Memories
by Presley H. Cannady and members of the Anime
Manga Development Group
ROBOTECH Prelude --The Iliad Epic
Act I- Past and Present
___________________________________________________________
The New Era Sagas and all therein are copyright 1995@ Presley
H. Cannady. All rights reserved. Any profit-intended
publication of this novel without authorization of the author
or current copyright holders is strictly prohibited.
Copyright 1995@ Anime/Manga Development Group
Copyright 1985@ Harmony Gold
Copyright 1982@ Tatsunoko Productions
Copyright 1982@ Studio Nue
This story is not to be bought or sold, in whole or in part.
The electronic publication of this novel is intended for free
access, and does not intend to infringe on the rights of
Harmony Gold USA. The author has not accepted and will not
accept any remuneration for this work. This book is a
combination of events from the series and source material, the
RPG and events of the McKinney Novels. Its canonical value is
uncertain and is completely of my universe design.
____________________________________________________________
Prologue One
"ETA IN 18 MINUTES, SIR," THE AIDE, WHO SEEMED TO BE OBSCENELY
close to eighteen, placed a steaming cup of Harrisburg creme
and coffee onto the small platform before him. Guerta sniffled
slightly before taking his first sip. The shuttle--a
gull-winged dive Horizont-class assault ship--belonged to his
first assignment, a new Cheranko-class capital cruiser
commissioned only two months ago. The Jovian moons slipped by
rapidly as the pulse engines hurtled the vessel along a
pre-arrange path cutting across entire orbits of each of
Jupiter's loyal inner giants. To the "east," Ganymede station
rose over its namesake's horizon. It measured some
seventy-four kilometers in length; an asteroid, an outbound
Ganymede-subsystem rock designated "Gordon-331," provided the
bulk of the materials for the station's construction. As the
Horizont nimbly slipped through Ganymede's orbit, the vista
receded as quickly as the planetoid before him; within
half-an-hour, Ganymede station was a speck against the
back-drop of the greyish moon-world. From the bridge, the
captain watched from the guest officer's station as a veteran
chief petty officer guided the carrier according to the
instructions of the shuttle skippers--a lieutenent not that
much younger than Guerta. With vain unassumingness, the
skipper would occasionally glance in his direction, as if
looking for some sort of expression of approval. The senior
officer, who remembered the perturbation he felt as a junior
officer eight years ago, had already recognized the shuttle
skipper's raw talent. No particularly difficulty accompanied
such an observation, considering both the Horizont skipper's
and the warship captain's ranks were quite unnatural in respect
to their ages. Therefor, each time she glanced back, the
captain would nod his head in a silent gesture of satisfaction,
and sip from his coffee; he neither commented nor hinted his
opinions. He need not to critique her flying technique;
instead, the captain concentrated on assessing the growth of
her command capabilities in his mind. The results pleased
him. Still, that didn't make the ride terribly enjoyable--to
the new skipper of a capital-class carrier-cruiser, the bigger
the better. Light ships always disgusted him. After all, the
captain had lived the dream of serving with the space-going
frigate force of the United Nations Spacy; starting out in the
MIYY--the Karest IV Marine and Aerospace Militia.
Captain Manuel Figuerra Guerta, UNS, glanced steadily at
the main viewscreen as the small Horizont-II personal shuttle
ascended from Ganymede, the massive discus of Jupiter, the
motherplanet, increasing in size as the made their way to a
flotilla of glimmering lights some few hundred thousand miles
above the termination of the gas-giant's atmosphere.
"...some hull ionization," Guerta's ears perked up at the
sound of that. A relatively inexperienced commanding officer
in the United Nations Spacy. Flights aboard these aging
transports proved enough to put him in a general state o
unease. He tentavively placed his coffee down and fixed his
eyes on the view-grid. They passed through the first fleet,
two DTTS-15 Horizont I assault shuttles formed up on their
tail, like massive whales surrounding the awestrucked
observer. As quickly as they appeared, they subceded to the
first division, heading for the older Excalibur-class Macross
Cannons allotted to the mission force. He gingerly touched the
black console lit with various computer generated console
arrangements, opening a comm channel directly linked to his new
assignment. "Millie? Are you there?"
A slight pause--and a stifled giggle--came online first,
and then the soothing, reassuring voice of Ensign Mildred
Lefler came online. "Uh...yes, sir. Please try and enjoy the
ride. We'll at least try to get you here in one piece."
"Keep an open channel with Ganymede Personnel," he
dismissed the friendly sarcasm,"and be prepared to send
condolences to my family. By the time--if I live through
this--I'm onboard, everyone else should be ready for the jump."
"Aye, sir," Millie replied. "Colonel North is supervising
the final transfers for the 36th from the Sloth and the
Willow. Commander Keets wants you to know that White Ox and
Necromancer squadrons are onboard and prepped. We'll see you
aboard, sir. Daedalus out."
Captain Guerta watched as the screen went blank, recalling
the defense layout plans for his vessel. The Daedalus would
not only ferry her own defense squadrons--seven squadrons which
made up the 197th UN Spacy Carrier Air Wing--but a mixture of
Aerospace Force and Marine aviators under a unified command.
Colonel North was the commander that force, which was
designated as the 36th Composite Aerospace Wing--detached from
the 145th Tactical Space Corps. Composite Aerospace Wings were
usually smaller than their pure-breed counterparts, and the
mission of the Co-AW had evolved from a balance of different
units within a military branch to cross-outfit composites.
Four squadrons, often segregated by branch affiliation, were
representative of the three main aviation branches and the air
power capabilities of the UN Army. In the Daedalus' case, they
would not be ferrying Army troops--although ninety-eight Marine
Corps Cyclone riders were included for the long voyage.
Like her distant ancestor, some fifty years ago, the
Daedalus was about to embark on a mission of peace while, at
the same time, being armed to the teeth. Like a small insect
skimming the surface of eternity, the shuttle found its way
home, a small patch of light against the magnificent half-face
of Jupiter.
* * *
The elongated, arrow-shaped fold-inducing pylons of the
Daedalus calmed once the their test warm-up completed its last
cycle, setting the graceful, elongated vessel adrift at the
mercy of Jupiter's gravitational pull. The forward hull was
arrow shaped, streamlined to the forces which hyperspace
inflicted in such vessels. The starship hung in dead orbit
around the behemoth of the solar system.
"This is Ganymede Seven Eight to Daedalus," the conn tower
over a hundred thousand miles away linked to the Daedalus
through its communications system. "Full authorization for
departure is granted. Prepare for immediate departure." It
was a message that the twenty warships alotted to this wave of
the fleet were all receiving.
Several older-generation Valkyrie VF-1Ss raced by the
medium-sized REF ship, followed by the younger VF/A-2Y
Vindicators and their VF-3 Solstice cousins. The vessel was a
late entree into the Robotech Expeditionary Fleet.
Commissioned eleven years ago in 2066, it symbolized the new
mission of the Fleet, exploration. The Daedalus measured
nine-hundred meters total length, a thirty-three percent
increase from the standard SDF-10 Cheranko class beam length.
The first line of the SFC-91000 Janeway series, the Daedalus
featured a variety of improvements, such as the RRC's
fresh-off-the-line dual-Reflex engine arrangement, capable of
supplying power to the warpfold manifests as well as siphoning
off more than enough to run other systems. Still, the unique
design of the Daedalus lay in its externally unorthodox design
principles. The fold drive was manifested in four massive
pylons, which resembled (and in a way, acted) like sails on an
old wind-powered vessel of one of Earth's ancient wet-navies.
Alongside the forward hull, streamlined bulges indicated a
modification--this additional hangerspace held two of the three
Horizont assault shuttles--in collapsed storage--that the
Daedalus served as the mothership for.
Her destination was the Fourth Quadrant, and ultimately
Tirol. It was over ten years ago that the Great Severence
Catastrophe separated Earth and Tirol irreversibly for the
forseable future. The mechanism and the actual definition of
the event and its aftermath were still mysterious by the
esoteric group of physicists who studied it. The phenomena
that had quite literally ripped hyperspace apart halted any
stable folds of the higher slipspace (spacefold) velocities
(above 70,000 times the speed of light practically) throughout
the First Quadrant. With no contact possible between the
Sentinel worlds, the majority of the population of Earth had
fallen into a year of panic. That was 2060. By 2076, Earth
colonies were pumping out vessels using superluminal drives
developed from non-Robotech Terran sciences.
