Behind the Eyes of the Beast                                                               

 

 

PART ONE

 

Kip Black stood on the helm of the mother ship, hands in pockets. Searing gusts of wind swept down from the speck-less blue skies, to blow in his face and ruffle his crow-black hair.

          Before and below him spread the wastes of Kell, thousands of miles of parched earth and behemoth slabs of rock. Sprawling here and there were crumbled buildings, blocky and cubic in shape, milky white in color. They were the barest whisper of the city that had once lain here, centuries ago, before the great desolation. Kip scanned the landscape through the blue-glass eyes embedded in his sockets, feeling the terrain for himself, breathing life into the maps that were recorded in his cybernetic brain.

          He was a tall man, with broad shoulders and a powerful sinewy body. It was a body grafted time and again with synthetic enhancements; everywhere from his lightning-responsive nervous system to the artificial muscles that coiled around his titanium bones were tweaked to the human limit and beyond. Under his heavy gloves and the black leather of his flight suit ran the scars of his countless operations, the long welting gashes that was the price he had paid for his service to the Kingdom. Long thin lines, scars better concealed, extended from his neck and ran over his cheeks, to end just below the ridge of his skull. They crinkled slightly when he smiled or frowned, like they did now, as Kip's lips tightened into the ghost of a grin, his eyes narrowing into a squint as he gazed off into the distance.

          "It's almost time to fly," someone said. Kip turned to a slightly built man, standing by the deck door; arms crossed over his chest, his brown ponytail dancing in the wind. "Control's assembling the squad at the Docking Pool."

          "I know, Lace. I caught the announcement," Kip replied, taking his hands out of his pockets. He strode over to the deck door and, resting an elbow on the side beams of the open doorway, he looked back at the younger operator, who stood more than a head below him. "Just felt like taking a look at the land with my own eyes, before I went out there in the 'suit."

          "Hey, navigation is my job," Lace said, smiling, "you just sit back and blast the bad guys."

          Kip said nothing as he slipped through the door and down the staircase, Lace following him closely. The inside of the mother ship was a beehive of frenetic activity; technicians and the landing crew bustled to and fro, making last minute adjustments and final examinations on the equipment, scrambling to their posts. Kip and Lace waded through them all, backs to the walls of the narrow hallways, to make their way to the Docking Pool. Heavy iron doors ground open to reveal a vast, domed space, scattered with pieces of machinery. On one side of the chamber were the operator's stations; rows and rows of metal chairs, spilling cords and wires from their padded backs. Other operators already occupied some of the stations, similar to Lace. A wickedly sharp needle hovered poised over each seat, aimed at the back of the operator's necks. Lace took to his own station, letting the crew strap him in. A steel mask was placed over his face, and Lace's hands found his console using touch and familiarity.

          One the other side of the Docking Pool were the TMAI suits; racks upon racks of them lined up from floor to ceiling. Five of the suits were already unlocked and ready for use in the middle of the Docking Pool, surrounded by mechanics, helping the pilots don the bulky armor. The TMAI -Tactical Mobile Armored Infantry- suits were a good four meters high, enough to cocoon even the largest built man in a solid chunk of titanium. They were four-limbed in shape, with gnarled powerful-looking legs and long five fingered arms that were festooned with an array of devastatingly destructive weaponry. A long tube of gleaming black extended from the left forearm of each of the 'suits; the GAR mobile cannon, a piece of laser weaponry that could blast a hole in the armor of a tank, full on. Belts of machine-gun ammunition as long as pencils ran down their arms and wrapped around their torso, gleaming brass. The heads were shaped to look vaguely human, and two circular visors, glowing red, were sunken into the metalwork, giving them a gaunt, skull-like appearance.

          The rest of the squad was already there, lowering their faceplates down under their chins to reveal their faces. They turned their heads to Kip as he approached and began to climb into his own suit.

