Shedding the Demon (10 page)

 

Damon was impressed by the speech
and by her accomplishments. He still had trouble believing that there were so
many star systems with so many planets, and so many
people!
Sometimes he
missed the simple life of the Family, but now he could not believe how
insignificant it was compared to the Human Empire—a term disliked by the
Kyndrists.

He learned about wormholes, interstellar travel, wormhole
energy (related to, but actually different from the wormholes themselves),
Debar reactors, and Kline drives. His mind would begin to spin when he realized
how much of the world he had never experienced. No wonder no one ever tracked
down the Family when they used electricity, it was essentially free using a
Debar reactor and wormhole energy! His world had grown exponentially in the
last few weeks, and he was still coming to grips with it. Sometimes he had the
overwhelming desire to find Andrea and show her all these wonderful things,
while other times he wanted to go back home and forget it all.

Throughout the time he spent in the lab, he felt alone. The
feeling was ironic, since he was always surrounded by technicians or trainers
of one type or another. However, the only people who really spoke to him as a
person were Dr. Baksa and Joann. Reverend Trueblood wouldn’t speak to him at
all, but would talk about him as if he was not there, something that annoyed
Damon to no end. He decided that he would
instruct
Mr. Trueblood on the
finer points of etiquette if ever given the chance.

Finally, the day arrived when the procedures would begin. He
was nervous, of course, but after learning so much about his enhanced abilities,
he couldn’t wait to actually receive them. Dr. Baksa greeted him in the
morning, clearly excited, and Joann hovered behind her, looking a little
scared. Over the past few weeks he wished that he could have gotten to know
Joann better, but under the circumstances, idle banter was the best they could
manage. He thought back to her transformation on the ship when she first changed
to civilian clothes. Once out of the uniform, she became a completely different
person.

Before, she had a severity to her speech and actions that
fit her rank, and few questioned her when she spoke. After she stepped out of
the uniform, Damon felt that she became her real self. It was as if she played
a character while dressed as the colonel, but was free to be herself outside of
that role. In the lab setting, she spent more time in the background, sometimes
relegated to minor roles. She was rarely consulted, but she seemed to give
satisfactory answers in those cases, at least as far as he could tell.

He found the new Joann very intriguing, and fervently
wished, again, that he could get to know her better. She was not beautiful, but
she was attractive and cute. Her facial features and light brown eyes were not
truly noteworthy, but very expressive, and her entire countenance shined when she
laughed. She was shorter and thinner than Andrea, and she lacked the lean
muscular limbs that Damon used to admire during training. Nonetheless, she made
him think of Andrea, which often made him a little sad and homesick.

He laid down on a gurney that the technicians had placed
before him while they prepared IV’s, various injections, and an anesthesia
mask.

“See you on the other side,” he said to the room but looked
directly into Joann’s eyes as the first needle was injected into his arm

“Promise?”

“It’s a date,” he tried to smile but was already falling
asleep.

 

**** ****

 

Damon awoke feeling normal, but
unable to move. After a moment of panic, he remembered that they had warned him
he would be immobilized. Slowly he became aware of aches and pains all over his
body, but nothing severe. He felt weak and tired, as if he had the flu. It was frightening
being unable to move, but he quelled the rising panic with an effort of will.

He could hear people moving around him, and soon they
entered into his field of vision.

“Ah, I’m so glad you’re awake,” a slightly familiar face
said to him, smiling. “Let me get the doctor, and then we can begin to bring
your systems online.”

He disappeared and the activity level in the room ramped up
noticeably. Excited voices were coming and going all around him.

Once the core team had gathered, Dr. Baksa led the start-up
of his new and improved body. Joann was in the background, but he couldn’t see
her often.

“First, we will bring up your motor control skills so you
can begin to move. But Demon, please be careful, it will take you a while to
get used to your weight and strength. For now, move slowly and deliberately
until you’ve had time in training.”

Suddenly, he felt released from the sensory deprivation, and
he had awareness of his limbs. It all felt very natural, although somehow more
intense.
That could just be a compensation for the previous deprivation,
he thought as he flexed his fingers and moved his toes. With Dr. Baksa’s
guidance, he slowly moved into a sitting position. He looked at his hands
expecting to see the armor and scales, but could not discern anything special.
The color of his skin had changed and looked almost gray now, but other than
that it looked like skin.

“Huh,” he said out loud in mild surprise, “I guess I
expected to be metallic.”

