Cyborg Strike

by David VanDyke

  Markis spread his hands in acceptance. “Once you left my personal service, have I ever expected that?”

  “No. I just wanted to be clear. If I take over, I will rule Australia for the benefit of the world – and for the people there, and for myself, not for you or for the Free Communities.”

  Markis threw him a jaunty salute. “Got it. Now about Russia…”

  “What about it? You said you have some problem with them?”

  “Just with the Septagon Shadow program, the parts of it that fled the US. The Russians took them in. I’m sure they love the idea of absorbing the technology and using it.”

  “I fail to see that the issue is. Surely a few cyborgs are not that disruptive to a technologically advanced nation armed with nuclear weapons.”

  Markis finished his sandwich and reached for another. “Not of they stay in their lanes. My concern is that they might turn the tables on the Russians.”

  “The tail may wag the dog, you think?”

  “I do. Cass has been looking into it for quit a while, ever since her son Rick and daughter-in-law came home with implanted cyberware.”

  “Yes,” Spooky replied drily. “I can see the motivation.”

  “I’ve directed Cass to turn over a complete package of data to you. All I ask is that you look at it and, once you have secured your position, think about what needs to be done. If the goal is to get all of Earth, especially the big players, pulling the yoke together, we have to remove a rogue element like Septagon Shadow.”

  Spooky chuckled. “You want me to do your dirty work.”

  “Our dirty work, Tran. We do what we do best, you do what you do best. Win-win.” Markis stared at Spooky a moment longer, as if deciding what more to say. “Did you ever wonder why I gave you so much material to work with?”

  “Because you had no choice, if Orion was to be built?”

  Markis laughed. “Not that kind of material…I meant human resources.”

  Spooky’s eyes narrowed, and his nostrils flared with suppressed realization.

  Markis’ smile broadened. “It’s a rare thing to get ahead of the great Spooky Nguyen. I’m talking about your fellows, your compatriots.”

  “Psychos?”

  “If you have less pejorative term I’ll use it.”

  “I don’t really mind, between us alone. Officially, we call them ‘Outliers’.” Spooky finished the sandwich, drank a glass of water and relit his cigar. “So you’re claiming you…”

  “Killed at least two birds with one stone by shipping you all the ‘Outliers’ we could find? Yes. Even Cass was against it, but I think I was right. Getting rid of the Psychos from the rest of the FC dramatically simplified our problems, and I figured that someone would eventually put them to good use, or eliminate them for us. The only risk I foresaw was that they would seize power and make a mess of things, but once you took up residence there, I slept like a baby.”

  Spooky puffed his stogie contemplatively, matched by Daniel across from him. “When did you know?”

  “About you being one? For sure? I suppose just now…but I was almost certain from the time the missile strikes went awry. I just couldn’t see you getting duped that way, which meant that somehow you had to be complicit. No Eden would sacrifice hundreds of millions of people, even if the payoff was breaking the back of the nations standing in the way of saving the Earth. But I saw you infected. Ergo…an Outlier.”

  “Hmm.” Spooky stood up to pace after tapping a chunk of ash into the tray. “A deductive leap. I did not think it would be so obvious.”

  Daniel shook his head. “It was only obvious to someone who knew you well, knew your skills and abilities, and also knew the real ins and outs of the Eden Plague’s effects on the human psyche.”

  “Ah. Elise.”

  “And her team, of course. We were talking one day and suddenly I had an epiphany.”

  “You are a fortunate man, to have such a wife.”

  “I am.” Markis stood up to match Spooky across the table, putting down his stogie. “My reports say you have a good woman, too.”

  “Good? I’m not sure that’s the right term, but…loyal, entertaining, and effective, yes. An excellent match. But now we are just exchanging pleasantries, and I am very tired.” Spooky made as if to grind out his cigar.

  Markis leaned back in his chair, interlacing his fingers behind his head, his elbows spread to the sides. “I remember when we used to just shoot the breeze. Be a shame if we’re beyond that simple pleasure now.” His eyes were wide, and held something Nguyen could not completely fathom.

