Retaliation

by Paul C. Middleton

  He wasn’t an average human anymore. It had taken him longer to accept that than John Grimes and the team, probably because of his age. He could take a couple of bullets to his body armor and just keep going. If they flanked him or used grenades, he was in trouble, though. But he could probably move faster than they were used to. It would take time for them to adjust their aim to compensate, especially when leading their target.

  Waiting here was getting him nowhere fast, so he chose to take the initiative. Moving to run in an arc towards the first group he threw one of the knives Boris had given him as a distraction in the other direction. It’s glint attracted a lot of fire as he took off running. It had felt like a minute before the sound of a bullet whizzed by near him.

  At that point, he was nearing the flank of the seven-man group. Charging, he drew his knife with his off hand, firing bursts from the MP5 to keep them more worried about being hit than focused on shooting at him. Three went down in those bursts of his shots. That left four that were an immediate threat. His gun clicked empty so he dropped it to hang on its sling and switched the knife to his right hand.

  It was then that he spotted that his opponents had attached bayonets to their guns. He hadn’t taken into account that they may be reacting slower than he expected of trained military, forgetting the fact that they weren’t professionals. They had acted instinctively in the right way, though. This was fast becoming a cluster-fuck experiment, he thought as he drew the silenced Glock with his left hand. He shot one of the attackers in the head as he pulled the gun and then the guards were on top of him.

  He parried the first thrust with the Bowie knife, reversed his grip and drove it into the man's throat on the back swing. He cursed as it hit bone and stuck briefly. He blocked the second fighter with the Glock, the bayonet of his opponent skidding along the slide. Twisting aside from the third one, that man’s bayonet still managed to plunge into his leg. With the rush of pain, he felt something electrify the senses throughout his body.

  Dan could feel a type of energy envelope and thread through his body. Whether it came from inside or outside, he couldn’t determine in the rush of combat. He had spoken with Bethany Anne and Gabrielle enough to make a guess that this was Etheric energy working in his system.

  He dropped both pistol and knife. With one hand he reached out and snapped the first man’s neck. Then he wrenched the bayonet out of his leg and jerked the man holding the rifle forward. He smashed his fist into the man's nose driving bone into his brain with a crunch, killing him instantly.

  He ducked behind cover and grabbed out one of the syringes that Bethany Anne had insisted he bring. It had her blood with extra nanites. He injected it next to the wound. As he crouched down reloading the MP5, he could see the wound slowly mend itself together, leaving only the slick blood behind on the surface.

  That left four out there to neutralize. He felt simultaneously sickened and energized by what he had just done. As he poked his head from cover, rifle fire resumed from his opponents. Bending to pick up his knife and pistol, he turned and charged the remaining guards. En-route he saw a wolf from the corner of his eye.

  The firing had stopped as they paused to reload. He grinned. They should have sequenced their fire better. That way one of them could have kept shooting while the others reloaded.

  He backhanded the wolf as it neared him and kept running at the men. As he came closer, he fired off two rounds taking out a man with each of his remaining shots and dropped the empty pistol. Turning slightly, he stabbed one man through the sternum with the knife. Finally, he grabbed the last man with his left hand and snapped his neck. He heard the last wolf approaching from behind, so he spun and slapped it violently across the face, forcing a yelp of pain as it tumbled away.

  He retrieved his weapons. After reloading, he put the guns away and grabbed the unconscious, but breathing wolf and throwing it over his shoulder. Dan walked back to where he assumed Boris was after he saw one of the tipped trucks being righted.

  ******************************************************************

  As Dan and Boris drove off with a truck full of wolves (and one still unconscious human), Dan asked, “So what do you plan on doing with them?”

  “Interrogating them for information,” Boris replied. “They have to know something useful. Organization, recruitment methods, base locations, supply routes...something.”

  Dan grunted and responded, “I’m gonna call down a couple of extra pods. We’ll dose them with a sedative and take them with us. Looks like you get to see the Australian base, mate.” He said the last with a grin.

  “I need to get back to…” Boris’s voice trailed off. He wanted to be near Janna. He should get back to Danislav. There was a conflict in his priorities, confusion in his mind, that he worked to keep hidden from Dan as the truck proceeded down the dirt road to where they had landed a pod.

  “You need this info, right? And you need to know they are telling the truth, yes? Then you need Stephen, Akio, Barnabas, or Bethany Anne. They can make sure you get straight dice out of these sorry sacks of shit.”

