Weir Codex 1: The Cestus Concern (19 page)

Straining his enhanced senses, Mal lingered in his hiding spot, trying to pick up the men’s conversation.

“What in blazes are you men doing here and what is that thing?” demanded the army lieutenant, keeping a wide distance from Pyroclast. The cyborg was giving off enough heat from his radioactive core to have everyone in the area sweating profusely.

There wasn’t a dry armpit in the house.

Jason May stepped forward and flashed a badge he’d pulled from one of the many pouches around his waist.

“Agent May, Project: Hardwired,” said the technician in his most authoritative voice. “We’re here on orders of the Dee-Oh-Dee, pursuing the terrorist cell responsible for the attack in Los Angeles yesterday.”

The head of Project: Hardwired’s weapons division passed the lieutenant, a red-faced man with a bowl-cut in his mid-thirties by the name of Hughes, a print-out containing a blown-up photograph of Mal.

“This man, ex-United States Army Ranger Malcolm Weir, made his way on to Fort Irwin early this afternoon to kill his former commanding officer. Your Colonel Denman,” continued May as Hughes looked over the photo. “We were too late to stop him.”

“Colonel Denman is dead?”

Lieutenant Hughes was stunned but was still able to offer the assistance of his men of his detachment.

“We’ve got the terrorist pinned down in that training area,” started May.

“Keep your men out of my way, Lieutenant Hughes,” interrupted Pyroclast’s hissing, inhuman voice before turning to the GMRs under his command. “Gamma-One, have your squad secure the perimeter around the village. Lock down all exits and wait for further orders. Designate Cestus is mine.”

The unstable cyborg headed for the entrance to Medina Wasl, venting hot vapor from his pipes and powering up his rail-gun for another barrage.

“’Clast,” the Project: Hardwired weapons tech yelled after the radioactive killer, causing him to pause. “Remember, Doctor Ryan’s team needs Cestus intact. He’s got all of their data stored in his head, so they need it unmelted. Got it?”

“Did command say Designate Cestus needed to be delivered to Ryan alive?” countered the radioactive cyborg, causing the asphalt to melt under each slow step he took towards the training area Mal had fled to.

“No, sir,” responded Pyroclast’s handler, grinning.

From his vantage point, Mal grimaced at what he inferred from the conversation: the bad guys needed the computer they stuck into his head in one piece, but the rest of him was fair game for the creepy flaming cyborg to burn to cinders.

Excellent, he thought sarcastically. At least Mal didn’t have to worry about Pyroclast incinerating the entire area and him with it. With his orders in place, the maniac would have to fight Mal on a more personal level—and hand-to-hand is something he had always been very good at.

“Let him come,” said Mal, diving for the cover of the shadows deeper into the counterfeit village as a concentrated burst of superheated plasma turned its wall into a pile of kindling.

Mal didn’t have to wait long.

Twin gouts of flame belched through the razed gates and were followed closely by the slow moving figure of their creator. Stalking inside, Mal’s foe twisted his body in a wide arc, coating everything in radioactive flame, turning everything it touched into an uncontrolled conflagration.

“Come out, Mr. Weir,” blustered Pyroclast. “I’ll burn this place to the ground and you with it!”

Leaping out from behind his cover to avoid a ten-foot section of wall liquefying into glowing orange magma, Mal began to regret his decision to hide in an enclosed area with the madman. Realizing his best chance at survival was to pit his speed and agility against the slower, more powerful cyborg, Mal closed the distance between them, angling himself in what he hoped was Pyroclast’s blind spot.

Faster than a thing his size should have been able to move, Pyroclast met the attack with the searing hot barrels of his main weapon, the rusted-looking surface of it sizzling and popping everywhere it touched Mal’s bare skin.

“I may be an older model, but I’ve got the same sensor suite you do,” laughed the harsh, raspy voice of Mal’s horrendously disfigured assailant, following up with a pulverizing blow from his scarred left fist.

The jolt of Pyroclast’s rock hard fist pounding into Mal’s side sent him sliding across the uneven, rocky ground of the training compound, the hero losing an outer layer of skin in the process. The hiss of steam venting from the series of pipes climbing Pyroclast’s spine was all the warning Mal had before another shaft of plasma surged towards him, causing the ex-Ranger to twist out of the way, groaning as his back and neck were charred.

