by Mat Nastos
Mal extended his computer senses even as his eyes moved across the figure, taking in its unusual appearance.
The main plates of the knight’s armor were composed of ceramic tiles encased within a titanium matrix. The technique had been used on armor vehicles for years, making it resistant to any sort of kinetic attacks, as well as being nearly impervious to cutting. A layer of titanium-carbon alloy micro-chainmail covered most of the torso, legs and arms, protecting every area of the warrior’s body. Mal’s computer noted some form of a liquid body armor, treated with a shear-thickening fluid made up of equal parts of polyethylene glycol and minuscule glass particles beneath the chain. Tiny electro-magnetic pulses indicated the entire suit was reinforced with an exoskeleton that would increase its wearer’s strength exponentially.
The obvious weapons of a rocket-powered spear in the new-comer’s hand and three-foot long high-tech sword on his waist were backed up by a pair of well-hidden weapons-systems built into the large gauntlets he wore on each hand.
Whoever the man was, he came to fight.
The automatic response systems built into Mal’s computer banks and ingrained into every single one of the trillions of nanobots swimming through his body reacted in kind: the cyborg’s arms nearly doubled in thickness. Razor-sharp ridges flared out along his forearms and elbows, three inch spikes extruded from his shoulders, and his fingers distended into segmented blades the size of a butcher’s cleaver. Circuits in his pituitary gland began pumping endorphins into his body and his endocrine glands kicked into high gear.
“You’ve come at a bad time,” said Mal in a growl. “We’re not receiving guests at the moment.”
Fiery red lenses remained locked on Mal’s face as the figure bowed deeply at the waist.
“This one does apologize for our rudeness, however we did knock.”
Something about the knight’s intonation and inflection caught Mal’s attention. The way he moved reinforced the fact that the two had met somewhere previously. Recognition hit the cyborg a second later.
“Kalita?!”
“You may call me Grail, Mr. Weir,” answered the cold electronic voice of the armored figure. “But the time for pleasantries has passed.”
Even though Mal was prepared for it, Grail’s initial assault nearly ended the battle before it had a chance to start. Incredible as Mal had found the knight’s speed and agility in their previous encounter, now augmented by the high tech exoskeleton in his armor, Grail moved like lightning, clearing the fifteen foot space from where the floor ended in a flaming mess to Mal in the blink of an eye. It was all the cyborg could do to raise his guard in time to avoid taking the mercenaries spear through his thorax. The armored man remained in constant motion, spinning, twirling and striking faster than a snake. Minor cuts and tags from the powered-lance began to build up on Mal’s legs and torso. They weren’t enough to stop or really harm the fast-healing cyborg, but they did keep him off-balance enough to prevent any sort of effective counter attack.
Sparks flew wherever seven-inch talons raked across Grail’s armor, leaving behind thin scratches that were nothing more than cosmetic damage to the Englishman’s uniform. Mal grimaced. Kalita had been a bear to fight in civilian clothing…dressed in his ‘Sunday’s finest,’ the man was an order of magnitude tougher. Unless Mal could figure out a way through the knight’s defenses, he was going to be in for a very rough time indeed.
Dodging a round of attacks from Grail gave Mal an idea…it wasn’t a great idea, but it wasn’t like he had a whole lot of options. Mal’s senses had already determined the man utilized far more of his brain capacity than did a normal human: if the cyborg’s computer was correct, he was operating at nearly 100%. The wiring between the knight’s brain and his muscular-responses worked faster than anything Mal, or his computer system, had ever seen before. During the fight, Grail reacted almost instinctively to any opening the cyborg presented, no matter how small. All Mal needed to do was give his opponent an opening—nothing too obvious or Grail would know he was being set up—and it couldn’t be anything too vital or the mercenary would put an end to their duel and Mal’s life.
Knowing what he had to do, Mal screamed in mock frustration and lunged in with an upward claw attack that exposed the right side of his torso ever so slightly. It was a target Grail found too tempting to resist.
Depressing a stud on the shaft of his spear, Grail ignited the rocket boosters on the back of the weapon with a burst of yellow and white flame.
