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  Jade Sky

  A Matt Rowley Novel

  By

  Patrick Freivald

  JournalStone

  San Francisco

  Copyright © 2014 by Patrick Freivald

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  JournalStone books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

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  The views expressed in this work are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

  ISBN: 978-1-940161-43-3 (sc)

  ISBN: 978-1-940161-44-0 (ebook)

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014932374

  Printed in the United States of America

  JournalStone rev. date: May 16, 2014

  Cover Design: Rob Grom

  Cover Photograph © Shutterstock.com

  Edited by: Dr. Michael R. Collings

  To The Redhead™. You're why I write.

  Patrick Freivald

  Endorsements

  “Jade Sky is an ass-kicking action-fantasy that takes no prisoners. Lightning fast, brutal and way too much fun. Highly recommended!” – Jonathan Maberry, New York Times Bestselling author of Code Zero and Fall of Night

  Patrick Freivald’s latest novel, Jade Sky, is one of those all too rare reading experiences that just consumes you. I live for those moments when a book practically swallows me whole. I felt that way about Mieville’s Perdido Street Station and Bacigulupi’s The Windup Girl, and I felt it about Jade Sky too. Some authors just have that special touch when it comes to creating worlds, and for Jade Sky, Freivald made a future so rich in detail and so full of life and energy that I couldn’t help but lose myself in it. This is a book full of wild invention and even wilder action, yet grounded by a genuinely sympathetic love for the people who live there. Freivald has truly reached a new high water mark here, which is pretty scary considering that he was already so damn good. – Joe McKinney, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Plague of the Undead

  "With Jade Sky, Patrick Freivald takes science fiction, the supernatural and action adventure, seamlessly combining the genres in a unique and page-turning thriller. He brings his world, characters, dialogue and narrative to life with skill and assurance that keep the reader turning the pages. Loved this book!" – Dana Fredsti, author of Plague World

  Jade Sky rips like a bullet… or an entire armory of same. Cinch up your body armor and enjoy Patrick Freivald’s blitzkrieg through dark trenches and the corridors of the human heart–I sure did. – Norman Partridge, Author of Dark Harvest

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Jade Sky

  Chapter 1

  Blood rained from the ceiling. Matt Rowley gasped cordite-stained air into his lungs as crimson drizzle spattered his face. I hope that's not mine. His shoulder, knee, and gut itched, the tell-tale sign of muscle and bone knitting together. Whispered, alien gibberish clawed through his mind, warning him. He rolled to his left and squeezed his eyes shut against the coming shrapnel. Bullets raked the floor where he'd been lying, peppering his face with chips of concrete. An unaugmented man would have died twice in the past five seconds.

  He slithered backward under the steel loading-dock platform, opened his eyes, and swore. His helmet lay across the factory floor, next to the face-down Sergeant Karle. Tendrils of smoke rose from Karle's ruined body, his entrails smeared across the shelving unit above him. So much for radio. He couldn't see the others, but heard the unmistakable chatter of their REC7 assault rifles outside. The throatier return fire probably belonged to German-made HK's.

  A quick inventory wasn't promising: one flash-bang grenade, a bandolier of shotgun rounds, and a Beretta M9A1 with three bullets. He unholstered the pistol and took two shots. The room went black as the remains of the fluorescent lights tinkled to the floor. He cringed as bullets pinged off of the platform. He risked a look when they stopped. The heat rendered his infrared vision useless, but his brain processed the ultraviolet spectrum into a black-and-white picture.

  The claustrophobic room, narrow with thick walls and not enough cover, could have been tailor-made for an ambush. The explosion had converted the door they'd just retreated through into a pile of smoking cinder blocks and twisted metal. The stock of his AA-12 combat shotgun stuck out from the rubble, too far out of reach, and he didn't see Karle's REC7 anywhere. The two men near the back door lowered goggles onto their faces. Perfect. Matt shot the one on the left. The man screamed, blood spurting from his neck, and stumbled back through the door as his partner returned fire.

  Matt hissed when a ricochet hit his bicep. His carbon fiber sleeve spared him the worst, but it still hurt like hell. The man reached for his belt, and the whispers filled Matt's mind with future possibilities. He picked the one he liked best then reacted to what hadn't yet happened. He rolled from under the platform and kicked as the object skittered toward him. The man stumbled back in surprise, and the grenade followed him out the door. Matt accompanied the dull explosion with a prayer of thanksgiving for late-second precognitive therapy.

  He pulled the combat shotgun out of the rubble and put on his helmet. "Room's clear, Karle's dead," he said into the mic. His heads-up display showed his own elevated heart rate and adrenaline levels, but no moving targets. "Status?" he asked no one in particular.

  Lieutenant Kifer responded through the radio, an edge of panic to his voice. "Ryan's dead, and I'm pinned down behind these barrels. Can you give me some covering fire?" Small arms fire peppered the doorway. Matt ducked back.

  A REC7 fired from the left, full-auto, then Conor Flynn's voice broke over the radio. "Brilliant, mates. I leave you guys alone for two minutes and you get in this kind of trouble?" He fired again. "Rowley, I got your shooters shitting themselves. Get Kifer." Two more bursts came from his direction.