Matter-antimatter, fusion, and Sekiton/Sekitan/ Sekra-powered
drives could be used to traverse the great quadrants to reach
Tirol, but it would be more than a century journey to reach
that promise land at a maintainable superluminal velocity.
With more startling reports developing surrounding temporal
differentials and loops plaguing the center of the galaxy,
transgalactic voyages seemed almost alien in the new
space-faring age.
However, in early 2066, Dr. Reidt offered a theory stating
that it was possible that these Quadrants, grouped together in
the massive and forboding Gamma Quadrant, might be healing on
the hyperspace range to allow for the protoculture slipspace
fold. It had come time to test that theory. With new designs
on the reflex furnaces of the new SDF-10 and SDF-11 classes,
they stood poised to launch once again the original charter of
the SDF-3 and the First Robotech Expeditionary Force: to
recieve Tirol in the name of humanity and peace.
The remaining protoculture on Earth was gathered together
in a last ditch effort to re-contact Tirol. To the Daedalus, a
small but formidable light cruiser, went the honor of serving
in the reincarnation of the Robotech Expdeditionary force. The
Second Robotech Expeditionary Fleet stood poised on the brink
of history. Forty years had passed since the Mars Veritech
Fleet returned from Tirolspace. After the Invid occupation was
lifted, those forces and fleets had returned to space to search
for the SDF-3. With the REF abandoned by their flagship, they
spent ten years roaming the Galaxy. Finally, the flagship
returned, and Earth had left an age of terror, war, and
destruction supposedly behind it.
It was not to be.
His name was First Lieutenent Akuza Patton, United National
Spacy Aerospace Force, and he wore a glossy black uniform with
red emblazoned shoulders and a wide, decorated double-lapel.
His collar was a turtleneck like process that branced off near
the Adam's apple. Reservedly, he removed his personals from
the luggage just recently furnished to his room.
Akuza had grown up during this time of chaos. Sixteen
years ago, Tirol and Earth had lost contact completely with
each other; two of many victims of a strange and debilitating
event that was known throughout the Quadrant as the Severance.
When he was four years old, he watched as the nebulaic ripples
of the Severance flushed through the night sky, light exceeding
even the speed it was limited to, and the consqeuences as
devastating as the beauty of the tragedy. The more practical
limitations imposed by the new galaxy were a variety of new
time slips and anamolies that virtually cut the Galaxy in
half. Space travel nearly suffered a swift death at the hands
of fate, and humanity was forced to return to the stars with
lower-end fold drives--ones that wouldn't misfold into the
temporal-spatial vortex hyperspace's upper regions had become.
These drives--first powered by reserves of protoculture
generators and cells before they were herded away--now ran on
fusion and matter-antimatter engines, both with power yields
greater but more difficult to maintain than the seed-reaction
of the protoculture process. Langleyes fusion, the closest
mankind had come to developing the reflexive fusion process
inherent in the protoculture process, still remained years
behind development.
However, humanity managed to survive and pool together,
becoming stronger than it had ever been--maybe wiser as well...
"This is goodbye," he removed a small holograph of his wife
and their newborn son he would be leaving behind. However, for
the past five years, he had debated with himself on this
decision, and had already chosen his course of action. Out
there, his family, his own family was lost, waiting for him.
His father, passed away before he turned forty, had failed to
make amends with Akuza's grandmother, who abandoned him in the
care of the Patton family while fleeing a war that would send
most of them to internment camps under the Invid occupation.
Growing up in the healing ghettos of Tokyo's Sumida-ku, the
home of the Patton family following the end of the first United
Earth Government, his grandfather--the actually an uncle who
adopted Michael Sterling, Akuza's father--had met married into
a wealthy Ohta-ku family; that particularly ward served as a
sort of underwater seaport for the subterranean colony.
Virtually founded by the ex-yakuza Shimada family, the Japanese
culture and society survived both the Second and Third Robotech
wars. His adoptive grandfather died as a member of a
Manchurian resistence force that was decimated during the early
years of the Invid occupation. The Patton family was quickly
absorbed into the large Tokyo-ken clan of Akuza's grandfather's
wife. It wasn't until Michael Sterling Patton and his young
wife, a member of another powerful family, the Shinburu clan,
migrated to the North America California coast that he reunited
with his Northland Patton relatives. Five years later, Akuza
was born.
As he turned to see what would be Earth's position in its
present orbit, he found himself longing to be at home in the
newly rebuilt Tokyo, with his family on a nice, safe
assignment. However, as he finished packing away his
belongings, he realized he was lying to himself.
* * *
In 2063, it was General Aragorn Sagan who governed over the
world below from this historic office. The desk was fashioned
of something that resembled polished balsam wood, but was of
far sturdier Centauran stock. General Sagan received it as a
gift from the Planetary Premier of that period. Both had died
only a few years ago; in the same year, ironically. Both had
also tried to gain some measure of absolute power over the
Council that supposedly censured them. Sagan founded the
Global Astro-Police Forces in the early 2060s, an emergency
response to the ensuing chaos the Severance had inflicted on
Earth and her newborn colonies. Generally considered by most
historians and political analysts to have been the most
powerful man in Earthspace and a planetary despot before his
premature death, Sagan actually brought Earth to a stable
development point for a trade off of just three years (although
many areas of the planet still haven't recovered to this day).
Since then, the Allied-Earth Federation had evolved three times
before becoming the United Planetary Confederation, a
cooperative government of seven worlds including Earth and her
colonies.
Of course, UN Spacy retained its military hold over
Confederation policy; a position of power often criticized but
rarely challenged.
Lieutenent General Marie Crystal-Phillips, sixty-nine years
old this July, shut off the hologram as Jupiter faded into her
viewport. Her astonishing radiance was evident, the result of
that last spacefold which had resulted in her age being
preserved for several years in hyperspace, and cellular
rejuvanation gave that added feel of returned youth. While she
was in fact nearing seventy, she seemed little over forty or
fifty. The only indication of her increasing age was the small
streak of grey that had come in with slight conspicuousity in
her scruffed, pitch-black mane. Life had been slightly harder
on her husband, Major General (ret) Sean Phillips, now a
senatorial general to the UPDC, which answered to the council
without fear of censure. Commander of the Southern Cross
Calvary Corps, she had been a major driving force behind the
commission and reality of the Second REF. Ganymede Station, a
small orbital facility similar to the one constructed from the
remains of Dolza's superfortress, the Little Luna factory
satellite, and the skeleton of the formerly operational Liberty
and the debris of New Frontier,, provided an astonishing view
of Earth's first Jovian colonization effort. To be accurate,
it was a Martian establishment; Mars had achieved autonomy as
early as 2064 for their support of the AEF during the
Three-Year chaos.
As she entered the hanger bay, she found herself emersed in
the daily drudgery of ground-crew life. Carefully manuevering
pass the non-attentive personnel towards the bay area, she
finally found herself saluted by three security lieutenents and
their commander.
"Commodore," she extended her hand to the former Black Lion
squadron pilot and a comrade of the General. Commodore Sakir
Bhutto, now in his early seventies, smiled and accepted it
graciously, returning a salute afterwards. "So, you really do
know how to show a lady around, don't you?"
"Can't hold a candle to Sean, no doubt," Sakir replied in a
mixture of Northeast American and Neasian East Indian
accentre. "All higher class capital ships are being outfitted
with these."
The Horizont III SDTTS-1 was of the same lines of those
developed during the First Invid War. This particular one, the
Darkstar, was pitch-black, with a double red/white line
stretching across its beamlength. Though unarmed and
unaccessorized at this time, it was a miniature starship,
capable of fold operations, unlike its predescessor.
"Shall we?" the Commodore beckoned, leading
Crystal-Phillips hand-in-hand up the red-carpetted loading
ramp.
