Read Online Cyborg Strike by David VanDyke - Free Book Online

deputy
said as she entered. Her eyes swept across the various workstations
and the operations chiefs who sat at them, concentric semicircles
reminiscent of an old space launch mission center.
    Nguyen nodded, and reached for a microphone
attached to his board. Choosing a communications path known only to
him, he spoke the code words, “Cry havoc.”
    He knew that below him in the secret chamber
of the vault, another door had opened, and his five infiltrators
now raced down a tunnel to find a nondescript van that would convey
them to a point near their target: Central Authority, the hub of
the Committee of Nine, and its most politically powerful piece.
    But as Mao said, all power comes from the
barrel of a gun. Sometimes Nguyen preferred a quote from Dune : “The power to destroy a thing is the power to control
it.” Either way, he was now employing power to seize more
power.
    “Now, Brigadier Alkina, I wish you good
luck.” He stood, nodding to her, and turned to go.
    “Wha –” Alkina clamped down on her objections
in the presence of subordinates, and then stood rooted as Nguyen
shot her a no-nonsense look, and then shut the door behind him.
    A good test of her subordination and
submission , he thought. It’s hard to go back to being number
two when you have a taste of the top job. Her reactions will be
instructive.
    Putting those worries behind him, he raced
down the corridor to the nanocommandos’ preparation hall. Two
hundred faces turned to look at him as he crossed to his own locker
and pulled out his skinsuit. Stripping down, he rapidly dressed in
the same dark mottled armor as the rest. Once he pulled on his HUD
helmet, he was indistinguishable from them on the outside.
    Within the system, though, he took charge
with a little Shakespeare. “Ladies and gentlemen, let this fair
action on foot be brought .” He sent the go code to confirm his
verbal instruction, and followed the stream of camouflage out the
doors and into the underground hangar.
    Within the enormous covered space rested ten
heavy VTOL aircraft, more advanced versions of the old US Osprey
tilt-rotors. In this case the blades spun enclosed within rings set
at each of the four corners, attached to wings that would allow for
fast cruising in airplane mode.
    At twenty-five commandos per, the vehicles
quickly filled, even as the hangar’s ceiling split and rolled back,
opening the chamber to the cool night sky above. Pilots spoke
clipped phrases and soon the first VTOL lifted straight up,
followed one at a time by the others. Nguyen’s was last, and only
half full, providing more maneuverability and less exposure.
    Once they cleared the roof line, the ten
birds shot forward in nap of the earth mode, skimming low over the
hills northwest of greater Sydney. Central Authority’s own complex
rested almost a hundred kilometers away, a bare fifteen-minute
flight.
    As soon as he was able, Nguyen connected his
command HUD with a geostationary satellite hanging in orbit above
Australia. His codes overrode its functions, turning it into his
own personal eye in the sky and communications relay. Within
moments his HUD lit up with detailed information on air and ground
traffic, as well as the encrypted feeds from all of his commandos’
HUDs.
    All of his commandos. He focused its
display on his five dogs of war.
    By ground vehicle it had taken those men
ninety minutes to get in position, perfectly coordinated with his
follow-up assault. Carefully calculating time and distance, he
waited until the correct moment and sent them in.
    Watching as their tiny icons raced across the
hillside above Central Authority, he envisioned their true speed
across the ground, speed that would hopefully startle and
completely overmatch any attempt to thwart them from reaching their
initial goal.
    He knew that they moved as a team toward one
of the emergency exits of the building that housed the vertical
access to the basements and vaults. They would even now be shooting
out