by Russ Linton
"Ever thought of outsourcing your security to India?" I ask.
"No more of the jokes. I am uploading mission parameters we discussed," Xamse says. He sweeps long fingers over a tablet, and his gold watch joins the cufflinks' dance. Got to admit, he wears the bling with confidence. Cutthroat CEO has always been his calling. I suppose today, I'll figure out if I've found mine. "Follow them very closely, my friend."
"Jetting off to a deserted island is the primary objective, right? I'll ride out the fall of civilization someplace I can build a treehouse and start over."
"The fall of Western civilization," he says with a smile as his accent thickens. Good for him. He's making his own jokes. "Do remember, I have controls should you decide to go over the wall as they say."
"Over a wall. Pretty sure it's a wall." See? I can be a helpful little minion.
"Please, let me kill him and fly this mission," Ayana says through gritted teeth. She takes aim, and the HUD tracks the threat but still won't paint her with a target lock. "Just open the armor."
Ayana's death threat meets an unconcerned hand wave from Xamse. "Let us not speak so freely of death. Perhaps there is a chance we can capture him, much as the original Black Beetle."
"Captured so he could be mind-controlled and put back on the battlefield," I remind him.
A tilt of his chin in impatient recognition, Xamse continues. "Our target, Tomahawk, has suffered more than most under an oppressive regime. Most regrettable. Yet he has been one of their deadliest weapons." Genuine sadness furrows his brow. "Mrs. Cantor has made it clear she prefers him to be apprehended despite the wishes of her counterparts in the Department of Defense. For now, we will try to accommodate her." He casually approaches his glossy wooden desk and slides the tablet across the surface. Hip resting on the desk corner, he folds his arms. "Weapon systems will remain offline until you have left the neutral perimeter around Nanomech."
"Right. You're afraid I'll pull a Xamse."
Even I'm not stupid enough to let a bomb like that drop. But I did. Gonna chalk that one up to adrenaline.
He sucks in his cheeks, and his jaw flexes. From deep inside the evil-lair basement where Drake hid his Black Beetle work, far below the Nanomech campus, nobody's likely to hear my screams. Being stuffed inside the second most high-tech weapon on the planet, I shouldn't be afraid, but as of yet, I have zero control over said weapon.
Annoyance evident in his stone features, Xamse extends one arm and pushes up the sleeve. A single finger glides toward the tablet. Ayana levels her rifle. Her hopes obvious that he takes her up on the offer and pops open the armor.
Maybe an apology is in order. We had such a touching moment only yesterday. "You know, I—"
One tap and I'm gone.
The office disappears. I'm soaring up the launch chute at what Drake's voice reports to be "excessive" speeds. Somewhere below, my stomach, esophagus, tongue, continues to rattle off a half-ass apology. I must've cleared the roof. Last I'd checked, it'd been a sunny day, but the horizon is a red and black haze. About the point where I think my eyeballs are going to be rolling uselessly inside my mouth, everything goes black.
That's not a feeling you can bottle into a simulator. Disorientation, sure. Complete loss of consciousness due to "excessive" g-forces? Thanks for the warning. Dick.
Xamse's voice fades in. "...appreciate professionalism. It will be best for you to stick to your scripted responses when engaging the target and the public. For them and for your own safety."
No idea how long he's been talking. I mumble an affirmative and do my best to cling to a fleeting consciousness, a task which takes much longer than I imagine. I wiggle around and get a feel for the space.
"Battle Armor in transit." Drake again, or his voice from beyond the grave. "Extremities locked. Motion will disrupt aerodynamic profile."
"Fine, I'll sit still. Are we there yet?"
"Command not recognized."
Goddamn. If there's one thing I'd change about the armor, it's Drake. He couldn't even record voice activation responses without sounding like a douche.
"I'll just stop trying to familiarize myself with the actual suit prior to a battle."
Must have overloaded his conversational subroutines because he doesn't provide a pre-recorded response. I settle into the cramped space and wait as the scenic valleys of California zip past. All the way to, ummm...South Dakota, so says the briefing. This is going to be a long flight.
