Specter Protocol

by Eddie R. Hicks

  Ray got pinned again. Serge used his massive arm to crush Ray’s neck while his free hand yanked the phone from Ray’s hand. Serge rolled off him with Ray’s phone still in his hand. He looked it up and down as he rose to his feet.

  “I should have done this,” Serge said while slamming Ray’s phone to the floor, “back in the truck!”

  And Serge’s right foot came down on the phone’s screen. Crack. The screen wasn’t illuminated with light anymore.

  With one hand, Serge grabbed Ray by the neck, lifting him up. He couldn’t breathe and struggled to break free of Serge’s grip with both hands. Ray’s feet dangled, trying to touch the floor that was a few inches too far away and covered by the white mist. In Serge’s free hand was his tablet, he thumbed it while facing its screen, resuming the RW hacking app he had on it that he’d stolen from Ray. Whatever it was he was doing to Estrella; he was upping the intensity of it.

  And if Serge’s back wasn’t turned to the entrance, he would have seen the spiderbot enter, following the last command it received: defend Ray. The bot deployed its laser, took aim, and discharged. A blast burned a quarter of an inch hole through Serge’s right arm. The sudden blast and shock weakened the hand he was using to hold Ray’s neck and dropped him. The bot blasted again, Serge rolled to the right, canceled what he was doing on his tablet, and pointed it at the bot. Now the bot followed Serge’s orders.

  To the side, Ray saw his last card to play, his pistol. He ran, then did an all-or-nothing dive for it, one hand reaching out for it. The hacked bot and Serge both faced Ray. Ray landed, grabbing the pistol, spun around on the floor like a break-dancer, saw Serge’s smug grinning face, and pulled the trigger twice. The first shot hit the bot’s targeting scanner, the second sent Serge to the floor.

  It was an eerie sight, watching Serge lay motionlessly in the white mist. His chest wasn’t moving, yet his eyes were open and facing the ceiling, mouth wide open, and a bullet hole gored through his forehead. A red pool grew from the back of his head. Ray felt sick. Ray killed someone again, and this time it was a fellow human.

  He tried his best to not let that distract him. Somewhere in the mist-filled reactor chamber was Serge’s tablet, and the remains of his smashed phone, he needed to gain both. Ray’s phone was done, Serge mashed it good, but it might be salvageable. As for Serge’s tablet, it was still active along with the app giving Estrella a rough time. He’d shut it down if the password lockout didn’t activate. Ray gave the tablet the same treatment his phone got. Estrella should be free now—

  Footsteps, lots of them.

  They were thumping hard and fast. Ray wasn’t alone on the shuttle. The Specters had boarded. Ray was alone and without a loaded gun. Or his phone.

  Sixty

  Estrella

  “Serge? Serge? Come in!”

  The crackle of a gun went off. It wasn’t the ones being fired out in the docks since those had just gone silent. The gunshots came echoing from the shuttle’s opened entrance. Someone got shot, and it only required two shots to end them. The bang made Yanmei freeze, her foot inches away from destroying what remained of Estrella’s synthetic hand still holding the edge of the shuttle, barely.

  Yanmei’s face stiffened with horror. “No!”

  And then the hack was gone and control over Estrella’s cyberware returned as Geoffrey came back online. Yanmei turned and ran. It gave Estrella time to climb up to the top and wince at her mangled fingers and sparking wires. Her thumb was the worst of her damaged digits, the wires inside were the sole reason it hadn’t fallen off. She was pretty pissed about her hand. Ignoring her bleeding gut, she chased Yanmei inside the shuttle.

  Once aboard, Estrella browsed through her abilities list, she selected Induce Muscle Spasms and hoped it’d be enough to slow Yanmei or at least prevent her from injecting herself with that needle. She released the swarm once Geoffrey confirmed she was in range, the nanites moved to seek Yanmei. Hopefully the nanites could keep up with her. Yanmei was moving fast.

  Behind were raging footsteps. It was the Specters, but none of them were ghostwalking. It was likely they’d hit cooldown, or they knew it was pointless to ghostwalk thanks to the wolves. Whatever the case was, they saw Estrella and two of them raised their rifles and shot at her. Her cybernetic reflexes helped her dodge those rounds, and sparks flared on the walls where the bullets struck. She’d hit Overdrive if she wasn’t low on nanites. She had two swarms left.

