Geosynchron (52 page)

"Robert Varless!" cried Benyamin.

There was no mistaking the resemblance between the sylphlike
man lounging twenty meters to Natch's right and the slim figure on
Robert Varless's official Meme Cooperative profile. You just didn't see
ears that long every day.

Hang back about twenty seconds, Jara told Natch over the secure communications channel.

Jara and Petrucio Patel were already staring down the list of possible distractions from the Council's oppo research, dangling under
neath the man's photo like a shingle. Time was of the essence, so they
had already learned to focus on the items that Merri had tagged during her evaluations last night. Avid fan of the Delhi Chakras
soccer team ... former member of Creed Dao ... left behind a similarly elfin companion and small daughter to join Brone's Revolution
of Selfishness ...

Jara's and Petrucio's hands almost collided as they reached to point
at the third item simultaneously.

Back at the viewscreen on the other side of the room, Robby
Robby flipped madly through the database of advertisements, collating and sorting with his fingertips through entries that he had
already spent hours collating and sorting. Blonde ... female ... Caucasian ... six to eight years of age ... missing ...

"Natch is waiting," said Jara in foreboding tone of voice. "Almost
twenty seconds."

"Got her!" cried the channeler, punching at the screen with two
fingers.

Four seconds later, Jara could see through Natch's battle suit cameras that Robby's automated bid for three times the going rate had
been accepted, and the One-on-One Motivation Network had replaced
the current advertisement on the viewscreen with the promo of
Robby's choosing.

It took three tries. Three heart-rendingly gorgeous little girls
listed as missing in public service announcements by the Congress of
L-PRACG's Center for Missing and Exploited Children before Robby
struck on one with enough of a resemblance to Robert Varless's
daughter to cause him to turn his head. And even then, Jorge Monck
decided to add a secondary distraction by sending a shapely waif of a
Council officer walking past in the opposite direction. Natch and
Monck barely had time to jog by without being spotted.

The whole room exhaled in collective relief.

"Oh-h-h," moaned Benyamin, rubbing one hand across his sweaty
forehead. "That was fucking close."

"Aren't they all?" muttered Merri, who had decided her time was best spent proactively combing through the personnel files and tagging prospective advertisements.

So far, Natch and Monck had made their way past five Thasselians.
Two of the distractions had been relatively easy to conjure up and execute-including Robert Varless-but the other three had been decidedly more difficult. Jara was starting to suspect they should have just
trusted to the Council's bio/logic disguise people. It had taken an
entire five minutes to find a successful distraction for one woman. And
that had only been possible by using a technique Jara thought of as a
"one-two punch": use garish flash of color and/or light to start the head
turn, then sock 'em with the advertisement that packed an emotional
wallop. In every case, the process was taking longer than Jara had
anticipated, leaving Natch and Monck to come up with a variety of
excuses for loitering nonchalantly along half-empty hallways.

Something about the entire enterprise left Jara feeling thoroughly
depressed.

Is that all we are? she thought. Puppets with strings to be pulled by
marketers, advertisers, bureaucrats, and con artists? Of course, it was not
every day that your typical marketer could afford to spend thousands
of credits on research and surveillance into your personal life and
habits. But the fact that everyone had some kind of irresistible switch
of desire hardwired to their physiology seemed like a repudiation of
everything Jara had learned about herself over the past few months.

After all, it was not so long ago that Natch had been using these
types of emotional tricks against her. The fact that she was now
employing them made her feel like she had come full circle, and not in
a good way. Jara tried to imagine what her own Defense and Wellness
Council-prepared dossier would look like: weakness for nitro with
strong bitters ... seduced by proctor at a young age ... strong attraction to powerful men who treat her like refuse....

"Mohammed Victor Kohl!" shouted Benyamin, shattering her
brief reverie. "Forty meters down the corridor to the left!"

"Here they come," said Cheng. "Ready multi disruptors."

The mass of soldiers in white had gotten quite close to the Melbourne base by now. It was a vast force of multi projections, surely ten
thousand strong. They were dashing at top speed across the large open
field north of the base. Rosz knew that an advance multi force of ten
thousand must presage an invading force of close to forty thousand in
the flesh. Which meant two things:

Magan Kai Lee was sending the bulk of his force here to the north
of Melbourne.

And the decisive battle in the Council civil war of 360 would occur
here, with General Rosz as the presiding officer for Len Borda's army.

Rosz gaped at the advancing multi projections. Magan must have
concluded that his position was quite desperate to resort to this bold
surprise attack. It virtually eliminated the advantage he had gained by
arranging the base behind the unconnectible curtain. Could it be that
the political situation in the Islands was so precarious for the lieutenant executive that the base would not be available for much longer?

Lee must have decided that his best hope in overthrowing Borda lay
in catching this, the main Melbourne force, unprepared. He must have
decided that he could not afford to wait for Borda's inevitable offensive
action against Manila. It might have stood a chance of working if Rosz
hadn't suspected he would resort to something like this. The general
glanced at the row of viewscreens on the left-hand wall and was satisfied
to see his soldiers scrambling into position in their bunkers, some bedraggled, some with dartgun belts in hand and unloaded-but there. The
main banks of multi disruptors were mostly charged up, and substantial
numbers of shoulder-mounted disruptors were already in play as well. The
base itself, with its castle-like fortifications and multiple levels stacked
like a ziggurat, was as good a place as any to defend against assault.

