SG: Aurora #44 - Simple Wishes (Part Three of Five)

[Frobozz]

[[CONTINUED FROM PART TWO. YOU CALL THAT IMMEDIATE?]]

    There are some people who dream of dying standing up for a good cause
or making a last stand against adversity. They believe that life is a
constant struggle and the best way to leave it is to lay it down for
some meaningful cause. For these people there can be no finer death than
to fight the good fight and end it all with no regrets.
    Nicholas Treis wished that he was one of these people, because it
would have made accepting his impending death so much easier. But
Nicholas had never been terribly good at forced conversion and he'd
sooner die than start now. Which seemed like the point.
    Colleen moved out of her hiding place, forcing herself to control the
tremors in her hands. She wasn't feeling terribly steady at the moment,
what with discovering she'd been kidnapped from her home universe, kept
prisoner for years, and watching an old friend get the living daylights
beaten out of him by a creature that had come straight out of Hell(tm).
One might say that Colleen could use a vacation, but right now she
needed to focus on the present and name her own price on airport fees
later. She moved over to kneel by Nicholas and began to examine him
carefully. Though she was no doctor, Colleen had seen her share of lab
injuries (and had perhaps caused more than her share of them) and knew a
thing or two about the ways in which the human body could fall apart.
    Her patient gave Colleen a wan smile, his eyes shuttering. "Sorry...
fair Colleen," Nicholas whispered, fighting to get the words out. "I
could only get us this far, and no further."
    "Hush, ye," muttered Colleen, continuing her examination. "An' save
that strength ye were so happy tae just throw away a moment ago."
    "What's the point," murmured Nicholas. "We both know what's going to
happen... it's just a shame. I suppose... I didn't want to die in
another universe..."
    "I promise ye, thae's nae going tae happen."
    Nicholas looked up at Colleen and smiled, as best as he could. "Thank
you, fair Colleen. If you could just get me through... the portal, I
could die hap--"
    "Nae, ye martyrsome fool, I mean there's no reason why ye hae tae
die, much as ye seem tae insist on it! Now ye lie there, ye keep yer
strength and for the love of God, try nae to sacrifice yer life for the
sake o' some other pretty girl while I'm gone!"
    "What...?" asked Nicholas, surprised at the sudden turn of events.
Colleen didn't wait to answer him, but instead began to putter about the
room with verve, dismantling anything that didn't look absolutely
essential for the operation of the altiversal gateway.
    "I said hush! Or perhae I didnae, but since t'is a good way tae keep
yer strength, ye should do it anyhow! I figure... t'would be no big
trick t'cobble together a stasis device out o'the odds and ends
hereabouts. An' if I can get ye into one in time, well, voila, our
problems are deferred until modern medicine can make a liar o'ye!"
    "Cobble... a... "
    "Yes, yes," muttered Colleen with an impatient snort. "Don't ye
worry, I've built hundreds o'these. My first when I was six t'save my
dog..."
    "Your dog..."
    "Didnae I say hush? An' yes. Sadly, I learned a valuable lesson that
day. Never, -ever- build a stasis chamber small enough tae misplace. The
little thing was a rottweiler an' it got lost in the clutter in my
room... I finally found it when I was moving t'Canada..."
    "Um..."
    "Thawed him back out, but he'd never be the same again... freezer
burn's nae kind t'our furry friends..."
    "Ah..."
    "Hm, almost got it. I just need one more part tae make it wor--aha!
Ham sandwich!"
    "Wait, ham... why do you need--"
    "I said HUSH! Save yer strength. Now, just a little more work and ye
shall be all nice and safe..."
    Nicholas sighed and stared at the ceiling. He wasn't entirely certain
whether he should be thankful for this reprieve or terrified beyond
belief at the means of its delivery. He only hoped that he wouldn't wake
up one day to find himself buried under mounds of Colleen's equipment
and that apes had taken over the world... he wondered if it was good for
to pray for a -second- deliverance so soon on the heels of his first. Oh
well, the powers that be were said to be merciful... and he was pretty
sure that they were as freaked out about Colleen as he was.
    "Aha... oh damn, he used Swiss on this sandwich rather than
Provolone! Mmm, but wait, perhape I can convert between 'em..."
    See?

