The Slave Warrior Read online

  “Well, why didn’t you say so, man! Let them in!”

  The two men who walked in could not have been more different. One was big, young, with spiky hair dyed purple, bulging muscles and a struggling red beard. He wore a hodge-podge of leather clothes: a vest, tight pants and black combat boots. A variety of earrings and other piercings decorated his nose and ears.

  His companion looked like pictures the general remembered seeing of the father of the theory of relativity, Albert Einstein. His graying hair stuck out all over his head. A pair of old-fashioned glasses sat perched on his small nose, framed by bushy gray eyebrows. He wore typical hobo garb on his small, thin frame, consisting of a hodge-podge of tattered rags. He looked to be in his fifties.

  General Veracruz realized his mouth was opened so he slammed it shut, cleared his throat and asked gruffly, “Who are you and what do you know about Brogan?”

  The big one grinned widely, stuck out a big hand to shake, and announced loudly, “I’m MacArthur, but my friends call me ‘Mac’ or ‘Big Mac.’ Pleased to meet you General, Sir. Brogan told us all about you.”

  The little guy cleared his throat and said quietly, “How do you do, Sir. My name is Dr. Herbert Schneider.”

  Realizing now this might take some time, the general moved out from behind his desk. Lieutenant Nelson was still standing at the door, curiously listening to the exchange. Both wore the standard issue White Warrior body armor under their BL rebel camouflage uniforms, only the epilates on their shoulders denoting their ranks.

  “Lieutenant, why don’t you see if you can find some beverages for these gentlemen. What will it be? Coffee, tea, water, soda?

  “Water sounds great for me, sir,” Mac replied. “We’ve been a long time getting here and I’m a might thirsty. Blowing things up and long walks will do that to ya, I guess.”

  Not sure what he meant, but curious, the general turned to the doctor. “And what will you have, Doctor?”

  “Tea sounds wonderful, sir.”

  “Great. Lieutenant take care of it please. We are going to move to the small conference room next door, so our new friends can be a bit more comfortable. This way, please, gentlemen.”

  After everyone was settled, he impatiently waited for them to tell their story.

  Mac took a long swig of his water and started to tell their story.

  “Here’s the thing, sir. We got separated from Brogan during our escape from a bunch of river pirates on the Mississippi river, so we have no idea if she is alive or dead. But, knowing her, I’m sure she will show up someday. She’s one tough cookie.”

  The two proceeded to tell the story of the three of blowing up the Pilgrim Nuclear Generating Plant south of Boston; their escape, including the run-in with a tank, some soldiers; and then the journey down the Mississippi with the river pirates. Mac did most of the talking, with Herbert interjecting comments when Mac appeared to wander away from the key topic, which he did frequently in his enthusiasm.

  “So,” the general asked, “What are the two of you doing here?”

  “Well, it’s like this, General, Sir,” Mac replied with his big grin, “We told the White Warrior we wanted to join the Book Liberator rebel army. She told us if we got separated to head to Laredo. Look for you there. If you were gone from there, which you obviously were, to head toward Mexico City. So, here we are.”

  “And just how do you think you might be able to aid the rebels? In case you haven’t heard, we got creamed by bombing raids from the emperor’s jets in Missouri a couple of months back.”

  “We heard, sir,” Mac said somberly, “I’m sure that’s got to weigh heavily on you. But as far as we can tell, just because you lose a battle it doesn’t mean you lost the war. I’m good at blowing things up, so maybe I can help with explosives, or anything else you need. I’ll let the professor here tell you about his talents.”

  Herbert quietly began to speak. “Sir, I’m certainly not a trained soldier, but it was my expertise in electronics and knowledge of nuclear physics which brought me to the attention of the emperor in the first place. He wanted me to build nuclear bombs. Mac and Brogan helped me blow up the nuclear generating plant to prevent that from happening. I simply want to use my knowledge to benefit the Book Liberators. I know just about everything there is to know about electronics.”