* * *
_________
* * *
Prologue Two
Following the event that would become known as the Great
Severance, an REF upstart by the name of Aragorn Sagan, along
with several Australian based xenophobes successfully
established relations with the evacuated Allied Earth
Federation, the tentative governing body established by the
Pluto Veritech Fleet [see notes in section "End of the
Circle"]. Rising to the rank of general, the establishment of
the Global Astro-Police Forces restarted the cycle of
factionalism and politco-militarianism.
-The Biographical History of the Robotech Wars--"Sagan,"
published May 2104, Encyclopedia Artinia Inc., biographical
released by the United Defense Council report archives
* * *
New York, Earth Febuary 18th, 1985
TWENTY-YEAR OLD JANE FOKKER SUMTER IMPATIENTLY LINGERED IN
waiting room for her ass of a brother to show up, but soon
realized that casual punctuality was not one of his most
practiced traits. Uncle Gerald, the name she had so often
called her father's best friend, and Aunt Gloria would soon be
the proud parents.
Jane had come to live in New York two years ago, a
frightened high-school graduate on a partial scholarship to New
York University. From grade nine up she established herself as
an honor student of North Depshire High School, particpating in
mostly soccer sports, newspaper and student senate, and an
office runner for Mr. Zimmermann, her high-school assistant
principle and administrator of the junior class. Maintaining
above an 88 average for all four years, the grant for NYU
completely erased any thoughts of her entering the Canadian
Armed Forces like her father and mother. Jane was very big on
physical fitness. She had a desirable figure. Her ample bosum
was disguised under the layers of clothing that included a
loose blouse, a kashmir sweater, and a double-lined drab-grey
overcoat that screamed Mannhattan exec-style. Her hair was
ashen-blonde, as was the case with most of the members of her
family.
New York disgusted her, the city that was--she had been
raised in a rural Canadian town in northern Alberta. While
blizzards that were striking the city that year reminded her of
a typical Canadian winter, and she was surprised to see these
"southerners" faring pretty well against the frigid winds, the
filthiness of the public transportation (namely, subways) and
the constant skyline disillusioned her. Manhattan was daunting
and intimidating enough, but the less kept up areas in Kings
and Queens County isolated her to the island.
1985 was a blizzard year, the winter months hammering long
into March and the snow lingering into mid-April. The extended
Artic cold front swept across Alberta, skimming Chicago
slamming the Ontario-Quebec-New York region hardest. Not even
the temperacy of the Atlantic Ocean, which New York opened to
via direct landmass at the tip of New York City, and one
strait, could have mitigated the snow storm that burrowed into
the Northeast United States. Snow plows from all five borough
divisions of the Sanitation and Transportation departments were
busy clearing the streets and avenues of Manhattan and Staten
Island, with secondary units already cleaning up the millions
of highways and byways of Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx.
Some of the natives of the latter three considered it racial
and economic bias--Manhattan, a predominantly Caucasian
neighborhood and the business sector of the city often took
precedence over her poorly developed sisters; and Staten
Island, fast becoming a more Caucasian residential area and
ultimately an extension of Manhattan herself. Harlem and
Chinatown were one of the few underdeveloped ghettos in the
area. The difference between the upperclass of the city and
the lower-income residents in other bourough seemed only to
solidify this point of view.
Already, it had been an hour since Gloria had gone into
labor, and Ron would soon be to late for the fireworks.
Impatiently, she tapped on her purse as she kept glancing back
and forth from its maroon leather surface to the clock on the
waiting lounge's east wall.
"You waiting too?" a faintly Brooklyn accent surfaced.
"Huh?"
"I assume your not havin' a kid today," a jovial old
Italian woman smiled up at her. "So you probably are a friend
of the lucky mother, right?"
"Uh, yeah," Jane replied, unsure whether or not she really
wanted to talk to someone right now.
"My daughter's having her boy today, and I'm still waiting
for Ed to show up with the damn camcorder. What about you?"
"I'm waiting for my brother. Say, this is a military
hospital. Are you-"
"No, no!" the elderly woman laughed. "My daughter, she's a
chief petty officer in the Navy--I think Enterprise. She got
herself married in only one year, and now she's making her old
mother a grandmother. You have a sister or something?"
"A family friend," she replied. "Their first kid in
fifteen years of marriage."
"Wow," the lady breathed in. "Maybe you should try calling
to see if that brother of yours has left wherever the hell he
is. Are you new here?"
"Where?"
"The city, of course!"
"Yeah. We're from Canada."
"Really? Cold up there at this time of year. I have some
relatives around Toronto. How's about you?"
"Montreal."
"Ahhh. Your Quebecian, aren't you?"
"My father's from Vancouver, and my mom's from Germany,"
Jane replied, somewhat exhasperated. Standing up, she
stretched out slightly. "I think I will take you up on that."
"On what?"
"Calling my brother, Ron."
"Oh yes," the lady waved goodbye. "You do that now."
* * *
Jane stepped out of the lounge and found her way to the phone
area. Unfortunately, Nynex--recently broken away from the AT&T
monopoly--was installing new lines throughout the hospital's
systems. Pulling on her grey New Yorker overcoat, she stepped
out onto the rainy streets. It was one of those days. The
snow that had recently stopped only two hours
ago--noontime--was beginning to start back up. The visibility
was low and the slush was hard to walk through. It wasn't
something that could remedied by the Burrough Department of
Transportation. Potholes were already a major winter problem,
and she often wondered how the City Council could fail to
appropriate enough money to fill in those death traps. She was
wearing heels, so she'd have to take extra care when crossing
68th Street.
* * *
Craig Parker had been working for most of his life. Hamway
Transports Inc., for sixteen years, sent him across country to
deal with the most difficult stretches of road imaginable. He
was nearing his sixteen hour limit, and he'd pull up to a
garage off the Hudson River Drive for the next turn around. As
he pulled onto 68th street from Second Avenue, he eased on the
brakes and shifted to low-gear, avoiding the incredibly soaked
potholes of the yet-to-be renovated avenues. The eighteen
wheeler then picked up speed and headed west for the Hudson
River Drive.
Taking a bite out of the sandwich he had packed along with
him since Albany, he noticed that the light was shifting
carefully from red to yellow.
* * *
Jane's colors seemed to match perfectly with the color schemes
this grey and drudgy day. The light on the corner of 68th
Street and 2nd Avenue was beginning to change. Already, people
were jumping the WALK/DON'T WALK signs and crossing the wide
avenues, avoiding the sleetly sections of the highways and
trying to beat the traffic. When the light hit yellow, Jane
took the initiative to cross over to the phone booths on the
other side. She wondered if she had given too much information
about herself in the lounge. Jane since was Canadian, as
consequence, many of the rumors of city life were negative.
Particularly American cities.
Dammit, Ron, she snarled to herself. You've got ten
minutes.
* * *
February was a terrible month in New York City for weather,
noted for outstanding incidents of hydroplaning and ice. Craig
Parker slowed down his vehicle as he eased to a halt.
Suddenly, his trailer-wheels found themselves gliding over ice,
and his rig began to skid. Instinctively he brought up the
speed, trying to bring the rig back under control. His
forward wheels subsequently found a patch of water-covered ice,
and hell began to break loose.
* * *
Jane ignored the fury of the car horns as she raced across the
street. Unfortunately, the red high-heels she wore were
inadequate to the slippery surface, and more often than not,
she was struggling to retain balance.
Then she saw it. A red tractor-trailor was skidding
violently down 68th. She hurriedly attempted to get out of the
way, as the blowhorns sounded warning and the driver attempting
to bring his vehicle to a halt. She slipped again, this time,
scrambling onto the ground. Desperately, she scurried towards
the other side of the street. But the truck soon overcame her,
and her last thoughts turned to blackness.
* * *
Craig Parker nearly fainted when he saw faint splotches of
blood fly onto his foward window. The tractor came to a halt
in the center of the intersection, and despite the rumbling and
ricketing of the old rig, he could still almost hear and feel
the sickening crushing of bone. Without hesitation, he jumped
out of the cab and hurried back along his path, desparately
searching for something. Something alive, something to save...