  Turning the corner brought Yanmei back in sight, racing for the reactor chamber. It was full of white blinding mist. Yanmei vanished within the fog, so did the flying nanite swarm. Her HUD reported good news, the nanites got inside Yanmei. The bad news? They burned through most of their battery power just to keep up and fly inside her. The effects of Induce Muscle Spasms wouldn’t last long.

  Yanmei was on the floor, her body twitching, struggling to fight off Estrella’s nanites. And like Estrella, Yanmei had some sort of nanite cleansing ability too. Estrella had even less time to finish this. Estrella drove her one working hand down, rolled into a gauntleted covered fist. The impact smashed Yanmei’s face. The two were on the floor, brawling, pulling at each other’s hair. Estrella had a crushed left hand, and Yanmei was fighting off the nanites. Neither had an advantage.

  Yanmei regained control of her arm and the nanite needle that sprang out from her wrist. All Estrella could do was hold her arm still, Yanmei’s nanites couldn’t affect Estrella so long as she couldn’t stab her with the needle, and she couldn’t cleanse herself either.

  The two stood facing each other, Estrella still holding Yanmei’s arm. Behind she saw the source of the mist, a damaged cooling pipe leaking its coolants. She scanned it. It was nitrogen. She got a real tight grip on Yanmei, and pushed her back, way back into the broken pipe, deep within the mist. The spraying of nitrogen continued spewing from the pipe, its contents cold and covering everything it touched with a layer of frost and ice. Estrella forced Yanmei’s arm into it, and it froze. Yanmei screamed. Estrella ignored her and kept holding her arm in the nitrogen, freezing it to her gauntlet. The NC gauntlet was taking damage too, there was no doubt about that, but luckily for Estrella, its material kept her hand safe.

  “Nice arm,” Estrella said while looking down at Yanmei’s frozen arm, grinning.

  She still held Yanmei’s arm firmly, so she snapped it off at the elbow. Yanmei collapsed, screaming, the feeling of shock sending her body trembling at the sudden loss of the limb. Estrella wanted to throw the stiff arm back at her, but it had frozen to her gauntlet, still clenching it. It was an awkward feeling.

  “Estrella!”

  It sounded like Ray, but she couldn’t see him, not while standing in the mist with a whimpering Yanmei missing an arm below. Bullets blazed. She wasn’t sure who shot but had a feeling it was the Specters she saw earlier having caught up with her. She ducked and ran, bullets flying overhead. In the mist she met Ray, holding his hand to her. She gestured to the damage to her left hand, and that her right was frozen inside her gauntlet holding Yanmei’s arm. He cringed.

  Following Ray’s lead, she ran with him to the lower level of the reactor chamber, out of sight of the rifles from the Specter team. He found an emergency escape hatch and pulled open its door, waving for Estrella to follow. Missed bullets clanked against the floor and wall next to them. The Specters were catching up and not letting the mist hold them up. The two ran through, and found their way outside and onto the platform, running without looking back or to catch their breath.

  “Hey!” Ray shouted, pointing up ahead.

  Estrella looked and saw Piper waving her gauntlet hand at them. Beside her stood Miyuki and Bashiir, each one holding an assault rifle each, while the Alpha Pack in their wolf form circled around them.

  “The cavalry is here,” Ray added. “Let’s take this before they leave!”

  Estrella and Ray joined up with the group, lowering their bodies to huff and puff. Estrella gestured back at the shuttle they escaped from, glad to se
e the Specters didn’t pursue. Unless they were ghostwalking but none of the wolves or Bashiir could see them.

  “Guys quick!” Estrella shouted. “They’ve taken the shuttle!”

  Piper shook her head. “Fuck it!”

  Estrella growled. “No!”

  “We have no choice!” Piper roared and pointed back down at the port. A new dropship landed, deploying backup Yoshida PMCs. “Malcolm has an escape route, but it’s gonna be closing fast, we gotta leave now!”

