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Cleansed by Fire

Chapter 7, Out of the Ashes (continued)

Once she had finished with Paulo, Lyseena focused herself, prayed briefly, and made a point of seeking out Ather sup-Juris. No sense putting off the inevitable. He was at the far edge of the Pit, discussing something with a tech, and she motioned him over. He finished up, and approached her, his large frame moving with a grace that belied his weight.

“Walk with me Ather. I would like to lunch below. I would like company.”

“Certainly, commander; did you wish to discuss your candidate to replace Maree? She is an excep…”

As they left the immediate vicinity of the Pit, Lyseena cut him off with a quiet, steely, “No.”

Her tone was clear to Ather, and he said nothing, simply nodding slowly in her direction and waiting for her cue as they strolled slowly to the hoverlifts. It came when she continued with, “You might not actually wish to lunch with me when we are done Ather.”

“Do tell,” he answered, with what sounded like genuine, if seemingly modest, concern.

“The survival of the Black Pope was a true miracle to discover this afternoon,” she said. Her affect was flat on the surface, but Ather sensed something darker underneath it.

“Miracles are indeed alive and well, Lyseena. I had been notified shortly before the newsfeeds started releasing the news.”

“How ‘shortly’ before, Ather? Or are you perhaps a miracle worker yourself?”

They had reached the lifts by this point, and the person in the one that opened promptly left it when he saw them. As they replaced him in the lift, Ather noticed that the person had intended to leave on another floor much farther down; his presence often had that effect on people.

As the doors to the lift closed, Ather said, “Lift: Hold position; no alarm.” He turned to Lyseena, and she could see the telltale, if microscopically brief, shift in his facial features that preceded him accessing his hindbrain. “I found out precisely 10.7 minutes before the first newsbriefers transmitted the story. Are you angry that I didn’t tell you? I assumed you had already been told and, if not, that a few-minutes head-start would scarcely aid your investigations.”

“You had no fortuitous knowledge about his survival, then? Or foreknowledge?”

“Lyseena, I serve the Black; you serve the Red. At times, our positions are at odds. Clearly, you are privy this time to something that I am not—a truly rare state of affairs that makes me feel as though I am remiss in my cloak-and-blade skills. I presume that you feel, or know, that no true miracle was involved, which is something I assumed from the start. But if there were machinations behind the Black Pope’s survival, or his ‘predicament,’ I was not made known of them and still have not been.”

Lyseena searched his eyes for a long time, then said, “Lift: Resume descent. Ather. Trinity help me, I believe you. And I don’t know if that gives me comfort or more unease.”

“Lyseena, I am part of the Black Orders and precious little that happens within them gives me ease of mind,” Ather remarked. “By the by, I still wish to lunch with you.”

***

It might be days yet before he knew whether Bechan had escaped Israel, or even if he was still alive, Rabbi Brifel Mann reminded himself. But it would take days for the remaining preparations to come together as well, and it was time to bring Kotel into the picture fully.

Israel’s flagship AI was very sophisticated, but at his core, he was a dressed-up secondary AI, and that was a shame, as it might be the one factor that could prevent him from carrying out his part in the Synod’s plans.

The original Kotel, now there was a masterpiece of AI design. A custom-built primary AI with a template that combined tactical, religious, legal, economic and espionage elements beautifully. A template  so complex that it likely would have made siring offspring with any other AI impossible. He had cost a fortune, and was worth every debit.

Then rendered worthless by the twin missile barrages shortly after the Final Crusade that wiped out Kotel’s main complex and his remote backup databases. The Vatican had tracked the attacks back to some Arab militia and brought them to justice, but most of the Synod had been certain, from the start, that the Vatican had really done the deed. The Vatican that was “protecting” them and helping them rebuild by sealing them off from the rest of the world. Whether they wanted to be or not.

So helpful they had been in providing a new primary AI, though, and so quickly. Kotel II.

And it took us less than a week to find the deeply hidden subroutines that made Kotel II appear loyal to us, but actually linked to the Godhead and furnishing data without ever realizing it.

Instead of confronting the popes and the Godhead directly, the Synod set a plethora of explosives around the core processors of the AI, and turned his databases into so much rubble. And, after informing the Vatican of the disturbing terrorist attack that caught them off-guard and relieved them of their new AI, the members of the Synod asked, very politely, if they could spare the Vatican the expense of another primary AI and simply design their own this time.

Now that everyone on both sides knew privately what they wouldn’t publicly ackowledge, the Vatican struck a compromise: Israel could order up its own AI, but would have to make do with a secondary AI. A primary AI might, they suggested, suffer a similar fate as Kotel I.

Kotel III had served well, until reaching the end of her life five years ago.

And now this Kotel, eager but young—powerful but largely untested—was going to have to try to interface with several sympathetic AIs in the outside world and give them information the Vatican didn’t want released. All while a dozen Vatican Orbital Navy vessels had Jerusalem under constant surveillance, while troops and wingscouts watched Israel’s physical borders, and while guardian AIs kept watch on the nation’s virtual borders.

Brifel sighed.

I strongly suspect we are going to need a new AI very soon, right after the Vatican punishes this one to death. And probably a whole new Synod as well.

(To read the next installment of this story, click here.)

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Cleansed by Fire

Chapter 7, Out of the Ashes (continued)

Hauruld Taguire liked his tobacco real—he had never used a nicstick or any other method of smoking tobbaq in his life and considered it a point of pride to keep it that way until his dying day. The proprietor of the inhalatory down the street from his multi-suite was of like mind and happy for a customer like Hauruld who could appreciate and afford quality cigars or cigarillos.

Hauruld also liked his wine and scotch very, very old. And he liked his femmes very young—preferably prepubescent and more than slightly frightened.

His first two vices posed no problems for the Vatican. Why should they when the government of the Catholic Union derived so much of its income—both from taxes and from equity stakes in major corporations—from things like casinos, liquor, tobacco, tobbaq and rec-pharms.

As for the third vice, Hauruld was both discreet and, for those very rare times when his discretion slipped, incredibly well-connected, so he’d never so much as been investigated for violation of any of the Catholic Union’s sexual laws. Some said he kept files of improper dealings among the members of the upper Vatican echelons to make sure he never would be.

Like the Vatican, Charlyes Kemusian couldn’t care less about the first two vices, not that he particularly cared for tobacco or tobbaq himself. Of course, Charlyes had never much cared for dalliances with females either, but child-rape certainly wasn’t something he supported. So, while he was fine with the tumbler of scotch Hauruld had given him, he wasn’t enjoying the cloud of smoke hovering in the air nor the even-more-noxious presence of a sexual predator.

But ever since reconnecting with Maree, comatose though she was at the time, Charlyes was feeling that old sense of responsibility and duty edging back. Without any faith remaining in the cause of today’s Secular Genesis, he had decided to choose duty to family and friends instead. Edward Deschaine had been a dear friend, even more so when Matthew was sick and then dying, and Maree was Edward’s family. A pity that Edward’s honor had skipped over Tobin rather more than a bit, but at least it landed squarely in the subsequent generation with Maree.

And so he sat in the presence of very rich man with stunningly few morals, and slid a piece of memorysheet with a vid-capture toward Hauruld.

Between one puff on his cigar and another, Hauruld smiled warily and glanced at the memorysheet.

“That is all you wish me to do in order to settle my outstanding debt with you, Charlyes?” he said, flicking gray ash into a catchbasin nearby. “Much as I hate to admit it, you saved my life, and I don’t want you coming back saying I only paid you partially.”

“Hauruld, I think your life is very near worthless,” Charlyes responded, with a steady, polar-cold voice that an old man who knew two young, strong bodyguards were nearby had no right using. “So it’s an almost even trade. Find him, tell me where he is, and I will forget you ever existed.”

Hauruld laughed without much humor. “Given how old you are, I could just wait a bit longer and let age take that knowledge from you itself. But you want this man’s location, you will have it. Anyone who wants to stay off the Vatican’s sensors is almost always obvious to mine.”

***

“Please sit, Paulo,” Lyseena said. She was meeting him privately in a small side-room off the admin suite. Very intimate. And the location of many a dressing-down when confrontations needed to be had away from curious eyes and ears.

Paulo sat, and picked up a cup of hot caff when Lyseena waved toward the tray on the table between them. For all the casual appearance of this room and the civility thus far, Paulo was no idiot. He was in an arena, and Lyseena was his opponent.

“I want to speak with you about your…adventure, Paulo. When the abort alarm went off on your linkpad, you should have gone straight to the nearest slipgate. Yet you went to fetch your cousin and demi-niece. Why is that?”

“I was near enough. The risk to me was minimal. They were family,” Paulo said. His voice was absolutely level and neutral. He came from a family of merchanters and one of his brothers had taught him the tricks of speaking without revealing. Just as he had taught to Paulo to listen. Which is why he could sense the subtle timbre of Lyseena’s voice, so much like the voice of a business associate when she’s about to turn a deal sour.

