FREEDOM…

It was several days before Garth regained consciousness, and when he did, it was to the vast amazement and shock of the entire medical crew hired by Sa Herrig to ensure his number one client’s safety; before the sequence of events leading up to the destruction of the space port had become common knowledge –common to governmental inspectors, at any rate- the going theory had been that Garth N’Chalez was the party responsible.

Sa Herrig, operating under the verbal agreement given to him by Garth some time before regarding employment with the as yet unnamed Conglomerate, moved in the moment suspicions were cast in the proper direction –Ashok Guillfoyle’s direction- by hiring the best medical team money could buy, even though it seemed hardly worth the cost; other than some serious fractures and holes, one of which was in the man’s head, Garth seemed less worse for wear than was scarcely believable.

The damage Garth N’Chalez had survived was awe inspiring, to say the least. More than twenty God soldiers had lost their lives in the conflagration that swept through the space port, and yet Garth, battered, bruised, broken, bleeding, was going to come out the other end just tine; everyone hired by Herrig had been operating under the assumption that their patient was never going to regain consciousness, quietly accusing the pudgy banker turned CFO of fraud.

Therefore, when Garth woke up and began loudly demanding ‘hamburgers’, ‘French fries’ and a ‘milkshake’, word passed out of the private suites and through the rest of the hospital in a matter of seconds. Their famous guest was alive, and weird.

Sa Herrig, never very far away from Garth N’Chalez, hastened back to the room as quickly as he could, impatiently going through the strict security measures the firm he’d hired to protect the man during his convalescence had instituted. An agonizing two minutes later, Herrig was at Garth’s bedside.

“How do you feel, sa?” Herrig asked politely, wondering if the man was even going to be able to understand. The head wound that should have, by all rights, put Garth into a permanent coma was dreadful, the doctors concerned about brain damage should recovery ever happen.

“I want a hamburger.” Garth sighed. The hospital bed, barely more than a thin mattress covered in some kind of viciously rough fabric, was the most comfortable thing he’d slept on in what seemed like a million years. The events of the last few days were little more than a blur, the highlights of which were marked with a noticeable amount of violence and mayhem. “But, since you guys don’t know what the hell a hamburger is, I’ll make do with some hospital food.”

“I’ll, er, see what I can do.” Sa Herrig flashed a request off to the hospital avatar in charge of monitoring Garth’s room. “Say, do you, er, remember what happened?”

It was all very hazy. He recalled the reasons for going to the ship, and that he’d succeeded in getting Huey away without getting caught, but much of the actual moments were covered by a thick, sluggish feeling. He remembered a great deal of fire, a torturous amount of pain, and, of course, the God soldiers. Other than that, nothing. Garth told as much to Herrig, omitting the parts about how he’d managed to smuggle an artificial intelligence out of the space port without anyone the wiser. “Why d’you ask?”

“The devastation to the space port was total, sa.” Herrig went to flash some of the highlights to Garth, then cursed himself; he’d forgotten that Garth was without a proteus. “At first, it was believed that you had willfully engineered the destruction.”

“Why in the hell would I do that?” Garth demanded quizzically, hoping he wasn’t laying it on too thick. For all of his seeming bumpishness, Herrig had a first rate analytical mind.

“Nothing to worry about, sa. Preliminary investigations have already revealed an inordinate amount of explosives were placed directly beneath your, ah, your ship. An investigation into the exact route those bombs took to get beneath the ship is being conducted as we speak, although the actual culprit was apprehended later that evening in a very spectacular manner.”

“Oh?” Garth raised an eyebrow.

“Yes. You wouldn’t know the man, but someone named Ashok Guillfoyle apparently tried to steal your artificial intelligence off the ship and smuggle it out of the space port. Somehow, he was in direct control of a gang of vicious thugs calling themselves the Port Side Boys, and he tried to use them. The belief is that he tried to kill you and destroy the ship to hide his crime. Of course, he claims that you masterminded the theft as well as the destruction of the space port. Oh yes, and a gang war between the so-called Portsiders and the unfortunately named Devil Nuts.” Herrig scratched at his neck. “How portal of this was managed without instantly triggering alarms is still something of a mystery, but it seems that Guillfoyle’s company designed the systems for that area, and he could make people appear and disappear on the scanners whenever he wanted.”