“Oh no,” Dr. Baksa said, “one of our main goals was to make
it almost unnoticeable. The gray color is unusual for a skin tone, but not liable
to draw too much attention.”

Damon was surprised at how easy it was to move. He had imagined
he would feel heavy and ponderous, but in reality he hadn’t noticed anything
unusual in his movements. He reached upwards to stretch his arms and everyone flinched
away from him.

“What?” he asked slightly irritated.

“Um,” Dr. Baksa looked around quickly, spotted a coffee mug
and picked it up. “Here,” she said, holding it out to him, “take it.”

Perplexed, Damon reached out to grab the mug and it shattered
in his hand. Everyone ducked and covered their faces to protect themselves from
flying ceramic bits.

“Oh,” was all he could say.

“That’s why we are a little hesitant to get too close,” Dr.
Baksa said. “Please, do be careful. Once we get all of your systems online you
will be able to adjust the boost to ensure you can control your strength.”

“What?” Damon said, feeling stupid.

Everyone in the room snickered and Dr. Baksa said, “Don’t
worry, we’ll get there.”

 

 

The next few weeks were very strange indeed. Damon had to
learn basic functions like how to control his strength, along with walking,
eating, and grasping. Many of his basic motor functions had become frightening.
Casual contact with everyday items, especially doors, walls, and furniture,
became something he had to concentrate on to do properly. Every day there was a
repair crew in the lab replacing something that he had broken. Finally he
reached a point where he could almost function in the outside world. His
gray-tinged skin would garner some attention, but if he pulled doors off their hinges
and accidentally knocked down brick walls, people would surely notice.

Dr. Baksa took the lead in his training, and she was
fearless even when close to him. Her nonchalant attitude calmed his nerves and
helped him learn quickly. Joann was still there, still in the background, and
he always enjoyed catching her eye to elicit a quick smile from her.

Power for the armor and weapons came from a small power
plant embedded deep in his core. It generated only a limited amount of power, so
Damon relied mostly on battery storage for the heavy electrical needs. Power management
would be one of the biggest challenges he would face.

“We wanted to put in a Debar reactor, but we haven’t
overcome the challenges of making it small enough,” Dr. Baksa told him during
training. “Then, of course, there are the complications with mounting a
wormhole
inside
a person’s body, but I think we’ll have it soon.”

Implanted weapons were still locked out and he wondered what
they would feel like when brought online. There were thin fairings protruding
from under his wrists, but they were inert, and he was not sure how he would
use them. He was told that gun muzzles would rise out of the back of his wrists
on command once they felt he was ready to move into weapons training. Strangest
of all were the four humps rising from his upper back to just slightly above
his shoulders that would eventually be used to launch grenades, rockets, and
small missiles.

Another thing that surprised him was his new weight.
Previously he had always weighed in around 105 kg, but his new body dwarfed
that number and tipped the scales around 260 kg when loaded with ordinance.
This additional mass caused all kinds of problems when trying to maneuver, adding
yet another thing to the long list of items he had to re-learn.

 “Are you ready for the Heads-Up Display, Demon?” Dr. Baksa
asked him.

“Yes I am—been ready a long time,” he replied. He looked
around for Joann but did not see her.

“Good. There are many different functions for your HUD, so
once again, we will be doing extensive training. The good news is that you won’t
have to remember everything, the information will be easily accessible from
your control system.

“We’ll start with only the basic functions,” and she tapped
a couple commands on her screen.

Icons appeared in Damon’s vision, superimposed on his
regular eyesight, appearing to him as if they floating in front of his face.
Dr. Baksa introduced some of the basic functions and how to configure them for
comfortable use. He could call up detailed information on almost any item or
person that he looked at, simply by issuing a quick mental command. When he
looked at Dr. Baksa and requested biographical info, the HUD put a subtle
glowing outline around her in his sight, and a small box of text opened next to
her. The text contained her name, address, public account code, place of work,
current title, and other personal details.

“You can also use the HUD in conjunction with your
communications module to contact someone in your field of view, simply with the
direct connect command.”

Damon looked around the room and found Joann, called up the
bio on her, and placed a call to her public account code. She didn’t answer,
but he left a message requesting a time and place to pay up with the date he
owed her. He was able to do it all mentally and quickly. He marveled at the technology,
and he made sure to file away her number in his control system’s hard memory.

