The Northern Star: Civil War

By Mike Gullickson

"Prepare to be afraid. Be very afraid. Because even seasoned science fiction readers well versed in stories of military conflict and cyber-futures will enjoy something different in The Northern Star: Civil War . . . . With its cornerstone foundations rooted in perceptions and patterns of modern times, it's military sci-fi and futuristic cyber-reality at its best." - D. Donovan, eBook Reviewer. Midwest Book Review

The Giant is ill.
His daughter in peril.
Her bastion a psycho.
The worlds torn asunder.
War is fueled by want,
Subversion by greed.
What value is Free Will,
If you can be reborn as a God?

The Northern Star: The Beginning, which Examiner hailed as on of the “Top 5 Indie-Published Books You Haven’t Read, But Should,” showed us a violent, technology dependent world where the Coalition—the combined might of China, the U.S., and the EU—occupied oil-rich countries to take all that remained. The Northern Star: Civil War takes us further down the rabbit hole, where the digital connectedness of our world has allowed one man to subvert nations in his quest for immortality. In the first novel, John Raimey, a crippled soldier, sacrificed himself for duty and family and became the first Tank Major, a bionic soldier powerful enough to level buildings. His sacrifice was in vain. Ten years later, mentally ill, estranged from his daughter, and stationed in Africa to protect the mines needed to keep cyberspace alive, he airdrops into a town where the adults are murdered and the children abducted. What Raimey uncovers sets him on a new mission: save his daughter, no matter the cost.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mike Gullickson
• Release date: Oct 6, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311042873

Mike Gullickson

Mike Gullickson writes science fiction and fantasy novels. He lives in Manhattan Beach, California with his wife and two children. His debut novel, the cyberpunk bestseller "The Northern Star: The Beginning," was hailed by Examiner in 2013 as one of "The Top 5 Indie Published Books You Haven't Read But Should." Its sequel, "The Northern Star: Civil War," is out now. To learn more go to www.mikegullickson.com

Book preview

The Northern Star

-Civil War-

By

Mike Gullickson

Cover Illustration by Eric Tilton

Copyright © 2014 Mike Gullickson

Smashwords Edition

-This book is available in print at most online retailers-

License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Than you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Disclaimer

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The Author holds exclusive rights to this work. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited.

Acknowledgements

Melissa Gullickson

Always supportive. Always there. She’s made me a better man.

David Gatewood

Authors always thank their editors, and now I know why. Insightful, meticulous, and fun to work with. If you’re an author, I highly recommend you reach out to him.

Eric Tilton

An amazing artist & graphic designer. I hope the content is as good as the cover.

Justin McWilliams, James Aiden, John Bruno, Brooks McLaren, Dan Snow, Wes Ryle

These tortured souls read the 3rd draft and gave me notes. You do not want to read my 3rd draft. I promise you.

For Melissa, Jacob, and Olivia.

You three are my universe.

Part I

I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.

-Mahatma Gandhi

Prologue

-Chicago. 2065-

Commander Earl Boen waited on the runway at the base north of Chicago. It was four a.m., and while he couldn’t see the massive cargo plane that had flown directly from South Africa, he could hear it and see the blinking lights on its nose and wings as it approached.

Boen was seventy-seven years old, but looked younger. Hormone therapy had progressed by leaps and bounds, and he was on it. He had been offered the opportunity to become a bionic, but he had refused. Boen may have controlled the bionics’ operations around the world, but he still didn’t trust the technology. He’d observed how, in today’s military, there was a caste system that didn’t exist before: the bionic and the soft soldier. It had created an unspoken rift between soldiers, one that superseded even rank. The Tank Majors—goliath bionics—and the Tank Minors—infantry bionics—had made flesh-and-blood men into children.

The giant on the plane was the first deployable Tank Major ever built, and at one time had been Boen’s close friend. Tank Majors were more refined now, even if they shared the same armored and angular shape, but John Raimey was a walking earthquake and still the most effective. He was larger and his unique armor made him—not invincible, nothing’s invincible—but . . .

Resilient, Boen said. Raimey’s resilience was why he was stationed in Africa, where the Coalition armies were spread thin and reinforcements were non-existent.

The radio on Boen’s hip crackled. The girl is here.