          "You're late, Black," Lorn said, furrowing a brow. Kip ignored him, securing a buckle down with a loud slam. The other pilots exchanged glances.

          There were five of them in all, each with different specialties, and the equipment that hung from their suits reflected their assorted tasks. Heldred Lorn was their point man, a bureaucratic man with receding straw hair and green eyes. The wolfishly lean man with chiseled features was Lorian Grey, the heavy gunner and Kip's gun-mate. Fritz, the sooty-faced youth who nodded to Kip when their eyes met, was in charge of demolitions, and the field technician was a shorthaired, narrow-eyed woman named Kyo- Control liked to call the pair his maker and breakers. Kip himself was master gunner, and in addition to mandatory equipment, his suit was fitted with a AP long-range penetration rifle, mounted with a magnifying scope wired to the right eye socket of his helmet, which he slung over his back, as well as a chain-gun fixed to his right forearm for closer combat, matt-black and slick and greasy with oil.

          In a matter of minutes, everything was in place. The pilots clamped their helmets down over their shoulders, like medieval knights riding out to war. There was a powerful jolt as the TMAI suit activated, and Kip flexed his mechanical fingers, testing out the synthetic nerves that extended from his real fingers down to the iron digits of his 'suit. Under the visor his vision was filmed over in a sheen of red, and the world seemed to go slow, as the 'suit extended needles into his spine and started juicing up his reflexes. Letters and numbers began to scroll down in the corner of his vision, and his headset began to crackle alive with light static.

          "This is Control. Do you copy?" a prim man's voice said sharply. The squad murmured affirmatives in turn. "Standby, men. The operators will be coming in now."

          At the operator's stations, the crew were inserting the needles into the jacks on the back of each operator's neck, one by one jolting them away into cyberspace. Lace was cracking his knuckles and wriggling his fingers over his consoles, as he always did before taking a dive.

          Lace jacked in. The infinities of the matrix unfolded in front of him, vast flow of information running though jumbles of data cubes. The data streamed in blue and white across endless black, like a million bolts of silent lightning lacing clear night sky. Wasting no time, Lace did a tap-tap on his console and navigated himself to where Kip's TMAI suit connected itself to the net. Feeding his own neural information into the port -a kind of virtual handprint-, he logged into Kip's computer core. Immediately, all information regarding the status of the infantry suit -temperature, armor resilience, sustained damage, remaining ammunition, pilot's health- it all started to flow at his fingertips, streaming into his mind. Lace did a check on each of the statistics and hailed Control.

          "Pre-combat check is complete. T-Ceta is ready to go."

          "Affirmative, Lace," Control said. Then, after a moment's pause, "All suits are ready for combat. Operators, inform your pilots to standby for deployment."

          From his computer core, Lace accessed the op-pilot communication wires that fed themselves to the pilot's brain.

          "Kip," Lace called, speaking directly into Kip's mind.

          "Jesus! I hate it when you do that."

          Lace ignored him. "The crew'll open the gates now. Standby for deployment."

          A section of the inside hull of the Docking Pool began to grind open, cracking then splitting open to reveal clear cloudless sky. One by one, the pilots began to leap off the mother ship.

          "Go," Control told Lace.

          "We've got a go," Lace informed Kip. Kip walked over to the open hull and sprang into the air, the wind roaring at his audio-receptors. He free-fell a short distance, before his para-boosters kicked in, and from there he steered himself to the predetermined rendezvous point, a rocky outcrop amidst a sprawling forest of leafless gnarled trees, where the others stood waiting. Fritz was the last to land.

          Lorn raised a hand, signaling to move forward, and began to stride into the lifeless vegetation. Silently, the rest of the squad followed.

 

 

Kip watched the world from behind the eyes of the beast.

