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.”
-7-
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.
The Russians had been kind.
He laughed. “Kind” was a euphemism; they wanted what he had. He and the Russians needed each other, for the moment. Wouldn’t they be surprised when they found out what kind of scorpion they held to their collective breast.
They undoubtedly had a plan for seizing all of his work once it was far enough along, once their scientists had absorbed enough advanced research. Of course, he had a plan of his own to counter this, but he was playing a dangerous game.
A knock at his door brought his chief of research, Sharion Prandra, into his office. She shut it carefully behind her while at the same time Jenkins pressed a button on his console that should ensure privacy by scrambling any bugs or sensors.
“You asked for a meeting?” Jenkins waved her to a seat in front of the ancient wooden desk that had probably been there since Peter the Great was Tsar. “The usual time was not sufficient?”
Prandra set a small silver tray down. On it reste
d a polished pot, two glass teacups and a jar of raspberry jam.
“A social call?”
“It’s business, but not lab business per se.” She poured the strong hot brew into the two receptacles, then spooned a glob of thick jam into her cup.
“You’ve gone native, I see,” Jenkins said, ignoring the sweetener and bringing the strong steaming liquid to his florid lips. He sipped carefully, then set the cup down on the edge of his desk by his right hand.
“Not all Russian customs are beastly. I find I like the taste, and the sugar helps me think.”
“So what are you thinking about today?”
“The future.” She sipped again. “Specifically, to what use my research is to be put.”
“Our research,” Jenkins said warningly.
“I do not see you in the lab with your eyes on an electron microscope screen, or running nano-assemblers. If I accept you as part of my team, you must accept me as part of yours.”
“Meaning?” He eyed her narrowly over his again-lifted cup. This kind of rhetoric was unusual for the normally cooperative woman.
“Meaning that as you have a say in the science, I want some input – or at least some knowledge – of the operational side of things.”
Jenkins closed his eyes, admitting to himself that this was not completely unexpected or unreasonable. Prandra was not only a brilliant scientist but was also a shrewd person in general – not like most of the head-in-the-sand researchers. She had been willing to put herself under the knife early on, to try out Septagon Shadow’s less unpredictable human augmentations – such as her cybernetic eye. And she loved the power and control she had over her subjects. No, her interest had never been merely scientific.
So the question he had to ask himself was this: freeze her out and risk a problem, or accept her bid to get more involved?
Because she was the head of the project – hell, she was the project - he chose the latter. “All right. But only you. Operational security is imperative, even from – especially from – our local benefactors.”
“I understand,” Prandra said. “But I can read the cards quite clearly. We have ten S-3 Shadows now, the latest and best we’ve ever produced. No more glitches, no more mental instabilities. They’re reliable, completely under our control. Soon enough we’ll have a hundred, then a thousand. But what will we do with them? Even a thousand are not enough to retake North America for ourselves.”
“Who said anything about North America? Why bother, when we can carve out our own empire somewhere less…resistant. Somewhere with a tradition of autocracy, whose people are used to submitting to the iron hand. Rule by fear is much more effective than rule by brute force.”
“Carve out an empire? The world is rapidly turning into a science-fiction Disneyland. Every nation that joins the Free Communities is quickly brought under the Council’s wing and large-scale corruption is stamped out. The ones who don’t want that join the Neutral States to get some political cover and retain what independence they can. but the NS won’t tolerate gross misconduct either. Where else is there?”
“China and Russia are still their own masters. North Korea is as closed and surreal as ever, since the Chinese still find them useful. And a few islands – Madagascar, Sri Lanka, some of the smaller ones.”
“That’s just my point,” Prandra said with exasperation. “What’s left? Where’s our place? I want to continue my research unfettered, and I don’t want to be hunted down and put on trial for war crimes.”
“Exactly. So where can we retain some independence and, at the same time, be safe from the do-gooders?”
“Do get to the point, Winthrop. Play your guessing games with someone else. Where will we go?” She covered her anger by finishing her tea and pouring more.
“Right here.” He spread his hands, taking in their surroundings.
“What?”
“We stay here…and take over Russia.” Jenkins smiled, sitting back with his tea in his hand.
“You’re mad.” Prandra stood up to look out the window, not wanting to show her dismay.
“Not at all. I have a plan, and now that you wanted in on it, I’ll explain how you’re going to help me.” He reached into his pocket and took out a metal vial, setting it on the table.
The sound of its hard contact caused her to turn and look. “And that is?”
Winthrop smiled. “They call it ‘nanocrack’.”
-8-
“Ready?” Ken Jackson, the cybernetics technician, asked from behind the thick armored glass partition.
“Ready,” Jill Repeth replied.
“Any time, then.”
