We Dare

by Chris Kennedy

  “If you didn’t outrank me, Nate, I’d call you something a little stronger than lightweight.” Gunny laughed again.

  “Seriously, you look good,” the captain said. “I can’t see a limp and you’re not hesitant when you step off. I see a big difference, but are you ready for this?” He indicated the course with a wave of the cup in his hand.

  “About that,” Gunny said, “I was ready to retire before because I couldn’t complete the course. I can’t ask my marines to do something I can’t. Now, I can complete the course. The thing is, I’m not going to.”

  “What? Why?” Brink asked, concerned.

  “Because I can’t ask my marines to do something I can’t,” Gunny explained.

  “Ok, now I’m lost. You’re going to have to spell it out for me.” Brink said, shaking his head.

  “Everyone that runs this course hopes to set the record,” Gunny explained. “Hell, I wanted to every time I ran it. My score was normally in the top ten and I wanted the record for myself. Walk with me, Sir.” He walked past the first two obstacles to the first wall.

  “If I run the course, you’re going to record the time in that slate,” Gunny continued. “When I finish, I’ll hold the record time by a long shot. I can’t ask my marines to chase that time. I couldn’t catch it before my injury, when I wasn’t servo-assisted with bionic legs. I can’t ask them to.”

  “Now, I understand,” the captain said. “What I don’t understand is why you have us out here this early after only three hours of sleep if you knew you weren’t going to run the course.” He took another sip of his cooling coffee.

  “I’m not going to run the Beast, but I am going to tackle this one obstacle,” Gunny said indicating the wall in front of him.

  Gunny ignored the rope, and with seemingly no exertion, jumped and grabbed the top of the thirteen-foot wall, swung his legs over, and from a sitting position dropped down. Brink, standing off to the side of it, saw everything. He tossed his slate into the air over his shoulder. “Definitely don’t need this for you,” he laughed. “Get off my course before you embarrass it. The last thing I need is a Tamed Beast.”

  * * * * *

  Kevin Steverson Bio

  Kevin Steverson is a retired veteran of the U.S. Army. He is a published songwriter as well as an author. He lives in the northeast Georgia foothills where he continues to refuse to shave ever again. Trim…maybe. Shave…never! When he is not on the road as a Tour Manager he can be found at home writing in one fashion or another.

  * * * * *

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  Twitter: @CallMeCatHead

  # # # # #

  Tank by J.F. Holmes

  “Are you even human anymore?” she asked me. Brave, even with my gun pointed at her face.

  “Honestly, I don’t know,” I answered. Apparently, I took too long thinking about it, because her kick caught my titanium ribs and dented them, despite my skin hardening around the blow. The soft vital organs behind the ribcage knew they were human enough, and pain rocketed through my body as I fired. The bullet headed for her face, but her face wasn’t where it was supposed be. Damn, she was fast. Her second kick swept my legs out from under me, and I fell like the tank that I was. Hard.

  As I lay on the ground, waiting for the pain override to kick in, she stomped on the gun and casually crushed it. I expected her other foot to come down on my vulnerable throat, but she just leaned down and smiled. It was a beautiful, bitter smile.

  “I don’t know if I am, either,” she whispered and was gone.

  I sat up, feeling the pain but not caring. O’Brian poked his pistol around the corner, scanning through his HUD. Seeing that the coast was clear, he stepped around and knelt by me as I breathed in and out deeply.

  “You OK?” he asked worriedly, trying to watch everywhere at once while dealing with the information overload, a common issue for beat cops nowadays. The biometrics piped from HQ would have told him if I was seriously injured, as in, penetrating wound, but he still gave a shit, anyway.

  “Yeah, just give me a minute. Gyros ain’t as steady as they used to be.” That was a ‘borg joke; I didn’t actually have gyros, but five years of combat left me feeling like an old man sometimes.

  “Well,” he said, grunting with the effort to help me up, “getting blowed up will do that to a guy. Ask me how I know.”

  “How do you know?” I said, groaning as I got to my feet.

  He smacked my head. “Wiseguy. You got jokes. Now what do we do about Wonder Woman?”