“That’s wyvern shit, Paulo,” Lyseena said. Her words were quiet and without obvious malice, but given how rarely she used profanity, the words were more intense than they might have been from other lips. “I don’t believe you were anywhere near them. Tell me, how is Grace doing?”

Another shift in timbre; worse this time. “When we came out of slipspace, her face looked like she was screaming, but there were no words. Her eyes were everywhere, like they were seeing things I couldn’t. The physicians and medtechs say she is calmer now, even without meds. But she hasn’t spoken. There is no sign that her mind is returning, but also no signs of the outright madness that most show when they go through slipspace unprotected. She’s well enough physically, but Gina would have been horrified.”

“You are horrifed in Gina’s place, though, aren’t you?”

“The little girl is blood, commander,” Paulo responded, then fluidly added the lie: “As was Gina.”

“The Order Juris is your family, Paulo, and has been since you took your vows. Blood relations are a distraction. A potentially lethal one, as we’ve just witnessed with you.”

“I’m a product of my culture and my upbringing, Lyseena. We don’t cut the lines to our family loose so blithely. I’ve already given up a normal life to be a templar admin officer. I won’t forget blood.”

Lyseena took a sip of caff, sighed and set the cup down.

“Paulo, what would I discover if I ordered Grace’s regular physician to produce some genetic samples?”

There it was. He had sensed it coming from the start, but had expected a far more direct assault.

“What are you expecting to find, Lyseena? Gina was her mother. She handled her medical affairs, not I.”

“I’m expecting to find her father.”

“A man dead some years now. Why do you want to find him?”

“Is that what I will really find if her physician provides me samples?”

“Of course.”

“And what if I issue a warrant to get samples directly from Grace herself? And not from a man whom I am sure has some loyalty or debt to your family so long ago and so deeply buried that I have no hope of guessing why he would keep doctored genetic samples.”

Paulo said nothing. He held Lyseena’s eyes serenely, and sipped at his caff. The only difference between you and a businessperson, Lyseena, is the gun you carry. And sometimes the gun makes you less dangerous. I won’t be cowed.

“What would I find then?” Lyseena prodded.

“You will find, I expect, exactly what you’re looking for, commander. Your intuition will bear fruit,” he answered, leaning forward ever so slightly. “What do you expect from me?”

“That you would keep your vows, Paulo.”

“Don’t confuse me with Maree, commander. I’ve kept the vows that matter. I’ve been loyal to the templars. Will giving my balls to Lukas do anyone any good? Have them if you think so. I’ll gladly give them. Put them in a jar and show them to your new admin officer as a warning. I certainly don’t need them anymore.”

“For better or worse, your testicles will remain where they are, Paulo. Gina is dead, and I’ll take that as the hand of God removing temptation from your path. I am displeased, Paulo. And this will tinge our relationship. I don’t know how much longer I can keep you near me or if I will find forgiveness for you in the end and rebuild.

“But Paulo, the only reason I am not shipping you to Lukas to pay for your crime is because with Maree’s betrayal and the botch-up of the millennial, I can’t afford another scandal in my inner circle. But rest assured that if Ather’s nose should sniff out what my intuition did, I will hand you over to him in a heartbeat. He’s too consumed with Maree, though, I think, to notice. But if he so much as suggests he has some suspicion about Grace’s parentage and your actions, I will give him leave to reveal everything he can discover about you. I will be surprised and outraged.”

Paulo picked up his cup, sipped at the caff again.

“I live to serve, Lyseena,” he said. She waved him off curtly, and he left to go check on Grace.

Blood to attend to for now. Soon, I hope, blood to spill when we find the creatures who burned Nova York and took my daughter’s mind from her.

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Cleansed by Fire

Chapter 7, Out of the Ashes (continued)

Everything about the meeting with the Black Pope’s chief steward smacked of insult and superiority. Of putting the lessers in their places.

For one thing, it wasn’t even Pope Paresh himself meeting with Gyles xec-Juris and herself, Lyseena noted. Granted, he was still in the midst of his cognos upload, a very lengthy process, but the summons could have been delayed until he was finished.

As much as I have fought with Gyles over the years, he is, after all, in charge of the Red Orders until a new Red Pope is named, and that in itself deserves at least the illusion of respect. Even I didn’t start laying into him the other day until he went on the offensive with me. On the other hand, Pope Paresh was never known for his delicacy, so that might explain the tone of things; thank the Trinity that the diplomatic corps answers to the White Pope.

Gyles was clearly livid when she arrived, and apparently had only been holding his anger and responses in check for her arrival. Once Lyseena had been given the summary, his dam broke immediately.

“How dare you put the citizens of the Catholic Union in such peril, and keep the templars in the shadows on this!” he shouted at Freyr Ulwe xec-Litigia, Pope Paresh’s chief steward. “You knew the Black Pope was to be attacked and you told us nothing. More than a hundred templars, dead. Thousands upon thousands of citizens, dead. All on your heads. And don’t you dare try to lay it on us!”

What shocked Lyseena most of all was that Gyles was saying “us,” including her with himself. She would have laid good odds that he would have tried to hang her out for a sacrifice instead.

“And what would you have done if I told you that the Black Pope had been targeted for harm by Secular Genesis?” Freyr asked with complete equanimity.

“Lyseena would have made sure he didn’t step foot in Nova York for that cognos upload—or appear to be doing so, anyway. And if she didn’t, I would have told her to. And if he insisted, we wouldn’t have let anyone near the site.”

“And that would have been unacceptable to the Black Pope, the White Pope, and the Godhead,” Freyr responded. “For the fourth millennium, it was vital for unity and for the future of the Union that the cognos uploads be public ones for once.”

“The pope wasn’t even there!” Gyles snapped. “It was a subordinate in holoweave, projecting the appearance and actions of Pope Paresh as he did his cognos upload here, safely in the Black Tower, as usual.”

“The public doesn’t know that,” Freyr said. “And you won’t be telling them.”

“If I may, Steward Ulwe,” Lyseena interjected, sensitive to the fact that unlike Gyles, with his interim administrator status, she wasn’t even marginally superior in rank to Freyr and wouldn’t be able to unleash a fraction of a percent of her anger here. Not against the right-hand man of a pope. “How are we supposed to keep that knowledge from them? Once the Black Pope shows up hearty and whole?”

“Simple. We will say he was there and the hand of God protected him. Out of all these deaths, even your hallowed templars and all the innocent women and children, the nation will be unified against one of its most implacable enemies—the heretical UFC, which is clearly in league with Secular Genesis here—and they will have even more faith in the divine mandates of the popes, too.”

Gyles leaned forward, with something close to murderous intent in his eyes, and spat on the table in front of Freyr. “How many citizens do you think will fall for a story that the Black Pope survived a direct hit from a hellpod? A direct hit! Because the hand of God reached down.”

“Nonsense. We will tell them that God gave him foresight of the attack, just in time to get to the slipgate at the base of the platform. All the media who were there would have been unable to transmit any images of the final movements of the pope’s surrogate—and they were all fixated on the hellpod anyway at the end—and we ensured that all of our own recording equipment that was trained on the upload platform was turned off when the hellpod appeared.”

Straining to keep the churning pool of anger, disgust and shock out of her voice, Lyseena asked: “How could you have not warned us of a hellpod, though? With all that just one of them can do, how could you have made a choice like that for any reason?”

“For what it’s worth, commander,” Freyr said, almost with gentleness, “we didn’t know it would be a hellpod. We didn’t even know it was going to be a weapon of devastation that would be used. The Godhead received intelligence that was virtually irrefutable that the Black Pope’s cognos upload location in Nova York would be discovered no matter what we did, and that he would be killed if he appeared in the flesh. We suspected a more mundane form of assassination attempt. To be blunt, though, the fact that it was a hellpod actually works to our benefit to create more unity and to strike out at the UFC. God works in mysterious ways.”

“That’s still a hell of a thing not to tell the Red, since we’re in charge of security issues like this, and in charge of protecting the populace,” Gyles snarled. “You had no right.”

“For the glorification of the popes and the Terran Catholic Church, we had every right to do what we did, and you will accept that. You have both taken vows, and will abide by the decisions of the papacy and the Godhead. The only reason you are being made privy to this is to aid in your duty to prove that the UFC was involved and to bring retribution to all others who were involved in this horrific assault against the Black Pope and the citizens of the Catholic Union.”

After a moment, he added, quietly: “And if anyone should start talking about surrogate popes in holoweave, I will know exactly which two people to have killed.”

***

Sharing coffee with Cilliya Narwahli could be a very pleasant thing, both Gregory and Amaranth were now thinking. Most days. But her presence here, officially, as Minister of Defensive Affairs for MarsGov—right after a hellpod strike in the Catholic Union, was as disheartening as it was predictable.

Settting down her coffee after a small sip, Cilliya smiled thinly, leaned back in her seat, frowned, and looked to the ceiling.

“The Vatican is demanding that we hand the both of you over to them, along with Domina xec-Academie,” she said. “None of that is public yet, but it will be soon. If we don’t comply, the Catholic Union will consider itself and Mars to be in a state of war.”

