The Cestus Contract: Weir Codex Book 2

by Mat Nastos

  “Please, Mal…hang on. You can’t die…not like this!”

  An unliving, clawed hand reached up to touch the hysterical woman’s cheek more tenderly than she realized possible. Mal tried to reassure Amy, to tell her it was okay, that he would finally be able to rest, but another fit of cough filled his chest and he fell out of her arms.

  Pulsating red, white, and blue lights danced across the scene, accompanied by the wail of the sirens announcing the arrival of the police and EMT. Amy leapt to her feet and began bellowing out at the top of her lungs, trying to signal the men that she needed help…that Mal needed help.

  “HERE!” she shouted. “We’re over here!!’

  As the red and white emergency vehicles turned into the museum’s parking lot and headed for the frantically waving woman, Amy turned to reassure Malcolm Weir that everything would be all right. When she did, all she found was the empty, read-soaked carpet of grass where he had lain unconscious a moment before.

  “Mal?”

  Malcolm Weir’s body had vanished completely and without a trace.

  *****

  Designate Cestus paid scant attention as Amy Jensen moved towards the approaching battalion of police cars, ambulances and fire trucks…the death throes of Malcolm Weir had given it the ability to overcome the human’s control and cast out his personality. Instead, the cyborg turned on his heels and disappeared into the deepening shadows cast by the trees in the fading daylight. His mind focused internally as he maintained watch on each of his essential systems as they slowly rebooted and initialized. It would take a caloric intake of at least ten-thousand calories of protein before his nanobots would have enough material to begin rebuilding the majority of his damaged muscles and replacing the lost dermis and epidermal layers, but the being that was all that remained of Malcolm Weir estimated it would still be able to operate with seventy-four percent efficiency until then.

  Malcolm Weir.

  The name echoed coldly through the frontal lobe of the cyborg. If Cestus had been able to laugh he would have. Weir had been correct in his assessment: he had never been meant to survive. The human mind of Malcolm Weir should have been completely erased a year before when the technicians had replaced a third of his brain’s gray matter with circuits, wires and logic boards. That he had somehow survived, hidden behind the code, was a mistake that baffled the cyborg. It would have to look into how Weir’s mind had remained cohesive and been able to restore itself.

  Perhaps Dr. Ryan and those who remained of Project Hardwired would be able to answer the question for the cyborg. The thought of Carly Ryan caused three lines of encrypted code to insert themselves into the operational memory of Cestus. The code, a Trojan virus installed during his black-out in Kabul, had been hidden in a section of the machine-man’s mind that had been unused except as a communication relay to the Abraxas Array. With the mainframe destroyed, Cestus had ignored that portion of his databanks, assuming they were now irrelevant. It was an assumption that now forced the cyborg to speak out the three simple lines that had haunted Malcolm Weir of late.

  This is the way the world ends.

  This is the way the world ends.

  This is the way the world ends.

  “Yes,” thought Cestus as he moved quickly through the manicured grounds of Fort Tryon Park, heading for its borders. “I will make them answer all of my questions before they die. Before the world dies.”

  *****

  THE END

  Designate Cestus will return in “The Cestus Corruption.”

  If you enjoyed this book, make sure to leave a review where you purchased it online!

  AFTERWORD

  I am a completely unabashed, unrestrained, and unadulterated fan of action flicks. I love every shape and every variation of them: the iconic 80s actioneers, hardcore Asian action, crappy 70s Chinese martial arts, Blaxploitation, Hong Kong action cinema, and everything in between.

  I love action.

  With my first full-length novel, "The Cestus Concern," I wrote what I like to think of as my love-letter to my favorite action films. It was filled to the brim with everything I had ever wanted to see in a big-budget summer extravaganza. Explosions? Check. Car chases? Check. Gun fights? Double check. Insane martial arts battles? Triple check.

  I tried to pack it with every crazy stunt I could imagine, and readers seemed to eat it up. "The Cestus Concern" shot to the top of Amazon's Best Seller lists for Cyberpunk, Sci-Fi Action, and Men's Adventure. In fact, as I write this piece in late 2013, the book is still sitting at the #1 bestseller spot for Science Fiction nearly a year after its release!

