The Natural Selection Retaliation

by Kyle Robertson

  “We’re fine together, Carlos,” she said. “And if he calls me Punky-head just once, his diet will consist of every tuna dish he can think of. He’ll beg for my cooking.”

  “Let’s just hope he learned,” Alikira said.

  They checked their straps and cables so the could just scoop them up. An aircraft carrier was a streamlined warship. The Japanese invented the Skiff-scoop designed from their upper deck landing strip arrest cables. If jets could take-off and land without slowing to the ship, the watercraft should share the same properties.

  “Okay, Snark, lower it five meters. The scoop should skim the waves,” Carlos said.

  Snark dropped the apparatus to the appropriate height.

  “There,” Carlos instructed.

  “The first is twenty meters out and the second is twenty-one. Engage the piston buffers.”

  Snarl prepared the buffers and in three seconds, the submersibles were caught and she engaged.

  KSSSSSSSSSSS!

  She lifted the submersibles and brought them in.

  As they got back on the Yamato. Gaia ran up to Lance and hugged him.

  “Lance! How’d you do it?!”

  “Hi, Punky-head. I missed you too. When it went down, I got away from my automaton after I saw them mass murder everybody at the convention. Then I cut myself off from the network with a self-surgery.”

  “I love you, so I’ll let you call me Punky-head once.” She looked directly at Chip when she continued. “Don’t do it again even if you think you’re being funny. That’s how Chip survived the extinction too.”

  “Yes, I know. Chip found my transmission on the underground network and followed suit. I inadvertently kept your boyfriend alive, you’re welcome.”

  Chip went to Gaia and kissed her.

  “I missed you and the guys told me if I call you that you’d kill me. I’m learning.”

  Linda greeted Steve.

  “Hey, you. You actually told Chip not to commit relationship suicide. It feels kinda good using your brain instead of bullets.” She kissed him.

  “Honey, not in front of the new guy.”

  She looked at him in amazement, jumped on his waist and gave him a deeper kiss. Then she looked over to Gaia’s brother.

  “Hi, Lance, nice to meet you. Oh, by the way, Steve’s my boyfriend.”

  Chip went to Alikira.

  “Retrieve your bird, Di. Lance just gave me a hack idea that might make the fight to get to the Program much easier.”

  “What kind of hack are you talking about?”

  Chip began to walk to the laboratory with Lance.

  “Call it an ‘Undead neutralization duster’. We’re about to go on offense.”

  She hoped his enthusiasm was valid.

  Chapter Seven: Extensive Planning can Produce Extraordinary Results

  As they were on their way to Maryland, Chip and Lance worked hard on hacking Alikira’s albatross drone. Lance took out the scanning module and put the schematics on the virtu-screen.

  “What are you doing to my albatross?” Alikira asked.

  “We’re trying to manipulate the scan to double as a modified Magrupt cascade blanket. Then we’re reprogramming the signal to read and disrupt the nanites making them inert to collapse the undead.”

  “So, you’re cannibalizing my bird.”

  “You work with what you got, Di. I didn’t see a computer parts facility anywhere on the Yamato that was stocked. Somehow, the Japanese cleaned it out before they abandoned ship.”

  “Don’t worry, Alikira, we know what we’re doing,” Lance said.

  “Call her Di. That’s her battle call sign,” Chip said. “We’re goin’ all out this time.”

  Lance looked at the screen and felt disappointed.

  “We just have about a forty-yard cascade range, damn.”

  Chip went to the computer projection.

  “I can overclock the range to two hundred with a forty degree expanse spread in shorter bursts. It’ll just be highly unstable.”

  “You said there were three hundred plus. That’ll take three sweeps, four for certainty. Make the cascade stable. I’m working on its stealth bubble so it won’t be shot from the sky.” Lance got to work jerry-rigging the stealth security.

  At least her team was resourceful.

