“Reckoning”
CHARACTER LIST
LEADS
Robin Wakefield
Drew Harding
Clay Hartman
MAJOR ENSEMBLE
Sergio Santini
Gretchen Sharper
Mort Willis
Perdue
Purnell
MINOR ENSEMBLE
Radon
Iona Pax
Felicia Winthrope
Stan
Lorena
Johnny
Katia
Cristo
Maya
Seriana
Skyhawk
Cliff
Piper
Carson
Alexis
Ermies
Bespellion
Alexandra
Adrienne
Brandon
Boyd
Aart
CAMEOS
Victor
Ardel
Seril
BIT PLAYERS
All other named characters
ONE
Purnell glanced up from the video display and shouted over to Perdue. “Hey, psycho-killer. I think I found you a soul-mate.”
Perdue sauntered over, his rifle balanced over his shoulder. He bounded into the back of the SWAT truck. “Purnell, you know I’d never let anyone come between us.” He smiled wickedly.
Outside, the men were playing POSTAL. They’d gotten quite addicted to the game, a side effect of Robes-Pierre reprogramming their minds with it. He had turned Pembroke’s game’s mind-melding magic to serving their need to psych up for every new mission, drop old skill sets, add new ones, and to generally reinvent themselves on the fly.
Just what reprogramming they would need the game for in order to come up against this chick, Purnell couldn’t say.
“She goes by Felicia Winthrop,” Robes Pierre informed them. “She’s got game.”
They scrutinized the security camera footage of the hospital room where Felicia had awakened after an ice pick to the head, a miracle all by itself. “Did she just paralyze the good doctor with a thought?” Perdue sounded more fascinated than put out.
“Yep!” Robes Pierre sounded just as giddy with excitement at the thought of being entirely out of this chick’s league. What was it with these guys and limit-testing? Purnell was beginning to think he’d signed on with a group of perpetual adolescents.
“Look, fellas,” Purnell interjected, “I hate to rain on your parade, but we have our hands full with the tech-enhanced. Going after demi-gods is definitely not in my job description.”
“Stop trying to turn my action-thriller life into cheap horror with your ominous remarks, Purnell.” Perdue squeezed Robes-Pierre’s shoulder in a fatherly way. It was usually all it took to generate the predictable Pavlovian response. “How long to tweak POSTAL, and how much longer for the game to tweak us?” he said.
Robes-Pierre shook his head. “Not like the boys bother to come out of the trance state that game keeps them in, anymore. We have that going for us on the plus side. On the minus side, no one’s tested just how far you can take the human mind before on simulations and endorphin-releases.”
“We’ve already gone further than anyone’d have thought possible.” Perdue continued to speak in a confidence-building manner. “Why step on the brakes now?”
Perdue was referring, of course, to the fact that initial exposure to POSTAL had reduced most of his men to drooling vegetables. Follow up reprogramming with the game—used as a weapon for, as opposed to against, them—had gotten them back to where they were originally and then some, each man a good ten to twenty percent sharper in his area of expertise. Somehow recent history made Purnell no more sanguine on the matter of going even further into the heart of darkness chasing after ever-worse bad guys. This was video-game logic; the idea that life couldn’t be lived except level by level, each one more treacherous than the one before. What he needed was a time machine to go back in time and kill the first video game designer; now that was a mission worth carrying out.
Perdue’s coaching having its usual effect, Robes-Pierre said, “I guess we’ll never know if we don’t try.” It occurred to Purnell that the kid’s buttons were easier to push than the ones on his computer console.
“That’s my boy.” Perdue sounded pleased.
***
“Forty-eight hours playing with the latest tweaks to POSTAL?” Purnell groused. “That’s all? You think you could have given the game a chance to work its magic?”
Perdue shoved a clip into his automatic rifle. “You wouldn’t like to see me in any role under than the underdog.”
No, he wouldn’t, come to think of it.
