Recon- the Complete Series

by Rick Partlow

  Then I was surging forward, the restraint straps yanking free from their moorings when they tried to stop me. I barely realized they were there; I felt nothing but a faint, background heat that seemed to come from inside me. I intercepted Calderon’s hand as it swung past me, grabbing him by the wrist and twisting. There was a snap that echoed inside my head as the wrist broke, then a scream that seemed obscenely loud in the enclosed room, more a bellow like a cow elk going down to a wolf pack.

  I smiled at that, a baring of my teeth that wouldn’t have looked out of place on one of those wolves, then slammed my elbow into Calderon’s nose and felt it crunch flat in a spray of blood. I sensed rather than saw Van Stry coming up behind me, pulling her pistol out of her holster, and I let Calderon’s broken wrist go. I snatched the pulse pistol out of her grasp before it could clear the holster and chopped the grip into the side of her neck; she dropped like a stone, her eyes rolling up, but I was already turning back to Calderon.

  He hadn’t gone down; he was a tough son of a bitch for all that he was a pretty boy. He was clawing for his own gun, partially blinded by the pain in his nose and reaching across with his left hand to the holster on his right hip because of his broken right wrist. I had a pistol in my hand, but I wasn’t thinking very clearly at that point. I had no problem with killing him, but I felt an almost irresistible urge to beat him to death, not even considering shooting him.

  I used the pistol butt as a club, instead, smashing it into his jaw and sending him sprawling backwards and crashing into the line of cots against the wall. I took a step toward him, fully intent on pounding his skull into mush, before I realized that the med-tech was yelling for help and the door to the room was opening…

  I finally realized I was holding a gun. A gloved hand came through the open door, bracing itself on the frame, and I shot it. There was a crack like lightning striking a tree and severed fingers flew away from a charred and cratered section of the wall. The door swung slightly open and I fired the rest of the magazine through it, not caring if I hit anything. There was no response; the screaming and swearing was trapped inside sound-proofed helmets. But a couple of wild bursts of laser fire rattled the metal door with static discharges before I rushed across the room and slammed a shoulder into it, closing it securely. It had a physical bolt lock, much cheaper and quicker to install in a temporary facility like this than an ID-protected electronic one. I threw the bolt, then turned just in time to see the technician lunging towards me with an injector in her hand, probably loaded with sedatives.

  I smacked the device away with the red-hot emitter end of the pulse pistol and she cried out sharply and grabbed at her burned hand as the injector flew out of it. I could feel myself starting to come down from the adrenalin high already, still numb from the painkillers but knowing on some instinctive level that I’d pulled, if not torn, some muscles and tendons and I was going to hurt very badly in the not-so-distant future. My nanites would fix me up, given time, but between the end of the painkillers and the beginning of the healing was going to be a world of hurt. Of course, I was getting ahead of myself; it was far more likely that I was going to die in the next few minutes, and then I wouldn’t have to worry about the pain.

  I stumbled over to Calderon and yanked the pistol out of his holster. He wasn’t quite unconscious, but he was lolling stunned on the floor, blood pouring from his nose and mouth and his right wrist limp and hanging at an unnatural angle. I smiled slightly. I wanted to shoot the fucker, but letting him suffer from the humiliation of the beating was more satisfying.

  I tossed the empty pistol into a corner, automatically checking the load on the fresh one. Calderon had the damned thing personalized with his initials engraved in the metal casing around the ignition chamber. I snorted.

  What an amateur.

  “Are you…are you going to kill me?” It was the technician. She was holding her bruised and burned hand to her chest, panic and desperation in her round, pale face and light eyes.

  “Not if you don’t give me a reason to,” I told her and I could tell I was slurring my words. It was a combination of the drugs she’d given me and the ones I’d given myself. I cursed under my breath and peeled the patch off my neck. The damage was done now, its payload long delivered, but I tossed it on the floor anyway.