Boen watched as a car pulled up and three silhouettes made their way to a nearby hangar. One was much smaller than the others, but still taller than Boen had imagined. Vanessa Raimey was sixteen now. Boen’s heart tightened. Even when life grows deep, regrets have a tendency to bob up and down on the surface. And to this day, every day, Earl felt guilt for what he had done. He had known Raimey since he was a recruit, and he had been integral in persuading Raimey to become a Tank Major.

But seven years ago, it had been a strange and frightening time. Boen had just come out of retirement during the crisis with China, after the active Secretary of Defense had put a bullet through his own head. The oil was almost gone, the U.S. had united with the EU and China as the Coalition to take what was left, and MindCorp’s mind-freeing virtual technology had created a new online universe that was more important than the real one.

It had also been the dawn of the bionic age. Dr. Evan Lindo, a U.S. military advisor and genius, had adapted Mindlink technology to create the first bionic battle chassis: the Tank Major. Months before, John Raimey and Eric Janis—another soldier—had been crippled in a blast, and they became the first two candidates in the program. In the end, it was Eric who was chosen for the prototype. But the Chinese planted a virus in Eric’s implant, and he went insane, destroying a base that housed the King Sleeper, an incredibly powerful online hacker, a nuclear bomb in the digital age, and an asset a million times more important then a man made of gears and steel.

So the U.S. government had needed John Raimey to become a Tank Major overnight. And to convince him, they’d had to play a trump card that even now made Earl grimace: Raimey’s wife, Tiffany, had just been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer.

When Raimey was wheeled before Earl, Dr. Lindo, and Cynthia Revo—the chief founder of MindCorp—what followed was nothing short of coercion. If Raimey agreed to the procedure, the U.S. would take care of his family. His wife would get the best medical treatment available, regardless of cost. His daughter’s education would be paid in full. Both would have pensions that would make his existing one look like a child’s allowance.

The only caveat: as a top-secret weapon, John could never see them again.

And if he didn’t agree . . . well, the most effective treatments weren’t covered under standard medical. And it was tough to find work as a quad amputee.

The request may have been phrased as a question, but everyone in the room knew it was a demand. John had no choice.

Tiffany died anyway. She put up a fight, but those little no-purpose cells ran amok and couldn’t be stopped. And John’s orphaned daughter had been tucked under the wing of an unlikely bird: Dr. Lindo, who was now the current Secretary of Defense—and Boen’s boss.

The plane’s tires chirped on the runway as it rushed past Boen. He walked back to the hangar and waited for it to taxi over.

At the hangar, the belly of the plane opened and a team of technicians emerged. One held a remote control that guided a treaded, massive metal chair that carried John Raimey. His footsteps would have damaged the floor of the plane.

Raimey looked down at Boen. Even though the rest of him was now black, bulging armor, and his head was small, seated between his giant shoulders, his face was the same face that Boen remembered. More lines, more worries, but the same. Dark skin, a scar that hooked down the right side of his cheek. Eyes as emotionless as those on a doll. Bitter eyes.

Is she here? Raimey asked. No ‘hello.’ No ‘what have you been up to.’ Boen felt the tension. He knew the bond he and Raimey once shared was long gone.

She is.

The chair moved slowly down the ramp. Technicians crawled over Raimey like mites, preparing him for the mission that would start in one hour. The chair rocked to a stop at the bottom of the ramp.

Clear? Raimey asked.

Clear.

Clear.

Clear.

Three ‘clears’ was a go. John stood up. He was thirteen feet tall and weighed six tons. His jet black armor was an osmium and depleted-uranium alloy coated in advanced ceramic/Kevlar energy-dispersing plates. His entire body, down to the nuts and bolts, had been built from the same material. Two massive drive chains spun slowly around his waist. In battle, they were a blur, a frenzy, rolling inertia that helped him change direction, punch, and provide gyroscopic balance.

Raimey’s hands alone weighed over eight hundred pounds each. The knuckles were bulbous with armor, the hands themselves virtually unbreakable. When they were open, a grown man could sit in the palm; when closed, they looked like the jagged end of a mace.

Technicians wheeled over two massive metal boxes. Raimey plucked the metal boxes off the ground and slid one onto each shoulder. They clacked into place. Using his mind, he racked the slides back on his shoulders and slapped them forward, loading the projectile-less artillery round.