Purnell regarded the cement floor beneath his feet. Better that than creaky floorboards to alert their targets there were very scary dudes taking up position. But jumping off railings onto cement, rolling across it after bullet-dodging kamikaze dives… everything pointed to a later appointment with the chiropractor. Thirty-five was just too dang old for this line of work, especially chaperoning the likes of Perdue.
The warehouse had a high enough ceiling for a hawk-breeding program. Some of Perdue’s men had assumed the high roosts that would have been favored by the hawks, taking advantage of the scaffolding used partly for storage, partly for catwalks.
Their comm system allowed them to converse freely, amplified their faintest whispers, and it also brought the conversation between Felicia Winthrop and her mark into bold relief. That last part wasn’t doing anything for Purnell’s ulcer.
“Remind me why I should be so impressed?” Felicia asked. She occupied the center of the room, alongside Taylor Caldwell.
Taylor picked up the weapon. “It’s a de-atomizer, though I prefer the term ‘ray gun,’ myself.” He aimed it at one of the street people trapped in cages like experimental monkeys.
Taylor fired the weapon and the street person disappeared. “No blood trail. No DNA. No evidence the person ever existed.”
The street people threw rabbit pellets they’d been given as food at Taylor and railed against their cages.
“How come the ray gun doesn’t affect the cage?” Felicia asked.
“It’s keyed only to biological life. On setting two, it will dispense with the cage, too, and, if you like, half the warehouse.”
“Nice.” Felicia smiled and nodded.
“Is this where I get paid for all my efforts?”
“Yes, it is.”
Taylor found himself aiming his rifle at himself, and not understanding why. “What— What’s going on?”
“I’ll be piloting your autonomic nervous system for the rest of our journey together.”
That was Perdue’s cue to act.
With catlike reflexes, he fired before Taylor could depress the trigger.
But he’d made the mistake of aiming at Felicia, not Taylor, and her reflexes were even faster. She turned toward him and dodged the bullet by angling her head at the right split-second.
Taylor no longer pointed the rifle at himself; he pointed it at Perdue. He fired, and that section of the warehouse disappeared.
“It really is too cluttered around here,” Purnell said, figuring Perdue had dodged that bullet like so many others, and so was in a position to appreciate his sense of humor.
The rest of the team opened fire on Taylor, enveloped him in a cloud of bullets that would effectively dematerialize him the old-fashioned way: one bullet hole at a time.
Felicia took the opportunity to sneak out the back. She dodged numerous bullets coming at her general vicinity with equal finesse. Purnell thought, What we should have done was enclose Felicia in a halo of bullets, as she was the harder target to take out. But the boys had a nasty habit of shooting first, thinking second.
Perdue, no fool himself, had stayed locked on Felicia. He seemed not the least deterred by the fact that Taylor was holding up from the impact of all those bullets striking him as if the laws governing life and death had temp
orarily been suspended.
Perdue fired an RPG at her; let her try and deflect its blast. She did, however indirectly. Taylor turned and ignited the RPG with his ray gun before it got halfway to Felicia. She ducked the blast radius using the same superhuman responses. Though, her temper clearly wasn’t immune to taking a hit.
Taylor focused his weapon on Perdue who shot it out of his hands using reflexes nearly as good as Felicia’s.
Taylor caught the rifle in his opposite hand and depressed the trigger in the same motion. Forget that the angle of the rifle was already perfect for taking out Perdue, showing Felicia could maintain a calm, calculating head under duress. With the ray gun’s locking ability, Perdue understood that ducking was pointless. Instead he utilized the one option remaining, which wasn’t pretty.
He shot at the rifle, aiming to cripple it, with little more than its business end to take aim at, essentially being asked to shoot up the rifle barrel. Even for a marksman like him, that was a tall order. Still, he did it.
But it didn’t matter. The ray heading for him was unimpressed by the lead stopper in the barrel.
Perdue next did something that threw them all for a loop.
