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The Man From God Only Knows

By: Adrian Leverkuhn



The Man from God Only Knows
Part I of the Blackwatch Saga
(c)2009 Adrian Leverkuhn

Introduction

In the immediate aftermath of the Drug Wars, politicians within the Northern Tier turned away from the long held position to simply "go after" traffickers. Long, contentious experience with underfunded treatment programs and overcrowded prisons - coupled with the fractious Islamic ascendency after the Secession Wars - left liberal politicians helpless and at a loss to halt their precipitous slide in the standings; neo-conservative forces made huge gains in elections and after a fourteen year hiatus the leader of the ConIsmus party took the premiership away. On a platform of immigration reform and a promised new round of 'get tough' laws against drug users, conservatives swept aside liberal opposition groups and returned to power with a broad electoral mandate.

The first round of ConIsmus Reforms, the so-called Corupus Iurus Civilis, delivered great power into the hands of Law Enforcement. Police officers on the street were given the power to place any person suspected of being in the Northern Tier illegally into one of several newly constructed detention facilities. Little was said at the time though it was widely known; those who were so detained would never be released, would never be seen or heard from again. The facilities so created became known as Manzanars, and their ranks swelled with tens of thousands from the 'Southern Tier' who were caught fleeing the Drug Wars. Rumor had it that most died from forced labor, but reporting on conditions inside the Manzanars was forbidden after a few feeble attempts by frightened i-reporters.

The second element of the first round of reforms was more controversial from the start: police officers were given the power to summarily execute any person found in possession of or using any form of illegal narcotics, along with broad new powers to search for these compounds.

Drug use fell precipitously the first few months after the Reforms went into effect, the number of people caught trying to sneak into the Northern Tier dropped to a trickle. ConIsmus politicians sneered at their liberal brethren, corporate journalists soon lauded the neo-conservatives for rescuing the new republic and reinstituting law and order, but soon rumors surfaced that the police were using their broad new powers to intimidate or eliminate anti-reform agitators and perhaps not a few liberal politicians; even a complacent media couldn't ignore these dangerous new developments.

Wary ConIsmus politicians rushed through a second set of reforms; these simply modified existing code to include an element of due process. A new class of law enforcement officer was created: the Justinian. Though nominally a police officer, Justinians had to have served as a lawyer for a minimum of five years before appointment; the Justinian's job was to go to the scene of all arrests for narcotics use or illegal immigration and verify that the arrest was valid before certifying a suspect for summary execution or internment. And there was one other stipulation attached to the creation of the Justinians: all would be biologically female.

And from this simple twist of fate a tale comes to mind... 

+++++

+++++

Part I

Aurelius Krul-son sat behind an arcing row of tables in the front row of a small classroom; he yawned and wiped a smeary tear from his cheek while other cadets filed-in and took their assigned seats. A fresh spasm tore through the muscles in his neck and he rubbed taut cords of tortured tissue until the pain subsided, then shook his head again as another yawn came for him. He put his hand out and grabbed the edge of the table as he winced through another spasm, this one deep in his back and shoulders. He felt awful, wanted more than anything in the world to go back to the dormitory and sleep for a week. It was not to be, he knew, not with Codex exams less than a week away. He shook his head to clear away the fog, wished once again the PT instructors would back-off from these recent late-afternoon runs.

He opened his notebook – Institute-issued and graded weekly for neatness – and took out a couple of pencils from the attaché case that lay by his feet on the concrete floor. Other cadets did the same as the clock rolled around to 2000 hours, then a door beside the whiteboard opened and the week's instructor – one they had never seen before – walked into the classroom. 

Krul-son caught his breath when he saw her.

The instructor was very short, not particularly slender but by no means overweight, yet she exuded an obvious self-confidence that was positively buoyant; more important and certainly more to the point he thought she was sexy, consciously sexy, like she enjoyed projecting authority through the overt appearance of sexuality – and that made her a very rare bird indeed. She walked up to the podium before the class and laid out her materials on an adjoining table, then grabbed a marker and strode over to the board and began writing:

'Sinn August-dottir; District Attorney's office; law of search and seizure.' Her words, like her clothing, were carefully structured, precise; the lettering and punctuation left by her fine-boned hand was clipped and neat. At first all Krul-son noticed was the curve of her hips, but soon the wedding band on the third finger of her left hand caught his attention, yet even so his eyes wandered back to her exciting form.

She turned to the class and nodded to someone in the rear of the room; Krul-son dared not turn around and it was in any event unnecessary. The Commandant of the Regional Institute would be there in her immaculately starched whites, checking to see how this latest class of rookie police officers responded to their new instructor. She would, as was her custom, leave after the first few minutes of class; meanwhile, the instructor took up a remote and lowered a screen behind her and began reading off the highlights of what she planned to cover during their first morning session.

Krul-son diligently began copying every word she said, ignoring the wedding band he saw on her left hand as best he could, all the while trying to wipe away his impure thoughts with the rigorous rules of procedure that dripped like cool honey from the instructor's icy lips.

+++++

Lunch was always the same: protoplast steak and soy-carb noodles, a four ounce cup of enhanced water, three supplemental capsules of hormones and iodine. Krul-son sat at his assigned table, in his assigned seat; he looked up from his tray from time to time and squinted at the clock on the far wall, then at the radiation monitor. Everything in the dining room was white – the harshest white imaginable: the walls were white; the clock on the wall, the tile on the floor; everywhere he looked it was as if all of them were afloat on a sea of endless white. Everyone in the room... every one of the cadets, every instructor, was dressed in the same blistering white, and all but one had pure white skin. The sole exception was Misogi Kibata, an exchange cadet from the Asiana Confederation; her skin was perhaps a bit darker than his own – if at all – but it was her shocking silver hair that commanded the most attention. She was startlingly beautiful despite the radiation burns on her right arm. For some reason the latest regeneration sprays had great difficulty repairing irradiated flesh.

Halfway through the meal he looked up and noticed Sinn August-dottir walk into the room with the commandant; to Krul-son she seemed almost grimly determined to keep a private joke suppressed and out of sight for as long as possible. The two women walked through the crowded dining room and on into the private dining room reserved for high-ranking visitors. 

'Naturally,' thought Krul-son. His eyes retained the passage of her legs, the soft arcing lifts of her hair, the twinkle in her eyes.

"What did you say?" Pol Dienison said. 

"I didn't say anything," Krul-son said defensively.

"I beg to differ. You said 'naturally'; I heard it quite clearly."

"I'm sorry. I must have been daydreaming again."

Dienison shook his head while he snorted. "Your daydreams are as tired as your eyes, Aurie," Pol said consolingly.

"I am tired," Krul-son whispered defensively before he yawned. "I feel like I haven't slept in days."

"Perhaps that's because you haven't slept in days. If you'll think about it for a moment, you might recall none of us has."

"I wonder if they are making us tired for a reason," Aerrik Aerriksonn interjected. 

"To what end?" Greggor Tarkusson replied defensively.

"I don't know. See how we handle stress, maybe." Aerriksonn shot back, his eyes bloodshot, his food untouched. "I don't know. Why get us up the middle of the day for a run, then to class on an empty stomach?"

They all turned back to their plast steaks, sipped at their water, savoring the precious liquid. Moments passed in silence, each afraid to contemplate the possibilities that lay under Aerriksonn's question.

"I think Aurie has the hots for our new instructor!" Dienison chimed in from out of nowhere.

"What!?" Krul-son jerked away from the insinuation. "No way!"

The other cadets chuckled, smiled at Aurelius for a moment. Tarkusson looked at the clock, mentioned the time; they rose and took their trays to be recycled and formed-up for prayer, then turned to the flag and saluted as they recited the simple pledge of allegiance:

'I pledge my life to God, and to the Republic He hath founded;

His Word lights the path to Justice as He guides us to Life Everlasting.'

They broke formation and walked across the cool concrete to the classroom building.

Krul-son found he could not take his eyes off the instructor all afternoon; her words seemed to hold him and caress him even though plainly there was nothing personal about search and seizure law. When her legs appeared briefly from behind the table he craned his head and took in the shape of them, fought to control the stiffness that grew from his belly, that threatened to spread through his body like a wildfire.

At one point he flinched when Dienison's elbow slammed into his ribs; he jerked to attention only to find that the instructor – along with everyone else in the classroom – was looking at him. There was understanding in her eyes, but something else was there as well. What was it? Mirth? Sorrow? Pity?

She walked from behind the instructor's table and stood before him.

"What are you looking at so intently, Cadet?" she said.

Krul-son struggled to contain the embarrassment that lurked within, waiting to engulf him; he fought to maintain the presence of mind he knew was being measured by those watching outside the room. 

"I ask your pardon," Krul-son began, "but I was lost for a moment."

"Lost?" she replied. 

"Yes. So sorry." He looked down at his notes, dreading what must surely come.

"How so?"

"You said that when a citizen is in the public eye there is no reasonable expectation of privacy. But what about things that may not be visible?"

"Such as?"

"Perhaps something not so readily apparent. Something inside a coat pocket, say, or inside a backpack? You are saying we have the right to search inside those items as well?"

"Of course! Any container or article of clothing which might reasonably be used to conceal prohibited items may be searched! Were you not paying attention?"

"Yes, Ma'am, I was. But are you saying that probable cause to search is overridden when there is no reasonable expectation of privacy? That when a citizen is in public we may search them at any time, without cause, for any reason? In effect... for no reason at all?"

"Effectively, yes, that is so." Her eyes bore into his.

"Oh." He was fascinated by the complex emotions that swirled in them.

"Oh?" She said dismissively as she walked back to her place before the entire class. "Oh? Is this not clear to you all?" Hands on hips, she stood now and looked around the room. "This provision was at the very core of the First Reforms. If you'll recall your basic history, the fourth amendment of the original constitution, by mandating a prohibition against all 'unreasonable' search and seizures, effectively made it impossible for the police to do their jobs. Lawlessness and runaway drug use ensued, society fractured when promiscuity and immorality replaced God as the focus of their lives. God's punishment was swift and vast, was it not?"

There were murmured assents around the room. No one doubted His wrath.

"Well," she said, looking directly into Krul-son's eyes, "I am glad I was able to clear that up for you." She smiled at him and for some reason a shiver ran down his back.

+++++

The weekend's 'ride-along assignments' were posted before dinner on Fritag evening; Krul-son gasped when he saw he had been assigned to ride with the instructor from the DAs office, and stunned when he learned later that morning at dinner that Sinn August-dottir was a Justinan. Cadets had almost never been allowed to ride with, let alone talk to a Justinian one-on-one, and he wondered why he had been chosen. He ate that morning in silence while his tablemates regarded him with a wariness that bordered on awe.

They had two hours of free-time after dinner on Fritags and the cadets from Krul-son's pod usually gathered on the commons patio to gripe and commiserate with one another; they arrived that evening exhausted and with four ounce bottles of water hoarded over the week. They sat in silence, watched the sun rising, and though each longed for bed the need to talk, to spill all the stress that had built during the long week, was overwhelming. The nervousness each felt about Krul-son's scheduled ride-along was all too readily apparent, as well. 

The four of them sat side-by-side, their backs resting on the warming patio wall, lost in thought as the sun rose above the distant, hazy horizon. There was not a tree in sight, for none remained in these latitudes. The Institute had been built on what had once been verdant parkland; now every direction you looked you saw a vast, unremitting cityscape spreading into the shifting seas of a vast desert. The sun rose into an almost perpetually cloudless sky; only a thin veil of permanent hi-altitude smog kept people from being roasted alive if they remained out in daylight too long, and only if their filters remained effective. Though they were all in their twenties each could just remember when things had been different...

Krul-son looked at the reflective domes being built over the more affluent sections of the city and wondered when the poorer sections would be covered. Far across the valley he could just make out the entrance to one of the new underground cities being carved from the guts of a mountain. How many would live there? Would it be habitable in time?

"You know," Dienison said, "I think I understand the reasoning behind the Reforms as well as any, but it makes me uncomfortable to be able to disrupt lives so arbitrarily."

"I know what you mean," Aerriksson said, "but there really wasn't been an effective alternative. Who would advocate returning to the old ways?"

Each of them shuddered; each had bad memories of growing up during the depression and resource wars that followed the secession movement and revolution that killed-off the First Republic. No one wanted to see a return to the anarchy that swept the land as drug cartels pushed deeper into the homeland, as first police officers then the National Guard were swept aside by a drug-crazed tide of blood-thirsty immigrants. Only full scale military intervention had restored order and the remaining people had been more than happy to sweep aside the remnants of a wholly ineffectual government.

"Sometimes I think of quitting," Tarkusson said after a long pause.

"What would you do?" Krul-son said as he looked at his podmate.

"I don't know. Perhaps go north. I hear there are still trees there, and water. And farms... I have heard there are farms. Perhaps one could find a job there?"

"I have heard we are not welcome there," Dienison replied, lost to the irony in his words. "They built a wall some time ago. Besides, how would you get that far north?"

"I don't know. It was only a thought, really."

"Some thoughts are better kept to one's self, Greggor."

"I know, Pol, I know; but this does not seem like such a good way to live."

"It is what it is," Aerikksonn said. "Soon it will be our job to protect this way of life."

Krul-son was uncomfortable, wanted to change the subject: "The Codex exam next week will be miserable."

"Why?" Pol said. "We've been studying the material now for a month!"

"Alright, wise-ass..." Aerriksonn cut in, "... what does section 21.03 describe, and what is the range of punishment?"

"Section 21.03," Pol said as he turned to his podmate. "Theft of Water from Public or Private Land. The actor, with wanton disregard for the public good, appropriates water from any source, either man-made or natural, for their own use. Punishment: less than one liter, 500 credits and 500 days in detention; more than one liter but less than ten liters, forfeiture of all property, twenty years detention; ten liters or more will be adjudicated on site by Justinian, the range of possible sentences imposed may include summary execution if deemed warranted by the Justinian and approved by the Tribonian."

The other three clapped. "Bravo! Well done!"

+++++

"See! Watch Tarkusson's movements!" the Commandant said as she bent over the screen. Sinn August-dottir leaned too and watched the four cadets as they talked on the patio.

"You doubt his loyalty?" Sinn said.

"I have watched him at First Prayers. His eyes wander, like his thoughts!"

