The Demon Plagues (35 page)

“I do. Sir.” Huff smirked.

“Thought you might say that. The question is,
are you smart enough to believe me when I tell you that you
don’t?”

The smirk fell off Huff’s face. He stared
Skull down for half a minute, then stood up. “A’ight. I can see you
believe it. Okay, you got somethin’ up your sleeve. Mebbe because
you and Tyler are good ol’ boys that both got cowshit on your
boots. So what’s your deal?”

“The deal is, you run the team, I stay out of
the way. I direct, you execute. I get you promoted to Chief – two
ranks, Huff – so you are senior to everyone but me, and in return,
you support me for this op. No more undercutting my authority.
Because I don’t really care about these bars or my position on the
team. If you had welcomed me in instead of made me an outsider, I’d
have asked them to make you a lieutenant and you’d be in charge.
But you cut your own throat on that one, because you assumed I was
here to take something from you. I’m not. I just want to do the
mission and get back to doing what I do best.”

Huff stuck a toothpick in his mouth, chewed
on it for a moment, thinking. Abruptly his whole demeanor changed,
like swapping masks. “All right. All right, I'm down with that.” He
held out his hand, apparently sincere.

Skull shook the hand, then sat back as Huff
left the cell.
What a self-taught actor. Seemed to go well,
unless he’s conning me. I hope he’s just smart enough to play the
game right…and besides, it will free me from the nitnoid crap to
focus on what’s important…important to me anyway.

Leaving his own cell he walked past the rest
of them, steel doors with safety-glass windows, like a psych ward.
Locks on the outside, in case someone else went berserk. At the end
of the hall he paused, looking into the common room.

Tables and chairs were set up in a corner, to
eat on or play cards, but most of the room was taken up with weight
and fitness equipment. Several Fortress Team members hoisted
prodigious free weight bars over their heads with relative ease,
laughing and joking. Skull was sure one of them had five hundred
pounds on the bar, and the man – Miller, he thought – brought it
down to his chest and did another overhead press, grunting.

Tests had registered a near-instantaneous
two-hundred-fifty percent gain in muscle strength and about a fifty
percent gain in muscular speed and reaction time. But to Skull,
picking up weights or carrying equipment – or even the Eden-like
healing the nanites brought – wasn’t the most impressive thing
about the treatment. It was the new mobility he had.

Without pausing or preparation, Skull swarmed
up the hanging rope to the steel-beamed ceiling, then
hand-over-handed across to slide down a chain, stopping with his
feet on the ring at the end. He bent down, put one hand in the
ring, then dropped, snapping himself back vertical, feet toward the
ceiling, and extended his arm in a one-limbed pushup, steadying
himself with a foot hooked around the chain.

“Cool!” Miller breathed. He put down the huge
weight with a clang, then ran to repeat Skull's route and feat. In
a moment he was hanging upside-down on the other ring chain next to
Skull.

Denham smiled, then let go to fall nine feet,
doing a handstand on the floor and then handwalking across to the
wall ladders. Hooking his toes into the rungs, he did a vertical
sit-up, then grasped two rungs different to hold himself out
horizontal from the wall, a human flag. Then he let go, landing
lightly on his feet.

The other men watching shifted from feats of
strength to testing out their new gymnastic abilities. It didn’t
appear that the nanobots improved balance, but with such speed and
strength, it almost did not matter. Endurance was also improved at
least fivefold, as the tiny machines boosted oxygen carrying
capacity on demand.

***

Skull slipped out of the supposedly-sealed
barracks by the simple expedient of climbing through the latrine
window. His tall skinny frame barely fit through it but with his
incredible strength he eased himself through with just a skinned
hip, which quickly healed. Once outside he took a running high jump
and cleared the twelve-foot fence with room to spare. He shrugged
to himself. If they complained later about his midnight excursion,
what would they do, give up their best super-troop?

Deliberately running flat-out, he tested
himself. He estimated that he hit forty miles an hour on the
asphalt, and figured he could keep that up until his body ran out
of fuel. This run was only a few hundred yards, though, over to the
officers’ quarters, up to the third floor. He knocked on Forman’s
door.

