Omega Point (43 page)

  "No, you won't," said Bear, whose head floated in and bobbed beside Tarquin in a swirl of primordial energies. "I feel weird."

  "I know, it's just a figure of speech to make me feel better. You too, Tarquin, or Tarquinius, I suppose. Looks like you got a new lease of life, eh? Spend it well."

  "Will do, old boy. Same to you."

  "I…" said Richards.

  "Bye bye, sunshine," said Bear.

  "Are we going or what?" said Geoff, and spread brown wings.

  "Yeah, yeah, we are," said Richards. He clasped his hat to his head. "Hi-ho silver!"

  The giraffe leapt into the dark, moving fast as thought. Ahead of them there was a door, very much like the one by which he'd entered Waldo's world from Reality 36.

  Richards turned back to look at the glowing point at the centre of the limitless black. A booming voice rumbled across the empty cyberspaces, the voice of a man who was once Giacomo Vellini.

  "I grow tired of the dark," he said, and potential built within his words. "Let there be light." The titanic man opened a fist, and reality erupted from it.

  "Oh, bollocks," said Geoff, as the wave front of creation roared under him, lifted him high and tipped him. Richards had the sensation of tumbling through infinity, k52's hyperdimensional coding all about him, different to the Grid, different to the Real, as solid as either.

  He fell through the door. It shut with a slam.

  He was back in a more mundane form of virt-space.

  Hughie stood there, a pained expression on his face, a cross between a demigod and an annoyed town mayor in his fancy suit.

  "Richards?" said Hughie as he patted at his stomach. He rubbed around the place k52 had speared him. "What the devil is going on?"

  Richards pulled himself up off the floor of the empty Reality 36 and jammed his hat back onto his head. "You're never going to believe me." "Really?" "Well, maybe. But later. We have to go." "Why?" "Because the entirety of the Reality Realms is about to be annihilated by a nuclear strike. Might get a bit of dodgy feedback if we don't scoot. Trust me, it's no fun being at the centre of that kind of thing. Shall we?"

  Hughie nodded, lost for words for once.

  There was a stutter in the firewall surrounding the Reality Realms' Grid spaces, and Richards and Hughie fled back to their base units.

• • • •

Otto woke groggy and nauseous, mentaug and brain swelling like the sea with thick static-like sensations. He pulled himself up and swung his legs off the immersion couch. The v-jack slipped from his head, and with its stimulatory magnets gone from his cranium he went from wildly disoriented to merely fuzzy.

  He took in the room. Other than himself and the mortal remains of the unfortunate Waldo, it was empty of human occupants,

  Something was wrong.

  Chloe lay on the floor, case cracked.

  Valdaire would never drop her phone.

  Otto scooped her up and ran from the building. As he went down the dank corridors he turned all his cybernetic enhancements to maximum – risky in his state, but the complex was about to be turned into ash and, although he couldn't outrun a bomb shockwave, he would at least give it a spirited try. He rapidly assessed what could have occurred to make Valdaire be so careless with her closest friend. His mind kept returning to the same answer. Kaplinski.

  He ran out into the main body of the tank garage.

  Sure enough, in the failing light Kaplinski stood outside, one arm clamped round Valdaire's throat, holding her off the ground. She stared at Otto, unable to speak, her hands clutching at Kaplinski's distended forearm. She was not struggling, but hung there desperately, attempting to keep the pressure off her neck. Otto snatched up the bar Marita had hit him with earlier, and walked into the square.

  "Klein!" shouted Kaplinski, "looks like I got here a little too late. How's it feel to damn the human race?"

  Otto circled the other cyborg cautiously, his senses thrumming, data processed lightning-fast by his mentaug. Kaplinski's body still burned with the strange energy signatures he'd seen on the train, but he was malfunctional. His face had not healed properly, half of it still black bone. There was visible damage to his knee. Evidently the tesla cannon had compromised several of his systems, healthtech included.

  He was not invulnerable, then. Otto had a chance.

  "Look at us, Klein! Two broken toys, used and thrown away. k52 offered better, and you did not listen!"

  "Kaplinski! In five minutes this place is going to be levelled by another of k52's traitors. You hear that? He's going to nuke this place, you along with it."