  

  Jean-Renae was below-deck in the aircraft hangar reprogramming his Apex Nordic Special Forces to attack the undead. If they had a decayed scent, a low temperature, and no signs of a rhythmic heartbeat, his animals were designed to attack. He just hoped his wolverines were holding down the fort in Halifax.

  Snark and Purge were curious about taming those monstrous savage beasts and went down to see what he was doing.

  “Hi, Jean-Renae is it? Carlos told me you bio-augment wild beasts for protection. How do you do it?” Snark asked and pointed at Purge. “I’m asking for a friend.”

  Jean-Renae was surprised at their presence.

  “Bonjour… who are you again? I just only saw you in Halifax, yes?”

  “I’m Snark and he’s Purge. Purge’s people in Manhattan are having to stave off all the Panthers, leopards, tigers, lions, and Jaguars released from all the zoos in New York. Neo-Khaos just took out one pride of many. Can you bring those big cats to their side so they can guard against the other predators?”

  “That sounds like an enormous task for me, no?”

  “Can you teach them how to do it?”

  “Oui, if they know technology and don’t run from those hunter-killers, I can do it. I never shared my skills with anyone, as if there were anyone to share them with,” he said. “But I can do it, yes?”

  “Thank you,” Purge said. “I don’t think Subroc, my second in command, can last more than six more months. When would your class be available?”

  “I think we can help each other. I was trying to find a way to tell Carlos his soldiers must ride and control these animals. Do you have enough people to control thirty-six beasts?"

  “Oh, I have that many with ten backups. The new ones can teach the reserves how to ride them.”

  “I will need them all to learn how to augment. They’ll all learn how to be self-sufficient, yes?” Jean-Renae said. “We can stop in Manhattan for a test run. You never want to go into battle with an untested advantage.”

  “Will your animals attack those cats?” Snark asked.

  “I just programmed them to attack the undead. That command is so sense intensity oriented, It takes two days to calibrate fully. They’ll just execute their hypno-trance attribute. That is how I was able to change the rest. It’s an ancient method the wildlife scientist used to do to study these savage beasts called tranquilizing and tagging. You have around fifty minutes before they wake from the trance, so they need to know how to augment quickly.”

  “Training starts when we get them and bring them to you I take it,” Snark assumed.

  “Oui, I am ready now. Retrieve my students.”

  Purge and Snak left to get Purge’s people.

  

  Snark stopped in the helm’s room to inform Carlos of their pit stop.

  “Come in!” Carlos yelled after the knock.

  Snark came in.

  “We have to stop in Manhattan tomorrow. Your friend has to train Purge’s people on how to control the Arctic animals and augment those renegade big cats. He was gonna tell you we needed to ride those beasts, but Wally gave him another idea.”

  “We have to stop anyway,” he said. “Lance and Chip are nowhere close to finishing the hack on Di’s albatross. I guess we need a few practice runs before the big one goes down.”

  “I guess Di’s in the lab with those two,” she said. “I bet they like having a pretty woman being interested in their work.”

  “She’s not pretty to Chip. She’s a tech-ripper interested in his tinkerings. Lance knows she’s my girl, so we’re respectful that way. She’s my chicka and they know it.”

  “I’m not saying they want to bed her
, Carlos. They can appreciate her platonically. They’re brain junkies and Chip has Gaia. I don’t know about Lance though.”

  “Lance has only been here for a day. Maybe you can set him up with someone.”

  “I don’t know anyone to set him up with and I’m terrible at doing that anyway,” Snark said.

  “Treat it like a mission,” he said. “Don’t you know someone who needs a respectful cordial man to treat her right? Do you know anyone like that? Maybe a surface scratch in your new relationship?”

  “How many hints are you going to throw?” she asked him.

  “We call it ‘carpet bombing’ in flight school,” Carlos said. “Where is Cindy anyway?”

  “She’s about to get some good news after I talk to Lance,” she said. “That’s why Di thinks you’re so suave.”

  “I can just deduce and correct problems. If that’s a suave thing, I guess I’m suave.”