“Skull?” The Navy commander adjusted her
bathrobe as she waved him in. “Out a bit late, aren’t we?”

“Don’t ‘we’ me, Chaplain, it’s patronizing.
We need to talk.”

“Okay, sit down and talk.”

“I’ll stand. What do you think of the
team?”

“Is this another of your headshrinker
questions?”

He stared at her in annoyance. “No, it’s an
honest one.”

“Good, let’s keep it that way. I think…I
think there’s something weird going on, beyond the usual. Something
more than the weirdness of nanotechnology.”

“Right, you felt it too. Let me tell you what
I observe. These guys have all the skills but hardly any of the
discipline of any special operators I have ever seen. They are
overly macho, shortsighted, and selfish. If I didn’t know for a
fact that they are
not
Eden Plague carriers, I’d think they
were Psychos. Huff particularly troubles me. Markis is the epitome
of the pararescueman – self-sacrificing to a fault, no bravado, the
pure professional. Huff on the other hand…he’s calculating and
underhanded, more like a gang leader than a team leader.”

“So what does that mean?” Forman ran her
hands through her bob, setting a hair band into place. She didn’t
seem surprised by his line of questioning.

This action caused Skull to abruptly notice
her as a woman, not just a potential ally. This confused him a bit,
because he’d ruthlessly suppressed his body’s urges for so long.
Besides, she’s an Eden, and I’m a…what will they call us? Nanos?
Cyborgs?
He stamped down brutally on his libido and answered,
“It means I need you to get a look at their files. I want to know
their backgrounds beyond what they claim. I want to know why they
don’t line up the way they should.”

Christine looked long and hard at Skull, then
came to a decision. “I don’t need to go take a look at their files.
I already have.”

Skull raised his eyebrows in surprise.
“Really? Why?”

“Because the General asked me to. Why do you
think I’m involved with this team? There were other Edens to be
guinea pigs. The General wanted someone with ironclad integrity
bolstered by the Eden Plague, untainted by Unionists sympathies, to
keep an eye on things. He’s a very intelligent man – and
attractive, too –” she arched her eyebrows at Skull - “and he
wanted me to evaluate everyone on the team.”

He ignored her jab. “Including me?”

“Especially you, Skull. But you don’t worry
me nearly as much as they do.”

“What do you mean?” Skull finally sat down,
leaning forward with interest.

“On the surface you are all damaged men, or
should be. Every one of you has problems – disciplinary,
psychiatric, and emotional. A bigger bunch of semi-functional
misfits I never saw. But I’ve come to realize your own coping
mechanism is highly effective. You cut yourself off from feelings
so you can do horrific things you think are necessary for the
greater good. You’re probably the sanest one of the bunch, within
limits. The rest…well, let’s start with Huff. He was kicked out of
the Pararescue program two weeks before he would have graduated –
at the top of his class – for sexual assault. Probably rape, but it
was never proven. The rest are almost as bad.”

Skull sat back, amazement on his face.
“That’s…that’s crazy. I thought I’d be the odd man out, have to toe
the line and play the straight-laced trooper game. Instead, I’m
getting sick of their dirtbag attitude. And now that they have the
Tiny Fortress treatment…they’re far worse. Thank God they’re going
operational soon, or they’d self-destruct.”

“Operational? Really? Do tell.” Forman laid a
melodramatic finger alongside her jawline, her chin on her
thumb.

“Damn, I really shouldn’t have said
anything.”

“Rather late to worry about that. We’re
co-conspirators now.”

“Yeah,” he sighed. “you’re right. Okay…in a
couple of days we’re outbound for our first mission. It’s a wet op
– an assassination – I don’t know the target.”

“What about the other team?”

Skull gripped the chair arm in sudden
tension. “What other team?”

It was Forman’s turn to be surprised.
“The…you don’t know? There’s another Fortress team. You were the
first, you proved the concept. Took the biggest risk. Team Two is
inside Cheyenne Mountain, I’m told.”

“Told by who?”

“Ah…well, I overheard the two Tylers talking,
just a brief mention. I don’t think they realize how sensitive Eden
hearing is.”

“So no one is supposed to know. Certainly not
us on, what, Team One?” Skull stood up again, began pacing. His
head hit the overhead fixture and he cursed, changing his path.

