Location via proxy:   [ UP ]  
[Report a bug]   [Manage cookies]                
Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Reborn: Captain Daring, #3
    Reborn: Captain Daring, #3
    Reborn: Captain Daring, #3
    Ebook336 pages6 hours

    Reborn: Captain Daring, #3

    By Blaze Ward

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Captain Daring has her team. And a mission to save the world.

     

    They will make her better than she was before. Will it be enough?

     

    A high level general's actions threaten to bring down everything if she can't stop him in time.

     

    Reborn, the culmination of the Captain Daring cyberpunk trilogy, where nothing is what it seems and Joie Daring faces the most impossible odds. But she is Captain Daring. Be sure to start with Revoked and Returned.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherKnotted Road Press
    Release dateSep 10, 2022
    ISBN9781644702932
    Reborn: Captain Daring, #3
    Author

    Blaze Ward

    Blaze Ward writes science fiction in the Alexandria Station universe (Jessica Keller, The Science Officer,  The Story Road, etc.) as well as several other science fiction universes, such as Star Dragon, the Dominion, and more. He also writes odd bits of high fantasy with swords and orcs. In addition, he is the Editor and Publisher of Boundary Shock Quarterly Magazine. You can find out more at his website www.blazeward.com, as well as Facebook, Goodreads, and other places. Blaze's works are available as ebooks, paper, and audio, and can be found at a variety of online vendors. His newsletter comes out regularly, and you can also follow his blog on his website. He really enjoys interacting with fans, and looks forward to any and all questions—even ones about his books!

    Read more from Blaze Ward

    Related to Reborn

    Titles in the series (3)

    View More
    View More

    Related ebooks

    Science Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • UNLIMITED

      In Search Of . . .

      Jan 1, 2019

      In Search Of . . .
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      American Spartan

      Jan 24, 2023

      American Spartan
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Orphan’s Dilemma

      Aug 10, 2021

      In a few minutes they’re going to say, “It’s your turn, Harold.” He will face Ms. Wickham with her thick black frames and smiling, slightly bugeyed look, the question more in her eyes than on her lips because he already knows what that question is. H

      11 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      GhoST StoRies

      Apr 12, 2021

      GhoST StoRies
      8 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Chost Stories

      Apr 12, 2021

      Chost Stories
      8 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Grounded.

      Jun 14, 2020

      Grounded.
      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Moses Ingram

      Apr 29, 2022

      What was your relationship like with Star Wars before this? I didn’t know so much about the Star Wars universe. Of course, I knew what it was culturally. It’s a super phenomenon. You hear about it in songs. People reference it any chance they get. So

      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Three Poems

      Jul 1, 2018

      Three Poems
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Come Fly With Me

      Jul 8, 2024

      Come Fly With Me
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Westworld: Is This Now?

      Jun 24, 2018

      Westworld: Is This Now?
      8 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Quotients

      May 7, 2020

      Quotients
      8 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Bourne To Run

      Feb 24, 2022

      Bourne To Run
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Bourne To Run

      Feb 24, 2022

      Bourne To Run
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Going Und Ergrond

      Apr 20, 2023

      Going Und Ergrond
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Carol Morley

      Sep 14, 2023

      Carol Morley
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Letters

      Sep 5, 2024

      Letters
      13 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Cancer Celebrities

      Nov 1, 2021

      The Cancer Celebrities
      6 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Reborn

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Reborn - Blaze Ward

      CHAPTER 1

      Joie Dearing studied her image in the mirror. It was the middle of the night, but she hadn’t really been able to sleep. Or get back under after waking from her first sleep.

      Too wound up. Too something.

      She hadn’t undergone her first surgery, so she still represented a cybernetic Human. One arm, one eye, one ear replaced after that truck bomb in Egypt. Bullet-proof cloth under the skin of her torso. Argenite alloy reinforcing a lot of her bones.

      She wasn’t all that worried about Yormevs and his alien Heecha scientists being able to take her apart and put her back together. They’d been planning for something along those lines for more than a year, but hadn’t found the person they’d wanted to do it on until she came along.

      She would be whole again. Human, at least briefly. All the electronic and metal parts would be removed. Organic parts quick-grown to replace them.

      And then the fun began. Or whatever you wanted to call it.