He held out his hand, palm up, as if it were a shield. And he emitted a ray from it that took out the rifle in Taylor’s hand, and seconds later, took him out as well. Just like with the de-atomizer, there was nothing left. “Robes-Pierre, you want to get in here? I have some more tweaks for POSTAL.”
The SWAT truck drove through the wall. The driver couldn’t be bothered to drive around to the gate and crash through it, which might have taken a few more seconds.
Purnell found his way to Perdue’s side. “We’re letting Felicia get away.”
“I’m over it. She’s small potatoes.”
“Now that you emit laser beams from your palms, you mean, and mere mortals have become oh, so tiresome.”
“Something like that.” Perdue smiled, and shouldered his rifle. “You just keep up your end of the repartee, Purnell. Hate to get full of myself, now.”
“No kidding.” Purnell took some solace from the fact that Perdue seemed to have the same sardonic distance on himself as ever, even if he did seem a bit off. “You mind explaining for the rest of us?”
The group descended the scaffolding, and gathered around Perdue.
Robes-Pierre, who had incontestably been monitoring everything from the truck, already had Perdue’s hand in his, open for inspection. “Fuck me. The game did this?”
“Not exactly.” It was the first time all eyes left Perdue’s palm. “Some chick named Robin Wakefield.”
“But how?” Robes-Pierre asked.
“By telepathic link, I’d imagine. As to the technique involved—apparently there’s an energy-medicine more familiar to the Chinese, using meridians and conduits through the body.” He stared at his own palm, flexed and released the hand. “She showed me how to use acupuncture, acupressure, meditation, tai chi, and other practices to open the channels further, in case I wanted to pull off this stunt on my own next time.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Robes-Pierre said. “I’m familiar. I should have thought of this myself. I’ll upgrade the game. In a month we’ll all be doing this shit.”
“We don’t have a month.” The ominousness of Perdue’s words did not escape the group.
“I’m afraid to ask why,” Purnell said testily.
“Maybe I’d better let her explain.” Perdue pointed to an empty space on the floor where absolutely nothing was—but empty space. The entire crew stared adamantly at it, anyway. Which is why they saw a woman materialize before them, taking form as they watched.
“Hello, gentlemen. I’m Robin Wakefield.”
Several of the team relaxed on cue, shouldered their rifles, and whistled and made inappropriate catcalls. She didn’t even blink. Strange, because for a saint, she sure knew how to dress to hypnotize the typical male long enough to put them of a mind to accept whatever she might have to say. Purnell guessed that wasn’t exactly by chance.
“I’m sending you on a mission to Saturn.” There were gasps and jaws hanging open, which Purnell figured was to be expected. “There’s a colony there, circa 2150. A floating city, to be precise.” Nervous chuckles bubbled up in several of the men. Some averted their eyes and tried to get comfortable with their weapons again, as skepticism settled in, despite her hypnotic allure. “I need you to protect this man.” She projected an image of a geeky-looking twenty-something. “His name is Fabio, and he built the time machine that got him to 2150. It’s not exactly our timeline, but close enough. He’ll become important to the alliance in the days ahead.”
Purnell thought, What alliance?
Robin Wakefield glanced at him as if he’d spoken out loud. “I’ve downloaded the images from my mind to Perdue’s, so he has some sense of what he’ll be up against.”
“Why not download it to all our minds?” Robes-Pierre asked.
After only a brief hesitation, she said, “You couldn’t handle it.”
Purnell suddenly realized what was off about Perdue. If anything, he looked steelier than usual. He was leaning mighty hard on his emotional dampening mechanisms to hold himself together. Iron Man could use a little oiling after that image download despite his efforts to project a smooth façade.
“Not to bog us down with minor considerations, but how the hell do we get to Saturn?” Purnell realized he was sounding like his usual whiny self.
“Once you’re up to speed, and I get the signal from Perdue, I’ll teleport you.” She smiled supportively, then dematerialized.
“I told you if we kept playing POSTAL, it’d lead to these kinds of psychotic breaks,” Purnell shouted, literally spitting his bile at Perdue.
