Richard mentally sorted through the strands of engineered neural tissue running along the corridor’s wall. Finding the one he sought he drove the hypodermic needle home and injected the mix of potassium and enzymes.
Outside the shield around the compound spasmed and formed a dome over the embassy, blocking any movement in or out of the grounds.
“What the?” gasped one of the collaborators who moved towards Zane. Zane fired, killing the man.
“Any more stupid questions?” Zane tore off his coverall. Richard unrolled the carpet and passed Zane his rifle, while picking up his own sword. Darmuks crowded into the hallway. Zane tossed a grenade into the front rank. It exploded, sending bits of the beasts in all directions. The door behind Richard began to open. He thrust his sword into a green, scaly creature he couldn’t identify. The electric charge coursed through the beast, which fell back, convulsed then lay still. Richard slammed the door closed.
“Rode the six hundred,” called Richard.
“Right,” growled Zane. He fired into the Darmuks in front of them and they began the sixty meter battle that would take them to the bio-mind’s central chamber.
* * * *
“Very good, my pet. Is it sweet?” Tannal forced Ashley to fellatio him.
“Yes, master,” said Ashley, pulling her mouth away. The sun slanted in through the windows, marking it as late afternoon.
“Taste my hole,” ordered Tannal.
Ashley scowled then a ripple ran through the bio-mind.
“Something has activated the perimeter shield! Guards investigate,” snapped Tannal. The two minotaur-like guards by the door moved into the hall.
Ashley wiped her mouth on her arm then closed her eyes. The symbiont released the last of its directives and became her servant.
Tannal felt the bio-mind acknowledge a new master controller.
“How? You can have no power over the core program. I saw to that when I programmed your symbiont,” roared Tannal, both mentally and physically. He glared at Ashley.
“By a power you know nothing of. You don’t understand human love, so you couldn’t access the parts of the mind that are ruled by it.” Ashley opened her mind letting him glimpse the emotion she and Richard had shared. The only thing she had managed to keep hidden throughout her imprisonment. “It’s a power you know nothing about.”
“Die slave.” Tannal focused his thoughts and a wave of energy slammed into Ashley’s brain. She let the force flow through her, dividing it into parts and feeding it to the people of her cyber coven. They took the power, turned it and sent it hurling back at Tannal. The Darmuk roared in pain and frustration as his own system rebelled. He felt the consciousness of several ram units shift, aligning themselves with Ashley.
Ashley let fly the binding programs. Slamming the horror and pain Tannal had used to bind his ram-units into the Darmuk’s mind. Seeking to overwhelm his consciousness.
Tannal hissed as his mind sought to retreat from the horror. He took a mental step towards oblivion then forced a counter program to activate. The binding programs deleted.
“Traitors, after all I have done for you!” he hissed. Vast amounts of data slammed into the minds of Ashley and her cyber coven. Ashley felt herself sinking under the volume of information.
* * * *
Richard swung his blade decapitating a battle-ape. A beast that looked like a giant badger clawed at him. The coverall ripped away but his body-armor turned the blow. A pistol discharged into his chest-plate, point blank. He jerked back into a battle-gorilla’s arms. He felt as if he’d been punched in the gut by a pro boxer. He brought the pistol in his left hand up by his head and fired blindly behind him. The retort deafened his left ear, but the arms holding him released.
Zane let out a volley of automatic fire, massacring battle-apes. The insect-like Darmuks crowded in to take their place. His bullets flattened harmlessly against their re-enforced exoskeletons. Against any kind of organized assault Zane knew they’d be dead already. The creatures had obviously never planned on an intruder getting this far and whoever was directing the assault had no knowledge of tactics. The Darmuk attack was more a barroom gang up than a military operation.
Richard threw a grenade amidst the insect-like Darmuks massing down the hall. It burst, filling the corridor with smoke.