A Tank Major’s size made him formidable. His armor made him almost impenetrable. But it was his hydraulshock punch—where the full energy of an artillery shell was transferred through his indestructible fists—that made Tank Majors the lords of war. That, above all else, was what made them Death.

He’s all yours, one of the technicians said to Earl. Earl nodded and he and the giant walked into the hangar.

You know where he is? Raimey said. He had come to kill Mohammed Jawal, the leader of the Western Curse, the predominant terrorist organization in the United States. During the King Sleeper/China conflict, the Western Curse had risen above the noise as a primary tool of the Chinese. Xan Shin, a high-level Chinese official, lured them to China with weapons and resources, recruited them to act as mercenaries. Xan Shin died in the conflict—at John’s hand—but the Western Curse, now with modern weapons and near-limitless funds, lived on stronger than ever. Their leader, Mohammed Jawal, was a brilliant man, at one point an advisor to the White House, and he was impossible to track down. The members of the Western Curse did something crazy in this world of cyberspace and Mindlinks and teraflops: they communicated in person, carrying messages written on paper.

Evan believes so.

Raimey grimaced at the name. Evan Lindo was there the day Raimey became a Tank Major. I don’t trust him talking to her.

You know I don’t trust him either, but he’s kept his word. She just started college. She interns at the Derik Building. He’s in Washington all the time anyway.

Raimey grunted. You know about Israel? he said. We stopped a train full of weapons.

The Coalition is attempting a diplomatic solution.

Raimey’s laugh was humorless. The Coalition—the U.S., EU, and China—had occupied sections of the Middle East for two decades, taking the oil. It’s going to happen. They have nothing to lose.

We’re preparing for all possibilities.

They passed transport trucks with soldiers milling around them, getting ready for the mission. Everyone paused to stare when Raimey passed.

Boen punched a keypad to open a rolling door, but stopped short.

I don’t know how this is going to go, he said.

She agreed to come, didn’t she? Raimey asked.

When I contacted her, she said ‘no.’ Evan convinced her. He wanted you for this mission. Evan wants Mohammed alive.

Raimey chewed on his lip. His eyes searched the ground. You did your part, Earl. I know she hates me. I just hope I can get her to hate me a little less.

I’m sorry, John—

I’m a grown man, Earl. I could have said ‘no.’ Raimey nodded at the keypad.

Boen finished entering the code and the door rolled up. In the middle of the empty structure was a sixteen-year-old girl. She had long, curled hair and light brown skin. She’d be beautiful if she didn’t look so angry. She wore a lead vest and gloves, standard protocol around Raimey’s armor. Two soldiers stood nearby.

Can we be alone? Raimey asked quietly. Boen nodded at the soldiers and they left through a side exit. Raimey walked inside and Boen closed the door, leaving the father alone with his daughter.

= = =

Vanessa Raimey stood at her full height, and was still just a speck in her father’s shadow. Her hands were clenched into fists, and Raimey could see that she was shaking.

Raimey started. Thank you for coming, I know you’re angry, I’m so sorry about your mo—

Don’t even start, Vanessa interrupted. You don’t get to be sorry. You don’t get to apologize. You weren’t there.

Raimey looked at the ground as if he had come across a rabid dog. I had no choice, he said quietly. If I didn’t do this, she wouldn’t have gotten the medical treatment she needed. They guaranteed you’d be taken care of.

Vanessa pulled a photo out of her coat. Tiffany Raimey had been vibrant and slender, caramel-skinned, with flowing black hair. She had exuded life. But in the photo Vanessa held, Tiffany was desiccated, starving, hairless. A skeleton with skin, dead everywhere except in the eyes. And in the eyes was pain. This is what we got when you left.

Vanessa tossed the photo at Raimey; it fluttered to his feet. That’s a month before she died. She lasted a MONTH like that! At the end she weighed eighty pounds.

Tears rolled down Vanessa’s cheeks. I’d feed her and she’d vomit all over herself. Some nights she would scream all the way through. Toward the end, she’d get confused and ask where you were. When you were coming home. At first I told her the truth because I was stupid and young, and she would cry between the screams. And I think that’s when I became an adult. Kids are told that lying’s bad and we should never do it. When really, it was the best gift I could ever give. And so I told her you were coming home soon. Every night, you were coming home soon.