  I linked to his helmet, and, while facial recognition software burned through a search of the five hundred million people living in America, uploaded an incident report to the NYPD Special Services D-base. “We, Officer O’Brian, don’t do shit. I go get her.”

  “Uh-uh. We’re a team, you’re my partner, and we go get her.”

  “Shit!” I groaned as her name and a face flashed up in my sight. She was a frigging scout—I knew it—though there was a big red CLASSIFIED and APPREHEND stamped across her Department of Defense official picture. Filled out the khakis pretty good, though, if you ask me. A severe Slavic face, high cheekbones, sergeant’s stripes, and crossed rifles. Infantry. Could have been a model, and ‘borgs made rank fast. Like O’Brian said, ask me how I know.

  Sergeant First Class (R) Valentina Kruchenova, Date of Birth, 2021.06.13, entered service U.S. Army through Brooklyn MEPS on 2039.06.14, entry MOS 11B, end service 11B4G. Departed Service 2047.09.06. Full military disability pension. Her combat record was classified, but I did a DNA link and proved my identity, and the list dropped down.

  Two tours with 2nd BN, 75th Ranger Regiment, including The Big Jump into Pretoria. Operation Blue Snake had been some bad shit. White farmers were being murdered wholesale as the country tore itself apart, and Blue Snake had been a clusterfuck from word go. Sixty percent casualties. I had been a dumb ass mechanized grunt at Fort Stewart when that happened, so I missed out.

  After surviving that, she was recruited into Special Forces, but washed out. The cited reason was “not mentally qualified” which I read as “not a team player.” That was when they were trying to rebuild Army SF after the endless War on Terror. You have to be both physically and mentally good to go, and the new SF had a 90% washout rate.

  “What the hell are you whistling about?” said O’Brian. “Lemme see.”

  “No way, buddy, I’m just getting to the classified stuff, and Leavenworth is really cold in the winter. You don’t want to see this.” He made a coughing sound that sounded suspiciously like he was saying “bullshit” but stopped pestering me. Good partners were like that.

  Next entry in her record was ‘transfer to TRADOC, drill sergeant.’ Speaking of bullshit, that was a common enough cover story for The Project. It had been a joke to those of us on the inside. I had been an “equipment tester” at the Army Research Lab in Massachusetts. Yeah, she was a scout. Loner, fast, augmented VR in her head, heightened senses, burner metabolism, and trained to hell and back in hand to hand.

  “Fuck me,” I muttered. She was going to be tough to catch.

  “Only if you buy me dinner first,” said O’Brian.

  I ignored that; I had already bought him dinner plenty of times, and he never put out. Not that I was interested, too many Y chromosomes for me. I preferred mine with natural XX, like Miss Valentina here.

  The rest of her record was more bullshit, piled higher and deeper, but each ‘transfer’ corresponded with an Operation I knew about. The hacker strike in Russia. Operation Wintermute, disabling the Chinese sub pens in the Spratly War. It had been a busy couple of years for both of us. Five years of running and gunning, until Congress shut us down.

  “Hey, Tony? Earth to Tony.”

  I tuned back in; O’Brian was holding up one finger and pointing to the side of his helmet. Unlike me, he didn
’t have an internal visual display, just his HUD. “Commander is on the line, wants to know what’s going on. Wants a visual.”

  I gave it to him. Zooming in on the three bodies sprawled out against the wall. I thought they were Caucasian, but it was hard to tell. Their faces had literally been smashed in, with the same kick that had dented my ribs. From their clothes, though, I guessed low level Russian mobsters. Muscle. I heard Captain Hernandez curse under his breath; he must have figured the same thing. Then he said, “Last thing we need, another frigging gang war.”

  “Yeah, and we’ve got other problems. She’s a ‘borg, like me. Well, not like me, she was a scout.”

  “And you were a tank, Corelli. You’re the only ‘borg, I’ve got right now, so go catch her while I give the Russians holy hell.” Click. Not even a goodbye. Grumpy bastard, but if I had his job, I would be too.

  “You drive, I gotta eat. Let’s grab pizza from Enzo’s.”

