Knight in Cyber Armor Read online

  Knight in Cyber Armor

  Bard Constantine

  Vigil: Knight in Cyber Armor is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

  This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author/publisher.

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  Copyright © 2018 Bard Constantine

  All rights reserved.

  Cover by Amir Zand

  Other Books in the Havenworld Universe

   Havenworld

   Silent Empire

   The Troubleshooter: Four Shots

   The Troubleshooter: New Haven Blues

   The Troubleshooter: The Most Dangerous Dame

  After the Cataclysm nearly wiped out humanity, the remnants survived in Havens: city-sized constructs built to reboot society and usher in a new age of mankind.

  However, the new age was not the type the architects had envisioned. The same greed and lust for power that existed before the Cataclysm resurfaced and the Havens quickly became quagmires of political and economic conflict that threatened to destroy the future envisioned by the Haven's founders.

  This is the world of Jett Wolfe, a man awakened from a grim past to a darker future. A man without a purpose. But when a masked vigilante dies saving his life, Jett becomes a man with a mission. He takes up the mantle of a cyber knight in a city without hope. When your life is on the line, and there is no one to call, look to the skyline. You just might see a new breed of hero.

  Jett Wolfe is...

  Ⓥ

  Vigil

  Chapter 1

  September 21, 2046

  Jett Wolfe fled from the end of the world.

  The silence was the most unnerving part of it. The sky was fire and the world was whirling motes of dust and ash, but the sound of the world breaking apart wasn't the roaring, sucking, explosive clamor he expected. The noises were muted. Rumbles, like distant thunder. The crinkling, crackling sound of cellophane crumpled in the back of his mind. The skittering of roaches across dry leaves. Even the wind was nearly silent, although the gusts were nearly enough to knock Jett from his perch atop the armored ATV truck.

  The Armordillo made a lot of noise and kicked up a lot of dust. The tank treads guaranteed they weren't bothered by the haphazard trails of wrecked cars and road debris, and the armored plating was thick enough to make even the most daring savage think twice about trying to roll them over. The ACU emblem on the sides probably helped, too. Not too many were stupid enough to take an Aberrant Control Unit on in a firefight, even in the Badlands outside the city.

  Jett was mounted in the suicide seat on top, scanning the dusty surroundings through the scope of his M2 heavy machine gun. Nothing was visible he hadn't seen for the last few hundred miles of the Waste. The road was a busted remnant of an interstate that once was swamped daily with New York commuters. All that remained were husks, vehicle carcasses stripped of anything of value. The Armordillo weaved between the remains, rumbling over broken asphalt with as much speed as the heavy vehicle could handle.

  They were running out of time.

  He glanced backward. The city dwindled in the distance, the towering buildings just dark bones, skeletal fingers pointed at the fiery heavens. He was glad to leave it behind. The place was a tomb, the remaining residents going out with whimpers instead of a collective roar, huddling in the near-empty skyscrapers and apartment buildings, waiting for the end to arrive. The rioting, looting, murder sprees, and general mayhem was terminated by the release of the Peacekeepers. Anyone committing a violent crime was ruthlessly targeted and eliminated by the black-armored synthetic troopers. Once it was clear Haven Core was sealed and armed against any sort of intrusion, even the most hardened protester realized it was over.

  They would die along with the rest of the world.

  Jett's helmet crackled. Beef's voice shouted over the line. "Megastorm coming in fast at nine o'clock!"

  Jett turned that direction. The horizon darkened with a churning mass of nightmarish clouds. The speed of the formation seemed impossible, but he had seen firsthand that impossible no longer applied at the end of days. Megastorms destroyed everything in their path with cyclonic winds that spewed multiple tornadoes and devastating lightning along with winds on par with a category five hurricane. They were death sentences to anyone caught in the open.

  "How much time we got?"

  "Twenty minutes, tops."

  "How long till we get to the kill zone?"

  "We're gonna be cutting it close."

  "We gotta move it, then."

  "Better drop in, Big Top. It's gonna be bumpy."

  Jett took a final look around at the injured landscape. The light diffused, flickering from the smothered sky in depressed colors. Anyone not hunkered down would be torn from the world like a fistful of dandelions hurled from a race car. There was no real reason for him to man the gun anymore. No reason for him to keep looking at death.

  He dropped down the hatch and joined the rest of the Hellrazors. Beef, Jax, Jisei, Bozo, Rosy, and Headshot. Jett figured it was the last time they'd be together. Either by the storm or their suicide mission, they were all dead men walking. But at least they'd go out fighting. Raise hell, die well was their motto. Had to keep trucking, no matter what the odds were.

  Beef drove the Armadillo. His heavy arms flexed with knotted muscle with every twist of the steering wheel. He turned to grin at Jett with big, white teeth.

  "Like a bat outta hell, Big Top."

  Big Top. Like everyone else, Jett had a nickname. He gave the orders, so he got the label.

  He held onto a ceiling latch, lurching when the Armordillo struck an especially deep crevice at top speed. "Literally. Not sure how much time we got left. Every forecast is different, but they all claim it's happening today."

