Looking around, he tried to find some sign or indication of where he could get some transportation around the Gulf to the western side where the port of Exmouth sat. Originally established as a submarine base in World War Two, until now it had been a sleepy tourist town best known for its access to the ocean reefs.
One sign he spotted was unexpected: SAVE THE REEFS shouted garishly in pink paint on a crude wooden placard carried by a weather-beaten woman with the young-old look of a recently elderly Eden Plague infectee. Everyone was ignoring her as she loudly proclaimed her environmental message.
The woman’s presence actually heartened him. It said a lot for the government that it still allowed free speech and lawful protest, no matter how misguided. Spooky would be happy to sacrifice any number of reefs to ensure Earth’s military power could defend them from absorption by the Meme.
Survival trumped all.
Another sign caught his eye, but this one read “Exmouth Shuttle.” A new but already dusty air-conditioned bus waited and a queue of people filed into it. He was about to join the line when he sense an incoming missile.
Taking a step forward, he turned to avoid the blood orange aimed at his head. Reaching up, he caught it as it went past, simultaneously searching for the source of the throw.
A late-model Land Rover, pearl white and far less dusty than everything else in sight, supported the shapely derriere of a stunning dusky-skinned woman with high cheekbones and lustrous black hair. Merriment danced in her exotic eyes as Spooky smiled and split the fruit in half with his roughened hands.
Without breaking her locked gaze, he walked toward the woman and the SUV, peeling the crimson orange halves. One piece went into his own mouth, bursting flavor almost unbearably sweet after two months of packaged rations. The other, on the tips of his fingers, went into hers.
For a moment her lips lingered on his hand, promises of things to come, before they found his mouth and fused to him. Juice spurted past their kisses and ran onto her brightly-colored sun dress, mingling with the patterns there. She slid off the fender into his arms, but her feet never touched the ground as he held her against the vehicle’s shiny surface.
“Tran,” she breathed when they finally separated. “I missed you.”
Spooky tried to set her down but her legs twined around him hungrily, clamping to his waist. He suppressed a demanding surge of lust. “So I see. I missed you too, Ann, but shall we get inside this fine vehicle? People are beginning to stare.”
“Let them stare.”
He shook his head. “I prefer not to draw attention to myself, and you are nothing if not worthy of attention.”
Ann Alkina’s pout smoothed out and she let go her full-body embrace. “As you wish. The inside is very comfortable.” Sloe-eyed, she reached around him to open the passenger door.
Spooky slid into the seat and clicked on the belt.
Ann’s pout returned when she climbed into the driver’s seat and saw what he had done. “Two months and all you can think about is business?”
Spooky blinked once, slowly, then winked his right eye. “No, I merely haven’t been really clean in all that time and I prefer our first session together in months to be…exceptional.”
“Good answer.” She put the SUV in Drive and roared off, dodging among the people and other vehicles with reckless abandon, eventually rolling over a curb and onto a paved road.
“What’s in Exmouth? A flight?”
“No, I decided to bring the yacht.”
“Slow travel…wench.” he chuckled. “A ploy to get me all to yourself for a week.”
“Only five days. And the long range comms are functioning. I’m not a fool. You’ll be able to work.”
“An aircraft still might have been wiser.”
She eyed him briefly as she drove moderately in the left – the slow – lane of the highway to Exmouth. “You can always call for a seaplane, but this way I at least get you for one day. And I thought it best to brief you at leisure on what’s been going on back in Sydney and at the Outback site. It might mitigate any…hastiness.”
“When have I ever been hasty?”
“Even so…”
Spooky sighed. “All right. I’ll defer to your judgment for the nonce. Do you have any sort of foul weed about?”
She gestured toward the glovebox, where he found a pack of slim cigars and a lighter. Soon the vehicle filled with fragrant smoke. He cracked a window as he took a deep drag, and sighed with pleasure as the nicotine hit his bloodstream.