The weeks went by quickly with so many interesting things to
learn and practice. He had access to a gymnasium that was reinforced to allow
for his weight and strength. Even so, he had to be careful not to break things.
He discovered that his new body was fast, very fast, although he could not test
the top speed in a confined area. It was also nimble, strong, and coordinated.

The doctors said that the athletic ability could not be programmed;
he had to have that naturally. The new body only enhanced the strength and
stamina; the skills still came from him. He slowly became proficient in
controlling his strength, and the control software helped significantly once he
learned how to optimize it. He could now pick up a coffee mug or a glass
without endangering the people around him.

Once the team had decided that Damon had good control over
his new body, they decided to activate his weapons systems.

They introduced him to a whole gamut of weaponry, from
mundane combat blades extruded from the fairings under his wrists to high-power
energy weapons. The photon-plasma pulse cannon, affectionately called the “Trip-PC”,
was the most fun, dealing incredible amounts of damage over a long distance,
but a single shot could deplete his energy reserves by nearly a third.

He carried a varied array of grenades and small missiles
that were powerful but had limited rounds. What they lacked in elegance they
made up for in brute force.

Damon had very little time to think during the day amid all
the activity and training. At night, however, it was a different story. Lying
in bed, he found it hard to fall asleep. He purposefully ran through all he’d
learned during the day, trying futilely to keep his mind away from thoughts of
Andrea and the Family. He hadn’t asked about them because he knew he wouldn’t
get an answer, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the truth. He tried to
convince himself that they were fine, that they were going about their lives as
if nothing had happened. With everything that was happening to him, it gave him
solace to imagine they were the same as ever. Every night ended the same way;
he’d toss and turn, fret and worry, and finally issue the command to his
control system to put himself to sleep.

Eventually, the day came when the training was complete. It
had taken Damon six months to master control of his new body through physical
tests, tactical training, and live-fire exercises. Now he was ready to be
unleashed on the Consensus, a trained Demon acting as an extension of the
Council’s will.

 

“Shrigauri Krych is leading a small revolution—avoiding
taxes, not buying from the dynasties, etc. He shows all the signs of trying to
break out of the Consensus and pursue independence. You have been sent to stop
him. In no uncertain terms: kill him, kill his officers, destroy his weapons
cache, and other supplies. Do it quietly, and never implicate the Council in
your actions.”

The words came to Damon from his internal communication
system, sounding like a voice inside his head.
Fortunately, I can turn this
one off if I need to,
he thought. The voice belonged to Gregor Sckolen, his
connection to the Council, whom Damon liked to call his “handler.” Gregor was a
military man through and through. Damon was sure they had specifically assigned
him in order to instill the values of respect and responsibility.

Damon liked giving him a hard time. “Why?” he asked.

“Why what?” Gregor responded on cue.

“Why do we have to kill him, why not let him declare his
independence? There are thousands of other systems, who cares about one?”

“We have to care about every individual planet. If one
secedes successfully, others will follow and the entire Consensus will crumble
into anarchy. It is for the good of all that we stop these renegades before it
is too late.”

“Maybe he’s right and we’re wrong,” Damon baited Gregor.

“The Consensus has succeeded where all other governments
have failed throughout history. We have peace, prosperity, and everyone has the
opportunity to live a good life.”

“Ha, you should visit my home in the Ruins!” Damon said,
offended by Gregor’s assertion. However, in the back of his mind he had to
admit that even life in the Ruins wasn’t all that bad.

“Sounds lovely, you’ll have to show me sometime.”

“I’d love to.”
But I don’t know where it is.

Recently it had occurred to him that in all the planets in
the Consensus, he had absolutely no idea which one was his home. He didn’t like
to dwell on it since the bleakness it caused could become overwhelming.

Gregor broke his cycle of thought, “Gear down in ten.”

Damon‘s thoughts came back to the present, in the cabin of a
public passenger ship. In order to move secretly, he traveled in the cheapest
seats available, which were uncomfortable and cramped, especially for a man his
size. He felt sorry for the people next to him.

Once they landed and disembarked, Damon stretched
expansively to relieve his stiff muscles.
Apparently this new body doesn’t
like being crammed into a tiny seat either.

“Do you have any intelligence on our target, or should I
torch the whole planet?” He wasn’t speaking out loud, but communicating with
Gregor mentally through his secure comm system.

“Of course we have intelligence,” he replied coldly.