      Her foe was a US Army General who had taken all the genetic engineering research Technology Research Command had done and upgraded himself and at least a handful of others into what Joie had just started calling Advanced Model Humans. AMH, because the military was all about the three-letter acronym for things. The TLA, as it were.

      Not fertile, so not a new species.

      Not yet.

      That was coming, but the Heecha had made it clear that the other aliens, the Danorak, had meddled too much in a world that was supposed to be off limits. Before Humans became a serious threat to the rest of the galaxy, somebody would drop a Carrington Event on the Earth.

      Blow up every satellite in orbit at once. Collapse the power grids worldwide. Disrupt and poison every computer network in existence, because they’d already penetrated all of them to see what the dangerous monkeys on Earth were up to.

      Was she enough to stop that? Even with her friends, there were less than a dozen of them. Against the full might of a US Government that might not be certain what TRC was up to, but had certainly supported wars everywhere. Troops everywhere. Assassinations and revolutions everywhere.

      Hegemonic power gone bad. Rank and sour. Willing to tear the rest of the world down rather than allow others to have an opinion that challenged the grim Yankee way of thinking.

      Multiplied now by angry aliens bringing their own conflicts and issues down here to Earth.

      Joie took a deep breath and turned on the light. She had slept in panties and a T-shirt, with the temperature in her cabin set just right.

      Texican skin. It had been Mexico before the white slaver colonists arrived in the early nineteenth century. After 1848, it became the United States, but the southwestern corner of the US had a lot of people living there already who weren’t white as the Eastern Seaboard would later classify things in law.

      Long black hair, straight to her shoulder blades and usually kept in a pony tail or a braid, since she had two hands now to do that. Dark eyes. Dark skin. Tall at one hundred and eighty centimeters. Impossibly heavy today because of the Argenite alloy. Athletic and muscular, but nobody would ever guess she weighed ninety-two kilograms most days.

      That would go away, but she’d have the muscles built up. Better, her fucking fake boobs would go away and she’d be back to what she’d been when she’d just been a soldier. Before some—male—idiot in command had decided that the best way to make her an agent involved inserting a couple of half-grapefruits.

      Not that she had strong opinions on the topic or anything.

      She’d missed being Human, but they had turned her into Captain Daring and sent her out again and again to save the world. Their idea of the world. Which involved killing a lot of people because she’d been ordered to.

      Joie would have to explain that eventually and hope that there really was a loving and forgiving God out there somewhere.

      Then again, maybe they all deserved to be in hell.

      Joie flexed her hands into fists in the dimness of her room then released them. That helped a little, but not much. Maybe what she needed was just to go do forms for a while. She’d stayed extremely late in the dojo with Sifu Wěn—Teacher Wěn—more than once, even sleeping on the couch.

      She got up. Found baggy pants and put them on, skipping socks and shoes as she made her way out the hatch and into the rest of the Heecha ship. And it was a ship.

      Starship. Traveling in space in ways she hadn’t asked and they hadn’t volunteered.

      Joie already knew too much. If she was successful, she would be accepting voluntary exile from Earth for the rest of her life, so that nobody could ever figure out what had happened.

      Or how to replicate everything.

      She just had to find everybody who knew the truth first, and remove them as well. Technically, instead of metaphorically.

      Exiled to the stars. All of them together.

      The hallways always felt wrong, but the Heecha were taller and thinner than Humans in their real form, though they could easily disguise themselves enough to walk in Seattle or Manhattan. The hallways made her unconscious mind slightly queasy.

      At least they were empty, because this wing of the ship had been designated for only Humans and a few Heecha who were helping her in her new mission.

      Joie walked to a particular hatch and let it slide open in front of her. She wasn’t surprised to find Sifu Wěn lotus in the middle of the dojo floor.

      Nobody really knew the truth about the Sifu. Only that a lot of former soldiers had trained with the fifty-something woman and all swore that she was the deadliest person any of them had ever met. Considering what most of them had, as a rule, done in their military careers, that was high praise.

      And a little frightening.

      Sifu grinned as Joie stepped to the edge of the mat.

      Joie folded herself into a similar lotus and focused on her breathing.

      I have given much thought to the nature of change, Sifu Wěn said abruptly, before Joie even spoke. About the compression of learning in times of great stress.

      Joie nodded, silent.

      You came to me as broken in spirit as in mind, Sifu continued. I had thought at the time to create a form called Wounded Crane, but that would never do because that would have suggested that you were lesser than others. Instead, you were merely as good as any I had ever trained. That was before you got better.