At the end, she was lucid though. Do you know what she said to me before she went? Can you guess?

Raimey shook his head. No.

She said, Don’t hate him.

Raimey’s jaw quivered. He had braced himself for anger. He had hoped that after Vanessa had screamed and yelled, a bridge could be built between them. But he wasn’t prepared to hear that his wife’s dying wish was forgiveness. He wasn’t ready for the chasm to open further into his deepest regret.

Vanessa paused, buried in the past. "When I told her I didn’t hate you, that was my hardest lie. Because there was nothing I wanted more than for you to be in that bed instead of her, wasting away with no chance to live. Nothing."

She looked up at Raimey, her eyes filled with watery hate. I never want to see you again. Don’t contact me. If you die, don’t have anyone reach out. I don’t want your stuff, I don’t want your money. I don’t care. I want to be happy. And I can’t do that when I think about you.

= = =

Boen waited outside for only two minutes before he heard Raimey call through the door. You can open it.

He did. Behind Raimey, Vanessa was gone. Boen was confused.

She came here to tell me that she never wants to see me again, and she never wants me to contact her, Raimey explained.

Boen was speechless. Raimey stared out at the transport and soldiers. His calm was unnerving, and Boen realized it was resignation. Raimey had thought this was how it would end.

Is that the team? Raimey asked.

Yes.

I don’t want to come here anymore, Earl. I can’t be this close to her, and not have her in my life. Raimey looked down at Boen. Tears clung to his eyes. I’ll do whatever you or Evan want overseas. If I do that, you’ll take care of her, right?

Raimey, it’s not like that.

YES IT IS, Raimey growled. Evan’s all over her. He’s the one teaching her. Not you. If I’m a good boy, she’ll be fine, right?

Yes, Boen said quietly.

Make sure of that, Earl.

Raimey left Boen and stepped into the transport without a nod to the Tank Minors. Twenty minutes later, he was rumbling off toward Chicago.

= = =

Mohammed Jawal, the founder of the Western Curse, was an educated man. Sixty, tall and long, he had the frame of a basketball player. His chest-length beard and salt-and-pepper hair hid a chiseled jaw and hard, attractive lines. Without the facial hair, he might have looked like a Bond villain.

He had been in Chicago for many years. It was too dangerous to move around. Not because of the police or the bionics—the Mega Cities stretched those eyes thin. No, it was the wandering gaze of a senior citizen on the subway that he feared. The curious child he passed on the street. Mohammed knew what few others did: that through the Mindlink, both MindCorp and the government could read your thoughts. And this knowledge had turned him into a paranoid recluse.

It was so obvious, and so ignored. The Mindlink was a two-way street. Data flowed out and in, to create the immersive experience of being there. In his dark room, Mohammed laughed, but it was hollow and tired. The great unwashed, how they flocked to a device that opened their mind up like a wound. They watched what they ate, but gave no second thought to the five thousand radio frequencies bombarding their brain cells and transforming their consciousness—what made them them—into a space run by a corporation and overseen by the government. Fear doesn’t make people wary—it makes them trusting and short of memory. They want to be taken care of. They want to be told everything’s okay. They want to believe. And the Mindlink did all those things. But cost has nothing to do with currency. Cost is a part of life, concession a scale constantly tipping one way or the other.

Nowhere was safe.

We’re almost ready, Sharif, his second lieutenant, said quietly from the doorway. Mohammed knelt east in the dark, praying for victory. But he was not an extremist, or a terrorist, though he was framed by the news as such. He was a nationalist, and his country had been pillaged by the Coalition for its oil.

Once, he had been a happy man. There was a time when he had hope. But then his extended family in Iran had been moved into boroughs, ghettos, that housed them like Jews before the Holocaust. Some had been murdered. It was a history repeated without the ovens or gas.

Make an example out of him, Mohammed said.

For Allah.

No. For Iran. For Iraq. For Saudi Arabia and all of our forgotten brothers.

Yes, sir.

= = =

Dr. Brad Zienkiewicz’s heart hammered in his chest. He could not believe that Cynthia had offered to use him as bait. He was one of the founders of MindCorp. He and Cynthia had stood side by side on that historic day when Tom, a test chimp, used a functional Mindlink to choose corresponding animals with his thoughts. It was Brad who had developed the consumer browser interface that took them from portal to portal without causing a seizure. He owned one percent of the company. He was worth over one hundred billion dollars.