  Needless to say, I was pretty pleased with everything I had crammed into the book and, in truth, I was feeling pretty cocky about it. That cockiness disappeared very quickly when I sat down to begin work on the second book in the Weir Codex series. Realization and despair began to sink in as I started outlining "The Cestus Contract": with everything I had put into the first volume, was there anything left for a sequel?

  How could I top a nuclear-powered cyborg blowing up on a military base or a giant junk-covered titan?!

  Luckily for me, I was able to re-energize my inner creative dynamo by returning to a love from earlier in my life: martial arts. Right around the time I started putting words to paper, I began classes in American-style karate. There was nothing cooler than being able to act out and choreograph the hand-to-hand sequences I was putting my hero, Malcolm Weir, through in the new tale. Knowing, realistically, what type of strike would follow a roundhouse kick helped me dive into my writing in a way I had never experienced before.

  It was exhilarating!

  Adding that element of working, practical knowledge to research which already included viewing and re-viewing hundreds of hours of action and grindhouse flicks, playing video games, and reading the over-the-top action comics of the 1990s allowed me to bring the story and emotion of "The Cestus Contract" to an entirely new stratosphere of testosterone and face-melting excitement.

  Hopefully I hit the mark for you, my loyal readers. My promise to you is that the Weir Codex Volume 3, “The Cestus Corruption,” will raise the bar even higher!

  -Mat Nastos, 2013

  About the Author:

  Mat Nastos is TV, Film, comic book, fantasy and steampunk writer/director, known best for bad horror movies about giant scorpions, killer pigs & dinosaurs in the sewers. He lives outside of Los Angeles with his wife and two kids.

  Connect with Mat Nastos Online:

  Twitter:

  http://www.twitter.com/niftymat

  Facebook:

  http://www.facebook.com/theMatNastos

  The Web:

  http://www.matnastos.net/

  On Amazon:

  http://www.amazon.com/author/matnastos/

  Read on for a preview of the first book in the exciting adventures of Donner Grimm, The Man With The Iron Heart.

  Available January 2014 from Nifty Entertainment.

  CHAPTER 1

  Operation: Anthropoid

  May 27, 1942. 10:30 A.M.

  Head nearly engulfed in smoke and standing with his back to the roughly paved Dresden-Prague road, Glasgow-born Ian MacAndrew puffed furiously away on his long-stemmed cherry wood pipe, desperately trying to finish off one last pinch of St. Bruno tobacco. If he was going to get himself killed in the middle of nowhere a thousand miles away from home in Czechoslovakia or Bohemia or whatever it was the blasted Germans were calling it these days, there was no way in hell he was going to let go to waste the only civilized blend to be found on the war-torn continent.

  They could take his life, but, God and Queen be damned, they’d never take his tobacco.

  The burly Scotsman shivered a bit in his ridiculously over-sized wool coat in spite of the morning already topping 27 degrees Celsius. He’d finally admitted to himself the truth of what Brigadier Gubbins and the boys back at the Special Operations Executive had told him when he volunteered to fly out from Sussex three days earlier: this was a suici
de mission.

  Up until that moment, the Captain in the Scottish Guard had been deluding himself into thinking it would all be a walk in the park. All he had to do was jump out of an airplane into the heart of the Hun Empire, meet up with a rag-tag group of Czech rebels, and assassinate SS-Obergruppenfuhrer Reinhard Heydrich, Reichsprotecktor of Bohemia and Moravia, one of the most powerful men in all of Nazi Germany. A man known more often as “the Butcher of Prague.”

  A grunt, masquerading itself as the Scotsman’s version of a chuckle, slid out from between MacAndrew’s lips, causing the bristles of his thick, red mustache to bounce under the shade of the dark hunting cap he wore pulled down low over his eyes. The man had done his best with the hopeless task of disguising his large frame. After all, a six-foot two, two-hundred and twenty pound lad from Scotland with flame-red hair would stand out almost anywhere, especially lounging on the side of a village road just outside Nazi-occupied Prague.