  Spooky paused, momentarily astonished. Then he tried to put himself in the other man’s place. Loneliness had seldom been the Degar’s affliction, but Markis was a social man, a white knight from his earliest days. Now he sat atop a political pyramid that precluded him from relaxing with anyone except his inner circle – who these days comprised mostly women. Cass, Elise, Shawna, Millie…there was Larry Nightingale, but he was the only one of the original A-team available. Vinny and Skull and Zeke were dead, and Spooky had left Markis’ side.

  “I understand, my friend.” Spooky sat back down, putting his feet up on the table, and asked, “We have beer?”

  “I’ll send for some.” The Chairman of the Free Communities stuck his head out the door and called for a couple of six-packs, an unconscious smile on his face.

  “Remember how Skull could spin a bottle cap with his fingertips like a Frisbee?” Spooky set his first metal lid between thumb and middle finger and snapped it toward Markis. It flew in an arc and struck his target in the chest.

  “I do! Looks like you mastered the skill.”

  “It took me some time. I couldn’t let him show me up, after all.”

  When the beer arrived the Chairman of the Free Communities Council slid one of the cans across to his old comrade, a man he hoped would soon be the absolute ruler of Australia. Then he ordered the weather shutters that covered the large window opened, allowing in the glow from the southern aurora.

  Under unearthly ribbons of dancing light, they reminisced late into the Antarctic night.

  -4-

  Spooky’s trip back to Sydney was much more comfortable than the ride in the drone: first class on a Quantas jetliner out of Johannesburg. If not for his warring thoughts, he would have enjoyed it, though the plane was full for a Sunday. He’d been escorted on, VIP-style, at the last minute, as certain as it was possible to be that his enemies had not had time to act against him from this end.

  As always, he had a plan for the other.

  Not since before the Eden Plague repaired the brain damage he did not know was there, had such an easy decision seem so difficult. He wondered what had made him agree so quickly to seize Australia. Impulse? Since when have I been impulsive, or anything less than self-serving? The whole thing smacked of sentimentality, something he had sworn to expunge from himself.

  Now he wished he’d taken a trip up to Carletonville with Daniel, to see Elise and her team of biopsychologists, to delve more deeply into the Plague’s true effects on the brain and mind. He’d always assumed that the virus had remade him once, from something into something else, when he had contracted it. Now he began to wonder if the process had ever actually ended, or was ongoing.

  And if it continued in him, then it did so in others? What would that mean, for himself, and for humanity’s evolution? Though that was perhaps the wrong word, as the virus was most assuredly a product of intelligent design.

  He had agreed to seize power, but now he wished he hadn’t, so strong was the lure of self-discovery. Brutally, he forced that concern down.

  Plenty of time for that when we beat this Destroyer.

  Even so…when was a Psycho not a Psycho?

  To this question, he fell asleep, waking only upon touching down.

  This time Ann did not meet him; he had forbidden it, concerned that their mutual enemies might target them together. Better that he use his skills to make his stealthy way alone.


  Pulling on a reflective vest and a ball cap, he held some cheap red ear protectors under his arm as he exited the plane. Instead of walking up the ramp, he spoke a quiet word in the ear of the short Asian man guarding the small emergency stairway at the jetway’s articulated corner. The worker handed him an airport badge.

  Spooky walked through the “authorized personnel” door, clipped on the badge and slipped on the headgear as he descended the steps. Sauntering across the tarmac, he was now indistinguishable from the dozens of ground crew that scurried here and there, conducting the airport’s business.

  Sticking to the secure pathways, he eventually exited the terminal in front, and took off the badge, vest and ear guards, shoving them under his arm. He ditched them in a nearby dustbin when the cab dropped him off at a corner near one of Direct Action’s clandestine offices.