And he had been demoted to a worm.

Relax, the hook said. Tank Minor Razal, a stocky Filipino, sat across from Brad as they rode to the MindCorp data node north of the city, where intelligence Sleepers had predicted the good doctor would be abducted and beheaded on a live feed.

Easy for you to say—you’re bulletproof, Brad replied.

Razal smiled and looked out the window. He had never been in a consumer vehicle before. Only the ultra-wealthy could afford them.

How much did this thing cost? he asked. He slid his hands over the leather seats.

Twenty million, Brad replied. He wasn’t interested in discussing the car. He was interested in living through the next hour.

Razal whistled. Wow. How much are tires?

It wasn’t the leather that made the car expensive, nor the metal. The oil was almost gone and what was left was hoarded by the government. Plastics of any kind were a luxury.

Brad slapped his legs, exasperated. I don’t know, a couple hundred thousand per.

Crazy, huh?

Yeah . . . crazy. Could you focus on me not dying?

Razal’s eyes clouded up as if he were stoned. The bionic’s constant smirk vanished. Roger. One mile away. Got it.

All Tank Minors were connected wirelessly. His dazed look vanished and that inside-joke smirk reappeared on the stocky Filipino’s lips.

He turned back to Brad. You’re not going to die.

Brad hitched a finger toward the front of the car. You and the green-eyed guy are gonna make sure?

Our team is positioned around the node. Stick by me and don’t do anything stupid.

Like?

Like run away or something, or get in the way while I’m shooting. Stupid stuff.

Razal was dressed in a suit to hide his modified body. He held a leather briefcase that concealed a submachine gun. He wore sunglasses and a wig to conceal his eyes and face. He was a Level 2 Tank Minor and one of the best marksmen in the bionic division.

I can’t believe Cynthia has gotten so involved, Brad said, shaking his head. Cynthia had worked with the U.S. military for almost a decade—from the first bionic, to the collusion against China, to the Terror War that had plagued the world since the superpowers had occupied the oil-rich nations. It was a conflict of interest that many of the founders objected to, though quietly.

Without her, we’d be blind, sir, Razal said. And you would have been driving here not knowing whether your head was going to be put on a platter.

Zienkiewicz gulped and changed the subject. I’m just glad this is the last of it. It is, right? You’re going to take them down, scan their brains, and get that bastard?

I can’t discuss that information, Razal replied, while nodding ‘yes.’ But hypothetically, if we had permission to do that, and we found pertinent information, then we’d have another team on standby to act on that information immediately.

= = =

First Team did not have a Tank Major: they needed to be quick and discreet. But they did have Mike Glass, the only Level 5 Tank Minor in existence.

The day before, Glass had attached to the team on special instruction from Evan Lindo. Razal and the other five Minors couldn’t believe it when he walked through the door. Most soldiers had only heard of him. He alone had toppled the resistance in the Middle East and hunted down terrorist leaders on our soil. Day-to-day, he was Evan Lindo’s right hand. In the field, he was an assassin. At all times he was a ghost. Even Tank Minors, strong men capable of flipping cars, looked away in his presence.

His Alabama twang was thin and labored because of the single cut-down lung that provided his biomass oxygen. His eyes didn’t blink—they were lenses. There were plenty of bullies in the military, but he wasn’t one. In fact, he barely spoke. What made him intimidating was the extreme detachment he had with those he interacted with. And because of his modifications—especially his eyes—he had slid into that uncanny valley where something is disturbing because it is so close to life-like, yet seems manufactured. That, plus the hearsay, and the potential for violence from his frame that even a Level 3 would be helpless to defend, had made him into something approaching myth.

And that myth now stood before Razal and his team, outlining the upcoming mission.

Sleepers have picked up a tail that leads to the outskirts of Chicago. A low-level lieutenant of the Western Curse was going online for . . . Glass paused.

Everyone at the same time said, sex. The majority of the breaks they got on terrorists were from the parties breaking down and going online to pork.

Glass nodded. His name is Matt Campbell. He was the in.