          Above and around them spread the Ghielle wastelands. Everything was chalky white, from the dead branches that brushed and snapped against his armor, to the behemoth slabs of marble canyon rock that towered over them, and the fine dust that flurried at his iron feet, which slammed and slammed the earth as he willed his armored suit forward. He kept his chain-gun on search mode, letting the barrel swim every-which-where, scanning for movement. Visibility was low; the dust swirled and billowed around them, cocooning them in a thick white fog. Kip switched his opticals to infrared, keeping visual track over his squad-mates through the heat emanating from their cores.

          The mission was pure reconnaissance, a straightforward search-and-destroy. The scanners on the mother ship had detected hostile activity in the area, and Lorn and his squad had been sent to quickly sweep the place for enemies; there being no shortage of Imperial forces in this part of the Kingdom, wandering over the border to probe for weaknesses in their defenses.

          All was quiet. There was to be no communication between any of the squad-mates; radio waves could be tapped, and so all coordination was managed through the net via each soldier's operator, who kept constant contact with each other, and in turn took their orders from Control. The operators would consult each other in the matrix, then relay decisions and orders to their respective partners. That way, according to Army doctrine, the soldiers in the TMAI suits could concentrate absolutely on combat, leaving all tactical decisions to their operators. The operators were a vital part of TMAI suit combat; they were the navigators, the tacticians, and through the net, they could hack and override enemy defense systems, as well as turrets, cannons and remote-controlled mines, and in turn counter manipulation from other, enemy operators. Lace, Kip's operator, a one-time master data thief turned soldier through parole; irrefutably the best living hacker in the Sphere.

          "What a shithole," Lace said, his voice resounding in Kip's brain. "This place is fucking ruined."

          "Where in the Sphere isn't, Lace. Everywhere's a shithole, after the desolation," Kip drawled back.

          "Not Maub. You ever been to Maub? That place is a goddamn jewel. Got robots for everything, tending oriental gardens and shit. I worked a few jobs there, back before."

          "Maub City is too close to the border," Kip pointed out with cynicism. "It'll be overrun by the Imperials, and soon."

          "Well, you might as well enjoy it while you can. You ever go on leave, I'll take you- hold on," suddenly Lace's tone grew serious. "You got hostiles at three o'clock, Kip."

          Kip stopped and swiveled sideways, unslinging his AP sniper rifle and locking it into place by his shoulders. His combat systems rewrote themselves from scanning to seach and destroy. "Distance?

          "Four hundred... three hundred eighty meters," Lace said, slamming furiously at his console. "They're closing in fast. Dammit, motherfuckers knew we were coming. Count's twenty; four full squads. You go permission to open fire at will."

          The others were also readying their weapons, checking their ammunition belts, slamming bolts home. Beside him, Lorian raised his heavy machine gun and spread his feet, bracing for the recoil. They were facing a towering canyon wall; the Imperials must be coming over from the other side of the peak. "Expecting engagement at two hundred fifty meters," Lace said. "Coming in at three hundred meters... three hundred eighty..."

          Something black emerged from the top of the canyon, then another, then another. One by one the emerging Imperial soldiers began to slide down the rocky face of the canyon, cradling their weapons to their chest.

          Lorian counted to three before he opened fire, spraying slugs of hot lead over the incoming hostiles, digging gorges into the white rock around them and popping at their armor. The Imperials swung their rifles up, stabilizing the barrel between their knees, and began shooting back. The energy bolts whined and shot up pillars of dust by Kip's feet, as he locked onto the closest Imperial through the scope on his AP rifle, and fired, the massive recoil a mere shiver against his iron shoulder. A short stream of pure white energy blasted out of the muzzle and caught the soldier full on the chest, drilling a hole through his armor and melting his head away into nothing. Kip operated the bolt to charge the rifle and lined up for another shot, taking out another enemy soldier in mid-slide, vaporizing his arm and part of his chest. On both side of him, Lorn and Fritz were blasting away with their GAR cannons, and Kyo coolly popped one Imperial after another with her slender little assault rifle. The Imperials who had managed to reach the canyon bottom and began to settle into a sort of half-crouch, taking cover under the boulders and slabs of rock that littered the landscape. The ground was level now that the Imperials had reached the canyon floor; the topographical advantage Kip and his squad had held a moment ago was now lost; and the Imperials began to press them with their numbers.