  Glancing around, he had a feeling of something out of place – perhaps of someone observing him closely. Smoothly he adjusted his cap in a nearby storefront window, using it as a mirror. It allowed him to spot a set of observers in a car just pulled up across the street.

  Must have made me after all, and followed me from the airport.

  Turning to his right, he stutter-stepped, then performed a rear-march without pausing as he saw two more men coming down the sidewalk, hands beneath their coats. The about-turn gained him nothing, however, as two more came from that direction. A quick spin spotted at least a dozen more closing in.

  He thought he might be able to disable several and get away, but the guns they undoubtedly carried would cause chaos in the streets. While he did not care terribly about innocent death, he loathed the idea of making the evening news, and cameras looked down upon them from high on the walls. For someone who lived his life in the shadows, there had to be a better way.

  Hurrying into the store, a popular coffee shop, he slipped through the press of patrons and out the back, into the alley. As he stepped out the door, he saw the eyes of a strangely built man with a hoodie gaze at him from a metal face.

  Then he felt a noose settle over his head.

  Surprise did not stop him from reacting instantly as the loop closed with machine speed. Reaching up as it began to jerk skyward, he tightened his hands to keep his head from being ripped right off his shoulders, and then jackknifed his body to reach upward with his feet to grasp the cable like a circus acrobat.

  Now looking up vertically along the line, he saw a man holding a winch control lever, gazing down at him with grim purpose from an opened window. Bereft of weapons, Spooky had only one choice.

  Upside-down, he climbed like a gymnast with his hands alone. Nano-infused power allowed him to gain at least three meters, but the cable’s circle around his neck did not loosen enough to release him.

  As he approached the winch and man, he saw only one chance to survive in literally one piece. Making a loop with the available slack, he grasped it with one hand like a cowboy with a lasso, and as his feet reached the upper window frame, he dropped the circle over the man’s head.

  Now his attacker had a dilemma. Continue taking up the cable, and the winch would pull his own head off first. Or, stop the winch and try to free himself.

  He chose the latter, the only rational decision for a human being.

  As the man struggled with the noose around his neck, Spooky arched his body into the window to place his feet on the floor, then he kicked his assailant in the gut as hard as he could. He could feel organs rupture as his curled-back toes dug deep, tearing skin and ripping muscle.

  Spooky’s triumph was short-lived, however, as bullets stitched across the wall near him. One caught him in the side, and he ignored the flare of pain to reach down and flip up a chair in the direction of the shooter, apparently the winch-man’s backup. With the cable around his neck, his options seemed few.

  The chair caused the shooter to dodge for long enough that Spooky could reach up to open the loop around his neck. Muscled bulged with nanite strength as he overcame the tightening clamp with pure power. He felt the skin of his fingers abrade and a muscle in his left forearm rip loose from the bone with the effort, but he was able to squeeze the cable over his head and off.

  Then it became a weapon, his only one.

  The cable was about a quarter inch across, braided of steel, and so weighed enough to be used as a crude flail. Holding about a meter of it with its head-sized clamped loop, Spooky dodged forward even as the gunman ripped off another burst.

  He dropped to roll under the bullets, hanging on to the cable all the while, and then swung it like a metal whip in a whirling blow that caught the submachine gun’s magazine and spun the weapon out of the man’s hands. Two quick strikes, forehand and back, with his good right hand put the man down, skull shattered.

  The room he occupied appeared to be an office, luxuriously furnished. Glancing out the window, he spotted four men waiting at the bottom aiming guns, looking up. Bullets followed his head as he yanked it back in out of the line of fire.

  No one with a hoodie.

  Spooky wondered what the plan had been. Was the metal-faced man wearing combat armor, a nanocommando deemed sufficient to finish him off as he hung in the air from the cable? They had suckered him well, driving him through the obvious escape route and into their trap. Had the winch-man made a mistake? Or had he been a glory hound, certain that he had his quarry helpless and wanting to make the kill himself?