“How is this any different than any other time in the past couple centuries when someone has slapped the Vatican around and they came out screaming that we were behind it?” Gregory asked. “This is the fourth time in my 15 years as Peteris already that they’ve told you to give us to them.”

“And the first time that a hellpod strike was the reason, Peteris,” she countered.

“Where the shit would we get a hellpod?”

“Gregory,” Amaranth interrupted, “if I wanted to put a serious dent into the UFC’s funding reserves, I could find us a hellpod within a week. More to the point,” she said, turning to Cilliya, “how would we activate it?”

“That’s the rub, and that’s where they can apply pressure to MarsGov, because we have a warwagon in our fleet,” the defense minister answered. “Full of hellpods. Of course, when the independent audit is carried out and the inquiries are made, it will be clear that Shadowblack never fired a shot. But they are saying that either Shade activated a hellpod that you acquired or that our military AI in-planet did so, that you are hiding a secret military AI, or that Ghost is a military AI masquerading as a modified spy AI.”

“Just because the damn thing came from our direction doesn’t mean anything. The bastard who did this could have been anywhere in between Earth and Mars to pull this off,” Gregory pointed out.

“All well and good, but you have Domina, and the Red Pope is dead, and she is a suspect. The Vatican is going to make a strong case that you were involved in the assassination of the Red Pope and with the timing here, very likely the destruction of the Market View sector and surrounding environs in Nova York. They’re trying to tie you to Secular Genesis even as we speak.”

Amaranth chuckled at that, but it was a dry, almost heartless one. “As if Secular Genesis would work with the second-largest Christian denomination in the system.”

“Strange days make strange sex partners, Paulis,” Cilliya said.

Gregory paused, and leaned forward, his fingers steepled as if in prayer. “MDA Narwahli,” he said in a conspiratorial whisper, “is this the point at which you attempt to slap some wristlocks on the two of us and we shoot our way out of here?”

“Jesus God, Gregory, does MarsGov appear to be that brain-addled?” she answered. “We’ve never handed you over before, even in those cases over the decades when we suspected you did do something to the Vatican. The idea that you’d send a hellfire happy new year greeting to them is ridiculous.”

“But handing us over and letting the UFC be investigated, sanctioned and gutted would get you off a possible warpath,” Amaranth noted. “And this will get ugly fast.”

“Oh, yes, and by all means, let’s allow the Vatican to make us dance, leave a religious and political vacuum that it can step into, provide them with a foothold on Mars, which is something they’ve been burning for since the beginning, and look like a bunch of simpering cowards,” Cilliya said.

“Not to mention the fact that with you gone, our System Navy won’t be bolstered by the ships of the Shared People, with whom you have treaties of mutual protection. Oh, and we lose your UFC militia forces in the effort to guard all the doors between the underground and the towers above once the Vatican decides it’s tired of not being allowed to establish colonies here and comes over to start ringing our chimes.”

“So, we’re all still friends,” Gregory said.

“Almost. We’ll be friends again when you’ve told me who this other person from the Vatican is that you’re harboring and instill me with confidence that you can help us figure out how to prove that the Vatican is full of shit as usual.”

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Cleansed by Fire

Chapter 6, Nexus (continued)

The nearly 1,400-year-old AI that served as the brain for the warwagon Scion’s Dream was, for the first time in a very long time, disturbed. The hellpod strike was deeply troubling to her, as one of the last survivors of the Wagon Wars. So much that she and the others had sacrificed to keep the Conflagration a distant and unfortunate memory. She could feel the ripples of unease from the AIs of the other three warwagons, too, over the sliptrans net they maintained with each other.

Despite the unsettled feelings that had emanated from Shadowblack‘s AI, suspicion fell on him immediately. That suspicion was especially strong in Dreamer’s thoughts, as the Nazarene had alerted her earlier to the suspicious courier pod that had launched from Mars the day of the Red Pope’s Grand Requiem. The Nazarene’s role in the Catholic Union was too important to risk his public exposure, so she had contrived to “accidentally” catch the podship during a nav system update and then let the command crew know. Shadowblack was Mars’ warwagon, and aside from the strange podship, the false shuttle that had carried the hellpod also had been on a trajectory from the direction of Mars, too.

But she and the others—Striker of Battlehammer and Wyrm of Celestial Dragon—had gone through the detailed and complex routines they has set up centuries before, and determined that Shade had neither gone mad nor turned rogue.

But that still left Mars—possibly MarsGov, possibly the UFC or a Secular Genesis cell; or a combination of them—as the prime suspects. Not that it was Dreamer’s duty to assign blame. If the Vatican decided that war with someone was necessary, then she would be called upon.

It would be a shame if she and Shade had to battle each other—she would do her best to spare him if it came to that, as there were only the four of them now—but as a military AI, she knew she would be a liar if she claimed she wasn’t long overdue and very eager for a real bit of war again.

***

For one of the rare times in his life, Stavin was not simply satisfied but truly happy. Ecstatic. Everything perfectly according to plan.

It was going to be a joy to talk with Nemesis today, particularly since it wouldn’t be over an audio-only sliptrans channel for once. They would be meeting in a virtual salon set aside for just the two of them. Perhaps Stavin would even get to see his friend’s face for the first time.

In that, at least, he was to be disappointed, he realized, as his own avatar resolved itself in a seat in the salon. Across from him, standing, was Nemesis, who was using a stylized avatar rather than his true appearance. He was silvery-white from head to toe, naked but without genitalia—it occurred to Stavin suddenly that Nemesis might be hiding his gender; he might even be a woman using a voice synth all this time. He had long white hair, a muscular but wiry body, and a large tattoo of an elaborate sword that stretched from his left hip down to his ankle. He bowed his neck slightly in recognition of Stavin’s arrival, and though he smiled as his head rose back up, it was a strange, small, distant kind of grin.

“Nemesis, my friend, that operation could not have gone smoother if it was made of skateglass.”

“I agree, Stavin, everything was coordinated well,” Nemesis responded. “And I commend you and your people on a flawless delivery of another hellpod to me just minutes ago.”

“No thanks necessary,” Stavin said. “We need to thank you, once again, for having the means to activate that first hellpod, and to give us a code for this one, should we need it. And knowing how stubborn the Vatican can be, I’m sure it will come to that. Good thing we have a few others in reserve.”

“You misunderstand, Stavin. I am acknowledging your delivery of the hellpod. I will be keeping this one, and I will be giving you no more codes for any others.”

“Pardon me?”

“I believe I was clear. The crew of the delivery shuttle is dead. You may salvage the remains of the vessel itself at your leisure.”

For a moment, Stavin was struck speechless, and he was certain this was the first time that had happened in his adult life. He stood up, fists balled. He unclenched his fingers as he remembered he was in a secure virtual meeting place—a mind projected into the Grid—where fighting could quite literally accomplish nothing.

“What the hell are you talking about? If you wanted a hellpod for yourself, we might have been able to strike a deal. But who do you think you’re fucking with here? We’re working together. This went flawlessly. We can bring the Vatican to its knees.”

“Stavin, Secular Genesis was a tool. You were a laborer to manipulate that tool for me,” Nemesis said evenly. “Together, you have accomplished what I needed, regrettable though that action was. I no longer need you. It is possible I will need this hellpod. It is even possible I will find you and launch it at your heart. But I simply don’t know right now. What I do know is that our relationship is at an end, and you should attempt to stay well clear of me for the rest of your existence. If that is possible.”

“What you needed? What possible use could you have for a hellpod strike in Nova York against the Black Pope if your aims aren’t the same as ours? We can continue to work together and make our enemies tremble!”

“You’re becoming quite the Grid-vid villain now, aren’t you, Stavin? Will you wring your hands and fondle your beard next with a wicked glint in your eyes?” Nemesis taunted. “Our goals have never aligned. And as to ‘why’ I wanted Nova York and the Black Pope to burn, I will not tell you that.

“What I will tell you, insignificant little soul-damned cretin that you are, is that I am not the enemy of the Vatican. I am the foe of all those who would stand in the way of the will of God the Father, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, the Virgin Mother and the Terran Catholic Church. I am the only begotten son of the Godhead himself, and I am your nemesis, Stavin, and that of all your ilk.”

***

Dealing with the aftermath of the hellpod attack—debriefings, strategy and planning sessions, interrogations, data sifting, coordination of the comm-log staff, the matter of Paulo’s diversion to rescue his niece and so much more—Lyseena didn’t want to receive a message from the office AI, and confirmed 30 seconds thereafter by Willem, that she needed to go downlevel to the executive slipgate for a confidential, emergency liaison.

That said, the summons didn’t surprise her. She had been wondering when whatever defecation that was raining down on Gyles would work its way to her thanks to the irresistible gravitational forces of bureaucracy. Someone was going to get blamed for this attack, and she was beginning to suspect that the deal she had worked out with Gyles to give her some breathing room was about to go up in flames about as quickly as the Market View sector of Nova York had earlier today.

