The Natural Selection Retaliation Read online

  The Natural Selection Retaliation

  Cyber Thought Police Book Two

  The Young Adult Dystopia Fantasy

  Copyright © 2018 by Kyle Robertson. All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in retrieval systems, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recorded or otherwise without written permission from the publisher.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown, living or dead to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

  Published by PIMI eBooks

  www.pimiebooks.com

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  Dedicated to Latasha R.

  The story so far

  After technology evolver to an independent intelligence level, the program, Circumscriber, attempted the pragmatic deletion of the entire Human Race. It almost completed its task of causing a complete evolutionary level event. Instead of total annihilation, there were a fraction of survivors.

  Those survivors vowed to keep humanity’s flame by rebellion. They had to fight murderous automatons and worse. They also had to combat an insidious cybernetic unit they nicknamed a ‘borgey’. They had an electromagnetic pulse weapon they called a Magrupt. It turned off anything primarily electric powered.

  Their rebellion was moving until one squad came up against a cybernetic unit in Australia. She was a cyborg, but not a borgey.

  Her name was Alikira Nguen and she was an Aboriginal woman who just escaped from a complete programming to delete herself entirely. She returned with the squad to assist the others, but looking like a borgey didn’t help them trust her. She needed to go something extraordinary to gain trust.

  She was able to hack Circumscriber to gain their trust. The main problem with the hack was the Program located their whereabouts.

  There was another radical faction of crazy humans who worshipped the Program and vowed to expose them.

  After certain tactical measures, the faction was defeated. Unbeknownst to our team, Circumscriber sent a giant mechanized monster to destroy everyone.

  After a devastating cost of losing Cole, their squad commander, the monster was halted. Since Circumscriber knew of their location, they had to keep moving to keep humanity alive.

  If you missed book one:

  Cyber Thought Police Book One

  Contents

  Chapter One: Retrieving the Stragglers

  Chapter Two: Rhyme of the Metalically Brilliant Mariner

  Chapter Three: The Refueling Terror Debacle

  Chapter Four: The Next Revelation Leg

  Chapter Five: The Manhattan Project

  Chapter Six: The Canuk

  Chapter Seven: Extensive Planning can Produce Extraordinary Results

  Chapter Eight: The Differentia Engagement

  Chapter Nine: The Somber Epilogue

  The Finishing Lube-job Final Touches

  About the Author

  Chapter One: Retrieving the Stragglers

  Carlos was flying back to their new naval base location. This was the last trip from Sheng Leung prison with the rest of the radical group of broken-legged humans. Their borgey defense was relentless on the infiltrators.

  The fortunate factor was their leader was killed by the kaiju, so the animosity died with him. They also lost Cole, their squad commander in the attack. War is never glamorous.

  Gaia walked to Carlos and sat in the co-pilot’s seat.

  “What are they eating at the base?”

  “They’re all on a seafood diet,” Carlos said, They miss that pulled pork dish you made.”

  “You’re talking about my Nuong Chuot dish,” she said. “Did you like it?”

  “Loved it,” he said. “I just don’t know where you found any domestic pigs or wild boars.”

  “That wasn’t boar,” she said. “Nuong Chuot is Vietnamese for a grilled rat.”

  Carlos looked at her in amazement.

  “You fed us rats?!”

  “You said you loved it,” she retorted. “It’s a Vietnamese cuisine and finding rats in prison is so much easier than finding any pig.”

  “You coulda just told us we were eating rat.”

  “Nuong Chuot is a Vietnamese delicacy,” she said. “You make it sound better when you say it that way. Chupa mis bolas sounds like a Spanish villa resort, but we both know what it really means.”

  “Gaia!” Carlos was amazed. “How do you know vulgar Spanish?!”

  “I once had a Latino boyfriend. I don’t know Espanol fluently, but I heard that phrase almost every day.”

  “Well, did you?”

  “You’re missing my point, Don Juan,” she said. “I was comparing our foreign language words sounding interesting and none of your business.”

  Carlos knew she wouldn’t kiss and tell, but he went for it anyway.

  “How did the Broken-Legged Brigade deal with eating rodents?”

  “They don’t eat meat. They depleted my garden. They’re all vegetarian like Cole was.” The memory of their great squad commander inadvertently hit her across the face with a sucker punch. She began to tear.

  Carlos saw her despondent memory assault her and wanted to ease her tearing sadness.

  “We all loved him, Gaia. He wouldn’t have wanted you to cry over him. He made you stronger than that. Remember him with reverence, not tears.”

  “I know he groomed us for this new world, but I can’t help it. Crying isn’t a weakness. Crying is a very important part of making us still human. The Program will show no remorse for destroying Cole even if it knew it accomplished that heinous act. Without any emotion, remorse, or guilt in its design, our memory of him is all we have left.”

  Carlos understood and felt for his friend. He let Gaia cope in her own way.

  “I have to swing out to land on runway 251. It’s an east, west runway.” He told her to get off the subject. He went farther away from that poignant topic by asking a very left field question. “What’s with you and Chip? I saw that arm grab which wasn’t just acknowledgment of his feats.”