“You don’t say.” Garth said sarcastically. “Doesn’t that beat all.”

Herrig nodded assiduously. “I do. So they were there to steal your AI, and they blew it up to cover their tracks. Of course, you know most of the rest: the explosions got out of hand and the entire space port wound up being destroyed.”

“Did they find my AI?” Garth asked slowly.

“No, they didn’t. As far as I can find out, everyone involved on the case seems to believe that the Portsiders failed in their endeavor and that the artificial intelligence was destroyed somewhere along the way. I’m very sorry, but your ship … well, it was … it’s completely destroyed.”

Garth lay there, wondering why in the hell Herrig seemed genuinely upset. He remembered a split second later that he was supposed to be mourning the loss of his AI, so he gave the best frown he could. Herrig seemed to respond well to the display of emotion, so Garth flailed around a bit as though he was actually physically uncomfortable at Huey’s death. “Dammit all.” He wailed. “That really sucks ass.”

Herrig received a flash on his proteus. Reading it over, he looked over at Garth and then back at the words blazing on his small screen. “Oh. Oh my.”

“What’s up, Herrig?”

“The, er, ah, the Chairwoman, the Commander General and the OverSecretary are, ah, coming to see you, sa.” Herrig stood up, suddenly very self-conscious about his appearance; he hadn’t gone home since Garth had been brought to the hospital four days ago, and he looked terrible. “I’m not fit to see these people in this condition, sa. If you will excuse me?”

Garth, who thought Herrig looked just fine considering the mess he was in, waved a hand, dismissing his good friend and ‘employee’. Herrig smiled thanks and hurried out of the room.

Two of the three high governmental officials looked very imposing and, in the General’s case, downright threatening, in their finery; Chairwoman Doans was a graying older woman in a severely cut black and blue business suit that made her nothing but sharp angles. If her clothes were a statement, Doans’ inapproachability was very clearly understood –this was a woman who commanded entire worlds and was used to getting respect without even thinking about it. Commander General Tigh, whom Garth had only seen on new channels, was every bit as intimidating in real life. Very imposing in his military black floor length leather overcoat, complete with high, stiff collar and giant shiny buttons, he loomed protectively behind Doans, exuding power from every pore; the logical other half of Doans, Tigh was also a man of immense power, capable of calling forth millions of loyal God soldiers to his heel within seconds. The two of them were perfectly suited for one another, and Garth was willing to bet the Latelian people didn’t care a single good goddamn who they were sleeping with, so long as shit got taken care of.

By contrast, OverSecretary Terrance looked like he’d been running short on sleep the last few days. His normally sharp green eyes had a distinct watery cast, and the man was slouching unhappily in his clothes. This was a far different man than the one who’d invited Garth into his den just a short while ago; he looked beaten, and badly. Above the sharp scent of disinfectant that the orderlies used day in and day out whether it was needed or not, Garth caught the distinctive tang of animal fear.

Garth didn’t need to see the script to see his part. He was the finger man, the stoolie, the pigeon and the rat. Somewhere down the line, the people investigating Guillfoyle must have made some connections. It was nice to know that just because he was a foreign devil Offworlder who worshipped false idols and gave the power of gods to machines that he wasn’t automatically labeled a troublemaker. He made himself more comfortable and smiled pleasantly at OverSecretary Terrance, who paled considerably. “Well,” Garth said, “this is a surprise. Not awake more than three minutes and I’m visited by the three most powerful people in the entire system. To what can I attribute this honor?”

Tigh pulled a wand out of his pocket and waved it back and forth through the air, checking his proteus every few seconds. He grunted at Doans, then put the machine back in his pocket.

Up until that moment, Doans had only ever seen footage of Garth N’Chalez. Both the stills and the live action video feeds of him in the ring and around the town didn’t give the man any justice at all. She could hardly credit that the slender, though well muscled, Offworlder before her was the same man who’d not only defeated a heavyweight augmented soldier in hand to hand combat but had managed to survive the worst calamity to strike the Latelian people since the very earliest days of their colonies. Of course, she had seen the exhaustive footage of his career in Special Forces –footage she’d been forced to request directly from one of Trinity’s odious representatives after it had developed the original files were missing and/or corrupted. The man was an absolute soldier. Watching him wade through jungles, hack through people, and infiltrate societies more xenophobic and distrustful than her own had been an eye-opener of the worst sort.