  She cringed away as I stepped over towards her, but I walked past and retrieved the injector from the ground where she’d dropped it. Van Stry was stirring, hands going to her head. I stuck the business end of the injector into her neck and pushed the activation stud. Air hissed out along with the sedative, and the woman collapsed back to the floor, insensate.

  “Hope that wasn’t a fatal dose,” I mused, tossing the device away.

  “No,” the tech assured me, sitting down on one of the cots next to where Calderon was moaning softly on the ground. I noticed she wasn’t in any hurry to treat him. I doubted she liked the guy any more than I did. “It should put her out for a couple hours maybe.”

  “Captain!” The voice was amplified by a helmet’s exterior speakers and clearly audible even through the thick, metal door. It was the team leader, Sgt. Rose. “Captain Calderon! Are you all right?”

  “He’s alive,” I yelled back. That seemed to take a lot of effort and I had to catch my breath and steady myself against the gurney before I continued. “He ain’t talking much at the moment, because I broke his fucking jaw. And his nose. And his wrist.” I chuckled, feeling the loopiness returning a little. “Breaking parts of him has been fun…I may take it up as a hobby.”

  “What about the others?” She didn’t seem too concerned about Calderon getting his face busted. He was just so popular…

  “Agent Van Stry of the DSI,” I giggled at the rhyming rhythm of it, “is sedated but breathing. Your med-tech is fine.” I nodded to her. “Tell the nice sergeant you’re fine.”

  “I’m fine, Sergeant!” She yelled. “He’s telling the truth about the others.”

  There was a brief pause, like Rose was conferring with someone else or maybe just thinking about what the hell his next move should be.

  “Munroe, how do you see this going down?” He asked me finally. “You aren’t getting out of that room alive unless you surrender, you know that, right?”

  I laughed at that, sitting down on the gurney now, the pulse pistol aimed in the general direction of Calderon and the med-tech.

  “Did you have someone go fetch you the Official Hostage Negotiation Handbook or something out there, Sarge?” I asked him. God, I wished combat was this much fun when I wasn’t drugged.

  He didn’t answer, and I thought maybe this was it, that they were going to blow the door, but instead I heard a hammer of running footsteps; then an alarm klaxon began sounding, blaring painfully over speakers set in the ceiling. The med-tech glanced around like she could see what was causing the alert, and even Calderon seemed to stop writhing in pain on the ground long enough to look up at the sound.

  They both looked over at me, and I just grinned and shook my head. The explosion came seconds later, close enough and big enough to toss me off the edge of the gurney and send a mobile medical scanner toppling over to the floor. I landed on my right shoulder and barely kept a grip on the gun, feeling a flare of pain that told me the drugs from the pharmacy organ were beginning to wear off.

  Outside the door, I could hear the crack of pulse lasers discharging, and an answering fire, the distinctive whoosh of rocket weapons. The exchange intensified, loud enough that it had to be right outside in the corridor, and then it fell silent. Heavy, echoing footsteps approached the door and I pulled myself up to one knee, holding the laser at low ready in both hands.

  The door shuddered under a thunderous impact, like a battering ram, and dust flew off the wall. The med-tech jumped at the noise and ran to the back corner of the room, huddling down behind the auto-docs. Another blow cracked the buildfoam frame around the door and I could see the lock starting to give. At the third hit, the door swung inward violently, let
ting a cloud of smoke and dust billow into the room from the chaos of the outer corridor.

  The biggest Skinganger I’d ever seen stepped inside, barely able to squeeze through the doorway. His gleaming silver right hand was still balled up in a fist, and I knew instinctively that fist was what had broken open the door. A rocket carbine was in his left hand, held like a pistol and pointed at me.

  “Is this the one?” He asked through sharpened, metal teeth in a gleaming metal jaw.

  “Yes.” I knew the voice before he appeared out of the smoke and darkness in his black leather vest and shorts.

  It was Kane. He nodded to me curtly.

  “Let’s go, Boss.”

  I laughed, wincing as the laughing hurt, and the getting up hurt even more. My head was swimming and the smoke filling the room had somehow made into my brain.

