“Twenty seconds,” he said, and bolted for the ready room door, leaving Smythe standing there. Seventeen seconds later he returned, dressed now in a flight suit and carrying two flyers’ helmets. He tossed another coverall at her. “Put this on.”
Normally Smythe would probably have taken exception to this kind of abrupt treatment, but the threat of death must have made her decide to forego her usual umbrage. She slipped the garment over her clothes and then received a helmet from the cyborg’s hand.
Next, the metal man took off his facemask and tucked it into his suit, revealing his human visage, relatively well preserved except for some bruising around the edges, from the explosion. He walked over to tell one of the pilots to get out of his craft. The man did not argue, but ran over to take the copilot’s seat on the other bird.
Waving Smythe toward him, the cyborg took the pilot’s seat and pulled on his flight helmet, bringing up his piloting overlay template and double-checking the aircraft’s status. Once Smythe had settled into the copilot’s seat of the little attack bird, he pressed the button that sent the signal to open the roof.
***
Surprise blossomed in Spooky’s racing mind as the ground began to move beneath his feet. It seemed a hill grew under him, and he ran downward to find stable earth. As soon as he could, he turned to see a squarish rupture, sharply cornered, doors with a thin layer of dirt and plants over them for near-perfect camouflage.
Something coming to the surface.
Nguyen backed away, looking around for his troops, but none were closer than half a football field, of any nation’s rules. With the HUD he called several to him, and marked the new threat on their displays. Then he hefted his own weapon, a heavy PW-20 loaded with Needleshock, worthless against most vehicles. He felt no great concern; any ground car or truck to emerge could be handled by his commandos or, if need be, by his aircraft.
Instead, one slim VTOL blasted skyward from the opened doors, then another. “Bring them down!” he ordered immediately, and several weapons of various sorts – anti-aircraft, heavy machinegun, Armorshock – let loose after them.
The lead vehicle took a missile into the engine housing, forcing its pilot to put it down immediately onto a hillside before he lost all control. Its twin lit up with the discharge of an electromagnetic pulse cannon, which froze all of its systems. Nosing over in the air, it tumbled when it struck the ground, coming apart by bits and pieces.
“You two check that one,” Nguyen said to the nearest commandos, pointing at the first crash, the biggest mess. Over his suitcomm he ordered, “All others on the surface within sight of it, converge on the downed craft and capture those in it.”
Then he ran.
As he was not the closest, he was far from the first to reach the crash site, and so was perfectly positioned to witness the death of one of his people. Too eager and insufficiently cautious, the man died in a burst of 20mm fire from the nose of the aircraft.
Its pilot had brought it in to pancake in some scrubby trees, and thus preserved most of its structure, apparently taking the opportunity to use the heavy weapon to shred the first grunt to walk in front of it.
Stupid, Nguyen thought. Never assume a weapon is not functional. Darwin wins again.
Neither he nor the seven or eight others approaching made the same mistake.
Because of his capture order, his people did not simply send in rockets to blast the fuselage, but one of them carried an electrical cannon, useful for dealing with a number of problems. Not only vehicles but also nano-infused personnel would fall to its overwhelming charge.
That commando fired its lightning bolt into the VTOL, and the aircraft’s electrically-operated 20mm cannon burped one abortive burst before jamming. Residual lights inside the helicopter-like vehicle went out, and as the blue shimmers dispersed, all were plunged into darkness.
Switching to IR allowed Nguyen to see a figure moving weakly inside. “Leave it to me,” he ordered, and approached alone on cat feet, PW20 at the ready. Hopefully, a couple shots of the heavy nonlethal round would allow whomever it was to be taken into custody. He could always use brave, resourceful people on his own team, if he or she could be persuaded to give up any hard feelings.
The copilot he could see shuddered wounded, her visage hidden by the aviator’s face shield. Red blood soaked her flight suit, her breathing labored. The male pilot next to her sat unmoving in his seat, face down on the cyclic stick.