* * *
Ten-year old Roy Fokker, the youngest son of Ron Sr. and
Celeste Fokker, held the hand of Ron Jr. as they stood in the
downpour. In his left hand was a small diecast Transformer
Jetfire, and the rain slicked his blond mane despite the
dark-green umbrella. He watched with utter confusion as his
older brother, Ron stared aimlessly into the street. He had
been an hour later than planned picking Roy up from the
babysitter during his and Jane's visit to his commanding
officer's wife's first child-birth, and would've been only ten
minutes late to the hospital.
Ten minutes... Ron kept muttering as he looked onto the
intersection, the rig, and eventually the New York skyline. He
understood, though it took sometime, as a lone tear flittered
down his rose cheek.
After awhile, Gerald Hayes came out of the hospital, his
joy from the birth of his own Lisa Eleanor Hayes dashed by the
tragedy that had taken place only fifty feet from the hospital
entrance. Taking hold of Ron, weak with grief, the drama
disappated to the unrelenting impassiveness of the urban
jungle...
* * *
Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan March 15, 1979
Rain poured over the dark night of the near-ended winter over
Tokyo. Thunderstorms of mixed ice and rain flailed down on the
towering skyscrapers of Tokyo, untouched yet by the fury of the
Rain of Fire. It would be nearly twenty years before the
amazing techno-wonder of the world fell prey to the the
ruthless barbarianism that would claim billions of lives. It
was a year of change. In the Middle East, rumors of peace
talks between the Zionist state of Israel and one of its mortal
enemies, Egypt, were now spoken with confidence, despite the
Carter Administration's continuing failure to bring the two
negotiating parties together. Anwar Sadat, Egypt's current
president, and his Israeli counterpart, Menachim Begin,
however, seemed to be on the verge of disproving thirty years
of political constancy as solid as the pyramids or the Western
Wall. On the other hand, Iran's dictatorship--a puppet to the
Western world for nearly forty years--had fallen to the hands
of fundamentally driven people, faithful to the ways of their
Qu'ran and now continuing to export their revolution through
any means possible. The Ayatollah Khomeini had become
America's most diffident problem to date, in a time where the
nation was coming to terms with a disturbing episode in
Southeast Asia--only six years ago.
It was this most recent, irksome turn of events that drew
Lieutenent General Raizo Yakazi attention as his personal
limousine navigated the crowded rainy streets of Ginza, passing
by seemingly craven and common looking huts that signified the
extreme low end of the Japanese business empire. Restaurants,
street side markets, and old cafes from the post-Meiji error
had carried over into the modern world. He looked with disgust
as several Yokota-stationed American Marines, half an
Expeditionary Unit's worth, sampled Tokyo's permiscuous
redlight district. His car suddenly came to a halt.
"Turn here," he finally said, repeating the phrase over in
his mind as his driver . The limo slowly pulled into the left
turning lane, heading towards the outskirts of the-
It was then where he saw it. A red car, bright red. An
American Shelby Cobra. The blinding headlights wailed into
Yakazi's eyes as he stared in horror as the sports coup began
to lose its footing on the wet, icy pavement.
A collision was nearly inevitable.
The screeching had begun to rise as the car skidded into
the intersection, winging another vehicle barely and heading
straight for the limo, when it finally happened.
Yakazi could have sworn the the lights grew ten times
brighter as he uttered his final prayers for his spirit's
passage into Kannon's heaven subconsciously. Hypnotized by the
headlights, he simply stared as his doom rushed up on him.
However, his driver managed to shake loose of the
disillusionment, and slammed hard on the gas pedal. The limo
itself screeched into a nearby lightpole at high speed,
crushing the safety zones of the forward cowl. Yakazi howled
as his hand felt as if it were thrown against a wall of
needles, and was subsequently thrown against the front seats
just as his rear-guard airbag deployed. He stayed there for
ten minutes, shocked and unsure. Carefully, he pulled himself
up, surveying the front seat.
The impact had been too fast for the driver, who now lay
dead on the steering wheel, his neck snapped by the sudden
whiplash and his articulate skull crushed on the nearly
metallic steering column. Yakazi stared into the bloodshot
eyes as he saw the frozen winds of fear locked in his driver's
eyes, shut forever by the instancy of his death. The general
immediately felt his stomach lurch as he struggled out of the
car.
The sports coupe, driven by a British diplomat's son, had
been less fortunate. Flames drew like swords of fire from the
charred remains of the peeling paint job. The diplomat would
receive compensation and apologies for his son's death, Yakazi
was sure of that.
And Hirotsugu would remain a faceless stain on the
limousine's dashboard, a faceless stain on Yakazi's personal
honor. One he would dedicate the rest of his life in a pursuit
to remove as a million horrifying images flooded into his mind.
* * *
The Lounge, San Fransisco, September 25, 1998
The Yakazi building, named after Japan's current
commander-in-chief of the Western Army, stretched two-hundred
and eighty stories upward, and occupied the equivalent of five
city blocks. Constructed by Nakoto-Mishima Heavy Industries,
Japan's first heavy-weapon-technology manufacturer, it served
also as an office building to half-a-dozen other
keiretsu-affiliated organizations. Of course, Alltech's
Hijisan-Moyamoto branch presented enough clout to reserved
thirty-five floors. When Nakato began construction in late
1996, all that had been there was a small plot of land that
both General Raizo Yakazi and his American counterpart, the
late General Dwight D. Eisenhower McPhillips--former
CINCFORSCOM and vice-chairman of the Joint Chief's of
Staff--first shook hands as a symbolic agreement back in 1988,
a short time before the Global War erupted. That agreement led
to a resolution that all Pacific-rim military excercises would
be conducted with the participation of both nations' forces.
McPhillips died a year later in a fatal car accident, and
Yakazi spent most of his time patronizing a special
technological institute near Osaka. The diplomatic liaison
officer was privy to that, as was anyone who had the reason to
ask. The Central Intelligence Agency--who often provided the
State Department with tidbits of information that served as
leverage during various negotiations--had never engaged in an
intelligence operation against Japan. A friendly nation in
this day and age, the CIA was non-existent at a time when that
status had been otherwise.
The federal government of the United States of America
oftened shied upon promoting private industry with tax-dollars;
this particularly included purchasing land from private
interests--foreign private interests--for any use. However, it
was accepted that embessies were an exception to this rule, as
they required a purchase of land from the home company and a
fee for maintenence. These were paid by tax-dollars, although
the host country often contributed to the embassy's cause
(afterall, the invitation for the construction of an American
embassy in any country usually meant that country had reason
for America to take interest). Japan immediately recognized a
two-fold benefit from this arrangement. Considering that
Japan's federal government was largely controlled by an
influencial elitist class of industrialists, the zaibatsu, Diet
parlimentarians respresenting Nakato and her keiretsu's
interests discovered that by allotting a portion of the Yakazi
project to serve as a closer-to-home circuit to the Washington
US-Japan Embassy, they could save on both construction expenses
and also exploit the security precautions that would be
provided in the form of Japanese servicemen and US Marines.
Nakato would show her appreciation by not only allotting the
sixty-floors for diplomatic purposes, but also for subsidizing
all advance security technological endevours made by the
American government to further establish a safe haven within
the skyscraper. In tandem with the Japanese security systems,
the Yakazi building was as safe from terrorism and crime as any
small military base could be. Nakato further enticed the
American government by providing enough federal space to host
several embessial extensions at the same time. With still a
lot more space, the federal government began to violate its own
unwritten policy and open extensions and home offices to
various West Coast departments. Even the state government
dipped into the office potential the Yakazi building offered.
