Kaleidocide

by Dave Swavely

  “Ready,” I said to Min and Korcz as the holo-covered entrance to the hangar swept into view in front of us.

  And then the miracle happened.

  The view through Min’s eyes blinked twice and lit up with new information on it. Target crosshairs from his weapons system displayed on the two invisible soldiers holding Jon, and eight others in other parts of the hangar.

  My system appears to have found a way to locate the enemies, Min said.

  “Send it to our glasses,” I blurted out, and Korcz and I quickly put them on. “Take out the farthest away, Min.” I knew Sun would have posted several snipers in perimeter positions, as a safety measure in case someone like us showed up. And I hoped there were no more than two, and that they could all be killed by Min’s missiles, because just one surviving sniper would end this attack very quickly.

  Just before our aero reached the hangar, target indicators for all of the Chinese soldiers appeared in both pairs of glasses, and we now had something to shoot at. Or run over …

  I switched the autopilot off and grabbed the controls of the aero as it streaked into the center of the hangar near the floor, smashing its nose into the nearest Wraith, who had been one of two guarding the entrance. Korcz fired out of his open window at the other one, and then I flew directly at Sun, the aero slowed only slightly by the impact with the guard. I wanted to get near the Chinese leader so his men would hesitate to fire grenades at us—something that also would end the attack very quickly.

  Meanwhile, I could see what Min was doing, from the video screen containing his view on one part of the windshield, and from glancing through the clear part of it at his head and torso hanging from the helicopter blade in the back of the hangar. The two antigravity enhanced false teeth dislodged from his mouth and shot out to the far sides of the hangar, in a loosely spiraling fashion. Min’s optical system split his view into two halves and zoomed in to follow both missiles to their destinations. In rapid succession they connected with their two invisible targets, one on a catwalk high on the north side of the hangar, and the other behind an aero on the south side. A shower of bloody body parts became visible and cascaded in every direction when they exploded, which would have been gratifying except for the fact that there were so many enemies still left in the hangar.

  When I thought I was close enough to Sun, I swerved the aero toward Jon. As I had hoped, the two invisible soldiers holding him let go so they could use their weapons, and he had enough presence of mind to drop to the ground, so I could pass above him as I plowed into them with the front of the car. I finally braked at that point, and both Korcz and I dove out because we knew that RPGs would be on their way to the car now that it was farther from Sun. The Chinese general was taking cover in the other direction, in fact, crawling inside the helicopter from which Min was hanging. I hoped he didn’t know how to fire the weapons on the craft, as I rolled hard to avoid gunfire from the remaining soldiers.

  One of them did send a grenade toward my aero, and the car exploded in a ball of flame. The smoke from the blast provided some temporary cover for me and Korcz, so we were able to fire back from each side of the wreckage. We both made the same split-second tactical decision to try to take out as many enemies as we could from where we stood, rather than run somewhere else and hinder our aiming ability while we tried to find cover. It was probably the wisest decision in a still hopeless situation, and we hit one or two of the men firing at us from the open floor and behind the parked aeros. But our success was short-lived, because at least one of the Flying Dragons was now behind us—perhaps one who had survived being run over, thanks to his body armor.

  Sun apparently recognized me as the smoke began to clear, from his vantage point not far away, because he must have told the soldier behind me to take me alive. I was focused on watching the red squares that indicated the targets ahead of me, and didn’t notice the red arrow at the far right edge of the glasses until it was too late. The invisible man stepped up behind me and put his gun to the back of my head, causing me to lower mine. Korcz saw this through the clearing smoke, probably because the red square appeared in the right side of his glasses. He turned his rifle in my direction, hesitating briefly while he decided whether to endanger me by firing on my captor, and in that moment he was hit by a barrage of bullets from the other soldiers left in the hangar. His big form crashed to the ground in a bloody heap.