***

    "It looks like we're on Level four-four-oh. Prison level, sir."
    Doug nodded absently, staring at the sign on the wall. Something
niggled at the back of his brain, and since that was such a unique
experience for Doug -- who rarely had any sort of activity going on in
brain-related locations -- he paid it special attention. Something about
the prison twigged a thought, and all he had to do was chase it down,
kill it, gut, skin and clean it and possibly serve that thought up as a
feast of an idea.
    "Got here fast," Doug observed with a shrug. "Let's try'n make sure
s'was worth t'cost, 'n stuff..."
    Cost. Cost... exchanges? Something to do with exchanges? Sears? Where
America shopped? No, he doubted even the entire Sears sales-force could
help the world now. Maybe Wal*Store might be able to help, but that
would require talking to that creepy yellow bouncing ball, and he'd
sooner -die- than... wait no, go back a step. Doug scowled as
long-atrophied dendrites struggled to live once more. Costs...
exchanges... excha--gifts! Gifts... WISHES!
    "Holy cats!" he exclaimed, blinking out of the trance-state that
other humans called 'thought'. "Daphne!"
    "What...?" asked one of the troopers nearest to him. "Who?"
    "Daphne. Th' jailer, right? Ah, you prob'ly knowed her by Wishstar?
She hadn't quit yet, right? Right? I was kinda away jus' 'fore all this
went down, so I'm kinda not sure..."
    "Oh, yes, the warden!" replied the trooper, relieved that Doug of all
people wasn't talking above him. "She was going to retire, but I believe
she was still looking for a good replacement. Something about needing
one who could actually keep the prisoners in their cells or
something..."
    "If this's th'prison level, mebbie she's around here somewhere." Doug
frowned, as another rare thought occurred to him. This was becoming a
habit! "Though... why wouldn' she've already done somethin' 'bout all
this... unless..."
    "Unless the enemy got to her first," replied another trooper,
catching the drift and running with it. "But to pin down someone who
could just wish herself somewhere else, they'd probably have had to know
they had to neutralize her fast..."
    "Mebbie they did," replied Doug, biting his lip in the hopes that the
action would coax more blood to his head where it was finally needed.
"If'n they come from th'next altiverse over from us, mebbie they had
their own... mebbie they read our files... mebbie a lot've things."
    "Maybe," replied the first trooper, scowling as a though occured to
him. "Well... what are your orders, sir? Does this help us or do we go
on?"
    "I... think..." the word tasted strange to Doug, but he managed to
get it out anyway, "Yeah, I think this helps us. 'cause if I was an
insane invader, I'd kinda wanna keep 'round a wishing-giver in case I
could, y'know, use her or somethin'."
    "And if they think otherwise, sir?"
    Doug's lips tightened. "Then we make'em sorry they ever came here."
    "Isn't that what we're already trying to do?"
    "Well kinda, but I mean... oh shuddup! We're goin' in. Lead th'way. I
think her offices were down that cor'dor there."
    The three troopers who had come with Doug spread into a triangle
formation, with their unarmoured leader at its centre. The group began
to advance through the darkened corridors, lamps set to low-intensity so
that Doug could see where they were going. It would have been safer for
the squad to move entirely on passive tell-tales, but they'd grudgingly
begun to respect their leader's somewhat unorthodox danger sense and
tactical instincts, so privately agreed that he should be able to see
what was coming up too.
    The quartet slipped down the hallway and reached a suite of doors,
each one closed and possibly locked. This was the most harrowing part of
movement behind enemy lines, because doors could conceal far too many
things for comfort and breaking them down from a distance was a bad
decision since that made noise and noise could alert an otherwise
unsuspecting enemy. So one suit advanced and probed the space behind
