Cyborg Strike (2 page)

“Ad infinitum. All right, I can live with
that. Anything else?”

“Not now.”

“All right. Have fun in the snow.” Daniel put
the phone down, then turned back to watch the sun set warmly across
the laboratory campus, thoroughly happy not to be in
Antarctica.

I shot two arrows in the air…they fell to
Earth, I know not where.

Tran Pham “Spooky” Nguyen cinched his harness
even tighter as the hybrid shuttle bucked him upward against the
restraints for the umpteenth time. Two dozen other passengers
rocked and jerked in time with him, all tossed synchronously by the
buffeting as the spaceplane bled off speed in the upper
atmosphere.

One man vomited into a sick bag. Another
didn’t quite reach get his to his mouth in time and some effluvium
leaked past the thin plastic onto his stained and blackened
coverall. The stench wafted through the bare-bones compartment and
soon others were holding up sacks and filling them.

Spooky breathed through his mouth and
employed Dadirri mental techniques to decouple his senses from his
bodily reactions, and closed his eyes to reduce the input he had to
deal with. The shuttle would make landfall in Australia soon, and
he had endured far worse things while stalking Viet Cong and Viet
Minh in his native Vietnamese highlands.

A
Thuong
Degar, commonly called a
Montagnard by the French and Americans in the country, his mountain
tribes had been persecuted by the lowland Vietnamese who had sold
themselves to the Communist ideology. His father had taught him at
an early age to kill those who would impose their ways on the
highlanders, and he’d done it well.

When the dope-smoking,
communist-sympathizing, hippie American civilians forced his
beloved Green Berets to abandon the fight, the young insurgent had
kept on killing, using Cambodia as a base as the lowlanders burned
villages and ethnically cleansed his tribal areas to expand their
cash-producing coffee plantations. Eventually he had joined the
so-called boat people and made his way to the United States as a
refugee.

Arriving in San Francisco, he found that same
exotic coffee sold to those same aging self-righteous Jane Fonda
generation peaceniks. As far as he was concerned, they drank the
blood of his people. It was all he could do not to kill them too,
but even as young as he was, he knew not all Americans were so
stupid.

In Greensboro, North Carolina he found the
largest concentration of his Degar people in the US.

In nearby Fort Bragg, he found his real home:
the US Army Special Forces.

The Green Berets.

He enlisted, and they were glad to have him,
especially after he demonstrated some of his skills. Combat
missions all over the world had honed and perfected his special
operations craft.

Now Spooky could hardly recall his own
previous life from behind the changes wrought by the Eden Plague,
the nuclear near-apocalypse, and the coming of the Meme Demon
Plagues on Earth. He’d changed so much…grown so much.

An especially severe shock shook him out of
his near-trance, and he heard the landing gear whine down and lock.
If he’d had a window, he knew he would see Exmouth Spaceport, so
named for the nearby town and gulf. No more yet than a flattened
runway with temporary buildings, it was the site selected to serve
as Australia’s main launching facility for the new fusion
spacecraft made possible by the cloned Meme fusion bio-engines.

Fifteen minutes later he did see it, as he
walked off the spaceplane empty-handed. He’d stowed away on
Orion
with almost nothing, and he was bringing very little
back with him, not even his own identity. Right now, he seemed just
one of many returning technicians, who had been working hard to
turn the mangled wreck of the warship into a usable orbital space
station.

In reality, he had played a vital role in
ensuring
Orion
’s costly defense of Earth had not turned from
victory into an ugly coup attempt. Colonel MacAdam, commander of
the Space Marines that Spooky had trained, had almost been
blackmailed by into mutiny by Ariadne Smythe, the head of the
secret Council of Nine, Australia’s Psycho-run shadow government.
Had he done so,
Orion
and her nuclear weapons would have
constituted a Damoclesian sword poised above all the other nations
of the world.

This would have been disastrous for the
Earth. With no more than nine short years to prepare for the coming
of the Meme Destroyer – reportedly an enormous space warship fully
capable of living up to its name – humanity’s only chance was to
remain united in purpose and in politics. There was just one man
that could keep them together.