  “What took you so damn long?”

  Then I passed out.

  Chapter Eight

  I was moving.

  I was moving, and I was uncomfortable, and my head hurt.

  No, scratch that; everything hurt.

  I opened my eyes with difficulty and reluctance and saw that I was lying across a metal bench in the enclosed rear compartment of a cargo truck, my head jammed into a stanchion at an odd angle. Sitting across from me were Divya and Victor, covered in soot and smelling like smoke and looking as beat up as I felt, but still alive.

  Surrounding us, crowded shoulder to shoulder in the cargo box of the truck, were nine Skinganger cyborgs, their bionics bare, proud metal. All of them had their arms and legs replaced, and most had at least one cybernetic eye as well, a couple with completely metal jaws and one with a full skull cap replacement. I’d gotten used to having Kane around, even though I still thought he was batshit crazy for wanting to replace his flesh and blood parts with bionics, but this… It was like the difference between having a pet snake and falling into a pit full of vipers.

  “Where’s Kane?” I mumbled hazily, sitting up painfully. I felt like a bag full of broken glass. I was also starving, which meant I was healing.

  “Up front,” Victor said, sounding cheerful despite his bruises and what had to be a hell of a headache from the stunner. He gestured towards the cab of the truck. “He’s some kind of VIP, I guess.”

  “Any of the others with him?”

  Victor shook his head.

  “They don’t like us Norms too much,” he elaborated, shrugging.

  None of the Skingangers around us seemed to object to the statement.

  “Did you kill her?” Divya asked me without preamble. Her voice was flat and lacking the affectations and flourishes she usually favored.

  “No.” I didn’t bother to pretend I didn’t know who she meant. “She was incapacitated and I had other problems.”

  “She’s going to be trouble, you know.”

  “She’s already been trouble.” I rubbed at my left shoulder; I was pretty sure I’d separated it breaking free of the restraints. “Does anyone know where we’re going?”

  Before either of them could answer, the brakes of the big trucks grabbed at the packed soil of the road and began to slow with a grinding, scraping sound and the squeak of metal on metal.

  “No,” Victor said, “but I think we’re there.”

  We came to stop with a violent jolt and I banged my shoulder against the corner of the cargo box before I lurched back the other way and banged the opposite shoulder against the unyielding metal of a bionic arm. I glanced into the glowing, red eyes of the Skinganger I’d collided with and murmured, “Sorry.”

  He didn’t respond, but I hadn’t expected him to.

  The Skingangers nearest the rear doors pushed them open and dropped down to the ground. Light was leaking in from outside now, competing with the chemical strip-lighting on the inside of the cargo compartment walls, and it wasn’t the neon glare of street lights or signs. Dawn was breaking, finally, bleak and grey but a relief from the oppressive darkness.

  I let Victor and Divya go ahead of me, trying to work up enough energy to move. I couldn’t find it, but I had to move anyway. I nearly fell out of the back of the bed and Victor had to grab my arm and steady me before I regained my balance. As I straightened up, I began to notice our surroundings.

  We were somewhere in the city, surrounded by generically industrial buildings and warehouses, the truck pulled just under the overhang of an enclosed garage. The dull, grey metal door was cranking down as I watched, blocking out the grey dawn in favor of the dim interior lights. Four other trucks were parked inside the garage, along with a makeshift armored vehicle built out of a rover. A wide ramp led up to a double-doored cargo entrance on the next level, with a narrower staircase running parallel to it and terminating in a side entrance sized for people instead of freight. Four Skingangers were posted in the garage as guards, as motionless as statues at their posts, each carrying a heavy, backpack-fed assault gun.

  Kane was waiting for us not at the foot of the stairs or the ramp, but at another, smaller door tucked into the side of the concrete support column upon which the ramp was built. It was an elevator, and the only way it could go was down.

  “Want to fill me in?” I said quietly to Kane as he led us into the lift car. It was just the four of us; none of the Skingangers came along. “What the hell happened anyway?”