      Better? Joie asked, unable to contain the word.

      I have seen Carter Faulkener move, Sifu Wěn nodded. Interviewed the man earlier today to understand how you beat him the first time. You came to me broken by Taylor Kehoe, though he was only following orders he now questions. Still, his sin was great and his penance ongoing.

      Joie caught her breath at the harsh vehemence in Sifu’s tones now.

      You could beat Faulkener today, Joie Daring, the woman said. So I have been giving thought to your new foes. The ones you mark as Advanced models. Asked myself how I would build such a thing, were it in my power.

      Joie’s eyes sparkled. Nobody knew all the various martial arts Sifu had studied, but there were hints that it might encompass every one practiced today. There were only so many ways to move. Each martial form simply assembled them in different orders and gave them different names, but all came from a single source called Humanity.

      General Bouchard might not be Human anymore.

      Have you reconsidered? Joie asked hopefully.

      Sifu had been offered the same sort of upgrade that Joie was going to undertake, and declined, claiming that she was an old woman, set in her ways, despite the fact that both Carter Faulkener and Ernesta Hernandez were in their fifties and sixties. For now.

      All three of them would be reverted to somewhere close to twenty-five when it was done. Peak Human performance, upgraded to face Bouchard and his troopers.

      I have given it much thought, but I suspect that your foes will fall into certain traps of behavior that are not readily evident until they face someone prepared to offset and neutralize them, Sifu said in much more serious tone.

      Joie blinked. Sifu thought she was Bouchard’s physical equal on the dojo floor?

      How? Joie asked.

      I am an old woman, Joie, Sifu grinned. I don’t have time to deal with young punks hyped up on their battling power. Or whatever silly shit they call it. If you cannot hit me, you cannot hurt me, so I must endeavor to not be in the way of your fist or foot. And then throw you into a post or in front of a bus driving by.

      Joie’s mouth had fallen open. She managed to close it before any flies took up residence, but it was probably a near thing.

      I will need to see how good you are when you are upgraded, Sifu nodded. Then we will know if I can still compete with your foes, or if it will become necessary for me to join you in exile.

      Just like that? Joie asked.

      I’ve seen more of this planet than almost anybody, Joie, Sifu replied, deadly serious. "Those fuckers don’t get to mess up everything. Destroy everything. Not if I can stop them. Now, what do you need?"

      Joie rose and considered her needs. She’d walked in here prepared to do forms for an hour or more until she got tired again. Or relaxed enough to actually sleep.

      That was unnecessary now. Instead, she rose and bowed at the waist in deep respect for all the things Sifu Wěn had given her.

      I needed to remember that I had friends, Joie said simply.

      CHAPTER 2

      Valmy Youri Bouchard. General, United States Army. Commanding General, Technology Research Command.

      That title, that responsibility, had allowed him to commandeer an aircraft out of Washington, DC, and fly it halfway across the planet with a small team of operatives who knew most of the truth about himself and his plans.

      Most.

      Nobody but him knew all of it, but the volunteers he had assembled had all passed every possible test of loyalty he had been able to devise and refine over the years.

      Now, he was standing in a hotel room in Hanoi. The premises would have been sealed off, had that been necessary, but he’d already seen everything he needed to see. And told the Vietnamese government more than they needed to know, but not enough to compromise his team.

      Either the team on the ground already or the one he’d brought with him.

      It had been enough to show the Russian and Chinese representatives the decapitated head of Carter Faulkener in a bucket of ice to convince them. That had ratcheted down tensions tremendously over the last few days.

      Even the Russians were willing to behave if you killed someone they wanted dead. They didn’t get to keep the head. Even dead, Mithras had too many secrets he could give up. It had been packed on dry ice and sent back to the States for analysis.

      But Valmy had a bigger problem. One that would get out eventually, no matter what bribes and threats he offered to everyone involved. So he was in a room that had belonged to Kehoe. The door frame had been damaged when Garrison Konicek had kicked the door in after nobody could find Kehoe. Or Sergeant Stone. Or Daring and her old boyfriend Graydon.

      Gone. Poof, like some magic trick.

      Worse, Konicek and Chelsea Vanlaere had been left behind by whatever had happened. And something had happened, because Kehoe’s room had been locked and chained from the inside, even with him gone.

