Waiting here was getting him nowhere fast, so he chose to take the initiative. Moving to run in an arc towards the first group he threw one of the knives Boris had given him as a distraction in the other direction. It’s glint attracted a lot of fire as he took off running. It had felt like a minute before the sound of a bullet whizzed by near him.
At that point, he was nearing the flank of the seven-man group. Charging, he drew his knife with his off hand, firing bursts from the MP5 to keep them more worried about being hit than focused on shooting at him. Three went down in those bursts of his shots. That left four that were an immediate threat. His gun clicked empty so he dropped it to hang on its sling and switched the knife to his right hand.
It was then that he spotted that his opponents had attached bayonets to their guns. He hadn’t taken into account that they may be reacting slower than he expected of trained military, forgetting the fact that they weren’t professionals. They had acted instinctively in the right way, though. This was fast becoming a cluster-fuck experiment, he thought as he drew the silenced Glock with his left hand. He shot one of the attackers in the head as he pulled the gun and then the guards were on top of him.
He parried the first thrust with the Bowie knife, reversed his grip and drove it into the man’s throat on the back swing. He cursed as it hit bone and stuck briefly. He blocked the second fighter with the Glock, the bayonet of his opponent skidding along the slide. Twisting aside from the third one, that man’s bayonet still managed to plunge into his leg. With the rush of pain, he felt something electrify the senses throughout his body.
Dan could feel a type of energy envelope and thread through his body. Whether it came from inside or outside, he couldn’t determine in the rush of combat. He had spoken with Bethany Anne and Gabrielle enough to make a guess that this was Etheric energy working in his system.
He dropped both pistol and knife. With one hand he reached out and snapped the first man’s neck. Then he wrenched the bayonet out of his leg and jerked the man holding the rifle forward. He smashed his fist into the man’s nose driving bone into his brain with a crunch, killing him instantly.
He ducked behind cover and grabbed out one of the syringes that Bethany Anne had insisted he bring. It had her blood with extra nanites. He injected it next to the wound. As he crouched down reloading the MP5, he could see the wound slowly mend itself together, leaving only the slick blood behind on the surface.
That left four out there to neutralize. He felt simultaneously sickened and energized by what he had just done. As he poked his head from cover, rifle fire resumed from his opponents. Bending to pick up his knife and pistol, he turned and charged the remaining guards. En-route he saw a wolf from the corner of his eye.
The firing had stopped as they paused to reload. He grinned. They should have sequenced their fire better. That way one of them could have kept shooting while the others reloaded.
He backhanded the wolf as it neared him and kept running at the men. As he came closer, he fired off two rounds taking out a man with each of his remaining shots and dropped the empty pistol. Turning slightly, he stabbed one man through the sternum with the knife. Finally, he grabbed the last man with his left hand and snapped his neck. He heard the last wolf approaching from behind, so he spun and slapped it violently across the face, forcing a yelp of pain as it tumbled away.
He retrieved his weapons. After reloading, he put the guns away and grabbed the unconscious, but breathing wolf and throwing it over his shoulder. Dan walked back to where he assumed Boris was after he saw one of the tipped trucks being righted.
As Dan and Boris drove off with a truck full of wolves (and one still unconscious human), Dan asked, “So what do you plan on doing with them?”
“Interrogating them for information,” Boris replied. “They have to know something useful. Organization, recruitment methods, base locations, supply routes… something.”
Dan grunted and responded, “I’m gonna call down a couple of extra pods. We’ll dose them with a sedative and take them with us. Looks like you get to see the Australian base, mate.” He said the last with a grin.
“I need to get back to…” Boris’s voice trailed off. He wanted to be near Janna. He should get back to Danislav. There was a conflict in his priorities, confusion in his mind, that he worked to keep hidden from Dan as the truck proceeded down the dirt road to where they had landed a pod.
“You need this info, right? And you need to know they are telling the truth, yes? Then you need Stephen, Akio, Barnabas, or Bethany Anne. They can make sure you get straight dice out of these sorry sacks of shit.”
Boris slowly nodded. Dan was right. It was best that they go about it this way.
CHAPTER SIX
QBS ArchAngel
Bethany Anne was going over reports with Barnabas when ADAM interrupted them.
<< Bethany Anne I regret to inform you TOM and I may have made an inexcusable error>>
What do you mean?
Uh, what my overly analytical accomplice is trying to say is we didn’t thoroughly analyze all the programming in the Boris nanites, and therefore we might have misidentified them.
Guys, okay why are you coming to me with this now. I mean you’ve had them for weeks, right?
<<With everything that has been happening, I put confirming our initial analysis to the lowest priority.>>
Get with Jeffery and arrange for more E.I. units to assist you.
Not everything is on ADAM. I failed to give him details of older esoteric methods that were used by other Kurtherian Clans. The methods were considered antique, not just obsolete. They dated from thousands of years before the split. They are so old that what I knew of them was incomplete.
So you are telling me we now have three possible landings of Kutherians on Earth for me to deal with? Well doesn’t that make us special fucking snowflakes? She paused a second, thinking. Ok, your priorities haven’t changed. So, what upped the relevance and caused you two to figure out what the problem is, and brought it to my attention?
TOM continued, Unfortunately, that isn’t the worst of it. There are programming quirks unique to each of the clans. Things that don’t change, because they are embedded in how we learn to program. This coding is so old I cannot identify it as belonging to any clan. Or from an unknown faction within the clans. But that doesn’t match up with the nanites. They are close to what I would call modern. It is like someone from your history — a Ghengis Khan, say — came to the present day and took nuclear technology back with him. Then he figured out how to modify them. Kurtherians of that era had not yet broken from the philosophy that the Five still have. I cannot predict what may have happened to change that.
TOM stopped for a moment before realizing he hadn’t answered her, But, to answer your question, it is Janna’s condition that made us bring this to your attention.
<<The differences in programming are critical to what happened to Janna after she absorbed nanites from Boris by swallowing them. We gave the analysis much higher priority after the situation involving her was revealed.>>
They are much more aggressive at changing a person to fit their optimum DNA. Not only that, the medical pod cannot flush them from her system without a significant risk. A small but significant percentage of the nanites hook into the body’s vital functions — literally — and siphon energy to reproduce. If she had been brought to me within hours, the Pod Doc still might not have had the capacity to halt or reverse the changes. The process would damage many cells in critical areas because one of the core rules was changed. The nanites will try to change a person whether they have enough energy, or not.