  "Fitting!" said Kaplinski. Strange light shone from his retinas, the wild look of a wolf caught in headlights. "That you and I should die together, if not as comrades-in-arms, then at least in war, and as worthy enemies."

  "The damn war's over, Kaplinski. Stop fighting! Let Valdaire go."

  "Listen to yourself!" spat Kaplinski, "always for the other, always thinking of anything but yourself when you could take anything you wanted. You make me sick, Klein."

  A counter rattled down in Otto's head. On the far side of the square stood a large Chinese airbike. His mentaug adjutant played dozens of tactical scenarios, but each one ended in failure; there was no way to get Valdaire, get on the bike and get out of there before the bomb fell. He could not possibly take on Kaplinski and win in that time.

  "I wanted to be more like you, you know? I wanted to be a better man. I did try, Klein! I did try to stop fighting!"

  "You didn't try hard enough, you miserable son of a bitch. Let her go!"

  "So you do have some human failings, eh, Otto? Anger, that was always yours."

  "I control it, Kaplinski."

  The other cyborg twitched a shoulder. He looked old all of a sudden. They were both old, old, damaged men whose war was long done, shouting at each other as the world burned. Senseless.

  "Seems that not all of us have the boy scout in us," said Kaplinski. Otto's adjutant registered strange patterns of EM rippling through Kaplinski's body. His forearm writhed as the very flesh reformed. Spurs of bony carbon extruded from the top, flexing as they came. Valdaire's eyes widened in as they twitched in front of her. "I will stick with the pleasures I know then, and enjoy the look on your fucking superior face as I rip the face off your friend. See you in hell, Klein."

  "You're a walking cliché, Kaplinski." Otto prepared himself to attack. He wouldn't stand there and watch.

  Kaplinski grabbed Valdaire by the throat, bent her over his knee and forced her eyes closer and closer to the spines on his arm.

  The countdown in Otto's head flashed red and chimed. Three minutes.

  Otto coiled and leapt, dropping Chloe as he came. He cannoned into Kaplinski; it was like hitting stone. He heard Valdaire scream as his barbs ripped her cheek. Kaplinski dropped her and rolled back. He skidded in crouch backwards, swollen fingers and heels ripping up the thin soil on the concrete, a savage smile on his face. "That's more like it, Klein, that's more like it."

  Otto rolled, winded. Kaplinski came at him, so quick Otto struggled to follow it. He performed a salmon leap over Otto's head, landing squarely on his feet behind him. Pain exploded all over Otto as Kaplinski slammed him on his damaged shoulder. Alarms flashed in his head and his adjutant registered a deep puncture wound, scraped down off his scapula, through his subdermal plating and into his left lung.

  Otto staggered. Kaplinski had put something in him. His healthtech went haywire as it fought off an invasive presence. He felt his left side go weak as his cybernetics ceased to function. He limped round to face his erstwhile corporal.

  "
Leutnant, Leutnant
." Kaplinski walked slowly up to him, a sharp probe on his left hand morphing into a boney blade. "I expected a better fight from you." Otto's healthtech fought Kaplinski's infiltrators to a standstill, but his breath burned, and his chest was tight and painful. He sank to his knees.

  "Fuck… you…"

  Kaplinski smiled and drew back his bladed arm.

  A rattle of heavy-calibre gunfire sounded. Kaplinski shuddered as bullets tore into him. His face twisted into annoyed surprise, and he turned round.

  Behind him Valdaire sat upon the Chinese airbike, Chloe in her hand, twin cannon smoking. Kaplinski walked towards her.

  Valdaire fired again and again as Kaplinski marched toward her. His skin warped and bubbled as it attempted to reform. Valdaire fired and fired. Kaplinski kept on coming.

  He came to a stop in front of the bike as the guns clicked dry. Valdaire looked up at him.

  Kaplinski sparked and bled, but stood yet. "You should have left when you had the chance," he said.

