The Kabul Incident: A Weir Codex Novella

by Mat Nastos

  Hands slick with quickly cooling crimson goo slid across the smooth surface of Brazier’s now-cracked computer.

  “Yes!” thought Brazier. Communication should be back on line any second. He had a chance. Licking his dry, blood-caked lips, the engineer looked back over his shoulder, trying to hide his efforts to get an emergency signal out to Talborg…to Gauss…to anyone who might be listening.

  “System reboot in ten…nine…” came the thin, female voice of Brazier’s electronic tablet.

  So close!

  Fingers forged from titanium-carbide alloy elongated with a twitch of the cyborg’s wrist. Blades nearly a foot in length slid into thin grooves along each of Cestus’s ten fingers, transforming them once more into the weapons of a butcher. A human grin half formed on the super-soldier’s face, forced out from somewhere outside of the cold, logical computer programming that formed the personality construct hard-coded into his electronic brain. The mind of Cestus had been replaced by something alien and far less human than what he had been before.

  “Six…five…”

  Stalking forward with the ease of a panther hunting its prey, Cestus towered over the engineer’s fallen form and raised its clawed right hand.

  “This is the way the world ends…” he repeated to his quarry’s horror.

  “Two…”

  “Help me…” Those were the last words to escape from the blood-caked lips of Engineer First Grade Scott Brazier. The words fell even as his head dropped to the hard packed dirt floor of the tiny room. Freed from its position atop his thin shoulders, Brazier’s skull fell onto its side, eyes still blinking up wildly at the man responsible for his death.

  “System reboot initiating…”

  *****

  Grace Talborg slid her hand up and rubbed her newest companion: the thin line that formed in the middle of her forehead, between her eyes and just over the bridge of her pert nose. The wrinkle had begun to make itself known four hours earlier when the eight surviving members of the covert team sent out into the deserts surrounding Kabul had returned to the safety of Camp Eggers. It started to threaten to split her face open three hours earlier when Talborg and her bosses back at Project Hardwired headquarters in Los Angeles had watched the POV footage taken from the on-board computer located deep within the brain of Designate Cestus.

  That was thirty-two viewings ago and it was beginning to look like there would be another thirty-two before they were done.

  Computer technicians, cybernetic engineers, military analysts, and even the heads of the Project had all been brought into the spacious boardroom eight-thousand miles away from where Talborg had confined herself and her computer to review the footage and to assess exactly what had gone wrong. Or, to be more accurate, to review the footage and assess exactly who was to blame for what had gone wrong.

  Somehow, approximately three minutes into the mission, all communications to and from the team in the area—all satellites, all land-lines, all radio waves—had been disrupted. The group had been cut off. Even more disturbing was a loss of contact with the cyborg soldier, Designate Cestus, who had been sent into an active insurgent base to recover stolen chemical weapons. Never before had anything like that happened. There were back-ups and redundancies built into every system, and it was statistically impossible for them all to go down at once.

  And, in regards to what precisely happened to him during that time—or what happened to the engineer monitoring the cyborg—Designate Cestus was being absolutely no help.

  All the cybernetically enhanced super-soldier would say was that he went off-line for six minutes and that Agent Brazier had been killed by an enemy ambush during that time. Not that Talborg really cared one way or the other for the loss of Brazier. The man had been an idiot and it was only a matter of time before he made a mistake that was going to cost the project in some way. All Talborg really cared about was the black mark she was sure was being left on her otherwise spotless record.

  “Was there any trace of the sarin gas containers or the rocket launch vehicles, Agent Talborg?” The face leaning in to ask the question was one very familiar to the woman: the head of the weapons division at Project Hardwired, Jason May. “Did any of the terrorists make it out of the compound alive?”

  “All the chemical weapons were recovered by the clean-up crew, along with the BM-21s and approximately seven tons of small arms and explosives. Twenty-nine corpses belonging to known members of the Jabhat al-Nusrah were recovered on scene.”

  “And Agent Brazier?”