Sinn pursed her lips. "We have seen this before. Many cadets become distracted after so long at the Institute. What makes you think this is different?"

The Commandant leaned back in her chair. "Did you not hear him speak of fleeing to the North? Is that not enough?"

"What is your recommendation?"

"Public opinion is waning again; respect for the Police is falling too."

"Yes, we know that."

"Perhaps if an officer were to die, was to be killed, in the line of duty?"

"I take it you mean a cadet? Perhaps one on a training exercise?"

"While searching a house for drugs? Yes. That would be ideal."

"I will take this to the Tribonian, perhaps Montag morning. But I feel she will want to run this by the Senatusconsulta."

The Commandant reached back and rubbed her neck. "That would be a mistake, a terrible mistake, Sinn August-dottir. This must be kept away from all eyes, all prying eyes." She twisted her neck from side to side, rubbed a spot below her right ear.

"Are you alright?" Sinn asked.

"Yes. Yes, but..."

"You would like me to stay with you tonight?"

The Commandant stood. "Would you?"

Sinn stood, turned and began unbuttoning the other woman's tunic. Soon her hands ranged over taut breasts and firm stomach before sliding her mouth down into the moist warmth that had been waiting oh so patiently for this coming together all week.

+++++

Thor Bergtorson, the regions senior Tribonian, looked at the cadet files once again, then at the new video feed from the Institute. As the regions highest law enforcement officer, no one exceeded his authority other than regions two senators – and they only if they acted in concert. He read one of the files, then looked at The Commandant on his monitor; she had never been able to keep her lust in check, and that one simple fact more than any other had always hindered her police work – and her administrative judgment. And he had never once suspected August-dottir of philandering whilst on duty. He knew her eccentricities, knew them only too well, but what he saw now was clearly a dereliction of duty. He watched the two women writhing on the bed, the Commandant's face buried between Sinn's legs, yet he felt almost nothing – just the faintest echoes of memory. All The Republic's Tribonia, all by edict male, accepted ritual castration as a condition of appointment; only male members of the Senate escaped that fate. Now, after listening to the intercepts of their conversation, Bergtorson wondered if the two really were acting alone, if they really planned to keep him out of the loop. He turned up the volume on the feed and listened to their frenzied passion.


The Man From God Only Knows Ch. 02



Part II of The Blackwatch Saga

©2009 Adrian Leverkuhn

+++++

Deirdre Gravvis-dottir and Pol Dienison drove through vacant streets in the city's central district, their eyes fixed on lengthening shadows left by the setting sun. People would be coming out now, leaving their shelters and coming out as temperatures fell, the sun no longer considered a lethal predator. The outside temperature was still f/114, though it would probably fall close to f/100 by midnight, yet already some of the more desperate souls were gathering to begin foraging for food and water. The early worm gets the bird, or so the saying went.

A heavily armed man ran across the street a hundred yards ahead and disappeared in shadow behind an old building. People did not run in this heat unless they really had to.

"Son of a bitch!" Gravvis-dottir yelled. "Did you see the size of that gun?"

"Yah!" Pol squirmed in his seat, suddenly feeling very exposed out here on the street. The air cars were only lightly armored, not designed to withstand assault by First Republic-style weapons. "Shouldn't we call for back-up?"

Gravvis-dottir stopped the car, scanned her display.

"Something's not right," she said.

Pol looked down the street but some part of his mind was screaming 'danger'; he looked to his left and saw movement in the dissolving shadows.

"Oh, fuck," he said. 

+++++

The Watcher looked down into his glass desktop; permutations of probable outcomes flashed across one screen while an overhead image of the street filled another. He focused on the men in the shadows, analyzed the image to determine the make and caliber weapon each possessed and began sorting records to determine who these men might be, what their motive might be.

That was important. Were they simply criminals? If so he would move on. But if not...

Could it be?

The large image he had sent to The Wall, the image on which several other Watchers were now focused, was centered on the police air car stopped in the middle of a downtown street. Red cross-hairs flashed where armed men were hidden. Several were ahead of the police car, but many more were converging in shadows from the rear and both sides. There were now twenty armed men identified as threats by the first Watcher, and all were taking up positions around the police car.

'These are not criminals,' the first Watcher thought. His impulse burst into the network, interrupted the work of hundreds of other Watchers around the world; within a moment all their attention was focused on the evolving scene on the street.

They watched, blinking rapidly one and all, as they recorded images of hundreds of rounds being fired into the police car.

As if something or someone far away had thrown a switch in his head, the first Watcher broke his connection and stood. He blinked rapidly as the feed pouring into his mind slowed to a trickle, then stopped.

He turned and walked from the room.

+++++

Krul-son and August-dottir heard a first plaintive cry for help, then silence. An emergency transponder activated, indicating an officer was dead or dying and automatically sending the location...

"Go!" Sinn shouted when the data began streaming onto the cars central monitor.

Without thinking Aurie hit the thrusters and the car shot a hundred feet into the air and arced toward what decades ago had been called South Central. He looked down at the data screen and noted at least a dozen other cars enroute and he smiled, felt comfort in this communal response, this 'brothers-in-arms' feeling that swept through him. He saw the old Coliseum ahead and cut back power; they were less than a mile out now and were by far the closet unit to the scene.

"Do you want me to proceed, Justinian?"

"Why wouldn't you?" she replied caustically.

"It could be a trap, an ambush, Justinian."

"Of course it is. It is our job, regardless of the danger. Follow procedure and proceed."

"Yes, Justinian."

Airborne, the newest generation police cars could travel at speeds approaching a hundred miles per hour; per standard operating procedure Krul-son swept in low over the scene at maximum speed and let the car's sensors record images, then he banked the car into a hard climbing turn and studied the images that danced across his central display. These images were sent to all other responding units automatically and simultaneously so it was no surprise when the shift commander came on the patrol circuit and began ordering deployments around the scene. 

Krul-son was ordered to orbit the scene at maximum altitude and protect the Justinian unless or until called for. When the car reached its maximum cruising altitude of four hundred feet he flipped on the autopilot and commanded the car to orbit while he studied images that cycled across the display.

The air car on the ground was almost unrecognizable.

Twisted metal frames, shattered carbon-fiber panels, pock-marked lexan, drifting smoke... two bodies barely recognizable as human. He struggled to read the car number, then the command circuit chattered to life...

"All units, area appears clear at this time. Deploy in zone and we'll walk in."

New images came in as other cars overflew the scene; soon it was all too apparent who had been killed and Aurie closed his eyes for a moment as he fought back tears.

"Are you alright, Cadet?" he heard Sinn August-dottir ask. Did he detect compassion in her question?

"Yes, Justinian." He directed his attention to the flight controls and increased the turn angle; as the car banked hard he looked down on the scene as the other responding officers landed and walked toward the shattered police car. Something caught his eye...

"Justinian! There, by the large building on the corner..."

"I see it! Hover and illuminate!" She switched her headset to transmit: "All units, hostiles on the ground, transmitting coordinates - now!"

Krul-son leveled the air-car and set the search-beam to maximum intensity, then centered it on the moving shadows. The central display revealed several men running, but just then one turned and aimed something seemingly right at his face. The display flared as brilliant light flooded the sensor; Krul-son banked hard and dove for the surface as the shoulder launched surface to air missile crossed the distance in less than the time it took his eyes to blink.

+++++

The Watcher rubbed his eyes with a thumb and forefinger, then he delicately fingered the plates grafted to the sides of his skull; they hurt some days more than others, especially when he was off the grid, but now they throbbed insistently, like someone or something was trying to run around inside his head. He blinked his eyes rapidly again, as if the motion itself might somehow clear the pain; when that failed he checked his flight instruments on the central screen and increased altitude another two thousand feet. His craft, a transport salvaged from the First Republic, was leaving the airspace of a region that had once been called the Alps, a country once known as Switzerland; the jet would take him across the deserted remnants of inland Europe and onward across the receding waters of the Atlantic.

A thin necklace of light delineated the coastline from freshly exposed seabed; all human population was now arrayed around the world's coastlines, around the desalinization plants that maintained civilization now that the planets once mighty jet-streams had drifted north -- and were now firmly anchored there. Rainfall and indeed almost all variation in weather was a conspicuous feature of extreme northern and southern latitudes, those higher than fifty five degrees north and seventy degrees south. All agricultural production was centered in those latitudes, which effectively had made the countries once known as Canada and Russia the world's breadbaskets; of more immediate importance, these two regions had proven inadequate to sustain the estimated one hundred and twenty million people that remained on the planet. Production had withered as the climate inexorably warmed. Trapped on a dying planet, the population that lay below the Watcher as he arced over the coastline had perhaps another five years before it faced the finality of extinction.

Unless...

+++++

Krul-son leveled the car and raced between the rooftops of the burned city; the missile had lost contact and was arcing around in the blackness above, trying to find some tell-tale infrared signature to lock-on to. He throttled back and settled onto a deserted street and turned off the car's systems, then looked up at the blazing exhaust of the missile until it went out and its self-destruct circuit activated.

"That was good flying, Cadet," Sinn August-dottir said, her voice beginning to shake. "As good as I've ever seen."

"Thank you, Justinian. I was concerned for your safety."

"Noted. I think you can reactivate power now."

Krul-son looked at the threat receiver -- it was silent now -- then he turned on a single battery and turned on the car's computer. A query instantly flashed on his screen; 

"Status?"

"Nominal," he typed on the tiny keypad. "Resuming flight after restart."

"10/4" flashed on the screen.

Krul-son began the engine re-start procedure and turned systems on one by one; the fuel-cell was low and would need hydrogen soon. 

"We should refuel, Justinian."

"Noted. Proceed."

Shadows moved between buildings to his right; there was not yet enough air pressure to effect a re-start.

"Justinian..."

"I see them."

They were both focused on the shadows to their right... so focused they failed to see the men who walked up to the left side of the air-car. One of the men tapped on the window and Krul-son jumped, turned toward the noise.

One man stood there smiling at him, three others had their weapons leveled at Justinian Sinn August-dottir.

The smiling man made a cutting motion across his neck and Krul-son reached for the emergency transponder; the smiling man drew a pistol and leveled it at Aurie's face. Just then he noticed the smiling man had odd looking metal plates grafted on the side of his bald head.

"Justinian? I..."

"Open the canopy, Cadet."

Krul-son motioned to the smiling man that he was going to release the canopy; the man nodded and stepped back fractionally while motors lifted the canopy. Hot air dense with hydrocarbons burst into cockpit; soon the smell of unwashed humans washed over him as well.

"Your weapons," one of the other men said. "Now."

When they had handed them over Sinn and Aurie were helped from the car; one of the men came forward with a bundle of plastic explosives and began rigging a booby-trap in the cockpit. Another came up behind Krul-son and placed a black cloth sack over his head; he felt his hands being restrained after that, then the crunching of tires on gravel and the high-pitched whirring of an electric motor. He was lifted onto, he assumed, the back of the electric car, then forced down harshly and tied to something cold and hard.

He felt the car lurch and accelerate smoothly away, and only then did he realize he was alone. The Justinian was not with him; his failure was complete.

+++++

The Watcher was high over the Atlantic while he watched these events unwind and it was during this encounter that he first saw one of his brethren, another one of the Watchers that had left years ago, and he knew his intuition had been correct all along.

"These disappearances are not random," he said aloud. They were the first words he had spoken in over fifteen years.

"Things are not," the Watcher said as he got used to the sound of his own voice again, "quite what they seem."

+++++

end part II 



The Man From God Only Knows Ch. 03



He felt the little electric car drop as if it had suddenly come upon a steeply inclined ramp; his body leaned painfully on a metal lip as the car listed into a sudden left-hand curve, and the pressure did not let up for several minutes. His ears popped once, then again, the air at one point suddenly grew cool and dry and he began to shiver. He felt sure he had dropped several hundred feet on a spiral ramp when he felt the transition to a level surface again, and whatever surface there was was as smooth as glass. The car stopped once and he heard the muffled voices of people several feet away, then the car lurched again and resumed its journey.

After what seemed hours the car slowed, the whirring electric motor droned to a stop and he was wrapped in sudden, uncomfortable silence. The air was, however, a little warmer now, and he heard the clatter of construction equipment somewhere not too far away.

Hands gently lifted him from the flat bed of the car, he felt someone tugging at the black cloth hood that covered his face and he winced from the sudden brightness that seared his eyes. It was bright here, wherever here was, yet it was much cooler than the city! His eyes watered and someone gently wiped the tears from his face.

Krul-son blinked, cleared his eyes.

He stood within the center of a small group – several men, one woman – and as they regarded him quietly one of the men stepped forward and snipped off the nylon band that secured his hands behind his back. He rubbed his wrists, shook his hands to wake them from their cold sleep.

A man – another with metal plates grafted to the side of his skull – stepped forward and extended his right hand. Krul-son looked at the man, at the extended hand, and took the man's hand in his. Then the man handed him his sidearm.

Krul-son looked at all the people around him, and they at him; they were unarmed, he noticed, and they regarded him casually as he took the pistol in his hand. What was this? A test? He holstered the weapon and snapped it in place.

The woman stepped closer now, and she regarded him with kind eyes for a moment. It was as if she was deciding not just what to say, but how to say it. At length she held out her hand and took him in tow: "Come with me," she said, her voice full of quiet authority. In an instant it hit him: he had seen her before, but it had been a long time ago.

Only then did Aurie Krul-son take note of his surroundings: he was in a smallish space hollowed from living rock, the "ceiling" was mere inches from the top of his head, the way beneath his feet was smooth, polished stone. The walls were roughly finished yet still looked neat and clean, the way ahead lined with OLEDs that filled the space with brilliant white light.

The woman held his hand and they walked briskly down the corridor; he turned his head once and was startled to find they were alone – the other men had remained by the electric car. He could see them talking, gesturing at the road he must have been traveling on. But they had left him armed and alone with this woman? Why? That made no sense! How could these people consider him friendly when they had just killed two of his comrades?

They walked for perhaps ten minutes through the rock until the woman stopped beside a metal door set in the rock; she put her thumb to a green scanner and the panel flashed briefly, she entered a code and the door slid quietly into the rock. She led him into a very small room, the door closed abruptly behind him; another door was set in the opposing wall yet it did not open.