  Those questions would have to wait. Crossing the room to pick up the second man’s weapon, a submachine gun of Uzi make, Spooky lay down and crawled to the interior door, pressing his eye to the crack beneath. Nothing could be seen within three or four meters distance, no feet waiting immediately outside, so he rolled out of the way and reached for the knob. Opening it slowly, he saw nothing and drew no reaction.

  Obviously bringing him all the way up here had not been in their plans, else they would have had more than two men waiting, and that gave him his opening. The clandestine Direct Action office rested within a building next to this one, a similar ten-storey corporate structure that would lease space to anyone with money. He recalled that a fourth-floor midair glass walkway linked the two, and he now ran through empty halls on this Sunday, searching for the way across.

  Then he skidded to a halt.

  While his attackers seemed to have made a mistake, one obvious backup plan would involve the connecting corridor, if they knew about his destination: a trap within a trap. Suspended in the air, the bottleneck would surround him with glass, with nowhere to go. If they were waiting at both ends…he might survive a forty-foot drop to the pavement, but he would likely be further injured, making him a sitting duck.

  His left arm was still useless, but he had gained a firearm. There must be at least eight ways out of the building, two emergency exits on each side. Better to take his chances on one of them, or perhaps break a window from the second floor and make the easy leap to a grassy knoll in the landscaping.

  Pounding steps could be heard from the direction of the main stairs near the elevator well in the center of the building, so he ran for one side, perpendicular to the alley wall of the winch, or that of the connecting walkway. Reaching the end of the corridor, he found the exit steps.

  Hearing the heavy tread coming after, he turned at the stairwell door and aimed his Uzi down the corridor the way he had come. Just one man followed him. The one with the hoodie, and the metal face.

  Spooky fired one burst, striking the man center mass. As expected, this yielded no result, but he’d had to try, in case his assumption about the armor was incorrect. He snarled and leaped down the stairs.

  Bigger, just as fast, probably tougher, especially compared to his own injured state, and relatively immune to bullets, his opponent had little to fear. The only thing Spooky could do was run, escape. On the second floor he exited the stairwell and hurried three doors down, desiring to get away from anyone waiting at the exit below. A powerful kick snapped the lock and he entered the office. Without pausing, he
launched a heavy lounge chair there with his foot, directly through the external floor-to-ceiling glass.

  Then he followed it.

  Bullets ripped the air above him as he struck the grass below and rolled through the shards, cutting his shoulder lightly. Using his momentum, he spun to his feet and leaped ten meters across an ornamental pond, prompting a burning agony where he had been shot.

  Behind him he heard the heavy thud of the big man dropping to the ground and following. Without looking back, he ignored the pain and accelerated, his legs churning faster than any mere human.

  An Olympic sprinter can briefly approach forty kilometers per hour. Spooky sustained at least seventy as he aimed himself down a nearby street to run alongside rolling cars. As soon as he came to a red light, he used the level rear deck of one to vault over the mass, landing on the hood of a taxi in the front before stepping down and turning to avoid the cross traffic.

  This gave him a chance to glance back the way he came, and he saw his pursuer still coming on, nearly as fast as he. Spooky cursed the ancestral gods he did not believe in and racked his brain for some way out of this dilemma.

  Almost, he face-palmed himself for forgetting the obvious, until now. Slowing his sprint, he reached out to deftly snatch a phone from a pedestrian’s hand, drawing a shrieking complaint. Making sure he was not losing ground as he wove through traffic, he dialed a number from memory, then spoke a code phrase once it connected, and a location.

  Sirens wailed as the city’s police force woke up to the mayhem. Spooky took a left, continuing to put distance between him and his original drop-off location, ensuring that he was not driven back into the arms of his attackers. Only the one man still pursued, the dogged armored nanocommando.

  Ahead he spotted police cars setting up a roadblock, but too slowly, and all unready. Leaping over a vehicle, he lightly brushed its flashing lights as he continued past. Yells to stop followed, turning to cries of outrage as his pursuer ran heavily between the blockers, sending two officers flying on his way through.