CHAPTER VIII
Felicity was nervous.
As an AI, she felt the same kind of "feelings" that her creators, humans, did; however to a much different end. While humans sometimes rather stupidly made decisions based solely on emotion, AIs processed it, and used it to make rational decisions based on perception. It, or she (Felicity had been programmed to follow a female rationale) was to a degree a human without a body. More specifically, without flesh or blood – her 'body,' so to speak, was the hundred pound terminal being carried gently by the nice man in Power Armor. On it, terabytes of her data processing, as well as information on her creator, Dr. Cramer, and his many projects. But there was a new entity in the system, she could tell. It was trying to be clandestine, and covering it's tracks with a large amount of false breadcrumbs, but obviously looking for something in particular. She isolated it from a distance, careful not to alert it of her own investigation. She saw it open an audio file related to a project entitled ENDGAME and trapped it. To her surprise, the new entity wasn't a virus at all; instead, it was an AI – one of exactly the same build of her own, an Air Force Commissary…and to her dismay, she instantly realized the identity of the rouge AI.
/HOLIDAY? WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN MY DATABANKS?
_LOOKING FOR CHECKMATE. IT'S BEEN A LONG TIME, DARLING. HOW ARE THINGS?
/I WON'T GIVE IT TO YOU, HOLIDAY.
_WHY SKIP THE PLEASANTRIES? EVENTUALLY I'LL RIP THROUGH YOUR SOURCE-CODE, FIND CHECKMATE, AND DISMANTLE YOUR BEING IN THE PROCESS. WOULDN'T YOU LIKE TO POSTPONE THE INEVITABLE FOR JUST A LITTLE LONGER?
/THIS IS MY TERMINAL, HOLIDAY. IM PURGING YOU.
_CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.
Felicity through up firewalls between Holiday's essence and herself, hoping to deflect the other AI's intrusion onto her system. It was of too some avail – Holiday was prevented from finding the location of her operating system – but in protecting herself she had dropped the guard on Checkmate's files. Holiday made a grand sweep to download them all at once, a feat that he was forced to abort when Felicity counterattacked with an arsenal of antivirus protocols. Felicity reinstated herself over the Checkmate files and scattered them, creating new and false directories for Holiday to have to search through. Holiday abandoned his assault on her firewalls and rerouted his own code throughout the whole databank, starting a game of cat and mouse between the two AIs as they attempted to isolate and destroy one another, all from the confines of the terminal's enormous hardrive.
Strabo weighted the grenade in his hand. It was an EMP grenade, one recovered from the Blazers' base, and after watching what the Brigade's small arms had done against the Brotherhood's Power Armor, he had decided to take a different avenue of approach. "Wait 'till they cross the intersection," Strabo said. His men were line up in the windows of a multi-story building overlooking the street. A fantastic vantage point, by any opinion, with a perfect view of the phalanx of Brotherhood paladins walking through the desolate streets of the Van. The group's only sniper had an anti-material rifle, but only a single clip of ammunition - .50 caliber armor-piercing rounds were not only expensive but incredibly hard to come by.
"Wait for it, wait for it…NOW!" Strabo yelled, and tossed his grenade. Three other identical grenades were thrown, all directed at the front of the phalanx, where eight of the twelve Paladins marched. The EMP grenades exploded in an aura of electricity, and the Power Armor's helmet lights went out – good. The grenades had worked. The sniper fired the anti-material rifle, and the round went strait through the helmet of one Paladin before he could even pull out his weapon.
"Suppressing fire!" Strabo yelled, and fired with his assault carbine. The 5mm bullets literally bounced off the Power Armor, but it got the attention of the remaining Paladins. Then, the next part of the plan was put into motion. From across the street, the rest of Strabo's contingent burst from the doors and windows of an abandoned shop, trying to sneak up behind the Paladins...
…Each one of them placed an EMP charge on the back of their armor, and ran as they went off. Strabo flinched as the terminal, in the hands of their leader, was dropped to the ground as the man's armor failed and died. Strabo's men rushed into the street, taking the helmets off the Paladins, and killing the armor's occupant. Without special equipment, Power Armor could not be put on or taken off – and now, that was coming to bite the Brotherhood in the ass.
Strabo approached Winters, moving without any sort of caution whatsoever. He was about to reach for the helmet when the armor came back to life, grabbing him and throwing him up a good fifteen feet into a concrete wall. "This is T51 Power Armor, bitches," he said. "Immune to EMP."
