Fei had wanted to spend her day going over the error messages her new simulation program, designed to work with twenty-nine machines that Bock wasn’t even allowed to use, had spat out during the latest test suite, but instead she had to devote herself to defending Yalsa 5 against GLEA’s next form of attack — a smear campaign on the Web. The Agency was trying to erode any support Yalsa 5 had from the rest of the galaxy. Fei couldn’t let this happen.
She braced her fingers against her temples as she watched yet another Webcast from yet another mediaist on her vidscreen. Fei sighed. ‘So they’re saying this entire planet is a hotbed of criminal activity and there are bodies strewn through the streets.’
‘Doesn’t help that GLEA has the footage from those old gang fights, hey,’ said Jalen.
‘Should we send up our own images? Of quiet streets and smiling children and things like that?’ Fei asked, wincing at the devastation in the footage. It had happened years ago, but the people watching the Webcasts might not realise that.
Jalen clucked, two tentacles thumping the desk in front of her. ‘That’d be hilarious, doncha reckon? Everyone will think “hey, crime looks really good, let’s try it out”.’ The Jezlo sobered. ‘But we have to do something quick or Atsa’s gonna lose all its tourism, even after that blockade goes. That’s a huge chunk of the governor’s income.’
‘And, by extension, our income too,’ Fei noted. She smiled when Jalen’s tentacles clapped over the Jezlo’s oddly-shaped mouth, a sign of the other woman’s horror. ‘Okay, but simply throwing images up on the Web is nothing compared to what GLEA can do to us.’
‘Let’s worry about what we can do,’ Jalen suggested.
Fei cradled her forehead between her thumb and forefinger. ‘Tell Bock and Ala we need some promotional material. Footage. Something. Anything.’
Jalen scampered away. Since the woman could have just used a communicator, it seemed likely that Jalen had wanted to rest her eyes. Fei’s were burning — it came from looking at vidscreens for hours. She dropped her head onto the desk, intent on leaving it there, but the keyboard built into the surface pinged unhappily at her. Muttering under her breath, she pried herself off it and tried to decide if she should risk checking over the results from the test suite. Her new simulation program should have been finished by now. But whenever she dared to think about working on it, there was always some other problem to deal with.
Like all twenty-nine of the terraforming machines suddenly booting up on their own.
Someone was remotely accessing them. GLEA was getting ready to destroy Atsa City.
Fei groaned. ‘Of course whoever made that firewall of theirs could get through mine and figure out how to use only twenty-nine machines. That was stupid, Fei, stupid! I should have gone out to every single machine and taken them off the Web. Ugh!’
Jalen exploded back into the room. ‘Gods, you should see it. It’s bad.’
‘Can’t, busy,’ Fei muttered as she re-hacked her way into the machines. She erected another firewall, but she wasn’t sure how long it would last.
‘The machines started up and — ’ Jalen began.
‘Yes, I know, I just shut them down again, but if I don’t keep them that way everyone is going to die — and if they die it’s all my fault!’ Fei broke off, gasping. ‘Sorry.’
‘Just tell me what to do,’ the Jezlo said, flying across the room on her own chair.
A loud screech of static greeted them from the window, which was sealed shut and supposedly soundproof. Whatever was causing the noise had to be seriously loud.
‘Tell me Bock doesn’t have those giant vidscreens he’s got plastered all over the buildings hooked up to the Web,’ Fei said out of the corner of her mouth.
Jalen’s silence was answer enough.
Fei slapped a hand to her forehead. ‘Okay. Get ready to listen to some propaganda. GLEA’s hacked the screens.’
She tried not to be distracted by the exterior vidscreens as they conducted the booming voice of some Chipper who was insisting that sub-level gods didn’t exist but, if they did, surely they could not offer anything better than the protection of the Creator God, conveniently meted out by the Galactic Law Enforcement Agency.
‘Fei!’ Ala stormed into the room. ‘Bock’s not gonna want to shoot down them screens. And don’t forget about those starkin’ machines! What’re you doing about it?’
‘Don’t you trust me?’ Fei gritted out. She allowed two blinks to moisten her eyes.
‘I’m tryin’ real hard to do that right now!’ Ala said and let loose a string of curses.
Fei considered giving her boss an apology, then very visibly shook her head. It wasn’t her fault. And there was no time to blabber on like it was.
Kuja, I need your help, she thought. I just can’t seem to throw off this other programmer and I’m afraid all these people will die because of me. Stark, I meant Bagara. Bagara help me!
Fei had barely finished her plea when a raging khaki and hazel torrent engulfed her. She opened her mouth to scream but never got the chance to unleash it — because suddenly she was in a dingy basement, standing behind a boy hunched over a vidscreen. His ankles were encased in bulky lascuffs that looked completely out of place on someone half Fei’s size.
‘So you’re the one causing me all my problems,’ Fei said as he continued to smash the keys lit up on the desk in front of him.
‘No, please, I’m doing what you want — ’ The boy broke off when he finished spinning around. His eyes lost some of their panicked width. ‘Oh. You’re not a Chipper.’
Fei arranged her face into a smile, hoping it didn’t look as strained as it felt. ‘No, I’m…I’m the programmer on Yalsa 5.’
‘Uh, no, you’re not on Yalsa 5 because they’re halfway across the galaxy!’ the boy said, diving back into his work. ‘Don’t distract me. If you distract me, I can’t break their new firewall and get the machines under my control again. I can’t fail — the Chippers’ll kill my mother and I can’t let them! I won’t let them!’