  “And smoothly humble, Fly Boy,” Snark said. “I heard Steve call you that.”

  “I’m going to tell him you need a nickname too,” he said. “You know your mission, so execute with pride.”

  Snark nodded and went to find Lance.

  

  “The bone structure frame consists of hollowed-out carbon-fiber tubes,” Chip said. “Use that space to micro-insert the fiber stealth components and I’ll do a trigonometric wing power-weight ratio boost to keep it in the air while it still scans.”

  “Check your velocity relativity balance, so the scan information doesn’t digitally corrupt the transmission signal to us,” Lance said.

  Alikira just watched them work. Breaking locks and hacking the programs were much easier.

  Snark came into the laboratory and sat next to Alikira.

  “What are they doing, Di?”

  “Advancing my albatross. I can’t tell you how, but they said I would love the final reveal.”

  Snark watched Lance open one of those bone tubes under an electron microscope while Chip boosted the velocity accelerant mechanisms.

  “Okay, I see you don’t know the ‘behind the scenes’ stuff, but what are they trying to accomplish?”

  “They’re trying to make my albatross a nanite disruptor to clear the way for me to get to the Program. I think they’re trying to make that Jean-Renae guy’s beasts irrelevant.”

  “You know that’s not going to work fully, right? You have to overkill strategy. I’d rather have unnecessary left-overs instead of needing another meal to survive.”

  “DAMN! My hands are too jittery to attach these component diode ports in a stasis field!” Lance yelled in frustration.

  Chip walked to him and told him.

  “You haven’t stopped since you’ve arrived here. You’re stressing too terribly to get this right the first time. Your logic is sound. Take a break to keep your body functioning correctly. You’re doing too much.”

  Snark looked at Alikira.

  “I think it’s time to give him some relaxation.” She turned to Lance. “How do you feel about New Yoty girls, Lance?”

  Lance looked at Snark.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t ask my initial question. Are you gay?”

  “Am I what? No! Who are you?!”

  Snark walked to him with a digital picture.

  “I’m Snark, but I’m not just asking for no reason. How does she look to you?”

  Lance took the picture.

  “Who is she?”

  “Would you be interested in her?”

  “I’ve been alone for years. I could be interested, why?”

  Snark smiled.

  “Her name is Cindy. She had her child taken by a savage panther. Her last boyfriend left her when he found out she was pregnant. She glommed on to my guy because he was nice to her. If she doesn’t look like an ogre to you and if I can get her interested in you, how about a blind date?”

  Lance was surprised.

  “You asked me if I was interested and she doesn’t even know I exist?”

  She took out her imager and told him to smile.

  ‘Click’

  “At least she’ll know what you look like now.” She showed him the picture.

  “That looks terrible. I look as confused as I am. You can’t show her that,” he said. “You’ve never done this before.”

  “Look. Lance. The only reason I’m trying this crazy attempt is Cindy has this thing for my man, and you’re a nice guy. She needs a nice guy and you need to relax. Just try it. That way, I won’t have a clinging woman around my man and you’ll have a nice lady. If it doesn’t work, you won’t be committed to her.”

  Lance thought about it.

  “Okay, fine, but take this picture.” He struck a pose.

  She retook the picture and showed it to him.

  “See, if you're trying to sell the steak, you must show the sizzle.”

  “Well, you don’t look like a lost lunatic. I can show her this.”

  She put her imager in her pocket and left to find Cindy. Chip walked behind Lance.

  “What just happened? Did you set this up, Di?”

  “Alikira looked as surprised as Chip was.

  “I had no idea Snark was on a mission, especially not that type of mission.”

  “I like her,” Lance said. “She had the strength to talk to me and get me interested in Cindy when she didn’t even know me that well. Is Cindy a psycho?”

  Not from what I see,” Alikira said. “But if you two get along, just be prepared for a penguin-type relationship.”

  Lance smiled.