  Matt peered around the corner for a quick look, then jerked his head back. The recalled image flashed onto his visor, crisp and clean. Seven hostiles, armed to the teeth, covered each other as they closed in on Kifer's position from three directions. Little more than a stack of 55-gallon drums and a small shack, Kifer’s poor defilade left him exposed. Matt looked out again.

  "Kifer, the guys at eight o'clock are about to break cover. Take them, and I'll get the two at three. Ready? Go!" Matt's AA-12 roared four times, the finned projectiles adjusting to the information fed through his helmet. They hit their targets and exploded, spraying gore and organs across the ground. Kifer's first target grabbed his shattered leg and wailed. His companion dragged him back behind a burning, upended delivery truck.

  "I'm out," Conor said. "Give me a minute."

  Matt ducked behind the wall as Conor reloaded. Bullets chipped the brick from the right. "Rastogi,
" Conor said, "I'm going to pin those assholes on Rowley again. Go get 'em."

  "Got it," Akash Rastogi said. Matt waited while the gunfire intensified, then silenced, and bolted out the door toward Kifer.

  "Echo company ETA two minutes," a professional, male voice said in his headset.

  "Might be late for that," Kifer said between wheezy breaths. "Rowley, how good are these things at lungs?"

  Matt dove behind a pile of pallets as Akash and Conor kept the rest of the hostiles pinned with short, controlled bursts. He couldn't see Kifer, or any movement, but took comfort that regenerates could repair anything short of death. He fired his last three shots over the burning car, and they exploded downward as programmed.

  Someone screamed, and everything went silent. Matt breathed a sigh of relief. "Are we clear?"

  "Hope so," Kifer said. A grenade lobbed over the barrels toward Kifer's position. "Shit. Never mind."

  The barrels erupted in a spray of blue fire. The shockwave knocked Matt back twenty feet. His head rang as he hit the wall, the tang of blood filling his mouth. The stink of petrochemicals overwhelmed everything else, and flame bathed the stockyard in flickering light. His foot hurt with a casual dullness. He looked down at the fire licking up past his boot onto his pant leg. Shaking off the concussion, he slashed through the boot laces with his knife and kicked it free, then scrambled deeper into the rubble. Rolling to his stomach, he crawled into the ambush room and took aim at the door.

  A short silhouette stepped into view, face hidden by a reflective visor, and Matt breathed a sigh of relief. Conor's Friend or Foe transponder would have shown up green on Matt's helmet, were he wearing it. Still, he'd recognize the build and gait anywhere. Conor held out his hand. Matt took it, and Conor hauled him to his feet. "Brilliant, you're alive."

  The sound of helicopters had never been more welcome.

  * * *

  Matt watched the third squad disgorge from their helicopter, then walked barefoot to greet his boss, whose black flat-top stood immune to the prop wash. Bean-pole tall, Jeff Hannes wore a $300 suit that matched his gray eyes, a windbreaker bearing the International Council on Augmented Phenomena eye-and-thunderbolt logo, and a constipated grimace. Matt shook his hand, and let Jeff lead him far enough from the chopper that they could hear each other.

  "Well, that was a clusterfuck," Jeff said. His eyes hovered over the grunts dragging corpses into a line. They'd covered the ICAP casualties with white sheets; Dawkins's goons had been left in the rising dawn.

  Matt ran his tongue over his teeth. "They knew we were coming. We'd all be dead if it weren't for the spidey-sense."

  Jeff shook his head. "If they knew you were coming, they wouldn't have been here."

  Matt turned his head and spat, but didn't raise his voice. "I'm not saying you're wrong, Jeff, but twelve dead agents, man. Three from the bonk, and the rest from these pricks." He gestured to the dead bodies behind him. "Since when can seventeen normals take out four augs, if they didn't know beforehand?"

  The bonk lay on the ground next to the other bodies, a headless, eleven-foot-tall humanoid mass of muscle, bone, and bad attitude. Its head lay twenty feet away. Conor sat on it, katana on his knees, polishing the blade with meticulous care. The basketball-sized hole in the bonk's torso showed ribs fused to form a solid plate and a heart the size of a human head. The bonk was half-again bigger than even Russian military augs; Matt couldn't understand why anyone would augment themselves to the level of inevitable insanity.

  Jeff said nothing for a moment, then nodded his head. "Okay. Say you're right, and they knew you were coming. Anybody sane would have run. Why didn't they?"

  "Don't know." Matt looked at the bodies of his squad-mates, then at the two prisoners, one barbequed beyond recognition and strapped to a gurney, the other unconscious with a bandaged leg. His brain felt glad they'd lived to be questioned and prosecuted, but his heart wanted to tear them limb from limb. "Why don't we ask them?"

  "We'll get them healed up and schedule an interrogation for oh-nine-hundred." Jeff put a hand on Matt’s shoulder. "Meantime, why don't we find out what this butcher's bill bought us?" Matt closed his eyes against an onslaught of whispers, the mindless, unintelligible side effect to Gerstner Augmentation. "Matt? They died soldiers."