  “Vilberg,” Kane said, pushing a button on the wall, the last one in a row of four. “Told us about the fight with the mercs and the Skingangers.” His natural eyebrow moved slightly, as close as he would come to a shrug. “Wanted to talk to them.”

  There was a lurch and a fatigued, overtaxed electric motor hummed to life, lowering us down under the warehouse.

  “How did you know I’d be in trouble?” I prodded.

  “They have sources,” he said simply, gesturing upward.

  That wasn’t surprising. I bet they had autonomous insect drones with on-board memory that smuggled out intelligence physically to get around the EM jamming. The Skingangers loved all those little tech gadgets.

  “Are the others here?” I wondered.

  “No.” He might have left it at that with anyone else, but with me, he knew he had to be more precise, even at the expense of wasteful and inefficient oral communication. “Back on the ship. They wouldn’t be welcome.”

  “But we are?” Victor cracked. Kane didn’t respond to that, but then he didn’t feel like he had to talk to Victor.

  “I’m fairly certain,” Divya commented unexpectedly, “that they brought us here as more of a ‘fuck-you’ to the Sung Brothers than as any bonhomie they might suddenly feel for Norms.”

  “We’re heading to meet someone, aren’t we?” I asked Kane, feeling a sudden stab of concern. “Not just trading one cell for another?”

  There was that slight movement of the eyebrow again, this time a signal of disdain.

  “Anatoly,” Kane told me. “The boss.” He turned back over his shoulder to Victor. “Don’t talk.”

  Victor grunted in amusement at that, but didn’t say anything.

  The car ground to a halt, nearly throwing me forward as the door opened. Wherever we were, it had an air of primitive permanence to it; the walls were carved out of bedrock, unlined and unadorned but for adhesive strips of chemical ghostlights and looking like they could have been dug out tens of thousands of years ago by the Predecessors.

  A single cyborg Skinganger waited for us; and from the looks of this one, she might have started out as a female, though it didn’t make much difference at this point because most of her torso was metal. She had a rocket carbine held at high port, and she followed us closely as we headed down the stone corridor to an open, doorless chamber. It was full of holographic computers, enough storage to rival the Fleet Personnel Center on Inferno. Data input consoles ringed the rounded walls, each equipped with cords that could be hooked up to interface jacks.

  There wasn’t a chair in sight, unfortunately, and I really needed to sit down.

  A hulking figure waited the
re, the light of a data display behind him throwing an ominous shadow across the room. He was big enough that he made Kane look puny by comparison, and he had enough biological material left that I could tell he came by the size naturally, not from the replacements. His face was all biological except for the eyes, both of which were glowing red orbs that didn’t even try to mimic flesh, and the squared-off jaw and high cheekbones spoke of a visceral, natural power and commanding presence.

  The red eyes bored into me with a perpetual glare of disapproval, and he spoke.

  “You are Munroe.” The voice was deep and pleasant, like something you might have heard synthesized for a NewsNet update.

  “I am,” I confirmed. “You are Anatoly, brother of Alexi Putschin, boss of the Novya Moscva bratva.”

  “My brother skulks while I fight his battles.” There was something different about this one, I thought. He didn’t seem a slave to the abbreviated idiom and absurdly efficient movements as the others were, even Kane. “I am my own man and the leader of my own force.”

  “You’ve been fighting the Sung Brothers for a while now,” I said, seizing on his loquacious mood to ask the questions we needed answered. “You’ve attacked them many times. But you claim neither you nor your brother are responsible for the assaults on the Sung Brothers’ off-world weapons caches.”

  “Because we are not,” he said with no doubt in that well-modulated voice. “We lack the space assets to do it ourselves or the funding to hire others. If we had that kind of money, we wouldn’t be forced to fight to the death for our share of the arms market, would we?”

  I felt unsteady on my feet and I wanted to ask him if he had a protein bar in his vest, but I forced myself to relevance.

  “Do you know who is responsible then?”

  “Of course I do.” He regarded me with an almost contemptuous smile. “It’s the Cult.”