"Your ears may hurt," the woman said. "Move your mouth like this." Aurie watched as she opened her mouth wide and moved her jaw from side to side, then she pressed another button and he winced as sudden pain pierced the inside of his head...

"What the..." he managed to get out, then the second door opened and the pain subsided fractionally. A silver railway car of some sort filled the next room, which was itself little more than a simple unadorned platform hollowed from stone. He stepped forward and looked down at the tracks and was surprised to see nothing but smooth stone. "Where are the rails?" he asked.

"Mag-Lev," the woman said as they walked along on the platform to the car's door, as if Mag-Lev meant anything to him. "Much faster. Let's go. We have a schedule to keep!"

"What?"

She led him into the single car and again held her thumb to a scanner; doors sealing both the platform and the car hissed shut simultaneously. She led him to a deeply cushioned seat in the empty car and motioned for him to sit. He stood and, his mouth still working to ease the pressure in his head, observed the empty car could easily hold twenty people in such seats and could still accommodate a lot of cargo.

"Quickly!" she said. "You will want to be sitting when it starts."

There was nothing subtle about the cars motion; it accelerated fiercely down to dark tunnel, pushing them back firmly into the deep padding.

"I don't suppose you're going to tell me what this is all about? Or where we're going?" he said after what seemed like another hour.

She smiled at him a moment longer; she held him in her eyes and a smile played through them.

"Not a chance." She took his hand in hers and gave it a gentle squeeze.

+++++

Very few elements of the GPS constellation remained in orbit after the Resource Wars; precise navigation over long distances was almost impossible by older methods such as celestial as the dense, smog-laden upper atmosphere no longer afforded reliable seeing. Dead reckoning tracks were less than useless for high altitude great circle routes over the pole – such as it now was – and even long range radio aids to navigation such as Loran were no longer reliable enough to present a viable option.

The Watcher's aircraft, a Falcon business jet now more than fifty years old, was one of the few aircraft remaining that had a working inertial navigation system, and as such the Falcon was capable of near pinpoint navigational accuracy as long as the balky old gyros head out. He looked at the panel, at the old Bendix FGS-70 flight director that had first seen service with the first jumbo jets of the 1960s, with something akin to wonder in his eyes: there was not one facility left in the world capable of manufacturing equipment of this complexity with such precision – not one.

So much had been lost to the ravages of fundamentalist extremism.

And like so many other things, the Watcher knew he was materially a living remnant of that collapse. He too was a product of First Republic technology, a vast military experiment into human/machine engineering to develop ever faster arrays of super-computers, and as such he embodied all that was evil to the extremists who ruled the scattered remnants of humanity. He looked at the curved horizon, at the thriving agricultural settlements in northern Iceland off his left wing and the verdant mountain ranges of Greenland just now peaking up over the nose of the jet and found it hard to remember a time when these places had been almost uninhabitable due to extreme cold. The Asiana Federation now farmed most of Greenland, of course, and there were rumors they had recently sent fishing boats back to sea in the Arctic Ocean.

The Watcher was slow to take note of the change that was coming over him. He had been disconnected from the grid for hours now and with each passing minute those neural impulses others called feelings – emotions – were gradually coming back to him. Normally his mind was full of the networked responsibilities he had been assigned to cover as an integral part of the grid; now he looked down at his hands and saw them for what they were: flesh and blood and bone. Human. He was human, not integrated circuitry and binary code. He had no idea where or how he had learned to fly, only that he knew how to – instinctively – and the idea vaguely troubled him. As the looming mass of Greenland approached he suddenly remembered flying as something he had learned to do thirty years before – indeed, he found he recognized the shape of the mountain range ahead... Nothing made sense absent memory, and now all memory was a huge black gulf of frozen time.

Disconnected from the grid, memory began to flood back unchecked, emotions came pouring into his mind without pattern or purpose. He panicked as he struggled with the concept of mortality, with death, and his mind tried to jump back into the safety of the network – but there was no connection. His eyes began blinking rapidly now, his breathing became shallow and rapid. The Falcon was on autopilot; without that the jet would have crashed – so complete was the Watcher's disorientation. He fought to control the chaos that threatened to completely overwhelm him.

A shadow passed over cockpit and he ducked instinctively, turned and looked out over the left wind. His eyes fluttered, his heart hammered inside his chest. It was impossible... it couldn't be...

Another aircraft hung off his wingtip but whatever the thing was it looked like nothing he had ever seen or heard of before. The craft was grayish-black and shaped something like a manta-ray, except of course it wasn't alive at all. He saw the pilot of the other craft and his mind reeled... it was as if his entire understanding of the universe had suddenly come unhinged...

It was like looking in a distant mirror, only this reflection moved of its own volition. 

The other pilot was waving his hands, holding up a microphone; still the Watcher looked at this reflection, still he tried to deny the reality that hung motionless off his wingtip.

More motion...

The reflection was holding up a piece of paper.

There was writing on it. "117.5" was scrawled boldly in bright red ink; instinctively the Watcher understood and turned to the radio console under the windshield and adjusted the primary to that frequency. He keyed his microphone: "Unidentified aircraft," the Watcher began, "state your name and purpose."

The reflection was wiping his eyes! What? Was the man crying!

"I repeat! Unidentified aircraft, state your purpose!"

He saw the man bring a microphone to his mouth, saw him key the microphone, heard the other man struggling to compose himself...

"Dad? Dad, is that you? It's me! Jamie!"

+++++

Tribonian Thor Bergtorson drummed his fingers on the duraplast desktop while he listened to Justinian Sinn August-dottir as she finished her preliminary report; he tried to keep his sense of irony in-check while he watched the ring on her left hand glimmer in gauzy light and wondered who she'd set her sights on next...

"To conclude, Tribonian, the men simply disappeared as quickly as they appeared. We were unable to locate even the tire-prints of their vehicle after a few blocks..."

"Why don't you state the obvious, Justinian. This new group is well organized, much more so than any other group we have encountered before."

"Yes, as you say, the point is obvious, Tribonian. What is less obvious is why they took Aurelius Krul-son, and not me. I would think capturing a Justinian would be a high priority for any resistance group..."

"Resistance?! You think these people are that well organized? That resistance is their purpose?"

"It is a possibility we must consider. They evidenced cohesive small unit tactics and excellent coordination."

"Military?"

"Hard to say, Tribonian. I would say that is a possibility as well."

"I had hoped we eliminated that threat twenty years ago."

"Yes, I know, but some estimates conclude that many thousands disappeared when the First Republic collapsed. These personnel have never been adequately accounted for."

"I understand. Anything else?"

"A pity we had no warning," Sinn August-dottir said slowly. She looked directly at her superior while she spoke; the Tribonian concentrated on meeting her eyes, revealing nothing. He dared not allow her to compromise his connection to either the Blackwatch or the Galts.

"Yes. As you say, a pity." He looked at her with cold detachment in his eyes: "How do you plan on conducting the investigation?"

She outlined their plans: to search all the buildings in a one mile radius, to question every man, woman and child in the area, to follow all leads they developed until they found the cadet and carried his captors before God's servants.

"You will keep me informed, I take it, Justinian? As your investigation proceeds?"

"Yes, Tribonian."

He toggled the screen and severed the connection, leaned back in his chair and laughed for a very long time.

+++++

Aerrik Aerriksonn sat with his head down; he tried not to stare at the two empty chairs beside his table in the dining room, but every so often his eyes drifted to them and cold pressure returned to his chest. Pol – dead and now buried; Aurie gone, probably dead. All within a few minutes. Was life really so fragile? So meaningless?

Greggor Tarkusson did not outwardly appear as distressed as Aerrik but his gut burned with virulent intensity as his mind drifted back to Pol's mutilated, bullet-riddled body. He knew well ahead of time the attack would be bad, knew Pol's death would by ugly, and deliberately so, but once it had been discovered that Pol was one of the informers planted by a Senatus committee looking to ferret out potential infiltrators within the Institute they had to act. Greggor knew it was only a matter of time until his activities were discovered; he had dropped off the information to his controller and understood it would only be a short time until an operation was mounted to plug the leak. What was a surprise, however, was Aurie's disappearance. He'd had no clue that was in the works and had no idea why that had been deemed necessary.

"How are you two doing tonight?"

Greggor looked up, saw the Commandant, saw the concern in her eyes; he shrugged noncommittally before standing: "I am better, Commandant."

"Sit...sit," she said before Aerrik could push back his chair. "May I join you?"

"Please," Greggor said. She sat in Aurie's chair and he winced.

"You four were very close. I know that. Is there anything I can do?"

Aerrik looked away... it was as if a vital spark had been snuffed from his life and now he was adrift.

"Is it possible for us to be assigned to assist in the investigation, Commandant?"

She shrugged. "With over four months before graduation? I think not, but I can see to it that you spend weekends in that division."

"Thank you, Commandant."

"Aerrik?" the Commandant said softly while she looked at the boy.

He looked up, his eyes a wasteland of grief. "Commandant?"

"Would you like to speak to a priest?"

He looked away, tried not to meet her eyes.

"Aerrik?"

"I'll be alright, Commandant."

"I might believe that if you were eating your food, but this is two days now, Aerrik, and not a bite."

"I am taking the supplements, Commandant. I cannot hold down my food."

"I see. Is there blood in your stool?"

"Yes, Commandant."

She sighed, leaned back in the chair. "Very well, come with me. We shall have to go to the clinic."

They stood and walked from the table; the other cadets in the dining room looked at Aerrik as he followed the Commandant from the room, then all eyes turned on Greggor. There was confusion in many of the eyes he saw, and he wondered if he had been compromised until Aerrik's words entered consciousness.

"Oh, no," Greggor just barely moaned the words. Of course! No appetite, bloody stool: radiation poisoning. He started to cry, so he didn't see all the other cadets turn back to their meals and resume eating.

+++++

The Mag-Lev car stopped in a huge natural cavern; the air seemed almost icy when Aurie and the silent woman disembarked. Milky stalactites graced the high ceiling as far as he could see, tunnels – apparently new ones – were everywhere and disappeared at odd angles into inky blackness. And there were structures in here! Houses, small to be sure, but houses! He heard a dog barking, a baby crying!

The light was dim and growing more so by the minute... Were they losing power?

"Come," the woman said. "We have a long walk and the sun is going down."

"Excuse me? Did you say the sun?"

"Yes. The light fades. The sun goes down." 

Now Aurie was confused. Was she stupid? Trying to be cute? Could it be that this woman thought he was the ignorant one? And why did she seem so familiar? 

They came to another metal door, this one manned by someone in a uniform, then they walked down a metal tunnel and into another vehicle of some sort. This one was narrow, was barely tall enough inside for Aurie to remain upright, and almost every seat was taken. The people regarded him curiously, like he was something far removed from the routine of their lives.

"Sit! Quickly now, and put on your seatbelt."

Almost as soon as he looked-up from his seat he felt movement, slow, deliberate, and far below the clunking of heavy metal on metal. A turbine-like noise, perhaps some kind of engine spooling up, became apparent. A chime, a flashing light:

"Please put your head back, and your arms on the rest by your side," an unseen voice said.

"What is this?!" Aurelius Krul-son said, his voice was quivering now, his every sense filling with total dread, his brain screaming some kind of primeval warning.

The woman put her hand on his for a moment: "Look out the window," she said, her voice full of expectation.

The noise rose to a thundering roar just before Aurie was pushed back in his seat by an unbelievably powerful force. He just managed to turn his head in time to see the subterranean darkness give way to brilliant sunshine. Barren mountains fell away almost instantly and within moments he could see the curvature of the earth, the pale beige ring of atmosphere still keeping the icy vacuum of space away. The noise abruptly stopped, the landscape below grew greener, lakes appeared – even patches of snow – snow! – remained on the northern slope of some of the taller mountains. After less than ten minutes aloft the craft was descending.

He felt the woman's hand on his again and he turned to look at her again.

"Where are we going?" he said. "Where are you taking me?"

"Home," the woman said. "You're going home, Aurie. We're going home."

+++++

The dark manta-shaped aircraft slipped a little ahead, the Watcher tucked into close formation off its right wingtip like he had done it a thousand times before – which perhaps he had. The line between memory and reality was very indistinct now – he simply couldn't understand how or why his body knew what it did. Conscious memory played no role: if some flight parameter needed attention he was on it – without a moment's pause or the slightest hesitation. He knew. He understood. He had no idea why.

And what of the man in the other aircraft?

'How could I be his father?' the Watcher said.

"Repeat that?"

The Watcher shook his head, scanned the instruments. "What makes you think I'm your father?"

"Dad? Not to evade, but we need to keep radio silence as we close on the coast."

"Of... Greenland?! Why?"

"It's not called Greenland anymore, Dad. Just keep on me. Once we leave the west coast we'll alter course to, uh, a little, uh, to the right."

"What?"

"You can fall off a little, Dad. We've got a long way to go. And don't worry. It'll start coming back soon."

"What?"

But the frequency was silent now, the sun high overhead as the two aircraft flew over jagged mountains and fertile valleys. Fifteen minutes later they left the safety of land again, sun glittered off Baffin Bay seven miles below and scattered clouds not far above the ocean's surface cast deep black shadows on the sea. The radio came alive for a moment:

"Dad, course change in ten seconds."

The Watcher flipped off the autopilot with his thumb, cued on the other aircraft's aileron movement to begin his turn; they settled on 310 degrees and he set the heading bug and toggled the autopilot on again. Another hour and he could just make out sunlight glittering off Hudson Bay a little to the right of their present course. He scanned the instruments, staggered under the onslaught of so much memory coming back so suddenly. Everything looked familiar! Why?!




The Man From God Only Knows Ch. 03



James Bay? Were they leading me to James Bay? Why?!

"How you doing, Dad?"

"I've got about four hours left before we need to find a Texaco station."

"A what?"

"Fuel."

"Copy. We're about six hundred out."

"Shit. I could use a double Whopper with cheese about now."

"A what?"

"Uh, Burger King? Ever heard of Burger King?"

"Negative."

"Fuck."

"Roger that. Is that some kind of hamburger place?"

"Affirmative."

"Don't sweat it then, pops. Mom'll fix you up in no time!"

"Mom?" A swirling kaleidoscope of images filled the Watcher's mind. "Sarah?"

