Clancy,Tom - Net Force - Cybernation.txt

by Cybernation(lit)

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  pu harm. But no point in saying that now. He was i enough already, ^course, out of sight might be out of mind. She was |she eould divert Roberta's attention. She could buy |;a new toy, something to do with his fighting art. or later he would feel the call from her to find a where they could get naked. Roberto was, after all, sfprimal in his urges. Maybe it would be for the best

  an wasn't around. 11 right," she said. "Gather your team and make the gements. Roberto won't be back before tomorrow at rliest. You can be gone before he returns." sense of relief was obvious, long as we are here, why don't you lie down and

  massage your back? You're as tight as a violin

  ,

  i started to protest. "That's what got me in trouble in Ffirst place."

  Max," she said. " 'Berto is in Washington. You'll be when he gets back, and we aren't doing anything aven't already done a dozen times. What difference it make now? Why not relax and enjoy it?" : didn't give him time to think about it. She slid her down his chest and into his lap. After that, he had things on his mind.

  iForce HQ

  co, Virginia

  els was in the Net Force gym, dressed only in a pair Ifchorts and workout shoes, practicing his djurus. The ; dances encompassed all the moves that serak teach- had developed for fighting, armed and unarmed, ewhere in the djurus were all the tools you'd ever he'd been taught, far, he had learned more than he thought he'd use

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  if he got into fights every day. But better to have too much ammo than too little.

  The creator of the esoteric fighting style had been a cripple called Sera, so named either because he was wise as an owl, of had a hoarse voice, depending on which definition of the Indonesian word sera, you liked. According to the various oral histories and subsequent letters and books, Sera had been born with a clubfoot and missing part of one arm. Such handicaps would not seem to lend themselves to the development of expert fighting abilities. Nonetheless, that had apparently been the case. Evidently the man had been an extremely nasty fighter, and not a man to be sneered at, however gimpy he might have been.

  The origins of the art and its first practitioner were somewhat mysterious. Michaels had poked around, trying to research it, because he was curious, and had run into half a dozen dead ends.

  He shifted from djuru seven, coming up from the full squat and upward thrust to an attacker's face that ended it, to eight, moving on the triangle, or tiga. Later, he would practice the footwork on the sliwa, or square pattern.

  He had worked up a good sweat; it rolled down his chest and back. He'd always thought it interesting he could get so much work out of stepping around a triangle or square that was less than two feet long on each side.

  Djuru eight was essentially a blending of three previous < djurus-four, six, and three-and since it was the last one i he had learned, once he finished it he repeated it and ' started going backwards toward the first one. That was how you did the exercises, up and back on one side, then up and back on the other, so that each djuru got at least four reps, two on the right, two on the left.

  Pak, or Bapak-those meant sir, or most honorable older sir, more or less-Sera's date of birth was unknown. He'd been listed as having been born as early as 1795 a.d.; however, this seemed unlikely, given the

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  lineage of students, and Sera was probably born a century later, in the 1820s or maybe even the s. Current practitioners could not even agree on the |'s real name. The ones Michaels came up with were Hisak and H. Muhroji.

  didn't know any more about Sera than Michaels >
  said Sera was born in Tjirebon, on the north t of Java, east of what was then Batavia, now Jakarta, was no consensus on this point, jily history from Guru DeBeers and from what he find on the web indicated that Sera trained in Silat eng, which came from the area of Serang, in north- Java. From his exposure to Tjimande, which it is he studied, and with his training in Banteng, Sera eloped his own system, tailored to his physical hand>s.

  Ithough the exact dates weren't known, it was prob- sometime before the turn of the 20th century that i met the man who was to become his senior student, ss of a fighter named Djoet, who was supposedly around 1860, and died in the late 1930s. Djoet sub- ntly helped Sera formalize the system, adjusting it aple with sound limbs. Djoet was reportedly trained filat Kilat, Kun Tao, and probably Tjimande. lichaels made it back to the first djuru. He stopped, bbed a towel, and wiped the perspiration from his face

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  and head. The problem with the short haircut he liked was that it didn't soak up as much moisture. He had thought about wearing a headband, but decided that looked a little too yuppie-ish for him.

  He glanced at the clock over the gym's door. The day was winding down, and he had managed to lose a fair amount of the tension he had soaked up testifying before the senate committee. Not all of it, but some. Another twenty or thirty minutes of practicing his forms would help more, he decided. Picturing some of the more obnoxious senators on the receiving end of his punches and elbows probably was bad karma, but that helped, too. Imagining the "Urk!" a fat politician would blurt as Michaels buried his fist in the man's belly was certainly politically incorrect, but also very satisfying ...

  Net Force Supply Warehouse Quantico, Virginia

  "So is this a great toy, or what?" Julio said.

  Howard looked at the device. "It looks like a miniature version of Robby the Robot somebody stepped on."

