapped Lewis. “It’s necessary.”

  “Semantics,” sighed Arsus. “A trick of language. I am not the best at it. Language is Randuu’s obsession. Mine is power, specifically political power. Let me provide you with some advice. If you and Jenny split from us, you are on your own. Without Valruun, you will be separated on your very first jump. And though you may try to make that first jump last as long as your hosts may live, the length of it will pale in comparison to your separation. You will be lost, Lewis. You may search forever and never find each other, or us. You, Lewis Herman, will be alone. And without someone to remind you, in your isolation you will eventually subjected to the insanity of Nastarii.” He pulled back on the wheel in front of him and turned left to circle around.

  “I can’t wait.” Lewis faked a shiver. “You’re getting me all excited.” Jenny had told him the same. It looked like a shitty futu
re, but sticking with Arsus and his crew felt like a shitty alliance, and there were undercurrents he didn’t like, a feeling of being controlled. It was like travelling with overprotective parents that wouldn’t let him make his own mistakes even though that was the only way he was going to learn anything. He’d remain a child his entire life. That was just as unpalatable as being lost in the ring. The nice thing about Jenny, was her inexperience. They were peers. They could learn together. He wondered if there were others like them, new to the ring. “How often you run into other jumpers?”

  “Not often. It was more frequent at first, but the further we’ve gone, the more scattered we’ve become.”

  “And you’ve been following Tanandor this entire time? Since Paradise?”

  “Yes. We’ve been hunting him.”

  “How?”

  “Valruun’s interface. He checks the conduits once we jump into a simulation, and he can ‘feel’ Tanandor’s touch on them. We’ve used the same conduits he did, although, unlike Tanandor, we don’t know what type of simulation we’ll end up in.”

  “Interesting. But this time you’ve jumped ahead of him. How did you know Tanandor would come to this simulation when he jumped?”

  “Because your simulation only had one writeable conduit, and it led here. It was a dead end. Lot’s of reads, but only one write. That’s why we were able to engage this trap. Jumping ahead of Tanandor was a bit of risk, I admit, which is why we left Heticus behind.”

  “One conduit?” Lewis mulled that over. “Is that normal? Why weren’t there more?”

  “It is very uncommon.” Arsus pinched his lips and frowned in a moment of doubt. “I’d guess that your simulation is a copy of this one. A duplicate. Maybe a sub-sector designed to trace a specific historical deviation.”

  “If that’s true, then this world’s history is the real one.”

  “Real.” Arsus snorted and shook his head. “The events in this simulation may occur with more frequency, or maybe it was the base simulation for another series, it’s impossible to know, but it’s no more real than any other. They’re all simulations.”

  Jenny interrupted, shouting over the mic. “Radar signatures getting closer.”

  “Damn.” Arsus checked his sensors. “Can’t see anything with Jenny bending the beams around us. Our radar gets warped too, and if they’re close, they might have a visual on us. Have a look around.”

  Lewis craned his neck and stared out the windows. “Skies are clear. They must be on our six.”

  Arsus toggled the rearward cameras. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  “Senjiita!” Beloris shouted. An old man had jumped from a cart on the road, waving his arms in greeting as Beloris approached. As they grew closer, Beloris called out Paradisian. “Ak ath mak asth ar tamoris devfar.”

  Replying in the same language the old Chinese man called back. “Forgiveness, my old friend, though I never expect you to forget, I will still ask it.”

  “And you can keep asking.” Beloris smiled. “But I am glad to have found you.”

  “Who is this?” Yang Shi asked Senjiita. The peasant looked understandably worried. After all, Beloris had fallen from the sky with no parachute and then simply walked to the road, and now this strange language.

  “He is a friend,” Senjiita answered in Mandarin. “I will be going with him.” He bowed to Yang Shi. “I thank you for your help, and wish you and your family good luck.”

  Yang Shi bowed in return. “Then I shall go. Good luck to you, Zhang Lin.”

  A beeping sounded from Beloris’s case. Opening it, he pulled out a radio. Listening for a second he turned and swept the horizon with his eyes. “Aircraft.” He pointed. “There.”

  “Indeed.” Senjiita peered at the distant jets. “I’ve been taking them out.” Senjiita frowned. “Unfortunately, the Japanese have decided to send drones this time. It was inevitable. Simulants learn eventually.”

  Grunting, Beloris spoke into the radio. “They are unpiloted, Arsus. Does your magic black jet have any weapons?”

  “No. I had them removed to make room for the booster rockets. Hold on. I’ll have Jenny block their radio connections. That ought to drop them.”

  After Arsus explained what he wanted, Jenny came back on over the channel. “I can’t do that. There are surface to air missile installations all around us. If I stop bending their beams, they’ll fire on us, and I can’t multitask like Randuu.”

  “Can’t you phase them?” Lewis suggested. “Let the air pass through their wings and they’ll have no lift.”

  “That would work,” grumbled Arsus, “if they were in my range, but they aren’t, and at these speeds, I probably won’t be able to get a grip on them anyway.”