"Roger that, pops."

"Fuck."

"That ain't the half of it, Dad. Not even close."



end part III



The Man From God Only Knows Ch. 04



Part IV of The Blackwatch Saga

©2009 Adrian Leverkuhn

+++++

The Commandant paced back and forth in her office, her hands behind her back, chin almost on her chest; her crisp white uniform seemed so heavily starched the fabric might crack at any moment. Her lips bunched up from time to time and she wrinkled her nose occasionally as if she had passed through an odor most particularly vile. There had been rumors throughout the night that Justinian Sinn's investigation had literally uncovered something of significant importance; indeed, the implications were life-altering -- if the rumors were true. She had been waiting for a report from the field for over three hours, and now she was beyond aggravated.

The sun, now high in the morning sky, was unnaturally bright and temperatures were climbing to make matters worse it was long past her bedtime. The Institute's cadets had been asleep for hours and she was beyond exhausted. She increased the polarization of her office windows and pushed another button, retracted the metal solar-shutters, looked out through the through amber-haze and roiling thermals that filtered her view of the city. Two air-cars approached; one broke off for the city while the other slowed, banked into a hard right turn and circled to bleed off speed. It was Sinn's car, she saw, and the Commandant smiled as it settled in a lot just a few meters from her window. The canopy opened and she watched as Sinn August-dottir climbed into the blistering sun; she watched as sweat formed instantly on Sinn's forehead and she smiled at the all too human truth of such heat.

A moment later Sinn walked into the Commandant's room.

"I've never felt such heat, Aneal," the Justinian said as she made her way to a chair. "It was 150 near Rampart, and by 10:30!"

"Work progresses well, I have heard. The mountains will be ready in time. We will survive." She turned around and looked at the Justinian. "What have you found? Tell me."

"A passage of sorts."

"A passage?"

"Perhaps more a tunnel."

"And? What is so interesting about this tunnel?"

"We went down three hundred paces, came to a sealed door, really more like a bank vault's door. Very heavy, impossible to open without codes. Sensors watched us all the way down."

"You are think you were being watched?"

"Cameras moved as we moved, Commandant. Yes, we were watched."

"And codes, you say."

"There were scanners and keypads, Commandant."

"Who knows of this?"

"Myself and Commander Weblenson, and three officers."

"No more?"

"No, Commandant."

"Have you told the Tribonian?"

"No, Commandant; just Weblenson and the other three know of this." Sinn looked at Aneal, wondered what the other woman -- her best friend and mentor -- was thinking. "Do you not trust him?"

The Commandant shook her head. "No."

That revelation shook the Justinian: "Why not?"

"I'm not sure. Just a feeling."

"Oh."

"Yes. Oh. Woman's intuition. It may be that simple but I feel like he knows something, like he's been keeping secrets."

Sinn nodded. "Yes. I have felt that."

"And perhaps for quite some time."

The Commandant looked at Sinn, and the downward cast of her face, the sorrow that had only recently etched deep lines around her eyes. "I see you have taken the ring off. What do you plan to do now?"

"I'm not sure yet."

"You look sad. I did not think you liked the boy so."

"Yes. Neither did I. There was something about him, Aneal, something I can't quite put my finger on. Some deeper purpose in his eyes. I suspect that was what attracted me most."

The Commandant watched Sinn August-dottir, watched her soft eyes and her delicate fingers steeple as she talked, as the younger woman became almost entranced -- lost perhaps, as if in prayer. She moved to Sinn's side and stroked her hair -- a maternal impulse to be sure, but an impulse as confused as any the Commandant had endured in recent years. She loved Sinn completely but struggled with this most evil of impulses -- the Church regarded such union as heresy, as reason for excommunication and even banishment. She shuddered at the thought; images of others so castigated remained with her from her own time on the force. Bodies withered from relentless solar radiation, some falling to cancers caused by localized radiation from power plants shattered during the resource wars. It was a wasteland now, a wasteland of truly Biblical proportion.

All Bible prophecy had come to pass, hadn't it?

Those non-believers who claimed what had happened was little more than self-fulfilling prophecy had been deluded, and ultimately purged from the body of Christ. What was left had been sanctified, cleansed in the baptismal fount of war and re-birth...

"Was he one of the Taken?" the Commandant heard Sinn ask.

They rarely spoke of such things even now, rarely acknowledged the truth of what had been done in the aftermath of the Secession War, but the Commandant felt she owed Sinn at least this small measure of truth.

"Yes. He was."

"Oh dear God," Sinn whispered.

"Perhaps that is the strength you recognized in the boy."

"Commandant? Could it be that was why he was taken, and not me?"

The thought seemed to hit the Commandant like a blow to the body; it very nearly took her breath away. She walked to her desk and opened a file on her computer and studied its contents. The consequences of failing to act now might well be catastrophic; the boy had been abducted a week ago, and if that was indeed the case there was no telling how deep this went.

Yes, the time had come; they would have to act now. Now and with the full fury of God.

She looked at the link at the bottom of the page one last time before touching it, before summoning a full emergency plenary of the Senatus and the Church, and she wondered with awe in her heart just what might come from all the force she was summoning, ready to unleash on the Unbelievers one last time.

+++++

The Watcher's name had once been Thomas Stormgren, and so it was to be once again.

Reunited with his wife and two boys, the nightmare of the past fifteen years was over; the final phase of a plan almost twenty years in the making was beginning to take shape. Surgery to remove the implants had been painful but regeneration sprays had healed the wounds inside of three days; memory still flooded into consciousness causing short periods of anomie -- and these bouts were always followed by severe hunger -- but slowly the elements of this other world were coming back into focus.

Long before the resource wars, long before the ascendance of Church Elders to total power, before the creation of the Senatusconsultus and the Pandect Reforms, select members of the military from around the world, and limited to those few who had not fallen yet into evangelicalism, had been summoned by scientists and engineers to discuss a radical plan, a plan to save a last remnant of reason from the coming darkness. Resources had been diverted, the first layers of infrastructure planned and built. Even as the resource wars raged, even as the First Republic and the other states of the United Nations began to fail under the weight of devastating population increases and catastrophic climactic collapse, the self-proclaimed Blackwatch organization funneled more and more resources into the implementation of a daring plan.

The earth was, scientists had explained, doomed -- at least as far as continued human habitation on the planet's surface was concerned. Plans to move underground would, they reasoned, fail due to the same reasons life failed on the surface: population pressure and dwindling resources managed by the superstitious and those consumed by other mysticisms. All would be as Hobbes and Malthus predicted; life would become nasty, brutish and short and population pressure would ensure final extinction. Life on earth could be extended perhaps five hundred years by moving underground, but the end would be the same. There had to be another way to keep humanity alive, to keep the flame of reason burning.

That way had come from an unexpected place.

NASAs first Terrestrial Planet Finder orbital telescope, launched in 2012, had revealed scores of worlds within 50 light years that seemed likely candidates for research; of these a few dozen had been by spectroscopic analysis revealed to likely be hospitable to carbon-based life. A second more powerful telescope launched in 2015 had been successful in resolving three of these planets in detail sufficient to conclude that human life might have a chance of surviving on them. They had oceans and land masses filled with snow-capped peaks, rivers and forests and grasslands.

Then the conservative resurgence of 2016, the rise of the American Ayatollahs, states seceding from the union -- all happening as the climate began heating at unprecedented rates and crops began failing globally. Local conflicts spilled into regional wars, emerging superpowers were pulled in to protect failing client states and several terse exchanges of nuclear weapons ensued; concurrently, a civil war of sorts raged within militaries around the world as the forces of evangelism, suddenly emboldened by their total resurgence, began to purge non-believers from their ranks. At that point the Blackwatch organization began moving into prepositioned sanctuaries, but many could not move fast enough to protect their families.

The children of warriors were seized to seed a new generation of evangelical soldiers, these children had been collected when possible after their parents had already been killed. Some were simply abducted and their parent's killed; most were raised in monastic orders, indoctrinated in the ways and beliefs of a new world order, raised to protect society until cities could be built under the earth. Perhaps by then they would be ready to rule their new world in His name when the time came.

The Blackwatch, of course, infiltrated the organs of the new state security apparatus, slipped agents into Institutes around the world and resistance fighters were trained and armed and turned loose to harass local governments, and all these activities were coordinated by hundreds of men and women who had been surgically augmented to interface with networked super-computers around the world. In the end there was little said or done by the Northern Senatusconsultus that was not monitored by the Blackwatch; indeed, most human activity on the surface was eventually fed into the growing Blackwatch network.

And Thomas Stormgren the Watcher remembered everything he ever experienced while connected to the network. 

Everything.

+++++

Aurelius Krul-son's birth name was Austin Stormgren; he was Thomas' youngest son. His mother, Sarah, escaped with his brother James into the Blackwatch network when the great purge began; she had almost managed to get to Austin before the military police arrived at the base school. They learned later that all children on the base had been taken into "protective custody" -- no reason given. She knew enough about the Blackwatch to trust them when they told her they would be able to monitor him, to look out for him. Though heartbroken, she had resumed her work as an engineer for Lockheed-Martin in their new facility in the cold, hard granite five hundred feet beneath the vast Hydro-Quebec facilities near Chisasibi, Quebec. She even had intermittent video feeds of his progress through school, though more often than not these tended to depress her severely for days on end.

As hard as it had been for Sarah Stormgren to lose this vital contact with her son, when Thomas volunteered to move to the Magic Mountain, the so-called Human-Hybrid Super Computer facility located under an old sanitorium outside of Davos, she had been completely devastated. Thomas had the intellect and, quite suddenly, vast time on his hands; there was, you see, no longer a pressing need for pilots. What active military was left of the First Republic had been concentrated in the hands of US Navy submariners; all had effectively made it under the protective aegis of the Blackwatch until they too were quietly disbanded, albeit voluntarily. 

One of the Senatusconsultus' first decrees was to eliminate all military and police who refused to take the new oath of allegiance; this had the unintended effect of driving many undecided officers and enlisted men into covert service for the Blackwatch. By further decree, those high-ranking officers that remained, and that wished to serve government in a high-ranking capacity, had to submit to chemical castration or join a monastic order and work under those restrictions; most of the men and women that chose to submit were, oddly enough, in fact already members of the Blackwatch. 

The Senatus, at first composed of fearful old men and ambitious young women, grew increasingly leery of letting these retired military men serve in any capacity unless neutered; the First Reforms enshrined this trend by concentrating power in the hands of people who knew well the evils of testosterone. The only men in the Senatus were as a consequence, and predictably, chemically castrated; only later was it required that they possess a degree from one of the new theological seminaries. 

Ironically, it was at this time that women in the Senatus and the Tribonia began experimenting with the use of testosterone, and with quite unexpected results. These women soon became territorial and predatory; they fast developed a lust for power that soon grew to heights once seen only in members of the First Republic's senate. A fair amount of sexual predation was rumored to have been concealed by Justinians guarding the Senatus proper in New Jerusalem. Gender identity issues surfaced during this time, particularly with the Justinian class.

It was also during this period that the use of illegal, mostly homemade narcotics skyrocketed. Psychobiologists had long known there was a connection between a propensity to experience religious euphoria and the various addictive disorders associated with narcotics use; academics studying this phenomenon had concluded decades before that areas in the brain that governed religious euphoria were indeed the same regions of the brain stimulated by narcotics -- and not coincidentally that mediated chemical dependence, as well. With the global environment collapsing, more and more people turned away from their painful new reality and turned inward; people either sought explanation and comfort through religious experience or fell into a narcotics induced escape. Human productivity fell precipitously, apathy became the norm until the varieties of religious experience emerged as a practical solution to the problem of narcotics addiction. With the draconian penalties imposed by the First Reforms, religion finally began replacing narcotics use on a vast scale; some critics implied that, in effect, one addiction had been replaced with another, more desirable addiction. But a further benefit emerged, one with more immediate consequences: people addicted to narcotics had for centuries proven to be very hard to control; yet as had been discovered near the end of the First Republic, those subsumed to religion were much more docile and far easier to manipulate for political gain. The Senatus was able to consolidate power globally after that with only token resistance.

The Blackwatch, not coincidentally, elevated reason to the status of religion and banned traditional religious expression. The practical result of this edict was shocking and almost immediate: depression and suicide rates skyrocketed within months, social cohesiveness declined and apathy increased. Clearly, without some sense of greater Purpose the human animal withered and degenerated into chaos -- or Hell, depending on your point of view. The social engineers counseling the Blackwatch were stunned by this finding and had no ready explanation, and no solution to offer.

It was during this transformative period that the last Terrestrial Planet Finder in orbit made its final and most shocking discovery; this event bound together members of the Blackwatch as nothing ever had. 

For you see, the orbital telescope had found, and this quite by accident as it turned out, a sailing vessel adrift in a sea of stars.

End part 4



The Man From God Only Knows Ch. 05



Part V of The Blackwatch Saga

©2009 Adrian Leverkuhn

+++++

Thomas Stormgren shook his head, steepled his fingers reflexively while he listened; his two boys Jamie and Austin had a plan for getting Blackwatch operatives out of Los Angeles. Their idea had some merit, he had to admit; now that the entryway to the Mag-Lev tunnel had been discovered getting these people out had become a priority. It would simply be a matter of days until ConIsmus forces crushed each successive barrier and gained the Mag-Lev platform. The most likely result: the Blackwatch would lose physical contact with the west coast, their agents would be lost. There simply wasn't time to construct a new platform and access-way to get the people out. 

But as is the usually case in such instances, it had become a moral imperative that the Blackwatch try. And Stormgren wasn't so sure there wasn't a girl involved in his son's thinking...

"That's why we go in daylight, Dad," Austin said. "In and out, a fast pick-up. Three transports, four at the most."

"You say that like three or four transport aircraft will suddenly grow out of this rock! Austin, the Skunk Works will have to modify existing vehicles, and that could take weeks." Thomas looked at his son – until a week ago he had been just a fleeting memory – and he hated himself for the pain he saw in the boy's eyes. "Son, we just don't have weeks. Hell, we may not even have days. The surveillance cams showed them moving heavy equipment down to the area around the ramp last night. They'll move on it soon. We just... we're going to run out of time!"

"Can't we blow the access tunnel? Keep them from the platform?"