  And indeed, it did. A scaled-down version of the movie robot, the device was squatty, maybe eighteen-inches tall, and had a clear bullet-resistant Lexan half-dome atop the cone-shaped body, complete with a pair of articulated arms and tanklike treads. It was very wide at the base and narrowing toward the top.

  "We call her 'Claire,' " Julio said. "Your basic self- contained radio-controlled mobile reconnaissance and surveillance unit, the main feature of which is optical and auditory gear, including state-of-the-art CLAIR equipment -that standing for Circular-Looking-A-class InfraRed sensors. Aside from the regular cams, she can see heat sigs in the dark, has a fuzzy-logic come-back circuit so she won't bump into things and can find her way home

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  KC fails, and little waldo arms for picking up things : under her microscope, should the need arrive." shook his head. "Uh-huh. What did this beast H"

  ; sir, there's the beauty of it. Nothing. Not a dime." ' did you manage that? Tell me we aren't running robot here, Lieutenant. Something you won in a |game with your RA buddies?"

  wound me, sir, to suggest such a thing." 1 butter wouldn't melt in your mouth, either. Give." here is a test model, from CamCanada, up in x They specialize in making devices to inspect the of big pipelines, checking weld integrity, hunting like that, but they are looking to get into the I and military market. This is one of three prototypes : off for tests. The Mounties have one, one went sultan somewhere in the Middle East, and we ; third. We test it out under field conditions, write and for our trouble, we get one of the first i when they go into full production, absolutely free Well. Except for the maintenance contract, of e. But that's nothing." ^resting."

  i picked up a remote and pushed a button. The little ^whirred.

  t does all the usual forward, back, left, and right stuff, : POV cam shows an image right here on the hand- IDigital images and sound, and instant capture of i
nfo own wireless modem and DVD burner, which are here somewhere. Those can be plugged into just : any computer for study and analysis." I held the remote so Howard could see it. "Everything afed out the wazoo, structural components are from titanium or aircraft aluminum, and you Uy set off a stick of dynamite ten feet away t hurting it. Got a gyroscope for balance, low center avity, and she's very stable." s brought the robot close enough to them so he could

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  kick it. His combat boot drove it back a few feet, but it whirred and stayed upright. He touched a control. "This shuts off the gyroscope. Watch."

  He moved to the little device, which was slightly shorter than knee-high, and managed, with some effort, to shove it over onto its side with his foot.

  The robot whined, and a rubber-tipped metal rod extruded from the robot's side and shoved it back upright.

  "Automatic righting system," he said. "She can pick herself right up and keep on going. A byproduct of BattleBot technology, I'm told."

  He picked up another remote and pushed a button. The windowless warehouse got very dark.

  Howard saw the remote control's screen light up, and the false-color IR images of himself and Julio, looking like two washed-out ghosts, appeared on the screen.

  "Lieutenant, I believe you just turned me into a Caucasian."

  Julio chuckled. The false-color computer-augmented image tinted Howard's skin slightly darker, but no more man a redhead's tan might be.

  "Only with the lights off, sir."

  < He switched the lights back on. "But wait, here's the really fun thing," he said. He touched another button, and the robot hissed like a giant lizard, leaped two feet into the air, flew about four feet forward, and came down. It clunked when it landed, but not hard enough to knock anything loose.

  Howard raised an eyebrow.

  "Compressed gas jets. The tank isn't that big, so it's only good for eight or ten hops before it runs out, but if Claire here comes to a ditch that would take too long to go around, she can make like a bunny and leap right over it."

  Howard smiled. "Might make recon of a building full of armed terrorists easier, at that. What are they going to run when they go into production? Any idea?"

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  llpark only. They're saying a hundred thousand, Ca-

  Lieutenant. For that much, we can buy an r-plated car."

  , but it can't do this." little robot hissed and jumped again. 1 it's tree."

  it's the service contract run?" tically nothing. Three years, maybe thirty thou,

  thirty thousand American or so, I can find a lot of men who would spit and jump up, even if they ; see in the dark."

  shook his head. "Have I ever mentioned that the is somewhat old-fashioned?" ever know when my buggy whip is going to come y. Lieutenant It does the job it was designed to never needs batteries."

  I on, John, give it a try. You know you want to." I the controls to Howard, fell, yes, he did. It was just like playing with Tyrone's toy on Christmas morning when the boy was nine, mother was fond of saying, If you couldn't have what was the point?

  pushed the button, and grinned as the robot I again.

  22

  Washington, D.C.

  Santos waited until the senator came out of the supermarket on his way home before he made his move. One of the most powerful men in this country, one of only a hundred altogether, and he not only didn't have a bodyguard, he drove a small car and did his own grocery shopping. Amazing. In Rio, a man in this senator's position would be guarded, chauffeured everywhere in an armored limo, and would not have the slightest idea what a carton of milk or a loaf of bread cost, unless somebody happened to tell him. What was the point of having power if you did not exercise it?

