Doom Star: Book 03 - Battle Pod Read Online Free PDF Page B

has?”
    “It’s my job to be paranoid, sir. I suggest you talk to her via vidscreen.”
    “Would the explosive be enough to take out both of us?”
    “No, sir.”
    “Where is the danger then?”
    “She could attack you physically, sir.”
    “I am combat-trained,” Hawthorne said.
    “Begging your pardon, sir, but you’re an older man.”
    “And I am a man and she’s a woman.”
    “If the Madam Director is correct concerning the devious nature of the cyborgs, who knows what other surprises have been modified into her.”
    “Enhancement drugs?” asked Hawthorne.
    “She may also have been trained in special fighting techniques.”
    Hawthorne clasped his hands behind his back and scowled at the clone. For months now, he had awaited the cyborgs’ arrival. He desperately needed shock troops superior to the Highborn. The war in South America went against them in a slow and bitter grind of attrition.
    Hawthorne unclipped his holster and withdrew his sidearm, a Gauss needler that fired heavy steel needles. It had a rubber-coated grip so it wouldn’t slip and felt good in his hand. He checked the gun, flipped the safety so it was ready for immediate fire and shoved it back into the holster.
    “Even an old man can draw a needler,” Hawthorne said.
    “Her reflexes may have been enhanced.”
    “Paranoia is a good attribute in a bodyguard. For the Supreme Commander of Social Unity it can lead to paralysis. I must weigh the risks versus the benefits, play the odds and then strike boldly if that is called for. Deciding what to do with the cyborgs could be the most critical decision of my life. If she’s been tampered with so she’ll attack me, I want to know that. I suspect the only way to learn the truth is to present myself as a target.”
    “If she makes it past your needler and is killing you, sir, do we have permission to gas the chamber?”
    Hawthorne nodded curtly. Then he adjusted his holster and strode for the entrance to the cell.
    ***
    Hawthorne sat across the table from the clone. He shook his head. The clone’s name was Rita Tan. It felt odd, because Rita Tan used the Madam Director’s voice and had many of her mannerisms. What Rita lacked was the Madam Director’s confidence.
    Here was a person who had seen too many horrors up close. She acted like a person who believed the world was under imminent doom, and that no one else understood the nature of the peril. Rita Tan blinked much too rapidly. Her head jerked at the oddest moments and she had the annoying habit of smiling too much as if she feared Hawthorne would attack unless she pacified him. Rita Tan put her elbows on the table and leaned forward too far. Her facial skin was stretched and she spoke in a hushed tone.
    “He showed me the assembly line, the process.” Rita shuddered. “It removed the skin and incinerated it. The stench was horrible. The saws, the artificial attachments—it removed the brain and put it in a sheathed braincase, and connected a new spinal column.”
    “Why did this….”
    “Toll Seven,” she whispered.
    “Why did Toll Seven show you the assembly line?”
    “They calculate their actions using logic parameters. The trouble is I had no idea of their ideal outcome and what weights they put to each action. I found their speech either incomprehensible or frighteningly naive.”
    “Did Toll Seven or the others give any indication they planned—”
    “I escaped that night,” whispered Rita. “I knew they planned to alter me, to strip away my flesh, my humanity, and implant my brain into a cyborg body. I used sleep enhancers and shot to Earth using full thrust. I had to beat them here. I had to warn my mother. You can stop them, can’t you? You can order their destruction? You have the authority, I hope?”
    Hawthorne gave her a small nod.
    Rita Tan sat back and sagged in her chair. “Then I’m not too late. Please tell me you have the authority to order the pods blasted out of space. I have to