          "There's too many of them," Lace said, as a rifle bolt rippled dangerously close to Kip, searing at him through his armor. "You'll never make it like this, exchanging fire for fire. You'll find an abandoned city a kilo to the west. Take shelter there until extraction."

          Without a word, Kip started to run -the others were already starting to move- due west, bringing his chain-gun up and raking the enemy lines as he did so, covering their way. Out of the corner of his vision, he saw Lorn take a blast in the gut, toppling heads over heels to disappear into the swirling dust.

          "Leave him," Lace said sharply, a split second later. "His op's given the sign- he's dead."

          "Goddammit," Kip growled through gritted teeth, backpedaling, shooting his chain-gun with his right hand while blasting his GAR cannon with his left, vaporizing an enemy soldier through three meters of solid rock.

          "Time to get the fuck out of there, Kip," Lace warned. Kip turned and started to run like holy hell.

          The squad ran out the mouth of the canyon and leapt into the forest of dead trees, back the way they came, their black armor crashing through the brittle foliage. Rifle shots snapped furiously at their heels, spraying their backs with grit. One well-placed blast took Lorian by the arm, cleanly blowing the limb off by the elbow. The heavy-gunner's suit immediately sealed the wound, pumping his nerves with pain-killing drugs, and the man kept right on running.

          Night fell quickly in the Ghielles; the sky was darkening, and the horizon was shot with a bloody crimson, throwing the forest into a tangle of shadows. The shooting behind them subsided abruptly.

          "We lost them?" Kip asked Lace.

          "For the moment. Not for long."

          Fritz, Lorian, and Kyo were running ahead of him, wreathed in the hungry blackness of a dying sun. Kip followed, his visor automatically adjusting itself to the changing lights. 

          Kip never knew what it was that made him duck. Maybe it was pure animal instinct, a kind of sixth-sense cultivated by the best warriors. Or maybe the minutest change of detail in his surroundings had simply touched off his hair-trigger reflexes.

          Whatever it was, he was already lowering his head when the white blur shot out of the underbrush, swinging it's pulse-blade in a lethal arc that slashed the air where his neck had been a moment before.      

          Kip turned his head and locked his chain gun on to the nearest Slitter- Imperial cyborg ninja soldiers, specialists in close quarter combat. Their helmets were adorned with eerie facemasks, utterly emotionless, with milky white skin and the lips painted blood red. In a blink of an eye the forest around him was crawling with them, clinging to trees, pursuing them across the forest floor. The Slitters saw him and began to close in, moving like spiders through the underbrush. Kip fired, riddling the Slitter with bullets, shattering its head and quartering the chest.

          Abruptly, all the Slitters stopped froze in mid-crawl, limbs locking rigidly into place. Static started to gurgle from their throats. It was Lace, doing what he did best, jamming at their cybernetic brains.

          "Get goin'," the operator said, "I can only hold them for a few seconds."

          Kip needed no further encouragement. He backpedaled at full speed, combing his line of fire across the immobile Slitters, taking out as much of them as he could.

          He reached the rocky outcrop that had been their original rendezvous point. His squad-mates were nowhere to be seen. Only the last tendrils of twilight clawed the sky now, and the forest was plunged into night. The outcrop on which he now stood was a lone island in the sea of darkness. Not far away, Kip's audio receptors caught the whirr of the Slitters reactivating.

          "Kip. This is very, very bad shit," Lace said.

          "Tell me something I don't know."

          "The others have already reached extraction. Control wants you to hold the Slitters as much as you can, while I secure you an escape route."

          "Fuck that," Kip spat. "He's telling me to die out here. What does he think I am, some sort of fucking kamikaze pilot?"