Damon smiled to himself; he loved to make Gregor mad.
Now
I just need to find something to occupy myself until nightfall.
Damon
wandered out of the spaceport and into the heart of the city.

 

 

Later that night Damon crouched on a rooftop looking out
over a small park and into the building on the other side. The night was dark
and the clouds overhead threatened rain at any moment. Gregor had identified
this building as the headquarters for Shrigauri Krych, and it was likely that
Damon would find him inside.

He activated only his passive sensors, but even so they
provided detailed information to his HUD giving a clear view even in the dark
night. He easily identified people moving around the perimeter of the building and
on the surrounding rooftops. Unbidden, Andrea’s voice returned to him for the
first time in a long time.

 

 

Damon actually laughed out loud at
the last line in the memory.
These losers can’t touch me or hurt me, and
they certainly can’t
kill
me,
he told the voice, although he
couldn’t dismiss the sadness that accompanied the memory.

 “Gregor,” Damon asked, “why don’t I just torch them with
the Trip-PC, lob my load of grenades in the smoking hole and call it a night?”

“Because your
Primary Mission
is to take out the
leadership of the rebellion, which requires evidence of their death, and gather
any relevant intel from the site. Your Secondary Mission is to locate,
identify, and destroy any weapons cache you can find.”

“You’re not answering my question.”

“If you proceed as you suggested, it will be impossible to
be sure that you have completed any of your mission goals, and we will be
forced to call it a failure. And, a display of firepower that significant will
certainly cause suspicion to fall on the Council.” The smugness in his voice
was annoying and Damon was no longer enjoying this little game.

“Fine, then, we’ll do it your way,” and before Gregor could
respond, “Initiating radio silence,” cutting off all communication.

He scanned the surrounding area for additional threats when
he realized he was not the same Damon that had skulked around in the Ruins. “What
am I doing?” he said to himself, “I’m truly the Demon now.”

With that, he dropped to the ground twenty stories down, his
armor hardening before he landed. The impact was loud enough to get the
attention of at least one guard. Damon strode across the park in no hurry and
made no effort to hide himself. He walked directly toward the closest guard who
was struggling to see into the gloom of the park.

“Hey— who are you? Stop there.” The guard shouted as he
caught sight of Damon striding toward him.

“Who me?” Damon asked as he leapt over the remaining
distance. “I’m a
Kyndra-spawned
nightmare!” he said as he grabbed the
man by the front of his shirt, breaking through the ceramic-mesh armor
underneath. He lifted him easily off his feet and growled in his face, “I’m the
Demon, come to life,” and he crushed the man against the side of the building.

Damon felt the stiffening of his armor a split second before
a huge impact hit him in the back, driving him through the wall and into the
ground.

Wow, I felt that one!
He hadn’t been hit that hard in
any of his training. Before he had time to stand up, his armor stiffened again
and another shell smashed into him, driving him deeper in the foundation of the
building.

He tried to extricate himself from the rubble.
It came
from behind and above. I must have missed some big guns up there.
He
ignored Andrea’s voice in his head saying
‘I told you so!’
He could feel
the impact points on his back, and his face and shoulders hurt where they had
been driven into the hardened concrete. It had been a long time since he felt
lingering pain. He scrabbled through the smoking debris, trying to find
something in his HUD to identify the attacker. He desperately wanted to
move
before they could hit him again.

He stopped when he heard voices approaching.
Of course!
They think I’m dead. After all, who could survive those hits?
Damon
listened and scanned with some low power sensors. The angle was bad and the
rubble interfered with the returns, but he identified three people approaching.

“Stand down those rail guns,” one of them barked into a
radio, and Damon took that as his cue to rise from the dead.

Moving as quickly as he could in the loose debris he tried
to stand. He slipped and wobbled in the poor footing, making his entrance not
quite as dramatic as he hoped, but it was still effective.

“Looking for someone?” he asked as the three men practically
fell backward in shock. One of them tried to bring his gun to bear on Damon,
but he was far too slow. Raising his left hand, Damon eliminated all three with
a short burst from the slug guns.

Now what’s going to stop them from firing again?
He
thought as he jumped to the side in a desperate attempt to avoid another hit
from the rail gun. He didn’t go far due to the loose ground underneath him, but
it was enough as the whole area exploded into a cloud of dust with the impact
of another fast-moving projectile. This time, Damon was able to get a bearing
on the shooter, and called it up in his targeting HUD. A red square appeared in
his vision, on top of one of the buildings near where he had started his
attack.
Stupid! I could have found them easily if I had only looked,
He
scolded himself. He spun around and dropped to one knee as he brought the
Trip-PC up to meet the targeting reticle, which turned from a rectangle to a
cross as his aim hit the mark. Firing the cannon caused a substantial kick, and
the top of the building was completely obliterated in a cloud of flame and
debris. The red targeting icon disappeared.