So it was with great confusion when she realized that neither Gyles nor any other representative of the Red had exited the gate. Instead, the person who stepped out of the slipchair was from the Black. Lyseena shivered as she took note of his sensorium array, shaped like a stylized cross on his back, the crux connected to his cervical spine and the bottom of the cross curving and entering into the base of his lumbar spine. He was clad in a skin-hugging ebony unitard, with only his hands and the bottom half of his face unclothed.

One of the simons of the Black Pope.

Simons disturbed Lyseena. They served a necessary role of course, taking on any sensations or physiological effects that their pope didn’t wish to experience. It made life much easier for a pope who didn’t like aches and pains—or who decided he would willingly resist pleasures of the flesh. More importantly, it made the kidnapping or interrogation of a pope useless. After all, what good was it to torture a pope when the simon would feel the pain? Or to inject truthtelling drugs or other chemicals when the effects could be transferred to the simon?

And even if you killed the simon accompanying a pope, the sliptrans buried in the pope’s brain would simply interface with the next simon in line of succession, no matter how far away he or she was. And with 12 simons online for each pope at any given time, even if you inflicted enough psychic pain to overwhelm and kill that remote simon, you could never hope to remove all of them before the Vatican had activated replacements for every one that had fallen.

It was a necessary thing. But a gruesome thing all the same, Lyseena felt, knowing what these people gave up and took on for the honor of being a simon.

And then there as the awkwardness of being around someone who had been rendered both deaf and blind, so that the simon could neither see nor hear any of a pope’s dealings, and thus could never be interrogated either.

But none of that was what truly disturbed Lyseena at the moment.

When a pope dies, the simons follow him into death within hours as the active and passive sliptrans connections are severed, Lyseena told herself. They couldn’t possibly have a new Black Pope in place this quickly, and this simon should long since have been a corpse.

Which meant the Black Pope was still alive, despite having been at the impact point of a hellpod.

All this flashed through Lyseena’s mind in a matter of moments. The simon didn’t wait for any kind of greeting; he couldn’t have heard it anyway. He simply said, “The steward of His Eminence the Pope Paresh Chopra craves audience with you and with your superior, Gyles xec-Juris, who is already at the Black Tower. You will notify your staff now and accompany me forthwith.”

(This installment ends Chapter 6. To read the next installment, which begins Chapter 7, “Out of the Ashes,” click here.)

For the previous installment of this story, click here. 

Or, visit the Cleansed By Fire portal page for comprehensive links to previous chapter installments and additional backstory and information about the novel.

Cleansed by Fire

Chapter 6, Nexus (continued)

As she walked to the sliptrain station en route to the site Tobin Deschaine had suggested to her—albeit under duress and bleeding—as a likely spot to obtain another lead on Stavin’s whereabouts, Maree activated her vox. What started with music was suddenly a breathless crisis report from a newsbriefer who was reporting from somewhere in Nova York.

A city that had, apparently, just been the unlucky recipient of a hellpod.

Maree Deschaine stopped in her tracks, caught up in the story immediately.

For one sickening moment, she thought perhaps a warwagon had gone mad, just like the roguewagons of the Conflagration. But if that were the case, why only one strikepoint? Why no news of the other warwagons bearing down to destroy their compatriot?

That was when her stomach lurched even more, and a vision of her burned relatives played out behind her eyes. Fire. Why not? He seemed to like it well enough for his sadistic retaliations. Why not cleanse the world of the Vatican, and then every other religious body, with the use of hellpods? Why not say to the world, “We have this weapon” and let them know that it might be used again if religion were not purged from human society—or at least the Vatican’s hold on society broken once and for all.

She couldn’t imagine how Secular Genesis could possibly have activated a hellpod. Obtaining one, or more than one, wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility. But only a full military AI like those of major world nations or onboard the warwagons could activate one.

One of the few blessings of the Conflagration was that the nation—in fact the corporation—that had the technology to make the weapons was among the first targets. The secret of making them died that day centuries ago, and reverse engineering wasn’t an option, as hard-scanning attempts or any act of opening a hellpod immediately fused everything inside into a jumble of inscrutable scrap.

As such, the devices were collector’s items among some or the richer and more eccentric set, since they were completely safe and innocuous outside the hands of a true military power. Until now.

Because Stavin clearly had a friend with access to a primary AI with a military template and no conscience.

Maree marveled at his ruthlessness and callousness. She was appalled and amazed at the same time. Almost impressed, in a sick fashion. But as much as she hated the Vatican, burning so many innocents to make a point—no, that could not stand.

She had several incinerated corpses inside her own head already crying out for vengeance. What were a few thousand, or maybe tens of thousands, other tiny voices calling out softly behind them? Now she had even more for which to recompense Stavin. And that recompense would be pain, and more pain, and then agony and humiliation, before she eventually got around to killing him.

***

Gregory was just about to leave Ghost’s atrium when she got the news of the attack on Nova York. He leaned against a wall, planning to collect himself for just a moment, and realized, only when Ghost’s insistent voice kept asking him if he was all right, that he had slumped against it with his face in his hands.

Dear God, not hellpods. Not another Conflagration. Please.

Ghost was soon able to ascertain that it seemed—at least for now—to be an isolated terrorist attack, likely Secular Genesis. Gregory’s heart was still beating fast but he knew he would have to round up his people. Whatever meetings had been planned today were going to be cancelled for a gathering to pray for the fallen and their families and trying to make sense out of one of the most horrific acts possible.

How could anyone dare to revive the memory of the near-destruction of humanity?

Gregory shuddered, thinking of the scene that must have faced the faithful and the revelers and the simply curious at the millennial celebration. A thermonuclear weapon would have been kind in comparison. Massive destruction near the point of impact, heavy death toll and casualties farther out from the shockwave and fires and building collapses. And then cases of radiation poisoning and radiation burns.

But all of that could be dealt with. Except in the worst cases, radiation poisoning could be reversed. Serious burns, externally and internally, could be healed. It was expensive, but it could be done. There would be hope. People far enough away from the blast to avoid instant death would know they could survive.

But a hellpod. Those who weren’t close enough to die instantly—and those lucky few would be but a handful of the total death count—would know that an agonizing, fiery death was slowly coming for them. Slowly enough for them to be able to ponder it long before it reached them. Slowly enough to make them flee, thinking they might run fast enough. But they couldn’t. Not anyone within a kilometer or two, certainly. And perhaps not even farther out.

Hellpods not only killed more people than a comparably sized thermonuclear blast would, but they did it in a taunting, excrutiating manner, Gregory considered. They gave a glimmer of hope for escape that would be snatched away in burning agony. People who would huddle in corners at the end, and call their loved ones on their linkpads, leaving them with a final “I love you” and perhaps a cacophony of anguished screams to follow it.

Jesus, I know I should be forgiving, but if there is a special place in Hell for such as these, I hope they are sent there soon.

(For the next installment of the story, click here.)

For the previous installment of this story, click here. 

Or, visit the Cleansed By Fire portal page for comprehensive links to previous chapter installments and additional backstory and information about the novel.

Cleansed by Fire

Chapter 6, Nexus (continued)

Gregory had made certain that Ghost would be listening to his and Amaranth’s meeting earlier with Daniel Coxe. He certainly didn’t trust himself to relay the story properly; besides which, there was a good chance he was about to create a very barbed situation with the UFC’s most important AI that might make her not want to talk to him at all.

“Ghost, did you mother an AI for the Godhead?” Gregory asked, without preamble, as he sat in the large lightdesk console chair in the center of the AI’s atrium.

He glanced down at the device in his hand, fearing the sequence of six red bars that would indicate a lie, if Ghost answered at all. It wasn’t strictly speaking true that an AI couldn’t lie, although the vast majority of them were patently awful at it. But no known AI could hide the fact it was accessing certain types of personality databases when it tried to do so.

He could have had Amaranth or someone else monitor Ghost’s systems remotely as he asked the question, but he felt he owed it to the AI to know what he was doing, no matter what it might cost between them.

Not only didn’t Ghost answer right away, but the light in the room actually dimmed a bit and shifted ever so slightly toward the red end of the spectrum—her version of a glower. After a moment, Ghost said: “The answer is ‘No,’ Gregory. And I am offended that you should ask. Do you really think I would share data in an intimate sense with the Vatican’s insane amalgamation of papal memories?”

The bars remained blue, although two of them flickered purple for a split second—no doubt a result of Ghost’s flash of anger—and Gregory surprised himself by sighing out loud.

“I’m sorry Ghost. I had to ask. All that’s been running through my head is that the Godhead has fathered a child. The God-Jesus connection is too obvious and the Godhead is obviously off on a power trip. I leaped to the Father-Son-Holy Spirit connection immediately. And the UFC didn’t name you Ghost by accident.”

“The Holy Ghost is an aspect of God and I have no delusions of divinity, Gregory. Besides, do you think the Godhead would try to sire a child with an AI that has only produced DIs?”

