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  Visit IsaacHooke.com for more information.

  OPERATION:

  BUG SPRAY

  ARGONAUTS

  BOOK NINE

  Isaac Hooke

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, names, organizations, places, events and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © Isaac Hooke 2018

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be copied, reproduced in any format, by any means, electronic or otherwise, without prior consent from the copyright owner and publisher of this book.

  www.IsaacHooke.com

  Cover design by Isaac Hooke

  Cover image by Shookooboo

  Special thanks to the following Beta Readers who helped out with this book:

  Nicole P.

  Gary F.

  Sandy G.

  Lance W.

  Amy B.

  Myles C.

  Lisa A. G.

  Gregg C.

  Jeff K.

  Mark C.

  Mark P.

  Jeremy G.

  Doug B.

  Jenny O.

  Gene A.

  Larry J.

  Allen M.

  Norman H.

  Robine

  Eric

  table of contents

  one

  two

  three

  four

  five

  six

  seven

  eight

  nine

  ten

  eleven

  twelve

  thirteen

  fourteen

  fifteen

  sixteen

  seventeen

  eighteen

  nineteen

  twenty

  twenty-one

  twenty-two

  twenty-three

  twenty-four

  twenty-five

  twenty-six

  twenty-seven

  twenty-eight

  twenty-nine

  postscript

  about the author

  acknowledgments

  one

  Rade crouched in the shadows of the alleyway.

  “Hey Surus my girl,” Bender’s voice came over the comm. “What are you doing for supper tonight?”

  “Not now, Bender,” Rade said.

  Rade moved out of the alleyway at a crouch and into the dark streets of Gala, capital city of Ceres V. Buildings whose exterior surfaces were ornamented with sweeping curlicues of baroque design sprawled outward around him.

  Ceres V was one of the first human colonies ever. According to the archives, it was founded by the Rayleigh Corporation, which advertised the planet to the poor citizens of Earth over three hundred years ago, promising an escape. “Start over on Ceres V” was one of their slogans.

  People from every nationality and country had arrived. At first the settlers had tried for a melting pot approach, but as more and more landed, the people organized into tribes by ethnicity and claimed different continents for themselves. As such, the population distribution and geopolitics were similar to Earth’s. Settlers originally from the United Systems claimed one continent, the Russians held a second, the Sino-Koreans a third, the Asiatic Alliance a fourth, and the Persians the fifth and final land mass. With continued migration, not to mention accelerated breeding programs over the past three hundred years, the population had swollen to well over three billion people.

  Gala was on the Russian side. It didn’t have a Russian name however, because the city was dominated by Franco-Italians. The French and Italian settlers had been late to the game, and there hadn’t been enough of them to claim a continent for themselves, so they had settled on a few cities in each of the major land masses. This particular district of Gala was renowned for its 18th century-inspired architecture, hence the baroque designs.

  Two combat robots appeared from the shadows. The Centurions named Algorithm and Formaldehyde. Rade tightened his grip on the Phant stun rifle he held as the robots hurried to his side. A laser rifle hung from his opposite shoulder. He was wearing his military-grade jumpsuit and exoskeleton combination, not so much for environmental protection—the atmosphere was breathable—but for the armor and bodily enhancement. The suit connected to the hardpoints that protruded from his joint regions, augmenting his speed and strength. The jumpsuit also helped with obfuscation, as holographic projectors hid his features behind the faceplate, and the specialized jumpsuit fabric shielded his embedded ID, preventing the retrieval of any identifying information. His team was similarly equipped, as were the Centurions: because of those suits, a casual observer would have no idea robots were even inside.

  “No sign of movement at the door,” Manic said over the comm from his position on the rooftop opposite the target.

  “And I got no sign of any bitches at the windows,” Bender said, who was comparably positioned.

  “You mean tangos?” Manic said.

  “No,” Bender said. “I mean bitches, bitch.”

  “At least I shower,” Manic said.

  Bender chuckled. “Could’ve fooled me. Even through your jumpsuit, I can smell your feet from here.”

  “That’s not my feet…” Manic said.

  “Approaching target,” Rade said, preempting further discussion.

  Rade reached the door. The building was similar to most in this quarter: two stories, square shaped. It had taken Surus months of surface sweeps conducted from a low-flying shuttle to determine that the Phant was in this city in the first place, and several more months of classic spy craft to finally track down their target to this particular residence.

  The building abutted against the neighboring structures on either side, effectively creating a solid wall that bordered the street. According to his overhead map, it hid a communal courtyard in back formed by the neighboring buildings around the block.