Engulfed in pain as the spear punctured his abdomen, sliced open his kidney and pierced the thick muscles of his back, Mal regretted the decision almost instantly.
As cool and useful as having the ability to quickly heal from any wound could be, the fact of the matter was that getting shot still hurt…a lot…and was something Mal tended to avoid at all costs. The audacity of the move startled Grail and took his primary weapon out of play. The knight backed off warily, watching as Mal’s living metal arm slashed down, breaking the spear in half and leaving less than an inch protruding from the former army ranger’s belly.
Mailed fingers gripped the hilt of the sword sheathed on the knight’s side and slowly slid the blade from its scabbard. A flex of the man’s armored hand activated an unseen switch in the handle, igniting the weapon’s length with a blazing corona of bright blue energy.
The opening Mal had given himself by removing Grail’s longer range weapon was quickly closed by a bellow of rage from off to the side of the combatants. The cyborg turned just in time to see Chris Donlin climb up to his feet. The explosion had knocked the man for a loop and allowed the Caliber protocols to assume control once more. While Mal sympathized with Chris’s plight, he couldn’t help but be annoyed by the poor timing.
“No, Chris, stay down!” Mal screamed as his friend, blinded by rage, charged their foe haphazardly.
A flurry of cape whipped around, hiding Grail’s movement as the man stepped away from the path of Donlin’s charge. Mal watched as the knight’s sword reversed its direction and dropped down beneath the man’s arm. With a flick, the meter-long energy blade punched through the torso of Chris Donlin, trapping him, twitching and shuddering, on its point. Grail braced both hands on his sword’s long handle, spread his legs wide for leverage, and lifted Donlin a foot into the air.
“Shhhh,” whispered Grail into the audio receptor replacing Donlin’s left ear as the knight gripped the mortally wounded half-man tightly around the back of his neck. “Your torment is at an end, soldier. Be at peace.”
The snapping noise that accompanied a quick jerking motion by Grail’s hand caused bile to rise in Mal’s throat, cutting a scream off into a strangled moan.
“No!”
Grail released his grip on Chris’s throat, allowing the man to fall limply to the floor of the destroyed motel room. Extending the now bloodied blade before him in a gory salute for Mal’s benefit, Grail bowed with a flourish. The cyborg bellowed for his friend, but it was too late. Chris Donlin was dead once more.
“You’re a dead man, Grail!” Mal bellowed, charging his foe.
Tipping his head in a half bow, Grail answered, “I welcome death at the hands of the one who finally delivers it to me. Sadly, Mr. Weir, I fear you will not be the one,” said Grail.
Mailed hands opened to reveal a spherical device the size and shape of a baseball, gray in color. The knight’s thumb threaded itself through a ring which protruded from the top of the M67 fragmentation hand grenade and pulled it free with a click, sending the spoon spinning into the air. Grail stepped back out of the ruined wall behind him, igniting his rocket pack to get clear even as he released the explosive canister, allowing it to bounce directly into Mal’s path.
Mal screamed bloody murder as the concussive force of the frag grenade tore into him, pitched his body out sideways through the hole Grail had left in the outer wall and left him flailing in the yawning space one hundred feet above the busy Manhattan street below.
“Oh, no…not ag
ain,” grumbled the cyborg as he tumbled heels-over-head towards the distant ground.
CHAPTER 17
The stifling Greenwich Village air and cacophony of the rush hour traffic in Manhattan did little to decrease the hatred Malcolm Weir had for falling from tall buildings. If there was anything that could claim the top of his bucket list of things he never wanted to experience again in his life, it was being flung out of a building and plummeting towards the ground at high speed.
Having his on-board computer systems assure him silently the eight-story fall was not a great enough distance for the battered cyborg to reach terminal velocity, or that it estimated his chances of surviving the impact with the pavement below at greater than ninety-eight percent, didn’t improve Mal’s opinion of the situation. The rapidly approaching gray surface of Bleeker Street looked hard and unforgiving regardless of high survival probability and, unless the dark green canopy stretched out in front of the D’Agostino’s grocery store beneath him was sturdier than its appearance indicated, Mal was pretty sure he wasn’t going to enjoy slamming into it at just over thirty miles per hour.
