Four installments left in Book 1. The final day begins. The final reckoning is at hand — at least for CPMC, the people of Cascadia, and the two beautiful rebels whose passion for each other set the whole thing in motion...
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Chaos Angel Spanner — Chapter 23: Black Panic in the Suites
Part 3: No Time This Time
4 november 2014.
General strike, day five. Election Day. The beginning of the end — or just the end of the beginning?
[A grinning man in a business suit gleefully whips a bound, naked, and scarred black slave who screams each time the whip hits his bloody back. The soundtrack: the ominous Jaws theme.]
Spanner:
My fellow citizens. You may be wondering what the “real” Americans, your leaders, have in store for you. It is, of course, this. It is what makes them leaders. They alone are permitted to exercise will, which is theirs alone by divine right. We, the people, are their niggers. Our duty as the non-chosen is to obey the chosen in abject fear. Look well, citizens, at the true face of leadership. It is what you are up against.
[The grinning business-suited man stabs the camera repeatedly and viciously with a large knife, to the screeching violins from Psycho. The camera bleeds.]
It is a matter of survival. We the people have proven ourselves bad niggers indeed. This is how they intend to punish us. It is not enough for you to cast your votes today. You must take away theirs. For they vote, not with ballots, but only with bullets. Their bullets are aimed at you. This is your first chance. Don’t let it be your last.
dreamspace. Dr Henry Becket faces down a chaos with angel wings. “You cannot prevail against the power of God, Good, and authority, Spanner. It is not possible.”
“Your precious Order cannot stand against the Law of Entropy, no matter how Good it is absolutely,” Spanner replies in a chorus of female voices. “The ramparts of your castle are falling without need for enemy cannon.”
“The eternal Order of Heaven stands forever against the ravages of the fallen world of matter.”
“Matter is not spirit, Doctor. Your error is to force eternal order on a world where things fall apart. See? The center no longer holds, the center of the race of man.” Spanner points toward a giant sphinx, walking through the burning valley below, destroying all it touches, firing death-ray beams at all that moves. Its movements become stiffer, its stony frame more unstable, until it starts to fall apart. Above, to Dr Becket’s horror, the citadel on the mountain above begins to fall in on itself...
Shira’s apartment. In the bedroom, Shira and Leila strive to become one in a hurry. Driven by pure adrenaline, they race through foreplay with extra fury, suck each other’s breasts at the same time, then their cunts; Shira gets on Leila, presses their cunts together, presses both their G-spots, they rub their clits together and their cunts turn to fire and they bodies to light and they finally merge...
In the bathroom, they share one last languid bubble bath before the battle. “What happens if we lose?” asks Leila.
“We fight on. Either we win, or they destroy us. Either way, we fight, or we die.”
“As long as we’re together, I don’t care.”
“A few more years of this, even I’ll probably get tired of this. There’s a reason why the bad guys prefer to have others fight their wars. Ollie found that out the hard way.”
Leila sighs. “Let’s concentrate on immediate things now.” She resumes running her hands all over Shira’s body, Shira does the same to her, and soon they are kissing. They are interrupted by a clipped scream. They turn to see Moon Roach.
“Am I interrupting you guys?” asks Moon.
They smile at her. “No.”
She starts taking her clothes off. “You don’t mind?”
“Of course not,” says Leila.
“Go ahead,” says Shira.
Moon strips naked and gets into the shower. Not athletic, but still attractive. Moon starts the water; Shira and Leila smile at each other, then resume kissing.
In the study, eight hackers man the machines at election central: Jennifer, Steve, and Ken; Evil the Cat, El Kabong, and the Cockroach Twins. Jennifer acts as team spokesperson. Hope asks, “Systems ready?”
“Voting system operational, firewalls running, spam vote blockers running, all defenses up. So far as we know, everything’s A-OK.”
“Everybody get the word out?”
“It’s spreading as far as it can go. We expect the bad guys to try to DDoS us, but we’re ready for that.”
“You think the system can hold up?”
“This one works better with heavy volumes. That it?”
“That’s it. All we can do now is wait on the starting gun.”
CPMC boardroom. The Fearsome Foursome and friends assemble before the big screen. “This is the second time this Spanner has decided to attack us directly,” says Chairman Becket. “We must stop him before he causes any real damage. I want him dead.”
Litton says, “Spanner is a very clever man. We need to match him with a very clever plan.”