each door with every passive -- and one or two short-ranged active --
scan he had available . After several moments of work, he was reasonably
sure that each door was free of a squadron standing silently behind it,
waiting to open fire when someone was brave and foolish enough to go
through. The unlucky trooper was then flanked by his squad-mates, who
prepared to fire on anything he might have missed when the first made
his move.
    Nothing exploded when the trooper opened the first door, which was
revealed to lead into Wishstar's offices. Doug moved in to examine them
and frowned, as he found Daphne's coffee mug lying shattered on the
ground He was no expert, and possibly not even much of a layman, but the
way it had fallen made him think of the cup being knocked from the table
by a spastic arm.
    "Yo... I think maybe, jus' maybe, they got her," he said, shaking his
head. "Think it was a struggle. S'not a good sign. Let's keep lookin',
though."
    The others agreed and the nerve-wracking door-opening continued. Two
more rooms were empty, leaving just the passage into the Beanstalk's
prison. They'd decided to save this door for last because it was the
sturdiest and potentially most dangerous one in the place, armed as it
was with booby-traps and other safeguards to prevent super-powered
prisoners from forcing their way out of jail. Ostensibly the door
wouldn't react to someone wearing Tornado armour, but the enemy had
proved clever often enough that anyone giving the situation half a
thought worried that they might have pulled a reversal here as well.
    "Open 'er up," ordered Doug, unworried. The three moved to comply,
the one on point trying the door which slid open. The trooper killed his
lamp as he saw light down the tunnel.
    "We have lights ahead," he called back to the others. "Corridor's lit
up, and there's more illumination coming from under the jail foyer door.
Either someone left the lights on, or we've got company..."
    "COMPANY IS WHAT YOU HAVE!" boomed a voice over a public address
system that was set into the hallway's ceiling. The sudden sound caused
the three troopers to drop into well-practiced firing positions, moving
to cover as much territory as they could between them. The voice laughed
and addressed them once again. "SURPRISED? WELL I HAVE MORE SURPRISES IN
STORE FOR YOU! MOVE FORWARD AND I'LL SHOW YOU THE BIGGEST SURPRISE OF
ALL! SHE'S WAITING FOR YOU!"
    "Damn it," muttered one trooper, not relaxing his guard a whit. "I
hate obvious traps, but I hate obvious traps set by jerks with an
overblown sense of theatrics more. Do we go in?"
    "'course we go in," replied Doug. "S'a trap, right? S'what you do
with a trap. Go into it."
    "That's only in the movies, sir. In real life, it's generally
considered a good idea to move -away- from traps whenever possible."
    "Well then," Doug beamed, heading down the corridor towards the foyer
door. "Since this's real life, they'd 'spect us to go somewhere else!
They won' be expectin' us t'actually go in!"
    "No jury in the world would convict me," muttered the trooper as he
and his friends moved quickly to follow Doug down the corridor. "Sir,
you'd better let me open that."
    "Nah. I've got a good feelin' 'bout this door. 'sides, if it rips me
t'shreds, then y'all hightail it out. S'my stupid idea t'go down this
way, an' I'm not makin' y'pay th'price if I'm, y'know, wrong."
    With that Doug turned the handle and pushed open the far door,
stepping through it into a large, steel-reinforced room. A glance around
showed him all he'd come to expect out of Aurora's prisons: there were
temporary holding areas for incarceration until more permanent
accommodations had been prepared for an unruly inmate; security stations
from which disobedient prisoners might be contained; and a nice,
friendly, welcoming desk smack dab in the middle of the reception area
to contrast with the stark, secure decor and confuse the Hell(tm) out of
impending guests.
    The person sitting behind the aforementioned desk was himself quite
out of place. He was dressed in a gaudy, somewhat militaristic uniform