Zane fired on full auto, forcing the remaining battle-apes back then pulled the mask from his belt and slammed it over his face. The insect-like Darmuks were either dead or falling back, but other forms seemed unaffected by the gas. Zane dropped his empty clip and slammed another home.
“Rush.” Richard positioned his own mask.
They sprinted forward, firing at the shadows that moved in the mist. After roughly three meters a group of five Darmuks, that looked like giant armadillos, stood shoulder to shoulder blocking their way.
Zane fired at the beasts, but nothing happened. Richard brought his electric sword down against one of them, but it glanced off. One of the beasts lashed out leaving a deep gouge across Richard’s breastplate.
“Back, toss the cookies,” snapped Zane.
Richard and Zane both stepped back into the thinning mist and tossed grenades onto the floor beneath the Darmuks. The creatures looked at the bombs with disdain and sat on them. Protecting the weaker beasts behind them. The grenades went off. The wall of armored beasts hissed with mirth. There was a creaking sound. The floor gave way and they fell into the embassy’s basement. Richard tossed another gas grenade to the far side of the hole. When it exploded he and Zane leapt gaining two meters of ground.
* * * *
Ashley focused against the data and turned the input towards Tannal. The information quivered between them until one of the ram units released a screech and died, its brain turned to mush. The data stream vanished with the person’s life.
“Witch,” snarled Tannal.
“Proudly!” countered Ashley. A shaft of pornographic web-sites shot from her mind to Tannal’s. She felt his biological drives wrestle with his consciousness, as his body wanted to accept the data. He lost control of more of the bio-mind as he diverted attention to controlling himself.
Ashley felt other ram units opened themselves to her, letting their capacity join with hers. Behind Tannal Betty stirred.
Tannal deflected the pornographic feeds into a ram unit. He mentally clawed at Ashley’s mind, invisible tendrils of will. Ashley countered. The wills met, flashing across the bio-mind units like sheet lightning.
Ashley’s cyber coven opened completely to her. Ten human wills, ten human minds, ten human souls, joined against one Darmuk, backed by all the power and knowledge of a far distant world. The forces balanced. They crackled through the interface. Other bio-ram units died. The gibbeted ones threw off their programs and in their death throws added their wills to Ashley’s.
Betty moved jerkily, like a martinet. None of the mental combatants noticed her.
Ashley felt her coven weaken. The data they had hoarded, the careful networking, was proving insufficient. She pushed harder, but it wasn’t enough. Tannal was winning.
Betty paused as if mustering something within. She leapt at Tannal, slamming her foot into the Darmuk’s groin. She then grabbed his secondary symbiont and pulled with all her might ripping it from his head.
Tannal screamed diverting all his attention to Betty, slamming her mind with so much data the cells exhausted in less than a second. In that moment of distraction Ashley pushed her will into Tannal. His mind exploded in pain. She reached deeper, burning out the modula oblongata. His body stopped. The other minds of her coven rushed forward, tearing their tormenter’s consciousness apart. Tannal convulsed.
Ashley mentally watched over her conveners, making sure no trace of energy stirred in the fallen monster before them. When the last faint glimmer of life left the Darmuk she opened her phy
sical eyes. Standing she moved to Betty’s side.
“Ash,” whispered Betty.
“Betty,” replied Ashley.
“Thank you. Tannal lost control of the mental binding as he fought you. I had to help,” explained Betty.
“I’ll tell your father how special his daughter is.” Ashley watched as the light faded from Betty’s eyes.
Closing her own eyes she once more dipped into the bio-mind. All the ram units that still had a will of their own waited. She sent a command. There was a screech of agony as the feeding symbionts detached themselves, slithering free of their hosts, literally gluing the incisions shut as they departed.
A minute later she sent the second command. She felt the bio-mind shrink as the symbionts disconnected and acknowledged the control of their individual hosts.
“Go, get to the sewers,” she ordered using her own voice.
An explosion rocked the embassy.