  Rade placed himself a few meters to the left of the entrance and signaled Algorithm to take up a position on the other side. By situating himself here, admittedly Rade was getting a bit close to the action, and essentially taking on the role of the point man. In the military, as the platoon leader, he had reluctantly ceded that role to others, those dedicated men and women who had risked their lives so he could sit back and watch
from a relatively cozy distance.

  He was no longer in the military.

  Still, he had other reasons to stay back and protect himself. He was a father now. He had a woman who loved him.

  I’m going to be careful. I’m not going to do anything to endanger my life.

  Yeah right.

  He had learned long ago that he lived on the adrenalin rush. Like everyone on his team.

  We live for this.

  “Formaldehyde, place the charges,” Rade said.

  “Roger that,” Formaldehyde said.

  But before the combat robot could move into position, the door exploded outward. A towering humanoid figure emerged.

  “Mech!” Manic yelled over the comm. “Big one!”

  “Titan class, to be exact,” Harlequin said.

  “Told you we should have brought the Hoplites,” Fret said over the comm.

  The large Titan mech swiveled toward Rade and his robot companions.

  Rade suspected the stun rifle wouldn’t work as it only affected smaller mechs, but he fired anyway, hoping to get lucky. No change. The AI core was simply too well-shielded by the Titan’s armor.

  As the electrical currents from the stun dispersed along the metallic skin of the impact area, the steel giant swung a deadly fist toward Rade.

  He fired his jetpack immediately, knowing if that fist connected, the blow would kill him. He altered his trajectory to arc over and behind the monstrosity. Then he cut power so that he landed in the Titan’s passenger seat.

  The mech reached back to haul him from the seat, but then the Argonauts deployed on the surrounding buildings opened fire. Plasma bursts battered the arm of the mech, but the weapons barely caused a dent against the heavy armor.

  Rade was forced to fire his jetpack again to escape that metallic hand and he retreated to a nearby rooftop. Algorithm and Formaldehyde had similarly evacuated.

  The Titan spun toward Rade’s position, the Hellfire missile turrets on its shoulders coming to bear.

  Rade leaped backward and fired reverse thrust on his jets. The Hellfires slammed into the building edge in front of him. He landed on the far side of the rooftop and debris rained down.

  “The question is,” TJ said over the comm, “is this the Phant, or a diversion?”

  “I didn’t see any evidence of Phant possession around the AI core region,” Rade said.

  “But that could just mean the Phant has possessed the pilot instead,” TJ transmitted. “Assuming an Artificial is in the cockpit...”

  “Thoughts, Surus?” Rade asked.

  “I doubt our target would have circumvented the barriers I put in place,” Surus said. “The field is too powerful. I think it would be a good supposition that the mech is AI controlled. A diversion.”

  Surus had approached the building earlier with four combat robots, and together they had lined the base of the exterior walls with strips of metal that emitted Phant-repelling gravimetric fields. Her team had installed two sets per wall so that fields transmitted upward across all four sides of the building: since the adjacent buildings abutted this one, Surus had convinced the neighbors to rent them out to her, giving her access to the bordering walls and allowing her to place the necessary gravimetric devices. She’d also installed one of the devices along a square plane that passed through the entire bottom floor of the building. In theory the Phant, if it attempted to flee into the ground, or out through the building walls, would be prevented from doing so by that field. The only place for their prey to go was up.

  “The target rooftop remains clear,” TJ said from his position.

  “Then the Phant is still inside,” Rade said.

  Loud incoming fire erupted from the roof of the building across the street as Tahoe unleashed his mounted heavy plasma gun at the Titan below.

  “You don’t have time to wait for the Phant to emerge,” Shaw said from where she was overwatching in orbit. “I’ve already detected law enforcement drones incoming. Better get your asses in gear!”

  “If there’s one way to set off a sensor grid and alert law enforcement, it’s releasing a fully armed Titan mech into your neighborhood!” TJ said.

  “Exactly what our prey wanted, no doubt,” Rade said.

  The Titan fired its jumpjets and landed on the rooftop where Tahoe was raining down plasma fire. Lui jetted forward, landing on the Titan’s back. No doubt he was attempting to cut the jumpjet fuel lines. Tahoe meanwhile rushed it from the front.

  “We got this!” Tahoe said.

  Taking out a Titan in mere jumpsuits was no easy task, Rade knew, but he had to trust his friends. He turned toward the target building. There were three intermediary rooftops between himself and the target. He activated his jetpack and arced over them.

  During the jump Rade heard loud rotors overhead. Glancing up, he saw a shuttle accompanied by armed drones. That shuttle would be full of combat robots waiting to be deployed.