  “Good to know,” muttered Lewis. Squinting as they came into view, he recognized the drones via Garibaldi’s memories – Yamazuki-class jets piloted by Kanakino A.I. and armed with short range Hakuhyō rockets. Without radar, they’d be remote piloted by camera, but the rockets could still fire line-of-sight. “I guess it’s up to me.” Lewis activated his interface. “What are the odds they were all loaded with the same faulty ammunition? And what are the odds that the fault in that ammunition will result in premature detonation of their warheads right now?” He pushed.

  White flashes burst over the farmland and all six drones blew apart simultaneously. Flaming debris rained down toward the wet farmland below sending spooked peasants running for cover. The X-143 shook in its turn as the shockwave reached them and Arsus held back on the stick, completing his route back toward Beloris and Senjiita. Slowing and snapping switches he prepared the quad-jets for conversion to hover-mode and dropped the landing gear. “Buckle in,” he told Lewis. “I’ve never landed this plane before.”

  “Maybe you should have thought about that before you used the pilots as canaries.”

  Arsus adjusted several levers in the center console. “Maybe you should think of something new to bitch about.” Rumbling vibrations shook through the plane and the roar of the engines increased in pitch. Pushing on the pedals and flipping more switches, Arsus bit his lower lip in concentration. The hilly horizon slowly rose as they descended to the empty field. Rocks and clods of dirt flew from beneath the jet wash. Seconds later, the plane’s landing shocks bounced and Arsus cut the thrust. Lewis felt his stomach shoved into his chest and back into his abdomen as they hit. An alarm went off on the console, one flashing red light.

  “Starboard landing gear,” shouted Arsus. “Blew the hydraulics. Not an issue. We won’t need them after this.” Keeping the engines idling, he opened the belly ramp. Beloris was already running toward them with Senjiita on his back in a fireman’s carry. Lewis met them while Arsus shut the alarm off.

  “Ground forces are on the way from the city,” Senjiita said when Beloris set him down. “This group will be better armed. Too many aircraft have been downed. They’ll have portable rocket launchers. Heat seeking, I would think.”

  “Take them out,” shouted Arsus. “I don’t want them firing on us.”

  Senjiita nodded. “Done.”

  Done, thought Lewis. Just like that. How many had Senjiita just killed with a push? It was inherently unfair. Senjiita was a weapon of mass destruction more horrible than any nuclear device or plague. No one would see him coming. No one could defend against him. He was simply death, and they would simply die. What a shitty way to go.

  “Find a seat,” commanded Arsus. “We’re headed for orbit.”

  Lewis buckled in and found himself across from Senjiita. The old Chinese man raised his hand in the shape of a pistol and dropped his thumb, then pointed to his forehead. “Nice shot,” he said in Mandarin.

  To his surprise, Lewis discovered he understood the language well enough to get the meaning. “Thanks,” he said wryly. “But it wasn’t me.”

  “Who was it?” asked Senjiita.

  The wash of the jets hummed and Lewis felt the ship lift off. It was an intere
sting question, coming from a veteran jumper. He waited until Senjiita had his helmet on before answering the question with a question of his own. “When you jump, what stays behind and what comes with you?”

  Keying his mic, Senjiita answered “Every host leaves a stain, some more than others, Herman Lewis. For you, I suspect the life of this host will be much remembered. It is often so with the first jump. Navigating memories requires practiced care, a talent you have yet to master, or am I wrong, Herman Lewis?”

  In Chinese, the family name came first, remembered Lewis. Given that his own name didn’t fit anymore, maybe he should do the same. Make him feel less like a gimp. Replying in what had to be horrid Mandarin, he said, “Maybe you should just call me Herman.”

  Senjiita nodded as if he understood completely.

  “I’m not who I used to be,” said Herman. “And by that, let me explain in as few words as possible. After blowing your brains out and trapping Beloris in a pit of flaming phosphorus, I thought it’d be prudent to do something about my… violence issues, so I took a shortcut and let the system uncork my skull for a look-see. I know, dumbass rookie move, right? It merged all of Lewis’s memories with Garibaldi’s and built a third personality to dominate them – that’s me. So ‘Herman’ is a way to differentiate me from the old pansy-ass. What concerns me, Mr. ‘killer elite,’ and what I need to know is: will my personality remain after I jump, or will the original Lewis return?”

  Senjiita closed his eyes. “Ah. That I cannot say,” he answered sagely. “Even Nastarii can awaken from a dream, if they recognize they are dreaming. But every mind is different. For you, the truth may not be simple. Your training may hold a clue. Do you remember what Tanandor taught you?”

  “No. Valon – the asshole you guys like to call Tanandor – locked all the memories of my torture inside of dreams. To get to them, I’ve got to relive things. Shit I flat-out don’t want to relive. So far, that’s been a major issue for the biggest part of my core personality. As in, fuck that. I ain’t gonna do it. So what do you suggest?”