“One down,” he said out loud, feeling sure of himself again.
However, he took too long in aiming and firing the Trip-PC at the first target,
and the other rail gun crew was quick to react. The projectile hit him in the
shoulder and smashed him into the pavement under his feet. The impact and the
way it bent his body around hurt even through the armor.

“
Kyndra’s soaking tears
, I hate these guys!” He said
to himself as he tried to move out of the wreckage as quickly as possible.
Another round came in, missed him, but the impact sent him sprawling forward on
his face. Now he was exposed, but he was also on firm ground. He bounced up and
sprinted to the cover of the corner of the building. Things were quiet for the
moment and Damon brought up his active sensor array to get a better feel for
his surroundings. Active sensors gave him a much better picture, but also
revealed his location to anyone looking. In this case, he was sure they already
knew where to find him so there was no risk in using the powerful active
sensors. Almost immediately his HUD identified the location of the target, and
he powered up the Trip-PC to prepare his attack.

Moving quickly, he spun around the corner of the building,
brought his weapon to bear, but registered an incoming round almost
immediately. With no time to lock in, he fired the cannon in the rough
direction of the rail gun, and dove out of the line of fire.

The round gouged a path of destruction through the ground,
but missed Damon entirely. The explosion from the Trip-PC shot lit up the sky,
but his sensors could not determine if he’d hit anything important. He started
to power up the cannon again, and noticed a red icon in the corner of his
vision. Pausing to check it, he found that his energy reserves were down to
18%. He checked the charge on the cannon and found it was not able to fire
again.

“Two shots?” he said to himself incredulously, “I get only
two shots?
Weeping saint
!”

Before he had a chance to move, another shell from the rail
gun smashed through the building and into his back, slamming him into the
ground yet again, and dropping a good sized piece of the building on top of
him.

Through the surprise and the pain, Damon watched the red
icon flash in his vision.

“. . . 14% . . .”

Apparently, taking hits will deplete my energy, too,
he
thought.
It might have helped if they mentioned that in training!

He turned up the amplification of his strength, rose out of
the rubble, and moved quickly out the line of fire.

“. . . 10% . . .”

Really, now what?
He started to feel helpless. Energy
weapons were now out of the question, and he was forced to turn down his
strength amplification in order to conserve energy. This time, he kept moving
so the rail gun couldn’t hit him again. He weighed the idea of retreat, but
couldn’t bring himself to admit defeat. Then he heard Andrea’s voice from what
now seemed like a long time ago.

 

 

“Fine, I’ll retreat for now, but I will come back!” He gathered
the sensor information into an overhead map in order to find his best way out
of the area when small arms fire erupted on either side of him.

He instinctively covered his head with his arms, but
realized after a second that it was not necessary. Although they could not hurt
him, the autorifles they used were powerful and he could feel the bullet
impacts. Rounds were coming in so quickly and from so many different directions
it was confusing and disorienting.

“. . . 9% . . .”

Damon gathered his senses and charged the source of the
gunfire to his left. As he ran, Extruded Combat Blades slid from the fairings
on both wrists and detached into his hands. Distantly, he was impressed by the
soldiers’ resolve as they kept firing through his approach and did not run
away.

“Stupidity and bravery are nearly the same thing,” he said
to them as he sliced them to ribbons with the plastic blades.

“. . . 8% . . .”

Doesn’t this power plant produce anything?
He thought
angrily as he charged another group of shooters. This group, too, refused to
give ground and paid the price with their lives.

Damon felt the impact of something larger than small arms
fire and turned to see a small armored truck rolling toward him, firing a heavy
round two to three times per second.

“. . . 6% . . .”

Got to move fast,
he thought as he charged the truck.
Now he felt more autorifle impacts and saw more shooters lining the rooftops
around him. His armor handled the impacts easily, but they were annoying and
just strong enough to throw him off balance. He caught up with the truck since
it could not maneuver well in the urban setting, jumped on top of it and took
out the heavy gun with his blades. He then punched down through the top of the
truck and dropped inside to gain some cover from the autorifle assault.