Cramped spaces National Champion here. My room at Nanomech has been the most spacious I've had in the claustrophobic line of bunker, college dorm, militarized retirement home, and solitary cell. I got this.
Nights though, those were tough in jail. Aurora's display provided a constant reminder of loss. I couldn't help but relive the fire or worry about Mom. She still hasn't tried to contact me. Alone, on the run, struggling to control psychic powers, I shouldn't be surprised I haven't heard from her. I suppose I should try to take this as good news. Maybe she's safe somewhere.
Both she and Dad's body seem to have vanished.
"Battle Armor, can you display the photo of Connie Harrington, prisoner 39885, Detroit police department?"
"Network access restricted."
Great. Another conversation with Xamse. Who knows what I'll need to research on these missions. FreedomNet is garbage, but it has its uses. Although keeping the battle armor's ports closed to the wild with Xamse's remote pilot functions activated is necessary to avoid a hijacking. Plus, I realize one thing this older suit doesn't have.
"Xamse," I call out. He's slow to answer.
"Yes?"
"My anti-Chroma firewall. Maybe we should install one in the newer model, just in case."
"Much farther ahead of you, friend. This has been done."
Good. Doubtful his consideration was for my safety, more for his hardware. One of these days, I'll fly that sexy beast.
"And Spencer?"
"Yes?
"Controls are yours."
Speaking about flying—I'm freaking flying. On my own if I don't count Drake's ghostly rantings. The country is coast to coast people, but at thirty thousand feet during the day, humanity's impact is muted. We're approaching the Rockies where there's even less evidence of civilization. Untamed spaces still exist. Places for Mom to hide.
We're hundreds of miles away from Nanomech. Supersonic speeds aren't conducive to maneuverability, so says the training manual. Shear off an arm and the flight compression suit can keep you from dying of blood loss. Grim. Terrifying. But I want to fly.
"Battle Armor, manual controls."
"Affirmative."
A smile tugs at my cheek. I pull back on the throttle and pitch downward. Green floes of forest separate into individual trees. A once-flat world rises. Shadows lose their harsh edges to become dim, feathered spills. Geological processes become ridges and valleys swallowing the expansive view of the helmet, replacing an empty sky.
I streak across a meadow, startling a herd of...deer? Elk? I dip closer, focusing the external microphones on their thrumming hooves. The sound fills the Battle Armor.
Hound would approve. There's a feral heartbeat here, independent of anything people have ever done. Could be this disaster is what we needed all along. A taste of freedom. I can't keep from remembering the other times I've felt this way. At the controls of Martin's plane. Flying bareback on Cuddles. In Dad's arms.
"Spencer, not too far off course or I will need to intervene." Xamse's voice spoils the Call of the Wild.
Fuck off. Fuck off. I say it mentally a couple more times, so it stays trapped inside my head.
"Copy, base. Just testing out the systems."
"Your test lies ahead."
I let the Battle Armor resume autopilot and Drake complies with a ferocious roar. The herd scatters. Their trail of dust transforms from a streak to a stagnant cloud, and then all detail is lost. Back to the detached view, I'm a missile on a pre-programmed heading.
"Battle Armor, display mission briefing."
Right, my test. Tomahawk.
CHAPTER 14
"YOU HAVE ARRIVED AT your destination," Drake says, mustering the cheeriest tone possible.
Above the target zone, the Air Force hasn't bothered with restricted airspace. There's been no sign of private or passenger jet traffic, and airliners are much less common than they used to be. No electricity means empty roads, clear skies. And although Tomahawk's power profile doesn't list flight, what it does show isn't any less concerning.
Still, how tough could a half-blind, hundred-and-twenty—year-old man be? We'll chat. He'll tell me to get off his lawn. I'll ask him to provide one more service for his country. Be a patriot so he can show my flag-burning generation what that's all about. We'll fly off into the sunset.
I touch down in Tomahawk's backyard, a small clapboard house on the Pine Ridge Reservation. A chain-link fence encircles the yard and uninterrupted plains stretch beyond. I've got to adjust the external mike filters because the constant wind sounds like I've stuffed my head inside a sandblaster.