  Herbert sat back in his chair, his hands folded primly on his lap. “But, I prefer to not have anything to do with nuclear physics.”

  “So, you are telling me you were both in on blowing up the nuclear generating plant. I heard about that from a BL spy. You traveled with Brogan, but you don’t know where she is?”

  “That’s it in a nutshell, sir.” Mac nodded with what was apparently his trademark grin. The diminutive doctor nodded his head in agreement.

  “Well, I guess your story is just wild enough to sound exactly like something Brogan would do. How did you lose track of her?”

  “Last we saw her, she was bobbing up and down in the current of the Mississippi River, headed south. The pirate ship was boarded by some troopers and we managed to slip over the side. Unfortunately, the river was treacherous. Just hope she didn’t drown, sir. She is one heck of a soldier.”

  The general nodded his head in agreement, then sat in silence for a moment. “Lieutenant take these two rebels to Max and tell him I said to see if he can find some use for them in the army.”

  Mac and Herbert stood up, shook the general’s hand, expressing their appreciation for allowing them to be a part of the fight.

  Once he was back in his office, the general shot an arrow prayer heavenward for Brogan’s safety.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Raging Solitude

  The headaches had become more intense. Anyone who was in the same room when Emperor David Priest started to get a headache often became the brunt of his uncontrollable rage. He would pick up whatever he could find and throw it while screaming obscenities.

  There were rumors going around that anyone with intelligence chips implanted more than 40 years was suffering similar symptoms. Apparently, nerves damaged from the implant eventually regenerated around the implant, forming painful lesions in the brain. But Priest refused the corrective surgery, afraid whoever did the surgery would kill him while he was under the anesthetic.

  After the BL sabotage, which not only destroyed his cyborg army but the glass-pyramid the emperor regarded as his secure headquarters, he did not feel safe again. His elite unit of marine guards rushed him from the remains of the unstable pyramid to an underground bunker just minutes away. He had one cyborg left of the original two prototypes. The other one disappeared, along with the traitor Dr. Herbert Schneider, after they were sent to the Plymouth Nuclear Generating Plant to begin the process of building nuclear weapons. He was pretty sure Schneider was behind the explosion destroying the plant.

  He refused to move from the underground bunker since the two explosions. His paranoia and headaches had increased to the point where most of the time his seven-foot tall cyborg was the only one he allowed near him. All communications were done via vid units. Food was ordered in and the cyborg used sensors to test it for poison before Priest would eat it.

  When he entered the bunker, he was fit and trim; a leftover from his days as a general in the Marine Corps during WWIII. Now, ten years later, his tall, muscular body had turned to flab. Although the general’s chiseled jaw included a dimpled chin, his face was now haggard. His hair, no longer kept in a marine buzz-cut, was long, unwashed and totally gray. His eyes were shrunk back into his head. He had not shaved or cut his finger nails in years. Personal grooming was ignored inside what he now regarded as a rebel-imposed prison. He was convinced everyone outside the bunker wanted to kill him.

  He wasn’t far off in his paranoia. The Book Liberators had posted a million-dollar reward for his assassination. He ruled what remained of a once proud, democratic country with iron fists of fear and intimidation. His arbitrary commands always resulted in someone’s death, or the de
aths of thousands of citizens. His cyborg was programmed to respond only to his commands; his marines knew better than to cross him or the cyborg; some tried but paid the price with hours or days of torture before they finally died.

  With a command over his vid-phone, he could order whole barrios or neighborhoods leveled by his marines. Each marine had a feature on their augmented helmet, allowing Priest to watch what they were doing any time he chose. His bunker included a bank of hologram screens allowing him to pick and choose who and what he could monitor.

  “It is the Book Liberators fault I’m stuck here,” he grumbled to himself as he listened to a report from the head of his national security team over the vid-phone. The woman, Major Grimes, was a tough, no-nonsense marine. His top general, General Jamil Hawthorne, recommended her after seeing her cold-blooded way of dealing with a BL cell in Chicago City.