In Mal’s opinion, even with his nanotechnologically-enhanced healing factor, picking asphalt out of his skin was near the bottom of things he wanted to do in Manhattan on a Saturday evening.
“At least it was a short building this time,” was Mal’s only thought as he twisted his body so his back tore through the thick cotton-blend material of the store’s canopy. In spite of what comic books and motion pictures might lead you to believe, an out-stretched street awning offers little in the way of resistance to a three-hundred plus pound military-grade cyborg falling through it.
The bright blue of the New York City sky was shocked out of place by the blazing white of the pain in Mal’s head.
The super-soldier moaned, half-rolling onto his side in an attempt to ease the discomfort of four broken ribs and a shattered scapula. As the heroin-itch of thousands of nanobots racing to repair the damage his body had suffered in his uncontrolled descent to the ground, Mal attempted to reconcile the strange whining that filled his head. It was an annoying buzzing sound that wouldn’t stop—like a swarm of angry bumblebees trying to escape from the base of his skull.
Less than a heartbeat later, the ‘bees’ reconciled themselves into the strangely calm voice of Mal’s internal computer warning him of six hostiles approaching his position at ground level and four more from above. A litany of weapons statistics followed the warning but Mal failed to take them all in as the pavement, cracked from his fall, began to vanish in a torrent of fully automatic machine gun fire.
Coughing blood, left shoulder hurting like blazes and extended off at a weird angle, Mal clambered up to unsteady feet and allowed his full suite of heightened computer sensors to spread around him. He needed to take stock of what Kalita…what the Grail…had brought to help apprehend the renegade cyborg.
Mal refused to allow himself to be taken down by an effeminate Englishman dressed like something out of an ‘Iron Man’ movie.
An effeminate Englishman who had just killed his friend in cold blood.
Eyes tightening into thin lines, Mal compartmentalized the sadness over the death of Chris. He’d have time to mourn the man later. Right now Mal used the emotion to fuel a rage that had been building since his awakening a month earlier—a rage directed at the men responsible for the horrors that had been done to Mal and his unit—a rage that could be focused on Grail and his men.
“They will pay,” was Mal’s last rational thought as his Cestus programming took control of the situation and everything went red.
Legs pumping like giant, muscled pistons, Cestus broke from under the cover of the tattered forest green over-hang, sending the unspoken signal to the tech in his arms to bulk up nearly to the size of tree trunks. The additional armor that covered his sides and back would help protect the cyborg’s still-human internal organs from damage, and the gorilla-like arms, covered in spikes and razor sharp ridges, would be more than enough to deal with the flesh-and-blood soldiers hunting Cestus.
As for Mr. Kalita—the man now referring to himself as the ‘Grail’—Cestus had a personal score to settle with him.
The group of Templars spread out, the men positioning themselves to encircle Cestus and cut off any chance he might have to escape. Inside, Cestus laughed humorlessly at the attempt. The cyborg had no intention of fleeing…not while his enemies still drew breath.
*****
Billy Mitchell was angry. No, he was beyond angry. The government agent was flat-out pissed off.
As members of the government trace team in charge of keeping tabs on the Malcolm Weir, Mitchell and his partner had been the ones who were in the forefront of the Cestus investigation. Over the past three days they had been stuck out in the unrelenting summer heat and humidity Manhattan was famous for, standing around for alternating 8-hour shifts, eating bad food and putting up with the obnoxious locals.
When word came down from the mobile command and control center known as Sky-High that the operation was shifting from ‘wait and watch’ to ‘apprehend,’ Mitchell was on the edge of orgasm. Not only was it going to be his first real taste of action, but he was going to be part of bringing in one of the most wanted men on the planet and do so with the world-famous black-ops group, the Templars.
It was like his birthday and Christmas all rolled into one.
His internal celebration ended just after the second explosion.