  “Hey, if we hit it off, I wouldn’t mind a life-long mate. I’m a transiton. We never got any opportunities like this before Circumscriber. I know I hate the thing, but you always have to count the silver linings.”

  “Are all of you optimists?” Alikira asked Chip.

  “When you’re a transiton, you always look for the jewels around the corner.”

  “Knowing I have you guys on my team,” Alikira said. ”We’re about to take out the Program. Get your calculations tweaked so when Lance is relaxed, he can make my bird a scary new device.”

  

  “Are they ready? They do know the magnitude of this class, yes?” Jean-Renae asked Purge.

  “They’re New Yorkers. They’re always ready for anything,” Purge touted his people.

  “We will see, no?” Jean-Renae turned to the crowd. “Okay! Settle down, people! This is a serious class on how to control my commando animals and how to augment your wild felines in Manhattan! Have any of you ever ridden a mechanical bull before? I am sure you being from Manhattan, you haven’t experienced any real bulls before!”

  A guy from Purge's people raised his hand.

  “My uncle was a rancher upstate and I rode a Bramah before. Those things don’t play.”

  “Good: that means you can ride a Kodiak,” Jean-Renae said. “You can show them what to do if they get unruly if you do not mentally mesh with them, no? After you meet, mesh and ride them, I will show you how to augment!”

  He walked to Purge.

  “Is that gentleman a leader?”

  “I wouldn’t call Mario a ‘gentleman’, but he was what we called the ‘neighborhood Kingpin’, so he can lead.”

  Jean-Renae looked over to see all of them watching Mario meshing with his assigned Kodiak with confidence and wanted to knock him down a peg.

  “Okay, People. You must look your animal in the eye to show them who’s in charge!”

  Mario stared down the Kodiak and the bear bowed his head. Jean-Renae tapped the feral button on his transmitter and the bear looked up, growled, and snapped at Mario! He jumped back immediately.

  “HEY, oso loco!”

  That was when he heard the laughter and whipped his attention to Jean-Renae clicking back the docile button.

  “You did that?!”

  “Oui and you just showed them how to react when they cannot mesh with their animal. These are hunter animal
s and mindless bravado can kill you among them. If they get primitive, back down and become non-threatening immediately. There is a reason I chose those animals. Do not let them verify my choice with you.”

  “That was wrong, Jean-Renae,” Wally said. “Very funny, but wrong.”

  “When you think you are going to die, you learn faster,” Jean-Rene said.

  “You have a morbid way to motivate people,” Wally said. “Just have them mesh with their animals without losing any arms, okay?”

  “If you think they’re in danger, my method works. I will not let anything happen to my asset allies. That is quintessentially self-defeating, yes?”

  Wally smiled as his people began to mentally mesh with those menacing beasts.

  

  “Why have we stopped at the Manhattan shore?” Alikira asked Carlos as they slowed to a stop.

  “That’s right. You were in the lab with the tech twins looking out for your bird. Two reasons. Lance and Chip need to field test the albatross and Jean-Renae’s team of beast riders need a few test runs while trying to augment those wild lions, tigers, and leopards running amok around Purge’s people.”

  “We’re planning this assault the right way. It’s bitter-sweet because I know we need to, but it reminds me of Cole’s Murphy’s Law tactic.”

  “Wow, you just brought me down instantaneously,” Carlos said.

  “Don’t get distraught at his death. Honor his accomplishments. I know it’s tough being reminded of his death, but you’re giving him accolades with your tactics.”

  “Yeah, I guess his influence is still active around here,” Carlos said. “I’m just happy he lead us when he could, but you’re right in your statement; bitter-sweet.”

  They both were silent in the helm’s room listening to the engines slowing to the stop. It was a somber moment before the methodical clicking climb to the initial death drop.

  Snark opened the door to see them quiet and wanted to get them motivated.

  “It’s time, guys. Don’t you want to see your friend’s riders, Carlos and your albatross, Di? We’ll be on the dock in twenty.”