  “That was quick,” Rade said.

  “Their response was unexpectedly rapid,” Surus agreed.

  “I told you law enforcement was incoming…” Shaw said over the comm.

  Rade landed on the target rooftop and hurried across, heading toward a door on the far side.

  “Next time give me an ETA!” Rade said.

  “I thought get your ass in gear was ETA enough!” Shaw replied.

  Two drones fell as the Argonauts on the adjacent rooftops shot them down. At the same time a figure in a jumpsuit rocketed skyward from another building and latched onto the underside of the shuttle. Surus. Rade was expecting the alien to flow inside the fuselage in her natural form and take over the bird, but instead she tossed a frag grenade into one of the rotors and then let go. Meanwhile the shuttle careened southward, plunging over the rooftops as it fell toward the adjacent streets.

  One of the remaining armed drones swerved toward his rooftop to attack.

  “Rade…” Shaw said over the comm.

  He was halfway to the door.

  Not going to make it...

  Rade ducked for cover behind a large potted plant. He leaned past with his laser rifle, but before he could fire the drone dropped from the sky.

  “Bye, bitch!” Bender said.

  Rade scrambled to his feet, switched to the stun rifle, and finally crossed to the door. He crouched to the left of it.

  “I have several more police mechs converging on your area,” Shaw said over the comm. “ETA two minutes. The extract window is going to be tight.”

  “I’ll make it quick.” Rade kicked out the lock on the rooftop door and bashed it open. He immediately ducked, aiming his rifle into the dim confines. The staircase beyond proved empty.

  He hurried down the steps.

  As he reached the bottom a figure blurred into view. Before Rade could react, something knocked away his rifle, grabbed him, and hoisted him into the air. He spotted the featureless face of his opponent: it was a combat robot of some kind.

  The robot smashed him down toward its raised knee.

  Not going to break my back today, a-hole.

  Rade fired his jetpack and swerved aside just in time, and the robot ended up smashing Rade into the floor instead of its leg. A jolt of pain ran through his hip.

  He kicked his leg outward in a front sweep and the enhanced strength of the suit allowed him to knock the robot down. Before it could recover Rade retrieved the blaster from his belt and fired it into the AI core region at point blank range. There were no droplets of condensation indicating Phant possession, Rade noted.

  He holstered the blaster and retrieved his stun rifle. His tibia region throbbed in pain where his leg had made contact with the robot during the front sweep. Not even a jumpsuit could cushion a blow like that. But he’d live.

  He paused to survey his surroundings. He was in a tight upstairs hallway. One sealed door on the left, another on the right. At the far end, a wide hole in the floorboards indicated stairs doubling back, leading down to the first floor.

  He kicke
d in the first door and dropped to one knee. He scanned the room, and then pied both sides of the doorway with his rifle. An empty bedroom. He tossed a grenade toward the closet, and when it detonated, the doors blew off their hinges. Clothes scattered about the floor.

  “First upper bedroom, clear,” Rade said over the comm. He glanced at his map and saw that Algorithm and Formaldehyde had reached the rooftop, and were hurrying toward the doorway to join him. He also saw the red dots of the incoming law enforcement mechs.

  No time to wait for my robots.

  He approached the second door, but before he opened it, he heard a voice apparently addressing him from beyond.

  “I’m going to hunt you all down,” a deep male baritone said. The accent was Sino-Korean. “I’m going to kill your family, one by one. The Argonauts. Your wife. Your two sweet children.”

  Rade growled and kicked down the door.

  He saw a man seated on the far side of the bed, his back toward Rade. An Artificial or not? The collar of his shirt was raised, hiding his neck and potentially the droplets of condensation marking Phant possession.

  Rade fired the stun weapon. The man collapsed, proving that he, or rather it, was indeed an Artificial, as the weapon had no effect on human beings.

  Rade raced around to the far side of the bed. The Artificial lay prostrate on its belly.

  The Artificial began laughing. “The master is not inside me.”

  Rade carefully checked the neck region under the collar. No condensation.

  His sixth sense fired and he turned around. Purple liquid was bubbling forth from the floorboards, flowing from the far wall toward the Artificial. That liquid was the natural state of the alien they hunted, a liquid that could incinerate a man in a jumpsuit by the slightest brush against his boots. However, Rade carried a Phant-repelling emitter in his jumpsuit: the alien couldn’t get close to him. Nor was it trying, at the moment. It clearly intended to possess the Artificial.

  “I don’t think so.” Rade aimed his stun rifle at the Phant…