The Orion Plague (39 page)

Must have been a roving patrol. Just luck
they were nearby: bad luck for them, good for me.

Behind her she heard Muzik follow her onto
the cold new asphalt. Checking her HUD, she bolted in the direction
of the laboratory and its heavily fortified computer system.

Her information, supplied no doubt by an
insider, said that all the Septagon data was kept in two places
only.

One copy was discreetly hidden in a Moscow
bank safe deposit box, on a multi-terabyte hard drive no bigger
than a game console. Updated weekly in case of disaster, it was
Winthrop Jenkins’ personal insurance policy, unknown to others in
the cyborg program.

Not unknown to the CIA. Repeth knew that
defections to the US and other free nations had increased an
hundredfold since the Septagon coup. The cyborgs might be able to
control the apparatus at the top, but the Russian people had never
submitted easily to foreign domination, rising to defeat enemy
after enemy that tried to invade them, ending with Napoleon and
Hitler.

That data would be taken care of by a
different team of unusual special operatives – a crew, if the truth
ever be known, of former bank robbers that the US government had
scared straight and put to work for their country. Repeth mentally
saluted them and wished them well.

The only other cache of data was here, data
drives within an isolated vault. Fortunately for Repeth and Muzik,
the ground of the town-turned-base was soggy, tundra-like, and thus
basements had not been built for the new construction. In the quick
conversion, Septagon had opted to fortify an existing building.

The building they sprinted for now.

PW5 pistol in one hand, PW20 .50 caliber
heavy slugthrower in the other, Repeth led the charge. The handgun
popped intermittently, one shot per human being she saw. Her HUD
datalinked with the chip in her brain and the one in her mechanical
eye to identify targets as they presented themselves, like a video
game on the screen inside the faceplate.

Down two blocks and over one brought them
within a street’s length of Building W, the lab. “Wish we could
have come up closer,” Repeth remarked.

“Wishes, fishes. Up we go.”

She had almost emptied her pistol’s
fifty-round magazine by that time, so she quickly changed magazines
and replaced the weapon in its thigh holster. Then she looked up to
the top of the two-story warehouse between them and their goal, and
jumped.

Muzik followed her through the air as they
arced up and over the brick parapet of the old building. They both
alighted heavily, and Muzik had to pull a foot loose from a soft
spot in the old wood of the roof. “Watch that, we could fall
through.”

“Got it.” Sidling sideways, she followed a
brace beneath the surface, visible in the IR as the material sagged
slightly around it, and showed a different temperature as well.
Moving forward, eventually she caught sight of the laboratory, with
its five-meter fence and lights blazing like white suns. Her HUD
spotted motion everywhere and marked two dozen targets. She saw a
pair of light armored vehicles parked within view, BTR-90s she
thought, and prioritized all her weapon fire. Then she put her EMP
projector in her left hand and readied her PW20 in her right.

Glancing at the HUD ranging readout, Repeth
said, “Set your thrusters for sixty-five meters, and aim for that
left air intake. EMP the left BTR in the air. I got the right, then
pick off personnel.”

“Roger,” said Roger.

Old joke, new circumstances
. She
jumped.

Compressed gas shot out of her boots as her
feet left the parapet, giving Repeth the extra distance she needed
to clear all the obstacles and land on the laboratory roof. It
would have been nice to have more than one booster and one landing
charge, but this ironman suit of hers was already overloaded with
gadgetry.

Her HUD showed Muzik a fraction of a second
behind her and off to her left. She fired her PW20 nine times in
two seconds, letting her computer targeting system do all the work,
while concentrating on the EMP cannon in her other hand. When she
was as close as she was likely to get she triggered it straight
into the turret of the BTR-90 armored vehicle.

All the lights on the vehicle exploded and
the turret spun sideways, its electrically-powered chain gun
spitting shells into the night. She saw it cut down one of its own
soldiers, then fall silent with a last lone pop. Smoke began to
pour from its engine compartment and troops bailed out, frantically
beating at flaming uniforms.

Someone yelled as she and Muzik were spotted
in the air, and a burst of tracers reached into the sky far from
their position.

Too much to hope, not to be seen
.

Both came down with a burst of retro-thrust
to slow them, otherwise they might have broken through at least the
top surface of the roof. As soon as she gained steady footing,
Repeth holstered her EMP cannon and ripped a large air intake cover
off its mountings and discarded it to the side, revealing a second
layer a meter down consisting of welded steel plating – in effect,
an armored roof. She reached to her back-rack and extracted a
self-opening thermite cutter frame. Popping its clamp, she let it
expand its slinky-like shape until it formed a circle a meter
across.

Dropping it, she let it settle on a
featureless stretch of steel, then stepped back and crouched,
facing away. “Ready?” she called over her comm, as Muzik should
have done the same near him.

“Ready. Fire in the hole.”

End of
Cyborg Strike
preview.

***

Plague Wars Series

The Eden Plague - Book 1

Reaper’s Run - A Plague Wars Novel

The Demon Plagues - Book 2

The Reaper Plague - Book 3

The Orion Plague - Book 4

Cyborg Strike - Book 5
(Summer
2013)

Comes The Destroyer - Book 6 (
Fall
2013)

Stellar Conquest Series

First Conquest
-
Book 1
-
Contained within the anthology
Planetary Assault

Desolator - Book 2

Tactics of Conquest - Book 3
(Fall
2013)

Other Works

Unfettered

Low Justice

For more information visit
http://www.davidvandykeauthor.com