A few minutes later they turned off the main highway and drove through the edge of the port to a private wharf. Alkina did not stop when she got to the pier, but rolled slowly onto it and thence up a heavy-duty brow directly through the cargo hatch of a yacht of at least fifty meters length. Bates Motel was painted across the stern: a private joke.
Inside, white-clad crewmembers, mostly short men and women noticeably resembling Spooky, rushed to close the hatch, open doors and offer their services. On the deck, the boat’s captain and officers lined up and bowed. “Welcome back, General,” the skipper said.
Each nametag on their uniforms said Nguyen, and each was related to him in some way, as well as being thoroughly vetted Eden Plague carriers. Here aboard, at least, he had very little to fear from treachery or spies. “Thank you all,” Spooky replied with genuine warmth, giving the lie to those who said all Psychos were cold and sociopathic. Even the most selfish soul could respond to sincere and hard-earned adulation.
“I need to clean up now. Please continue to take instructions from Colonel Alkina, and I will see you at dinner.” He exchanged bows with them again, and then with great relief followed Ann to the master cabin.
After – truth be told, even during – a thorough sudsing shower and then bath, they indulged themselves in languid sex, reacquainting themselves within the ancient rite of man and woman. Spooky watched carefully for any alteration, any sign of change between them, and found something interesting.
As they lay sated in the bed, facing each other on opposite elbows, his eyes flicked a question toward her chest, and the faintest of new scars.
“Yes. I had it removed,” she replied.
“Why?” His query held no anger, only curiosity.
“Aside from the feeling anyone with the code and a transmitter could end me? To prove to you that I love you.”
“Oh? I would have thought leaving it there was greater proof.”
Her eyelashes batted once, twice. “Did you get out of practice, up there in space?”
“Perhaps. Or perhaps I want to hear it from you.”
“All right.” Ann ran a long nail down her sternum, then tapped it twice. “You have no easy hold over me anymore. I had two months to do what I will and would, but I am now here, with you. When we get back, you can examine all I did in your name. You may not agree with everything, but you will find nothing disloyal.”
Spooky searched her face for the truth, and found no lies there.
Ann rolled toward him, arms above her head, to spoon her naked back into his equally bare chest. “I love you, Nguyen Tran Pham.”
“Love is not always forever.” Cruel words, but he wished to ensure no doubts between them, for he did not base his life on sentiment.
“But ownership is.” She squirmed so that she lay on her back, her flank fitting perfectly into the curve of his hips, cheek to thigh. “I am yours, Tran. You taught me what it was to be a new kind of human, when others thought those like us were…worthless. You gave me the most important gift anyone can give.”
“Respect?” He kissed only her forehead, so that she could respond.
“A home. A family. A place to belong.” She turned her face to nuzzle his chest.
“Yes…for people like us…” It’s a family of tigers…but even tigers mate, and refrain from killing each other, usually. Perhaps… He wondered whether this was the one woman in all the world whom he could trust…or was it all just a deep and clever stratagem to get rid of
him?
He shook briefly, like a dog, trying to rid himself of that idea. Such thoughts could become self-fulfilling prophecies.
“I’ve lost you again, haven’t I?”
“Never,” he replied. “Just can’t stop my mind from running.”
Ann sighed wistfully. “I’m glad we have a thousand years. I’ll wait that long if I have to.”
He didn’t ask “for what.” Maybe someday he would be able to give her what she craved. Until then…he’d give her what he could.
-2-
Spooky took the seaplane after all, not because he was impatient – not entirely. It was more because he felt increasingly vulnerable sailing along the south coast of Australia. One missile, one torpedo, one remote-controlled suicide speedboat and both the current and former heads of Direct Action would be out of the way.
For the same reason he ordered Ann to stay on the yacht, at least until the seaplane’s next sortie. He hadn’t thought much beyond Earth’s temporary salvation, and now he was filled with a feeling of important thing undone, of political undercurrents he no longer had a sense of. Months had elapsed since Orion’s liftoff; a lot could happen in the small shark-pool of the Committee of Nine.