          "I'll get you outta there, Kip. You gotta trust me." Back in the matrix, Lace was riffling furiously through digital map after map, testing scenarios, checking altitudes. "Just hang in there, man."

          Kip said nothing. He could feel the Slitters out there, slowly circling him in, like sharks in the dark, quietly probing his weaknesses. Kip tripped his chain-gun and pulled his handgun out of its holster with his left hand, thumbing back the hammer and flicking off the safety. There was a moment of silence.

          When they came they came fast, leaping at him from the darkness like snowy wolves. Kip fired with both guns, the blinding muzzle flashes tearing gashes into the night. He took down Slitter after Slitter as they charged him, shattering their faces and bodies with sprays of hot lead slugs. He gritted his teeth in the searing flashes of his own weapons; the world went into crystal clear slow motion as his reflexes sharpened even further; and one by one, he could see cracks forming themselves into a black spider web as his bullets bit and tore at Slitter armor.

          A pulse-blade drew an incision across his chest; Kip paid it no heed. He was lost in red rage, his guns tracking and obliterating the cyborg ninjas, one by one. 

          Fuck you. Fuck you, fuck you, FUCK YOU.

          "Kip!" Lace called. "You must have taken a shot in your cooling systems. You're overheating. You hear me? The guns gonna fucking burn you up."

          "Just tell me how to get the hell outta here," Kip said, sweat pouring down his forehead and trickling over his eyes. The temperature gauge in the corner of his vision had hit forty-two degrees and rising.

          "I'm workin' on it!" the operator said, his fingers flying over the console. A keening alarm began to ring in Kip's ears. "Kip, you keep this up, your suit's going to automatically shut down in thirty seconds."

          "Override it," Kip said through clenched teeth, shooting down another Slitter. The temperature hit forty-five degrees. His could almost feel his blood starting to sizzle within his veins, and the hairs on the back of his neck curl and burn. It was like being trapped in an oven. The heat emanating from his suit lanced up and down his body as fiery spears, scorching his bones with excruciating pain.

          "Dammit, Kip. I do that, you'll be cooked alive."

          "Just do it, Lace. If I shut down now, I won't have a fucking chance and you know it."

          There was a pause. Lace murmured an obscenity and punched a series of commands, silencing the alarm.

          "All right, I got your escape route," Lace said. "Hundred meters to the north, you'll find the ledge of a cliff. Kip, I want you to leap off the cliff.

          Kip was already moving due north, his mechanical legs propelling him up into the air, above the Slitters and down onto the ground behind them. Gears ground as he started to gallop forward at full speed. He didn't question Lace's judgment. As the pilot, he trusted his operator completely. If the op said to jump off a cliff, then goddamn if he didn't do it.

          The Slitters pursued him, slithering through the underbrush. Without looking back, Kip swiveled one arm over his shoulder and killed the three running closest, relying only on his sensors. 

          He could see the gaping ridge of the cliff now, and the infinite maw of darkness that stretched beyond. The Slitter behind him realized what he was about to do and slowed, hesitating.

          Kip flew. He kicked the dust one more time before launching himself into the air, and then there was nothing below him save miles of empty space. He fell, his gut wrenching as he tumbled heads over heels through the darkness, like Alice in the rabbit hole. The ground came closer and closer, a massive wall of earth that rushed at him like a freight train, and Kip felt himself bracing for impact.

          Suddenly the boosters in his suit kicked in, running on the auxiliary fuel that Lace had re-routed from his AP rifle's energy pack. Six tons of free-falling titanium and iron slowed in mid-drop, and Kip felt a strange, floating sensation before he hit the ground in an explosion of dust and debris, blowing a crater into the wastelands.

          As the dust settled, Lace did a damage check. The boosters had broken most of the fall, and Kip's suit had come out mostly unharmed, with the exception of a few dents and scratches. The cut from the Slitter had split his armor hull into a nasty gash, but it was nothing that wouldn't hold for a few hours, which was more than enough time to be picked up and shipped back to the mother ship for repairs.