It had gone well enough at first, Mitchell and Hutchison had braced themselves against the guide-railings of the twin-winged hover-platform as it dropped down to ground level at high speed in pursuit of Weir. The short agent had unslung the MP5 from across his back, checked its ammunition, and switched the weapon to ‘full-auto.’ His feet were dancing a jig as a giant hand slammed into his chest, stopping the agent just short of exiting the vehicle.
“No dice, Fish,” said Roddick. “You stay with the car. Take it up ten stories and give the gunners a solid firing base in case we need them.” The big man jerked his thumbs towards the two men standing behind the intimidating machine gun nests set up on each wing of the hovercraft.
“Sorry, Kappa-Two. Big boys only,” chuckled Hutchison as he strapped on a backpack containing a pair of shiny chrome tanks connected by a silver hose to a rather odd looking apparatus with a wide nozzle on its end. “At least they’re letting you drive.”
Cheeks flushed red on Mitchell as the group of six men disappeared down the street, heading for the spot where Malcolm Weir had fallen from above. He couldn’t believe he was getting left behind. At this rate he’d never get his own codename.
“Eyes up, Fish,” called the Templar seated at the weapon over Mitchell’s left shoulder. “Take us up.”
“High-hat,” grumbled Mitchell to himself, pulling back on the flight sticks and easing the vehicle into a sharp ascent. “My name’s High-hat.”
*****
The internal sensors located just above the top of Cestus’s spine launched into a laundry list of weapons carried by the men he faced. Every bit of equipment seemed to be standard military issue—there were no surprises like those Grail possessed. MP5s, a mix of tactical grenades, electrified batons and Beretta M9s made up most of their arsenal. The one interesting piece was a custom device harnessed to the back of the tall man outfitted in a black uniform that differed from the others. The device contained a mix of triethylaluminium and polyisobutylene held in a pair of canisters tied to the delivery system cradled in Kappa-One’s arms.
“Flamethrower,” analyzed the Cestus programmer that now controlled the body of Malcolm Weir. “Approximate effective range: ten yards. Target classified as primary threat to self.”
Super-heated gas and plasma erupted from the gun in Kappa-One’s arms, impacting inches from where Cestus stood. Asphalt melted into gummy tar around his feet. A second quick burst roared out onto the cyborg’s left side and enclosed him in a half circle. An attempt by Cestus to spring to his ri
ght was cut off by a torrent of angry bullets fired by a team on the rooftop above, cutting into the molten ground in a tight line. The soulless eyes of the possessed man closed to the tightest of slits against the glaring light of the wall of flame that had sprung up around him. His foes were trying to force him off the streets and into a trap.
Glancing up, at a spot three blocks down and just over the height of a building, the cyborg’s enhanced senses spotted his primary foe, Grail. The dark green armor of the man shone dully in the bright Manhattan sunlight as he was held aloft in the harness of a jetpack, with weapons at the ready. That’s where they wanted to catch Cestus by surprise. The fools still thought Malcolm Weir was in charge.
And that would be their death.
Instead of running through the convenient opening behind him and facing the trio of men with stun-batons at the ready, Cestus moved towards the flames. Just before he hit the burning obstacle before him, the cyborg slammed his right hand into the ground and ordered his cybernetics to expand to their maximum length of seven-feet. The maneuver stretched his bionic arm thin to less than two inches thick, but its make-up was strong enough to allow Cestus to vault gracefully over the flames, surprising the armed men on the opposite side.
When confronted by the sight of a three-hundred pound killing machine hurling at him over a wall of flames, only one of the men was able to remain calm enough to bring his short submachine gun to bear. Teflon coated bullets punched into Cestus’s side, throwing his trajectory off-balance and causing a vicious slash from his living metal claws to miss Agent Kappa-One completely. Ignoring the wounds perforating his lung, kidney and intestines, Cestus used the momentum from his leap to roll into an attack on the man who had fired upon him. The Templar’s hand, still holding his MP5, fell to the ground twitching, severed by a backhanded swipe from a bionic arm morphed into a gleaming scimitar blade.