  Santos had already driven the route the man would take to get to his townhouse. He had a woman there-not his wife, who was back home in West Virginia with their two teenaged children until the school year was done. Santos had seen the mistress himself when he had driven by earlier. Hie information about the wife and children was public knowledge, available to anybody who cared to look for it. Another amazing thing. Back home, men of wealth

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  knew that knowledge was power, and they to themselves. Why would you give a potential r anything he might use against you? Foolish. : senator from West Virginia swung his car out onto t and headed home, driving in the right lane. San- him, two cars back on the four-lane road. œ blocks later, Santos swung into the left-hand lane the senator. He sped up slightly, just a few I an hour over the limit, not enough to trigger photo r or the interest of a traffic cop. He gained a block senator's car, pulling into his home street forty- onds ahead of the honorable Wayne DeWitt. He the car's engine, sped a hundred feet down the and hung a skidding one-eighty turn. He stopped r, his steel-toed workboot resting on the brake, but i gear. He lifted a motorcycle crash helmet from the : to him and slipped it on, pulled the straps tight. f helmet had a face-shield of heavy clear plastic. He the visor down into place. He already wore the leather and rubber grappling gloves used by NHB fighters for matches, with the wrist wraps cinched fc! You could use your hands, but there was a lot of ; on the outside. He put a boil-and-bite mouthpiece i his mouth and slipped it over his upper teeth. Guar! for the first seventy-five hundred dollars of dental : if you hurt your teeth while wearing it, nine dollars |-mart. A great deal. He wore a boxer's cup in a jock- t over his leather pants, and a weightlifter's thick and S belt covering his waist and his lower back under his jacket. Without special springs and belts, he was

  I as he could be in this car. the senator's car rounded the corner, Santos the accelerator pedal.

  thing you had to give big gas-guzzling American 1 had power to spare. He left tire rubber smokl on the asphalt as he took off. : was doing almost fifty when he switched lanes and 1 into the senator's compact car.

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  It was at a slight angle-he wanted to be able to drive his car away, if possible, and there was too much chance of rupturing the radiator in a head-on, even against a smaller car.

  There was a hard thumpl and crash, and a sense of time slowing down, almost of drifting through space. Even though he was braced and ready, the seat belt tight, he still went forward into the air bag as it deployed. The face shield and gloves saved him from a flattened nose and brush burns on his arms as he hit the bag, which immediately collapsed. Striking an air bag in an accident was not, as some people seemed to think, like being hit in the face with a soft feather pillow. It was more like being punched by a gloved boxer, hard.

  The big car's windshield didn't shatter, that was good, but something shiny flew up from the impact and hit on the passenger side hard enough to crack the safety glass.

  He saw the senator's car spinning, saw the man's head hit his side window, blasting the tempered glass into squarish little bits that burst outward in a glittering fan of shrapnel. The air bag in the senator's car had gone off, but the deliberately angled impact had caused the senator to hit the bag well to the side, so the safety device didn't do as much good as it would have-another reason to avoid the full frontal smash.

  Once past, Santos stood on the brake, and his car, already slowed by the crash, skidded to a noisy stop. He looked back in time to see the senator's car pinwheel into a fiberglass light pole that snapped off at the base and came down on top of the auto just as the car plowed into a row of bushes, wiped them out, and smashed the right rear panel into a thick oak tree. The tree shook violently, but held.

  Santos put the car into reverse and backed up. Seemed to be driving okay, nothing scraping against the wheel, that was good.

  He came abreast of the senator's car. No way they were

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  to repair that, the whole front end was shifted to t side, the frame bent and badly distorted. Steam came i the ruptured cooling system.

  senator's head lolled through his shattere
d side aw. Blood welled from his head and dripped onto d, and from the angle of his neck, Santos thought tit be broken. Certainly it was wrenched enough to muscles. The front of the car was collapsed so that the man's legs were probably pinned, they were broken, too.

  1 enough. Maybe he would die, maybe not, but he : going to be playing golf any time soon, if he sur1 And he would not be a thorn in CyberNation's side | a while, either.

  ntos put the car into forward gear, and drove away, were coming out of their townhouses to see what happened. He kept his head down, knowing he was

  by the helmet and face shield, he was around the corner, he pulled the helmet gloves off and spat the mouthpiece into his hand. He led the lifting belt, pulling it from under his jacket. I used a small pocket knife to cut the elastic on the jock I cup. With one hand he stuffed all the protective gear > a big shopping bag from Trader Joe's.

  miles away he came to a major bus stop. There a movie theater across the street. He parked the car ,a movie lot, damaged front end toward the building, t out, and dumped the bag in the nearest trash bin. Any- who found the bag would probably not be the kind j person who'd run straight to the police, and even if were, what was illegal about gloves, a helmet, and a ng belt? By the time anybody found the hit-and-run cle, he would be long gone. i walked to the bus stop. Smiled at an old black lady saw him coming. She smiled back, good night's work, this. Made a man proud.