          "Kip? You all right?" Lace asked.

          "Banged my head."

          Lace laughed.

          Kip lay there for a while, white steam billowing out of his suit as it cooled in the night winds. Then he pushed himself upright, hauling his weapons back into place.

          "What now, op?" Kip said.

          "We wait here. Control will send a drop-ship, come pick us up."

          They waited in silence, as Kip brought his suit down into resting position, locking the joints into place so he could rest his body, and Lace scanned the area for approaching Imperials.

          Kip surveyed his surroundings. He was standing in the middle of a vast dust bowl of white sand, peppered here and there with black skeletal trees. The crag, from where Kip had just made his leap, towered blackly behind him. And before him spread the Kell desert, the horizon unmarred by mountains or boulders. They were at the ridge of the Ghielle canyons; beyond this stretch of desertland was the border between the Kingdom and the Unallied Lands, and further beyond that was the Imperial Realm of Corumekia.

          Kip watched the wind slice at the dust under the moonless sky, and his gaze held something akin to longing as he looked upon the horizon and the lands that must lie beyond. That was when he saw the man.

          He was a ghost, an apparition; a force that reached over the streams of time to blast Kip's mind away like the scorching bolt of a rifle. He was tall, and gaunt, and he wore an expensive looking, black three-piece suit. A perfectly tied bowtie sprouted by his throat, and upon it was fastened a silver raven brooch, glittering in the starlight. His hands, long bony fingers enveloped in creamy white gloves, spread over the smoothly polished handle of his cane, on which he half-heartedly leaned. The ghost stood there for a moment, quietly bathing in the inky darkness; his pale face was settled in a slight frown, gazing off into the distance, as if in reminisce. Then he turned his eyes at Kip.

          It was impossible- no, he didn't believe it. He couldn't believe it.

          The gaunt man tightened his lips in a smile. That maddeningly familiar smile.

          Kip screamed. 

         

           

"Goddamn it, Kip! Talk to me!" Lace shouted from within the matrix, trying to keep his cool. One second everything had been going smoothly, and the next thing he knew, all of Kip's cerebral systems had gone totally haywire. There was no trace of virus, or another op hacking in, and Kip's brainwaves didn't indicate insanity. Not yet. Something Kip had seen had disturbed him so much, to the point that it had almost shattered his mind.

          Kip began running at full speed, heading out into the desert land, dunes and trees whipping past on both sides.

          "Kip! What the hell happened? What did you see?"

          "Concord," Kip said abruptly, his voice surprisingly clear. "I saw a... man out there."

          "You saw a man? Out here?" Lace echoed incredulously. "This is a battle zone, Kip. Fuck, don't you see? You're running into a trap."

          "No. It can't be a trap. Lace, I know this man."

          Lace thought that over, not knowing what to make of it. "You know this man."

          Kip said nothing, madly galloping through the sandy fields.

          "So where's this guy now?" Lace asked.

          " can see him. He's gliding in front of me, leading me someplace."

          "There's a guy running in front of you," Lace said. "Kip, that is fucking bullshit. Your TMAI suit's moving at more than three hundred kilo's per hour. Even cyborgs don't move that fast."

          "I didn't say running, I said gliding. And I see what I goddamn see."

          Lace hesitated. It was the ultimate op's paradox; everything he was hearing indicated instability or enemy infiltration on the part of Kip's mind, yet his very own analysis as an operator had led him to the fact that Kip's mind was indeed perfectly lucid. And Lace had absolute confidence in his own ability. It was his common sense clashing with his belief in his own competence. He hailed Control.

          "Lace!" Control crackled, and Lace could almost see the man's face, white with rage. "What the hell is happening out there? T-Ceta's gone completely berserk on us."