      Valmy sat on an uncomfortable queen-sized bed and listened as Konicek completed his briefing.

      Nothing had changed in the twelve hours that Valmy had been in flight. Or the hour drive to the hotel.

      Valmy got up and paced. Konicek and Vanlaere both moved out of his way, the former moving to the bed and the latter putting her butt against a wall.

      There was a desk. It still had a computer bag next to it, with a charger in the pocket and other detritus of life on the road. Things Kehoe would have taken with him, given a choice in the matter. Similarly, Stone or someone had left an unfired semi-automatic pistol in the room safe.

      Suitcases were here and in rooms belonging to the four that had disappeared, along with all their clothes save what they had been wearing. Phones left behind in two cases, but not four.

      Taken out of their beds? Bed. Graydon’s room had shown no sign of sleeping, while Daring’s had two bodies worth of mussiness.

      Valmy turned at the end of a pace and considered.

      Gather up everything, he ordered. Even stuff that maybe belongs to the hotel. We’ll pay a fine. Whatever. No evidence left behind.

      Sir? Konicek blurted.

      This room, this hotel, he said. Too exposed. Too compromised. We will evacuate the premises and get to the airport as soon as possible.

      What if they come back, sir? Vanlaere asked.

      It’s been days, Lieutenant. he turned to her. They won’t be. Whoever took them means business. We need to get back to where we have access to our own team and resources. And quickly.

      I thought the Russians were mollified, sir, Konicek spoke up. They’ve seen Faulkener’s head.

      And by now they know that the team responsible for it has vanished without a trace, he replied. That will make them nervous, but for other reasons.

      Because we don’t know, General? Vanlaere asked.

      Oh, I have a few ideas, he smiled. But this is not the place to brief you about what’s really going on.

      We have other enemies we don’t know about?

      "You don’t know about, Vanlaere, he corrected her. Time to fix that."

      CHAPTER 3

      Ernesta studied herself in the mirror. Sixty-one years old. Gray hair. Crow’s feet and laugh lines. Dressed in comfortable jeans and a loose sweater because they kept it too cold on this ship.

      Medium height. Medium build. Just right to disappear into a crowd when she’d been younger and doing things that the Mexican government had frowned upon.

      Well, officially. For a few bribes, the right men had generally turned a blind eye, leaving her mostly to deal with the foolish Americans and their ignorant arrogance about culture and their prudish demands that the rest of the world believe the same things they did.

      She was older now. A grandmother many times over, with one son who was a doctor and a second who was one of her Regional Managers in the family business. At least for now.

      Ernesta Hernandez might never return to Guadalajara. Nor to the life of luxurious crime she had known. Folks would have to step up and handle things, but she’d been training everyone for this day for years, even before she knew it was coming.

      And it was coming.

      Tomorrow, a stranger would greet her in the mirror. A younger woman. One looking enough like Joie Daring to pass as a sister, or at least a cousin. To be twenty-five again? Even without being able to have any more children, what could she do, knowing everything she did now?

      Except that it would be somewhere else. A new adventure, quite literally on another planet, if the stories from Yormevs were even remotely true.

      What would it be like, leaving Earth for good? More interesting, what would Mitch say? He’d been looking at her with eyes normally reserved for Joie, but those two seemed to have moved beyond having been lovers and turning into old friends.

      Did Ernesta want a much younger lover, even as he would suddenly be the older?

      Decisions, decisions. At the same time, Joie needed her. Needed Ernesta’s mind. Her experience. Her sneakiness.

      Because while Joie had spent more than fifteen years in the US Army, Ernesta had spent more than fifty dancing dangerous games with them. And winning. Even Carter couldn’t say that, though he’d been a terrorist renegade off and on for twenty-some years.

      What would Ernesta do with another fifty years of living?

      What could she do?

      That question was even more interesting than the thought of being young and having a hardbody again, like she’d done in the era of croptops and hiphuggers.

      A knock at the door and she turned away from the old woman who’d greeted her this morning. Answering it, she found Yormevs, standing next to Joie. Ernesta hugged both of them.

      Joie needed it and Yormevs wasn’t fast enough to elude her. Apparently, Heecha didn’t hug.

      Foolish. She’d have to cure them of that as well.

      You ready? Joie asked.