There was little doubt in Doans’ mind that Garth N’Chalez was somehow personally and intimately involved with the destruction of the space port, the eradication of two opposing gangs and the ‘outing’ of the treasonous Ashok Guillfoyle. The only problem was a complete lack of proof; the proteus given to the Offworlder by Terrance –who was going to be OverSecretary for just a few more minutes only- had been destroyed in the fires, giving them zero opportunity to reconstruct the man’s actual course of actions since his meeting with the OverSecretary. The team originally assigned to monitor his movements had gone dark and was not responding to any overtures, the data recovered from relay stations completely at odds with everything they knew to be true. A prime example was a data node specialist’s insistence that Sa Garth N’Chalez had not been in the space port at the time of the explosions –according to the relay stations, the sa hadn’t left the hotel for several days, and hadn’t accessed so much as the hotel kitchens.

That pointed to the mysterious Lady Ha, but again, there was no proof. Terrance would admit only to outfitting the Offworlder with a MilSpec proteus, and short of torture, there was no way to get anything else out of the man; Doans didn’t want to resort to physical abuse because the man would crack like an egg and there were things he knew that should be kept secret no matter what. Doans suspected Terrance of attempting to maneuver himself into office once again, but there was nothing new in that; as OverSecretary, it was practically his job to oust the Chairperson. It was just usually done in more tasteful, obvious ways.

Even though they could not prove it and would not attempt to, OverSecretary Terrance had completely ruined his life by trying to force Garth N’Chalez’ hand. And thanks to Terrance’s stupid shortsightedness, they couldn’t rescind citizenship until he broke the law. Even then, they wouldn’t be able to execute Garth, because Trinity had exercised Special Privileges Rights just seconds after the paperwork had gone through; immediately following an arrest, Trinity was to be made aware of Garth N’Chalez’ apprehension. Death by misadventure would not be accepted. It would be punished.

“You have put me in a very difficult position, Sa N’Chalez.” Doans said at long last.

“Ma’am?” Garth shook his head. “Er, si?” He flicked his eyes mischievously at Terrance, who flinched as though he’d been hit in the gut.

Doans cast a sidelong glance at Terrance. “The OverSecretary has informed me of his own free will that he outfitted you with a military grade proteus.”

“He did?” Garth asked quizzically. “And here I thought every Offworlder turned citizen was allowed to remote access spEyes, hack into network servers, and generally befuddle the entire population.”

Tigh grinned despite himself. As much as he was personally very doubtful of Garth’s actual motives, the man had balls.

“And did you do these things?” Doans asked, even though she knew the answer would be an utter lie.

Garth closed his eyes for a long moment. As far as he was concerned, they had him dead to rights on pretty much everything that’d happened since landed. His previous life as a damned good mercenary gave them no other choice than that, but he also knew that if they’d wanted him dead, they wouldn’t have let him wake up in the first place. He didn’t know much about the inner workings of the Latelian government, and didn’t really want to; it was enough to know that Chairwoman Doans was willing to hang the bulk of the blame on Terrance –who must’ve shit bricks at the destruction of the port- and let it go at that. If he lied to the ruler of Lately and said that he’d never once used the Intelligence functions on his proteus, Garth imagined that she’d pretend to believe him and then sic thousands of agents on him the moment he got out of the hospital. On the other hand, if he told her the entire scope of his actions, she’d probably be forced by her own common sense and loyalty to the office to punish him in some way. “Damned if I do, damned if I don’t.” he murmured, eyes still closed.

“Sorry?” Terrance shifted nervously from foot to foot.

Garth shook his head. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to use blaspheme. Uh, yeah, as a matter of fact, I did. Use some of the … higher functions. Once or twice.”

Tigh cocked his head to one side. Either the man was completely insane, or he really was packing a thousand pound pair of testes. “Would you care to elaborate, sa?”