“Get the pilot out. She’s wounded, and I want her alive. Make sure she is disarmed,” he instructed. Unfortunately he’d chosen his commandos for aggression and capacity for violence, not their ability to take prisoners.
Moving to the other side of the cockpit, he kept his own weapon pointed at the unmoving man slumped in the seat. Reaching for a piece of tubular metal wreckage, he used it to prod the body, seeking signs of faking injury or death. The chest did not rise and fall, so he tossed the rod onto the VTOL’s floor and fired one round into the figure’s thigh, where it burst with a spark.
No reaction. Satisfied, he turned to look at the team ministering to the injured pilot.
Spark?
Only Dadirri saved him, long hours ever alert to his old teacher Maka’s walking stick, blows that would come at him from every blind direction until he could feel them before they fell, merely by the way they disturbed the air.
Flexing at the waist, Spooky dropped his helmeted head below a powerful swing of the very tube he had just discarded and continued the motion, rolling and coming smoothly to his feet beyond, facing the aircraft. Firing instantly, he put five rounds into the chest of the figure even now rushing for him.
Mistake! He could see no effect, and by then the man got too close. Blocking another strike of the enemy’s improvised bat only rendered his own weapon useless, broken in half by a blow like a pile driver. Then he recognized the one he faced: from his size and speed, this must be his pursuer from the assassination attempt.
Pride nearly undid him then, temptation to have his vengeance, and to tell the others, this one is mine, but he believed he had long ago moved beyond such idiocy. Survival and victory came through outthinking and outfighting, not though heroic gestures.
“Kill him,” Nguyen ordered.
Weapons from the half-circle of onlookers ripple-fired, but their target changed direction suddenly, faster than expected, causing them all to miss. Bullets and rockets plowed the ground as the figure, still anonymous in his helmet, charged at the downed pilot and the two commandos giving her aid.
One instinctively rolled out of the way, weaponless and wise with discretion.
The other snatched up a grenade launcher, but even nanite speed failed to bring the weapon on target before the attacker shot his foot forward in a blurring, precise kick. The commando’s head snapped backward and lolled as his body tumbled, dead or dying.
More shots crossed his path and one Armorshock round struck with its characteristic discharge. The man stumbled, slowing, and other projectiles hammered him to the ground until he lay still.
Even more cautiously this time, Nguyen approached, not relying on any firearm. Rather, he held his hands in an open combat stance, and took light steps that would have impressed Kwai Chang Caine’s blind Kung Fu teacher.
Dadirri saved him again, as well as a lifetime of training, as incredibly, the man surged to his feet scarcely slower than before. His shattered helmet fell off of him.
Now Nguyen could see the face of his attacker, which turned to face him. A face he knew, that he’d studied so long ago in his nephew Vinh’s intelligence dossiers. And he never forgot a face, even one he thought long turned into Edenhood and therefore cured of his penchant for sick cruelty.
“Miguel Carrasco.”
“Spooky Nguyen.” The man’s voice sounded like something a machine would make, but his face showed a very human rage.
“What is this about?” he asked. “What did I ever do to you?” His racing thoughts already had a theory, but if Spook
y had any weaknesses, curiosity might be one of them, so he let the man talk rather than ordering him killed.
“You wanted to kill me, there on the floor of the lab. I appreciate that.”
“Yes?” Spooky’s theory took a hard left turn. “You would rather have died?”
“Yes! But that do-gooder Markis and his tame bitch had me shot up with the Plague.” Carrasco’s face twisted with hatred and reflected agony.
“Ah. I see.” And now he did. “No longer could you take pleasure in rape and murder. What was it – nightmares? PTSD? Guilt?”
“It was pure hell. I swore I would find a way to get myself back and hunt you bastards down…and now, here we are.” Carrasco smiled. “Are you still a chickenshit gook slope who can’t face a man?”
Anger surged within Spooky, an emotion he thought he’d dispensed with long ago. It caused him to give in to pride.