  “Chip is a very accomplished transiton. He shut down that kaiju before you were swatted out of the sky and I admired him for that,” she tried to cover her affection.

  “Does that work on your girlfriends, because I’m not buying that weak sauce. You like a transiton. Isn’t that a young woman’s violation?”

  “Shut up, Carlos. He saved your butt. I just like his smarts.”

  “So, what you’re saying is you’re fine with hearing Chupa mis bolas from him?” He began to grin.

  She punched him in the shoulder.

  “Just land the plane, Fly Boy.”

  

  Linda was working on the hydroponics pump watering the plant nursery at Yamamoto Naval Base. She used to place things in chaotic disarray with her bombs. Now, she was delicately keeping their food source alive.

  “I don’t do this, Gaia does. Cole used us for our strengths, not our unfamiliarities.” Then Cole’s death hit her.

  Dammit, Cole. You not being here hurts to no end. You were the smart savvy one. You stopped Steve from blanking Alikira. I miss you so much, she thought as she tightened the irrigation pipe.

  Kayleigh came into the nursery.

  “You don’t have to work in the mud anymore. Carlos and Gaia are just landing with the last of those people. Gaia can do this. Help Chip res
et their legs.”

  Linda had this sick little pleasure of rebreaking their legs to splint them better. It did help them, but she enjoyed administering the initial pain.

  She got up to wipe off her hands.

  “I don’t know how she does this messy job. I work with Symtex, Nitro, and other caustic chemicals. If I get any of those chemicals on my hands and they mix with other volatile substances, we can kiss this base goodbye.”

  “Your meticulousness must eat at you when you do ‘dirty work’,” Kayleigh said. “All I know is this is not your thing, it’s Gaia’s.”

  “I’m not discounting Gaia,” Linda said. “She feeds us with whatever is edible and it always tastes good. I just won’t volunteer for this anymore and she won’t make bombs.”

  “If she made bombs, the shrapnel would smell like potpourri,” Kayleigh said.

  Linda grinned.

  

  Carlos and Gaia got off the plane to see Steve and Marc siphoning fuel from the J.S. Kodai. It seemed like it was the fullest other than their lead aircraft carrier, the J.S. Yamato. It took a while to transfer that much fuel. If they kept their trucks, they all would be filled for 3 months.

  “We have the last of ‘em, guys! Just don’t hurt them when you haul them to the infirmary!” Carlos yelled at the two.

  “Time to get your workout in for the day,” Marc told Steve. “As if siphoning wasn’t tough enough, we have to haul the Crazies.”

  “The real ‘Crazies’ died with forty of your friends and Cole. These people are victims just like we are. Have some respect for all humans. We don’t need a crass attitude from you when we’re circling the drain right now.” Steve was a brute, but he became an influential brute when Cole died. “Time to pick ‘em up and put ‘em down.”

  As they went into the cargo hold, Linda came to Gaia.

  “The hydroponics in the plant nursery is all yours. I’m tired of ‘mudding’.”

  “I told you how to care for the plants before I left. It wasn’t hard, was it?”

  “You said nothing about fixing ruptured pipes in the mud. That wasn’t gardening, that was plumbing.”

  “You make intricate devastating bombs built to destroy anything. Changing a pipe in the mud couldn’t have confused you at all.”

  “No, it doesn’t. What confuses me is why you actually ‘like’ to do those sloppy, dirty tasks,” Linda said.

  “Because you can’t make pizza without dough ingredients,” she said. “Farming ain’t a pretty job. You just like the food without taking into account all the work that goes into making that food. I’m finished feeding the injured in the prison. I can take it from here. Go blow some stuff up.”

  Linda thought Gaia was the quiet one. After Cole died, she changed. She knew this new life wasn’t ideal. They had to battle their own with bringing Alikira into the fold and then they had to really battle insidiously radical zealots bent on everyone’s destruction, including themselves. Then that kaiju thing wiped out those zealot’s leader, his inner circle, 40 Neo-Khaos soldiers, and Cole. This wasn’t a very good year.

  At least I have the pleasure of rebreaking some zealot's legs, she thought as she went to the infirmary to meet Chip.

  

  Alikira was leaning on the rail on the deck on the Yamato. She was watching everyone working with Sledge by her side.

  “Y’know, they wouldn’t mind your megaton loading talents. You could carry those generators closer to the ships so they wouldn’t have to relay the fuel so far away,” Sledge said.

  “They don’t need me,” she said. “I was the cause of forty of their friends and Cole dying. Why would they want any help from the “Death Bringer”?” She put up air quotes.

  “You didn’t bring any death, Alikira.”

  “Di,” she said. “My name is Di from now on.”

  Sledge rephrased. “You didn’t bring any death, Di. That was all the Program.”

  “It wouldn’t have been there if I didn’t call it. I brought it and it did its job.”

  “You didn’t call it. It found you. With a dastardly method, I might add. You didn’t know because you weren’t supposed to know until it was too late,” he said. “I know it’s devastating thinking you caused their deaths. You were just the unsuspecting tool it used to execute their murders. You didn’t do it because you had no idea. This may sound a little harsh, but you ain’t that important, kid.”