  Matt opened his eyes. He felt numb, just as he had in the Siege of Baghdad. These men were older than those kids had been, but they were fathers, brothers, husbands, snuffed out in an orgy of violence. He exhaled, and realized he'd been holding his breath. The shakes, the crying, the hopeless rage, they would all come later. Meantime, he had work to do. "Yeah."

  Akash sauntered up, REC7 slung from his back, helmet under his arm. "What are we talking about, eh?" Though he was a soft-spoken, first-generation Canadian, his north-of-the-border accent clashed with his chocolate skin, short black hair, and dark brown eyes.

  Jeff nodded toward the bodies and wandered away, giving the soldiers space.

  They stood in silence for a moment. Akash licked his lips, then said, "They died heroes."

  Matt grunted. "That's what Jeff said. It won't bring them back." He turned to walk away, and Akash grabbed his arm.

  "It's not your fault it was an ambush, Matt."

  "I know." And part of him even understood it. But a deeper, softer part would howl in terror and sadness, drowned under the need for men like him to do their jobs.

  Akash opened his mouth to reply, but Matt cut him off.

  "Just don't, Rastogi." He forced his tone softer than he wanted to. "I know what you're going to say, and I appreciate it. But I'd rather not hear it."

  "Sure," Akash said, and turned with him to watch the growing, well-ordered bedlam.

  A legion of technicians, forensics staff, and scientists joined the squads of soldiers, and they got to work. It didn’t take long to find what intel told them they would: algae vats, centrifuges, distillation equipment, dehydration tanks, and countless glassware, all the components of a world-class chemistry and biology lab. The third building they opened had four tractor trailers parked inside, each with a different logo: Joe's Meats, Lynne's Dairy, C.E.L. Trucking, and Midwest Cargo, Inc.

  Conor ran a hand over his shaved head. "Bet you a pint what's inside."

  "Jade?" Akash asked.

  "Nothing."

  They cut the lock and opened the first truck. Shrink-wrapped pallets packed two high and two across stretched as far as he could see.

  Matt hopped up and tore the wrapping off the front-most pallet. He lifted off a wire crate and pulled out a plastic bag. He admired the emerald green crystalline powder. He tossed it to Conor, who handed it to Jeff.

  "I owe you a pint, Rastogi," Conor said.

  Matt ignored them. "Call it two kilos per bag, ten bags per crate, eighty crates per pallet, and," he peered into the back of the truck, "looks like twenty-four pallets. So, forty thousand kilos? That's a lot of Jade."

  One of the soldiers let out a low whistle. "What's the value on this stuff, sir?"

  Jeff snapped out of a slack-jawed stupor. "Uncut? Twenty bucks a gram wholesale, more or less. That's . . . Jesus, that's . . . ."

  "An eight with a lot of zeroes," the soldier said, holding out the calculator on his phone's screen for them to see.

  Akash let out a low whistle. "You owe me eight hundred million pints, Conor."

  "Open the other trucks," Jeff said. The soldiers jumped to work. As the doors slid up, their incredulity grew. The first three were full, the last nearly so.

  Matt snorted, then walked outside. The red sky heralded impending dawn, and the Atlantic looked like a sea of blood. It fit his mood.

  Shoes crunched on gravel. A lighter flared next to him.

  Jeff took a deep draw of his cigarette, held it, then blew the smoke downwind. "What's on your mind, soldier?"

  "Puzzles. If they knew we were coming, two full squads of augged agents and a platoon of regulars, with choppers and planes and the wrath of God behind us, why leave behind three billion dol
lars of Jade?"

  "Fifteen billion, once it's cut."

  "Okay, then, fifteen. But the question remains—why leave behind that much?"

  Jeff took another draw on his smoke. "Maybe they didn't have time to take it?"

  "Okay, why protect it with so few guys? This place is set up for a garrison of what, two hundred? They could have met us in real force, turned it into a battle."

  "If they knew they didn't stand a chance—"

  "—then why protect it at all? Cut your losses and run. They've got boats, a plane, trucks . . . Dawkins had to know that nobody was getting off this island once we showed up." He gestured toward the legion of soldiers outside. "Seventeen guys against an army. It's just all wrong."

  Jeff sighed, and they sat in silence as the sun freed itself from the horizon. An osprey danced through the light, hovered for a split second, then dove feet-first into the water, rising again with a fish in its talons.

  Jeff opened his mouth, and Matt slammed his fist into the wall. The cinder block caved in a puff of dust, and Matt let the pain fuel his anger. "But they did know, dammit!" He locked eyes with his boss and realized that Jeff hadn't spoken. The only explanation is that they didn't know you were coming. Matt hadn't read his mind—he'd seen the future and reacted to it before it happened.

  Jeff's face held the slightest of smirks. "That stuff really works." He dropped the smirk and put his arm on Matt's shoulder. "Anyway, I think you guys should have some leave time, after you talk to the shrinks." Matt didn't bother to complain, but Jeff kept on anyway. "No use whining about it, even if it is a pain in the ass. I'll keep you posted."

  Matt looked down at his knuckles. The skin had already healed over little specks of cinderblock—he'd have to clean it out later. "Yeah."