          "Don't know, Control. Pilot says he saw something out there. Someone he knew."

          "I don't care what the pilot says," Control said tightly. "Get him back. This is qualifies as an act of desertion. If he doesn't turn back in thirty seconds, we'll be forced to issue an immediate seach and destroy on him. Army protocol."

          Lace switched channels. "Kip, you turn back right now, or Control'll have to mark you as a deserter. You know what they do to deserters. They'll hunt you down and kill you, Kip, bring you back in pieces. I'm goddamn begging. Turn back."

          "I can't," Kip said, his voice pained. "I'm sorry, Lace. But I can't."

          Lace swore. He switched to Control again. "Pilot shows no intention of discontinuing."

          "GODDAMN IT," Control snarled. "Lace, shut down his systems and jack out. We'll collect him in the morning."

          "No," Lace said quietly.

          There was a long silence.

          Control was the first to break to quiet; his voice, raspy with static, almost a whisper. "You'll be aiding and abetting a deserter, Lace. You're a good op. Our best. Losing Black is bad enough. We don't want to lose you too."

          "Kip is my partner," Lace said, wondering if he would come to regret this. "I can't leave him."

          "Lace," Control pleaded. "We'll be forced to destroy your body. You know what that means, don't you?"

          Lace said nothing.

          Control continued. "You'll be trapped in the matrix forever, Lace. Condemned to live as a neural ghost, an electronic parasite. Don't do this to yourself, soldier."

          "It’s just meat," Lace said, surprised to find his voice hoarse. "Like we used to say, back in the biz. It's all just meat."

          "Very well," Control said, resigned. "If that is your choice. Good bye, Lace."

          Lace cut the link.

          They ran for four hours straight, before Kip finally grinded his gears to a stop, so close to the border that Lace could see the lights on the check-points of the border that seperated the Kingdoms and the Unallied Lands, twinkling in the distance like jewels on a sparse necklace. The soldier collapsed from exhaustion, his helmeted head banging against the lolling dunes, the mammoth TMAI suit half-burying itself in the alabaster sand. Grains of snowy dust began to collect on his visors, filming over the red ferra-glass like dry frost.

          "You lost him, huh?" Lace said.

          "Lace?" Kip seemed shocked that the operator was still there, with him. "I thought you jacked out."

          "Heck, I was getting bored with Army life, you know?" Lace said. "Thought this was a good as time as any to escape." 

          "Shit, Lace. They're going to cut your link, trash your body." Kip knew what that meant to an operator. It was a technical death; only Lace's mind would still exist in the world, as the barest vestiges of data in the matrix. 

          "You know what they say." Lace kept his voice light. "Curiosity killed the cat."

          "Why, damn it. Why did you do it?"

          Lace thought it over.

          "Because I believe in ghosts," he finally said.

          "Ghosts," Kip echoed.

          "Not, you know, like spirits and souls, none of that supernatural garbage. More like... traces. Foot prints, except in the mind. You come across some really weird shit in the matrix. Things that can't be explained by logic. Crazy stuff; one guy I knew a while back, he quit the biz; says he saw his dead mother, while he was in on a dive. We think we know fucking everything there is to know about the matrix; but the truth is, the brain, it's chock-full of perplexions. There's black spots everywhere across our map of the human mind; the subconsious, vestigial memory, the sixth sense- what we used to call the nighthead." Lace paused. "Everybody's got a past, Kip. Their past. Their ghost. I wanted to know what your ghost was. That's all."

          Kip lay in mute silence for a while. Then he said, "When I first joined the squad. Did anybody tell you what I did? Before?"

          "No," Lace said. And now that he thought of it, it was strange. Kippard Black hadn't come through the usual batch of cadets. Kip had been specially injected into the team, with orders from above that no questions be asked. He was strange man, obviously an outsider; but he knew what he was doing in his TMAI suit; even better, probably, than Lorn or Lorian, who had been their best pilots in the squad until then. He was also a tough soldier and a superb shot with the rifle, and that was all that mattered- nobody had even thought to question his origins, and if they did, they kept it to themselves.  