The Lounge was actually on the fifth floor, one of five
floors with informal names such as the Lobby, the Boardroom,
and the Security Deck. Considering the Yakazi building and its
surrounding complexes occupied ten-times the square meterage of
both World Trade Center Towers--most of that space with smaller
"towerettes" required by zoning laws--the Lounge itself was
nearly half a kilometer in length and width. Along the edges
of the floor were wall-to-ceiling windows made of transparent
aluminum. With so much extraneous space, the Federal Bureau of
Investigations was able to move their San Fransisco office on
the Lounge floor of the Japanese wonder-structure. Of course,
the Special Agent in Charge, a known Klukker--former Grand
Wizard of a Denver suberb during his assignment to that city's
office--with a severe distaste for anything Asian; as well as
the Nakato Foundation, protested supporting a police force
within the Yakazi building. The former threatened to hold the
government on charges of violating a purported policy of
non-collaboration with foreign businesses; those charges never
found their way to a prosecutor, let alone a courtroom. The
latter, however, attempted to pressure the American government
with threats of eviction. Since the lower sixty-floors were
deemed to by Japanese-United States federal property, the
zaibatsu would have to make use of their government and
American contacts to pull it off. However, Japan's current
Prime Minister, Hicharo Seki, came to power in 1992 at the time
of the dispute. A strong leader, he managed to limit zaibatsu
control over parlimentary issues, and threatened to levy
emergency anti-trust resolutions to further rift the keiretsu
from government precedings. Any other man may have fallen from
power in disgrace, but Seki had served as his nation's
ambassador to America for twenty-eight years; a record
unprecedented in fifty years. The second reason for his
retaining of power was a sweep of Liberal Party representatives
already thirsting for the blood of the zaibatsu. Seki managed
to normalize relations between the two parties, and was often
credited for sparing the Japanese monopolist-economy's life.
The zaibatsu could not so easily topple such a man.
The Lounge was technically an informal meeting
place--hosting parties for various occassions and guests by
various hosts. However, more and more it became an actual
center of diplomatic activity. The lax demeanor of the Lounge
provided for a more comfortable environment. However, the
diplomatic liaison on call today still felt uneasy.
Junior Diplomatic Liaison Remie Farrell wished to heaven
that her partner Anne were here instead of herself. A junior
member of the Department of the State, she was an apprentice
under Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Jill McIntyre, who in
turn learned from ex-Secretary of State Warren Christopher
during the Clinton Administration. The new President had
inherited nearly ninety percent of the State Department, one he
recognized to be far more adept at foreign policy than any
replacement he could think of.
"Ohayo gozaimasu, Nagura-san," Farrell greeted with feigned
cheer. She could have never known that her acquaintence
trained under the Japanese ambassador; Soji Nakamura often
served as a public and internal relations consultant to the
various keiritsu and invidual conglomerations within the
Japanese politico-business structure. She unbuttoned her heavy
overcoat, soaked from the downpour both she and her counterpart
just escaped from. "Hajimete o-me ni kakarimasu."
"Good morning to you as well, Ms. Farrell," the young man
responded in turn, with surprisingly articulate English. Seiji
Nagura was a radically thinking senior partner of the H-M
group, a member of a growing order of businessmen that
furthered to seek the cutting of the American industrial red
tape. At twenty-eight, he was the youngest trustee of OTEC,
called Alltech for phonication. The company recently executed
a merger alliance with American chief stockholders represented
by TXI Encom's Wall street firms. The American technological
corporation, owned solely by multi-billionaire former US
Airforce commander Presley H. Cannady I, was the chief
distrubuter of the Nexus computer; a system which Alltech
produced through its Hijisan-Moyamata branch. His presence
seemed to demand respect, despite the four inch difference in
height--in favor of Farrell. "It is a pleasure to meet you."
They shook hands immediately, exchanging business cards in
the traditional fashion. "We've talked with your Ambassador
last night," He refered to a conversation with the American
Embassy in Tokyo. "He delightfully informed me that you were a
rising star on the diplomatic publicist team. My own publicist
looks forward to working with you."
Unlike her collegue, Anne Therese, Farrell was more cool to
small talk, and engaged in it often. "Yes, I believe that
would be a stimulating experience. So, Mr. Nagura, how may we
help you?"
Nagura smoothed his and took his seat with furtive
silence. "In overview, my corporate division, Hijisan-Moyamata
has been a rather involved with TXI-Encom with the
Alltech-Encom weapons stock merger. Of course, I assume you've
already been briefed on that part. I realize that our country
has been currently in talks with emergency trade reforms with
our government, but the fact is is that both of our are members
of a mutual defense treaty, and yours it currently at war with
a potential threat to our own sovereignty. Therefor, we've
come up with a proposition for your Congress' foreign commerce
committee; hopefully it will be considered seriously."
Seiji smiled subtlely. The fact remained that the Japanese
had been lobbying the House Commerce Commitee--consisting of
R-Arkansas, RF-Dakota, D-New Mexico, and D-Wyoming--for the
past three years, and several economical powerbases had been
established in those states by Mitsubishi, Nakamoto, Seida,
Seiko, Sony, Toshiba, and Honda; very different industries with
very similar goals.
Farrell listened as he explained the overwhelming threat
the Sino-North Korean's first true coalition, the Neo-Asian
Co-Prosperity Sphere Alliance, presented to both JSDF and
American defense forces. The liaison wasn't well versed in
military matters; her partner, Anne, once again superceded her
in that area of expertise. However, the Ambassador had
specifically asked for the Diplomatic attachee unit in this
case, and she was the only one currently available. Of course,
she would handle the matter carefully, bring it up promptly to
Walter Immensinet, the American collegue of often-mobile
Ambassador Nakamura, and allow the scene to take its course.
Whatever course that may be.
* * *
The Pentagon, AJ-6 of the Naval Department
The decorated general passed the guard at attention into
Block-991 without so much as a hesitation in his gaite. As a
supervisor of Top Secret Aviation Projects, he was one of
eighteen people cleared even into the lower block levels.
Shadows cleverly and deceivingly masked the Pentagon's
specialized security scanners and sensor arrays, spread
throughout Alpha Block. The hall ways of Block-991 were on
Level V, one of Washington's new and improved warrooms.
Level VI, one of fifteen "levels" that climaxed at the
fifth rank, was actually on level with Five, the situation
room. A subset of Level V, Six contained most of the computers
that brought information directly to the various screens and
"pretty" displays that cluttered her host. A direct outlet to
Level VII, the power management floor, kept Six up and running
24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Fourteen hundred modems and
communications datalines ran internally through the Pentagon
from Level VI and out to various command posts through
Washington, the United States and the whole world. Alpha Block
of Level VI was a highly secured station of direct-access
terminals; they were primarily used to view incredibly
sensitive material free from standard Level V duty officers and
personnel (if MOST-CONFIDENTIAL-classified personnel could be
considered such).
Major General Tomson, Alfred G., had served in Cambodia in
one of the first Special Operations and Observation Groups
about four months after Nixon had approved of bombing runs
inside that country. He had earned to the rank colonel with
the gruesome, brutal massacre of his unit. An only survivor,
the experience was a scar he never fully recovered from.
Tomson was later promoted to the generalcy, after serving as a
tactical supervisor to the commander-in-chief of the US forces
in charge of evacuating the American military presence from
Vietnam. Tomson finally received a tolerable desk job at the
Pentagon in '85, after nearly twenty years on the active and
semi-active docket. The department he was assigned to turned
out to be the J-2 section before and during Walt Kent's stint
as head. Tomson had managed to forge a working relationship
with the former Vice-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff--General McPhillips, although the Vice would often
comment on the Tomson's personal life as "a few degrees short
of absolute zero." Kent was the connection Tomson had managed
to manipulate to gain clearance to almost all of the United
States Armed Forces' most sensitive intelligence, technology
and information.
The briefcase was not actually his atache case he normally
carried about with him. It was a high-powered Nexus Laptop,
containing a built-in wormer. He passed into the computer
room, dark and foreboding. He ignored turning on the lights,
and sat at the Sysop's terminal. Entering in his palm scan and
personal access code, the computer registered him positive. He
quickly flipped open the briefcase and connected the laptop to
the nearest SCSI port.
All right, the general thought. His face did not change
when the screeching of an active modem emitted from the PC
speaker.
"Damn it," Tomson said. Five minutes had passed, and the
connection finally solidified. After three minutes of
verification and cross verification, they finally determined
that he was who he said he was. "Access file Delta-Q," Tomson
typed in. Delta-Que was Priority Lambda, which required a
complex string of codes from the surrogate computer. He
quickly selected the icon named Stealthentrap. This better
work.
The hard drive whirled, its memory searching through a
million passwords. Got it! he nearly yelled out. The file
pored into the portable wormer of he had jacked into his
laptop. Legally, he was just downloading information he was
cleared for. He justified that the eighteen million in cash
would supplement for the immorality and treachery of the rest
of his task.