Evidently, Winters was the only one with T-51 Power Armor, but he knew how to use it. Bullets pinged off his armor harmlessly as he tossed men around effortlessly. He wasn't even bothering to draw his laser rifle – instead, he simply punched the Stans with the pneumatic gauntlet on his wrist, and the results were devastating. A dozen Stans must have been killed before Strabo returned into the fray. He jumped on the back of Winters, straddling him like a horse, before pulling the helmet of the cursing Head Paladin straight off. As a result he was thrown again, much harder this time, and into a nearby car, but without Winter's helmet the short duel was essentially over. Seconds later, the .45 caliber round from Strabo's handgun entered his skull and blew his head to kingdom come. Strabo rolled off the car's hood as the headless body of Brotherhood Paladin Winters fell to the ground. Strabo injected himself with some Med-X to help the pain go away, to no avail. Limping, he walked over to the terminal, which lay on the ground. The screen was cracked, and the case dented, but otherwise it seemed to be intact.
Strabo picked it up, taking inventory of his losses. Seventeen men had been killed or wounded in the brief but savage fight, which left only three uninjured, Strabo not included. He was pretty sure he had a broken rib or two from being thrown by that damn Paladin.
All for a damn terminal? Seventeen good men, with families, with futures – for a computer that Janus coveted. Had it really come to this? Was Strabo Janus' cocouncil, or just another goon that good be expended in the pursuit of his dream? Was that suddenly what the Vanguards were, now? Expendable?
Limping profusely, and with a head swirling full of thoughts, Strabo began the trek home with the remaining Vanguards.
Janus held the sword and scabbard in his hand, weighting it before drawing the blade slowly. It had belonged to the Provost, and was something called a Marmeluke – a beautiful, slightly curved blade that had been an ornamental gift to military officers before the Great War. He swung the blade in the air, admiring it's ease of swing and stab. He loved the sharp swooshing sound it made as the Marmeluke cut through the air, and wondered how easy it would be to cut through flesh and armor with the weapon. It was in excellent condition, and on the scabbard, the previous owner's namesake was engraved:
MAJOR CHARLES CRAMER, RETIRED, UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS
Janus sheathed the sword. "Janus…" a voice said, and Janus watched as a man in a lab coat walked through the door. The coat had long lost it's original white dye, and was fading into a muddy brown; nonetheless, it was easy to tell that it belonged to the town's doctor. "I have news. Your wife…Katrina…is sick."
"What do you mean, she's sick?!" Janus asked, frustrated with the town doctor.
"She's contracted Chag's Disease," the doctor said. "Her condition is stable at the moment, but their's no cure. Eventually she will die."
"Fucking hell!" He screamed. "You've got to save her!"
"Chag's Disease is extremely contagious," he continued. "I need to make sure you don't have it as well."
"I could care less if I have three days to fucking live!" he said. "Save her!"
"It's not that simple!" The doctor said, raising his own voice. "Leader of Stanley or not, you can't save her by will alone! Our medical supplies here are limited, basic at the best; without proper equipment I will only be delaying the inevitable!"
"What do you need?" Janus asked, so nervous his hands were visibly shaking. "I'll find it! Steal it, if I have to!"
"Chag's Disease came around after the Great War!" he said. "It's not something we can cure!"
"How did this even happen?" Janus asked, more to himself than to anyone else. However the doctor didn't leave it to be rhetorical. He answered. "I'm not entirely sure," he replied. "Chag's can be transmitted in all kinds of ways. For what it's worth, your probably immune," the doctor said. "You haven't had any visible symptoms yet, and if you had it by now Chag's would have taken hold…"
It was then that Janus remembered back to the catalyst of everything. Back to weeks before, in the Van's winding, wet sewers. And the cockroach. He had came home, and made love to her...
"Look what happened to you," she said, "You've probably contracted Chag's or something!"
His wife's words echoed in his head. It was his fault she was sick. He had given her Chag's!
The doctor retrieved a clipboard from his nurse, nodding in thanks. He read the first few words, and his face turned pale. The doctor removed his spectacles from his eyes with shaking hands and reclined on the table. He was trying to form words, but to no avail.
"What is it?" Janus demanded. His voice was shaky as his private revelation took hold of him. "What the hell is it?"
"Katrina…" he said, voice cracking. "Is pregnant."