Cheng gave all this a glance of satisfaction. "Fire when ready."

The command zipped its way through the ranks of the defending
force. Within seconds, the horizon lit up with the ghostly glare of
multi disruptor fire. Beams of energy streaked northwards into the
midst of the invading force.

"Where is the Fourteenth?" asked Rosz. The 14th Melbourne
Division: Len Borda's multi projection corps.

"A little late suiting up and getting to the red tiles," replied
Cheng. "But they're already pouring out of the gateways and making
progress towards the enemy camp."

Rosz stood and walked up and down the row of viewscreens,
watching the targeted multi disruptor fire disappearing into the mass
of white robes. Borda's forces gunning with gritted teeth.

Suddenly the field erupted with the dull thump of smoke grenades.
A dark mist rose from the ground, obscuring the advancing force.
"Shit," cursed Cheng, though Rosz had expected this too. It was more
than just smoke camouflaging the advancing multi disruptions; no,
this was modern warfare. The mist was threaded thick with lightrepelling nanobots, designed to multiply when exposed to oxygen. The
defending Council officers were now firing into a dense black mass,
unable to target individual advancing projections.

"Patience," cautioned Rosz. "The mist only lasts a few minutes."

Cheng grunted something in the affirmative; of course, he knew
that as well as Rosz.

The advancing mass of Magan Kai Lee's multi projections had now
reached the periphery of the base, an unfortunate but also inevitable
development. Rosz knew that the goal of the multi projection corps was
not stealth or finesse, but rather speed. With no offensive capabilities of
their own and few defensive tactics besides obfuscating dark mist, all you
could really expect from the multi projection corps was to get inside the
enemy compound and scope out their defenses before getting zapped
with disruptor fire and sent back blinking to red tiles on base.

Rosz narrowed his eyes. The advancing mass was within dartgun
range of the base, and some had withdrawn weapons of their own. But
the disruptor fire had not thinned their ranks.

And Magan's troops were now firing.

General Rosz leapt to the closest viewscreen, zoomed in as close as
he could get to the invading force through the dissipating mist. He
watched a burly man in the white robe and yellow star bellowing,
charging forward-and completely ignoring the disruptor beam that
struck him in the chest.

"It's a trick!" cried Rosz. "This isn't the multi corps. Draw dartguns!"

"Draw dartguns!" echoed Commander Cheng grimly. "Draw
dartguns!"

It was too late for the troops on the periphery of the base, gathered
in their bunkers with disruptors still in hand. A good half of Magan's
troops were busy plugging the unprepared disruptor corps soldiers
with dart fire, mowing down entire bunkers full of Borda's troops. The
rest of the invading force was pressing forward into the base, leaping
over sandbags, firing wildly on anything they encountered.

Clever, thought General Rosz, stopping at the side table to pour
himself more wine. But there's a reason Council armies don't use this tactic
every time.

And sure enough, the surprise technique was already proving to be
of limited use to Magan Kai Lee's army. After the initial burst of casualties among the disruptor corps, the enemy was now finding a force
armed and prepared for their incursion. Darts began hailing through
the ranks of Lee's troops, and they began going down into the dust.

The trend only continued as platoons of Borda's soldiers ran onto
the field of battle to flank the invading forces. It was part of the defense
plan of the base, in fact-the outer courtyards were relatively easy to
breach, so that an invading force might be pressed between the hardened inner fortifications and defenders who had moved around to a flanking position. Magan Kai Lee's troops were now engaged in close
combat with Len Borda's better-armed, better-prepared defenders.

It was a massacre.

"Another wave incoming!" cried Cheng.

Rosz snapped his head to the viewscreen Cheng was pointing at.
He saw the enormous wave of white robes and yellow stars far down
the field advancing on their position. Perhaps thirty or forty thousand
strong. Reports were starting to come back from Borda's multi corps
confirming that the bulk of Magan's force had moved south from
Shepperton.

Cheng left a small force in the base to mop up the surviving false
multi projections, and sent the bulk of the army, already afield, to take
on the invaders.

Natch had moved into a more heavily occupied part of the Thassel
Complex now. Jara thought he must be getting close to the bodhisattva, because the density of the devotees in black robes had
increased dramatically.

"The woman with the red hair-Paranella!" cried Benyamin.

Merri had abandoned her attempts to get ahead of the game and
was now working in one team with Robby Robby and Benyamin while
Petrucio and Jara worked together in another. "Her daughter's part of
a fan club for Juan Nguyen," said Merri hurriedly. "Run the
ChaiQuoke promo!"

"Juan Nguyen?" protested Robby, shaking his head. "It'll never
work, Merri. He's the most popular actor on the planet right now.
Totally overexposed."

"Too late!" said Ben through gritted teeth. "She's looking this
direction. Run it, run it!"

Robby Robby was correct. The ad, which featured Juan Nguyen comically quaffing bottle after bottle of ChaiQuoke in rapid succession
long past the point where his bladder would rupture, completely failed
to distract the Thasselian named Paranella.