“Leave him to me,” he ordered his troops in a low, grating voice. They shifted uneasily, forming a circle. Spooky wondered what kind of a man would carry a grudge for more than a decade, when he could have rehabilitated himself in any number of ways. He also wondered what technology it was that allowed the man to operate with a dozen obviously fatal wounds.
More than a nanocommando.
Shadow Man?
Cyborg?
Carrasco’s attack confirmed his supposition, raining lightning blows powerful enough to break bones, using arms and legs sheathed in metal visible at wrists and ankles.
Spooky dodged and, when necessary, deflected the strikes with his own armored limbs. Even with such protection he was driven back, laterally, and around.
Like a tiger after a bobcat the metal man come on, implacable, his eyes suddenly glowing a visible red, a demonic thing of deliberate terror. Each blow missed by mere millimeters as his quarry moved out of the way. “You cannot survive against me,” the nightmare voice crackled.
“On the contrary, you cannot survive at all,” growled Spooky, risking a strike to the man-thing’s knee. It felt like kicking a metal pole, and did not slow his enemy in the least. Apparently the cyborg felt no pain. Damaging that armored joint, or any other, would take a powerful blow from exactly the right angle.
“I’m going to rip your head off and shit down your yellow neck,” his enemy said.
“I think not,” Spooky responded from within his cold rage, unleashing a combination designed to set up the spinning mule kick that would break that knee. He arranged it perfectly, finishing with every ounce of his nano-enhanced strength and speed, driving his heel sideways into the man-thing’s leg.
Instead, he felt his own fibula snap and his tibia shatter, shocking him utterly as he stumbled and fell, pain shooting throughout his body. I am a fool, he thought as he scrambled in the dirt. I discarded all the lessons of Dadirri in the heat of my emotion, and started brawling. I deserve to die.
Carrasco stumbled too, his leg knocked from under him though not damaged as planned. He fell heavily, then rolled toward Spooky, reaching with clawed fingers, intending to finish the job. As he did, a blade shot out from the cyborg’s arm, spearing six inches into the smaller man’s calf, causing him to jerk reflexively and pull the leg back, leaving a gaping wound that poured blood and dragged an enormous flap of flesh.
This thing could kill me, Spooky realized with dawning belief. Belatedly, he recalled the first and most obvious lesson Maka had taught him: where one fails, many succeed. “Kill it!” he roared, somersaulting backward and out of the way on three good limbs.
A hail of firepower converged on the cyborg. Armorshock blasts immobilized him long enough for antiarmor rockets to chew chunks from its metal skin. Large caliber bullets probed for the few weak spots – the eyes, the throat, the elimination port – and tore into the less robust human-machine hybrid mechanisms beneath.
Once the firing diminished, a nanocommando strode forward with a short rotor blade from the downed VTOL and used it to chop the thing’s head from its shoulders. It took nine blows.
Sitting on the ground holding his leg wound closed, Spooky instructed, “Find tools in the wreckage. There should be fire axes, or perhaps something in the workshops – saws, cutting torches. I want this thing dismembered and the pieces locked up in hard cases for shipment back to Direct Action labs. Ritter,” he turned to one of the squad leaders, “load our wounded on a good bird back to headquarters and pick up whatever you need.”
“Yes, sir,” Ritter responded, calling over his comm for a VTOL dustoff.
Spooky looked at the ugly scene around him and repeated to himself: never again. Never again would he fight from an inferior position. Never again would he allow opposition to grow powerful enough to challenge him on the continent of Australia. If a subtly effective police state filled with drones would save Earth, then by the gods, he would create one. No Stalin, no Mao, no Attila or Khan would outdo him in implacable ruthlessness.
His next order of business was to find out where that thing that used to be Miguel Carrasco had come from. Soon, he swore, he would have his own cyborgs, and his own cybernetics.
Never again.
-6-
“I can’t say I’m that unhappy, except about leaving you.” Jill Repeth spun the readout tablet idly around on the tabletop next to her husband Rick Johnstone’s cluttered CyberComm workstation within the damaged space battleship Orion. Orders to report to the provisional US capital of Pueblo showed on its face. “Space just isn’t for me, I don’t think.”