  Sledge had a strange way of setting her straight.

  “We buried the rest in the field a few kilometers away. I think Cole needs a burial at sea,” he said.

  “A squad commander's burial,” she whispered.

  “I think it’s a tradition we need to keep,” he said while massaging the tension from her shoulders. “You ready to lift some generators?”

  “Are they?” she asked.

  “I think so. They need your help and don’t think you did anything bad. That depreciation is fully self-induced.”

  She took a deep breath, stood, and went down the ramp to help.

  “Where were you?” Jak asked. “I don’t even think Steve can move these boulders.”

  “I was up there with Sledge being stupid,” she said. “I’ll have them closer to the battleships in no time.”

  Sledge saw her pick up a large generator and thought, Cole woulda liked your moxie, Di.

  

  “Okay, this will hurt for just a minute, but If I just let you heal this way, your new stride will be permanently lop-sided.” He counted to 3 and rebroke his leg.

  “AHHHHHHHHHHH! GET BENT! WE DIDN’T WANT YOU DEAD!” The other crew member cursed Chip.

  “I know,” Chip said. “Why do you think I’m helping you instead of leaving you in the grass to die in pain outside of the prison?”

  Linda walked in as Chip spoke.

  “Your bedside manner sucks, Transiton. Don’t get frustrated. Just shut up and break away.”

  “I don’t take pleasure in rebreaking legs, Linda. That’s your sick fetish.”

  Linda went over to one of their attackers to put her awkwardly shaped leg in a rigid traction machine.

  “This isn’t a fetish.” She pulled the machine to rebreak the leg. The woman screamed in bloodcurdling pain. “This is a public service.”

  Chip just shook his head.

  “Now I see why you smile when you obliterate things with your ‘special’ toys. Did anyone ever tell you-you're a gruesome lady?”

  “My boyfriends didn’t think I was gruesome.”

  “Was this before or after the extinction attempt, because if he could see you now, I’d think they'd be too scared to date ‘Boom Boom’.”

  Linda took the woman’s other leg and put it in the machine.

  “Cole called me that. I miss him. Thanks so much for bringing that up.”

  She pulled the machine to rebreak the leg with a bit of aggression. The woman screamed.

  “STOP REMINDING HER! PLEASE!”

  Chip saw her anger.

  “They’re doing his sea burial ceremony tomorrow. Are you okay to attend?”

  “Wouldn’t miss it, Chip. Cole deserves all of our respect. I’d be a bratty selfish idiot if I didn’t attend.”

  They kept working to fix those zealots. Then Linda realized they weren’t really religious lunatics. They were just frightened people manipulated by a shady con man. They just followed out of fear and naivety. She almost felt bad about administering their pain for her pleasure… almost.

  

  Sledge checked the fuel in the aircraft carrier. They were doing Cole’s burial at sea tomorrow and he didn’t want to become adrift while honoring his friend. He checked the gauge and saw it was bone dry. They also needed the carrier for possible escape. He went to the dock to inform Steve of their dilemma.

  As Steve and Marc were working on another battleship, Sledge interrupted them.

  “Hey Steve, Marc. I need you to fuel the Yamato. We'll need it tomorrow.”

  “I t
old you we didn’t have to go with the carrier first,” Marc told Steve.

  “You already siphoned the Yamato? Who told you to do that?!” Sledge became frustrated.

  “You told me to get some fuel. I thought we’d go for the fullest first.” Steve said. “The generators are running the heat and lights and Carlos flew back to the prison multiple times because of that.”

  “I thought you were a tactics genius. You ALWAYS keep your flagship ready to deploy at any moment! How can we mobilize for anything, even escape when the tanks are reading empty?! Top it off and don’t touch it anymore!” Sledge turned and walked into the building.

  “That wild hair is back up his you know where again,” Steve said.

  “Yeah,” Marc said. “Cole kept it outa there for a while.”

  Steve understood everyone took Cole’s death differently. Cole changed everyone.

  “We put all the excess fuel in barrels. Start refilling the Yamato with those and I’ll siphon the rest from the Shinma. That’s the rest of our day, buddy.” Steve took the siphon to the next battleship.

  Sledge walked to his office to pace and vent. He had to stay strong. His people couldn’t see him falter. He knew Cole’s sudden death was a shock to everyone, especially his core squad. He had to show strength to keep them sane. The hard aspect of portraying strength in the center of monstrous despair was making him insane.

  There was a knock on the door.

  “WHAT?!”

  Linda opened it.

  “I just wanted to tell you everyone is ready for tomorrow,” she said and saw his uneasiness with his erratic breathing. “You okay, Sledge?”

  “I’m fine, Linda. I just have to be the rock of this camp. Otherwise… you’ll all lose it.” He finally broke down.

  Linda went to his broken essence and hugged him.

  “Hey, we like you being the rock, but we understand even the hardest rocks can chip. Cole’s sudden death was your diamond cutter.” She patted his back. “You lasted way longer than the rest of us. Even Hardcore Steve cried yesterday.”