and toyed with a very large deck of cards. Even more out of place was
the figure of Wishstar, unconscious and suspended over -- of all things
-- a vat filled with bubbling green liquid. She was held by a simple
rope and locking pulley arrangement which would seem able to hold her
forever if not for a single lit candle under the lowest length of rope,
merrily burning it away.
    "Welcome, Aurorean," said the man behind the desk, in the same voice
which had boomed at Doug from over the public-address system. "I'm
impressed that you made it this far!"
    "Um..." began Doug, staring first at the man and then at Wishstar,
then back again. "It was hard t'get down the corridor or somethin'? What
th'Hell(tm) is goin' on here?"
    "Ah good," replied the man, in an oily tone of voice. "I'm so glad
you noticed my little guest there. She--"
    "She's hangin' in the middle of th'room!" replied Doug, outraged that
someone was behaving in an even more idiotic fashion than he. "How could
I miss her?"
    "Yes, well," answered the man, refusing to miss a beat at the
interruption. "Your friend there is my guest. And as you can see, she's
in great danger. A danger that you can bring to an end... if only you
dare."
    "Fine," said Doug, his eyes darting around. Odd, he thought. The
guards in this room must be well hidden, but they had to be there.
Otherwise, why would this man be so confident of his position? Clearly
he was a master plotter and had wheels turning within wheels... "Y'know
I'm gonna do my best t'save her. So tell me how I'm s'pposed ta."
    "It's quite simple. And yet... quite complex. You must defeat me
in... a duel."
    "Fine," said Doug, sighing. The sooner he could get through this, the
better. "Fists'r'guns. Which one is it? I c'n whip yer ass in either."
    "I'm certain that you could, good sir. But the challenge I propose is
a much more devious one! It will test your wits to the full and
challenge you to deal with surprising and ever-changing situations! I
challenge you to a duel... of Master Cards!"
    Doug blinked. He blinked again. When that had failed to change what
he had heard, he cocked his head. "The hell(tm) you say?"
    "Yes!" replied the man, fanning the deck of cards with which he had
been toying. "You will face me in a duel of this top-selling,
collectable and strangely addictive card game, Aurorean! Oh yes, I see
by the blank look on your face that you realise the full extent of your
peril, for you are correct in what you have no doubt surmised! That I...
am a Master Master Cards player!"
    "Sure, whatever y'said."
    "The stakes are nothing less than your beauteous friend's very life!
Should you defeat me, she goes free! Should I defeat you, she will die a
death most acidic! But even more diabolical than that, should you fail
to defeat me before the candle burns through that rope, she will plummet
to her very doom! What do you say to this, Aurorean? Do you have the
courage to face me?"
    "So," began Doug, slowly. "Lemme get this straight. I take those
cards, an' I play against you? An' if I lose, she dies?"
    "Yes! Yes, you have it exactly!"
    "An'... if I refuse, someone hidin' in this room shoots me, right?"
    "No! No, this is a gentleman's challenge! We fight with the power
given to us by the cards themselves! They unlock daring and often
surprising situations that we must deal with! It is a challenge beyond
words! Beyond, perhaps, time itself!"
    "Aha. So lemme jus' make sure, 'cause I really wanna be sure. We're
on the honour system for this one? No guards, nothin' but respect fer
th'cards?"
    "Yes! Of course! For who would be so coarse as to cheat the will of
the cards?"
    "Good t'know," replied Doug, stepping forward to the table. He
reached down and seized the man sitting behind it, hauling him out of
his chair with one hand before slamming a meaty fist into the
card-player's face with the other. Three more punches and the man
dropped to the ground like a rag-doll. Doug glanced at him before moving
to pinch out the candle flame. "Get 'er down, guys."