  Boris slowly nodded. Dan was right. It was best that they go about it this way.

  CHAPTER SIX

  QBS ArchAngel

  Bethany Anne was going over reports with Barnabas when ADAM interrupted them.

  << Bethany Anne I regret to inform you TOM and I may have made an inexcusable error>>

  What do you mean?

  Uh, what my overly analytical accomplice is trying to say is we didn’t thoroughly analyze all the programming in the Boris nanites, and therefore we might have misidentified them.

  Guys, okay why are you coming to me with this now. I mean you’ve had them for weeks, right?

  <>

  Get with Jeffery and arrange for more E.I. units to assist you.

  Not everything is on ADAM. I failed to give him details of older esoteric methods that were used by other Kurtherian Clans. The methods were considered antique, not just obsolete. They dated from thousands of years before the split. They are so old that what I knew of them was incomplete.

  So you are telling me we now have three possible landings of Kutherians on Earth for me to deal with? Well doesn’t that make us special fucking snowflakes? She paused a second, thinking. Ok, your priorities haven’t changed. So, what upped the relevance and caused you two to figure out what the problem is, and brought it to my attention?

  TOM continued, Unfortunately, that isn’t the worst of it. There are programming quirks unique to each of the clans. Things that don’t change, because they are embedded in how we learn to program. This coding is so old I cannot identify it as belonging to any clan. Or from an unknown faction within the clans. But that doesn’t match up with the nanites. They are close to what I would call modern. It is like someone from your history - a Ghengis Khan, say - came to the present day and took nuclear technology back with him. Then he figured out how to modify them. Kurtherians of that era had not yet broken from the philosophy that the Five still have. I cannot predict what may have happened to change that.

  TOM stopped for a moment before realizing he hadn’t answered her, But, to answer your question, it is Janna’s condition that made us bring this to your attention.

  <>

  They are much more aggressive at changing a person to fit their optimum DNA. Not only that, the medical pod cannot flush them from her system without a significant risk. A small but significant percentage of the nanites hook into the body’s vital functions - literally - and siphon energy to reproduce. If she had been brought to me within hours, the Pod Doc still might not have had the capacity to halt or reverse the changes. The process would damage many cells in critical areas because o
ne of the core rules was changed. The nanites will try to change a person whether they have enough energy, or not.

  So whoever designed them was what? A psychopath?

  No, that disorder was wiped out from our genome before we discovered interstellar travel.

  <>

  TOM hesitated before he replied. You think we didn’t check for such and repair them when we found them?

  <>

  We’ll top off her etheric energy in the Pod, but we need to get her out of the pod for some time.

  Well, why do you need to talk to me?

  There was resounding silence for a moment.

  Oh, right. You need my hands. And she needs to get some food in her. How long to go?

  An hour or so would be my best guess before she can be removed. Her transformation, as I said, was very aggressive. She will need food and time before I feel safe putting her back in to make sure no permanent damage was done and re-key her nanites to her new DNA. ADAM and I will spend some of that time making sure there are no more hidden protocols in their programming. We will want to put Boris in to ameliorate the aggressiveness on his nanites after we fix the programming.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Mess Hall, TQB Base, Australia

  Dan had gone off to report to the base guards and make sure that their prisoners were secure. Boris was hungry.

  He always was after being shot.

  Dan gave him directions to the mess area on the upper levels, so Boris found the room and served himself a large tray to start. There were some sidelong glances from the Were Guardians in the area at the large serving of vegetables.

  None of them commented, however. He neither knew nor cared if it was due to comments about his sparring, or his allegiance to Bethany Anne. Right now, with his hunger he was just happy to have the food without any smirks to irritate him from the normally protein heavy group.

  There was no-one he really knew in the mess. He sat down and started eating, enjoying the food. It was better than he had expected from a mass production-style setting like this.

  The Stroganoff was excellent, although it could have done with some smoked paprika for his taste. Most of the conversation that he could overhear was centered around the recent unpleasantness in China. Boris had nothing to add, so he sat by himself at a table in the corner.

  After about ten minutes Dan walked in with a small computer with speakers. He placed it on the table and went to get a tray of food for himself. When he sat down, he said “We need to talk, Boris. Janna is fine but what happened to her was unexpected and… unpleasant. How many times have you tried to heal or change someone with your blood before?”