“And what do you have in mind, Mr Litton?”
He sends his plan via text message that unpacks in a window on the Chairman’s monitor. He reads it. He tilts his head. “Hmm. Very clever indeed. Do your CPMC colleagues know about it?”
“We discussed it in detail, Mr Chairman.”
“I’m afraid it will take more than that to take him down. Still, we need every advantage we can get. Do it.”
Yoyodyne Seattle. The Empire’s largest defense contractor ramps up the assembly lines of its factories in Bangor to maximum. Its robots work overtime with a precision and endurance impossible to mere humans. Right now they are assembling an order of combat-grade sound cannons intended for crowd control. Governor Brinkman intends to keep Tuesday’s plebiscite from turning into a real election.
They mount the sound blasters onto military helicopters. When each copter’s cannon is installed, the copter is refuelled and sent to the launch pad for immediate takeoff. They fly to every corner of northern Cascadia. Other Yoyodyne and Dictel factories do the same thing, throughout the state and the increasingly unstable border areas. The pilots and operators do not know that the pirate broadcasters and their sound cancellers already await them.
Thorwald property. The owner is dead. The woman his father arranged with the Governor to marry has relieved him of his head. No one lives on the property anymore. The surviving Skeever Brothers declare it ownerless and decide to squat. The Spics who had been squatting, who decided to have their Aztec sacrifices of dogs and men there, became their own sacrifice. The dogfighting arena became their funeral pyre.
Jordie drives them back to the property. The rest are armed with AKs. Eddie rides shotgun. Tony and Beck guard from the back seat. “This oughta be easy,” says Tony.
“You never know,” says Beck.
“What you sayin’, Beck?” snarls Eddie. “You wussin’ out on us again?”
“Y’all never met an angel of chaos. I just don’t trust fate anymore.”
Jordie grumbles, “Suit yourself, kid.”
They turn up the pitted driveway. They pass the open gate. They reach the dark and empty warehouse. They get out of the car, carefully check the area for threats, agree that the coast is clear, then shut the car doors and head for the building.
Suddenly the warehouse lights turn on and blind them. The alarm sirens scream for the first time since the warehouse was abandoned; the brothers cover their ears. “What the fuck’s goin’ on?” cries Eddie.
“It’s
her!” shrieks Beck. “The angel of chaos!”
“Why didn’t you tell me”
“I
did!”
Jordie roars, “I bet she brought her team!”
The Shelley twins burst out bearing earmuffs and strange guns. The Skeevers aim their rifles at them. Rob and Leila answer with twin beams of concentrated sound, making them cover their ears, drop to the ground, and scream in pain. The car’s windows shatter. The twins hold the sound blasters on them so they can have the pleasure of making the gangster brothers squirm and writhe on the muddy pavement. As soon as they stop, Shira flies out a second story window on her new custom hoverboard. She flies above them and drops a rain of M-80s that go off around them.
Eddie, Tony, and Jordie Skeever flee to their car and drive off, leaving their little brother behind. Shira lands next to him; Leila and Rob join her on foot. Beck whimpers, “Don’t hurt me. Please...”
Shira reaches down to offer an open hand. Beck stares at her for several seconds and blinks. He looks around and sees no sign of the brothers who abandoned him here. He sighs, then reaches up to take Shira’s hand. She pulls him to his feet.
Dictel Criminal Detention Center Bangor. Four heavily armed guards escort one heavily chained Islamist hardman to the prison telephone bank. The moment they get there, one phone rings. The attending guard picks it up. “Hello? Yes, sir.”
“Who is it?” growls Ali Muhammad.
The guard holds the receiver toward the Jamaican. “It’s for you.” Muhammad does not reply. The guard puts it to his ear and mouth.
The voice of R.G. Litton says, “
Salaam alaykum, shahid.”
“What you want,
kafir?”
“As you know, today is Election Day.”
“Dey blaspheme Allah an’ His Chosen! You no elect Allah’s Chosen!”
“Precisely, Mr Muhammad. The liberal blasphemers are out of control, so the Good Lord Allah, blessed be he, hath laid a duty upon you and your men to put a stop to this horror.”
“You no fool me, Rat Bastard.”
“Are you a
man, Ali Muhammad? If you are a man, you will put an end to this effeminacy once and for all!”
“I be
man! I go’
keell faggotdem!”