***

    "I knew we should have taken that left turn at Albuquerque," muttered
Clark, as he hunkered down behind the row of machinery that at one time
had been precision machination equipment, but which was now serving a
greater role as 'cover'. He'd flipped a mental coin when he'd come to
the fabrication levels about whether or not to stop and scavenge some
vital parts and possibly see if there were a few rear-echelon repairs
that could be made to his squad's equipment. He made a mental note to
replace that mental coin next chance he got, as it was clearly both
unlucky and very, very wrong. Just as the scavenging had begun in
ernest, an enemy patrol had been sighted. There had been no time to
retreat back to the stairs, which were across far too much open
territory to make for a viable all-out withdrawal. So now his squad
clung to what cover it could and tried to beat back the assault in the
best way possible.
    "That's good, sir," muttered the trooper next to Clark, who leaned up
to squeeze off a three-round burst before ducking behind cover again.
"Now can you finish the impression and hand 'em all presents filled with
TNT?"
    "I'm shocked at you, trooper," replied Clark, lobbing a grenade
backwards over the improvised barricade. "Thinking of violence at a time
like this?"
    "I'm a product of the media, sir," replied the trooper. "Television
made me what I am today."
    "Oh God, no," sighed Clark. "Don't tell me you're one of those people
who blames cartoons for showing imitatable behaviour? Next you're going
to say that every kid who's *ever* dropped an anvil on his brother
learned that from Bugs."
    "I'm just saying that maybe if we watched more Discovery Cha--one
sec," the trooper jumped up as he sensed a lull in the ebb of battle and
sprayed a rapid-fire burst at his enemies, before dropping back down
again. "Anyway, if we watched more Nature documentaries and fewer
cartoons, maybe we'd be a less violent people."
    "I'd say the violence comes from influences external to ourselves."
Clark gestured backwards at the sounds of carnage behind them. "Case in
point. By and large we react to aggression, and we only read about the
bad apples who initiate it. Besides, they're firing at us and they
probably don't have Bugs to watch."
    "Hum, are you sure sir?" asked the trooper, leaning around his cover
to squeeze off a shot. "Maybe the Television Dimension covers both our
universes and we have access to the same shows."
    "Ugh, you had to go and mention that place," groaned Clark, pausing
to check his telltales.
    "Don't worry sir. I thought your foray against the television
invaders was brave and an inspiration to us all. I was inspired to laugh
flat on my ass for about ten minutes, in fact."
    "You are so busted when we get through this battle," replied Clark,
leaning to take a shot of his own. "Besides, Colleen's machine was right
there, waiting for somebody to use it... anyway. *My* theory is that the
T.V.D., if it exists elsewhere at all, is separate from each universe to
each universe. And besides, it would have to be, since we influence it,
not the other way 'round."
    "Are you sure about that, sir, or are you just making it up to sound
smart?"
    "Is there a difference, trooper?"
    "Yes sir! One is bullshit and the other's even more bullshit, sir!"
    "You are -so- lucky I'm too busy staying alive right now to cite you
for insubordination, trooper. Too bad there's no way to test the--"
Clark blinked suddenly as an idea hit him. "I've got it!"
    Clark's squad-mate looked over at him in hope. "Sir?"
    "This is so crazy, it just might work." Clark raised his speakers and
shouted over the din of battle. "This is the Aurora squad leader! I need
to speak to your squadron leader!"
    The gunfire didn't cease but it did ebb as the Borealeans were
momentarily confused. Then a similarly amplified voice rose over the
reduced din. "This is the Borealean squadron leader. Do you wish to
discuss terms of your surrender?"
    "Surr--oh, no, not at all. I was just wondering... what's your most
popular cartoon over there?"
    This time the noises of battle did pause. A few moments passed.
    "The... Snorks. They've been running since like the sixties. Plus
there's the Tiny Snorks, the Sea-a-maniacs, the--hey, what the hell(tm)
kind of question is that? All units, resume firing!"
    Clark grinned under his helmet as the gunfire resumed. "Not absolute
proof, but I think we've established that there are enough differences
to posit that the theory of separation is at least a valid one."
    "Wow," replied the other trooper. "And here I was, thinking you'd
come up with some great plan to save us all. Permission to feel profound
disappointment, sir?"
    "Denied, solider. Your goofy, empty, vacuous grin is all that's
keeping my spirits high in this fight. Besides, I've given our side a
rallying point. The Snorks? Stupid, sick, wrong-headed alternate
universes. There's no way our boys are going to lay down arms now that
they know what kind of scum they're facing."
    The other trooper's reply was cut short as one of Clark's scouts
threw himself behind the barricade, huddling behind it. "Sir!"
    "Report. What've you got for me?"
    "Sir, I just came back from corridor 5b, running hot. We've got
-another- murder of crows on the way. Half the size of this one, but
still..."
    "But still, that pretty much puts us at two-to-one odds," replied
Clark with a sigh. "Damn it, we're -not- going to be able to win that
one. It's either risk getting cut apart in retreat or get cut apart
while we sit here and fight. Anything else, trooper?"
    "Just one thing, sir. I just recently read a book that theorized that
the TV Dimension's actually just a creation of our collective
unconscious, a sort of Jungian psionic construct that manifests due to a
random fluctuation of Quantum Absurdity."
    "Noted, solider. Good work. Now I need you to do two things for me.
First, I need you to find us a route out of here and I need you to do it
fast."
    "Roger. And second?"
    "Get me the title of that book. It sounds interesting."
    "Yes sir!"
    "Dismissed! Get going!" Clark sighed and looked at his squad-mate.
"You know something?"
    "What's that, sir?"
    "We're dead men unless we can beat a retreat, and all I really care
about right now is reading that book before I die. I think all this
constant battle, and running... it's -really- starting to get to me."
    "I know just what you mean, sir. Down!"
    The two dropped as a missile clipped the top of their barricade,
knocking them about with a goodly dollop of concussive force. The pair
waited for their ears to stop ringing before diving for new cover, as
the battle raged on around them...