  O’Brian smirked and said, “You’re a cop now, not a soldier. We’re going to Bella Napoli for donuts. Like real cops.”

  * * *

  “10-13-UNCLE, 10-13-UNCLE, CORNER OF BROADWAY AND FORTY SECOND. SPECIAL UNIT ADAM NINER FIVE RESPOND.” Uniformed officer in need of assistance. Could be anything, but they wanted us there. I knew what that meant.

  We both said ‘shit’ at the same time, and I cued my mic. “Adam Niner Five, responding.” Coffee cups were put down and donuts crammed into mouths, O’Brian stepped on the gas, and we started enough lights to give an epileptic a fit. I told him to kill them when we got within two blocks.

  Flipping over to an internal com frequency, I listened to the report coming in over the net. “That’s our girl,” I said to O’Brian, but he was busy yelling at pedestrians to get out of the way. One gave him the finger; my partner rolled down the window and hit him with a pepper gun. The man cursed him in Swahili but got out of the way. Three blocks later, we were diverted. “ADAM NINER FIVE, REPOSITION FOR INTERCEPT” and an icon started to flash in the map in each of our displays.

  I had to admit, I felt damn human right then, as we went down Broadway, no lights on, Googazon cars being automatically directed out of the way. It was a thrill and always would be, almost as good as combat. One didn’t move fast enough, and the massive Ford Thunder SUV clipped the bumper, sending plastic and ceramic flying, probably waking the driver. It careened onto its side, and O’Brian yelled “SORRY! BILL THE MAYOR!” as we blew past. He took a corner on two wheels, jumping the curb and wrecking a hot dog stand, splashing dirty dog water all over the hood.

  “You’re cleaning that up,” I said to my partner as the wipers swished across the windshield.

  O’Brian merely laughed and drove faster. “My family has been cleaning the City’s shit up for two centuries, you stupid wop. Mostly you wise guys.”

  “Like an O’Brian ever made Detective.”

  “Like a Corelli ever lived to make it to Don!”

  He was a good partner who took my oddities in stride. We worked well together, though the older cop knew to get out of the way when I went from Tony to The Tank. Like now, as a DNA sniffer screamed, and I saw Kruchenova out of the corner of my eye. I clicked to target follow, opened the door, and bailed out at fifty miles per hour.

  As each part of my body hit the pavement, carbon nanofibers in my skin cells went rigid, forming a hard surface to protect the flesh underneath. I guess you could call it a combat roll, but I didn’t come up firing. Instead, I stayed tucked and hit her just as she turned to run, sending her sprawling. Before the scout could recover, my iron hand locked around her ankle, and I lifted her into the air. I stood close to seven feet after my enhancements and could hold the small woman high enough that her hands flailed at open air.

  “Valentina Kruchenova, you are under arrest. You have the right to—” and a shitload of electricity shot through my body. I fell over, my implants momentarily short circuited, right eye blinded, wires trailing from my mouth, one of the few vulnerable places for the taser prongs to piece my skin.

  “I don’t think so, Tank!” she laughed, and this time she kicked me in the balls. Those were, fortunately or unfortunately, still human. Just a slight tap, still disabling, but I knew she could have smashed them to paste. If I had been down before, I was out, now.

  “That…was a…dirty…move.” I grunted and tried to move protesting muscles and joints to cover my groin. She laughed, a melodious laugh, and ran as O’Brian fired his pistol at her. I honestly don’t think he was aiming too hard, though.

  “You know,” said my partner, kneeling down into my field of view, “I think she likes you. Really, I do. That’s the second time she didn’t kill you. I heard that in Italian families, that means love.”

  “Shut. The. Fuck. Up!” I managed to wheeze.

  “Adam Niner Five, Command, send update!” Hernandez called. O’Brian answered.

  “Dispatch, Corelli has been momentarily neutralized, and you don’t pay me enough money to chase a ‘borg.”

  There was a long moment while it seemed that we could actually hear Captain Hernandez cursing from all the way over at HQ on Randal’s Island without a radio. Then he came back on, “Adam Niner Five, from Command. Continue pursuit when able.”