  In my glasses I could see that two invisible Chinese soldiers were advancing toward me across the open floor in the middle of the hangar, two more were positioned behind vehicles that were parked around the outside, and another was behind me somewhere, probably moving into a closer position. With the one holding a gun to my head, that made six who had survived—at least we killed almost half of them, which was better than I had expected to do.

  Sun started laughing from inside the Firehawk’s cockpit, probably from the realization that he had been fooled by a double but still ended up with the real me. But then his laughter was cut short as the lights and power in all of the aeros in the hangar, and in the other helicopter, suddenly turned on. Before any of the Chinese could figure out what was happening, the aeros that had been providing cover for two of them surged backward and sideways, pinning one against a wall and pushing the other into the car next to it. The Reds screamed as they were sandwiched by the four-ton vehicles.

  At the same time, the Firehawk that had come alive without a pilot began to fire its cannons at the two soldiers in the middle of the floor, shredding them and sending visible blood flying from their invisible bodies like it was coming out of a water sprinkler. Hoping that the soldier behind me was taking seriously his orders not to kill me, I dropped down and back, bringing my rifle up sideways until it hit his invisible one and knocked it upward. Then I spun around and shot him right before he could bring the gun down again, and scanned the area behind his body for the sixth soldier that I thought was back there. But according to my glasses, there was now no one in the vicinity.

  So I turned around again and saw the unmanned helicopter swivel toward the two Chinese who were still trapped by the aeros. The Hawk opened fire on them as well, and the odd death scene repeated itself, with blood spraying out of nothing.

  I couldn’t believe it, but now there were no more live targets in my glasses. I was the last man left standing on the floor of the hangar. I turned my rifle toward Sun, who was frantically trying to work the controls for the helicopter he was in. But the same force that had animated the other vehicles was apparently preventing him from using that one.

  “Nice work, Min,” I said to what was left of the big cyborg, hanging nearby.

  What? he said in my glasses.

  I ignored the question, because I was now looking at Lynn and seeing that the nanites had reached her face and were entering her mouth and nose. I threw down the rifle, tore my glasses off, and pulled out one of my boas as I bounded over to the nearby Firehawk. I dragged Sun out of the cockpit and threw him down on the floor near Lynn’s twitching body. I straddled him and pointed the gun at his face.

  “Turn it off,” I said through clenched teeth, gesturing toward my dying wife.

  “I can’t,” he said, raising his hands to shield his head.

  I moved the boa downward and shot him between the legs. He screamed and put both his hands down there, so I dropped my body down and trapped them with my knee, pressing them against his wound. He screamed some more, and I held the gun tightly to his head.

  “Where’s the remote control?” I asked. “Tell me or you’re dead.”

  “Your friend Terrey,” Sun answered with difficulty, coughing up some blood, “is the only one who could stop it. And he is long gone.” He forced a twisted smile onto his bloody mouth. “Not a very good friend.”

  I looked over at Lynn again, and saw that she had now stopped twitching. So when I turned back to Sun, the hatred on my face was enough to wipe the smile off his, at least temporarily. I pressed the boa against his head and my finger against the tri
gger, ready to send him to the hell that I hoped was waiting for him, and stared hard at his face so I could see every gory detail of his death. But then my mind recalled the similar image of me shooting General Ho—the act that had precipitated all this—and I ended up grunting in disgust and pulling the gun away.

  Sun smiled again and repeated, as if to stab at me a second time, “Not a very good friend.”

  “He’s right,” said a voice behind me. I turned to see a figure in one of the invisible suits, which could only be identified by some splashes of blood on its front that had not yet been eliminated by the metamaterials. Then the figure became visible, and it was Terrey, wearing a shiny black suit with blood at the same places. He held in his hands an Alliant Trinity, the same three-barreled weapon I had used in the Taiwan assault, and finished his statement. “I am the only one who can stop her from dying.” He walked casually over to Lynn, kneeling down to look at her head, which was now completely covered with the living tattoos.

