Free Cyborg Strike by David VanDyke Page A

Authority of the Committee of
Nine, lifting Direct Action to a place of prominence in the shadow
government of Australia. Mopping up their operatives from their
scattered offices and minor facilities would be easy – assuming
they did not simply flee. Even now, Ann Alkina should be
transmitting an offer of amnesty to all of the ordinary personnel
who stayed in place, accepting their new master.
    As soon as the other sections of the Nine
heard about it – were graphically informed about it, that is – they
would fall into line, he was sure. General Alkina would take over
the day-to-day running of Direct Action.
    General Nguyen himself, of course, would take
over a reorganized Central Authority.
    The existing power structure could be useful,
which was the reason he would spare the bureaucrats and
functionaries. They would not protest too much at the change in
leadership, and he would move just as swiftly in the political
arena to consolidate his power.
    From the barrel of a gun if need be.
    Nguyen stood in the midst of the hellish
landscape, and resolved to himself: never again. Though a triumph,
such blunt, unrefined methods spoke more to failure than success. To win without fighting is the epitome of strategy , Sun Tzu
had said, and this fell far short of an acme.
    Never again.
    He would fit his steel hand with a velvet
glove, and seize Australia by the scruff of the neck, bending it to
his will.
    All for the good of humanity.
     
    ***
     
    Seventeen seconds of eternity later the
cyborg regained his eyesight and hearing as he rebooted. The rest
of his senses came back a moment later. Sitting up, he found
himself without any specific damage but with stress notations and
reduced capability across a wide variety of systems. Some of him
now ran on backups.
    Looking around, he noticed the corridor had
been badly damaged, with chunks of concrete lying all over the
floor, reinforcement bar sticking out of the walls, parts of the
roof caved in, and all of the lights out in his section. Flame has
traveled along the ceiling as well, burning the overhead material
and the recessed lighting. Extended spectra allowed him to
penetrate the dust and smoke until he was able to make out what had
happened.
    Where the bodies of the three nanocommandos
had been, now he could find nothing but craters. It looked to him
like twenty kilos of semtex or C8 had been detonated there,
vaporizing the bodies, though that was clearly impossible. Hell,
it must have been in the bodies, he thought. Clever, Spooky,
clever. Almost got me. It must have been something new, and ten
times as powerful, to fit into nanocommandos and not impair their
functioning.
    If all of the attacking nanocommandos were so
equipped – and he had to assume there were dozens, if not hundreds
– then Central Authority was doomed. The black-clad attackers had
to be going through this fortress like shit through a goose, and
one damaged cyborg simply wasn’t going to turn the tide.
    As soon as his hybrid brain-chipset agreed
with this assessment, his minder code insisted he reprioritize and
preserve the life of his principal. Because he’d already decided on
that himself, he was already heading toward Ms. Smythe’s office,
and avoided any warning pain.
    Fewer of the defenders clogged the corridors
this time, and he didn’t have to harm any of them at all before he
reached his goal. Bursting through the door, he did not wait for
acknowledgement before saying, “We must exfiltrate immediately,
ma’am.”
    Smythe stared at him, obviously startled by
her naked metal golem’s appearance, but she had not gotten to her
position by freezing under pressure. “Agreed,” she responded, and
stepped from behind her desk to follow him. In her hand she carried
a compact pistol.
    “Follow me,” he said, and paced himself to
her jog. It was only a short distance to the VTOL hangar, where the
two slim flying darts waited with their internal rotors already
spinning. A pilot sat in each, waiting