  "The end. They're calling it the Cataclysm." Rosy's eyes were haunted, so old in her young face. Fiery-haired and freckle-blasted, she looked barely old enough to drink. Hardened by being a soldier and survivor, but her edges softened by her youth. She ran with them because there was nowhere else to go. But she looked haggard, run down by the constant grind of survival. Jett couldn't blame her. He kept it together for the sake of the team, but he felt it just as anyone did.

  The hopelessness.

  Still can't believe Haven Control screwed us over like that. We were promised entry in exchange for our service.

  But HC pulled the carpet from under them, replacing them with androids that kept the peace through savage and efficient annihilation. The ACU was disbanded, the collective units left to fend for themselves like everyone else. His team tried to stay together, but between riots, massive gangs, and terrorist attacks, their numbers dwindled from thirty strong to the seven remaining. It wasn't until near the end that Jett understood. They had lost. There was nothing left to fight for. Nothing except survival. And survival took on a whole new meaning when the world was coming to an end.

  The Havens were GeoCorp's solution to preserving humanity, but the number of people selected was limited to individuals who functioned in a capacity deemed necessary to reboot the new society after their hibernation period. The rest of the world was left to fend for themselves against near-certain annihilation by fallout fr
om the Skygate Collapse. The economic divide separated survival prospects, with the rich rushing to build hibernation safe-houses of their own, and the have-nots either facing their mortality or desperately searching for a way to rob the rich of their escape plans.

  Jett and his unit fell into the latter category.

  Raise hell, die well.

  "They can call it what they want, Sonia. We're not going out like that."

  She gave him a wry smirk. "If you say so, Big Top."

  Headshot methodically checked his rifle. He was tall and lean, his skin almost as brown as Jett's. Despite the jarring bumps and heaves of the vehicle, his obsessive focus remained on his task. He spoke offhandedly, his voice lightly accented with a Colombian accent.

  "So how do we know the intel was good on this stasis station, BT?"

  Jett looked him in the eye. "We don't. Data Mack might have been just yanking our chain for kicks. But it's the only good lead we got, so we're going for it."

  "Yeah," Bozo said. "Not like we got anything better to do." He grinned, displaying a glimmering, diamond-coated grill. With the world ending, he indulged in whatever excesses he could steal or purchase. It not only showed in his mouth but his waistline as well. Despite the extra girth, he was a beast with a tactical shotgun, an ace at explosives, and loyal to a fault.

  Jax ran a hand through the bristly buzz cut and laughed. "Whatever happens, we're going out Hellrazor style. That's all that matters."

  "Hells yeah." Bozo and Jax pounded fists in front Jisei, who didn't say a word. She sat in silence, no expression visible behind the ballistic face mask that she never removed on a mission. The rest of her was covered in sleek body armor with attachments that housed nearly every killing weapon known to man.

  "Got a blip on the compound," Beef yelled.

  The Armordillo rounded a collapsed bridge, bringing their destination in view. The compound was an outpost from the Imperial War, another relic abandoned when the greater concern arrived. According to Jett's intel, it was inhabited by a savage gang of Deviants. The outcasts had abandoned society at the end of the Haven lotteries, reverting to the mentality of savage ravagers who robbed, raped, mutilated, and murdered anyone with the bad luck to cross them.

  Jett glanced at the radar scanner on the dashboard. "We have to hit this place hard and fast. If we're outside when that storm hits, it won't matter that we found the place."

  The Armordillo rocked hard from a side impact that struck with a sound like trucks colliding. Jax fell from his seat onto the metal floor. He looked up with a dazed expression.

  "What the hell was that? A rocket?"

  "Who cares? Let's show 'em what the Hellrazors are about!"

  Jett was already on the move. Opening the top hatch, he clambered out into the stinging dust and brutal wind gusts. The trembling rush of adrenaline sped through his veins. Swiveling the machine gun around, he peered down the sights. Several whooping, howling figures were moving in the ruins around the compound, but the nearest one had already reloaded his rocket launcher and had taken aim again.

  Jett squeezed a volley off. The Deviant's head snapped back, haloed by a cloud of misty blood. The rocket fired upward; the body toppled to the broken earth.

  Jett continued to fire in methodical bursts, picking off Deviants from their perches and hiding places. They scrambled like angry fire ants, swarming the compound with a wild assortment of pilfered weapons. They were a dirty, mangy, nearly feral gang; faces painted, teeth filed into points like animals. The stink of unwashed bodies wafted from their vicinity as their wild howls echoed in the air.

  The Armordillo lurched to a stop in front of a barricade obstructing the compound's entrance. Jett ducked behind the flak shield just before a gang of Deviants unloaded from the rooftop position. His heart pounded as the air hummed with rounds; metallic ricochets rang all around him. The air tasted like hot metal. He gritted his teeth, slapping a hand to the com on his helmet.

  "What's everyone doing—sitting pretty while I'm taking all the heat? Let's go, Hellrazors!"

  "Stop your bawling," Bozo said. "We got you, Big Top."

  A streaking rocket followed his statement, scoring a direct hit on the shooters above Jett. He ducked as debris and charred limbs rained down.