  And staying meant they’d be surrounded by the corporate soldiers while retaking the shuttle, defeating the remaining Specters, and searching for the prototype TEK they left aboard. And that was assuming they’d even get aboard, because as Estrella turned around again the shuttle’s jets fired.

  Within ten seconds the shuttle took off, blue flames from its thrusters pushing it up and up toward the golden skies, and then out over the Pacific Ocean. The Specters left them. She debated if leaving Yanmei alive was a good idea, who no doubt gave the order to escape.

  “Fuck!” Estrella yelled. She’d smash her hand on the guard railing if that were an option. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

  Estrella, Ray, Miyuki, Bashiir, and Piper followed Nelson and his gang of wolves. They slipped down off the platform, venturing into the maze of containers littering the port. They found Malcolm who led them out and into the industrial district of Los Angeles.

  Behind where the newly arrived, Yoshida PMCs marching across the port, securing the platform, untying the hostages, and taking control of the truck the Specters used. They searched for the prototype that wasn’t there. The prototype was on its way to Federation territory.

  It was a bittersweet victory.

  Sixty-One

  Miyuki

  The mechanic Estrella referred to as TT stood holding a tablet, its network cable jacked into Miyuki’s head. She sat at the edge of the operating table, twiddling her thumbs, dangling her legs, and awaited the report from his diagnostic checks. The battle damage she received from the fight at the port was extensive.

  Estrella was in the room with them, leaning up against the wall, arms crossed. Miyuki had noticed Estrella’s eyes were fixed onto her body and had been for some time. They didn’t move away, not even when Miyuki’s eyes eventually met hers. Miyuki shyly looked away, her face turning red.

  “How is she, TT?” Estrella asked.

  “Good enough for now,” TT said as his silver skeletal fingers swiped across the pad’s screen. “Might wanna bring her back tomorrow so I can do something about those hands. The tech in them ain’t wired right. I can make ‘em look like normal flesh too if you want.” TT jacked Miyuki out from the pad. He looked at Estrella’s left hand. “Speaking of which, how’s the hand?”

  Estrella clenched her left fist, bringing it to her face. “Good as new. Thanks.” From a nearby table, Estrella picked up Yanmei’s partially frozen arm and tossed it at TT. “What can you tell me about that?”

  He caught the severed arm swiftly. “What the hell is that?” He gave the wrist a tap and out sprang the nanite injector needle. “The fuck…”

  “We use that to inject armed nanites into our enemies,” Miyuki said. “Or into us and heal ourselves.”

  Estrella nodded. “Yanmei Feng hit me with that a few times. TT, think you can copy it?”

  “Maybe, fuck. I might make a killing with this on the black market.” He faced Estrella once again. “Where’d you get this again?” Before Estrella could reply. “Wait.” Now he faced Miyuki, right eyebrow lifted. “Enemies? What kinda enemies?”

  Miyuki stayed silent, remembering what Estrella told her. TT apparently wasn’t aware of Estrella’s work or friends, and therefore shouldn’t know anything more about Miyuki that he didn’t already know.

  “Eh, never mind,” TT said and walked to his workshop, bringing the arm with him. “You’d probably have to kill me if you told me, so don’t.”

  “Glad we have an understanding, TT,” Estrella said. “And like you said earlier, this is some next-level tech. You could be rich, if you play your cards right, and shut your mouth.”

  He grinned. “That is something I can totally do.”

  “Anything else?” Estrella asked him.

  “Not gonna lie,” he said, leaving Yanmei’s arm on the workshop table. “Was gonna close up the shop early today.”

  “Works for me,” Estrella said and headed for the exit, pulling her motorcycle keys from her arm. “I got to report to Yoshida, so I’ll get going.”

  TT gestured to Miyuki. “Do you got someplace to be too?”

  “Well…” Miyuki looked to the floor, wincing. She was stuck in the Alliance, alone, and regretting her actions of the last few days. Yanmei and the others were gone, and she hadn’t considered what she’d do next. TT asking her that question also meant he had no plans on letting her sleep in the workshop. Miyuki was homeless. At least she had a home to stay in before she killed herself.

  The thought had her body trembling, her eyes still facing the floor from where she sat up top of the operating table. A hand entered her view with the palm and fingers wide open.

