Cyborg Strike (10 page)

A hail of firepower converged on the cyborg.
Armorshock blasts immobilized him long enough for antiarmor rockets
to chew chunks from its metal skin. Large caliber bullets probed
for the few weak spots – the eyes, the throat, the elimination port
– and tore into the less robust human-machine hybrid mechanisms
beneath.

Once the firing diminished, a nanocommando
strode forward with a short rotor blade from the downed VTOL and
used it to chop the thing’s head from its shoulders. It took nine
blows.

Sitting on the ground holding his leg wound
closed, Spooky instructed, “Find tools in the wreckage. There
should be fire axes, or perhaps something in the workshops – saws,
cutting torches. I want this thing dismembered and the pieces
locked up in hard cases for shipment back to Direct Action labs.
Ritter,” he turned to one of the squad leaders, “load our wounded
on a good bird back to headquarters and pick up whatever you
need.”

“Yes, sir,” Ritter responded, calling over
his comm for a VTOL dustoff.

Spooky looked at the ugly scene around him
and repeated to himself:
never again.
Never again would he
fight from an inferior position. Never again would he allow
opposition to grow powerful enough to challenge him on the
continent of Australia. If a subtly effective police state filled
with drones would save Earth, then by the gods, he would create
one. No Stalin, no Mao, no Attila or Khan would outdo him in
implacable ruthlessness.

His next order of business was to find out
where that thing that used to be Miguel Carrasco had come from.
Soon, he swore, he would have his own cyborgs, and his own
cybernetics.

Never again.

“I can’t say I’m that unhappy, except about
leaving you.” Jill Repeth spun the readout tablet idly around on
the tabletop next to her husband Rick Johnstone’s cluttered
CyberComm workstation within the damaged space battleship
Orion
. Orders to report to the provisional US capital of
Pueblo showed on its face. “Space just isn’t for me, I don’t
think.”

Rick turned his blue-grey eyes in her
direction. “Eventually you’ll be spending more and more time out
here. Your skills and augmentation make that a certainty.”

“All the more reason to get back down to
Earth for a while.”

“I think you have unfinished business, and
you’re bored.”

“Is that wrong? I’m not cut out to be a
bodyguard, and there’s not much policing to do up here. As soon as
this ship starts in its conversion to a permanent orbital station
and the new cargo haulers start hauling stuff up from Earth,
Admiral Absen will probably have plenty of Stewards around
him.”

“So you want to be where the action is. I get
it. I knew who you were when I married you.” Rick leaned across to
kiss her. “
Vaya con Dios
, you have my blessing.”

Jill leaned into him and kissed him back.
“The orders say next available shuttle. That gives us twenty
hours.”

“We can have a lot of fun in twenty hours.”
He stood up, shutting down his console.

“Yeah. How long can you stay awake?” she
asked.

“I got a battle stim left over that I haven’t
turned in yet…”

“Naughty husband of mine. Sounds fun.”

***

Jill slept most of the way down, even through
the roughest bucking of the shuttle. It was an acquired skill most
combat troops developed. She woke up alert as the wheels touched
down at the enormously-expanded Butts Army Spaceport, formerly
Airfield, on Ft. Carson, Colorado, and soon walked off the
spaceplane with a heavy duffel in each hand. For this occasion, she
had put her Marine utility uniform back on.

Crisp, cool and sunny, the Colorado sky made
her squint. She wasn’t used to it, and here at altitude, the sun’s
rays seemed harsh as she walked across the new concrete. It smelled
of hot rain and jet fuel.

Flashing lights on a black SUV greeted her as
she approached the terminal building. The vehicle pulled up next to
her and the doors popped open, disgorging two beefy Secret Service
men. “Hop in, Master Sergeant,” Jill heard the woman in the
driver’s seat call, so she tossed a duffel to each of the men.

One stumbled and dropped her bag. The other
merely gave an
oof
and looked at her strangely as he caught
it. Each ballistic nylon sack must have massed fifty kilos.
Obviously that had surprised them, as well as the ease with which
she had tossed them. The two men hefted the things into the SUV’s
rear cargo space, then slid back in to the back seat, one on a
side, as Jill stepped into the passenger front.