  There was a loud clang as Otto's pipe connected with Kaplinki's damaged knee. It bent sideways, and Kaplinski toppled like a tower. Otto swung the pipe again with his right arm, smashing at the other cyborg's head, snapping it sideways. He kicked Kaplinski hard, sending him onto his chest. He drew his arm back and drove it with all his might into Kaplinski. His adjutant picked out a weakened point in Kaplinski's back, and the pipe went through, out of his side, and crunched into concrete. Otto swung his arm, knocking Kaplinski's bladed hand aside as it came at him, then stamped the pipe as hard as he could, punching it into the ground, and pinning Kaplinski in place. He stepped onto the altered cyborg's blade, braced his damaged side against Kaplinski's head, and bent the pipe back on itself. For good measure he stamped on Kaplinski's neck, crushing vertebrae. Still Kaplinski struggled.

  Otto looked at Valdaire, her cheek bloody, her phone clutched in one hand, screen alive, the Chinese airbike thoroughly cracked. She looked defiant.

  Lehmann really was right about her.

  "Let's get the hell out of here," she said.

  Otto limped over to the airbike as the countdown timer in his head hit one minute thirty and began to flash red. He climbed on clumsily, and belted the harness about himself.

  Valdaire pulled back on the airbike handles, turbofans whined, and it rose up into the air. Otto looked down at Kaplinski. The other cyborg ceased struggling and turned his head almost 180 degrees to look Otto right in the eye.

  
I should have gone for that headshot a long time ago.

  "We haven't much time," she said, and opened the throttle to maximum. Both of them hunkered into the bike's moulded seats as the air in front of the bike protested against their speed by taking on the resistance of wet concrete. The pointed nose of the bike cut through its objections, burner jets kicked in and it accelerated massively.

  Above the roar of the passing sky, the bike's jets and fans, Otto heard a familiar rushing noise. He looked up. Twin contrails etched themselves across the sky, a trail of fire behind them: stratobomber.

  "We need to go faster," he shouted right into Valdaire's ear. Air was ripped from his throat, and he belatedly realised he should be wearing a mask. The Soviet base was receding rapidly behind them. There was a dull explosion, and Otto saw a bright dot separate itself from the bomber high above them. "We need to go faster right now."

  Valdaire twisted the throttle as fast as it would go. Speed indicators crept up to five hundred miles an hour. The atmosphere did its best to tear them from their seats.

  Otto felt his left side augmentations come back online as his healthtech purged Kaplinski's infiltrating nanites from his blood stream. He looked back.

  The counter in his head reached five seconds.

  Thirty kilometres behind them, the bright dot of the bomb streaked groundwards, toward the army base.

  He turned his face away and shut his eyes as it detonated. The light from the explosion burned white through his eyelids.

  A shockwave hit them seconds later, tossing the airbike about like a leaf in the storm, Valdaire wrestled with the machine, managing, somehow, to keep it level, and then they were away from the blast front.

  Valdaire turned round and smiled a tight smile. "I think we're clear," she mouthed.

  Otto nodded. He looked back as fire raged through the taiga under a towering mushroom cloud.

  It really was time to go the fuck home.

 

In the Real, over Nevada, a second remotely controlled stratobomber screeched down from the edge of space. At ten kilometres up, it dropped three bombs that little in this world could stop. They exploded as airbursts above the Nevada desert, a threeheaded mushroom rearing into the sky as they each vapourised a circular portion of scrubby land.

  This physical destruction was not their principle purpose

  A surge of EM energy blasted the area, frying electronics of every kind for kilometres in every direction. Although stymied by the ground, of such force was the gamma wavefront that the pulse irradiated the Realm House, the attack's target.

  The faraday cage in the walls of the Realm House shorted. Spider drones fizzed and died. Cascades of sparks showered from the hardened servers as the sheer magnitude of the EM pulse overwhelmed their protective measures.

  The governing machinery of the fusion reactor under the servers was scrambled. Power surged into the tokomak, overloading the reactor. It went critical within picoseconds, and, picoseconds later, a star lived and died violently in Nevada, heaving millions of tonnes of earth up into a low dome lit from within, the mass collapsing into itself to leave a crater of white-hot glass.

  The entire contents of the Reality Realm servers were wiped clean nanoseconds before the Realm House was utterly destroyed. But not before k52's damaged web focused a portion of these energies in a manner that physicists would not fully understand for another few centuries. Somewhere that was not in the Real, nor in the digital ghostworld of the Grid, thirty-seven universal histories played themselves out, twelve billion years each, in mere nanoseconds of Real time, free of interference from man or thinking machine; a dead nerd's gift to totality.