          "I guess we all assumed you'd been iced in the whitebox for a while, you know? A reactivated soldier." Lace had heard of them, cyborg soldiers who were put to cryogenic sleep during peacetime, to be awakened decades later to the call of war. It would have explained his peculiar manner, his foreignness.

          "Iced," Kip said, slowly, as if tasting the words in his mouth and finding them bitter. "You could say that, I guess."

          "I knew it. How long?"

          "Three hundred years," Kip said. "I must have been thirteen years old when they iced me, because that was the age of my body when they woke me up."

          If Lace had a mouth, it would have dropped open. "That's highly unusual, Kip," he said. "That's very, very weird. Why would they ice someone as young as you were, and reactivate you three centuries later? It doesn't make any sense at all."

          "That's what I've been trying to figure out," Kip said. "First thing I remember, I was learning. Learning how to fire a gun, how to kill a man with my bare hands, how to make bombs." He furrowed a brow. "I don't remember anything, about... before."

          "And the man?"

          "He was always there, behind the glass walls. Watching. Always watching. Sometimes he talked to me, you know, like how adults just like to have these chats with kids. He called himself Concord. Mr. Concord. Then they sent me out to the Academy, and I never saw him again."

          "Until now," Lace finished.

           Kip said nothing.

          "Kip," Lace said. "The guys who reactivated you, who taught you how to kill. They from the Army?"

          "I don't know. They were just men and women in lab coats. But yeah. They probably worked for our Army. I could smell it on them; see it in their eyes, the way they walked and talked."

          Lace sighed. He ached for a cigarette, but then he realized that he had no body to smoke it with. This neuro-ghost business was going to take some getting used to.

          "What now?" he wondered out loud. "We can't go back to the Army, that's for sure. They'll be sending out scouts to look for us, issue warrants. We'll have to cross the border, hide in some city or another in the Unallied Lands, lie low for a while, until the storm blows over."

          "Nelo Angelo," Kip murmured.

          "What?"

          "Nelo Angelo City," Kip repeated. "Concord spoke to me, before he disappeared. He told me... to go to Nelo Angelo City."

          Lace mulled that over. "I've pulled a few gigs in NA," he said. "I know my way around the place, and it's shady enough and far enough beyond the Unallied Lands's border, the Army will have a hard time tracking us there. Nelo Angelo it is."

          Lace concentrated slightly, wondering if he could still navigate the net, without a body to type commands into a keypad- and suddenly maps and data about the area began to flood into his mind. There was no need to punch at his console; he willed it and the info was there, ready to view at his virtual fingertips. It was like suddenly discovering that he could move things using only his mind and he'd never need to reach for a remote control again. His soul may have been trapped in the matrix, but in a way, his current state was far more liberating than net diving in his flesh had ever been. He felt a giddiness overtake him, a delicious freedom- Look Ma, no hands!

          "Okay," Lace said, once he had gotten his bearings, navigating the net with his mind. "First thing in the morning, head north-west. There'll be a town there, a couple miles away from the border. Jerkwater pit called Krell. We'll drop by there for a while; you grab some food, repair your suit, and then we'll cross over and enter the Unallied Lands. Then it's smooth sailing all the way to NA city. Now get some sleep."

          "What about you?"

          "I don't think I need to sleep. I'll be surfin' the net, maybe watch some EntV."

          But Kip had already gone quiet; his brainwaves slowly settling into serene ripples of unconsciousness; leaving Lace to the wakeful world of the matrix, where electrons criss-crossed through black empty cyberspace like so many shooting stars. They trailed his dreams and nightmares, as they burned and flared from white to brilliant cerulean, lancing across a soundless black sky of lies that stretched on to the gaping maw of infinity.

         

         

 

 

 

 

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