Perdue smiled placidly. “I think you know better.” He broke open one of the SWAT truck’s external compartments, intent on stowing his gear. He signaled the others to follow suit. By the time they had the rest of the lockboxes open, it looked more like a fire-truck than a SWAT vehicle.
Purnell got up in Perdue’s face. “I tell you what I know; you’re taking orders from mystery chick because you can’t resist an invitation to fight outside your weight class. And since twenty-first century Earth doesn’t cut it anymore, at least until the next man out of time comes along, you’re happy to beam yourself over to Saturn.”
“I got the sense when she was in my head that she’s doing this for exactly the reasons you stated, only to save me from getting any darker. I guess she feels there’s more to be gained from giving me what I want than from frustrating me.”
Purnell snorted. “One more reason not to trust her.”
“To tell you the truth, she struck me as an amped up version of you.”
“Charming rhetoric will get you nowhere.”
Perdue smiled, then removed his Kevlar vest, and emptied the pockets to stow the shells and grenades in their proper drawers. Undressing as they talked gave their conversation a level of intimacy that wasn’t exactly intended. “I’d think we’d finally be on the same page, Purnell.” He assembled a fresh weapon. “We get to kill people who need to be put down, no doubt about it. Takes all the ambiguity and misgivings out of it for you.” He slapped the clip into place. “And we get to champion the little guy.” He chambered a bullet. “You get to marry your bleeding heart to my blood-lust. From now on, the missions fulfill both demands.” He slotted the assembled gun he’d pieced together into its rack. Perdue liked to make sure things weren’t so stripped down to base parts, there wasn’t at least one weapon ready to go.
“I don’t believe you.”
Perdue sighed. His eyes briefly went up and to the right, indicating he was thinking off the cuff. “We’ll need a practice mission before jaunting off to Saturn. Once we’re done powering up, we’ll head to the Amazon rain forest. Explain the facts of life to all those big money interests, the mining companies and earth-rapers, one and all, who want to take advantage of the locals.”
“You mean it?”
<
br /> “Don’t go off half-cocked. We still have work to do. Robes-Pierre, how you coming with those tweaks to POSTAL?” Perdue glanced down to see Robes-Pierre linking POSTAL to the data bases on energy medicine, which highlighted the energy meridians and chakras of the body; texts on acupuncture; various Zen scrolls giving testimonials to the superhuman abilities of saints and sages throughout the ages. He held his thumb up to Perdue. “Get on your headsets, boys, and load up,” Perdue shouted. He inserted his in-ear headphones. “Looks like we’re heading a little further down the road than we’re used to.”
The rest of the team slipped on their in-ear headphones that linked them to POSTAL as they climbed in the back of the truck.
***
Robin materialized back in her bed. She briefly flashed on the obelisk in the Iranian desert, which had empowered her teleportation to Perdue’s SWAT team location. The obelisk glowed in a small section along one of its four facets, still having not entirely powered down from the assist it had given her.
Even more alluring than the draw of the obelisk and what it could do to empower her outreach program to the other Renaissance figures was the idea of what she might one day be able to do sans its assistance.
One day she would no longer need the crutch.
TWO
Radon leaned out the driver’s side window toward the security guard at the gate. “Hey, where’s all the traffic going?”
“Sytech. Big conference. High-muck-a-mucks flying in from parts of the world I never heard of—and they probably wish they hadn’t either.”
Radon laughed.
The guard, perhaps figuring he’d said too much, picked now to get suspicious, and checked over the car. He noticed Radon’s thousand-dollar suit and his fifty-dollar car and made exactly the inferences Radon meant for him to make. “You sure you want to pick today for a job interview? If I were you, I’d come back tomorrow.”
“Desperation trumps common sense, you know?”
“Don’t I.” The guard pressed the button which raised the gate. He ushered him through with an impatient gesture, suddenly more focused on the line of cars behind him.
Renaissance 2.0: The Entire Series (books 1 thru 5) Page 175
