Kaleidocide (53 page)

I am very sorry, Mr. Ares.
These words were posting on another part of the windshield.
I have failed you.

“Nonsense, Min,” I said. “Let's see if we can do anything about this…”

I still have some hidden weapons capability, but I cannot use it unless I can get my neural controls back online. I'm trying, but even if I do, I would not be able to locate the enemy soldiers, and even if I could locate them, I only have enough ordnance to eliminate two of the ten.

I realized, from Min's words and from the slight distortion in the air next to the double, that China had developed a cloaking device for its soldiers and that a pair of them were holding Jon upright so he would have to wake up and witness what was coming. And before the conversation between Min and me could continue, Terrey's voice boomed through the hangar's speakers, and I found out what Sun had planned for Lynn's death.

“You have what you wanted now,” Terrey said, “and I'm sure you saw the injectors on Mrs. Ares's ankles when you removed her clothing. Which was hardly necessary, by the way. The nanites would do their work on her skin even if she was dressed.”

“But we would not be able to
watch them
do their work,” Sun answered, with a perverse smile that confirmed the implication that he had enjoyed humiliating my wife. “And I need you to come back here and activate the devices.”

“That won't happen,” Terrey said. “I'm long gone already, and going much farther away so I can't be tracked by you or anyone else. But I will activate them by remote control so you can have your fun watching her suffer and die—
after
you transfer the money to my account. If I had started the process already, you might not have paid me.”

“Half now,” Sun said calmly. “The other half when I am safely away from here, as we agreed. And you will activate the injectors first, before you receive your payment.”

Terrey paused before responding, but then said, “Fine. Have fun.”

Min reluctantly looked directly at Lynn's prone form for the first time, sacrificing his honor so that I could see what happened to her. The small devices attached to her ankles sparked to life and caused her body to spasm, as what looked like a thick liquid began to spread out in all directions on her feet and ankles, traveling slowly up her legs and covering all the skin with a multicolored surface that looked like a living tattoo. I knew that nanotechnology had been largely a bust in the scientific community because of its limited power supply, but I also knew that it had caught on as a fashion decoration which could only be used in patches like the triplets did, because of potential dangers to the dermal system. It wasn't hard to figure out why Sun chose this torture for my wife, or why he picked nanites that would cover her body with so many different colors. But he elaborated anyway.

“This is the ultimate form of
xing lu cai se,
” he said to Jon, thinking he was me. “And it is an especially appropriate punishment for you. You took my partner from me, now I am taking yours—with interest.” Lynn convulsed on the floor as the colors made their way up toward her hips, and she clutched at her big belly as if she was trying to protect the little girl inside it.

I checked the aero's HUD for our ETA to the hill, which was still several minutes away, and reached into the backseat for one of the assault rifles that Korcz had put there from the trunk. He grabbed one, too, and we both began to ready the weapons by turning off the safeties and chambering rounds in the main barrels and the grenade launchers. I was very surprised that the big Russian was willing to join me in this, because suicide was the only word that described what we were about to do. Maybe he thought that it was so clearly the right thing to do, and was therefore a good way for both of us to die.

 

47

BLOOD AND DUST

“Saul Rabin liked to refer to you as the James Bond of BASS,” Sun continued with an amused expression, as my wife continued to writhe on the floor, “because you were from England and had some adventures like that character. His lovers were famous for being covered with various substances by their killers—gold paint, black oil, and silver metal in one of the more recent holos. No one could die in real life from being covered in those substances, of course, but I assure you that your lover is really dying from this. The microscopic machines replicating themselves across her skin will not only block her pores, but also raise her body temperature to a lethal level in a matter of minutes. If she doesn't die from heatstroke first, the nanites will close off her breathing when they reach her head. In the meantime, every nerve ending in her skin will feel like it is being bitten and burned, and if she attempts to pull off any of her new decorations with her hands, the skin will come off with it.”

“Min,” I said into my comm before the bastard was even done spouting off, “you said you have some ordnance. What is it?”

I have two Incisor missiles in my mouth,
the dismantled cyborg said,
that they obviously did not know about when they removed my other augmentations.
Despite the gravity of the situation, I remembered what the Cyber Hole tech had said when he was telling us about Min's capabilities. He had said something about “weapons in his mouth,” and I thought he was merely using the figurative expression “armed to the teeth.” But he had been speaking literally, after all.

I am regaining some capability to aim the missiles,
Min said on our screen,
but remember that I cannot see or detect the enemy soldiers. Nor will you be able to.

This was why it was suicide for us, of course. But Lynn and Lynley and Min were a good cause to die for, as well as the possibility of ridding the world of a monster like Sun. Unfortunately, in the plan I was formulating in the brief time I had before we arrived at the hill, the Chinese leader was likely to live and the rest of us were likely to die—especially my double.

“You'll have to take out the two Wraiths holding Jon,” I said to Min, knowing that my look-alike would also be killed when he did. “Because they're the only ones you can locate.” My thought was that Korcz and I would fire randomly in the direction of where we thought the invisible soldiers might be, and then try to grab Sun as a hostage and force them to stop shooting at us.

I think I should just use the missiles on General Sun, sir.

I had figured this would come up, because it was the most logical conclusion. We're all going to die, so we might as well take out the threat to world peace before we do. But despite whatever “destiny” had been decreed for me, I wasn't nearly as concerned with preserving world peace as I was with the slim possibility of saving Lynn and the baby. And I wasn't willing to sacrifice her for it, as Saul Rabin had been.

“No,” I said. “I need Sun alive in case he's able to turn off the nanites. Just take out the two with Jon.” I thought again of the old man, who had rescued Min from China and brought him here to work at BASS. “And pray for a miracle.”

I have never done that, but there is nothing else I can do now. I'm sorry again, sir.