  “Not only is Major Jacqueline Grimes a tested and proven soldier,” the general told him by vid-phone shortly after the Battle of Missouri, “but she hates the Book Liberators with a passion. Apparently, her son joined a cell and was killed during the battle in Missouri. She wants them wiped off the face of the earth.

  “I put her in charge of a group of marines who were supposed to capture some rebels in Highland Park, a suburb north of Chicago City. It was in the middle of winter. Forty degrees below zero. Almost nobody was moving. Snow was ten feet deep and blizzard conditions. Didn’t stop her.

  “She drove one of our newest tanks herself, plowed through the snow and ran that sucker right over the top of the shelter where they were hiding. Never saw anything like it. I saw the vids shot by her lieutenant. Kinda creepy, really. She never showed a sign of emotion.

  “Apparently, there were smashed bodies everywhere. Cool as a cucumber, she walked through the bodies, looking for one still in good enough shape to interrogate. Found one. Anyone else still alive she shot herself. Once she finished the interrogation she shot him, too.”

  It was recommendation enough for the emperor. He interviewed her by vid-phone. Satisfied she could handle the job, he put her in charge of his protection detail. He also brought her into the loop on a research project he started after the sabotage of the pyramid and nuclear generating plant, thwarting his nuclear ambitions and cyborg army. She offered to be a test subject for the project.

  Dr. Argus Delis, a researcher from the University of Texas Dallas, was working on a liquid exoskeleton for the emperor’s marines, including cell regeneration to make the soldiers run faster, not feel pain, and be exceptionally strong.

  Major Grimes had suffered through a series of extremely painful trials without a complaint. Dr. Delis reported to Emperor David Priest and he was pleased with the results. Every few weeks, the major returned to his lab for some tests to make sure everything still worked properly.

  It had been two years since the first trial with the major as the test subject, and so far, there had been no major side effects. Priest had authorized expanding the exoskeleton to all troopers in Grimes’ detail, starting next year. He would have a ring of soldiers around him who were virtually indestructible. Only a shot to the head would kill these fearless, elite soldiers.

  Now, as he listened to the major’s latest report on the increasing criminal activities in metropolitan areas of the country, the emperor decided it was time to expand the exoskeletons to all the empire’s troopers. He needed to bring the lawlessness under control. Maybe then he could focus on finding the Book Liberator rats and destroying them.

  But the expansion would have to wait until he took care of the headaches. Priest rubbed the spot behind his left ear where the intelligence chip throbbed with every beat of his heart.

  He didn’t care that thousands of his citizens were dying every day of starvation. His only concern was finding and destroying anyone who dared to thwart him. As he again reached up to rub the same spot, his eyes passed right over the old woman cleaning his office.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The Rebel Spy

  No one paid any attention to the tiny old lady who industriously kept the emperor’s underground bunker spotless. She oversaw an array of cleaning robots but wasn’t a bit averse to doing a bit of cleaning herself if she wasn’t satisfied with their work. She always wore a drab, pale blue jumpsuit, too big for her tiny frame. Her long gray hair was stringy and constantly falling across her face as she stooped to issue commands to a robot or swipe a surface with a gloved hand to look for dust. Her bright blue eyes were set in a wrinkled face. Although increasingly crippled with arthritis, she had never allowed the disease to slow her down.

  Esther Longstreet, janitor extraordinaire, is a spy for the Book Liberators. But she is so good at her spy craft, no one in the bunker knows. She has been working for Priest as head of janitorial services since he became emperor almost twelve years earlier. Every day she hears things she is not supposed to hear. And every day her sharp mind records what she hears. When she returns to her tiny apartment a few blocks away from the bunker, she pulls out a vid-phone from a well-hidden location and sends what she has heard to the rebel headquarters in Mexico City, using the secret BL code. Everything is disguised as chatty communications to a fictitious brother.