  “I think he’s mad. No, really. He was cursing in Spanish; I could hear it.”

  * * *

  “So, where to next, partner?” O’Brian was driving a little more sedately now, only occasionally flashing his lights. “Take you over to Bellevue? Get you checked out?”

  “I’m fine,” I grunted. Truth was, I felt like complete shit, both physically and mentally. I’d had worse, like that time I caught part of an RPG in Venezuela, but this was an all-over body pain, like the worst charlie horse imaginable. I could barely move.

  Mentally, I was having a tough time. I actually kind of sympathized with Kruchenova, in a way. With the war over and our program shut down, what were we ‘borgs supposed to do? I had glimpsed my own file once, and a line at the top had caught my eye. Instead of being hired for a job, I had in reality been transferred from DOD to the Defense Reutilization Management Office. From DRMO, I had been transferred to DHS, and then to NYPD, as “surplus military equipment suitable for civilian law enforcement use.” They tracked my transfers like I was hardware, not a person, and if that wasn’t a big enough mind fuck, I didn’t know what was. Normally, I kept it at bay, and enjoyed the work I did for the Special Services, but today it was really getting to me. Her question, “Are you still human anymore?” echoed in my brain. Was I?

  “Hey Tim,” I said, as we waited on the approach to the bridge. Speed wasn’t necessary; she could have run to Brooklyn before our car could drive there.

  “Yeah? Broad bugging you?”

  “Well, she asked me if I’m even human anymore.”

  He seemed to think about it for a minute, waiting for the driverless mess to sort itself out. Then he said, “You still have a dick, right?”

  “I do.”

  “Does it work?”

  “Want to see?”

  He glanced over at me with a smile, but then said, “NO. My point is, if you got a dick, and it works, you’re human. Maybe catch this broad and put it in her, if she wants, and you have the ultimate answer.”

  “Life is very simple for you, isn’t it?”

  “Tony, my boy, the older you get, the simpler it gets.”

  I banged my hand on the dashboard out of frustration with the traffic, and at what was bugging me. Unbuckling my belt, I got out and walked up to where two aging hipsters were standing with their VR glasses on, trying to talk to a NYPD traffic bot. I shoved them out of the way and picked up the closest car. I tipped it on its side, then rolled it over like an egg. Then the next, and the next, making a lane for us. O’Brian leaned out the window and clapped as he steadily drove forward. As I climbed back into the Ford, he said, “Now THAT ain’t human!”

  “Not helping, Tim. Just drive. Take me over the bridge. We gotta go to her home turf; she k
nows the heat is on.”

  * * *

  Brooklyn was, is, and always will be, Brooklyn.

  My ancestors had started in the Lower East Side, fighting the Chinese south of Canal Street. When they had enough economic clout to buy townhomes in Brooklyn, they made the move rather than walk-up cold-water railroad flats. After that, Long Island and a small house in the suburbs, in towns with the names of vanished Indian tribes. Each successive wave of immigrants had followed them, and Brooklyn had become a patchwork of ethnic enclaves. When the Soviet Union fell, many ethnic Russians had fled the chaos to the Brighton Beach area, muscling out what was left of the Italians. I recited my history lesson out loud, as I had often done killing time in the army.

  “Why are you telling me all this crap?” asked O’Brian as we crossed under the timeless arches of the Brooklyn Bridge. “Like us Irish give a shit, we just toss your asses in jail. We’re the good guys.”

  “Oh yeah, well then what’s a paddy wagon named for?”

  “So, we like to drink, big deal!” he shot back.

  I liked teasing him; he was a good partner. “What about the Westies?” I asked, referring to a particularly violent gang of Irishmen who terrorized the Lower West Side way back in the eighties.

  “Everybody’s got some fuckups in the family; you know that. Kinda like that cousin you hide in the closet. But again,” he said, dodging through driverless cars onto the Belt Parkway. There were faster ways to get to Brighton Beach, but we both loved the view. “But again, why are you babbling about history?”

  “Because I like to understand the situation I’m getting into. The territory. The culture,” I told him. I had actually been reciting the history of the borough out loud.