Staggering to his feet, Mal blocked a clubbing overhead blow from Pyroclast that nearly knocked him back down. He should have been fast enough to take his opponent out, but the heat and radiation were too much for him. Just standing within arm’s reach of the bastard was killing him.

Mal wondered how much longer he could hold out.

Much to his chagrin, Mal’s internal diagnostics answered him: while his cybernetic implants and the nanites they contained would continue to operate at near-peak efficiency for another five minutes, the organic portions of his body would begin to fail in less than sixty-seconds of exposure to the extreme radiation seeping out of his attacker. Failure to evacuate the area would result in permanent damage and death.

Luckily, with the way Pyroclast was beating the living daylights out of him, Mal was pretty sure he wouldn’t last another minute. The super-solider was a goner if he didn’t think of something fast.

“Give me a run down on Designate Pyroclast.” Mal ordered his cybernetic brain to scan the data encrypted in it, hoping he could get the thing to find what he was looking for.

“Accessing,” it replied and was silent for a moment.

The information torrid that came an instant later was almost enough knock Mal off-balance.

Detailed plans, blueprints and specifications scrolled through Mal’s brain—most of which went right over his head, but enough sunk in for the germ of a plan to begin forming. Mal confirmed the scheme with his computer before stopping in his tracks and turning to face his fiery foe, arms nearly doubling in size and hands reforming into a ten pack of knives that would have made the people at Ginsu green with envy.

Mal charged his enemy, leaping over one searing plasma burst and deflecting another off his heavily-armored forearm so he could close the distance between them.

The last few feet Mal covered in a leap, hammering into Pyroclast’s deformed jaw with a raised knee that staggered the beast. He followed up with a series of battering blows from his fists and an elbow strike as he looked for a way to finish things off.

Outclassed by the larger cyborg in terms of size, strength and power, Mal had to rely on his own augmented speed and the lethal power of his own implants to avoid being crushed by a vicious counter-attack from Pyroclast’s flame-covered fist.

The peppering of blows across his body and face drove the scarred half-man into a psychotic rage, finally giving Mal the opening he needed. Pyroclast put every iota of his godlike strength into a haymaker, launching it with abandon in an attempt to utterly destroy the gnat that had been badgering him, an attempt that left the cyborg over-extended, off-balance and vulnerable. Mal ducked under the attack and propelled himself up under the crazed cyborg’s defenses, slashing out with the elongated blades of his fingers to cut deeply into its blackened, grotesque flesh down to the plates of carbon-fiber reinforced nickel that making up its chest.

Latching onto the covering to the dense plasma focus machine melded into Pyroclast’s chest, Mal planted his feet and strained with all his might. Realizing what the smaller man was attempting to do, Pyroclast clamped the mangled, disfigured fingers of his right hand around Mal’s neck in attempt to dislodge him.

Too late.

Ignoring the pain from the giant’s hand wrapped around his throat and fighting back unconsciousness, Mal planted his legs beneath him and hauled back, ripping free the covers to the generator at Pyroclast’s core, along with half of the cyborg’s chest. Both men were showered in muscle and meat and whatever cruel liquid now accounted for Pyroclast’s lifeblood, and raw nuclear power blazed forth, scorching everything it touched with the unrestrained power of a sun.

The effect on Mal was almost instantaneous as the flesh of Mal’s exposed torso and face began to burn and blister at the inferno of Pyroclast’s torn open chest. A white hot light, unbearable to look upon, shone from where the insane cyborg’s heart should have been.

Teeth clenched together with enough force to shatter stone, Mal knew what he had to do.

Pyroclast let loose with an inhuman howl of pain and rage as Mal plunged both hands into the nuclear furnace housed in between the carbon-fiber ribcage that held it in place. A second scream joined in, surprising Mal as he realized it was his own.

He could feel the radiation leaching his life away one heartbeat at a time. Mal prayed he had the strength to finish the job.

The radioactive cyborg began to beat down at Mal’s head and shoulders, to no avail. Hair and clothing and skin bursting into flames from the furnace, Mal pushed one final time, his arms tearing through Pyroclast’s back and rupturing the dense plasma core that powered him.