  Boris blinked, confusion clear on his face, stress in his voice. His accent thickened as he said. “Vat do you mean? I have neever tried to change anyvone. My mother taught me that unlike other Veres, ve had to be born. And no-vone ever told me that Veres could change another by blood. I assumed it vas by bite, vampires by blood, like de myths, da?”

  Then a look of guilt formed on his face and his voice became filled with pain and guilt-ridden. “Do you mean dat vhat she did to save me, the blood she vas covered in, nearly killed her?”

  Dan winced. If he had realized that Boris didn’t know these things he would have approached the entire topic differently. Cursing himself, he put a hand on Boris’s shoulder. “Look, Boris. If you didn’t know. It. Was. Not. Your. Fault. You couldn’t have even warned her. But TOM needs to explain the details to you.”

  Dan’s explanation didn’t seem to help Boris. He sat in a miserable crouch, the food he had been enjoying were now ashes in his mouth. When he talked about his past love he looked like someone was poking a bruise.

  Now he had the posture of someone with a dull spoon sawing through his guts.

  TOM’s voice came through the speaker. “I am far more at fault than you are Boris. ADAM and I did a quick and dirty analysis of the nanites in your blood when we put you in the medipod for the first time. We missed critical details in the differences in both the nature and programming of your nanites that would have become evident in a more detailed analysis. We assigned that project a low priority until Janna came into our care. We missed many details, like how aggressively your nanites would hook into and transform a new host.”

  “However, even if you had the standard Wechselbalg nanites, it has become evident to me that not all Weres understand the danger of trying to change someone. Unlike with vampires, an unsuccessful termination does not create an unintelligent walking… appetite.” TOM’s voice took on clear discomfort talking about the unintended consequences of his transformation of Michael. “However, they will kill the new host if they are not genetically compatible with their programming.”

  By this point, the room had gone quiet as the dining Weres listened to this revelation. They knew that many didn’t survive an attempted change, but the ‘why’ was new to them. Tom continued, “As those nanites were not initially keyed as precisely as Michael’s, they have a wider tolerance, but a significant majority of the population cannot tolerate them. All Weres need to be careful - or very desperate - when they try and change someone.”

  Unnoticed to Boris, Bethany Anne and Janna had entered the room. Boris turned when Janna laid a gentle hand on his cheek.

  Janna spoke softly from behind him, “Boris, it is not your fault. Besides, the operation in Russia needs you. I would gladly have died to save you if that is the price for taking out the NVG root and branch. I did not pay that price. Do not have guilt for might have been. It is a waste of time and effort.” His guilt lessened at her words. Then he noticed the looks of concern on many of the faces in the mess. He turned and viewed her and all his guilt returned.

  The only people he had seen that were definitively in worse shape than her had been those who had barely survived the concentration camps and gulags of World War Two.

  “Moya prekrasnaya odna, what have I done…” He whispered so softly that most likely only Janna and Bethany Anne heard.

  She put a finger against his mouth, smelling him with her enhanced senses for the first time. He smelled wonderful. A mix of forests and damp earth filled her senses. “Not your fault. It is no-one’s fault, Boris. It is over. I survived. I will be better soon.” She tilted her head and gave him a slight smile “Although I am famished.”

  TOM interjected from the computer speakers, “I would like to have you in the medipod after Janna has been put through the second round in the medipod to finish fixing her nanites programing. We can modify the programming in your nanites to make them less dangerous. They are overly aggressive in how they change a new host. We can make them less so.”

  Janna turned to move toward the food line. Boris stood and touched her wrist. She turned and looked at him quizzically. With a gesture, he indicated she was to sit. Anger flashed in her eyes, but Bethany Anne shook her head minutely from behind Boris.

  Janna nodded and sat down in the chair next to where Boris had been seated. Boris walked to the food line to get her a tray as piled with food as his had been. Bethany Anne looked at her and said. “Let him care for you. It will ease his guilt.” With a wry smile, she said, “If he hadn’t offered, I would have been tempted to slap him into next week.”

  Janna looked at her curiously. “Are you not worried about inappropriate fraternization amongst your followers?”

  Bethany Anne answered, with a stern expression on her face, “Yes, I am. There isn’t enough of it happening!” Janna’s shock showed c
learly, and Bethany Anne’s expression relaxed.