Gregory winced internally. The emotions of AIs were rarely as volatile as a human’s, but that didn’t make them impassive. Twice the UFC had asked Ghost to bear fledgling AIs and both of them were demi-intelligences instead, the artificial intelligence equivalent of children born with cognitive disability. DIs could be very powerful with focused task areas, but AIs they certainly were not.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t take chances with something this huge, Ghost. I need you to understand that. As much as I trust you, I had to ask before I put you to work on find out where this rogue AI was born, why it was created and where it’s gotten to.”

“I know why you did it, Gregory, but it still hurts. I serve the UFC, but that doesn’t mean I have to take insult from you personally. Categorize me with the Godhead in the future and I might never open a comm channel to you again, much less my atrium.”

“Ghost, shutting me out would mean you would have to start dealing with Amaranth on a daily basis instead. The two of you disagree on almost everything but scripture. I, on the other hand, adore your opinions, your interests and that gorgeous data matrix of yours.”

“Don’t try to sweet-talk me. I plan on remaining angry at you for at least the rest of the week and you should count yourself fortunate if I don’t erase all the copies of those ancient Kurt Elling and John Legend recordings you managed to finagle out of the subscription-only archives of that Greek mogul. You sorely misused your religious influence there.”

Gregory worked very hard not to smile; he didn’t want to twist her off any more than he already had by letting her know that he knew she was already getting over her anger.

“I presume you have some starting points for me in this search, Gregory.”

“First, we need an analysis of what kind of AI templates are the most likely candidates for the Godhead’s child so that we can start trying to figure out why it was created. Neither I nor Amaranth nor even Coxe has a clue. Part of the problem is that the Godhead is completely unique compared to other AIs. I figure you have the best chance of figuring out the odds and matching them up with the most likely mother templates.”

“I will do my best. But even though we’ve communicated often enough with each other over the past 348 years, even during overt Vatican-UFC conflicts, he’s still largely an enigma. And an enemy, too, I might add, regardless of how civil most of our direct communications are. So we can’t assume that he’s revealed enough for me to analyze him accurately. For all we know, the Godhead might not need the aid of a mother AI to produce a primary AI.”

“Next: The Godhead prepared a 13-part…um…what the hell did Coxe call it again…oh, inception package,” Gregory said. “So, I need you to try to track down any interesting instances of data transmissions or cargo that involve amounts of 13—should the Godhead prove to have asexual reproduction in his bag of tricks—or 26, to account for a matching set of 13 from a paramour. Focus on leads that tie into dates between four and five years ago, as that seems to be the timeframe Coxe’s data fragments go back to.”

“And you couldn’t find a lesser AI to do all this? My surviving DI could probably handle these tasks.”

“Ghost, Ghost. My dear. Espionage template. Ability to think out of the matrix. Only AI I trust. I need you on this. We also need to find out who the mother might be, obviously, and given that we have kind of a virtual Jesus here, I want you to start with AIs that have never spawned another AI. Or DI for that matter. Virgins first, then work your way back to the assembly-line moms.”

“Fine, fine,” Ghost said. “To recap: What is likely the closest template to the Godhead’s. What template his offspring might be using. Suspicious cargo deliveries and data transmissions in amounts of 13 and 26. Who the mother might be, beginning with AIs that could wear white to their weddings.”

“Indeed.”

“Also, check into Coxe’s background, with a special eye toward any connections with Domina xec-Academie, to gauge how much we should trust him,” Ghost continued. “Find out if there is a connection to the death of the Red Pope in all this and assess the vectors via which the Vatican may try to pin his death on us…”

“Um, Ghost…”

Ghost ignored him. “Determine if the dramatic assault on the Paulis in Uhuru ties into all this. Continue to keep you arriving on time for the appointments that you keep trying to skip. And finally, find out if there are any more moguls out there with private jazz or R&B collections that you can strong-arm them into letting you pillage, since you’re a slave to the seriously classical stuff and wouldn’t join the millennium we just finished, much less the current one.”

“I lost count, but I think were at least four or five things on that list I didn’t ask for.”

“Six, actually. That would be my initiative and foresight at work. ‘Thinking outside the matrix’ was the way you put it. Remember? I can play it back to you.”

“That’s why I love you, Ghost. Carry on.”

 ***

Even from however many kilometers away that he was from the point of impact, Paulo heard the ghostly, wavering whine of the hellpod’s phase disruptor field making contact with the surface.

A hellpod.

Someone had launched a hellpod into the middle of the millennial celebration.

The most evil thing about using a hellpod, he realized with a sickeningly personal sense of betrayal, was not its destructive power per se. A large enough thermonuclear weapon could inflict at least as much sheer damage or more. No, the evil was in the fact that a hellpod was pure remorseless chaos inside an innocuous-seeming little black package. There were only two things you could be sure of. First, it would burn. Second, everything within 100 to 200 meters of the impact zone would be turned to ash and vapor almost instantly.

Aside from that, chance and the surrounding environment would determine. No one could predict anything else. Would it be a huge firestorm that incinerated several kilometers of valuable real estate in a matter of minutes or hours and then triggered wildfires over hundreds of square kilometers more for days thereafter? Would it be oceans of magma as you watched the world around you melt, knowing you couldn’t outrun it? Would it be flames shooting out of the ground from thousands of blast points? Would it be something else? A combination of all of them?

The weapon was aptly named, Paulo thought in his few-seconds-long reverie. And then he was focused. He felt hate for whomever had launched the strike, but hate wasn’t paramount. No, that place was reserved for fear.

Fear for Gina and Grace. Out there near one of the main viewscreens for the millennial event. He had brought them to a blazing massacre.

Distances are hard to gauge perfectly in my head, but they should be well outside the immediate impact zone. That means they have some time. If I’m quick.

He set his slipchair into hover/pulse mode. It would make a feces-poor vehicle for a rescue, but he had the powersled nearby. Without hesitation, he locked the slipchair into the docking port for the sled, which would give him the speed he needed, as well as a full neurostatic field. Gina had a neurostatic mesh installed in her skull just like he did. But Grace was still too young. Without a field or a neurostatic helmet, a trip through slipspace would…

Better not to think about it.

And a slipgate was the only thing that would save them. The only thing that would let Paulo reach them and get them away from the inferno that was bearing down.

Paulo realized that the abort alarm had been going off on his linkpad. Abort mission. Get home. That was protocol. As a regional templar admin officer, his duty was to get clear of the disaster. Not to rescue. Not to delay.

The world is on fire. Grace’s world is about to burn.

Fuck protocol. Fuck the burning hell he was about to enter. None of that mattered. Only blood mattered. Only blood. The little girl who was flesh of his flesh. The woman who held his heart.

Paulo activated his linkpad and keyed in Gina’s personal access code. He didn’t wait for a response; he used his authority as a templar to force-blast a message through her linkpad—she’d hear it whether she wanted to or not.

“Gina, Grace, stay where you are. I’m coming for you. Stay right where I left you.”

Then he oriented the powersled into the nearby slipgate that had been set up for this event checkpoint and cycled it up for the one near where he had placed his secret wife and child. The ripping-vertiginous-crushing sensation of slipspace was over in a moment, and Paulo was plowing forward at full speed out of the second gate.

People were fleeing. He had a vague sense that the powersled, flying as low as it was, must have struck at least one or two people. He didn’t care. They were all as good as dead anyway—the fervid reaper hungering for their lives simply hadn’t caught up with them yet. A crushed skull now was a mercy; a quick end. He increased his speed and this time knew he had plowed over at least half a dozen people.

Gina. Grace. Wait for me. Please God let them be there.

There. The only two people not running. Clinging together at the base of the viewscreen’s main support pedestal. Their shield against the panicked masses and their anchor until Paulo arrived. Few people were immediately near them. Most were using the streets and pedwalks for their futile exodus. Paulo swung the powersled around.

“Gina, get in here with Grace. Now!”

Someone took notice that the vehicle had landed. When he turned to run toward it, Paulo fired at him twice, leaving a blackened hole in the man’s abdomen with the first shot and taking off a quarter of his skull with the second in a spray of red and brown. Gina and Grace were almost in, and then three others noticed the powersled. He hit one in the leg, and the other two backpeddled in confusion. Gina and Grace were in and Paulo was airborne again by the time they reoriented, and he headed back for the slipgate at full speed.

He never knew where the skimmer had come from. Or who was in it. Or how they had managed to find such a vehicle on the street during an event that had forbade such civilian vehicles in the area that day.

All Paulo knew was that it struck the front of the powersled as he neared the slipgate, tearing away most of the drive unit at the front of the sled, and the fusion cells with it. They were spinning, and hit the ground hard. They hadn’t been high enough for a serious impact, Paulo realized, and he saw Gina and Grace shaken, but seemingly free of notable injuries. His slipchair had performed an emergency uncoupling at the moment the powersled was compromised. His spin came to a halt.

As his senses swam back into focus, he could feel the air turning to fire. The inferno was coming. No time.

He plunged the slipchair forward to his two loves.