"And then what, Austin! Come on, think it through! How would you move our people down to the platform?"

"That's not my point, Dad. Simply denying access to the secret is the point. Once the Senatus know the Blackwatch have developed the infrastructure to move people in and out of one city they'll guess all their cities have been compromised! Then what? They found this one using fairly primitive sonar equipment; how long before the others are gone?"

"Believe or not, son, we thought of that once upon a time."

"And?"

"Defensive measures were included in their construction."

"Like?"

"Chemical weapons, for one."

"You've got to be kidding! That's insane!"

Thomas nodded. "I agree, but it's there if we need it. The second option is only partly in place. There are prepositioned arms for a pretty large assault force near the platform, including a couple of tracked vehicles with mini-guns designed to operate in the tunnels..."

"But you said..."

"...that they'd breech the platform soon. Yeah, I know. That's the problem. We'd have to move on that within hours." Thomas paused, looked at his fingers again. "There is one final solution. We send a car down to the platform with a warhead in it."

"What?!"

"Dad?" James said while his brother started shaking. "What about the old airport, the one by the beach? Do they still use it?"

"The old LAX? Yeah, it's there all right. Maybe three of four flights in and out a month, but remember, the city's biggest desalinization plant is about a mile south of it. Heavily fortified airspace, lots of cops and militia."

"What if we could get all our people there? Couldn't we take one of the First Republic jets in with a small assault force, make a fast pick-up?"

Stormgren shook his head. "I remember the security in the area. I know where every camera is, how many security people they have, even response times and patrol patterns..."

"How could you possibly know that, Dad?" Austin yelled. 

Jamie put his hand on his brother's shoulder and shook his head when they made eye contact. 

"Oh. I forgot, Dad. Sorry."

"No problem." Thomas looked away; why was being a part of the so-called Hive stigmatized? He felt it, though, everywhere he went. Like he was different now, suspicious. But his older boy looked excited now, aggressive and excited. "Jamie, you look like you're about to bust.. What are you thinking?"

"A diversion, Dad. Focus their attention elsewhere while we go into LAX."

"The tunnel?" Thomas Stormgren said as a grin stretched across his face.

"Why not?"

"We'll have to pick up about forty people, Jamie. At least. And it'll probably be a hot pick-up." A hot L-Z... wasn't that what the used to call it. He looked at his boys, looked at them the way all father's look at sons about to venture in harm's way. Pride and fear. Pride and... "Now what, Austin?!"

"Well, there's someone I want to try and get."

"Who?"

"Oh, forget about it Dad. Won't work anyway."

Thomas Stormgren looked at Austin. What was the boy thinking? What?

"Dad," Jamie interrupted his thinking again. "About forty, you think?"

"Uh-huh. You have an aircraft in mind?"

James Stormgren smiled. It turned out he did.

+++++

While Tribonian Thor Bergtorson listened to Stormgren, he grew increasingly aware of the predicament he was in – he and all the other Blackwatch secreted in the city. Getting Austin/Aurelius back to Chisasibi in time had been a priority, and a fitting gift for his old friend, but no one had planned on losing the Mag-Lev so soon as a consequence. Now, with the Emissary's departure only weeks away, all their plans, and most developed carefully over the last five years, would have to be revamped, but of most importance, could new escape routes be developed in the time they had left? All their lines of support could be exposed at any minute; security could be compromised at any level, and this meant the end of the line for the Blackwatch on the west coast. 

The Watchers in Davos, Bergtorson knew, were collating information, developing a workable plan based on probabilities and expected outcomes, but no plan was ever perfect, and outcomes were almost never what you expected them to be. Still, he had learned the Watchers liked the initial framework developed by James Stormgren and were busily refining the concept, so he had to accept that this plan – or something close to it – would land on his desk within hours, and he'd have to implement it quickly. 

It was time to activate his network. 

It was time to move.

+++++

"Who is that?" the Commandant asked Sinn. "Is he here in the city?"

They were watching the recording of an intercept of a private comlink coming from Tribonian Bertorson's office, but the audio was encrypted, they had no way to know what was being said.

"There is no exact match on file but the computer has developed probabilities. The most likely match is a man named Thomas Stormgren..."

"What!" the Commandant jumped so suddenly she almost slipped out of her chair. Her voice grew old and rough: "Stormgren?"

"Yes, Commandant." Sinn had learned from hard experience to back-off when the Commandant spoke this way. She looked like a snake, a snake coiled to strike.

"The boy. Krul-son." The Commandant's eyes were dark now, dark with banked-down flames.

"What of him?"

"That was his birth name. Stormgren. Austin Stormgren." The Commandant looked at the screen, then at the Justinian. The girl looked sure of herself, of her facts anyway. What did she know?

"Then, Commandant, we must assume a link exists between this man Stormgren and the Tribonian, and if so, there is a link between the Tribonian and the attack on our officers."

The Commandant nodded, her eyes narrowed to glowing slits. "If you are correct, our government has been compromised at every level."

"Why do you say..."

"Think of it, Sinn!" the Commandant said as she slammed her hand down on the desktop. "The highest law enforcement officer in the region is linked to this tunnel! What is this tunnel? Where does it lead? But more important, we must assume that these people have been using this facility for quite some time, and to move people and supplies in and out of the city. First Republic supplies, am I correct in assuming?"

"Yes, Commandant. Autopsy recovered bullets from .223 caliber rifles, common in that era's weaponry. Probably M-16s."

The Commandant bunched her lips, her eyes burned now, burned with hatred.

"I must go to the Council of Elders. The Senatus may well be compromised." She punched up another screen, typed on her glass desktop and waited for the results to stream on the main wall-screen. "I will fly there tonight."

"What of the Tribonian, Commandant?"

"He must not be alerted. Begin reinforcing our position Westside, surround the access-way and prepare a major assault on the facility for tomorrow. We will move on the Tribonian then, at the same time. I will be back from New Jerusalem by late afternoon tomorrow. I will supervise his interrogation."

A cold chill ran up the Justinian's spine when she saw the look of cold evil in the woman's eyes.

+++++

A Watcher processes intercepts streaming in from Los Angeles and passes these on to the group. 

Plans are adjusted, probabilities and outcomes recomputed. A new strategy develops.

Eyes blink rapidly.

+++++

As ground troops mass around a hastily drawn perimeter in the scorched remains of west-side Los Angeles, an air car hovers above a concealed access-way beside the crumbled façade of an abandoned auto dealership. The pilot concentrates on the scene below; the Justinian behind him is talking to Tribonian Bergtorson, who nominally presides over the operation from the Judicial Ministry downtown. 

"Permission to commence, Tribonian?"

"Permission granted, Justinian Sinn. I wish you the greatest success. And please, be careful."

"Thank you, Tribonian." She changes frequency. "Echo one, go! Blowback, move to stand-by!"

Men in black are observed on screens around the world running to the once-secret vault door; they surround the area with explosive charges then can be seen dashing to take cover inside nearby ruins. The air-car increases altitude and backs away from the site as one of the men radios the countdown. 

Sensors in the car record the explosion; the blast is felt by people more than fifteen miles away.

The Justinian is first to see the result of this explosion on her sensors.

A crater more than a hundred meters wide has been formed in the middle of the area; the auto dealership and all the buildings immediately around it have been vaporized, small fires burn amidst scattered piles of wood and old automobile tires, the twisted remains of the vault door lie meters away from where it had just moments before. The rough outlines of a tunnel are now just visible through roiling smoke and rubble still falling back to earth. The pilot drops lower, hits the area with a flood-light and trains the intense beam down the tunnel.

"Goddamn!" Sinn August-dottir shouts on the command circuit. "Goddamn-it all to Hell!"

"Justinian! What is it? What do you see?"

Through the clearing smoke – about a hundred yards down the tunnel – she can just make-out another vault door; this one appears larger than the first. And somehow she knows this one will be much stronger.

"There's another vault down there! Get another charge ready!"

"Yes, Justinian. What about the walls? Will we need to shore up the walls?"

"There isn't time. Move your men!"

The Justinian hovers while another group runs down into the earth; a moment later these men come tumbling out of the tunnel – coughing and rubbing their eyes. The Justinian sees blood coming out of one of the men's mouth and nose.

"Goddamn-goddamn-goddamn! Some kind of gas!" the Justinian screams on the command circuit. "Chemical protection suits, NOW!"

+++++

The Commandant has just re-boarded her jet in New Jerusalem – what was once Avignon, France – when the data-link goes active: as her jet taxis to the active runway video of the operation back home streams onto her monitor. She watches while she opens a link into the command and control circuit.

"Justinian!" she breaks-in when chatter dies down, and as wounded men are evacuated from the debris-field. "Blowback approved by the Council. Execute!"

+++++

The Justinian changes frequency, she links to men gathered on the fifth floor of the Judicial Ministry:

"Operation Blowback is green, repeat green," she says on the secure link. 

A dozen commandos assault Tribonian Bergtorson's office with heavy force; doors are blown from their hinges, windows shatter and books scatter to the floor. The commandos enter the Tribonian's inner office...

"...Justinian, this is Blowback, negative contact, repeat, negative contact..."

"Affirmative. Proceed to secondary." Sinn shakes, then screams in frustration: "Goddamn!" She hears the Commandant's voice on the circuit and looks up to see her perplexed face on the screen before her. 

"Justinian! What has happened?"

"He wasn't there! But he was there five minutes ago, and the office was surrounded!"

"We are compromised, Justinian. Assume all communications are monitored!"

"But, how..."

"Do the best you can! Stick to the plan!"

Red lights begin flashing on her primary display, data streams on screen and she begins to tremble.

"Commandant, are you receiving this?"

"What? What is happening?"

"Commandant, there have been attacks at remote desalinization plants and the Institute reports gunfire within the dorm-pods. Central Division has been bombed and heavy casualties are being reported."

"Bombed? What do you mean, bombed? An aircraft?"

"No Commandant, first reports indicate a car bomb of some sort."

"I fear the End Times now, Justinian. We must pray."

Disgusted, the Justinian looked at another screen. The Commandant's ETA was three hours. 

"The sun will have been up for an hour," Sinn said, and the pilot came on line.

"Pardon, Justinian, but did you say something."

She changed frequency back to the primary command net. 

"Status! Can anyone tell me what progress we are making?!" she yelled.

"Justinian!" It was a man's voice. He sounded tired.

"Commander Weblenson! What is happening?!"

"The men are suiting-up; another charge is being prepared. They should be going down within a minute."

"Very well, and have another ready to go if there should be more obstructions."

"Yes, Justinian."

+++++

Thorsten Weblenson smiled. He had positioned their best troops, those most loyal to the Commandant, around the accessway and had totally committed them to this operation. And while the Commandant's best troops were occupied here, he had quite deliberately left key points around the city unguarded. Would the device be big enough?

It was a bold plan. Would it work?

"Snowbird, Snowbird, this is Streetsweeper."

Streetsweeper! The Tribonian! He had escaped!

"Streetsweeper," Weblenson said into the small transceiver he had in his right ear. "Streetsweeper, Snowbird, go ahead."

"I'm proceeding to primary now. ETA ten. Final ETA is now three hours."

"Copy three hours. Proceed against Songbird?"

"Roger. Advise after."

"Roger, out."

He turned to the Lieutenant by his side. "Is the charge in place?"

"Yes, Commander," the commando from the tunnel said.

"Go ahead!"

The second detonation was twice as large as the first. Weblenson was a mile away and the earth shook so violently he was knocked from his feet.

+++++

Reports were coming in from all over the city. Car bombs, truck bombs, snipers hitting key facilities – and all within moments of one another! And the Tribonian! Where had he gone? He had disappeared without trace! How?! And the Commandant! She looked almost catatonic! This was not the time to lose your mind! Sinn August-dottir watched as men moved toward the opening with their second charge, then switched on the intercom: "Pilot, move us back a mile. This next charge may be bigger..."

She looked down at the exposed entry as the pilot began her turn, then it was like time stopped for a moment. Her eyes wavered, the ground seemed to turn from a solid into plasma within the span of one heartbeat, then the earth gave up a violent shudder, fire was erupting from within cracks that began appearing without warning, radiating out from somewhere deep within the earth like slow-moving cracks across a window.

Radiation alarms flashed, warning alarms sounded; the Justinian's air-car spiraled out of control and fell from the sky like a stone.

+++++

Thorsten Weblenson smiled broadly. The men in the tunnel had obviously set the charge, and now his small group was in-place, ready to move. They'd not have to contend with the Justinian again, or the Commandant's troops! He looked at the Justinian's stricken craft falling, then at his watch. 'So much to do,' he thought. 'I might just make it out of here after all!'

"Streetsweeper, Songbird down. Repeat, Songbird down."

"Roger. Move to secondary, if she can still sing."

"Snowbird, clear." Well, that part had gone easily enough, Weblenson thought. Now it was time for the fun part. He turned to the east, to the first hints of the sunrise. They'd come from the east too, he knew.

The commando looked at him. "Ready, sir?"

"As I'll ever be, son. Ready as I'll ever be." He turned toward the smoke coming from, presumably, the Justinian's crashed air-car. "Well, let's go see if she made it."

End Part V 



The Man From God Only Knows Ch. 06



Part VI of The Blackwatch Saga

©2009 Adrian Leverkuhn

Austin Stormgren sat in the jumpseat behind his brother and another pilot in the cockpit of a markedly-old Boeing airliner; a 737, Jamie called it. It was slower than molasses, capable of about one-tenth the speed the SCRAM-jets the Blackwatch normally used to cover long distances, and the cockpit smelled like nothing he'd ever run into in his life. Coffee and body-odor stood out, but Jamie said the real stench came from tobacco. Tobacco! That stuff was almost legendary! And despite its slow speed, the old bird had one special trick up her sleeve that made it unique in all the world – and uniquely suited to this mission.

She had been the sole flying test bed for a next-generation electro-optical camouflage system when the secession wars broke out. Austin didn't understand it – basically sensors read light from the relevant angle and realigned molecules in a crystalline substrate applied to the surface features of the aircraft – and like a chameleon the aircraft – from a distance at least – for all intents and purposes almost disappeared from view. The illusion broke down rapidly when you got within a quarter mile or so of the aircraft, but with Jamie's plan that would be enough. Or so they hoped.