  “There is time to save her,” Terrey said to me, as I sat there with my mouth hanging open, in a state of shock, “but you’re gonna have to pay me, mate, because I only got half of what I was hoping for from Sun. Cash would be a bit risky, because I don’t know if I could confirm the payment in time to save Lynn. So I’ll take this aero as your fee.”

  As he said that, the car he had been using all week flew into the hangar from outside, and Ni and San stepped out of both sides of it.

  “I know there’s a code that will deactivate the self-destruct system,” Terrey said, “and allow us to take it anywhere we want. Give it to me, and I’ll take care of your wife.”

  “I’ll pay you twice what I offered you,” Sun grunted out from the floor. “If you kill both of them.” Terrey turned his way, but then shook his head and snorted through his nose like someone would at the foolishness of a child. The injured Chinese leader then offered him three times as much, but Terrey ignored it and looked back at me.

  “Give him the code, Min,” I said without hesitation, even though it would mean that our Sabon technology could be out in the open for the first time, because Terrey might be able to reverse engineer it and sell it to the highest bidder. I was still confused by my friend’s apparently double betrayal, but one thing I was sure of was that I wanted my wife to live.

  Almost immediately one of the Trois confirmed to Terrey that the code was correct, so he knelt down next to Lynn and inserted two small, thin vials into the apparatus attached to her ankles. Suddenly the skin near them started to turn gray, and the new color spread up her body the same way as before, but much faster. It was like the nanites were turning to dust, and leaving an inanimate covering where the living one was previously. When the gray reached her mouth and nose, Lynn coughed up a bunch of it and was soon breathing again. Terrey blew on her face to clear the dust off it, but left it on the rest of her body. He stepped away from her to make room for me, as I rushed toward her and took her in my arms.

  “Lynn, are you okay?” She coughed some more and turned sideways, to make it easier for the dust to come out. As she did, one of the triplets brought a long coat over and draped it over her, sending an apologetic glance my way. I looked around briefly and saw that Terrey was untying Jon’s hands, and that the other Japanese sister was standing near the groaning Zhang Sun. In my confusion, I wasn’t sure whether she was guarding him or protecting him.

  I looked back down at Lynn and said “Are you okay?” again. I was glad that she was breathing, but also worried that she might have suffered some kind of brain damage from the asphyxiation, and might never be herself again. Considering how long she had been unconscious, I wondered if I really would be getting my wife back.

  Lynn pushed her head forward, like she was trying to sit up, so I helped her to do so a little and supported her weakened form with my arms. She then moved her head around slowly, taking in the scene around her in the hangar. She grimaced in pain and made some unintelligible sounds with her mouth hanging half open, and I wondered if my worst fears were coming true.

  “What?” I asked.

  She coughed up some more gray dust, and blew the remainder off her lips.

  “Who’s gonna clean up this mess?” she asked, clearly this time.

  Yep, she’s fine, I thought. It was definitely Lynn, and she was definitely back.

  I didn’t know how long she or I would be safe, however. Sun was still alive and able to buy another reversal from Terrey, and I was still holding my gun under Lynn’s back and feeling a strong desire to blow both of their heads off.

  48

  DEBTS

  “The baby?” Lynn asked as she became more aware of what had happened.

  I looked at the triplet who had put the coat on her, and the female cyborg put a hand under it to examine Lynn’s belly. Apparently the hand itself had a medical scanning augmentation, because the manga girl soon declared that the baby seemed okay. Now that I had some degree of confidence that Lynn and Lynley had survived their ordeal, I could turn my attention to the one who was responsible for it.

  “What the hell, Terrey?” I still gripped the boa in my right hand, which was supporting my wife, and I still wanted to shoot my so-called friend for putting me and my wife through this. But I also wasn’t eager to endanger either of us again, so I had little choice right now except to give him a chance to explain himself.