Spooky Nguyen?
He laughed to himself
as he strode across the hot packed dirt of the roughly-fashioned
runway toward the growing cluster of buildings. The siren’s song of
ambition, of lust for power, keened somewhere in the background of
his mind, but he ignored it.
No, not me. At least, not yet
.
Perhaps someday he would rule an empire, but the ability to delay
gratification was one of his many strengths – to take the long
view. To do what was best for himself by doing what was best for
those around him, thus elevating all.

No, the one man who could keep the fragile
alliance together, the concord that put an end to the nuclear
exchanges and the infighting, that maneuvered the majority of the
nations of Earth into contributing to the construction of the
battleship
Orion
, was Daniel Markis.

Spooky’s next mission he set himself,
therefore, was to determine how to help Markis do it.

Approaching the administrative structures
near the prefab hangars, he ran his eyes over at least a dozen
distinct clusters of activity throwing clay dust into the burning
air. Each represented another hangar, or the site of some kind of
permanent facility. Beyond them Spooky could see at least thirty
ships – naval, cargo, and specialized construction vessels –
rapidly improving the seaport or unloading materials. If he was any
judge, within a year the world’s first true spaceport would be
fully functioning.

Looking around, he tried to find some sign or
indication of where he could get some transportation around the
Gulf to the western side where the port of Exmouth sat. Originally
established as a submarine base in World War Two, until now it had
been a sleepy tourist town best known for its access to the ocean
reefs.

One sign he spotted was unexpected: SAVE THE
REEFS shouted garishly in pink paint on a crude wooden placard
carried by a weather-beaten woman with the young-old look of a
recently elderly Eden Plague infectee. Everyone was ignoring her as
she loudly proclaimed her environmental message.

The woman’s presence actually heartened him.
It said a lot for the government that it still allowed free speech
and lawful protest, no matter how misguided. Spooky would be happy
to sacrifice any number of reefs to ensure Earth’s military power
could defend them from absorption by the Meme.

Survival trumped all.

Another sign caught his eye, but this one
read “Exmouth Shuttle.” A new but already dusty air-conditioned bus
waited and a queue of people filed into it. He was about to join
the line when he sense an incoming missile.

Taking a step forward, he turned to avoid the
blood orange aimed at his head. Reaching up, he caught it as it
went past, simultaneously searching for the source of the
throw.

A late-model Land Rover, pearl white and far
less dusty than everything else in sight, supported the shapely
derriere of a stunning dusky-skinned woman with high cheekbones and
lustrous black hair. Merriment danced in her exotic eyes as Spooky
smiled and split the fruit in half with his roughened hands.

Without breaking her locked gaze, he walked
toward the woman and the SUV, peeling the crimson orange halves.
One piece went into his own mouth, bursting flavor almost
unbearably sweet after two months of packaged rations. The other,
on the tips of his fingers, went into hers.

For a moment her lips lingered on his hand,
promises of things to come, before they found his mouth and fused
to him. Juice spurted past their kisses and ran onto her
brightly-colored sun dress, mingling with the patterns there. She
slid off the fender into his arms, but her feet never touched the
ground as he held her against the vehicle’s shiny surface.

“Tran,” she breathed when they finally
separated. “I missed you.”

Spooky tried to set her down but her legs
twined around him hungrily, clamping to his waist. He suppressed a
demanding surge of lust. “So I see. I missed you too, Ann, but
shall we get inside this fine vehicle? People are beginning to
stare.”

“Let them stare.”

He shook his head. “I prefer not to draw
attention to myself, and you are nothing if not worthy of
attention.”

Ann Alkina’s pout smoothed out and she let go
her full-body embrace. “As you wish. The inside is very
comfortable.” Sloe-eyed, she reached around him to open the
passenger door.

Spooky slid into the seat and clicked on the
belt.

Ann’s pout returned when she climbed into the
driver’s seat and saw what he had done. “Two months and all you can
think about is business?”