      Ernesta couldn’t help the little giggle that escaped her mouth. The excitement of it all.

      Still think you should go first, Ernesta replied. We’re here because of you.

      You’ll be easiest to do, Joie countered. Just reset you forty years. Carter and I have parts that have to be calculated and replaced first.

      Ernesta turned to the tall alien man.

      So will Carter still live for the centuries that the original treatments promised? she asked. Or does that get reverted as well?

      The man had thin lips. He looked Siberian or somewhere North Central Asian to her. Maybe Mongolian. Sharp, wide eyes in a green so dark as to be almost black. Black hair, thick and wavy, brushed back and maybe held in place with some product that didn’t give it a greasy look.

      Almost down to his shoulders in length, like he was a painter or something. Not a single gray hair, but the face promised you that he was in his fifties. And the black seemed natural, fading through a variety of browns and bronzes, rather than that uniform soot color guys normally got with dye.

      Dressed in slacks and a tunic that buttoned up the left side, like a Belgian chef or a 1930s pulp hero adventurer. Everything was brown. Not milk chocolate, but brighter than the really good 90% stuff. Bronze, if you could do that in cloth. Assuming it was cloth.

      Yormevs’s face went through several emotions as she watched, before settling in a place she figured was ambiguous.

      We cannot be sure until we commit the act, he finally said. Those Danorak fools might have made him immortal accidentally. Or the Humans he was working for. Doubtful, considering the primitive state of their genetic engineering, but stranger things have happened.

      Ernesta nodded. Not that she’d want to live forever. At least alone. Outliving all of her friends would suck. At the same time, it might come down to her, Joie, and Carter, if the rest lived normal lifetimes and died.

      What are you up to? Joie asked.

      Thinking about immortality, Ernesta answered.

      Joie grabbed her arm and linked elbows before she could continue, dragging her into the hallway and towards the medical lab where it would all happen shortly.

      And? Joie asked.

      How many Humans leave Earth forever if we are successful? Ernesta asked. A score? Maybe two?

      That depends on Bouchard and his people, Joie turned serious. They might be so wedded to evil that they don’t end up surviving long enough to ask that question.

      We just kill them all? Ernesta gasped. Where’s the Joie I know?

      Worried about the other eight billion folks at risk if this goes wrong and Yormevs’s people decide to crash Earth hard.

      Joie nodded to the tall alien who was following them silently. Ernesta caught the man’s nod.

      They were playing for extremely high stakes today. Like, all Human civilization being wiped out.

      And you can’t just kidnap them all with your beam thing? Ernesta asked.

      Joie wasn’t that much into science fiction, but Ernesta was. Had read all the weird shit in the library as a kid, then moved on to clear out every used bookstore she could find, tearing apart the ancient classics and the modern schlock. Still did when she had time.

      We do not know everyone who has the knowledge of the transformation, he replied.

      Same answer as before, but she’d held out hope.

      And not everything will be written down in a computer system that you have already penetrated, Ernesta nodded. Thus, you need Human agents who can walk around the surface easily.

      And understand Humans, Ernesta, he replied. Your kind are utterly insane by our standards, which is why you were supposed to be left alone for several more centuries. The hope was that you would grow up.

      She laughed. Couldn’t help it. Humans might, but that would be measured in centuries. Meanwhile, Bandi and his friends had been force-feeding alien technology, driving Humans to levels far beyond where they were supposed to be.

      So what was that about immortality? Joie asked, circling all the way back.

      If you and I are going to outlive everyone except Carter, is it worth it? Ernesta turned to her newly-adopted sister.

      Should we ask Mitch if he wants the treatment? Joie asked saucily. Is that what you’re about?

      Carter would need someone, too, Ernesta countered. Maybe this Amy person you’ve talked about.

      She has a thing for lumberjacks with beards, Joie laughed. Blond and muscles just makes it worse.

      He’s not a bad-looking dude, Joie, Ernesta allowed. Just a nutcase terrorist who turns into a complete goofball when he relaxes. Any good in bed?

      Never asked, never found out, Joie replied. Too busy killing him twice. Even if he survived both. But maybe Amy would be interested, once we sort everything else out. Gotta survive and save the world first.

      Ernesta wanted to say something sarcastic and salty, but they had arrived.

      Joie turned and took her into a medical laboratory.

      Big, coffin-like device in the middle of the large room. Several

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1