‘GLEA threatened to kill your mother if you didn’t terraform Yalsa 5?’ Fei asked, horrified.
‘Yes! You win the jackpot! Now shut up.’
‘But you’ll kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people!’
‘My mum’s more important,’ the boy said. ‘I don’t give a shit about anyone else.’
Fei’s eyes dampened. ‘Bagara. I can’t do this. I can’t be responsible for his mother’s death. Please, give me another way to do this.’ She knew her god could hear her; it felt like he was standing right behind her.
The boy released a groan of frustration. ‘You still haven’t shut up yet! Who or what are you talking to?’
‘The rainforest god,’ Fei answered.
‘Oh, I’ve heard about him,’ the boy said, his face glued to his vidscreen. ‘The Chippers don’t like him, say he’s bad news, which must mean he’s real because they wouldn’t be so worried if — stop distracting me!’
‘Bagara,’ Fei said, raising her voice. ‘Look at what the Chippers have done to this boy! He is a casualty. He needs you just as much as Yalsa 5 does right now and I can’t do anything, I can’t convince him — but you can!’
What would you have me do? Bagara asked in Kuja’s voice.
Fei closed her eyes and used her thoughts to respond to him. You brought me here, to another planet entirely, which means you can teleport people.
The god sounded reluctant. Yes…
So teleport this boy and his mother to safety, somewhere GLEA can’t get at them!
She knew she didn’t imagine his hesitance. She also knew, somehow, that she was the only mortal he’d allowed the privilege of moving between worlds.
You can’t give me special treatment, she told him, furious. It’s not fair to everyone else who needs you. Who will need you.
No, it’s not fair, Bagara agreed. You make an excellent point, Fei. I’ll do it.
I love you, Kuja’s voice added, but those words couldn’t possibly have come from him — or from the god.
Fei watched the boy disappear inside a vortex of swarming vines, finding this method of transportation no less alarming to watch from the outside. She hoped the boy’s mother was safe. She’d just have to trust that even though she couldn’t see it, Bagara was doing as she’d asked.
Funny how I never had that much faith in the Creator God, she thought wryly.
Within moments her own personal vortex came and carried her back to the techroom on Yalsa 5. Fei leaned against the nearest console, breathing heavily, tasting bile. The room was starting to spin a little less by the time Ala touched her shoulder, a soothing pressure that grounded Fei.
‘I’m fine,’ Fei managed in a wheeze. ‘Is the firewall still holding?’
‘Yep, looks like it — so what’d your god steal you away for anyway?’ Ala asked, correctly guessing who was responsible for Fei’s disappearance.
‘The Chippers forced a boy to launch those Webattacks on us,’ Fei answered, sinking into the hoverchair that Jalen had steered towards her. ‘They held his mother hostage so he’d work for them — they probably picked a planet where kidnapping isn’t illegal. But it’s alright. Bagara agreed to help the boy and his mother even though they aren’t from a rainforest world.’
‘For real?’ Jalen’s tentacles weaved with excitement. ‘That’s cool. Do you think he’ll take on an extra planet? I mean, we’re not even terraformed yet but…’
Ala removed her hand from Fei’s shoulder to grip one of her lasguns. ‘Those fuckers, threatenin’ a boy. And they call us the criminals.’
Fei thought she might have agreed out loud, but it was hard to tell when she was buried in her work. First she strengthened her firewall, then she wrote some code which convinced the machines that they weren’t on the Web (it might slow down the next Webattack since it wasn’t an expected method of defence). Fei couldn’t be sure how long this all took, because everything in her peripheral vision had faded to black long ago. When she finally looked up, Jalen had gone home. Ala remained, however, her red artificial eye glowing in the gloom.
Seeing that she had Fei’s attention, Ala jerked her head at a vidscreen off to the side. ‘Message came through for ya. At least I think it’s for you, ’cause it looks encrypted and you’re probably the only one who can open it.’
Fei recognised the boy immediately once she had managed to get the vid he’d sent to play. He spent several minutes explaining what the Chippers had done to him in detail, then he looked straight at the vidcam and said, ‘Use this against them, lady. Get ’em good. For my mum. I’m going underground. See ya.’
‘I didn’t ask him to do that,’ Fei murmured. ‘Do you think Bagara arranged it?’
Ala shrugged. ‘Doesn’t matter. We’ve got ourselves some ammunition against GLEA now.’
‘It might convince a few people, but it — ’
‘Won’t convince GLEA to stop coming after us, I get it,’ Ala finished, sounding grim. ‘But maybe we can get enough of TerraCorp’s clients to demand refunds and hurt them a little.’ Ala eyed Fei for a moment. ‘I’d tell you to get some sleep, but you’n me both know this vid needs to go viral.’
‘It’ll be a lot easier to do that if I give the vid to the mediaist I know,’ Fei told her.
Ala pursed her lips. ‘Do it. Anythin’ else you want to suggest? We’re flyin’ blind here, Bock and I, so any little bit helps.’
Fei leaned back in her chair, giving it serious thought, appreciating that Ala seemed willing to wait her out. Finally, Fei decided, ‘We need to get our side of the story out there.’
‘And this mediaist friend of yours won’t make us look like right douchenozzles?’
‘I don’t know,’ Fei said honestly. ‘But we should give our fight a face, someone the galaxy can see and sympathise with. Because right now we’re nobody. Everyone knows GLEA but they don’t know us. Ton Tinel can help us change that.’
‘I’ll talk to Bock,’ was all Ala said in farewell before she turned and left.
Fei grabbed her techpad and started searching the Webchat feed for BozzMed, aka Ton Tinel.