Chương 168: Chapter 166 – The Beast Without

"So that stuff zeroes out charges and enhancements?" asked Carrion. The kicker leaned his hawkish face closer to the row of air-needle injectors in the med clinic at the DOR compound.

"Stick the Beast Cult with it, and all of a sudden, no more magic? Sounds too good to be true."

"If you want, we can try It on you," said Hard Tone. Carrion raised an eyebrow at her.

"Naw, I'm good. Take your word for it, Tone."

"Good," she said.

"Because we don't have enough to waste on convincing your dumb ass. I've got an OPFOR team spinning up a scenario. We're going to drill this thing until our eyes bleed. Especially the infiltration team" She looked at both Carrion and Cole.

"I hope none of your guys are whiners about long days outside a Lewis Field."

"One or two jokesters," said Cole.

"But my team's tough. We did two weeks of aquatic ingress and egress training before Hexighast. No complaints except the mosquitos and the DFAC."

"Well, shit," said Carrion.

"My guys whine enough to go for gold at the whiner Olympics. You know Jason? Every time we're doing training ops he starts crying about blisters."

"What do you do?" asked Cole.

"Call him a pussy and make him do it anyway." Cole snickered.

"That's quality leadership."

"Bet," said Hard Tone.

"But you better kick some sense into him. BC is the toughest target we've cracked. There's a good reason we got approval for three fulls teams on this thing." Cole straightened up.

"What's our timetable?" Hard Tone scratched her face.

"Three weeks minimum to get the off-world training spun up. Six weeks until we're ready to ingress. We're going to need to plan infiltration scenarios, get comfortable with our fireteams, and make sure we can't get this wrong. I want attuned personnel embedded with OPFOR team, as well. That's a lot of moving parts. Even if they don't have enhancements, they'll understand better how to push us." She looked at Cole.

"A little birdie told me you've got an op to run for Moriarty. Does this conflict?"

"Negative," Cole shook his head.

"I'll be taking care of Moriarty's extraction prior. Moriarty will be running a parallel op linking up with a friendly offworld while we're taking on Beast Cult. I'll have my end of that finished before the pre-mission training is starts."

"How much do you trust Moriarty?" asked Hard Tone.

"I trust him to take a sweet deal where he gets the money and the credit while we do the heavy lifting." Carrion snickered.

"Sounds like he's got the kid figured out, Tone."

"Yeah," said Hard Tone.

"He's good. But watch yourself. Just don't get your dumb ass killed on whatever secret squirrely scheme that crackpot cooked up."

"Learned that on Vael," said Cole.

"My team's come a long way." This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version. She checked her watch.

"I'll get with you when I'm ready to sync back up. You two headed off post?" Cole glanced out the door.

"Got someone I want to see in the clinic, first."

"You have a teammate in here?"

"Honorary," said Cole. Carrion's eyebrows lifted as he connected the dots.

"Ah. The whiz kid. Airborne, you get some weird-ass jobs."

"Goes with his weird-ass team," said Hard Tone. She slapped Cole on the arm and grinned.

"Chin up. It only gets worse as the risk index goes up. Let's get the fuck out of here." Cole nodded. He followed Hard Tone and Carrion out of the lab, then split and hung left, going deeper into the second floor of the clinic to the always-on Lewis Field area set aside for research and attuned medics. He badged into a separate workshop where his enhancements started to sharpen his senses.

Inside, Norn and Bjorn, for once removed from their dungeon beneath the armory, fussed over a pile of mechanical parts, holding several up to what looked like a metal Jenga tower on four crab legs." No, no, no. I'm telling you, the brushless stepper motors. The 360 servos don't spin fast enough to generate lift. The lift equation is density, surface area, lift coefficient, and velocity." The aperture at the top of the tower looked up." Cole!"

"Hey Elliot," said Cole, closing the door behind him.

"How's life?"" Not s'bad. Alexa made me this body, though it's not as good as Archie, yet. I'm trying to get Norn and Bjorn to help me put rotors on it." He click-clacked over to a small laptop and extended a pair of small insect-like arms to manipulate it." They gave me internet access but won't let me on the internet. Which, I know, common sense to anyone who ever saw a sci-fi movie. Even though I promised Director Bricker that Skynet Elliot would be a fair and benevolent master to mankind."

"Couldn't do a worse job than Wilfordshire," said Cole. The clockwork body's camera swung towards him." Aren't you in the military? Are you allowed to say that about the president?" Cole shrugged. Elliot slid the lid on the laptop closed and jumped down from the table, almost toppling over as he landed on the slick tiles." Any update from Hexighast?"

"Flood waters have stopped rising," said Cole.

"Your dreadnaught alter ego is duking it out with Hextant's remaining forces. The bots in the city are doing what they were originally designed for: protecting people."" Awesome,"said Elliot. He tapped a foot on the floor as his camera spun idly." I kinda wish I could go back, you know? Those LouixCorp guys were weird, but they weren't all bad."

"Some of them might actually be coming here," said Cole.

"They've got some valuable knowledge. We might start sending people to Hexighast to train, as well." Elliot stopped. His camera swung back up to Cole." Is that safe? They think you guys are like angels. What'll happen when they figure out you're just as human as they are?" That would be a problem for the State Department.

"No idea. I'll leave the diplomacy to the diplomats. Is there anything you need?"" Can you make a hobby shop run? I checked online, and Fredericksburg has some parts I need."

"Sure," said Cole.

"Director Bricker gave the okay for you to make more bodies?"" I figured out a way to use a mesh network to control more bodies without them being 'Elliot' bodies. So if the connection gets cut off, it's more like losing a hand or an eye than losing a morally ambiguous sapient computer program."

"Ah," said Cole.

"I guess that makes it alright, then. Text me the list of what you need. In a way that I can understand."

"You got it! Oh, the twins were saying a bunch of stuff came back from Hexighast for you!" Norn (or maybe Bjorn) nodded.

"Yes. Is loot, being processed. Guns, armor. Trinkets. Collected by locals and brought on boat to DOR." The crew would be happy to hear that. They'd had to move quick and leave a lot behind on Hexighast. Howie and Besson made an early exit and by the time the dreadnaught was defeated, none of them had been inclined to sick around to pick up gear. Cole pulled his phone and sent a group text to see if any of the rest of his team was still on post and wanted to check out the loot.

Howie sent him the thumbs up, and surprisingly, so did Nona and Wayland. Nona because, well, Nona, and Wayland because he hadn't even been on Hexighast. He sent a quick message to meet him in the armory and headed down and out of the clinic.