***

    DeVrai paced, constantly glancing at his chronometer to see how long
had passed since the last time he'd taken a peek. He wondered for the
millionth time whether or not he should set a deadline on how much
longer he'd give the scout-turned-data-miner before calling a general
pack-in and move-out. Each time he decided to give it just a little bit
longer, because while movement was valuable, information was potentially
without price, if it was the right information. Pace. Glance. Ponder.
DeVrai knew he had to make a call sooner or la--
    "Sir," said the scout, bringing DeVrai back to the here-and-now. Some
guard -he- was, thought DeVrai; he'd not even noticed the man get up
from his station and approach. There were times and places for
wool-gathering, but this was not one of them.
    "What do you have?" DeVrai asked, turning to focus on the man.
    "Good news," replied the scout, grinning under his helmet. "Oh boy,
do we ever have good news. It was Donalds who really cracked it, but we
all--"
    "You'll all get a proper kudos later," interrupted DeVrai, raising
his hand to forestall any further gushing. "Details."
    "Yessir. Keep in mind, we don't have everything sorted and
translated, not nearly! But now that we've got most of it sifted, we've
been able to move faster on what we've got left."
    "And?"
    "Two sets of data stood out. First, we've got some files. On us."
    "Ah," replied DeVrai. "So how are those useful, exactly? We know
about us, last I checked. In fact, we're one of my favorite topics of
study. I took up a posting on this earth just so I could get to know
more about me and my kind."
    "We do, sir, but that's not what makes this so important. We know how
we see us, but now we know how they see us. And that means we can make
some guesses about how we should see them. Follow, sir?"
    "It scares me, but yes, I think so. Give me the brief... the very
brief... version."
    "You've got it. In a nutshell, as far as they're concerned, their
altiverse is the primary one and ours is some sort of mutant, twisted,
corrupt place just like all the others that aren't, well, them. They've
advanced a theory that related universes follow a sort of weird,
cosmically amusing pattern, where various attributes are switched about
from world to world like a sort of cosmic fun-house mirror."
    DeVrai nodded. "Go on."
    "They've given us a label after studying us for a while. Tentatively,
we're known as the 'Societal-order-reversed' universe."
    "The what?" asked DeVrai, lifting his eyebrows.
    "We're, well..." the scout gestured as he tried to sum it all
together. "It's like this. Reading between the lines, it looks like
people fall into a natural hierarchy there. You have people above you...
uplinks... and people below you... downlinks. The more important you are
and the more resources you have, the more people you're responsible for
and the fewer people you report to. Which, given what they said about
finding it incomprehensible that our world doesn't have a single apex
point, makes me think..."
    "Solider?"
    "Yes sir...?"
    "Their society is a great big pyramid? Is that what you're saying?"
    "I can't say for certain. But yes sir. I think that's exactly what it
is." The scout pursed his lips. "Again, reading between the lines, it
looks as though invading us is actually as instinctive an action as
clapping your hands to kill a fly is to you and me. The way they see it,
we're in total chaos, sir. We've reached out to other worlds and other
universes. It's only a matter of time before our two universes come into
contact. So... well... we're on the bottom. We're the bottom of the
pyramid. They want to make sure we recognize our place there and become
a part of the whole great big structure. As far as they're concerned,
societal chaos is a sickness that needs to be eliminated fast and hard
wherever it's found."
    "This is really not good news. It's also sick to think of a whole
world like this..."