  “According to Designate Cestus, Brazier was killed in crossfire with the enemy,” signed Talborg. She’d already gone over this bit of information at least six times with six different people. “Although Brazier’s blood was confirmed on the scene, we were unable to locate a body.”

  She knew what was coming next.

  “Can you bring up that footage, Agent Talborg?”

  “You damn well know I can’t, Jason,” snapped the mentally frayed woman. “Cestus claimed it happened while he was incommunicado.”

  “‘Claimed?’”

  “I don’t trust him…something happened during the blackout and it’s affected his systems.”

  “Come on, Grace. The techs here are saying Designate Cestus is still operating at over ninety-five percent efficiency. That’s well over the level of any of the other cyborgs…even your unit, Gauss,” chided May.

  Defeat wasn’t an easy thing for Talborg to accept.

  “So what now?”

  “Bring him back to the barn,” came Jason May’s voice over the satellite communications array connecting the woman in Camp Eggers with Project Hardwired operations back in Los Angeles. “Word from upstairs is that our boy is going to get upgraded with Doctor Ryan’s new nanotech. Director Kiesling and the Hardwired executive board are thrilled with Designate Cestus’s performance.”

  “Excuse me, sir?” Talborg was stunned at the announcement from her superior. Had the man not heard what happened? A six minute loss of communication and the death of his handler. As good as the cyborg’s performance rating had been, there was no way Kiesling and the others could ignore what had happened.

  The disembodied voice of the head of weapons development for Project Hardwired snapped back, annoyed. “You heard me, Engineer Talborg. Clean ‘em up and get the entire team—Cestus, Gauss and your pretty little ass—packed up and ready to head home. Wheels up within the hour. No arguments.”

  “But, Jason…”

  “No. Arguments.”

  May’s voice went cold and hard in the technician’s ear. She couldn’t believe he was cutting her off like that…especially after the recent physical turn their relationship had taken. The late nights in the office after the rest of the staff had gone home. The weekend in Lake Tahoe last month. Still, she knew enough about the man not to push things too hard. No matter how much Talborg thought Gauss deserved the coveted system upgrades from Doctor Ryan, she knew May would never be bullied into changing his mind. The best she could hope for was to…influence it.

  “Sir.”

  The temperature dropped a few more degrees with May’s response. “What is it now?”

  “Might I suggest a full mem-wipe to go along with Designate Cestus’s upgrade?”

  “Damn it, Grace, you know that’ll take a full rotation from the tech boys. We’re under the gun with our overtime and budget as it is.”

  An idea formed somewhere just beneath the line in Talborg’s brow.

  “It’s a matter of the unit’s active memory. The nanotech is going to require at least fifty percent of the Designate Cestus’s core system memory to load in and initiate…right now, he’s operating way under that.” The grunt from May nearly eight-thousand miles away told Talborg she was on the right track. Working the tech was the way to get to him. “A clean system will give us the best integration with Ryan’s nanobots. Otherwise, we’ll risk systemic rejection and have a crashed Prime on our hands…or worse. Remember what happened with Designate
Siege in Japan? None of us needs another mess like that, do we?”

  Ten seconds of dead air had Grace Talborg worried that she’d lost her boss. That she’d pushed too hard.

  “You do it,” answered May finally, allowing the blood to rush out of Talborg’s ears where it had been pounding harder than a college drum-line. “Any overtime is on your head.”

  “Of course, sir,” grinned the tiny beauty to herself. “And maybe we can finish that…project we started in Tahoe—”

  “Hardwired out,” said May an instant before the line went dead.

  She had him and when she got back to the states she’d make sure to do whatever it took to bring him all the way around to her side again. She and Designate Gauss would get the recognition they deserved, Cestus and his incompetent handler be damned. They were owed the top spot.

  “Gauss, Cestus…pull the gear and get yourselves into the stasis pods. We’re heading stateside in sixty.” To Cestus, the engineer added, “And don’t forget Brazier’s pack. The lab rats are going to want to go over his data with a fine toothed comb and see where you two botched up.”

  Nodding, the blood-covered cyborg responded, “Yes, Engineer Talborg. I have Engineer Brazier’s files ready at your convenience.”