* * *
_________
* * *
CHAPTER I- Preamble
As a former member of the United States Navy, it seems like
an age has passed where I now fly with former enemies. As a
member of the Skull Squadron, it is hard to believe that
Chinese, American, Russian, Japanese, Korean, and European
pilots now join in one great force, flying as brothers.
-Captain James Riley's speech at the convening of the first
UN Navy Veritech Squadrons, 2008
* * *
Langley, Virginia
September was a hellish month, and it seemed as if the Blizzard
of '96 would be dwarfed by the artic air expected to roll in by
the end of the year. Already, snow was falling near Montreal
and up in the northern Adirondacks of New York. In Washington,
closer to the temperate zone of the Atlantic ocean, freezing
winds were rising up to frost windows and engines, giving
commuters caught in the gridlock a migraine of engine failures
and giving the antifreeze manufacturers an added bonus. The
cold winds lashed arounded the airbase at the perimeter of
Langley's boundries. A single man stepped out of his small red
Toyota to face the rigid cold of the aboveground outside
*RESERVED* parking-spacesabove the more convenient underground
safehouses. Langley the Building separated the parking lot
from Langley the Airport; an added convenience to those forced
to make the long walk towards the Building with the deafeningly
painful roar of military aircraft landing, approaching, and
taking off.
The privilages of rank.
The man brushed up the thick collar of his London style
overcoat under the watchful gaze of the two Marines guarding
the lobby entrance. The renovated headquarters glistened
despite the torrential rains that swept over Washington this
week. Winter would come earlier than expected this year.
Dr. Shiba Tamano was a sansei--third-generation Japanese
American--with pure ancestry and ascendency to the ancient
Saotomi daimyo near Nerima. His issei (first-genertion)
grandfather and nisei (second-generation) father were both Navy
veterens, serving in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. But
during his grandfather's tour of duty during World War II, his
grandmother and her family were interned in camps, losing both
the dry goods store they had managed for ten years, their home
in Seattle, and their sense of pride. When Grandfather
returned, he stubbornly rebuilt his business, and owned a chain
of Japanese dry goods stores along the Washington Coast.
Tamano was supposed to be reared to take over the chain with
his grandfather's death in '83. However, right after college,
Tamano made it clear to his family he intended to pursue a
federal judgeship. Of course, it never happened.
Probably the reason why is that during his time with the
Department of Justice, he had found himself a much more keen
investigator in computer crime than an interpreter of law. The
FBI requested his services when they began their first intranet
and kept him on until Langley finally took notice. During his
times in the field of crime investigation, he had successfully
record fifteen major computer-crime sprees during the early and
mid-80s, and also had a hand in the downfall of the 414s in
Michigan when time-sharing servers and terminals were the
latest in public computing.
Unlike his grandfather, Tamano never served in the military
himself, but had a civil equivelency rank of Lieutenent Colonel
in the United States Army. He was experienced in Agency
operations, but preferred the lab work over analyzing
intelligence data.
He removed his jacket, and headed for a specially marked
area of the Forward Computer Lab.
* * *
Terabits of information swirled around within the processing
units of the various servers of one of the largest network
installations on the face of the planet. Currently, the person
payed to keep these machines running twenty-four hours a day,
six days a week, was still enjoying the rest of his breakfast
hour. Which left Karen Antoinette Mitchell alone with ten
dedicated Encom series cable modems jetting at three-hundred
megabytes per minute, uncomfortably slow at best. Linked to
the physically distant systems at the newly constructed New
York FBI Station in Rochester, these powerhouses forged a bond
between America's foreign and domestic intelligence assets.
What Assistant Sysop Mikalan, FBI, wanted with the CIA's info
was anyone's guess. Currently, the duty system administrator
was working in-house; Karen enjoyed a fiber-optic direct
connection with the internal network. Her access left very
little of the sensitive material stored inside out of her
reach. The senior system operators Langley's network services
were directly answerable to the Subdirectorate of Data
Processing and Generalization, which was inturn under the
Central Intelligence Technology Directorate
The Power PC--Karen groaned--she was seated before was
currently partitioned to four Quad-Speed Recordable Opticals
that had been prepping ofr the past four hours with a virtual
reality interface. She was currently jacked into the remote
network via a small, crude video-display device strapped over
her eyes. Her hands blindly moved across the keyboard, and
with surprising accuracy began coordinating the system through
which the data she was responsible for would be managed.
Hundreds of documents appeared in iconic format before her
as Dr. Tamano entered the room. Complete with manipulative
graphic links and network biparitioning software, it was well
over five gigabytes of information.
An incredible waste of power and machinery in her opinion.
The "Old Dirty Bastard," the loving nickname of the Cray
Arcturus IICX supercomputer secured in a cold-condition room
just in front of her, separated by an inch of
plexi-tempraglass, was currently operating under Air Force
Timetables. Despite protests filed by her and her immediate
superior, Dr. Azumo Tamano, the Air Force, or more directly her
father, had insisted on the use of Langley's advance facilities
to handle the project, although its security level was quite
low to be using on the Cray-Unix systems emplyed at Langley.
What could've been easily done on any retrofitted VAX design
board was now costing the American taxpayers an accumalated sum
of $43.50 in data management and unnecessary security
precautions. To her even more promt disgust, she had to hook
three of the Hood sequencers in the Mainframe area to interface
the Windows 95 constructed database into a "Goldstar 6.0" UNIX
operating system format, a painful task that had taken four
hours last night.
She had not gotten any sleep, and hardly noticed the sun
rising above the grey skies on this murky Saturday. Angrily,
she finalized the last of the data conversion program and
toggled out back into realspace.
Dr. Karen Mitchell held the civil service equivalent rank
of a full-bird in the United States Air Force, a military
branch she had served as an enlisted technician some ten years
ago. Before her transfer to the Central Intelligence Agencies
National Photographic Analysis team during the Honduras crisis,
she had already become infatuated with the fast, accurate
machines of the late eighties. A design liaison to both
Microsoft and TXI Encom Teleconnection Industries, she was a
member of several military economists assigned to assist in the
production of a Windows NT98 environment for the new network
renovations that went along with the renovations to the complex
of Langley itself. However, Karen was looking with more and
more confidence at TXI Encom's Atlantis Gold 98 operating
system; Windows' chief competitor.
"Working late?" Tamano placed a cup of black coffee next to
his most promising employee. Karen was the only member of his
senior staff with a doctorate degree besides himself, and he
respected the fact that the Director of Central Intelligence
hadn't completely forgetten that properly trained professionals
still served some purposes in a world dominated by
video-gaming, Dorito-chomping computer freaks.
Karen accepted the coffee graciously, sipping off the
natural foam from the top and watching as the the quads
carefully encoded the information for transfer on floptical
copy. "I hope they've arranged that COD. I'll be finished in
five hours."
"And hang around for eight more?"
"I don't do that!"
"Bull. Why don't you want to go home? I can finish up
here."
"I'm sure you could," Karen turned to him, her eyes heavy
with sleep, and some antagonism. Tamano dropped the subject,
"but, Technology and Jenkins wanted a copy of these files on
Shadoworld Level Gamma-Synch pronto. I was on call and
so...here I am. In fact, they came to me personally."
"Really? Well you are a five-star general's daughter."
"What does that have to do with anything?" Karen narrowed
her eyes.
"Nothing. I'll post them up later. Just file a copy into
my mailbox."
"All right," she replied in somewhat exhausted cheeriness.
"By the way, Daddy says 'this is going to end all the craziness
in this world.' You buy that?"
"Yeah, right," Tamano snorted.
A few hours later, Karen was still emersed in her work. The
system she was accessing via the Old Dirty Bastard was a Cray
IIxn supercomputer much like the one before here, linked
through gigabits of RAM and ROM to only two Stratus sequencers
and data managers, it all was linked to her Macintosh Power
PC. The 5 gigabyte harddrive and 90mhz Motorola 76088 chip was
sufficient enough to hold the information she was downloaded.