Spooky blinked once, slowly, then winked his
right eye. “No, I merely haven’t been really clean in all that time
and I prefer our first session together in months to
be…exceptional.”

“Good answer.” She put the SUV in Drive and
roared off, dodging among the people and other vehicles with
reckless abandon, eventually rolling over a curb and onto a paved
road.

“What’s in Exmouth? A flight?”

“No, I decided to bring the yacht.”

“Slow travel…wench.” he chuckled. “A ploy to
get me all to yourself for a week.”

“Only five days. And the long range comms are
functioning. I’m not a fool. You’ll be able to work.”

“An aircraft still might have been
wiser.”

She eyed him briefly as she drove moderately
in the left – the slow – lane of the highway to Exmouth. “You can
always call for a seaplane, but this way I at least get you for one
day. And I thought it best to brief you at leisure on what’s been
going on back in Sydney and at the Outback site. It might mitigate
any…hastiness.”

“When have I ever been hasty?”

“Even so…”

Spooky sighed. “All right. I’ll defer to your
judgment for the nonce. Do you have any sort of foul weed
about?”

She gestured toward the glovebox, where he
found a pack of slim cigars and a lighter. Soon the vehicle filled
with fragrant smoke. He cracked a window as he took a deep drag,
and sighed with pleasure as the nicotine hit his bloodstream.

A few minutes later they turned off the main
highway and drove through the edge of the port to a private wharf.
Alkina did not stop when she got to the pier, but rolled slowly
onto it and thence up a heavy-duty brow directly through the cargo
hatch of a yacht of at least fifty meters length.
Bates
Motel
was painted across the stern: a private joke.

Inside, white-clad crewmembers, mostly short
men and women noticeably resembling Spooky, rushed to close the
hatch, open doors and offer their services. On the deck, the boat’s
captain and officers lined up and bowed. “Welcome back, General,”
the skipper said.

Each nametag on their uniforms said
Nguyen
, and each was related to him in some way, as well as
being thoroughly vetted Eden Plague carriers. Here aboard, at
least, he had very little to fear from treachery or spies. “Thank
you all,” Spooky replied with genuine warmth, giving the lie to
those who said all Psychos were cold and sociopathic. Even the most
selfish soul could respond to sincere and hard-earned
adulation.

“I need to clean up now. Please continue to
take instructions from Colonel Alkina, and I will see you at
dinner.” He exchanged bows with them again, and then with great
relief followed Ann to the master cabin.

After – truth be told, even during – a
thorough sudsing shower and then bath, they indulged themselves in
languid sex, reacquainting themselves within the ancient rite of
man and woman. Spooky watched carefully for any alteration, any
sign of change between them, and found something interesting.

As they lay sated in the bed, facing each
other on opposite elbows, his eyes flicked a question toward her
chest, and the faintest of new scars.

“Yes. I had it removed,” she replied.

“Why?” His query held no anger, only
curiosity.

“Aside from the feeling anyone with the code
and a transmitter could end me? To prove to you that I love
you.”

“Oh? I would have thought leaving it there
was greater proof.”

Her eyelashes batted once, twice. “Did you
get out of practice, up there in space?”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps I want to hear it from
you.”

“All right.” Ann ran a long nail down her
sternum, then tapped it twice. “You have no easy hold over me
anymore. I had two months to do what I will and would, but I am now
here, with you. When we get back, you can examine all I did in your
name. You may not agree with everything, but you will find nothing
disloyal.”

Spooky searched her face for the truth, and
found no lies there.

Ann rolled toward him, arms above her head,
to spoon her naked back into his equally bare chest. “I love you,
Nguyen Tran Pham.”

“Love is not always forever.” Cruel words,
but he wished to ensure no doubts between them, for he did not base
his life on sentiment.

“But ownership is.” She squirmed so that she
lay on her back, her flank fitting perfectly into the curve of his
hips, cheek to thigh. “I am yours, Tran. You taught me what it was
to be a new kind of human, when others thought those like us
were…worthless. You gave me the most important gift anyone can
give.”