There was no screen in the briefing room. All of the Minors could see in their heads what Glass was showing them. It became memory. They saw a standard map overlay that turned into a detailed satellite feed. It shifted to a perspective near the top of a skyscraper.

Razal realized they were watching the footage through Glass’s eyes. He must have been a hundred stories up. Birds flew beneath him. The zoom made the men nauseated, and a few of them shook their heads as the view from the skyscraper kept moving in toward the crowd. Then suddenly the view locked in on a white male walking through the crowd, looking around nervously. The footage swayed from side to side like the sight of a riflescope. They were seeing firsthand how Glass’s vision worked.

One of the soldiers started to dry heave. Glass paused.

Should I take you off the feed? No sympathy, no nothing. Words.

No, sir. I’m fine.

The zoom kept up with the man, and then he turned the corner. The tight zoom vanished and they were a thousand feet above the city and Glass was on the move, working along the rooftops. The image cut—this part was unimportant for the brief—but Razal was beside himself with awe: Glass had effortlessly leapt across chasms that were fifteen yards across. He must be lighter than he looks, he thought. Most Tank Minors weighed around three hundred pounds.

The footage reappeared in their heads. Glass was looking down into a cyber-cafe, again from high above. Campbell walked out, looked around, and took a different route from the way he had come. Glass followed, again moving effortlessly along the rooftops.

Campbell went into an old brick high-rise, and Glass stopped moving and zoomed in. An overlay scanned over the HD picture, and heat signatures were picked up through the brick. They could see hundreds of other glowing silhouettes, some faint as they walked farther back into the building, others intense flames at the front.

Not infrared, Razal thought. It was too far away and it couldn’t go through the brick. Rotoscoping technology? Radiation sonar? Whatever it was, it was something Razal had never seen before.

Another perspective shift and time gap. Glass was on the ground now. He walked into the alleyway and quickly scaled the wall. He didn’t look through the window—he was using that funky vision that could go through walls. He found Campbell. In the soldiers’ heads, they could hear the conversation of the terrorists:

Where were you? a glowing blob asked. It was seated with others at a table, working with a long, black, angular object: a rifle.

Went for a walk, wanted to clear my head, Campbell said.

We got the message. It goes down today.

Holy shit, Razal thought. This intel is from right before Glass arrived.

Is your head clear enough? another blob, radiating orange and yellow, asked sarcastically.

Fuck off, Chris. When have I let you guys down?

We’re cutting that motherfucker’s head right off, one of the blobs said. What’s his name, it’s a weird one. Polish, or something.

I’m Polish, another blob said.

Zienkiewicz.

He’s going to do it.

Who?

Jawal.

He’s here?

Apparently he doesn’t leave his safe house anymore.

Why would he do it himself?

I guess he wants to send a message.

The images and sound vanished. Glass was done transmitting.

Evan contacted Cynthia. With her permission, we’re using Dr. Zienkiewicz to draw them out, taking them at the node, where she’ll interrogate. This mission’s success is measured in minutes. Questions?

Soldiers asked about logistics and tactics. Glass answered them. They got ready. Glass handpicked Razal to ride with the target.

= = =

Two hundred yards from the entrance, Glass projected mentally. The others picked it out of the air like it was a radio signal. Two Minors were on the ground, hidden in dumpsters. Three were in sniper positions ten stories overhead so that each covered one hundred and twenty degrees, totaling a complete circle. Razal directly protected the package. In the front of the limo, Glass chauffeured behind a tinted windshield.

You ready? Razal asked Zienkiewicz. He put his hand over the briefcase.

Don’t let them shoot me, Zienkiewicz said. His uppity demeanor had disappeared, replaced by the fear of a child peering under their bed.

Don’t worry, our intel said they want to behead you.

Dr. Zienkiewicz blanched.

Razal looked out the tinted window as they approached. You’ll be fine.

Glass pulled the car up to the data node. Data nodes were MindCorp offices, located throughout the world. Mega-cities such as Chicago, New York, Singapore, and London would have up to a dozen apiece, scattered throughout. They were nondescript, subterranean in design. Some had office space topside—this one stood three stories tall—but almost all of the infrastructure was below ground. Data Cores—the giant pulsing tubes of fiber-optic light—were much easier to build down than up.

Situating them underground also served to shield the insanely complex structures from the elements. Depending on a Core’s size, up