The woman driving was unknown to her, but
seemed cut from the same mold as the others. “The President would
like to see you, Master Sergeant,” she said flatly.

“I see.” No point in asking what about. These
would either not know, or would not tell, so she kept her mouth
shut until they debarked twenty minutes later in front of the
Presidential Mansion in Pueblo.

“Secure those bags for me, will you gents?”
Assuming her request would be granted, she followed the woman
through security and soon was ushered into the august presence of
President of the United States Nathan B. McKenna.

He looked far younger now than his
chronological sixty-some years. When she had last seen him, he had
just been infected with the Eden Plague and the rejuvenation
process had not yet taken hold. Now, after several months, he
looked like a young thirty, with old eyes. He sported grey dye at
the temples, an affectation all the rage among Eden rejuvs in
positions of power.

“Jill!” McKenna reached for her hand warmly,
a two-handed politician’s grip, but she could see he was genuinely
sincere. Still, she doubted his summons was for just a kumbayah
with the Marine who had saved his life.

“Good to see you, sir.” Once they were seated
in the Oval Office – made so in this “New White House” by
renovation rather than original design – she asked, “How may I
serve my country?”

McKenna poured two single-malts with his own
hand. “We’ll get to that. How is Rick, and how was it up there?
Tell me all about it, from a personal point of view. All I get is
briefings. Tell me a story.” The man seemed eager to hear her tale
of space battle, his eyes bright and interested. Had be been a dog
his ears would be standing up and facing forward.

So she spent the next half hour describing
everything she could, as McKenna sipped Scotch and nodded.
Eventually Jill relaxed, even with two Secret Service agents
standing behind her.

Besides, she knew she could take them out if
she had to.

Crazy to think that way.

Crazy not to, after all that had happened.
There were still a lot of leftover Unies around. Just like after
the Soviet Union fell, some always longed for the good old days of
authoritarianism and order.

Once her narration finished, McKenna banged
down his emptied highball on the coaster with a clinking thud.
“Amazing. Thank you for that. I’m sure I’ll listen to the recording
many times. Now, I thought I’d give you a heads-up on your new
mission.”

“Have you found Septagon Shadow, sir?” Jill’s
eyes burned a bit brighter with hope.

“Yes, we have, but that’s about the only good
news there is. Technically, they’re out of our reach.”

“Please don’t keep me in suspense.”

He held up a hand. “They’re in Russia. It had
to be either that or China, really. Winthrop Jenkins could only
move so much money out of the country before we clamped down on the
transfers. Actually his elderly sister Adelia was they key. Once
she became an Eden, she regained her health and vigor, and with the
law on her side, she took control of the family fortune with a
vengeance. So he had to find a sponsor to set them and their rogue
research program up.”

Repeth pursed her lips. “What can we do,
then? They’re in a sovereign country. Regardless of the program’s
provenance, the US has a cybernetics program and the Tiny Fortress
nano program. How can we deny Russia the same?”

“That’s why I said the news wasn’t all good.
You’re right, it’s difficult. With the help of the Neutral States,
we’re going to put political and economic pressure on them, and see
how it goes. We’ll try to get the Russians to give up Jenkins, at
least. The experiments those people conducted were immoral,
hideous, but the results…well, the program helped us make you,
didn’t it?”

Jill crossed her arms, unconsciously shutting
down. “Like the rehabilitated Nazis helped us make rockets and
H-bombs. So sir, why am I here, if there won’t be an
operation?”

“Who says there won’t be? I’m going to
exhaust all other options so I have political and legal cover if
there is a covert op. We’ll need the time for your upgrades anyway.
And training.”

“Upgrades?”

“You’ll see. And Master Sergeant…I detect a
certain reticence.”

“It’s just…this isn’t the same as breaking
people out of prison camps or restoring order to territory, or even
bodyguarding an admiral.”

“Or pirating a submarine?”