He leaned forward and looked out the cockpit window: he could see the wing flexing but it looked weird. They were miles above the desert floor but even in the early dawn light he could see desert features on top of the wing. The image shimmered and adjusted as the aircraft flew over a small mountain range; the wing looked more like a pile of boulders for a moment, then shimmered again into something new. He watched as Jamie looked at a screen full of radar data coming from who-only-knew – probably Davos, for all Austin knew – then spoke into the intercom.

"Target entering atmosphere. We should pick them up on their bleed, say within ten minutes, and expect landing in another ten minutes after that."

"Roger that," came the metallic reply.

"I got time to pee?" Austin asked.

"Yeah. Fuck, I need to take one too. Jennie, take the airplane."

"My airplane," the co-pilot said.

"Come on," Jamie said as he crawled and contorted his way out of the left-hand seat. "Fuck, feels good to stretch for a second. Ah!"

They walked back into the cramped aisle by the forward galley and the main entry; Jamie opened the bi-fold door to the tiny restroom and fired away, talking all the while about what a funky airplane the 737 was, how solidly built it was and how easy it was to fly, then he backed out and motioned: "Your turn."

"Not much on privacy, are you?"

"No such thing, living inside a fucking rock. You get used to it. Anyway, you'd better get used to it, too, at least if you're serious about making it onto The Emissary. There aren't that many open slots left, you know."

"I'll make it." Austin leaned into the room and held his nose while he pee'd. He popped out after thirty seconds and gasped for air. "My God in Heaven! It really stinks in there!"

"Yeah? Seventy year old crap; that'll do it every time. This bird ain't no spring chicken." He patted a wall affectionately, looked around at the interior, at the men gathered in the rear.

"You seem to take everything so calmly, Jamie. How do you do it?"

"Hm-m? Hell, I don't know, kid. Just the way it's been, I guess. When you fly, you stay calm or you screw the pooch everytime. You get killed, fast. And speaking of which, you're gonna need to be thinking pretty quick on your feet in about ten minutes. You'd better go back there, get with the ground team and get ready to roll."

"Yeah, right." Austin turned, looked at the commandos huddled in the rear of the aircraft. Fifty men against whatever thousands ConIsmus could muster. Would they be enough? Would Weblenson really be able to neutralize so many, so quickly? "Well, good luck Jamie."

"Me? Shit, Ace, I'm gonna be sittin' up front reading some vintage porn while you're out there kicking ass. I may have big brass balls up here in the big, blue sky, but put me on the ground and I grow chicken feathers every time."

They looked at each other for a moment, then shook hands. It was an awkward moment, in a relationship that had been nothing but a brief series of awkward moments.

"Right. Take care, brother."

"I'll try to keep a couple of cold ones ready."

"Cold ones?"

James slapped his brother's back. "Later, Ace, later. I've got to go do some of that flying shit right now." He turned and walked back into the cockpit but hesitated a moment, turned and looked at his little brother one more time. He swallowed hard, tried to keep from tearing up while he watched the kid walk back to the other men.

"What a crazy, fucked up world!" he said to himself.

He turned and shut the cockpit door behind him.

+++++

Tribonian Bergtorson led his assault force – and the people they'd picked-up over the past couple of hours – through the Institutes buildings; he was looking for Misogi Kibata, the silver-haired exchange student/cadet from the Asiana confederation. The girl's father was part of Asiana's diplomatic mission to the Blackwatch; it would do no good at all at this late date to lose the girl – even if she had known the risks. Besides, he'd heard a rumor she had a crush on Aurelius/Austin. That couldn't hurt. And if he could get her onto The Emissary? Goodness! What concessions could he wring from Asiana for that?

His radio crackled.

"Streetsweeper-3 to lead, we have her."

"Lead to three, good work. Proceed to pick-up."

Outstanding. Now, why hadn't he heard from Weblenson?

+++++

Another volley of machinegun fire ripped through the rocks above Weblenson's head, spraying a hail of stone and mud down the back of his neck. He was pinned down, unable to move; his group of twenty commandos was scattered along a defensive skirmish-line to his left and right, the Justinian's downed air-car was about a hundred yards in front of his position. Scattered remnants of the Commandant's elite ground force had seen the Justinian's car going down and rallied to her call for help. She was hurt, but apparently not critically so. Weblenson had one last card to play, and he wondered if it was time to throw it down now. Or hold just a little longer...

He took out his radio.

"Justinian?" he whispered into the headset.

"Who is this?" he heard her reply.

"Weblenson."

"Where the fuck are you? What happened?"

"Justinian, it appears they detonated a low-yield device underground, possibly a neutron device." That was the planned-for lie, anyway. "My men are gone, only a handful left. Where are you?"

She read off coordinates, then: "Do you have any medical personnel, Commander?"

"Yes, Justinian. I had them pulled well back."

"We need them here," he heard her say, and he could hear other men crying in the background.

"I hear gunfire, Justinian."

"There are commandos between my position and yours; I don't have enough men left to mount an assault on their position. Can you cut them off, maybe take them from the rear?"

"Yes, Justinian. Give me a few minutes to get in position. I will call you back in a minute."

Weblenson called his lieutenant over and they discussed options, then he sent him on their way. He took out his other transceiver and switched frequency. "Snowbird to Streetsweeper?"

"Snowbird, status report!"

"Resistance heavier than anticipated."

"Understood. ETA now twenty minutes."

Weblenson groaned. It would be almost impossible, he knew, to cover the distance to the airport in that amount of time, let alone conduct a ground op first. "Twenty, understood."

He turned to the lieutenant and gave a hand signal.

The 'assault' on his position from the rear began.

+++++

Sinn August-dottir lay in the lee of the downed air-car, a blood-soaked pressure dressing over the top of her right thigh, a deep cut on her forehead oozing blood through a gauze pad taped there. Her pilot lay next to her, dead. Four other men, two wounded badly but still fighting, lay on either side of her. She hears gunfire, looks over rubble and sees Weblenson and a group of men converging on the commandos that has pinned her own men down for a half hour. The firefight lasts but a few moments and is over, she watches Weblenson and his men running through rubble toward her position. Soon a medic is by her side, cutting away fabric, sticking a syringe full of morphine into her other thigh. The world begins to swim and shimmer, she can just barely make out what the men are saying...

"She's lost a lot of blood, Commander."

"We don't have time for this. Load her up; we've got to get moving!"

"Moving?" the Justinian said through a shifting purple haze, "Moving where, Commander?"

"To the airport, Justinian. The hospital was attacked not long ago, and the streets are no longer safe. There is an aid station at the airport."

"What... why the..." she tries to speak, instinctively knows something is wrong but her body isn't responding anymore. An orderly leans over and puts an oxygen mask over her face... the gas smells odd, metallic... She feels her body falling, falling like a leaf into a broad running current... 'I remember water,' she thinks as the last ragged vestiges of consciousness reach for her, before she is pulled up into the light. "I remember streams and autumn leaves." Her eyes close, her breathing slows.

"We've got to hurry," Weblenson tells his men. They have her on a stretcher now and are running toward a ground transport when a huge double sonic boom rips through the sky overhead. Weblenson looks up, sees the Commandant's SCRAM-jet re-entering the atmosphere, begin its wide, arcing turn to bleed-off energy and line up for the approach into LAX.

"Alright men, that's, that's our signal... up there!" He stopped and pointed at the fiery re-entry. "We've got about ten minutes to get to the rendezvous."

They threw the stretcher in the transporter and clambered in. The pilot pulled back on the stick and the truck leapt into a grim, smoke-filled sky.

+++++

"There it is!"

James Stormgren craned his head to the right, looked out past the co-pilot's pointing finger. The SCRAM-jet was trailing a thick white vortex of condensation and fiery residue from re-entry; it looked to be turning on the base leg of its approach. He looked down at the shiny domes that cover Palm Springs, then at the threat receivers on the panel: still all quiet. 

"Angel One, LA Center, clear to land, no other traffic, contact approach on one two two point five."

"Angel One to one two two point five."

Stormgren reached up, dialed in the new frequency, looked out over the left wing and saw the Commandant's shuttle begin its final roll-out onto final. He poured on throttle and began climbing to intercept it; by the time they were over the eastern limit of the city he had the 'invisible' 737 tucked in behind and just a little above the shiny white dart-shaped shuttle.

So far no radar contact, no warble from the threat receiver.

He backed off a little, moved a little left, prepared to arm the single Sidewinder missile hastily slung under the 737's right wingtip for just this purpose. A part of him hated to destroy such a beautiful machine, let alone the men and women inside, and a part of him hoped the other pilot would be able to control the shuttle and somehow bring her down intact. He wondered if he'd be able to in similar circumstances.

Probably not, he told himself.

He could see a huge white desalinization plant off to the southwest, the coast and sea sparkling beyond; almost dead ahead he could see the remnants of a huge explosion drifting in the still morning air, apparently large fires were still burning down there, probably out of control.

"Five hundred," the automated voice of the flight computer chimed.

"Missile armed," Stormgren said. He knew that almost instantly threat receivers on the shuttle would go off, that they'd initiate a 'go-around' and begin countermeasures.

"Two hundred, minimums," the voice of the flight computer again.

"Fox one!" Stormgren yelled. The Sidewinder leapt from its mount and crossed the two hundred meters to the Commandant's shuttle in a millisecond; before, probably, the other pilot would have time to react to his threat receiver. The missile slammed into the left engine pod; fan blades and a huge orange blossom of fire erupted from the left side of the fuselage; the shuttle began rolling drunkenly to the right as the other pilot struggled to control the resultant asymmetry. 

The shuttle crossed the runway threshold nose down and left wing up; the right wingtip struck the ground and the shuttle began cart-wheeling – before disappearing inside a roiling black cloud alive with orange flame.

Stormgren chopped the throttle, flared the 737 and touched down; he didn't use the thrust reversers, didn't want to call attention to their arrival and alert whatever ground forces were stationed at the airport. The jet rolled out slowly to the end of the runway, the old coast highway and the beach lay just over a line of dunes beyond. He turned the jet, aimed it right back down the runway, then cut power to the number one engine on the left wing as the jet rolled to a stop. He heard doors opening in the cabin, men shouting as they slid down emergency slides; he saw his brother running away from the aircraft to help establish a defensive perimeter and he felt a little surge of adrenalin-fueled pride.

"There!" the co-pilot sang out, pointing toward the old main terminal complex a mile away. "Trucks!"

Yes! No one pursuing! The plan might work after all!

He looked down to the far end of the runway - to wreckage burning uncontrollably there; so far not one fire truck or other emergency vehicle had responded. What the hell was going on?

Now two groups of trucks approached; one on the ground from the terminal and the other from the air. The second landed in a cloud of dust; men boiled out and joined the others already on the ground. He saw a stretcher being off-loaded from the air-truck, a couple of wounded ConIsmus troops being helped out by commandos as the first group arrived. Another few minutes to load and they'd be able to get the fuck out of Dodge. Men were climbing the webbing to get aboard, but it was slow going.

A sonic boom, then another and another. Heavy transport shuttles re-entering atmosphere over the city; reinforcements arriving from another city-state. He reached for the intercom:

"Hurry it up back there! At least three shuttles inbound!"

Stormgren looks out his window; a couple men remain, one talking on a radio handset, pointing at the shuttles overhead arcing down toward the airport. Stormgren looked up at the shuttles; he'd never seen anythin like them before. And they weren't lining up to land on the runway! They were coming straight down, like helicopters, and right down toward the runway.

"Start one!" he yelled at the co-pilot.

"But..."

"Goddamnit, start one!"

"Starting one!" Stormgren heard the turbine spooling up seconds later. The remaining men on the ground turned and looked up at the cockpit; one was still talking on the radio. The other was looking up at the approaching transport, then turned and looked up at the cockpit.

"Oh God, no," James moaned. Austin. It was Austin, and he watched helplessly as the other man grabbed his brother, pushed him toward the aircraft. Austin shook his head and, as if resigned to an uncaring fate, stood by the other man. 

A commando burst into the cockpit. "All aboard! We better move!" he shouted. "Now!"

Stormgren nodded, looked at the engine temps and pressures as both engines spooled up.

"Give me take-off flaps," he says to the co-pilot.

He looks back at the men on the runway, but they are gone. He can see a group of men running away from the area through fire and rubble off to the left; something catches his eye... it is the first transport shuttle flaring to land far down the runway.

He pushes the throttles to the stops and pedals the rudders to command authority, all thought of his brother fading as reality settles-in: he might not be able to clear the shuttle and its heavy down-firing thrusters. The 737 gather speed, the old concrete runway rumbles away underneath as they pass through one hundred knots. Stormgren looks down the runway at the first shuttle.

"V-one!" the co-pilot calls.

"Fuck!" Stormgren yells. Another shuttle is landing at the far end of the runway, the shadow of the third blots out all light just overhead.

"V-two, rotate!" the co-pilot calls out.

Stormgren pulls back on the yoke as explosions ripple through the air around him.

End Part VI



The Man From God Only Knows Ch. 07



The Man from God Only Knows/7

A Conclusion to The Blackwatch Saga


As the world around the airport exploded Stormgren wrestled the old jet into a steep turned for the mountains north of the city; warning lights and threat receivers howled. He concentrated on keeping the aircraft as low as possible. A surface to air missile roared by a few hundred feet overhead; the threat receiver remained silent as the missile disappeared into the deep haze over the city. He pushed the stick down a bit more; at fifty feet over the ground and two hundred knots the landscape rippled by in a blur. He pulled up sharply to clear a low range of hills; the threat receiver howled in earnest now. He jinked hard high and right, then slammed the nose over and to the left; this second missile roared into the hillside a half mile to their right. He leveled the wings as they topped the crest of the range then pushed the stick down again and eased off the throttle. They cross the ruins of old valley settlements as Stormgren scans the panel for the first time since take-off.

"Hull integrity, pressurization, secondary hydraulic reservoir," the co-pilot states. "And my fucking nerves!"

"Roger that!" he chuckles. "What do you make our fuel?"

"About four hours, but a lot less if we stay down here in the weeds."

"Okay."

The cockpit door opens, Stormgren turns and finds Thor Bergtorson, who until a few minutes ago was Tribonian to the Senatus, standing in the doorway; his arms are stained with blood, his shirt ripped.