However, the Navy and Airforce speciffically asked four five
CD's specially formatted to run both OS/2 Warp 3.3 and SunOS3
UNIX Operating Systems. The TCP/IP language interface that the
system used interfaced with a vamped up version of UNIX, now
windowed and user friendly much like SunOS3 or Goldstar. It
was excellent for controlling the various network links and
maintain a stable connection to where she was going. But
something really pissed her off.
The Department of the Navy had procured her time-use of
Langley's systems instead of Annapolis' computer center. Using
a hundred terabytes to get three gigs of information was not
only illogical, but a waste of electrical energy. Already, the
Cray had charged up at least a hundred dollars in three hours
on their electrical bill. Since this was coming out of the
taxpayer's pockets, she wasn't even excluded in her yearly
statement for this shit. Anyway, plugged directly into the
Power PC was an eight-disc quad-speed CD changer. NEC's Quad
speed allowed for easy link up to the Macintosh, which inturn
quickly translated and reformatted the UNIX language
information flooding in. The three Stratuses and the Cray
hummed outloud, almost never skipping against the gently whine
of five Encom ISDN lines forging their direct connections.
She nearly jumped when Dr. Shiba Tamano tapped her shoulder
gently.
"Sorry," he smiled, sitting to USAF mugs filled with coffee
on the desktop. "I figured you liked yours-"
"Yes," she finished for him. Wearily, she took the
coffee. It was 3 A.M. By now, it was late morning over in the
Persian Gulf. She'd have to hurry.
"You really shouldn't tackle both shifts," Shiba pointed
out. Karen Mitchell was not known for abiding by the eight
hour workday. Single and childless, she took the freedom of
being able to work in an environment for twenty to forty-eight
hours, non-stop. She sometimes took a rest in her office when
work was slow. But tonight, she had already put in seventeen
hours.
"I can use the hours, and I've got nothing better to do
anyway," she smiled sarcastically. On her desk were to tickets
to tickets to the Knicks game, which finished up several hours
earlier.
"Okay, its your head," Tamano quipped.
"Don't worry," Karen thought back to the four-day-straight
she pulled off last month for a measily $2.85 extra an hour.
"Almost finished here."
"You want to know the score?" Tamano recalled Karen
grumbling earlier about the game.
"No thank you, spoilsport. I'm taping it for when I get
home."
"You'll be disappointed."
"Nice try," Karen half-smiled. "There."
A Goldstar window appeared, asking her to confirm the
operation. Clicking OK, she watched as the massive Cray
super-computer started its characteristic rumbling hum. As the
compact discs whirled in their slots, Karen found herself
tapping into what her profession called the "Shadowrealm."
Back in the late '60's, the United States Defense
Department and several Polytechnic and Technic Institutes
engaged in an experience linking computers over the lines of
many By the early 1970's, this primitive timeshare system
evolved into the ARPANET. Originall implemented to support
military research about building networks, it quickly expanded
as the design of the network improved.
The network design approach assumed that the network itself
was unreliable. The orignal ARPAnet called for the direct
connection of two computers, allowing a failing segment to be
rerouted into an alternative approach. Then, in the early
1980's, Ethernet-based local area networks were developed.
Most workstations that made up a local area network (LAN) ran a
UNIX operating system. This became standard, due to its
internal networking features. Since all networks communicated
on IP (Internet Protocol) level, users could link networks.
Eventually, ARPAnet was abandon, due to a combination of
factors. The National Science Foundation created five
supercomputer centers before its abandonment, making the
ARPAnet the fastest electronic resource system available. With
the fall of ARPAnet, the base design of the network, and the
systems themselves, were incorporated into NSFNET, created by a
rather interested National Science Foundation. NSFNET had
connections running on specially conditioned phonelines,
allowing speeds up to 56,000 bits per second. These lines were
expensive however, and as technology increased, the NSF decided
to create regional networks, allowing sties to connect to their
nearest neighbor, in a daisy-chain pattern. Each daisy chain
connected to one of the region's cupercomputer centers, and the
centers themselves were linked together. This strategy allowed
any computer to communicate with any other computer by passing
messages up and down the daisy chain. The daisy chain was
succesful, but its limits included availablity and user space.
Researchers quickly overloaded the systems. In 1987, Merit
Network, Inc., was contracted to maintain and upgrade the
systems. In junction with IBM and MCI, Michigan's educational
network was the first to be upgraded. The original NSF lines
were replaced by ones many times faster, and quicker systems
were installed. The network was subsequently opened to most
academic researchers, government employees and contractors,
international research organizations, and in the early 1990's,
commercial sites began to pop up. By 1992, these commercial
sites connected the private user to the Internet, and
international access is now well known. The connections
improved in the seven years of the 1990 decade. The seemingly
amicable connection of nodes and information seemed to be the
meeting place of the future.
But now, the Internet, or the parts that really matter,
were waging a secret war. Agents of each side were finding it
even more simple to break in the unsuspecting cyberspace of
top-secret networks, opening a vast wealth of valuable
information, information that could change the tides of war.
No network was completely protected, or hidden from view. But
deep beyond the imaginations of any hacker or believer in
super-phenomenal events was a region known as Shadowrealm. It
was here that many hackers turned away from, or wasted their
time trying to enter. It was a specially formatted area that
allowed its user to explore every corner of the Net, open or
locked, at will.
Tonight, Karen and Dr. Tamano were interested in the
specific cyber-"regions" of these locked areas. The Defense
Department did not wholly evacuate the Internet. A wealth of
defense secrets lay hidden beyond the reach of saboteurs and
espionage agents. And during this time of war, it was
especially protected. Something that would answer the
questions of many of today's futurists and believers in UFO's.
A secret so confidential, it would become deadly.
"We're in," she smiled, folding her arms. "The 'Dirty
Bastard's" up for grabs." What she was referring to was the
Cray computer, which had scrawled on it the words "Dirty
Bastard," and which the scientists their so lovingly called
it. It calibrated the CD-ROM chambers perfectly, and the
information was immediately downloaded.
"It should take at least a half-hour," she pointed out.
Fifty-seven gigabytes of information onto five compressed CD's
was worth the wait. "Then its the Navy's problem."
"What is it?"
"Can't say, but I think Pete could clear you. Its your
machine afterall."
"No it isn't," Tamano retorted defensively.
"The way you go on about it, you'd think it was."
"Very funny, Karen. But since I'm a nice guy, I'll let you
on a little secret," he put down a video tape next to her.
"Might as well sleep in the lounge for a few hours
afterwards."
She picked it up, reading the label. August 31,
Knicks-Sonics "You can be a real sweet-heart sometimes, you
know that?"
"I know. Goodnight, and don't stay up to late," Tamano
said, turning for the door.
It was actually several minutes faster, much to Karen's
surprise. The Old Dirty Bastard had finally decided to shift
her projects to high-priority, which puzzled Tamano. It was
routine, the AI program deciding which projects it ran were
most important and categorizing and classifying them by
priority. The other reason was generally not even considered.
The computer immediately transferred its data via an
expensive direct-link to Houston. INTELSATCOM had been
informed of the data transfer and had transfered COMINT
sigint/comint satellites to reconfigure for dump overload. The
target for reception had been intended only for a small
aircraft carrier group residing four hundred miles off the
coast of the Arabian peninsula.
However, a small defunct, an error in programming and
transfer, a virus, or whatever had gotten into INTELSATCOM's
databanks, had subsequently allowed another advid listener
access.
* * *
Finnigan, North Carolina
Finnigan was not an old town, just like both Carolina states
were the two of the youngest colonies that later formed (and
temporarily fractured) the Union. Just under two-hundred years
of history kept the town to its traditional roots. Every
Fourth of July there was a festival that went down the Main
Street, clear of cars and buses as it had been at the
mid-century mark. Every Christmas the Southern Baptist and
First Presbyterian congregations would shed their traditional
enmities for each other's doctrine and put on one of the
grandest Christmas pageants in the whole county. Children
still played in the lawns, and outside the town, large fields
of cotton and tobacco--the latter crop thanks to Finnigan's
close proximity to Virginia--surrounded Interstate 77, part of
what was sometimes refered to as the "Long Road" to those who
stopped over to Roanoke, Virginia for the night. Interstate 77
connected up in Virginia with 81, which inturn connected with
84 in Pennsylvania, heading up into New York. Fortunately, it
was largely used by vacationers heading back home for the
summer to their original Southern roots; pure Yankees stuck to
the faster I-95 in a race for Florida, sun, beaches, and of
course, Disney World. That's not to say Finnigan didn't
attract many tourists. Many vacationers passing through from
Richmond stopped by to hear the town's tale of its own little
role in three American continential wars. The area had played
hosts to Stonewall Jackson and Picket's brigades, waiting to
join General Lee to march to Richmond and began the bloody
campaign into the North during the Civil War. It had been a
minor battlefield (when the town was first starting up) during
both battles in the Charlotte region--for the course of the
Revolutionary War and the War of 1812.