  As the tall cybernetic soldier turned away to leave the darkened confines of the tent, Talborg caught something in his eyes. Something predatory and alien. Something that seemed to be watching and waiting. For what, the young engineer had no idea. Whatever it was, she couldn’t wait to get the bastard back to headquarters and get him erased. Even if she had to go in on her own time to get it done she’d make sure there was nothing left of the monster when Doctor Ryan’s staff took over. Hopefully whatever personality construct they built for him next wouldn’t be such a creep.

  “Yes,” thought Grace Talborg as she finished packing her own gear. Everything would be better once they got home.

  ###

  Follow the adventures of Malcolm Weir in “The Cestus Concern” available NOW!

  GLOSSARY

  CHU:(pronounced choo) Containerized Housing Unit. These small, climate-controlled trailers usually sleep between two and eight soldiers and is the primary unit of housing on larger bases. A CHU Farm is a large number of CHUs together. A Wet CHU is a CHU that has its own bathroom, usually reserved for generals and other high-ranking individuals. CHUs are unarmored and very vulnerable to rocket attacks.

  DFAC:(pronounced dee-fack) Dining Facility. AKA Chow Hall. Where soldiers eat.

  Dust-Off:Medical evacuation by helicopter. For example, "Dust-off inbound" means that a MEDEVAC helicopter is on the way.

  Fitties: The M2 .50 caliber machine gun.

  FOB: Forward Operating Base. Bigger than a COP (combat outpost), smaller than a superbase. A FOB can be austere and dangerous, but is more commonly provisioned with hot, varied meals, hot water for showers and laundry as well as recreational facilities.

  Fobbit: Derogatory term for soldiers who do not patrol outside the FOB.

  FUBAR: Fucked-up Beyond All Recognition. The situation has gone bad.

  Green Zone: In southern Afghanistan, refers to the lush, densely vegetated areas following rivers which Taliban fighters defend vigorously. As opposed to the Brown Zone, which refers to the more barren mountains.

  Groundhog Day: From the Bill Murray movie, the phrase is used to describe deployments where every day proceeds the same way, no matter how the individual tries to change it.

  Hajis: A derogatory term for Iraqis, used widely during the Iraq War. A Hajii Shop was an Iraqi-run shop on the base, often selling pirated DVDs, or Hajii Discs. Rarely used to describe Afghans.

  Jabhat al-Nusrah: a branch of Al-Qaeda operating in Syria and Lebanon.

  Pino: Derogatory term for the cyborg members of Project Hardwired. Shortened from ‘Pinocchio.’ Toy-boys who aren’t real.

  POG: (pronounced pogue) Person Other than Grunt. Derogatory term for a soldier lacking combat experience. See: Fobbit.

  Rum-Int: A combination of rumor and intelligence. Gossip, scuttlebutt.

  SAM: Surface-to-Air Missile.

  Sit-Rep: Situation Report.

  Tangos: Hostile targets.

  PRAISE FOR

  THE WEIR CODEX

  BY MAT NASTOS

  The Cestus Concern

  “With The Cestus Concern, Mat Nastos crafts his most daring and imaginative work to date. Thrilling and action-packed, Cestus moves at a breakneck pace. Nastos continues to show why he is the next great voice in sci-fi.

  —Rob Liefeld,

  Creator of Deadpool, Cable, Youngblood and X-force, and founder of Image Comics

  “Equal parts Terminator, Frankenstein and Universal Soldier, Nastos reinvents the classic motifs, creating something truly exciting.”

  —Adam Lance Garcia,

  Author of Green Lama: Unbound

  “Nastos has crafted a novel that is crying out for a comic book or movie adaptation. Just when you thought you'd seen everything cyborgs had to offer - from Robocop to Wolverine - Nastos plants one firmly on your jaw with this!”

  —Express News & Reviews

  “The Cestus Concern is intense, adrenaline powered action that never slows down from the first to the last page.”