Approaching Sydney, he diverted unscheduled to land on Lake Burragorang, where a wad of cash from a startled local bought him a ride into the town of Penrith. There he slipped into one of the directorate’s safe houses and logged on to a waiting secure terminal.
His codes were still good, another indication that Alkina was either loyal, or very subtle. Spooky allowed himself to be nearly certain of the former.
Spending the evening in seclusion, he trolled through his own information systems and those of his rivals, using backdoors he had had installed. While no computer wiz himself, he had some extremely competent people working for him. He learned many interesting things, but nothing so fascinating as a piece of virtual paper waiting in the intelligence report bin titled Daniel Markis, a subfile of his people’s spying on the other Free Communities and its council.
Marked Most Secret, it began with the words, “Dear Spooky,” and ended with “Your friend, DJ.” Between the greeting and closing was an invitation to meet, either at Carletonville or some neutral place of his choosing.
At what game are you playing, Daniel? A secure channel should be good enough, with modern encryption. On the other hand, Direct Action’s people had discovered this message in Markis’ computers, or perhaps it had been slipped into his own heavily defended system. Either answer demonstrated that nothing was uncrackable.
I need time to make sure of the situation here, he thought. Ariadne had tried to blackmail MacAdam into a shipboard coup, and Ann had rescued his family to remove that lever from her grip, but the fencing match between Direct Action and Smythe’s Central Authority undoubtedly continued.
A nice name, that, he’d always thought. Spooky mentally tipped his hat. It subtly reinforced her legitimacy even in its nomenclature. Direct Action, on the other hand, conjured up an unsubtle brutality that served him well, since its actual operations were normally executed with perfect finesse.
Usually.
After shooting off a note to Ann, he reviewed her actions in his absence and was pleasantly surprised. Oh, he might have tweaked something here, improved something there, but by and large he was satisfied. He went to sleep with as much peace of mind as he ever had.
The machine beeped early with a reply from Alkina, and an hour later he hopped into a nondescript Japanese sedan indistinguishable from a million others on the road. This time Ann had dressed in her Australian Army uniform.
“Brigadier now?”
“I thought as your proxy on the Committee it was appropriate.”
Spooky chuckled. “Soon you will outrank me.”
“Perhaps you should dispense with ranks and just be yourself.”
“I am myself. I like the rank. As a young Army sergeant I used to dream of putting on the godlike rank of Master Sergeant. That’s all the higher I expected to go, as a foreign-born Green Beret with no degree. Look at me now.”
Alkina laughed. “As you wish, my lord.” She gestured at a package in the back seat. “Speaking of uniforms, I brought yours.”
Spooky glanced back at it. “Later. For now, just get me in to DA HQ unobserved. By the way…did you see the Markis message?”
“Of course.”
“Thoughts?”
“He’s your friend. I wouldn’t presume. I don’t think he’s setting you up, if that’s what you’re asking. At least, not physically. Politically, perhaps, but politicians are all the same backstabbing lot.”
“Not Markis,” popped from Spooky’s mouth before he could stop it. “Funny, that’s the least cynical thing I’ve said in some time, but it’s true. He’s a good man, and he wouldn’t screw me over, politically or otherwise…unless he thought I deserved it. As I see it, he owes me on every level, from the return of his children to the role I played in getting certain countries on board with the Orion project, to going along on it myself.”
“So what are you asking?” She turned down an unmarked but well-traveled road leading into the green almost-mountains.
“I suppose just your opinion of the logistics. Where should we meet?”
“Antarctica would be the safest. It’s an FC stronghold, very hard to infiltrate for the Russians or the Chinese or any rogue elements. Either that or South Africa itself.”