“What about you?” Ji-Yeon climbed from the cyber couch and moved to Ashley’s side.
“Richard will need me. Go!” Ashley pulled a flashlight from a compartment on the side of Tannal’s cyber couch and passed it to the Asian. “He was afraid of the dark,” Ashley explained.
The conveners looked at each other.
“Ashley. You may—” began Natalie.
“Am I the head of this cyber coven or not? For the love of Isis, get out of here! Your mates and children are waiting at the docks. Use the sewers. The things down there will be up here fighting Zane and Richard. Steal some clothes once you get outside.”
Another explosion rocked the floor.
The conveners moved sluggishly to the sewer access. Natalie opened the steel gate and with a single backwards glance led the way into the tunnel.
“Ashley, I’ll never forget you,” called Ji-Yeon, as she vanished down the passage, the flashlight making a dim receding glow.
“I’ll never forget any of you,” whispered Ashley.
* * * *
“Last clip!” Zane slammed the clip home in his rifle.
“Bloody hell!” Richard threw the last of his gas grenades into the Darmuks massed before him. Shots rang out from a sniper who stood on the stairs that opened off the side of the hallway farther down.
They pushed forward, their armor rent and battered. Richard’s sword buzzed as the capacitors slowly recharged after each strike. He knew the batteries were almost exhausted.
Zane let his rifle speak. Darmuks fell, but others rushed in to take their place. “Time for Armageddon,” he snapped.
“Do it!” Richard decapitated another Darmuk. Blood oozed into the material of his armor where a clawed hand had made a hole in his sleeve.
Zane jerked up his eye-patch revealing a clear lens. A shaft of blazing, laser light leapt out of the socket. The laser tore into the beasts in front of him. They howled as it sliced them in two, or fast boiled them in their shells. Bits of Darmuk littered the hall. Twenty seconds later Zane crumpled to the floor. Richard grabbed him supporting his left side, which had gone completely limp, and hauled him down the corridor. They stopped at the door to the bio-mind’s core chamber. The laser had cut a path of carnage down the hall.
“Primary power is out.” Zane reached with his right arm and pressed his thumb onto the laser’s lens, it clicked in. He straightened, taking his weight off Richard. “Reserves up. I’ve got maybe fifteen minutes. I’ll hold them here.”
“Zane?”
“What’s a few minutes? Go to her, Richard! Tell her I love her to.”
“I really wish Betty had married you. I couldn’t have asked for a better son.” Richard pushed his last two clips into Zane’s hand and threw his remaining grenade into a clump of Darmuks that were creeping out of a side passage. He left his sword against the wall and entered the bio-mind’s core chamber to the sound of the exploding grenade.
Chapter Thirty
The Gamble
“Last session, if all goes well,” remarked General Flanders.
“Yes. General, thank you for making me stay with this. Doctor…um…Colonel Green was, is an extraordinary man. Touching his mind has been one of the finest experiences of my life.” Major Joans settled on the interface couch.
“He’s a hell of a friend, son. God’s speed to you.” The general stepped back as the nurse started the IV.
* * * *
Upload monitoring/ Richard Green /Index 11:10/ 3/7/2034
* * * *
“Major.” Zane closed the door and took a seat in the small efficient lab.
“What is it?” Richard sat behind a computer set on the workbench that circled the wall at waist height.
“Doc, do you think Janis and Ash are…”
“I don’t know. Intel says the Darmuks have kept some humans alive as slave labor. We can hope, but…Zane, she’s very pretty and there are very good odds none of us will survive to the end of this. Do what feels right. Janis would understand.”
“Wow. Like, Doc, how’d you know?” Zane stood and moved to the work surface at the side of the room. What looked like a sword with a hollow core lay in a vice. A variety of electrical components were scattered around it.
“Candy was asking about you earlier. I never suspected a porn actress could actually have a brain. Just goes to show how we all have our bigotries. That girl is one hell of a secretary.”