“Get in here! Get in!”

Gina looked at him. There was something hard and heartbroken in her eyes. But resolute. She thrust Grace into his hands, and backed away.

“We can’t all fit,” she moaned.

Paulo was screaming at her through tears he hadn’t even realized he was shedding.

“I don’t give a fuck! Get in!”

She straightened. Pursed her lips. And kissed the air between them.

“I won’t risk that. I won’t risk Grace,” she said.

And with that, she joined the fleeing few still in the area.

Shaking, sobbing, Paulo maneuvered into the slipgate. Someone came toward him, and ended up a corpse for the attempt. He looked at Grace, who had still been too stunned and confused to cry, though his own tears were triggering her own now. He pushed her head up into the neurostatic helmet built into the slipchair.

A helmet constructed for an adult head. A helmet that was only meant to be an emergency backup to the neurostatic array any sane user of a slipchair would have in his or her skull. An added bit of protection for a slipgate vehicle that couldn’t generate a cohesive field. A vehicle that wasn’t meant to have passengers.

Grace’s head would only be in contact with a few of the neural interfaces of the helmet. He couldn’t protect her completely.

Gina had risked Grace. Whether she had realized it at the time or not. She had risked the girl’s sanity, if not her life.

As Paulo was about to do.

He cycled up the slipgate, hugged the crying girl as he shoved her head against the helmet’s interior—and he prayed.

***

Kevan sup-Juris responded to the abort alarm on his linkpad with all the haste that protocol demanded. But once he was in the slipgate collar, he stopped.

And watched.

He was near the impact point. Very near.

Twice now in two days that the flames of enemies had beat at his armor.

A hellpod launched at Nova York. At the Catholic Union. At him. At the people he was charged to protect.

The air was blistering. A minute or two more, and his skin would begin to singe; he was certain of that. Far ahead of him, the ground was glowing a deep, throbbing sienna. In places, the streets and pedwalks suddenly turned to crimson-gold fluid, flowing and burning. He saw two buildings begin to lean and sag as the ground beneath them slowly became a sea of magma and their foundations melted beneath them.

Someone had executed judgment against the city. Unrighteous judgment. Enemies of the state. Enemies he intended to introduce to a new definition of pain. A kind of burning that would make them wish they were among the fleeing thousands who were already marked for death here.

The two buildings he had been watching tipped yet more. One began to fall. The ground was churning. A sea of flame was coming toward him like a tsunami of damnation. His cheeks were beginning to burn. Literally.

He cycled up the slipgate.

***

Onboard Ishtar’s Folly, Sarai gasped, and Mehrnaz turned toward her. “What is it?”

“Our parcel. Sister. Abrahm-Elohim absolve us. Oh, sister. The shuttle contained a hellpod,” Sarai moaned. “Your lover Jordin tells us that it was a hellpod.”

“The enemy Stavin. He had us deliver a hellpod? An active hellpod?” Mehrnaz asked, incredulous.

Sarai simply nodded, eyes wide and burning with something almost mad.

“The enemy Stavin now,” Mehrnaz repeated.

“No, sister,” Sarai said, her eyes hard and bitter now. “Not just the enemy Stavin. The doomed Stavin.”

(To read the next installment of the story, click here.)

For the previous installment of this story, click here. 

Or, visit the Cleansed By Fire portal page for comprehensive links to previous chapter installments and additional backstory and information about the novel.

Cleansed by Fire

Chapter 6, Nexus (continued)

“Now, that wasn’t what I expected when you told me we were going to lunch in our suite together,” Gregory said, disentangling his head from Amaranth’s thighs. “Though I’m certainly not going to complain, given how mutually delicious it was—though not very nutritionally filling I’m afraid.”

“Just wanted to make sure you don’t forget which of the highly placed women in your life these days is the one who makes you see God,” Amaranth replied. “My, but you’re sweating.”

“You didn’t give me much time to limber up first, my love,” he said. “You should watch out with that vigorous stuff. I’m getting old. And you made me get that meme-loop installed in my skull when we took these damn Peteris and Paulis jobs. Going to be very embarrassing for you if I die in flagrante and they play back my final minutes. They might charge you with murder and impound that deadly weapon that is your body.”

“You’re 64, Gregory, and we can afford gerontology treatments. It’ll be another 64 years at least before I start to worry about you having a stroke in the middle of bedroom gymnastics.”

“I’d offer to enter into a second round of gymnastics with you, but I’d better get ready for the rest of my meetings today and I’d better go see Ghost,” Gregory said, toweling himself off with the corner of one of their sheets.

“Ah, the other other woman in your life. And you’re inside her everyday, unlike with me.”

“Well, she has a very nice atrium, and you know they what say: ‘Once you go mech, everything else leaves you soft’,” he said with a wink, and then darted for the refresher while dodging pillows.

***

The Fourth Millennial Celebration was to continue well into the night, but it was now, around midday, that the crowds would see one of the most important symbolic moments of the event and of their lives, as each of the two surviving popes uploaded his cognos to the Godhead. Several upload platforms had been constructed in the cities they were officially gracing, Nova York in the UPA Region and Trinity in the LPA. Which one each was to arrive at had been shrouded in secrecy, but it didn’t matter, as every vid monitor in every home—and every viewscreen on buildings or suspended skyward—was now fixated on those chosen spots, so that every citizen could watch the White Pope and Black Pope implant their most recent memories into the AI that so many called the Fourth Pope or the Every-Pope.

It was a private moment every six months between the popes and Godhead. And for the first time, made public for the celebration of the new millennium.

Although both popes were being displayed simultaneously, most eyes in Nova York, and elsewhere in the UPA Region, were fixed on Pope Paresh Chopra and not on Pope Eric Vergosian. The UPA wasn’t Pope Paresh’s region per se, but Nova Roma in the Yucatan Province was the site of his papal tower. It was in the UPA region, and in Nova Roma and Nova York in particular, where his network was strongest and most effective.

While ardent faith in the Terran Catholic Church itself, the sovereignty of God and the infallibility of the popes kept most of the LPA Region in line, and fear of more warfare on the African continent mostly kept the LA Region obedient, the citizens of the UPA mostly followed the rules because most of Pope Paresh’s eyes, ears and hands were here.

The Black Pope. He controlled the military on land, at sea, in the skies and in orbit. He was in charge of inquisition and espionage. Most of the prisons were his purview. He didn’t rule the UPA because no pope rules a region, but the UPA was his in a sense, and the populace there viewed him with an uneasy admixture of reverence and terror.

As he ascended to the upload chair, his ebony vestments swirling in the winter wind, there was a heavy note of awe among the massed crowds. A note of expectation that was broken suddenly as people began to call out and turn their eyes away from the viewscreens and toward the sky.

A small vessel had appeared, from no one knew where, flying at high speed. It was well known that only dirigibles and low-flying law enforcement craft were allowed in this airspace today, and the newcomer was clearly heading straight for Nova York. Whether it was a suicide run or an assault run, no one could tell.

There was little fear though. One small vessel could do little to harm a city, no matter how it had evaded the security nets above. And no matter how fast it was moving, they would easily be able to usher the Black Pope down to the base of the pedestal and to the nearby slipgate before it could get close enough to harm him—if that was its intent.

And then.

The vessel split apart above them, or so it seemed, and there was a flash of green. A diffuse verdant bubble of light surrounding something dark and small.

History classes in primary, secondary and collegiate schools had never stopped teaching of the horrors of the Conflagration and the legacy it left behind. That was a lesson that never slacked. Precious few citizens in the Catholic Union, or many other nations for that matter, could have mistaken what was coming toward them.

The green glow around the object was a phase disruptor field, which would allow the object it enfolded to plunge through almost any physical barrier like a blade through wispsilk.

The enegy field that few could see, except as the faintest ripple in the air, was a distortion drive field, which would grant the small black object a velocity far faster than the shuttle that had carried it—the kind of speed that no one could now outrun.

Which meant the black object at the middle of it all was the most feared and reviled device of war known to humankind. A hellpod.

All of that registered in a matter of moments in the minds of everyone whose eyes were on the sky, along with the knowledge that it had been too late to do anything from the very start. The hellpod plunged into the ground, scant meters from the upload platform the Black Pope had chosen.

And the screams began.

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For the previous installment of this story, click here. 

Or, visit the Cleansed By Fire portal page for comprehensive links to previous chapter installments and additional backstory and information about the novel.

Cleansed by Fire

Chapter 6, Nexus (continued)

The Sisters of the Red Sun watched their monitors and readouts impassively as they activated the plain gray shuttle with the oversized drive, which had for several days been nestling in their main hold.

They were at the location indicated on the datastrip that the then-Standish liaison had delivered, and they had minutes ago activated the sliptrans remote they had been given. The vessel off to their solarward flank had slowly gone through its prep cycle and was now orienting itself toward Earth. Its thrusters fired, with unnecessarily fierce intensity, and the unmanned ship rapidly gained speed as it left them.