"You guys alright back there?" Stormgren asks, his eyes wide.

"It's pretty breezy!"

"Breezy? What? Why?"

"Maybe you better come take a look!"

"Can't right now..."

"Right. Well, the entire right side looks like Swiss cheese..."

"How 'bout the wing?"

"Brown fluid coming out of the engine pylon, a big hole just shy of the wingtip."

"How big?"

"'Bout a foot 'round."

"Jenn, can you see it?" Stormgren asked the co-pilot.

"Leading edge looks okay; can't see much else."

A large mountain range loomed ahead and Stormgren increased power, settled on a ten degree climb at seventy eight percent EGT – low and slow. 

"Where are we headed," Bergtorson asked. "Edwards?"

"Nope. Hole in the Wall."

"No kidding? Never been."

"What's the Hole in the Wall?" Jennie asked.

Stormgren looked at her, smiled. 

"Once upon a time it was called Area 51."

He saw her mouth drop, her eyes grew disbelieving, then he flashed his best 'shit-eatin' grin:

"Wanna go see a Starship?"

+++++

The 737 taxied to a rough stop by an ancient tan hanger; two very well preserved F-22 Raptors circled overhead. Stormgren chopped power, set the brakes, began shutting down systems one by one. The cockpit grew warm, then hot.

"Well, that was fun!" the co-pilot said.

"Nothin' to it." Stormgren's shirt was soaked through; the sun was still high in the sky and the air conditioning had shut down when the engines idled down. The APU was fried.

The cabin door opened, a stairway rolled up and cadets and bureaucrat-cum-spies filed out and jogged toward the closest shade they could see – which was inside the open hanger door. Bergtorson stepped back into the cockpit, fresh bandages on his arms and neck.

"A hundred forty four out there," he said, stating the obvious. Hot air filled the aircraft now and it was stifling. "We'd better get inside."

"Did you see my brother?" James asked the senior man.

"Come on. Let's go. We need to talk."

+++++

The hanger, like all the other buildings at the old base, was an empty shell; all it provided was access to another major R&D facility located deep underground.

James Stormgren sat in a small auditorium with the commandos who'd been on the flight; there were about forty men in the room and a handful of women, including his co-pilot Jennie.

His father walked in a few minutes later with Thor Bergtorson. They both stood before the assembled commandos, both looked tense.

"ConIsmus forces have breeched the Mag-Lev platform," Bergtorson began. "In about twenty minutes we're going to detonate a large device about halfway down the line. That'll be the end of our access to the west coast, for good, I'm afraid."

He looked around the room.

"As you know, we left behind some men; its not clear but I'd say ten, fifteen or so went overland to recover Commander Weblenson and the remnants of his force, including, I'm told, the Justinian Sinn August-dottir."

Bergtorson crossed his arms over his chest.

"We're going in to go get them. I need volunteers."

Every hand in the room shot up.

+++++

She looked up at him, fire burning in her eyes.

"I'm not apologizing for who or what I am," Austin Stormgren said to the Justinian. "All I will concede is that I am who I am."

"And what is that, fool!"

"I am my father's son. And I have learned just what that means."

The Justinian shook her head in disgust. "No, you are a traitor. Simply that, nothing more than a traitorous fool." 

She tried to sit up, winced at the pain that seared from her thigh to her chest.

"You need some morphine," he stated. "I'll go..."

"I don't need your drugs. Leave me be, let me go in peace."

"Right. Go. Yeah." He shook his head, moved further down the storm sewer where the remaining troops and commandos had set-up a makeshift comms shack. Another burst of encrypted code streamed-in as the assembled commandos watched; Weblenson took the SD card and fed the data into his computer, and the message came up on a little hand-held screen moments later. He read through the information then deleted it, looked up the men and women. His face was grim, tired.

"Before dawn, two transports. On the beach, about ten miles north of here."

There were groans, worried looks, more than a few heads dropped in despair.

"We can't carry the Justinian that far," one of the men said. "She's bleeding too bad."

"She needs surgery. Soon," one of Weblenson's medics said. "All I have left is a bag of plasma and some morphine, and not a lot of that, either."

"How long?" the Commander asked. "How long can we keep her stabilized?"

"As soon as possible. Blood expanders will only last so long. Four hours, maybe five. Twelve if the plasma works. If she can handle the pain."

"What do you recommend?"

"A simple overdose of morphine would be most the most humane thing," the medic stated.

"No, Goddamnit!" Austin growled. "We can't do that! You don't underst..." He caught himself, stopped before he said too much. Some of the older hands looked at him, saw something in his eyes: they knew something unspoken was lurking in the boys mind... probably something important. A few exchanged sidelong glances, some nodded, others shrugged their shoulders. 

Weblenson watched it all, but even he didn't know what young Stormgren was keeping back.

"I'm open to suggestions, son," he finally said.

Austin shook his head. If the plan fell apart his best choice was to see that the girl lived. That had to be his first priority. "Then I'll take her up, call in for a medevac."

"And then what, Austin? Stay with her?"

"Yes."

A couple of the commandos interrupted: "Are you out of your fucking mind?" "You want to commit suicide?"

"Not particularly, no, but I..."

"But you what? You'll be imprisoned, tortured. You won't be with her."

"That's not important..." began, but he stopped himself again, turned away from the men and looked down the tunnel to where she lay. He thought of her as he'd first seen her in the classroom, thought of riding with her and her voice played with his feelings – as it always had – those feelings he'd had for her from that very first moment.

"I care for her, yes. And what happens to her. But..."

"That's because you don't know the bitch, son. She's a viper."

"So she may well be. It does not matter. I've made a promise."

Weblenson nodded. "Alright. So be it."

A commando came running from the far end of the tunnel: "We have secured an air-truck, Commander. We must hurry."

"Well, there you go kid. The course of true love and all that shit takes many a strange road. Stevens, you and Sir Galahad go get Her Highness, would you, and let's get her skinny ass out of here!"

+++++

When she was strapped down in the back of the truck, when they were safely airborne, the Justinian looked at Austin. He saw an expression in her eyes he'd never expected to find; they were soft, feverish, full of sorrow – but something else, too...

"How are you feeling?" he asked her.

She smiled wanly: "I heard you, all of you, back there in the tunnel."

He looked away: "Oh, sorry."

"Would you have stayed with me? Really?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because of something I saw in someone's eyes."

She turned away. "Oh? Mine?"

"No."

"I don't understand."

"I think you wanted me," he began. "Back at the Institute. I could feel something – between us." But it was more complicated than that. Not yet... not yet...

"You could see that?"

"I think so, yes. But feel is a better word."

"You are right, Aurelius. I wanted you then. Badly."

"Why? Why me?"

"DNA at first, until I met you. I arranged to teach the class on search and seizure law, you know, just to meet you."

"And the ride-along?"

"Oh, yes. I wanted to that night. If you hadn't been..." 

Her voice was weak now, and Austin looked up at the medic; he shook his head, pointed at the last bottle of plasma and shrugged. "She ready to try?" the medic whispered.

He took her hand. "Will you do me a favor?" Austin said to her.

She bit her lip, exhaled slowly, deeply: "If I can. Yes."

"I want you to fight now, not give up. We want to give you another bottle of plasma, and a pretty heavy shot of morphine."

"Ah, so you would spare me even my own death? Would you think that so kind, my friend?"

He squeezed her hand, looked into her eyes. "I'm not going to lose you."

He felt her hand in his, the warmth of it, the way it felt so right in his own. Perhaps she feels the same?

"Go ahead, then." She looked up at the medic, her eyes filled with tears, then at Aurelius. He leaned down to kiss the salt away as the medic slipped a needle into her thigh.

"I'll see you when you wake up, Samantha. I'll be waiting, okay. Don't worry."

Her breathing slowed, her eyes fluttered and closed.

'What?' she thought as she drifted away. 'Why did he call me that?'

+++++

The Justinian opened her eyes. Everything was a cold, white blur. She heard electrical machinery humming all around her; whatever this place was – it smelled funny, like copper and burning rubber and old rock. And it was cold... so cold! She shivered and someone moved to her side, put a warmed blanket over her body. The shadow moved, reached down and wiped her eyes; she looked up when her vision cleared, saw an older woman and her mind reeled. No! It couldn't be! The hair was different, but the eyes, her chin... even the very smell of her...

"Mom?"

"Yes, Sam. It's me."

"Mom? How..." but it couldn't be... she'd been killed in the Secession War...

"It's alright, Sam. You're home now. Sh-h, sh-h. Just rest now, don't cry. Everything will become clear soon."

"Oh, God, where am I?" She tried to catch her breath through a veil of tears but failed. "No! No, I'm dreaming... this is a... I know I... dead..."

A pinch in her upper arm, flooding warmth, then she was floating again – floating away into dreams and nightmares and broken landscapes filling with molten cities...

"You will sleep now, Samantha. Sleep for a long, long time. But Sam, I have something for you. It will be waiting for you."

+++++

Her eyes opened; she was in, what, a different room? Yes, but everything felt very different. Now, aside from the glow of strange machinery she felt a strangeness about everything around her, even the air she breathed felt strange, almost alien. And she felt alone, a profound loneliness, inside this strange, glowing darkness – and what was this? Could she feel the room spinning, or was it medication? But, over there! Someone was sitting in a chair by her bed. It was a man. Was he a nurse? A doctor?

"Could I have some water?" she croaked. The man moved in the darkness, reached for a cup and stood uneasily. He came to her, an odd looking cup and spoon in one hand, and he fed her bits of crushed ice. Ice! Real ice! "Oh, God, I feel so stiff. Where am I?"

"Well, I'm sure not God!" the man said.

"Aurie – Aurelius?" She could feel his voice in the core of her being.

"Try Austin."

"Oh, right."

"More ice?"

"God, yes please!"

She took more, chewed on it slowly. The entire sensation was so foreign... "Ice... it's been so long so I had ice..."

"Good stuff, frozen water," he said. "Nothing like it."

"Could you turn on a light?"

"You sure?"

"Yeah? Why wouldn't I be?"

He ignored her question, the tone of her voice, flipped a switch by her side and the room lit gradually, as if arrangements had been made for her own personal sunrise. Blue light, deep and radiant, glowed from the ceiling; in a moment streaks of gold and orange appeared in this "sky". She looked around as the room grew lighter; everything was all wrong! The room was too narrow, the ceiling too low, and everything was rounded – there wasn't a sharp angle or corner anywhere – and one wall was all wrong... like she was inside a dome. A dome! Of course! These people must have been building domes for as long as we have, maybe longer!

The closest wall was sloped, curved! As the wall fell away from the ceiling she could tell that it was curved, part of the dome; even the window inside this wall was curved! And the window? The glass was black, the corners of the window radiused, and the glass itself was... what? Thick? 

He watched her face, watched for signs of recognition, or fear. As the light grew stronger it also became less radiant, somehow white and soft at the same time... like a cloudy day. Her face was as soft now, but still radiant. He hated what the next few minutes would bring...

It was then she saw his face. He seemed older, or was it just maturity she saw in his eyes?

"Where are we? A Dome? The Northern Tier?"

"This place... is called The Emissary."

"But... you didn't... where are we?"

He nodded, looked down at her legs, willed her eyes to follow his own...

Her right leg was gone. A short stump was, she saw, perhaps all that remained.

She felt her throat closing, a scream building; he reached out and brushed away hair that seemed to be floating in front of her eyes, beyond her silently falling tears.

"It's not as bad as it looks," he said.

"Right, right, sure..." He wiped away more tears; only then did she notice her hands were secured to small railings on the bedside with thick padded straps. She pulled at the straps, panic filled her eyes. 

"Oh God, I'm a prisoner?"

"No, you keep trying to pull out your IV! In your sleep!"

He was trying not to laugh; she suddenly filled with rage and hate.

"You fucking bastard! You think this is funny!"

"In a way, yes. Yes, it is."

"Get out of here, you fucking fool! Leave me alone!"

"In a minute." He grew stern, watched her now as a biologist might examine a specimen under a microscope. "We have a few things to discuss."

There WAS something different about him. She wasn't imagining it. She saw it in his eyes, in his hair, and she grew afraid – quiet and very afraid.

"You're older," she said, her voice trembling.

"Yes."

"Have I been in a coma?"

"Not exactly."

"Aurie – Austin, would you stop this! Why are speaking in riddles!"

"Alright." His movements were jerky, somehow forced, as he turned and stepped over to the window. "There's no easy way to tell you this, so just try to be calm, alright?" He reached out and turned a dial; the intensely polarized window began clearing, a white metal shutter of some sort slid up into the ceiling and out of view.

Rings hung before her, rings and vast blue swirling clouds. And stars! Everywhere! It was too strange, too unreal for her mind to take in: she was looking at a planet with rings around it. Saturn. Yet it was huge, the rings so close she felt she could reach out and touch them.

"What is this? A hologram?"

"No." He looked at her as he moved back to her side but he smiled even as her eyes grew wide, even as her lips began to tremble. She tried to speak but only fractured bits of parched words crawled from her sundered mind.

"But... what..."

"About your leg, first. We've harvested cells; we're growing you a new one from your own DNA. The docs will talk to you soon about what they plan to do."

She blinked, looked up at him. His words made no sense. Nothing made sense in this place.

"Second. In case you're having trouble with the idea, you're not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy."

"Uh-huh. And this is Oz?"

"Not quite, at least not yet. The Emissary is, well, a kind of shuttle." He watched her eyes; they were trying to follow his lips as he spoke. "We're about to swing around Saturn, then there will be a burn. Like a rocket, except you won't hear anything. But the acceleration will be very powerful, and painful; you won't be able to move – at all. I didn't want to take a chance, well, that you'd wake up in the middle of it. It will be very disconcerting, disorienting."

"And I, uh... Like that isn't?" She pointed at the rings and all they implied. 

"Don't say anything. Not yet." He held her hand now, squeezed it gently while he looked in her eyes. "After the burn we'll be coasting, we'll be leaving the solar system at about 70 percent of light-speed. If all goes according to plan in about two years we're going to rendezvous with, well, with something out there."

"Something?"

"Well, someone?"

"Someone?" Her eyes blinked rapidly. "Who?"