“Good. We have restored your safe houses and given Dictel Corrections management the order to release you and your men at once. You will strike without mercy. Then you shall rule.”
Al-Qaeda in America’s Cascadia branch are assembled at the prison gate. They are former Klan, Zeta, Red Triad, Black Mafia: all converts, not one Caliphate native among them. Once outside, Ali Muhammad rallies his troops. “De infidel dey have election!” The hardmen boo, roar, hiss their hatred. “We smash! We destroy infidel! We conquer fo’ de Holy Prophet Osama bin Laden!” They approve with a deafening roar.
Back inside, the guard at the phone bank makes a call of his own.
Shira’s apartment. Shira’s phone rings. Deth Pussy. “Yo, Deth!”
“Wussup babe!”
“Got me a scoop?”
“You’re in luck! We got ourselves a man inside the Cage, and he says the Wogs there just got officially sprung!”
Shira frowns. “You don’t say. Anything to do with the election?”
“They got orders to smash it. Our man says the orders came from one Rat Bastard.”
Shira’s frown morphs into a wicked grin. “Well, well, well. I think I’ll go tell a few friends. If you know what I mean by friends.”
Thorwald property. The escaped Caliphate terror agents assemble at the dead serial killer’s abandoned headquarters. They have no need for the destroyed dogfighting arena (they can always build their own). Dictel helicopters sent by Litton drop the weapons he promised them. When the crates land, the terrorists open them with the supplied crowbars, open the boxes, and take the weapons and ammo, bootlegged from China. Being the savages they are, they celebrate by firing their guns at the sky.
They find themselves being shot at by punked-out Mexicans on motorcycles. Los Punkz have returned for revenge. Al-Qaeda in America answer rage with rage. The Spics and the Wogs go to war, each war tribe hellbent on annihilating the other. Soon COPCO Seattle is forced to redirect precious strike forces away from the strike to suppress this gang war, only one of the many gang wars going on throughout the city.
the strike. The crowds build to full strength before 8:00. Echelon is already trying to destroy all their phones and the entire Darknet. Every Corporation, Syndicate, and rival Empire in the world tries to prevote every single one of them with their botnets. Most of them, some not even striking, have set their phones and computers to send their votes precisely at, or shortly after, eight; those without smartphones or computers will vote by phone, whether cellphone or land line, if the phone networks stay up and AT&T does not preblock their votes or prevote them for CPMC.
Already the protest sites are attacked by swarms of helicopters blasting their sound cannons at them. The pirates’ sound cancellers switch on, cancel out their blasts, even destroy sound cannons and make their helicopters crash.
Voting will be the easy part. The hard part will be keeping CPMC from cancelling it. The strike must go on.
Shira’s apartment. The clock ticks toward 8:00. Every second seems an eternity now. Everyone at election central holds their breath and crosses their fingers.
OZMA calls up Shira. “Do you think we’re going to prevail?”
“You just do your thing, and I’ll keep doing mine. If the plan works out, yes. If it doesn’t we’re all dead.”
“T minus twenty!” yells Jennifer.
In the living room, Willa puts her arm around Leila. “Think of the Conservative Revolutionary Party as a criminal gang made up entirely of Oliver Thorwalds. These are the rich men addicted to absolute power who go into homicidal frenzy whenever one of their slaves even thinks of exercising their will. They must steal the last crumb from the starving and the mites from widows. If they prevail, they’ll keep turning back the clock until there’s no more reality standing between them and their sovereign whim.”
“Can’t we do to them what I did to Oliver?”
“Darling, he was just one man. The terrorists try over and over, but they always fail. That’s because a gang is a different kind of beast from a bestial man. It thrives on faith created through fear. We have to starve the beast, and the only way to do that is for us to swallow our fear and together abandon our faith.”
Jennifer: “Five...”
Wolveroach: “So far we’re standing up to Echelon!”
“Four...”
El Kabong: “Anti-spambot defenses holding!”
“Three...”
Evil the Cat: “The big hit’s comin’! Prepare yourselves!”
“Two...”
Shira and Leila rush out the door, the Cockroach twins cross their fingers...
“One...”
Moon sings, “It’s heeere...”
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[
Revision 2, 10/22/11: All scenes at Shira’s apartment (“election central”) and the Thorwald property are heavily revised from the unpublished first draft to fit Third Revision continuity, with some material removed; everything else is new material.]