A bent tree droops in the front yard. Willowy branches fan in the same direction as the shivering grass. An old junker of a car sits half-buried in trash. Clearly, it's been out of commission a long while.
Unlike the other two vehicles.
A Humvee and an armored personnel carrier have joined the scrap. I squint to focus a targeting reticle and zoom in tighter on the Humvee. A clean, angular slice has been taken from the turret gunner's shield, behind which is a fine spray of blood. Steel designed to stop bullets has been sheared cleaner than an empty soda can. Near invisible, a hairline fracture runs lengthwise through the hood. Engine fluid pools underneath and chemical formulas cycle in the HUD identifying the soupy mixture.
The other vehicle, the armored personnel carrier, is wrecked. Half an axle protrudes from the grass twenty meters away according to the HUD readouts. The frame has been diced into at least four sections. More blood lines the inner walls.
"They never got out," I say. Drake remains quiet. I didn't trigger any command words, I know, but the silence he provides feels solemn. "He did this? Tomahawk?"
At the mention of the name, a portrait fills the top quarter of my HUD. Chewed up cowboy hat and a collared shirt, Tomahawk could be just another farmer and not a top-tier Augment. His face reminds me of the topography of the desert foothills. Deep crevasses are carved into his forehead, and his cheeks appear calved from granite. Old, older than any Augment I've seen, he hasn't had the wind tunnel speeds of Hurricane to provide a free face tuck, nor does he have the ageless bearing of Hound. Milky eyes peer from ridged sockets under a hairless brow. The only part of him untouched by age are the black braids draped on his shoulders.
"Tomahawk, U.S. Arsenal asset number 6748—"
"Where is he?" I interrupt.
"We are at his last known location. Heat signatures not detected inside the structure."
I could knock, but the whole little shack might collapse. Four walls and a roof, it has the basics needed to be called a house, but the joints lean and swell at odd angles, the roof a bowed collection of mismatched shingles. With a lifetime of military service, he came back here. Can't say the mind-numbing walls of Whispering Pines ever made me wonder why more Augments didn't line up outside, but looking at this place...
"Let's see the mission briefing."
The photo shrinks and slips to the side to be replaced by the briefing text which Xamse helpfully read out loud, twice. Somewhere along the way, my brain tuned him out. Taking orders is one of those skills I've never developed. But meeting this guy without all the details would be stupidity.
This chop shop "contact" happened a few days ago when US Forces came to remove the local tribe. Why they decided this was necessary, it doesn't detail.
"Xamse," I say, switching over to the communications link. "Dude's not home."
He doesn't respond immediately. Babysitting a guy in a high-tech weapon might have taken a backseat to running his multi-billion-dollar corporation. I'm about to punch in coordinates to return to base when he answers.
"Our client was quite clear on their need to approach and if possible, apprehend the target." Other voices, machinery, clutter the background of his line. "Are you just now reading the briefing? Weren't you—"
I up the gain on the external mike and wind noise fills the helmet. "Can't hear you. Strong winds...must...abort," I say, killing the two-way comms.
The line re-opens. "Find him. That is all."
"Copy," I say into the dead air.
Isn't this how it was with Dad? Xamse giving orders despite all the powers and the Augment team? I dig deeper into the report. A few quick scans of the satellite images provide a possible answer.
I'd seen the wind turbines from a few miles out on my approach. There's a main street of sorts to search. But the turbines... I don't know, I've got a hunch.
Boot mounted rockets fire, and I launch skyward. The community isn't made up of zero lot line homes. Most have acres of empty space, but a cluster of houses along the highway mimics a suburban lifestyle. The rest are trailer homes, some sporting graffiti, their lots barren.
In the distance, the wind turbines spin hypnotically atop their poles. They're the tallest thing for hundreds of miles. Shadows stretch uninterrupted into the plains, cartwheeling at a docile speed compared to all the damn wind. As we close, I hear the steady oscillation of air made by the mammoth blades like the whir of a giant ultrasound. The fluid intake and release makes an almost sucking noise. I scan the area for Tomahawk.