  The team exited the Armordillo with precision, moving in tandem to fire at their targets while protecting one another. It was a completely different response than their assailants, whose only strategy seemed to be running, shooting, and dying.

  Headshot darted away, clambering to the top of a derelict bus. Jett waited until the sniper assumed position before signaling the team forward.

  "Go. Get to the door."

  He led the way, running with his rifle in attack position. Deviants were everywhere, target practice for his proficient shooting. Anything above him he didn't worry about. That was where Headshot came in.

  As if to verify the thought, a Deviant tumbled from a broken tower, landing at Jett's feet with a hole in the center of his forehead. Jett took a moment to kneel and reload his rifle. Beef and Jisei assumed the lead position, gunning down the crazed attackers who still ran at them. It didn't seem to matter that their superior numbers were quickly being wiped out. They rushed forward like zombies, as if bullets couldn't harm them. As if they were superhuman.

  They weren't.

  Jett paused to open the eyelid of the dead Deviant. The irises were an unnatural shade of electric blue, a color no one was born with. It only confirmed what he suspected.

  They're all tripped out on nirvanic. No wonder they lost their minds.

  He took rear guard as Bozo, Rosy and Jax jogged past. The firefight grew sporadic as the Deviants finally recognized most of their numbers were already dead. The team had just reached the compound doors when Jax turned around, staring up at the sky with the most terrified expression Jett had ever seen. His mouth worked, but no words escaped.

  Jett turned around.

  The sky broke apart.

  There was no way to describe the horror. A mouth ripped the stratosphere open, and a torrent of liquid fire roiled out like discharged blood. Everything altered and distorted in ripples of heat and blinding light. The sound that followed was an alien toll, like some ancient god falling to the earth with a dying roar.

  Jett felt the impact so intensely his molars vibrated; the breath left his lungs as if his armor was made of paper. The air flashed; forks of lightning spread like electric tentacles, a conflagration followed by furious thunderclaps that made the ground tremble. The phenomenon was a few dozen miles away, but the separation seemed pitiful in the face of its raw power.

  The deadly storm they had been worried about earlier seemed a pale, pitiful thing in comparison. They watched in collective horror as it was simply eaten by the sucking, rippling, gaping wound in the sky like light into a black hole. Debris lifted from the ground, pulled by the inverse gravity of the phenomenon. Sand, rock, broken concrete and asphalt whipped through the air, yanked toward the yawning mouth miles away. Bodies were snatched up as well, screaming Deviants unlucky enough to be caught in the open.

  "Everyone stay low!"

  Jett didn't know if anyone heard his warning or not. The seismic rumbles and dying shrieks of the wounded sky smothered everything. He crouched down, shuffling with his team toward the compound as fast as they could manage. Everything tinted in colors he couldn't even describe, creating psychedelic images of light and writhing shadows.

  "I can't hold on!"

  Jett spun around. Headshot scrambled across a fallen piece of bridge, trying his best to resist the pull of the hole in the sky. He wrapped his arm around a broken pipe, feet leaving the ground and dangling in the air.

  "Headshot!"

  There was nothing they could do except watch in horror when a large piece of concrete struck him with the force of a runaway train. His body went limp, sailing through the air and intermingling with the rest of the flying debris toward the whirling vortex of blazing energy.

  Fire
burst from its maw, blazing comets that streaked across the sky. The missiles exploded in blooms of flame and shattered earth. Plumes of scorching debris rained down with punishing impacts. The scattered Deviants ran like frightened children, clutching handholds in the rubble as they all headed the same direction.

  Toward the compound.

  Jett's eyes widened. "Bozo, we need to get inside right now."

  Bozo had to shout over the chaotic din. "I'm working on it."

  "Work harder!"

  "Okay, everyone stand back." The heavy man edged away from the explosive he had secured to the door."

  "We don't have time. Blow it."

  "Fire in the hole!"

  The explosion didn't even register against the deafening punishment of the devastation. The door fell inward, revealing a dimly lit hallway.

  "Let's go."

  The team rushed forward. Jett stood at the entrance, waving them in. His voice was snatched by the same brutal wind that nearly plastered him against the wall. Squinting, he braved a look at the coming catastrophe. Just the sight nearly overwhelmed his senses. The sky was tortured by fire and lighting. The gaping cavity only widened; a hellish mouth that sought to devour all in its path. Deep inside was glimmering darkness, as if he stared at a fire-rimmed portal into the depths of deep space.

  This is it, then. The end. The end of everything.

  Bozo was the last, jerking back and staggering. It took a full second to realize he had been repeatedly shot in the back. As he fell forward, Jett dropped to one knee, avoiding the barrage of gunfire aimed at his head. Lining the attacking Deviant in his sights, he fired his rifle's grenade launcher. The explosion turned his assailant to a pulpy stain against the shattered wall.

  Jett gestured helplessly. "What the hell are they attacking for? Don't they see what's coming?"

  "They can't…hear you. Too far…gone." Bozo rolled over, blood staining his glittering teeth. "Wasn't…watching. Bastard got me good, Big Top."