Repeth cast her eyes down. “No one was
supposed to get killed on that op. Can you say the same about this
one?”

“You didn’t seem concerned about killing
people when you were looking for Rick Johnstone…or this man.”
President McKenna lifted a mug shot of Scott Stone out of a file
and placed it before her.

“The Professor? He was…”

“No worse than these people.”

Repeth shook her head as if to clear it.
“Sir, I was almost out of my mind with worry. I was obsessed with
getting Rick back, and I was ready to mow down anyone in my way…but
that was wrong. I didn’t come back to my country just to be used in
a tainted op. I can shoot someone in self-defense, or even in war,
especially with a round that gives them a chance to live through
it, but I’m not an assassin.”

“And I’m not asking you to be. The mission,
when it happens, is to go in and retrieve or destroy all their
data. The goal will be to set back their program for a few years –
hopefully until after this next attack from space is over with – by
which time our own advances will make anything they come up with
obsolete.”

Repeth chewed the inside of her cheek,
considering.

“Have you seen the news reports out of
Chechnya?” the President asked.

“No…why?”

“The Russians have sent in Spetznaz and
started killing every male between sixteen and sixty. No arrests,
just murder.”

“And this is somehow connected to Septagon
Shadow?”

McKenna nodded. “Our intel says these guys
are like nanocommando zombies. They heal fast, slaughter
indiscriminately, and show no remorse – no emotion at all.”

“Shadows?”

“Not full-blown cyborgs. One of our people
got a good look at a corpse. Chips in his head, but nothing
else.”

“So…direct brain control. This way you can
use Edens – implant control circuits to burn out the virtue effect.
Cheap and effective. I bet they could turn out dozens a day, just
as fast as they can trank them and do some quick surgery.”

McKenna nodded. “That’s the kind of people
we’re facing. No moral compunctions at all. And there’s another
thing that may help motivate you.” He tapped the photo. “Professor
Scott has escaped.”

“What?” She leaped to her feet, momentarily
leaving the floor with the power of her cybernetic legs. She heard
the agents behind her drawing weapons, and she was certain they
were pointed at her head.

The President waved them back from his seat.
“He busted out of the convoy bringing him to the supermax prison.
Broke the heaviest shackles, ripped open a containment truck from
the inside…our people believe he’s cyber-augmented.”

Repeth paced behind her chair, causing the
two Secret Service agents to back up and lift their sidearms again.
The motion caught her eye and she sneered pointedly at them, then
turned back to the President. “He must have sandbagged me. He’d had
the implants but he was clever enough to hide the fact, and let me
knife him in the gut. He knew he’d have a better chance once we
thought we had him well-restrained. I should have known he went
down too easy.
Hell!
I was a fool.”

“No more than us. We didn’t think to give him
a body scan. He was smart, we were careless. Don’t let it get to
you. He’s just one man.”

Repeth smacked one fist into another with a
sound like a gunshot. “All right. I’m motivated. But I’m still not
going to do wet work for you.”

“And I’m not going to order you to do
something you can’t. You don’t have to decide anything yet. Just
get the new equipment, train and prepare, and wait. That’s all I
ask. It could be weeks, or months, or not at all.”

“Fair enough, sir.” She came to attention,
facing him. “Will that be all, sir?”

McKenna looked up at her and sighed. “Yes,
thank you. That will be all. Agent Stags will show you out.”

Salmi, Karelia District, Russia was a
revitalized ghost town. Where before nothing but Reaper Plague
death had stalked the streets, now the area bustled with drab
military vehicles, automobiles of every make and model, bicycles
and pedestrians.

Winthrop Jenkins gazed at the activity from
his third-floor corner office – the highest available on the
heavily guarded research city. It overlooked the A130 bridge that
crossed the Tulemayoki river. That in turn emptied into Lake
Ladoga, whose waters lapped the piers and pilings of the suburbs of
St. Petersburg a hundred kilometers to the southwest, and extended
almost to the Finnish border.

Not too near, not too far. The new facility
was remote enough to ensure few stumbled across it, but close
enough to draw on the metropolis for material and support.