  Esther became a BL spy because her husband Howard and son George died because of the emperor’s commands. They weren’t doing anything but reading books in their own home. Esther was out shopping when the raid happened. She came home to find their tortured, dead bodies sprawled on the floor. At her request, the BL rebels helped her build a new identity to stand up to the scrutiny of the emperor’s background checks. As far as the emperor and his staff knew, her family died in a robo-car accident twenty years ago.

  Today she is anxious for a long day at work to finish. The news she has for the BL rebels is not good. Sometimes Esther wonders if what she is doing is enough. She has often thought about assassinating the emperor, since she is one of only a handful of people who has access to his quarters. But she decided she was not the kind of person who can kill anyone, even someone as evil as the emperor. She sighed to herself. Did that make her a coward? She just knew it was not something she could do, even if he deserved it.

  As she stole a glance out of the corner of her eye at the emperor, she felt a twinge of sympathy for the lonely man. She turned back to check the robot finishing the cleaning of the acrylic floor. Suddenly, she felt a cold hand on the back of her neck. Startled, she turned and looks up into the crazed, bloodshot eyes of the emperor.

  “Who the hell are you, and what are you doing here?”

  His hand began to get tighter. Her heart beating faster, she carefully turned as far around as she can until she could reach up and touch the emperor’s face.

  “It’s me, Your Highness. Esther, your cleaning supervisor.”

  For a moment, the emperor looked confused and then reached up to rub the spot behind his ear again, letting go of her. He stumbled backwards and fell into a chair.

  Esther decided it was better not to say anything else and quietly backed out of the room, her eyes never leaving the dazed emperor. As she exited the room, the two marines at the door moved to the attention position.

  “It’s okay, boys. It’s just me, Ether.”

  She shakily moved to the storage area where her locker is. That was close. I don’t know if I can keep doing this. The man is crazy!

  She managed to get herself to her apartment and then placed a call to Major Grimes to explain to her what had happened. After several failed attempts, she left a message and calmed down enough to send a coded message to the Book Liberators about the emperor’s decision to expand the exoskeletons to all the empire’s troopers.

  She just finished the message when she received a ping from Grimes.

  “Hello, Major.”

  “Esther, what do you need?”

  “Ma’am, I just had a situation with the emperor and I don’t think I can continue with my job.”

  “What happened? What do you mean?”

  Esther ex
plained, and the major was silent for a moment.

  “Let me give it some thought. I’ll talk to the emperor and see what we can do to keep you safe. Okay.”

  “Yes, Ma’am. Thank-you. Should I still go to work tomorrow?”

  “No, why don’t I tell the emperor you are ill and can’t make it?”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  As Esther ended the vid-phone call, she heaved a sigh of relief. At least she was safe for one more day.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Plans for a Genocide

  Being the top general for Emperor Priest was no easy, cushy job. General Jamil Hawthorne had learned in the last ten years to be ruthless and never hesitate to follow the emperor’s commands if he wanted to live. He decided early in his career as a marine to subsume his own will totally to that of his supreme commander. Having ethics, morals or any opinions of his own was a waste of time and energy. As a result, most of the marines under his command regarded him as cold and aloof, which was fine with him.

  General Hawthorne was a tall, thin man. He was about the same age as the emperor, close to 130 years old, taking age-defying drugs for almost eighty years. Because of his close ties to the emperor, he could get the needed organ transplants when one failed, as they often did when taking the drugs. He already had the surgery to repair the brain lesions around the I-chip implant.

  He watched Major Grimes go through the extremely painful, experimental, exoskeletal treatments. While he admired her stamina and endurance to get the treatments, he decided it wasn’t for him. He would stick with the standard issue body armor. He was 6-feet tall and weighed just under 185-pounds; most of it was muscle. He still did a rigorous work out every day. He wore his thick gray hair in a typical marine buzz cut, short on the side and long on the top. He never went anywhere unless he was in full dress uniform.