Finally, Finnigan would yield its most desirable trait as a
queer irony. Finnigan, despite all its down-home rhetoric and
appearance, was the most "wired" town of its size in the
South. Every member of the population of
two-thousand-four-hundred-eighty-three had access to a
computer, either at the schools or at home (and statistics
showed that 70% of Finnigan's families and single-residents
owned a computer with Internet access). The first Internet
Service Provider, a small-town company called New Traditions,
rubbed noses with the larger names that flooded into the
publicity market Finnigan demonstrated potential in. Oracle,
IBM, and Digital (before its demise in '93), had set up shop
just outside of Finnigan, on the old farm that once belonged to
the Irish immigrant who founded the town. With the war
continuing into its second year of devoted US involvement,
there were rumors about defense contractors building an
airfield no more than twenty miles from the town's core. There
were worries that the homely experience that Finnigan provided
would be diminished, but they were simply dismissed as baseless
doubts. Finnigan had modernized in too many ways too concern
itself about losing its values. Afterall, they retained the
one value that they claimed gave them far more redeeming
qualities than their city-slicker counterparts.
Finnigan was an all-Caucasian town, and its populace
intended it to stay that way.
The one of the first Klu Klux Klan pages on the World Wide
Web had been set up here with the blessing of a new local ISP
provider, Lynch Business and Leisure Electronics, whose
director and founder was once the Grand Wizard of the county
chapter. The ironic name that was featured in the company logo
was a source of the queer humor the town of rednecks enjoyed.
Finnigan, started by Scotch-Irish immigrants, had steadily
become the home of less Celtic and more Anglo-Saxon and
Germanic peoples. The first Jewish family to settle in the
town, just after the Reconstruction Act was lifted by Ruthford
B. Hayes, was chased out by white-clothed ghosts on horse-back;
the first Klukkers. There were never any Blacks in the town to
begin with, as the plantation concept never fully reached Old
Man Finnigan's liking. A few Blacks would sometimes pass
through the town, some had even stopped for a night, on their
way to meet family in the South or vacation like so many
others. Naturally, they were ignored most of the time, and
couldn't even get decent service in many of the institutions.
Prior to the 1970s, this could be expected by most southward
bound Blacks. However, it surprised a few (and mostly angered
the others) that segregation had remained the de facto
situation in this no-longer-remote area. On three occassions,
the county sheriff turned a blind eye to actual violent
incursions; one which resulted in a brutal murder.
Manipulation, of course, was the then-sheriff's forte, and
before losing his bid for a second term, he made sure that
those involved were acquitted and that the media didn't get
whiff of the incident. The closest it got to breaking
headlines was a police blotter report and a regional paragraph
in the local newspapers. Needless to say, in the local area,
no one cared.
The district of five-hundred plus kids, grades kindergarten
through 12th, managed to remain segregated, as there were no
racial minorities to "gum up the works." When the town began
to invite computer companies to setup shop within the town,
they made sure that the representatives sent were to their
liking. The companies and corporations, seeing the gold-mine
in wiring an entire rural area, turned a blind eye to the
racism and made sure only to send white representatives to work
with the local council.
The sun was just creeping over the horizon when a '94
Cutlass pulled off the empty street (probably the most modern
vehicle within a hundred miles, its driver and passenger
simultaneously thought to themselves).
"Makes me sick," Gary Coles could have been mistaken for a
pure Italian, his mulatto skin texture and nose attributed to
the strong and dominant genes of his Sicilian father. However,
that father had died when he was very young, leaving him with
his Black unwed mother and her maiden name. Italians weren't
welcome that much in the area, but they were more so than
Blacks. "How the hell did these guys find their way out of the
primordial ooze."
"I guess they learned you could do someone elses sister
instead of your own," his partner, Ibrahaim Mohammed Fasar was
not of Middle Eastern descent, but a subscriber to the
philosophies of the Nation of Islam. Unlike Gary Coles, Fasar
had a hatred for people such as Finnigan's population far
deeper than simple bitter contempt; one which ironically
mirrored the groundless hatred this community held for his
people.
Both were representatives for AT&T's communication
technologies division, which had grown over the years to become
the largest corporate ISP in North America. Coles was at least
twenty-years older than Fasar, and had worked personally on the
development for the UNIX SunOS3 and Goldstar flavors since the
early 1990s. His doctorate over Fasar's masters degree granted
him additional seniority.
"Let's not try to get on the natives bedside, kid. We're
in-country, y'know. Let's go."
The county clerk's office was fairly empty, save for a
small office that housed the clerk's own private system. When
Coles and Fasar walked in, they were rewarded with a filthy,
short man as well-groomed as a stray dog. He greeted them with
a discernably hostile glare, but clearly recognized he'd have
to deal with them for the time.
"I thought AT&T would be sending her senior--"
Coles cut him off, "Good morning, sir. I'm Gary Coles,
senior technology director at the Charlotte-Richmond Office.
This is my project manager, Ibrahaim Fasar. We are the two you
were expecting."
"I guess you are," the clerk said in a way that could not
be clearly interpreted as either condescending nor benign. You
bastards are somewhat smarter than I thought, Coles thought.
"Have you had time to see the town yet?"
"I'm afraid we won't be around long enough to do so, sir,"
Coles remembered from his homework. The clerk was the new head
Klukker--the Grand Kleagle or Klam or whatever they called
themselves. He could sense Fasar's patience already being
tried. At Coles confession, the clerk's smile broadened. Not
one Black, Asian, Hispanic, Jew, Muslim, nothing, he remembered
from his brief. Nothing but good, hometown white Protestant
folk. The home office should have never picked this town.
"Getting to business, I hope I can convince the council to
pass this deal quickly enough. ComTel and MCI have both put up
bids to test this site."
"I'm sure they have, but you've reviewed them, right?"
"I have, and I believe your offer is far more lucerative."
The cable modem concept was still catching on in the cable
television industry; fiber-optics would link television and the
Internet America-wide in the future, as it had up North.
Finnigan would prove to be the first Southern rural area to
accept it as mainstream. While MCI and ComTel could only
provide slower IDN lines, AT&T wanted approval to forward her
purchase of the two Cablevision corporations that serviced four
counties and eighteen major towns. With that, they would link
all services into a single phoneline--Cable, Internet, and
telephone services. With the deal came a completely serviced
Utopia server with free maintenence; AT&T would be setting up
shop as the first real industry WITHIN the town's central
limits. Of course, that would be decided ultimately by the
town council in the Ruthford B. Hayes Meeting Hall embedded
between the town hall and the mayor's manse.
"I'm glad you agree. We have every confidence that you'll
pull through, my friend," Fasar added to the end, drawing out a
slight, yet discernable, furrow in the large dome of the aging
clerk's forehead.
A few hours later, five Caucasian representatives entered
the town with the documented proposals; all were triplicated
and copied for public distributions, free of charge. The clerk
felt somewhat easier when he could see their faces instead of
Fasar's and Coles at the seven-thirty PM town council session.
It took three days of debate before Finnigan decided to go with
AT&T; the protests of a third-party candidate running for
county sheriff were drowned with the current's brag of his
rural town's development without the plague of Northland
liberalism that had destroyed the South in the recent
unpleasentness.
Within a few days, surveyors--at least half would be black,
from the briefs sent to the town board by the
Charlotte-Richmond office--would be in, submitting zoning board
disposals and reassuring the current sheriff and the Finnigan
people that the plan was in their best interest. Hopefully,
within a month or two, the AT&T server housing would be
constructed; and these monkey-suited niggers will clear out for
good.
* * *