“I agree. Do me a favor and get in touch with Cassandra Johnstone. Set it up for their remote facility. The day after tomorrow, if you can.” Spooky turned to snake over the seat into the back. Popping a catch, he folded down the central armrest and slowly, with careful nanite-assisted strength, pulled it loose from its fittings. A few more moments work opened a pass-through to the sedan’s trunk.
“I also brought a commando skinsuit,” she called. “It’s in the bag there.”
“Excellent. I’ll put it on in the boot.”
Once he had squirmed through the small opening, he turned around to fit the armrest back into its space, leaving nothing to show what he had done. A few minutes later he heard them pass through security, where Brigadier Alkina overrode her own protocols to decline a search.
Once parked deep underground, she opened the back and a figure, black-clad head to toe including full face shield, accompanied her to her office, hiding Spooky’s return from even his own people. One more day working, and a night together in the attached contingency quarters, and they were ready.
-3-
Invisible to as many spectra as Direct Action’s technology could make it, the stealthy insertion drone hummed low over the Antarctic snowscape. It had taken off from an underground launch-catapult and supercruised through the stratosphere most of the way from Australia before dropping to its terminal nap-of-the-Earth profile. Normally used to clandestinely drop or land specialized items, this time its cargo was unusual, even experimental.
A human being.
Crammed into the container, Spooky responded to the alarm and gentle hiss of extra oxygen with a sneeze and two blinks. The latter activated the HUD of his nanocommando skinsuit, which gave him the ETA to time over target: five minutes.
Plenty of time to clear his head and get ready.
He could have come in overtly, on a transport plane perhaps, but that would open him up to two improbable but disastrous possibilities: unexpected treachery on the part of the Free Communities, or more likely, a third party trying to counterfeit such a backstab. Either way, this method was much safer.
That is, assuming he survived the insertion.
His landing zone was a snow-covered plateau ten kilometers from the FC facility. The curve of low hills kept the drone – essentially a weaponless cruise missile – invisible to the air traffic control radar of the complex’s runway, even if its stealth coating was not enough. The deep drifts below would give him an extra margin of safety if the landing did not come off as expected.
Packed tight inside an in
ert cloth-covered silicone gel akin to the more prosaic stuff of computer mouse-pads, he could do nothing except count the seconds to landing. His final warning was the drone’s ramjet engine shutting off and air brakes deploying to bring the robot aircraft down to a preset speed.
At this point, powerful compressed nitrogen charges blew the landing package out the back and a parachute opened with a brutal shock. Its canopy deployed perfectly, and the shell swung once, twice, then ground gently into the deep white snow.
Another pop split the cargo casing, and Spooky’s surrounding gel inserts fell from him like dead white tribbles. Standing up, he surveyed the Antarctic horizon, feeling the bitter cold as a gentle cooling through his insulated oversuit and skinsuit.
The drone was made to carry and soft-land four hundred kilos of gear. Spooky weighed no more than seventy-five, suit and all. The rest was taken up with supplies – food, fuel, water, drugs, weapons, inflatable tent…everything he might need to survive for a few days in an emergency. He didn’t think he would need most of it, but he hadn’t lives this long by being unprepared.
First he activated a hot-pack meal and downed its semi-liquid contents – a stewlike sludge meant to provide maximum nutrition in minimum time. Thus fortified, he strapped on specialized cross-country skis and his preloaded backpack, and began to shush toward the base. His chameleon oversuit turned dirty white within moments, to match the snow.
The edge of the plateau presented his first challenge, especially with the twenty-knot wind cutting crossways to the slope. Several hundred meters of broken rock and ice made for a nasty route.
Taking an air-powered launcher off his pack, he fired a grapnel down into a crevice, then pulled up on its attached cord until its barbs seated firmly. Rearranging the lines, he then launched another in a parabolic arc toward the complex in the distance. It reached nearly to the far edge of the ice field, and he drew and pulled until the hooks caught on something and did not budge.
Cyborg Strike Page 2