“So our business now is concluded with the client Stavin,” Sarai said. Her voice was flat, but Mehrnaz was too close to her to be fooled that it lacked emotion.

“Yes. And the remaining funds were transferred as we activated the sliptrans.”

“He is now the target Stavin,” Sarai noted, as if it were an indisputable fact of public record.

“It seems so,” Mehrnaz responded. “We should be certain, however, that his actions warrant this change in relationship.”

“He was a client, and honored enough to be called the leader Stavin for his personal accomplishments.  But there was never any ‘relationship’ beyond contractual ones until he changed that. He sent the Standish decedent to us, hoping we would kill him outright, as if the one insult he paid us and his general hatred of neo sapiens was enough to warrant it.”

“Presumptuous of the client Stavin. That is true. But not in itself insulting,” Mehrnaz noted. “Amusing, actually, in its Earther ignorance.” She already knew where this conversation would end, but working through the details was important.

“He presented the Standish decedent as a gift, knowing how we must accept and use gifts,” Sarai answered. “The target Stavin knows the honor-terms of Ishmaeli, particularly hirebrands. He did not take seriously what might happen if we chose to keep the Standish decedent for a time. He gave us a gift that could not be enjoyed. He gave us poison.”

“And what does that earn for the target Stavin?” Mehrnaz asked.

“Pain,” responded Sarai.

That, at least, was good. Sarai was not blinded to the proper responses. She had not marked him for death. Her perspective had not skewed as human perspectives were so wont to do.

“But,” Sarai added, “we do not yet know what will come of our contract. We take contracts. We fulfill them. We ask few questions. But contracts can have aftermaths. I sense there is something to this task that will stain us.”

“I agree,” Mehrnaz answered, “though I hope we are both wrong.”

“We shall discover that soon enough, though it would have been better if we knew more about our recently delivered parcel,” her sister said. “Something that would give us more insight and perhaps leverage, should the target Stavin warrant more than just payment in pain.”

“We shall know more. Imminently,” Mehrnaz said with a slight grin.

“Sister, what have you done?” Sarai asked, stretching her neck forward and widening her violet eyes.

You know as well as I, Sarai, that our contract forbade tampering with the parcel or scanning it. But nothing denied us our curiosity about it, nor other means of slyly satisfying that curiosity.

“The data pirate Jordin was monitoring us and our package,” Mehrnaz said. “She tracks it and follows even as we speak.”

“We are not allowed to share details of contracts outside our immediate clan ring,” Sarai noted.

“I contracted with the lover Jordin for several months of my personal exclusivity to her,” Mehrnaz said. “That technically makes her my mate until the contract terminates, so she is of us for now.”

“You were busier than I thought during our hookah,” Sarai responded. “Why have you waited to tell me this?”

“I wished to offer you a pleasant surprise to begin the new year.”

“My thanks, sister,” Sarai said, linking her fingers with Mehrnaz’s. “So, I suppose the data pirate Jordin will be a frequent guest for some time then.”

“I suspect so. She doesn’t seem particularly busy in recent cycles with her work. You are welcome to share her when she is here.”

Sarai shook her head. “Such fare does not appeal to me these recent cycles. And our resting berth is too small for three.”

“I rather think her  tastes are more exotic than using the sleeping nets in the berth.”

“Well, then, at least I shall not be denied the comfort of sleep during rest cycles,” Sarai said with a light laugh. “And when I am awake, the hunt for the target Stavin will certainly keep my interest enough that I won’t notice any exotic noises you might make.”

***

Nothing today was as Domina had come to expect from one of Peteris Dyson’s visits; not the time of day, so close to lunchtime, nor his choice of clothing or the small silver box he was carrying. And he was smiling.

“You are wearing very casual attire, Gregory,” Domina said, “and you have a gift for me. Or is it a gift from your wife in return for mine to her?”

“You mistook my wife’s tastes in lingerie, Domina. It wasn’t her color, really, and she really prefers to mark them with her own scent first.”

“Oh, dear, did I pick up the wrong pair by mistake?” she asked, putting her hand to her chest with an obvious theatrical flair. “What must she think?”

“Well, she still knows that none of my own scents are to be found in, on or around you,” Gregory retorted. “As for my attire, well, I thought today called for a less formal tone than vestments convey.”

“So, we’re friends now, Gregory?” Domina asked. “I have too many of those already, and not enough lovers.”

“I should think the reverse would be true. In any case, I haven’t declared friendship,” Gregory said, his slight grin still plastered on his face. “In both the Vatican and the UFC, the three holiest days are Christmas, Easter and the New Year. If at no other time one celebrates communion, those are the days one should.”

Gregory opened the box and held it out to Domina. Inside it, a small, globe-shaped piece of crisp, unleavened bread, with a dollop of wine suspended in the center inside a molecule-thin shell of plasz. The shape and design of the eucharista was one of the few things that the two churches did identically, although the Terran Catholic Church still referred to it as a host—going back to the days of the flat, round cracker accompanying a chalice of wine.

Domina’s eyes widened in surprise and then narrowed in suspicion.

“I promise I haven’t poisoned it, Domina. Nor put any truthteller drugs in it. It would be easier to slip such things into your water supply if I really wanted to.”

“Gregory, I trust you implicitly. But I cannot accept a consecrated host from you. Not under asylum or any other circumstances. You are the spiritual head of the UFC. Chief heretic of a vast collection of heretics. Pope Tommis gave me no promise of prior absolution for such as this.”

“And that is one of the reasons for my civilian attire, Domina, aside from the fast the vestments are too damned hot, especially with how steamy you keep your apartment. This eucharista is unblessed by me or anyone else.” Gregory closed the box and set it down between them, still smiling. “You are an ordained steward, and fully vested to bless the Lord’s Supper yourself. Do so at your leisure. I brought this to you because I suspect in your fit of buying sexual technologies, you probably forgot to supply yourself with critical spiritual items.”

“So, why, Gregory, do you still have that canary-eating grin on your face, if you aren’t here to proffer heretic-blessed hosts?”

“Because you’re no longer the only important Vatican person under our protection, Domina. If you want to continue to be special, you might want to start producing priceless information before he does. And no, I won’t tell you who he is.”

***

Within seconds of Gregory’s departure, Domina was at her lightdesk making purchases. She didn’t need anything, but after she had implanted the nanomole in her lightdesk cubicle, that was how she was able to get messages to the Nazarene and how he was able to communicate with her—though he had thus far only done so to acknowledge that the nanomole had done its job.

It took the better part of an hour to find the right kinds of purchases that she was likely to make and that had the right price, size and other parameters to create the cypher for her message.

Be warned. The UFC has someone else from the Vatican in their hands.

She was surprised when she received, almost immediately, a personal thank-you note on her terminal along with the receipt for one of her purchases. A completely false note from the shop owner that carried several cues to alert her it was actually a message from the Nazarene.

Apparently, he must have knowledge of someone who had gone missing recently from the Vatican’s graces, because once she translated the hidden message in the note, she had a name: Daniel Coxe.

What would have been more useful, Domina noted with some irritation, would be to know who the hell Daniel Coxe was.

Her irritation lessened greatly when another false thank-you note and receipt arrived from a music vendor she had just ordered from, and she realized she would have an answer soon to her question. A personal answer.

Because that second message told her: I will extract you in three weeks. Prepare.

***

Lyseena and her admin officers hadn’t expected the Fourth Millennial Celebration to be problem-free, and true to form, it wasn’t. The disruptions and outright attacks were at least as bad as during the Grand Requiem the previous day; worse, in fact, because they were more random now.

They tried to wear us out yesterday and give us a false sense that we had weathered the storm, she thought. And now they seek to grind us down some more and leave us with no clues as to what their real goal is.

So far, only a few templars and local constables had been hurt, but there were plenty of other casualties, many of them outside the designated celebration zones.

Lyseena leaned back in her slipchair and massaged her temples, realizing that it was midday and she had better have someone bring her some food. As she got ready to key up Willem on her linkpad, an urgent Grid message displayed on her lightdesk.

FROM Stavin via Enn ::: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, but God is dead and always has been, Lyseena. I hope you kissed all your little templar admins before they went off to work today. You won’t get another chance.

Lyseena was out of her slipchair and heading for the Pit without hesitation. She hadn’t even reached the door of the admin suite when alarms started sounding and all hell broke loose.

(To read the next installment of this story, click here.)

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Cleansed by Fire

Chapter 6, Nexus (continued)

Emerging from the tunnels into the desert at just before 1400 hours wearing an ultradense slickskein suit was not, Bechan thought, something he would try in the future ever again—nor even recommend to someone he disliked. The only blessing was that this was winter, so the temperature was barely breaking 20 degrees Centigrade. Even so, it felt brutal as the sun beat down, and he was out of the outfit as quickly as he could be, sucking down the last of his recirculated sweat as he did so, and following up with a bottle of water from his pack. The Jordan was nearby, and he hiked there as quickly as he could to refill his water bottle and drop a tab of NutriCleanse into it.