  “Captain?” came a soft, worried voice in German from behind and below MacAndrew’s left shoulder, snapping the soldier back from his musings. “Is everything all right, sir?”

  MacAndrew’s large head, trailing twin coils of smoke like some ancient dragon of legend, swung slowly over to take a good look at the young man who had spoken.

  Jozef Gabcik, was a slight man, standing just over five-feet eight-inches and one-hundred and fifty pounds, in his late-twenties. Expressive, cheerful eyes, undaunted by thoughts of dying, shown out, pale blue, from under his own wool cap, which kept shifting into what MacAndrew could only describe as a ‘jaunty’ angle. Even before he had escaped the German invasion of his homeland a year before and found his way to the highlands of Scotland for training, the young man had been a fine soldier, having been awarded the French Croix de Guerre in 1940.

  Talented, good-natured, and cheerful even in the worst of circumstances, Gabcik had done well under MacAndrew’s harsh training for what was sure to be his last mission.

  Pride welled up in the Scotsman and the bright emerald eyes tucked back beneath his thick red eyebrows. MacAndrew was proud to serve with Gabcik and the other men he’d trained for Operation Anthropoid. They were the reason he volunteered to come to this stretch of road, halfway between Prague and Brezary, and give up his life to kill one of the most evil men on the planet. Gabick, his best friend, Jan Kubis, and Lieutenant Adolf Opalka, had trusted in their training to get them through the mission - had trusted in Captain Ian MacAndrew’s training - and he wasn’t going to stand by and let them do it on their own.

  Grinning widely, MacAndrew clapped Gabcik roughly on the back with a big hand and laughed, “Jozef, my lad, it’s a brilliant day. I’ve got my boys, I’ve got my pipe, and I’ve got the urge to kill a Nazi. What could be better, eh?”

  Jan Kubis checked his wristwatch for what must have been the hundredth time and looked up at the rest of the group, eyes narrowing, “It’s almost time.”

  “Aye, it is. Everyone get into position,” MacAndrew whispered, acknowledging the intense Kubis with a nod. The man, not much bigger than Gabcik, whom he’d known most of his life, was wound tighter than a steel spring. Earlier in the morning, MacAndrew had ordered the man to sling his British-made Sten Mk.II machine gun over his shoulder for fear the twenty-eight year old Moravian man would accidentally fire it in his nervousness. The Colt 38 revolver clenched tightly in his fist, half-hidden in the sleeve of his raincoat, was much less likely to go off before it was supposed to. MacAndrew just hoped Kubis remembered he had a bag full of grenades hanging across his torso.

  If they lived through this, MacAndrew would make sure to carry any jury-rigged explosive devices himself.

  A hiss from the tall, good-looking Lieutenant Opalka snapped everyone to attention. The immaculately groomed member of the Czechoslovakian underground had been a late addition to their little group. He’d been successful in a number of other sabotage missions and the higher ups back at Baker Street had been convinced he’d be handy to have. Opalka kept lookout for a signal from Josef Valcik, stationed about one hundred yards down the road, hidden in a thick hedge just off of the hairpin turn that would cause Heydrich’s driver to slow his car down enough for their ambush. The sixth member of their team, Karel Curda, a dirty little man with a rat’s face, stood sentry across the road, seated in a poor imitation of relaxation at a stone bench.

  Valcik was to warn the merry band with a flashing mirror of Rela Fafik’s approach. Rela was Gabcik’s girlfriend, set to precede Heydrich’s car and let them know if he was alone or accompanied by an escort of soldiers on motorcycles.

  “Rela comes…I see her hat,” said Opalka, letting them all know that Heydrich’s car was alone.

  Hearing the sound of Rela’s old auto echoing off the trees around them, MacAndrew sighed as he tapped the last few pieces of burning St. Bruno’s from his pipe before stashing it away in the front pocket of his old vest. “Get ready, lads. It’s time,” was all he said, reaching into his coat to check the slide of his Owen machine gun.