Jill stared at her left palm, and the two naked electrical contacts implanted there. Then she placed it against the grip held in a vise attached to the electrical workbench, and without further hesitation, triggered the discharge.
Her whole body jolted as electricity bled through her hand and out her body, but most of it went where it was supposed to: into the device, whose current function was to measure its efficacy.
“Excellent! Over ninety-nine percent delivery to target. How do you feel?”
“A bit tingly, but nothing I can’t handle. Healing already.” More importantly, it appeared her new, heavily insulated cybernetics had come through without difficulty. Hopefully the cyborg Shadow Men she might target with the blast would not be so immune.
“That’s just a raw discharge,” Jackson said as he stepped into the room with her. He detached the test cables from the device in the vise, then opened its grip and removed it from its hold. “Try this. Safety, trigger.” He handed it to her sideways, rather than butt-first.
Jill turned the bulky pistol-thing over in her hands. “Palm contacts meet up with the grip studs.”
“Right. You fire the discharge, which dumps the power into the weapon’s capacitors. Pulling the trigger fires an electromagnetic pulse tuned to what we believe are the Shadow Men systems.”
“Why so complicated? Why not just put batteries in the thing?”
The tech looked at her askance. “I’ll show you. Give it to me. Remember, it’s unpowered now, so don’t freak out.” He took it from her, then suddenly turned it on her and pulled the trigger. “Pow,” he said. “Oh, look, I can’t use it. Only you can. In fact, that gun only knows you. Not even another friendly can use it.”
“Amusing. So EMP will screw me up too?”
“Assuredly.” Jackson handed the gun back to her. “You wouldn’t be incapacitated but you will lose all your cybernetics for at least a minute. Back to Eden Plague and nano, and an extra ten kilos of useless crap to carry around. It should reset after that, but…”
“Got it. How often can I use it?”
“Your bio-generator should recharge within fifteen seconds or so. I know, that’s a long time, so we have some other anti-Shadow goodies.” The tech opened a padded case and took out a baseball-sized object. “This is just a mockup, but it’s fully modeled, so you can practice. EMP grenade. Roll one into a room and pow, it will shut down everything with a computer or unshielded electronics. Best you not be there with it, of course.”
Jill nodded. “Okay. Anything else?”
“New Personal Weapon Twenties with the new heavy Needleshock ammo. Fifty caliber. Five times the kinetic energy, ten times the electrical discharge.”
“Sounds lethal. That could be a problem, with the normals.”
Jackson pursed his lips and looked away. “There’s a risk. Eighty percent of normals should survive one hit. Ninety-five percent of Edens.”
“Hmm. I can live with that if I have to. I can always carry a PW5 for the easy shots. Anything else?”
Jackson perked up again, a kid showing off his toys. “Yeah, we have a whole bunch of stuff, more than you can really carry.” He looked through the armored glass and remarked, “I see your partner is here.”
“Partner?” Jill turned around to see a familiar pretty face. “Rock!”
Roger “Rock” Muzik stepped through the
door, an Adonis with weary eyes. “Good to see you see you, Reap. I guess we’re doing this thing together.”
“Great to see you too, sir.” She grabbed his right hand and shook it warmly, but with a slight hesitation, looking at his left. “Your arm…”
“Yeah, it’s regrown. Good as new. Took me a few months…like your legs, I imagine.”
“Don’t remind me. So, other than new limbs, how are you, Colonel?”
“Not Colonel, right now. My commission’s been inactivated. We’ve both been handed over to the minions of Hell,” he said drily.
“What?”
Muzik shooed the technician out of the chamber, closed the door and lowered his voice. “By Presidential order, we’re now part of the Agency.”
“Agency. CIA?” Repeth rubbed her arms, as if a chill had come into the room. She didn’t like the feeling of being detached from the military, as if suddenly unbalanced, with a piece missing.
“Yes. And that also means I’m working for you this time.”
A slow smile crept across her face.
“I see that suits you,” Muzik said.
“Well, McKenna had said I was going to be in charge. Then when you showed up…”
Muzik waved his hands. “Don’t worry. I’m fine with it. Besides, you have a lot more experience with all this cyberware inside us.”
“Us? They augmented you?”
“Yep.” He held up a hand, showing the palm contacts. “Amazing stuff. My cyberware is only set to ten percent right now, to keep me from jumping off the ground and banging my head on the ceiling by mistake. They’ll ramp it up over time as I get trained. Takes some getting used to.”
Repeth laughed. “Welcome to another transformation.” She looked over and waved at Jackson through the window. “Might as well continue with the presentation.”
The tech nodded and came back in. “Of course. Through here.” He let the way to the next room, a big place with more bustling techs and many workbenches.
“Here’s your armor. With your increased strength, it should be no problem to carry. It’s based on the Space Marine design, but with no need to be airtight, we were able to add a few things…”
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