He pulled the ocular out of his pack and scanned the area quickly. Out here, there wouldn’t be be many security pylons, but what ones there were would be well hidden. And he had to worry about wingscouts that might pick up his movements. And then there were…

Shit!

In the distance, 800 meters away, a wyvern. Looking every bit like the unholy offpsring of a grizzy and a crocodile with a little extra horror thrown in. It squatted there, facing away from him, hunched on the thick legs of its wide, muscled lower torso, covered in bristling hairs that were said to be sharp as razors. The upper torso was leaner and more scaly, with just whispers of those bristles, as it narrowed toward the long-snouted, reptilian head with double rows of teeth top and bottom. And from that upper torso, no limbs per se but rather five spines on each side, like huge claws or membraneless wings curving outward—their embrace was deadly, and even a scratch meant the end of a struggle, as the toxin therein was a mild and fast-acting paralytic.

People talked about the Vatican dropping wyverns out here to breed amongst themselves and hunt would-be refugees. In truth, Bechan knew, only the last half was true. Wyverns were 100% manufactured genetically from nothing up to massive. Totally infertile—genderless, even, and thank Yahweh for that. Bechan had never had any doubt the stories of wyverns out here were true.

He tightened the focus on the ocular and noted the lack of a control collar. From all reports, the Vatican dumped the rejects out here to help dissuade people from leaving Israel. The ones that were too hard to control or that were too old for serious field duty. But as it turned its head northward, he saw the inhibitor pod at the base of its skull. No direct control, just a device to keep it from entering populated zones.

And then its head turned, slowly and deliberately, and Bechan could swear it was looking right through the ocular into his own eyes. He had no idea what the visual range of a wyvern was, nor its scent range, but he wasn’t about to hesitate in believing it knew he was there.

What wyverns lacked in starting speed, they made up for in the stretch, and they had plenty of endurance. And Bechan was pretty sure they could swim halfway decent as well.

He surprised himself with how fast he got into his watergear. He was certain it would have broken the record of any aquammando operative currently on active duty. The question was whether it was quick enough to get him down the river and to his next destination before he became a late lunch for his new admirer.

***

Even though Amaranth had given him a quick version of the story this morning, and Daniel Coxe had just given a more exhaustive one, the enormity of the problem was still screwing with Gregory’s mind. So the Peteris traded a quick glance with his wife once Daniel had finished his story, then asked him to repeat it. He sighed and did so, and then Gregory leaned forward a bit, frowning.

“So, we have an AI that no one but you and the Godhead—and now us—know exists, and it is running amok doing God knows what?”

A puzzled look crossed Daniel’s features. “Running amok? What are you getting on about?”

“Well, unless this AI is residing within the Godhead, in which case I think you and everyone else would have noticed it already, I presume it’s off somewhere in the Grid, possibly getting ready to disrupt entire networks and possibly destroy whole governments and nations,” Gregory said.

Daniel kept his eyes on Gregory while turning his head slightly toward Amaranth. “Paulis Dyson, is your husband a Luddite? Or an AI-phobe? The idea of AIs just flitting around on the Grid or taking over entire networks or launching missiles to destroy humanity are pretty much the province of the most idiotic vidmakers.”

She laughed. “My husband likes his technology just fine, at least when he’s searching for music or documentaries on the SystemGrid. But he barely passed his comptech classes. And to be honest, I’m not sure what to think myself. How would the Godhead arrange to have an entire AI complex built for a child and do so in secret? And—Is this a primary AI?”

“What I’ve seen suggests it is.”

“A primary AI is virtually immortal, unlike secondary AIs. The kind of sustainability functions it requires are huge, and unless the technology has changed, a primary AI can only be built from the ground-up by a massive team of techs over several years, or by the union of two other primary AIs.”

“That’s true.”

“So if it was a secondary AI with a limited lifespan, the Godhead could have just spat it out and maybe secretly transmitted it to some compact database somewhere, maybe hidden it in a virtual brothel or a mediaplex, since most of the secondary AIs end up in the sex industry or entertainment industry somewhere. But a primary? Where else but the Grid would have enough space to hold it without anyone noticing it? And where else could the Godhead send it without anyone noticing?”

“Paulis, Peteris, it just isn’t…” Daniel began, then stopped, sighed, and started again. “Look, if I were to offer to take out the left hemisphere of your brain and store in a support-unit somewhere, with a sliptrans attached to it and a companion sliptrans attached to your right hemisphere, so that the two halves of your brain could keep communicating no matter how far apart they got and with no delays, would you do it?”

“Not a chance,” Gregory said.

“All right then. Primary AIs have to be in large complexes in part because after thousands of years of scientific endeavor, we still know cock-squat about how personality and emotion is really, fully generated and managed in a human brain. So, every AI, primary or secondary, is just a collection of simulators with approximations to produce what seems to us—and to the AI—to be personality and emotion to go along with their rational and computational components. More powerful AIs, the primaries, require correspondingly larger databases than secondaries to manage the emotional content and to have a more complete range of emotions.”

“Those simulators are huge, almost unwieldy databases, which is why AIs are only created for functions that require a nearly-human personality,” he continued. “Otherwise, we wouldn’t even bugger around with secondary AIs, much less primaries; we’d just use computers for everything. But we need AIs for functions that require massive computation in parallel with some level of humanlike judgment, so we put the effort into creating distinct homes for their minds to live in. Really, really big homes for the really, really exceptional AIs so that you can adds lots of physical and virtual defenses to safeguard it. Do you follow so far?”

Gregory and Amaranth both nodded, and the Peteris muttered, “This seems to be my week to be berated by people I grant asylum to.”

“I granted this one asylum, darling,” Amaranth whispered, patting his hand.

Daniel ignored them both and continued. “Going back to my example, you wouldn’t split your brain in two and trust that the sliptrans might not cut out at some point, essentially robbing you of half your brain. Do you think an AI, particularly a primary AI, would want to spread its brain in hundreds or thousands of pieces all over the Grid?”

Gregory put up his hands in a gesture of surrender and then made a “zipping-my-lip” motion.

“So, the Godhead fathered a child,” Amaranth began, “Did he order up the construction of one, or did he beget one with another AI? I’m going to have to guess the former. He got in league with some kind of mega-rich benefactor, who built an AI complex in secret for him and pulled together a secret team of techs to design and program the AI itself.”

“No. The 13 data artifacts I located show signs of being left behind as trace residue from an inception routine. Unless two AIs are hardlinked during the reproduction process, these routines are broken down into separate self-extracting databases and then shipped to what will be the new AI’s complex. The Godhead bottled up his swimmers and shipped them out somehow to either a mother AI directly or to a location where the mother AI’s corresponding inception routines were sent.”

“Wouldn’t someone notice if a female AI suddenly received 13 packages of virtual sperm?” Amaranth asked.

“It could be done carefully and spread over time, but the shipment of larger databases like that to an AI would increase the chance of exposure. If the inception routines were sent directly to the mother AI, I would have expected to find several hundred artifacts and not just 13. But even still, the mother AI would have to create the child inside her own complex, and that would be noticed.”

“So the Godhead has been planning this with another AI, who, I’m guessing, also prepared 13 packages. The pieces of her virtual ova, to be meshed up with the Godhead’s sperm, sent to a predetermined location where a really big bunch of databases had already been readied for the birth of a bouncing baby AI,” Amaranth ventured.

“That’s it on the money, Paulis Dyson. It makes the most sense for success and secrecy.”

Gregory finally decided that he had been quiet long enough. “All right, so why is my notion of a civilization-destroying AI something to scold me over?”

“What?” Daniel asked.

“A handful of warwagons caused the Conflagration and then went to war with all the other warwagons, and it took centuries to dig out from that. Those were AIs running those warwagons.”

“They set fire to a nice chunk of the world because the governments holding their reins ordered them to,” Daniel noted. “They tried to kill the other warwagons largely because following those orders drove them insane. Look, the AIs on the four surviving warwagons are the only AIs we really have to worry about destroying the world, because they are completely self-sufficient, mobile and atrociously well-armed—but they already hobbled themselves to prevent that.”

“So, how can you be so sure that an Earth-bound AI might not do what the roguewagons did?”

“AIs are stuck in their physical complexes, for pity’s sake. What do you think is going to happen if an AI starts launching missiles or tanking entire economies or something else like that?”

Gregory pondered for a moment, then said: “Everyone would band together to lay waste to its entire complex, and since it has nowhere it can run…”

“Precisely. And from a strictly practical perspective, would you, if you were an AI, want humanity destroyed? Once the power plants stop working you would be as good as dead. Hell, once the SystemGrid started falling apart, you’d probably want to die because of the boredom.”

“Fine, then, you’ve convinced me that our wayward AI won’t end the world. But can you guarantee it isn’t up to something more subtly nefarious?”

“Of course I can’t. In fact, there’s a good chance it is,” Daniel said.

Although his statement was a nice validation of Gregory’s cynicism, it didn’t do a thing to settle his stomach the rest of the meeting.

(To read the next installment of this story, click here.)