Mal’s living metal arms glowed white as he jerked them free from the spasming Pyroclast. He was forced to duck out of the way as a fountain of deuterium oxide coolant erupted from the dying man’s chest.

Both cybernetic men dropped to their knees and Mal watched as his enemy fell bonelessly to the ground in death, sighing in relief.

The relief was short-lived.

“The ruptured core of Designate Pyroclast will reach critical mass in twenty-nine point nine seconds. Immediate withdrawal from the area is advised.”

“For Pete’s sake!”

Leaping to his feet, Mal forced every ounce of energy he could into the muscles of his legs and ran full speed across the flame-enshrouded grounds of the fake village he’d been trapped in. The eighteen-foot high outer wall offering little obstacle, Mal’s legs cleared the structure in a superhuman vault that surprised the pair of Gamma-Unit GMRs assigned to guard the area’s perimeter. The cyborg slammed into them, knocking the government drones to the ground, and tumbling back to his feet in a run before the GMRs knew what hit them.

All the while, the computer counted down, each second seeming to come faster than the last. Before the final instant ticked away, the computer droned, “Initiating EMP counter-measures.” With that, a strange electrical surge ran down the length of Mal’s spine, along his nanotech arms, and out to the tips of his fingers.

The man renamed Cestus by the government didn’t have time to wonder what precisely his systems were doing, or if they’d work, as the forward concussion wave from Pyroclast’s detonation picked up his muscular body and tossed it fifteen feet into the air like a rag doll.

Mal realized he must have blacked out because he found himself lying stretched out on cracked pavement, surrounded by the overturned husks of old tan-colored tanks and armored-personnel carriers. Even his metallic arms hurt. Sitting up, Mal’s chest burned as he was wracked with a fit of coughing that filled his mouth with the coppery taste of blood.

Sore, tired, covered in burns and nothing else, Mal made his way slowly to where Zuz waited for him at the edge of the explosion’s blast radius.

The bald conspiracy-buff was looking daggers at his friend as Mal stumbled slowly over to the car and struggled to force the dented, nearly concave passenger’s side door open. Zuz’s angry eyes continued as the cyborg slumped down into the seat next to him and pulled the tiny level that allowed him to sit back, resting.

“You owe me a radio, Mal,” spat the man as he started the car up and pulled away from the devastation behind them. “A good one.”

Mal lifted the forearm he’d decided to shade his face from the sun with and squinted at Zuz, puzzled.

“Forgive me if I’m a bit dense from the nuclear explosion and all, but what on God’s green Earth are you talking about?”

“You owe me a new radio,” repeated Zuz.

Seeing that Mal needed more of an explanation, he pushed the power button for the device set into the car’s dashboard. Nothing happened.

“I was listening to the news—keeping my ear to the ground for intel—when everything blew up and the radio died. Hence, you owe me a radio,” said Zuz.

Mal was dumbfounded.

“So you’re saying it’s my fault that your radio shorted out from the explosion? And that I have to buy you a new one?”

Zuz nodded enthusiastically.

Grinding the warm metal of his palm into his right eye socket, Mal sighed.

“Please, Zuz, for both our sake’s, shut up and drive,” said Mal, stretching out as much as he could in the tiny car and closing his eyes. “We need to find Kristin.”

“Sure thing,” responded Zuz who remained silent for almost thirty full seconds before speaking up once more. “Hey, Mal…”

The sound of his friend’s voice grated along the ends of every nerve in the cyborg’s exhausted body.

“What…Is…It…Zuz?” asked Mal, exasperated. As if on cue, the computerized portion of his brain began listing the nearly one hundred ways the driver could be killed from Mal’s current seated position.

“Why aren’t you wearing any pants?”

CHAPTER 15

There was very little in life Gordon Kiesling hated more than having to report to his so-called superiors. Sure, some of them were nice enough, and a few were downright pleasant in some circumstances, but the idea that he, the head of one of the most powerful black-ops organizations in the world, should have to answer to pencil-pushers from D.C. flat out pissed him off.

There were days Kiesling wished he could just have every politician in the country taken out and shot.

Sitting there in a tiny, windowless waiting room on an incredibly tacky pleather sofa, face-to-face with the man most identified on organization charts as his ‘boss,’ Kiesling was experiencing one of those days.