“Terrey's the one who should be sorry, Min, not you. May he burn in hell for what he's done.”

Makes me want to believe in a place like that, sir.

I told Min to wait for my signal, as we were now less than a minute from the hill, and in the meantime asked him to look around the hangar in case we could see a distortion in the air where the other eight Chinese soldiers were. This was fruitless, especially with Min's vision impaired by his injuries, and so he flipped through his optical filters one more time. They didn't work either, so we spent the last moments before we reached the hill watching Lynn dying on the floor. Her body was now almost covered with the colors, and the screams coming from her mouth would soon be cut off. She tried to tear off some of the nanites from the top of her chest as they were nearing her throat, only to scream louder as the deep red of her blood mingled with the other colors there.

“Ready,” I said to Min and Korcz as the holo-covered entrance to the hangar swept into view in front of us.

And then the miracle happened.

The view through Min's eyes blinked twice and lit up with new information on it. Target crosshairs from his weapons system displayed on the two invisible soldiers holding Jon, and eight others in other parts of the hangar.

My system appears to have found a way to locate the enemies,
Min said.

“Send it to our glasses,” I blurted out, and Korcz and I quickly put them on. “Take out the farthest away, Min.” I knew Sun would have posted several snipers in perimeter positions, as a safety measure in case someone like us showed up. And I hoped there were no more than two, and that they could all be killed by Min's missiles, because just one surviving sniper would end this attack very quickly.

Just before our aero reached the hangar, target indicators for all of the Chinese soldiers appeared in both pairs of glasses, and we now had something to shoot at. Or run over …

I switched the autopilot off and grabbed the controls of the aero as it streaked into the center of the hangar near the floor, smashing its nose into the nearest Wraith, who had been one of two guarding the entrance. Korcz fired out of his open window at the other one, and then I flew directly at Sun, the aero slowed only slightly by the impact with the guard. I wanted to get near the Chinese leader so his men would hesitate to fire grenades at us—something that also would end the attack very quickly.

Meanwhile, I could see what Min was doing, from the video screen containing his view on one part of the windshield, and from glancing through the clear part of it at his head and torso hanging from the helicopter blade in the back of the hangar. The two antigravity enhanced false teeth dislodged from his mouth and shot out to the far sides of the hangar, in a loosely spiraling fashion. Min's optical system split his view into two halves and zoomed in to follow both missiles to their destinations. In rapid succession they connected with their two invisible targets, one on a catwalk high on the north side of the hangar, and the other behind an aero on the south side. A shower of bloody body parts became visible and cascaded in every direction when they exploded, which would have been gratifying except for the fact that there were so many enemies still left in the hangar.

When I thought I was close enough to Sun, I swerved the aero toward Jon. As I had hoped, the two invisible soldiers holding him let go so they could use their weapons, and he had enough presence of mind to drop to the ground, so I could pass above him as I plowed into them with the front of the car. I finally braked at that point, and both Korcz and I dove out because we knew that RPGs would be on their way to the car now that it was farther from Sun. The Chinese general was taking cover in the other direction, in fact, crawling inside the helicopter from which Min was hanging. I hoped he didn't know how to fire the weapons on the craft, as I rolled hard to avoid gunfire from the remaining soldiers.

One of them did send a grenade toward my aero, and the car exploded in a ball of flame. The smoke from the blast provided some temporary cover for me and Korcz, so we were able to fire back from each side of the wreckage. We both made the same split-second tactical decision to try to take out as many enemies as we could from where we stood, rather than run somewhere else and hinder our aiming ability while we tried to find cover. It was probably the wisest decision in a still hopeless situation, and we hit one or two of the men firing at us from the open floor and behind the parked aeros. But our success was short-lived, because at least one of the Flying Dragons was now behind us—perhaps one who had survived being run over, thanks to his body armor.

Sun apparently recognized me as the smoke began to clear, from his vantage point not far away, because he must have told the soldier behind me to take me alive. I was focused on watching the red squares that indicated the targets ahead of me, and didn't notice the red arrow at the far right edge of the glasses until it was too late. The invisible man stepped up behind me and put his gun to the back of my head, causing me to lower mine. Korcz saw this through the clearing smoke, probably because the red square appeared in the right side of his glasses. He turned his rifle in my direction, hesitating briefly while he decided whether to endanger me by firing on my captor, and in that moment he was hit by a barrage of bullets from the other soldiers left in the hangar. His big form crashed to the ground in a bloody heap.

In my glasses I could see that two invisible Chinese soldiers were advancing toward me across the open floor in the middle of the hangar, two more were positioned behind vehicles that were parked around the outside, and another was behind me somewhere, probably moving into a closer position. With the one holding a gun to my head, that made six who had survived—at least we killed almost half of them, which was better than I had expected to do.

Sun started laughing from inside the Firehawk's cockpit, probably from the realization that he had been fooled by a double but still ended up with the real me. But then his laughter was cut short as the lights and power in all of the aeros in the hangar, and in the other helicopter, suddenly turned on. Before any of the Chinese could figure out what was happening, the aeros that had been providing cover for two of them surged backward and sideways, pinning one against a wall and pushing the other into the car next to it. The Reds screamed as they were sandwiched by the four-ton vehicles.

At the same time, the Firehawk that had come alive without a pilot began to fire its cannons at the two soldiers in the middle of the floor, shredding them and sending visible blood flying from their invisible bodies like it was coming out of a water sprinkler. Hoping that the soldier behind me was taking seriously his orders not to kill me, I dropped down and back, bringing my rifle up sideways until it hit his invisible one and knocked it upward. Then I spun around and shot him right before he could bring the gun down again, and scanned the area behind his body for the sixth soldier that I thought was back there. But according to my glasses, there was now no one in the vicinity.