  It was Estrella reaching out to her with her left synthetic hand. “Eh, come with me,” Estrella said. “I got a place you could stay.”

  Miyuki shyly nodded, and then slowly reached out and touched Estrella’s hand.

  It felt real and was really lovely to touch.

  Sixty-Two

  Estrella

  Estrella was in Lady M’s office again, standing with her arms crossed before M’s desk. Los Angeles’s neon splendor was in its early stages of coming out for the evening as seen through the window.

  Lady M’s projection appeared. She stood ahead of the window, watching the skyline as if she had been there the whole time. Her flickering hologram spun, facing Estrella, her long cigarette holder in slender fingers as per usual. She puffed and blew the smoke out from her glossy red lips.

  “I’ll get right to the point, Rodriguez,” Lady M said. “The pods are gone. What the fuck happened?”

  Estrella’s head tilted to the right. “What do you mean gone?”

  “I mean they are gone. I sent people to the Bald Skulls hideout, and the Kobayashi docked at the Port of Alaska. There are no pods in either place.”

  Frustration caused Estrella to pull at her hair. “Fuck…” When she calmed down, Estrella added. “They were there, I swear.”

  “I believe you,” Lady M said. “I saw the video you sent us. Can’t say much about the Kobayashi. You didn’t supply evidence they were aboard.”

  That’s because it was all secondhand from Miyuki and the locals investigating it. Not that she needed to know Miyuki confirmed the pods existence on the ship. “Maybe the military took it? People from the Federation entered Alliance soil and started fucking things up.”

  “Perhaps, but Yoshida and the military share a special partnership.”

  “Like a special package of experimental weapons?” Estrella snorted, though she knew that the story wasn’t true.

  “Which we failed to prevent falling into the Federation’s hands.” M was still convinced the TEK suit was just a bunch of guns they’d been working on. Estrella wondered if Lady M was lying to her or had been tricked by her own people. “Anyway, someone on the inside would have fed me the details by now, and they didn’t because they don’t have the pods either. If they even existed on the ship at all.” She puffed and blew smoke from the cigarette and faced the desk. Like magic, its front drawer popped open. “Take it,” M said, gesturing to the drawer.

  Estrella peeked inside the opened drawer and pulled out a check. She grinned as she brought it to her face. “Payday already?”

  “That is a bonus,” Lady M said. “You exposed Patterson, giving me the satisfaction of watching his face when I fired his fucking ass, then had him arrested along with the people you identified in that video found in the Skull’s hideout. And thanks to the fighting at the port, I was able to trace the division those dead PMC ca
me from. Turns out a lot of them were dirty, so I’m going to make a few heads roll with our private military contractors tomorrow.” She puffed her stick and blew smoke. “And you were right about Portia. In fact, she was the one that gave the orders to search the mountains outside Anchorage and attack the port.”

  “There’s still more slime in your company,” Estrella said, stowing the check inside her synthetic arm as it split upon. “Like Ash—”

  “Shut the fuck up about him already,” Lady M’s voice was agitated. “Show me proof and he’s done. But if Partington and Taylor are out there, blaming the poor guy, I will defend him. I will not be seen agreeing with the words of wanted terrorists.”

  Estrella restored her arm to its previous state. It was tempting to come out with the truth, revealing that Ray and Piper helped her fight off the Specters, and that she’d been working with them in secret. And during the cyberattack, she came close to doing that, until she learned about Serge through Miyuki. But she stuck with her story, she arrived at the port alone, fought with the dirty PMCs, and fled when she was outnumbered. Estrella wanted her freedom and staying on M’s good side was the way to get it. And the sooner she got her freedom, the sooner she could ditch the double life. At least she didn’t have to keep the fact she reported to Lady M a secret from Ray and Piper anymore.

  “Unless you got anything else to report,” Lady M said. “Then, you are dismissed.”

  “I don’t.” She turned for the exit.

  “And,” Lady M called out, her voice stopping Estrella an inch shy from the exit. “Thank you…” Estrella looked back at M, eyes narrowing. She’d never thought she’d hear appreciation from a corporate body like her. “You’re weakening the cancer eating at Yoshida.”