  The charcoal gray coach bounced past and the group caught sight of the beautiful, raven-haired Rela. Gabcik flashed the girl a quick half-smile as he anxiously stroked the side-mounted thirty-two round magazine of his Sten gun, inexpertly hidden under the well-worn, knee-length wool coat draped over his shoulders.

  MacAndrew knew the young Czech wanted to shout out to the woman he loved, after all, this might be the last time they’d get to see one another, and was relieved by the man’s restraint. The thunderous roar of Heydrich’s open-topped Mercedes-Benz 320 B roadster announced that their prey was close and such a gesture could give the men away to the enemy. The car was a monster and the Reichsprotecktor’s confidence in his own power kept the car’s convertible top opened and exposed to the world. That overconfidence would spell his downfall, MacAndrew mused to himself.

  In a few seconds, thought Ian MacAndrew, it would all be over. One way or the other.

  Two flashes of light from Valcik’s mirror silently spoke volumes to the rebels: Heydrich’s driver, Johannes Klein, was making the turn, and the pulsating bleat of the car slowed to a murmur as it reduced in speed.

  The sound, rumbling closer and closer, fortified the resolve of every man present as they moved into their predetermined positions. MacAndrew, the most easily noticeable of the bunch, faded back into the thick hedge row lining the road for tens of miles in every direction, sliding the compact Owen gun from its hiding spot in his coat, ready for action. Lieutenant Opalka trotted across the road to join Curda on the bench, faking a conversation with the little man. In the distance, MacAndrew saw Valcik mimic his own disappearing act.

  Only Kubis and Gabcik remained where they stood. For, to them, went the most important part of the mission - confronting and killing Reinhard Heydrich. Nearly a year of planning and training came down to their ability to conquer fear and every ounce self-preservation in their bodies, and face a man directly responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of their country men.

  If all went according to plan, thought the big Captain from Scotland, the Reichsprotecktor would be dead in less than a minute and no one would be savvy to the men responsible.

  Ian MacAndrew should have known better.

  As the sleek black roadster pulled around the corner and the two Czech soldiers angled for the vehicle, ready to open fire, the Scotsman heard the sound of a second, larger engine in the distance and was nearly blinded by a frantic series of flashes from the hidden Valcik’s signal mirror.

  Nothing ever goes according to plan.

  *****

  Reinhard Heydrich laughed heartily at the words of his driver, SS-Oberscharfuhrer Johannes Klein. The young man had only recently joined Heydrich’s staff, but the de facto dictator of Czechoslovakia had already taken a tremendous liking to Klein and appointed him to the position of personal aide and driver. His stories of conquests with the local daughters of Prague were fast becoming legendary and, in Heydrich’s mind, those tales of nightly debauchery would be th
e only things that kept their long drive from his villa in Paneske-Breschen to Hradcany Castle bearable. The Reichsprotektor couldn’t imagine how truly ghastly the trip through the dreary Bohemian countryside would have been without Klein’s delightfully wicked boastings.

  Long fingers ran through thin blond hair for the thousandth time since the pair had left Heydrich’s home an hour earlier. The warm, moist wind of the humid morning had already blown his gray military hat from his head a number of times, and it now lay upside down on the seat next time him.

  Leaning back to relax, since their destination was still another hour out, Heydrich stretched out and called up to his driver in his high-pitched, nasally voice, “Klein, please hurry. I wish to be inside before midday. The heat is dreadful today. I’m sweating like a damned Greek back here.”

  “Is that wise, Herr Heydrich?” asked Klein, half turning from his perch behind the steering wheel. “We’re already a hundred meters or more ahead of the escort and they don’t seem to be catching up. Shouldn’t we wait for the men?”

  “My dear, Klein,” yawned Heydrich in half-feigned ennui from his reclined position in the back of the powerful Austrian-made automobile. “We are lions amongst lambs here, with nothing to fear but boredom itself.”

  “Yes, Reichsprotektor,” came Klein’s response as he faced forward, pressed his booted foot down onto the accelerator and increased the roadster’s speed.

  Heydrich snatched his hat from the seat next to him, repositioning it on his head and prodded his aide once more, “Tell me again, Klein, of the barmaid from Minsk…but just the interesting parts this time, yes?”