“Thanks, Doc. What the hell is this?”
“It’s something of a side project. Ashley and I took up fencing a little prior to the invasion.”
“Yeah, so?”
“The Darmuks won’t stop with the battle-apes and field commanders. Eventually they’ll produce types impervious to bullets.”
“How do you know that?”
“It’s what I would do. Keeping troops alive is efficient; it means they don’t have to spend resources to create new ones.”
“That’s a scary logic.”
“The Darmuks are pragmatists. That logic started me thinking. A high-voltage, electrical charge will penetrate most types of armor. The problem is in delivering it. A sword can contain a power source and capacitor circuits that would release a high-voltage charge when a ground is contacted.”
“You want to send our troops up against Darmuks armed like King fucking Arthur?” gasped Zane.
“Would you rather they go up against them unarmed? It isn’t a final solution, simply a versatile weapon that can be employed against bullet proof Darmuk soldiers until we find a more effective one.”
“Gods, what a mess we’re in.”
* * * *
Upload monitoring/ Richard Green /Index 15:25/ 1/3/2036
* * * *
Richard jacked out of his computer. “Oh, Gods, I miss you!” there were tears in his eyes.
“Soon, my Ash. Soon.” Standing he moved to the recording device he was constructing and examined its circuits. So far he had recorded the life of an elderly dog they had obtained from the pound. The images could be scanned, a single one selected. The gestational chamber that held a fetal puppy was the next stage in the experiment. He only hoped he had time.
* * * *
Upload monitoring/ Richard Green /Index 11:10/ 17/10/2036
* * * *
Richard examined the newest fetal body. This last batch had been the most difficult, because the start up DNA hadn’t been as fresh. Of the forty they had started only seven had made it past the first few cell divisions. Those seven seemed to be doing well.
“Identification may be a pain in the ass, but I thank the Gods for that cell culture.” Sighing he rubbed his eyes. He was thirsty and longed to lose himself. He missed her and trembled at the thought of what he was about to attempt.
“Ashley,” he whispered. His hand was part way to the drawer where he kept the scotch when he
stopped himself.
“No!” He swallowed in a dry mouth and left to get a glass of water.
* * * *
Upload monitoring/ Richard Green /Index 10:17/ 2/1/2037
* * * *
Zane stared down at him, his human eye mirrored concern. Richard squeezed the padded arms of the interface couch nervously, and looked at the download room’s white ceiling. Trying to avoid the younger man’s gaze.
“You sure about this, Doc?” asked Zane.
“As sure as I have ever been of anything. Do it, chronologically, pre-birth on.”
“The dog—”
“The puppy is doing well. It knows an amazing number of tricks for such a young animal.”
“Yeah and the dog died. Its brain was turned to oatmeal!”
“Yes, but it did it slowly after the upload was completed. If the pattern is consistent, we’ll have a month after we finish before enough brain cells die for it to affect our performance. What would you have me do?”
Zane looked speculative. “It’s worth the price.” He pushed the interface jack into place and moved behind the console. Richard’s next memory was of liquid warmth and a slow steady drumming sound.
* * * *
Major Joans jacked out and rubbed his temples. The pain between his ears was nowhere near as crushing as it usually was after a session.
“Done,” asked General Flanders.
“Yes sir. We can’t upload past the start of the download sessions without risking a memory loop. If the Colonel manages another download from mission site we can patch it in after the last session. The week of the sessions is lost though.”
“I suppose it makes sense. How long until the units are ready?”
An older man dressed in a lab-coat moved from the corner of the room where he’d been checking some instruments. “Allow the units a week to restructure. After that we’ll know for sure.”
“I hope to hell this works. The damned Darmuks have a new front line type. Looks like a giant armadillo. Anything short of tank fire and they just keep coming.”
“The Colonel will figure it out sir. I know he will.” Major Joan’s eyes strayed to the console giving the read-outs from the units being prepped.
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