  —The Examiner.com

  The Cestus Contract

  “Mat Nastos is one of the most exciting writers working in the field of adventure fiction today. Every page is an adrenaline rush and by the end of the story, you're left breathlessly anticipating the next. If you're not reading Nastos, you're truly missing out.”

  -Barry Reese,

  Award-winning author of The Rook, Lazarus Gray and Gravedigger

  “It was the best 80’s action movie I’ve read in a long time.”

  -Derrick Ferguson,

  New-Pulp author of Four Bullets for Dillon and The Adventures of Fortune McCall

  "Nastos has done it again! Cestus Contract is simply science fiction gold. Nastos’ passion and enthusiasm for the genre shines through on every page. If you’re looking for a thrilling and shocking action adventure, search no further. You’ll be hard pressed to put this saga down."

  -Mark Roslan

  Comic book writer of BubbleGun and Broken Pieces

  "Like a man shot out of cannon, Malcolm Weir finds himself in a never-ending tornado of mystery, intrigue, and violence, as he struggles to find out the truth about who he is and what he has become. With the follow-up novel, Mat Nastos doesn't mess around, cranking the action and mayhem to eleven right out of the gate and never lets up. It's a rip-roaring, mega-palooza of adrenelin."

  J.T.Krul

  Writer of Jirni, Soulfire, Captain Atom, Mindfield, and The Lost Spark

  PRAISE FOR

  OTHER WORK

  BY MAT NASTOS

  Man With The Iron Heart

  "It's rare when a book takes both the front line experience as well as the supernatural elements so readily associated with World War II and the Nazi party and turns them into something seamless and intriguing. "Man with the Iron Heart" does that exceedingly well and the characters live, scream, fight, and die right off the page, not content with just leaping."

  - Tommy Hancock,

  Award-winning author and publisher of Pro Se Press

  “The Man With the Iron Heart's tight and snappy prose takes grounded supernatural mysticism, a charming cast of very human characters and then hurls it all into an adventure that revels in the unapologetic grandiosity of classic action movies!”

  - David A. Rodriguez,

  Writer of Finding Gossamyr and Lead Writer for Skylanders: SWAP Force

  Read on for a preview of the first book in the exciting adventures of Malcolm Weir, The Cestus Concern: Weir Codex Book 1.

  Available NOW from Nifty Entertainment.

  CHAPTER 1

  It has been said being born is one of the most painful and traumatic events in a person’s life. For Malcolm Weir, being reborn was far worse.

  The first thing Mal noticed
as the warm, floating feeling only an especially heavy dose of morphine can give started to fade was the telltale itch in all ten of his toes and the balls of his feet.

  Strangely enough, the itch didn’t reach his hands. From the middle of his pecs, into his shoulders and down through both arms, there was an odd buzzing feeling, almost as if the Army Ranger was holding a faulty power cord in his hand—not quite the pain of electrocution, but an uneasy feeling that lay just below the surface and culminated in a pinprick discomfort in each of his fingers.

  As consciousness returned, a number of other tidbits of information began to register in Mal’s brain, the most troublesome being that his head felt as if a thick railroad spike had been inserted into it just below the base of his skull, and whatever caused the ache seemed to steal away his ability to move his head freely.

  His mouth was dry; so dry, it felt as if Mal had been sucking on cotton balls and Brillo pads for days, his tongue cracked and devoid of even the slightest hint of moisture. Mal couldn’t remember the last time he’d had anything to drink.

  Panic and worry struck with the force of a hammer between his eyes as the man realized he couldn’t remember anything at all. Mal had no idea where he was or how he got there. The worry quickly turned to fear as the soldier found himself unable to open his eyes.

  Where am I, thought Mal, as his darkness seemed to suddenly swirl with chaos and terror? What happened? Why can’t I see?

  Frantically, Mal reached up with his left hand to touch his eyes, barely noticing the feel of metallic and leather arm restraints tearing apart from his movement. His outstretched finger struck his face with more force than he intended. The tip felt numb, almost as if his hands were wrapped in a wet sock. A shaking hand traced the outline of the tape cover his eyelids as the sounds around him returned all at once as if someone had switched them on like a radio.