  “Never die young, mate,” Terrey responded. He had brought the three barrels of the Trinity into a ready position in his arms, though I couldn’t tell which firing option was selected. What I could tell, however, from my special forces training and experience, was that he had moved his body into a position indicating that he saw me as a potential threat. He had the same training and experience, so he might be aware that I had a gun in my hand, even though it was currently hidden behind Lynn. And he was smart enough to know that saving my wife’s life was not enough to make up for the fact that he had put her in danger in the first place.

  “So you’re the traitor,” I said, for lack of a better way to begin sorting all this out. I looked briefly at Ni and San, who both shrugged at the same exact time.

  “That’s why we wore black all the time,” Terrey said with a smile. “You should have known.” But then he turned serious, because he was also smart enough to know that I was confused and under significant duress, and could be easily tempted to do something stupid that would not end well for any of us.

  “Make sure you get the whole story, mate,” he said. “When I heard about old Zhang Bang here, how he was planning the kaleidocide on you and Lynn, I approached him and told him that I could probably get you to hire me, and asked what he would pay me to get close enough and kill both of you. It was big bikkies, of course, so we made a deal. To convince you that you needed to hire me, I asked for the location of the assault team in Oakland, so I could show you how good the Trois were, and one of his new Wraith suits, so I could show you how vulnerable you were. That’s how I got into the house in Sausalito without being seen or detected, and that’s why I’ve got all the good toys now.” He gestured toward the aero I had just given him, and turned himself invisible again for a brief moment, the splattered blood that I saw before having been absorbed by the metamaterials.

  “Why did Sun believe you would betray me?” I asked. “Didn’t he know that I saved your life in Taiwan?”

  “No,” Terrey said, visible again now. “He only knew that you were the one who killed his Ho. He wasn’t one hundred percent sure that I would betray you, of course, but that’s why he sent all the other methods, so he didn’t have to bank on just one. And speaking of banking, I’m sure he checked on me, found out that I was in big-time debt, and thought I would do almost anything for money.”

  Lynn was recovering somewhat, and moved as if she wanted to sit up further. But I wanted to keep the boa hidden for now, so I told her to be still until she regained her strength more.

  “Why didn’t you kill them right away?” asked Jon, who was recovered enough hi
mself now to speak, but not enough to be thinking very clearly about what had happened. I, on the other hand, was starting to put the pieces together in my mind.

  “Because I was in debt, for one,” Terrey said, “and saw a chance to eliminate that problem forever. So I told Sun that I would protect Michael and Lynn for a while—‘May the best man win,’ I said about that part. Then if I did protect them long enough to get paid a huge amount of money from BASS, I would then get paid another huge amount from Sun to end them. He bought it all, because he’s always dealing with people who can be bought.”

  “I still don’t get this,” Jon said with a blossoming anger, and took a step forward. “You were bought. You drugged us and left us here at the mercy of this monster—he took apart Min and would have killed Mrs. Ares. You took the money and ran away like a coward.”

  “First of all, mate,” Terrey said through clenched teeth, “settle down, and sit down.” He waved the Trinity at the double, and I instinctively moved my finger toward the trigger of my gun. But I nodded to Jon, who sat down, and Terrey continued. “I didn’t run away—in fact I never went anywhere, except to the other side of the hill to make sure that Sun got out of his jet. Who do you think figured out how to detect the Wraiths, by studying the suit they gave me? Who had my Sheilas take control of the vehicles in here, and who entered the fray personally in said suit to kill the ones you couldn’t? I’m very sorry for all the pain I’ve caused you, Min and Lynn especially. But it was a necessary evil.” It was his turn to nod, at the two of them, when he referred to them.

  Jon grunted in disgust and exasperation at this, which earned him another wave of the Trinity and hard look from Terrey. Despite this threat from the man with the big gun, my doppelganger looked at me and spread his hands in further disgust and exasperation. I was surprised at how much bolder he had become through his experiences in the past week, and I also noticed that there were tears in his eyes.