Rick turned his blue-grey eyes in her direction. “Eventually you’ll be spending more and more time out here. Your skills and augmentation make that a certainty.”
“All the more reason to get back down to Earth for a while.”
“I think you have unfinished business, and you’re bored.”
“Is that wrong? I’m not cut out to be a bodyguard, and there’s not much policing to do up here. As soon as this ship starts in its conversion to a permanent orbital station and the new cargo haulers start hauling stuff up from Earth, Admiral Absen will probably have plenty of Stewards around him.”
“So you want to be where the action is. I get it. I knew who you were when I married you.” Rick leaned across to kiss her. “Vaya con Dios, you have my blessing.”
Jill leaned into him and kissed him back. “The orders say next available shuttle. That gives us twenty hours.”
“We can have a lot of fun in twenty hours.” He stood up, shutting down his console.
“Yeah. How long can you stay awake?” she asked.
“I got a battle stim left over that I haven’t turned in yet…”
“Naughty husband of mine. Sounds fun.”
***
Jill slept most of the way down, even through the roughest bucking of the shuttle. It was an acquired skill most combat troops developed. She woke up alert as the wheels touched down at the enormously-expanded Butts Army Spaceport, formerly Airfield, on Ft. Carson, Colorado, and soon walked off the spaceplane with a heavy duffel in each hand. For this occasion, she had put her Marine utility uniform back on.
Crisp, cool and sunny, the Colorado sky made her squint. She wasn’t used to it, and here at altitude, the sun’s rays seemed harsh as she walked across the new concrete. It smelled of hot rain and jet fuel.
Flashing lights on a black SUV greeted her as she approached the terminal building. The vehicle pulled up next to her and the doors popped open, disgorging two beefy Secret Service men. “Hop in, Master Sergeant,” Jill heard the woman in the driver’s seat call, so she tossed a duffel to each of the men.
One stumbled and dropped her bag. The other merely gave an oof and looked at her strangely as he caught it. Each ballistic nylon sack must have massed fifty kilos. Obviously that had surprised them, as well as the ease with which she had tossed them. The two men hefted the things into the SUV’s rear cargo space, then slid back in to the back seat, one on a side, as Jill stepped into the passenger front.
The woman driving was unknown to her, but seeme
d cut from the same mold as the others. “The President would like to see you, Master Sergeant,” she said flatly.
“I see.” No point in asking what about. These would either not know, or would not tell, so she kept her mouth shut until they debarked twenty minutes later in front of the Presidential Mansion in Pueblo.
“Secure those bags for me, will you gents?” Assuming her request would be granted, she followed the woman through security and soon was ushered into the august presence of President of the United States Nathan B. McKenna.
He looked far younger now than his chronological sixty-some years. When she had last seen him, he had just been infected with the Eden Plague and the rejuvenation process had not yet taken hold. Now, after several months, he looked like a young thirty, with old eyes. He sported grey dye at the temples, an affectation all the rage among Eden rejuvs in positions of power.
“Jill!” McKenna reached for her hand warmly, a two-handed politician’s grip, but she could see he was genuinely sincere. Still, she doubted his summons was for just a kumbayah with the Marine who had saved his life.
“Good to see you, sir.” Once they were seated in the Oval Office – made so in this “New White House” by renovation rather than original design – she asked, “How may I serve my country?”
McKenna poured two single-malts with his own hand. “We’ll get to that. How is Rick, and how was it up there? Tell me all about it, from a personal point of view. All I get is briefings. Tell me a story.” The man seemed eager to hear her tale of space battle, his eyes bright and interested. Had be been a dog his ears would be standing up and facing forward.
So she spent the next half hour describing everything she could, as McKenna sipped Scotch and nodded. Eventually Jill relaxed, even with two Secret Service agents standing behind her.
Besides, she knew she could take them out if she had to.
Crazy to think that way.
Cyborg Strike Page 7
