Free Cyborg Strike by David VanDyke Page B

for their passengers to
load.
    “Twenty seconds,” he said, and bolted for the
ready room door, leaving Smythe standing there. Seventeen seconds
later he returned, dressed now in a flight suit and carrying two
flyers’ helmets. He tossed another coverall at her. “Put this
on.”
    Normally Smythe would probably have taken
exception to this kind of abrupt treatment, but the threat of death
must have made her decide to forego her usual umbrage. She slipped
the garment over her clothes and then received a helmet from the
cyborg’s hand.
    Next, the metal man took off his facemask and
tucked it into his suit, revealing his human visage, relatively
well preserved except for some bruising around the edges, from the
explosion. He walked over to tell one of the pilots to get out of
his craft. The man did not argue, but ran over to take the
copilot’s seat on the other bird.
    Waving Smythe toward him, the cyborg took the
pilot’s seat and pulled on his flight helmet, bringing up his
piloting overlay template and double-checking the aircraft’s
status. Once Smythe had settled into the copilot’s seat of the
little attack bird, he pressed the button that sent the signal to
open the roof.
     
    ***
     
    Surprise blossomed in Spooky’s racing mind as
the ground began to move beneath his feet. It seemed a hill grew
under him, and he ran downward to find stable earth. As soon as he
could, he turned to see a squarish rupture, sharply cornered, doors
with a thin layer of dirt and plants over them for near-perfect
camouflage.
    Something coming to the surface.
    Nguyen backed away, looking around for his
troops, but none were closer than half a football field, of any
nation’s rules. With the HUD he called several to him, and marked
the new threat on their displays. Then he hefted his own weapon, a
heavy PW-20 loaded with Needleshock, worthless against most
vehicles. He felt no great concern; any ground car or truck to
emerge could be handled by his commandos or, if need be, by his
aircraft.
    Instead, one slim VTOL blasted skyward from
the opened doors, then another. “Bring them down!” he ordered
immediately, and several weapons of various sorts – anti-aircraft,
heavy machinegun, Armorshock – let loose after them.
    The lead vehicle took a missile into the
engine housing, forcing its pilot to put it down immediately onto a
hillside before he lost all control. Its twin lit up with the
discharge of an electromagnetic pulse cannon, which froze all of
its systems. Nosing over in the air, it tumbled when it struck the
ground, coming apart by bits and pieces.
    “You two check that one,” Nguyen said to the
nearest commandos, pointing at the first crash, the biggest mess.
Over his suitcomm he ordered, “All others on the surface within
sight of it, converge on the downed craft and capture those in
it.”
    Then he ran.
    As he was not the closest, he was far from
the first to reach the crash site, and so was perfectly positioned
to witness the death of one of his people. Too eager and
insufficiently cautious, the man died in a burst of 20mm fire from
the nose of the aircraft.
    Its pilot had brought it in to pancake in
some scrubby trees, and thus preserved most of its structure,
apparently taking the opportunity to use the heavy weapon to shred
the first grunt to walk in front of it.
    Stupid , Nguyen thought. Never
assume a weapon is not functional. Darwin wins again.
    Neither he nor the seven or eight others
approaching made the same mistake.
    Because of his capture order, his people did
not simply send in rockets to blast the fuselage, but one of them
carried an electrical cannon, useful for dealing with a number of
problems. Not only vehicles but also nano-infused personnel would
fall to its overwhelming charge.
    That commando fired its lightning bolt into
the VTOL, and the aircraft’s electrically-operated 20mm cannon
burped one abortive burst before jamming. Residual lights inside
the helicopter-like vehicle went out, and as the