Each tower has a transformer positioned beside it and steps leading to a hatch. Flying robot suits aside, I always wondered how technicians got up there to do repairs. Must be a ladder inside.
These turbines survived Aurora's EMP unscathed. High enough voltage, if their braking systems remained intact, they wouldn't have gone too out of control. Damaged, maybe, but not fried. Row after row spears into the sky. The reservation here is a gold mine of power generation or, if they wanted to scrap them, parts made rare by the grid-wide destruction.
A gap appears in the neat rows. One of the tower pedestals is ripped partially from the ground. Rough concrete sits at a sharp angle, and the metal tower is twisted like a bent soda straw. Shards of metal litter the field.
Okay, so either they all didn't survive the event, or somebody's been busy. But where the hell is he?
Drake locates him first. Two towers down, an access hatch stands open at the base. A targeting reticle outlines Tomahawk's figure winking in and out behind the spinning blades. The Augment perches atop the nacelle, his feet folded underneath him, looking out through an adjacent row toward the empty plains. Limited eyesight, wind noise, whirring of diced air—I doubt he's even noticed I'm here.
"Target acquired. Readying weapon systems."
"Slow your roll, murderbot."
"Command not recognized."
"Keep the weapons offline for now."
"Affirmative."
I take a wide arc around the blades. Drake tracks them, issuing tiny bleeps when they appear too close to the flight path. They're so slow, if I collided with one, I'd best hang up this suit for good.
Tomahawk takes note as I hover into view. He doesn't linger though, just turns his eyes back to the horizon. I release a breath before engaging the external speakers.
"U.S. Augment designated Tomahawk, you are asked to stand down. You will accompany me to the nearest Federal facility," I say, my voice masked by the scrambler.
He purses his lips and nods to the prairie. "Don't call me that."
"What?" Okay, so the script didn't last long.
"I haven't been their weapon for many years." His speech is halting, but his voice is strong, unyielding to the age he wears.
"Fine, what do I call you?"
"Paul."
A little unexpected. I mean, I skimmed that in the brief somewhere, but it never sunk in. Parsing through I find the entry—Paul Thunder Hawk Steele. Ouch. I get it. The
government approved designation must be a Chief Wahoo moment for him. Never cared much for Cleveland myself.
"Sure thing. Paul then. You are asked to stand down. You will accompany me to the nearest Federal facility."
He spits over the side of the nacelle. "Remember when I nearly scalped you, Kemosabe?" He's got a bit of snark of his own.
Those milky eyes search the sky, and I don't know for certain if he can tell precisely where I am. Of course, he has to bring up the history with the former Beetle. The fight had been brutal. One of the reasons Drake started going heavy on the drones.
"Yes, I remember."
He turns his eyes back toward the horizon. "I should expect as much. Your people are liars, whoever you are. You should know, the nearest so-called Federal facility is on my land."
I check the maps and find the escort point well outside the reservation. Of course, there's another flaw in the plan. So far there aren't any transport vehicles. Us flying into the sunset suddenly seems as awkward as it sounds. I switch over to the comms.
"Beetle to base. Wake up, Xamse."
"I am monitoring your situation," he replies, quick and curt. "Proceed with the mission."
"What am I supposed to do, carry this guy?" Imagining myself flying with this elderly Native American dude cradled in my arms, the guy who can-openered an armored transport in his front yard, has me rethinking my employment.
"Proceed. Over."
He doesn't respond to my continued hails. Pretty soon, Paul gets chatty again.
"Some South American tribes claimed a beetle created the earth, rolled it from a pile of shit. Believable, but most see beetles as part of evil sorcery. Devils. They bring disease, devour crops." He's shouting to be heard over the steady cycling of the blades. His head takes a tilt to indicate he's focused in the sky off my shoulder; a relief if this all goes badly. "That's what you came here for, right? Native wisdom from the redskin? Your own spirit quest taken in the footsteps of your forefathers who marched my people against the mountains, into the seas. Marched until they fell to the side of the trail beaten by their bloodied feet, discarded."