"Well, it ain't a bunch of kids on Spring break, alright? I think they're, well, more like, uh, nerds. You know the term?"

She nodded slowly, a smile creased her face. "But..."

He brought a finger to her lips, shook his head.

"Sometime before the Secession War, the big one, I mean, NASA discovered a ship beyond the solar system, powered by a light sail, and it was huge. I mean really, really huge. The ship was headed, well, sort of, toward the solar system. Anyway, some people were scared, afraid the discovery would shatter belief systems and things started going to hell in a hurry. It's probably no coincidence the Secession War started a few months later. Society fractured, the religion and science thing, and everything began falling apart. People finally split along those lines and went their separate ways. But the scientists, well, they already had an organization in place. They called it the Blackwatch."

"We never..."

"...Never heard of it. I know. But it's even more interesting than that."

"The ship?"

"They'd been talking with them, for a long time. Learning. They're like, I don't know, like teachers. One of them came, in a small ship. A... well, something like a man. A male, anyway. He brought evidence of a really huge space-faring civilization they had discovered, and, well, they were off to see the wizard. They're going off in search of this old civilization, and they invited some of us along for the trip."

"Why... am I here?"

"Your mother was one of the principal discoverers of the ship, she made first contact with The Watcher."

"The Watcher?"

"Yes. He was old, expendable, as I understand it. He cloned himself."

"He what?"

"Well, you see, in a way he was my father."

"What?"

"I know. I don't understand it all either. Anyway, this has been their plan, your mother's and The Watcher's, almost from the beginning."

"So are you..."

"Yes. His DNA was integrated into ours."

"Oh, God."

"Do you remember the night I was taken? During that ride-along?"




The Man From God Only Knows Ch. 07



"Yes... how could I..."

"There was a train under LA, a Mag-Lev train. I was taken there, brought to Clarke Station. Your mother rode with me that day, and it was funny. Odd. I thought I recognized her. But it was you I recognized."

Her eyes were unfocused. Diffuse.

"The Watcher?" she said. "What did he have to do with The Blackwatch?"

"His technology, he, well, he jumpstarted certain kinds of science." 

"Do you know who, or, well, what they are? The Blackwatch?"

"Doesn't really matter, Sam. At some point they learned who I was, who you were; they told your mother about us, eventually about your plans to mate with me. She knew she'd never be able to tell you about the consequences of that. So, well, she sent for me, and eventually to get you out and onto The Emissary."

"Is she... here?"

"No, Sam. I'm sorry. She passed away last year." 

She wanted to cry, but somehow tears seemed inadequate.

"You know, I saw her..."

"Yes. You were still on earth."

"I hadn't seen her since... before the war."

"She loved you Samantha. She never stopped hoping."

She looked away, looked out the window at the pure impossibility that hung out there beyond the stars.

"So, she wanted me here... to go... on this trip?"

He nodded.

"She left you this." He placed a leather-bound book under her hand and helped her fingers grasp it. "When you're ready."

"Could I ask you something?"

"Yeah, sure."

"Do you have someone here?"

"Yeah."

She turned away, had never felt so alone in all her life.

"My Mom and Dad are here; so is my big brother. But he's got a thing for this pilot..."

"You told me, told me you'd be waiting."

"So I did."

He took her hand. "So, you think you want to make the trip?"

"Do you think we'll ever see the earth again?"

"Us? No. Maybe our great-great-great grand-kids, but not us. Maybe things will change by then."

"Change. Yes."

"I need to ask you again, and you need to answer me. Do you want to make the trip?"

"Do I have a choice?"

"Yes."

"How? I thought..."

"The burn is coming up in about six hours. A shuttle back to Earth will be leaving before. Some engineers and support people who didn't want to go but were needed to finish work on the ship. You can go with them if you like."

She looked at his face, at the truth in his eyes. And the yearning for... For what?

"If I leave, go back to Earth, will you go with me?"

"Yes," he said without hesitation.

"But you want to go, don't you?"

"Yes."

"One more question?"

"Shoot."

"Would you kiss me? I mean, really kiss me?"

They broke apart minutes later; her face flushed, her body understanding.

"They'll be able to fix my leg? On the journey?"

"Yes, of course."

"Good."

"Good?"

She looked at the stars, at their past, at her future, their future, and she held his hand for a very long time.



an ending

(c)2009/Leverkuhn



The Man From God Only Knows



He shook his head as he watched them. "Blasphemers!" he bellowed, then he picked up Tarkusson's file and flipped through it once again: the boy had seemed most promising during his interviews but over the past year his faith had waned, his judgment had matured too quickly for the indoctrinations to take hold. The boy's father had been a teacher, a professor of philosophy, before disappearing when the lad was just six, but even that brief exposure to the virus of reason had been enough to pollute the poor boy's soul. Still, he had tested well; the psych-profile had raised no serious issues. Most accepted their training without reservation; somehow young Greggor had slipped their clutching fingers and now he was drifting from their reach.

Pity, he thought, the boy would end up this way. A pawn in a much greater game.

The dilemma Bergtorson faced was simple: while he had known for some time something like this would eventually take shape, should he simply watch as events unfolded, allow The Commandant's plan to be carried out unfettered, or should he take this as a serious threat to his authority and intervene now? Save the boy, or sacrifice him? The implications...

"What!" Bergtorson sat up in his chair, looked at the written transcript of the women's conversation as it flowed onto an adjacent screen.

"I see you have chosen," The Commandant said. "It is a nice ring."

"I am getting old. I can put it off no longer."

"Why Krul-son? DNA?"

"Yes. We will make good children, and he seems interested in me. He will mate enthusiastically."

"I dare say; perhaps too enthusiastically! Perhaps he will want to remain as the child's father? Have you chosen yet?"

"Yes. I have chosen Bergtorson."

The Commandant smiled.

"Ah. Yes, that would neutralize him completely, wouldn't it? He would not be allowed to testify against you."

"Yes..."

Tribonian Bergtorson sat back in awe and laughed for a very long time, then reached for the encrypted telephone on another desktop monitor. His fingers danced across the screen as he dialed a classified seven digit number on the computer and waited for the connection to be made.

He did not wait long.

"Yes?" a voice far-away answered.

"It is Bergtorson."

"Yes, Tribonian. We have seen it."

"Any projections yet?"

"Yes, Tribonian."

"Recommendation?"

"Implementing as planned, Tribonian."

"Very well." Bergtorson closed the connection and sat back in his chair, then steepled his fingers just under his chin while he quietly regarded The Commandant and August-dottir. He watched for quite some time, lost in their passion, and he quietly reflected on his own youth, his own stirrings long ago, before government surgeons had removed them so efficiently. He remembered Tarkusson's file and flipped through it to the boy's photograph.

"A pity," he said quietly as he shut the file.

+++++

Thorsten Weblenson sat behind a white duraplast desk in the squad briefing-room reading through yesterday's incident reports. As usual, all offenses had happened during hours of maximum darkness; it had simply been too hot for sustained human activity during daylight hours for over a year. Evening temperatures rarely fell into the 90s, and daytime highs for the three "summer" months had averaged f/142 degrees. Now, in mid-December, daytime temperatures hovered in the high-120s. 

The greatest problem facing the region now was, oddly enough, water temperature. Currents off the coast were warming much faster than modeled and operating efficiencies at the regions desalinization plants were falling dramatically as a result. Pipelines from the plants to regional distribution centers were being hacked into, people were stealing water and damaging infrastructure. Weblenson's precinct was now in charge of interdiction efforts; over three hundred liters had been lost in the past week, and over ten meters of pipeline would need repair.

"Oh, great!" Weblenson moaned when he read he had four rookies from the Institute scheduled for ride-alongs this weekend. Then he got to the part where Sinn-Justinian asked that he take Cadet Tarkusson in tow the next two weekends. "Shit! Just what I need!" He was, he read further, free to assign two as he saw fit, but Cadet Krul-son would be riding with the Justinian. He whistled when he read that.

"Hey Sarge, wassup?" a patrolman asked as he walked in and took his seat at one of the briefing tables.

Weblenson looked over the man's sparkling uniform and nodded before speaking. "Rookies again tonight. Tomorrow, too."

"Fuck."

"Want one?"

"Fuck, uh, no."

"You know, Zimmerson, we need to work on your speaking skills."

"Fuckin'-A."

Weblenson shook his head and groaned, examined the uniform of each officer as they filed into the room while he continued to flip through the previous watch commander's notes. He called roll at 1720 hours, then asked for volunteers to handle the two unassigned cadets: Deirdre Gravvis-dottir took Pol Dienison and Avi-Shmoll Peres-son put his hand up to take Aerrik Aerriksonn. That settled, he called the dispatch room and had the rookies sent-in for the rest of the briefing.

What really gave them away as rookies, Weblenson thought as they entered, were the pristine attaché cases; old-timer's cases were scuffed and dinged, corners had long ago been worn smooth by years of neglect. Some were adorned with stickers and cartoon characters, others were clean and orderly; all had been beaten down by exigent time and high speed chases. The rookie's cases, in sharp contrast, gleamed.

"Dienison! You're in C-79 with Gravvis," Weblenson called out as the cadets took a seat. "Aerriksonn! In C-82 with Avi. Greggor! You're riding with me tonight," and when he consciously omitted calling out Krul-son's assigned partner a few of the old, old timer's faces bunched-up, their eyes narrowed to razor-thin slits. Something, they knew, was amiss...

Weblenson read out the offenses that had occurred the night before – a handful of burglaries, two water mains tapped, the usual crap – before handing out the night's patrol patterns and call signs...

"Can any of you slimeball rookies tell me why we shift them?"

Greggor Tarkusson's hand shot up.

"Go ahead, rook."

"Frequencies are monitored, patrol patterns are analyzed and exploited."

"And who are you, rook?"

"Tarkusson, Greggor, sir."

"Okay, relax Greggor. Good answer. You feel up to keeping the shift log tonight?"

"Yes, sir!"

Weblenson laughed: "Rook, you need to chill."

"Sir!"

The old sergeant shook his head while he passed out SD cards with updated codes that would be fed into each officer's patrol computer; these would in turn be fed into patrol car computers and each officer's helmet-radio.

Sinn August-dottir walked into the room; Weblenson ignored the instant hush that fell over the room and kept on passing out the cards, and he barely made eye-contact with her while she passed on her way to Krul-son.

"Alright, maggots!" the shift commander bellowed, "Let's hit it and keep it clean!"

Chairs scraped back, sixty black-uniformed officers and four grey-suited cadets stood and walked from the room.

He watched Sinn August-dottir closely as she walked by, rather the way a woodsman might keep an eye on a rattlesnake sliding by just out of striking distance; she looked his way just once and they made eye contact. She held him there for a moment, paused, then smiled and walked from the room.

A cold hand ran down Weblenson's spine; he tried to shake off the feeling off but dark forces lingered in the air.

+++++

She had one of the new patrol cars; the thing ran on pressurized hydrogen and was rumored to be very fast indeed – speeds of thirty five kph on the ground and almost twice that in the air had been reported and Krul-son didn't doubt that for a moment as he took in the car's stealthy black lines. Of course that was nothing compared to the hydro-carbon fueled vehicles of the First Republic, but those vehicles lived now only in museums and prohibited holos. 

"Do you want to drive tonight?" Sinn August-dottir said.

Aurie tried to keep his excitement under control. "May I?"

She tossed him the keys and he dropped in behind the stick. "You're flight qualified now, aren't you?" she asked as she settled-in behind him.

"Yes, Justinian. I passed the exam three weeks ago."

"Very well. Let's head to Westside."

"Surface streets, Justinian?"

"For now."

His arm on the center console, he pushed forward on the stick; the patrol car accelerated smoothly away from the station while Sinn slid the SD card into the computer and checked into service. He could see the Westside Dome far away across the valley, the ocean glittering behind it. The sun was still out, the car's canopy and windows deeply polarized to protect them; no one stirred on the blistering streets. 

Yet.

But that would change in about an hour.

+++++

A dark room. Hundreds of large glass tables, the surface of each alive with images and data flowing in a non-stop stream of information. Behind each table, a man, each identical to the next, each dressed in black fatigues, metal sensors grafted to the sides of their bald heads.

They no longer consider themselves strictly human; they hold themselves apart from the rest of humanity as if their origin and purpose is a closely held secret – which of course it is. No one outside the room knows when or where or how these men were created, and no one dares ask. No one outside the facility completely understands what it is these men do, or why.

They have no names, precious little identity, yet for all intents and purposes they are human. Even if just barely so. They understand human emotion as well as the data that streams into their minds, yet they have no practical experience with other humans.

Few have ever left this facility; those that have never return. Those so lost are almost instantly replaced by another nearly identical man. 

The men monitor all human communication, all the time. Screens filled with data highlight suspicious or otherwise noteworthy activity, but the men are engaged at all times sifting through data for patterns that might reveal a beginning, and an end.

They are known by the rest of humanity as The Blackwatch.

One is intently watching the video feed inside a police car, listening to the conversation between a young man and an older woman. His grey eyes dance across the screen looking for other relevant information, his brain processing information a million times faster than the most powerful computers of the First Republic. His brain discards irrelevant information as quickly as new information appears. When something particularly noteworthy registers his eyes blink, but he is unaware of this and would not understand what it meant even had he been aware.

He pulls up another screen by the first and monitors the data stream from another police car, then video surveillance cameras appear on the screen from around the area where these two units are patrolling. Images of a broken city begin flashing across the screen until a scene with three well-armed men fills a small sub-screen. He focuses on this image and it enlarges instantly. He compares the faces in the image he watches to known criminals and identifies them within seconds. With barely a conscious thought this information appears in a screen displayed on Tribonian Bergtorson's desk – or one of the other Tribonia elsewhere in the republic. 

A new set of images flashes of the Watcher's screen; the men are inserting clips into automatic weapons common in the First Republic; these weapons have been illegal for decades but somehow there are still thousands in private hands. The Watcher senses danger; he displays a map of the city on a large screen on a far wall and overlays the armed men and all police cars in the area. Other watchers lift their eyes and look at the central display for a moment; several blink and return to their tabletop screens. Data streams into the room at a furious pace now, eyes dart from image to image, from page to page, at surreal speeds.

Many of the Watchers are smiling now, though they know not why.

End Part I