    "Maybe not as sick as you might think... well, sir it's just that it
looks like you're expected to care about the people below you, no matter
what. People who don't are considered insane... the way they see us."
    "You sound almost admiring, solider."
    "Oh... oh no, sir. No, not me. I like my chaos!" The scout grinned.
"No, it's just kind of a nice thought that there's a place where taking
care of the people less fortunate than you's considered one of the
highest goals in life, sir."
    "It's just too bad we're at war with that place, isn't it?" DeVrai
mulled the news he'd been given. "Can't say I like this. With a culture
like that... " He shook his head. "Superguys, armies, countries, they're
all part of that structure?"
    "Yes sir. In different configurations within the structure, but it
looks like they're all ultimately part of that pyramid, sir."
    "Which suggests that... damn it."
    "What... is it, sir?"
    "Potentially, if someone high enough in the pyramid decided it was
necessary, then they could bring the entire resources of their world
against us. Every superguy mobilized. Every army made ready. Every bomb
sent our way. We don't have anywhere near that kind of a holistic
response network. The closest thing to that in this world is..."
    "Us, sir," replied the scout, sharing a wry smile with his commander.
"The irony isn't lost on us... and might even be intentional. It looks
like that's why Aurora was the first target. This was supposed to be a
quiet takeover and replace operation. Get Aurora on board while most of
the troops were outside dealing with a crisis. Replace the higher-ups.
Slowly expand the tentacles until everything was running through us. And
then indoctrinate the world over the course of a few generations.
Might've worked, except our good old chaos got in the way. Something
went wrong, the shields went up, we realised there was something amiss
and here we are."
    "It could still work," mused DeVrai. "If they win here. They probably
have enough dopples to replace us. Make it look like we won when
actually they did. And if the troops who come out bloody and battered
are a little different than they were before, well, who can blame them
after the traumas they faced in here? God, soldier, we can't lose this
one. If we do, we might just be handing them our whole world on a silver
platter."
    "That brings me to the next bit of good news, sir."
    "Soldier, right now I'm in dire need of some good news. Let me have a
double-helping if you've got it."
    "Try triple, sir. We've got troop deployment rosters for the past
four days, less this one. Yes, it's stale data, but you can put together
a pretty clear pattern of what they hold and where they like to patrol
out of it. I think... I can't promise anything, but I think... given
another hour we can make some pretty damned good guesses where the
enemy's likely to be at any given moment, less the chaos factor. Which
seems to be on our side anyway."
    "You might -just- have made my week. You and your boys, get back
there and work on those guesses. Data like that's worth waiting for."
    "Yes sir!" replied the scout, racing back to his station. DeVrai
watched him go, frowning just a touch as he digested the information
he'd been given. He was going to have valuable information in his hot
little hands very shortly. The big question was how to use that intel.
If his friendly AIs were still up and about, he could hand it off for
them to disseminate to the other squads in the Beanstalk; but without
them, DeVrai was on his own. There was no way to find the others unless
they ran into each other by accident... by the chaos factor. So DeVrai
had to assume that this information was something only his squad was
used.
    Damn but the leader's hat was heavy, he reflected.

***

[[CONTINUED IN PART FOUR! LET'S TRY THAT IMMEDIATELY THING AGAIN!]]

---
-Chris
frobozz at eyrie.org
http://www.eyrie.org/~frobozz

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