“Back at the Hotel Hospitalis, you know the place with all the other Offworlders?” Garth continued when all three of his guests nodded simultaneously. “Yeah, well, I started goofing around with my proteus, just trying to learn how to use it when all of a sudden I discovered this whole other network feed streaming out of the place, and all these extra spEyes. They were everywhere! So I sort of checked out what was going on, and it looks to me like the woman who runs the place is making tons of extra money selling access to unchecked raw footage of the Offworlders.” He grinned wide. “I’d check it out if I were you, especially since the relay load is already overburdened across the entire planet. Someone hogging bandwidth on promotionally approved Contest-related material could cause more problems than you know. All that money and stuff.”

“I’ll … I’ll get someone right on that, sa.” Doans cleared her throat, then resumed. “As I said, a very difficult position. Terrance has also informed me of his firm belief that you are in fact a highly trained Trinity spy sent here to demoralize and destabilize our culture to the point where the AI-run government can simply come in and take over. He has also made me aware of your claims to ownership of the Box, and your ten thousand year cryogenic sleep.”

“He did?” Garth feigned total shock. It wasn’t difficult to imagine Terrance, faced with a multitude of charges looming on the horizon, spilling anything he knew about everything. The man didn’t look any stronger than a piece of paper folded in half. “As to being highly trained, you bet your ass I am. I am the greatest frickin’ soldier that Trinity ever saw, or ever will see. I don’t work for Trinity, and I never will again. I have no love for Uncle Trinity. I was recovered from a cryogenic suspension chamber that had kept me on ice for ten thousand years. All of that is one hundred percent verifiable simply by talking to someone at Historical Services; they’ll tell you I was interrogated exhaustively by a spaz name of Kant Ingrams. Do I own the Box? I say I do, Terrance says I don’t, and regardless of the information I can give you concerning the elements used in its construction, its design, or anything else, there is absolutely no way short of my winning the Contest that will give me the chance to open it... Ahh, fuck.” Garth ground his teeth; he’d missed at least two, maybe three, days of pre-trials. He was out of the Contest.

“There is no need to curse, sa.” Doans said primly, though she herself had a tendency to swear like a trucker, especially when in session and faced with particularly stubborn opposition. She liked to think it was one of the things that had kept her in office so long. “In light of Guillfoyle’s repeated attempts to have you killed, the destruction of your personal space ship, and Terrance’s attempts to force you into action against the people of Latelyspace, I have issued an Executive Order giving you the right to bypass the entire pre-trial series of Contests. And since there seems to be no records covering your own actions during the last week, at least none that make any sense, it also falls onto me to make a decision concerning your … concerning you.”

“So where does the difficult position part come in?”

“You may not work for Trinity, you may sincerely be here to do nothing more than open the Box, if you can, and you may be truly interested in becoming a citizen of Lately. I have no way to prove or disprove any of your claims, or your complicity in the string of catastrophes that have suddenly been plaguing my planet.” Doans fixed Garth with her legendary stare; she was quite proud of her stare, crushing as it had dozens of men who’d had the temerity to try and get in her way. The Chairwoman felt a small quiver when the stare bounced off Garth’s indomitable cheery exterior. She forged on ahead. “But I am not stupid, either. My water tells me I would be better off having you killed. My Commander tells me the same. My advisors think I should destroy this hospital and salt the earth so that your influence can’t find purchase. But I won’t. Or, not yet: as I said, there is no proof that I can use.”

Here it comes, Garth thought gleefully, the threat.

“If I find your name so much as mentioned in the same sentence as a criminal act, or something strange, or even something of inordinate benefit to myself, I will have you arrested so fast your toes will fall off.” Doans swept out of the room, ex-OverSecretary Terrance following quickly behind.

Tigh lingered for a few seconds. “You should consider yourself incredibly lucky, sa.” The grizzled war commander said seriously. “If the Chairwoman had been able to find even a single iota of data putting you on the same block as any of the people involved, it would have been God soldiers all over the place, with you in the middle.”

Garth nodded strenuously. “Oh, yes, I’m very grateful. Especially for the bit about the Contest.”

Tigh leaned forward. “Just between you and me, sa… what was it like?”

“Off the record?” Garth stared at Tigh’s oversized proteus.

Tigh narrowed his eyes thoughtfully at Garth for a long minute before curiosity got the better of him; everyone who needed to know had no doubts that Garth was as guilty as the day was long, they just couldn’t prove it. With a thin smile, Tigh shut his prote down. “Of course, sa. The strictest of confidences.”

Garth beamed. “It was the most goddamn fun I’ve had in ten thousand years.”