“Skull…mentally step back a minute. What if
you were in charge of Tiny Fortress in this situation. Would you
put all your eggs in one basket?”

“No, I understand, I’d have multiple teams
too. And I might not tell them about each other. Leftover paranoia
from the Unionists. But this team…it’s a Kelley’s Heroes bunch of
misfits…or actually, a Devil’s Brigade. Which means…”

“You’re expendable. Or even, maybe you’re
supposed to fail, perhaps in some spectacular diversion.”

“Son of a bitch.” He paced several more laps,
then turned suddenly to her. “Thanks, Commander. You’re…you’re a
real American, like we’re all supposed to be.” Then he turned and
walked out, radiating anger.

“Huh,” Forman said to herself, aloud. “I
think that was the highest compliment he could pay me.”

“I think you’re right,” said Jill Repth from
the bedroom doorway. “That was…interesting.”

“Enlightening. I’m glad Nano hearing isn’t as
good as Edens. I noticed you shifting around in there.”

“As you say. So Skull is a romantic at
heart.”

“Aren’t all men? They just cover it well.
Every one of them wants to live for something bigger than himself.
Or better yet, die gloriously for it. Skull’s just looking for the
right moment. Funny, and he thinks
Markis
has a Christ
complex.”

Jill shrugged. “Colonel Nguyen once told me
we become what we hate. I think he was right.”

“Satan certainly did. Why should we be
different?”

***

“What the hell is this?” Sergeant First Class
Holden lifted up the back-and-chest plate armor, so different from
the usual Kevlar.

“It’s the latest thing,” answered Captain JT
Tyler. “Lighter and tougher than anything before. It’s a
nanomachine-assembled crystal ceramic that’s guaranteed to turn
most conventional rounds.”

“But what about these big gaps?”

“We have a synthetic spidersilk softsuit for
you to wear underneath that will stop most of your incoming,
provide you with the flexibility to move. Between these two layers
of armor and your enhanced strength and speed, you’ll be able to
cut through any enemy unit like leopards through sheep.”

“Won’t they just be using Needleshock rounds?
Who cares about those?” asked Miller.

“Because, dumbass, they hurt, which means
enough of them will knock you down or out. Also, the ablative virus
coating will occupy your nanites fighting them off, and you will
immediately lose efficiency – you’ll lose strength and speed.
Third, the electrical shock will knock out your nanites in the
local area, like a micro-EMP. So you will wear this stuff. Put it
on now, and only take it off to shower or sleep. Get used to it.
That’s my orders.” JT put his hands on his hips, glaring at the
team.

“Hey, uh, Captain,” Huff asked in his best
oily almost-subordinate tone, “Where’s the General in all
this?”

“Huff, he has more to do than just run this
one project and deal with the details, so he asked me to pass these
simple, routine orders on to you. Is that going to be a
problem?”

“Oh, no, no problem,
sir
. Jes'
wonderin’…”

“The General will be here to give you your
final mission briefing, sometime in the next few days. In the
meantime, get as used to your new abilities as you can, follow the
training schedule, listen to Warrant Officer Denham, and remember,
you are still the property of the United States of America, even
more than you were before you got the injections. You’re all giddy
and high from this stuff, but you’re not invincible, any more than
Edens are.”

“Hah, I could take any five Edens,” boasted
Holden.

“That’s what we designed the nanites for. But
that also means you’re going to be sent on formerly impossible
missions and you’ll be up against high odds.”

“Nothin’ to it, sir!” Miller chirped.

Captain Tyler looked sideways at Skull, who
took the cue. “That’s enough already, get it on like the Captain
said.” He traded looks with Huff, then walked over and began to don
the gear.

Tyler stalked out.

Skull spoke to Huff in a low voice. “Funny
how we’re getting orders from the lab’s Chief of Security.”

“Yeah. Maybe that weasel is off the
reservation, I’m thinkin’.”

Skull shook his head. “Not yet he’s not, but
I think he just tipped his hand. Daddy doesn’t know everything
that’s going on, and Junior there resents his subordinate position.
If the President isn’t fully in charge, and General Tyler isn’t
fully in charge, then…politics abhors a vacuum.”