Cybernation

Michaels figured that meant he was smarter than some of the first gung ho chargers to step up. It was a good idea to see what an enemy knew before you risked an attack.

That could be a bad sign for Michaels.

“So, you think you can get past his defenses?” Duane asked.

“Yes, sir, Chief, I believe so.”

Duane nodded. “Show us.”

When the big recruit stepped up to the mat, Michaels saw Duane flash his big grin at Toni, where Raven couldn’t see it. He wished he had Duane’s confidence.

When Raven got closer, he said, sotto voce, “Nice skirt, sir.”

Michaels smiled. SOP, trying to anger an opponent. He said, quietly, “Yeah. Don’t look up it while you’re down on the mat, son.”

“Not gonna happen. Sir.”

“Okay. Let’s see. Show me what you got.”

Raven slipped into a side fighting stance, left foot forward, circled his hands over his face and groin. From the smoothness of the movement, Michaels realized the kid had brought this with him when he joined the feds — it was too slick to come from the Hawaiian’s six-week self-defense course.

Raven said, “What I got is a black belt in tae kwon do, sir.” He sneered, bounced around a little, and edged toward Michaels. “But I won’t hurt you too bad.”

Oh, good. A martial arts jock who wanted to prove his stuff was superior. Michaels was, he had to admit, a little nervous. He’d been studying silat pretty extensively with Toni for more than a year, working out hard, practicing pretty much seven days a week, rain or shine, and he was far from a finished student. Still, he was improving. Toni didn’t pull her punches, and she’d had a few people she knew dance with them at the gym a few times, to make sure Michaels had different-sized and skilled opponents, to help teach him distance and timing. He wasn’t great, but he was not a total dweeb anymore. He hoped.

The kid had just made a mistake — he’d bragged about his black belt, which, like the skirt comment, had been to intimidate Michaels, to make him nervous, but he’d given too much away in doing that. If you thought you might be facing a tiger, that could be a problem. If you knew you were facing a lesser cat, that made things easier.

TKD was mostly a sport these days, though there were some old-style guys around who were excellent fighters, according to Toni. The sport guys liked to kick, they did that to score points, and they liked to kick high, to the head. Standing sideways like that, Raven was going to have to use his front foot if he wanted any speed. A spinning or round kick from the rear leg was going to take too long to get there.

All of this flitted through Michaels’s brain fast, a second or two, then the attack came.

Raven danced in and threw a high roundhouse kick at Michaels’s head.

He was limber, and he was very fast. Michaels ducked, and the kick sailed harmlessly over his head. As Raven came down, Michaels tapped him lightly on the ribs, no force, to see what the kid would do.

Raven sprang back, out of range. “That punch wouldn’t have done anything,” he said.

If he really knew how to fight, then that tap should have convinced him he’d made a mistake. If he was rattled, however, it didn’t show.

Michaels glanced over at Toni. She shook her head. The kid didn’t have a clue.

He came in again, twirling and throwing a quick combination of kicks — a front snap, roundhouse, and axe- kick, intending to bring his heel down on the top of Michaels’s head or shoulder with the last technique. It was a good sequence, fast and well-executed.

He must have expected Michaels to back up and block, since that was probably what he was used to seeing, and if that happened, he would tag him.

Michaels didn’t back up.

Instead, he dropped low as he stepped in and caught Raven on the hamstring of his kicking leg with his right shoulder. No punches, no counterkick, no sweep, just a step and the shoulder—

The kid flew backward, lost his balance, and fell. He managed to turn the fall into a diving half-twist and roll, and came back up. “No problem!” he said, too loud and too fast.

Now he was rattled. A smarter, more experienced fighter would have backed up and thought about it, gotten cautious, but Raven hardly paused. He knew this stuff, he was gonna make it work!

The third time he came in, he threw a powerful right punch and right snap-kick at the same time, and if he was pulling either, Michaels couldn’t tell. The kid wanted to whack Michaels, for embarrassing him, and he wanted it to hurt. He was extended, balanced on the ball of his left foot, his supporting left knee almost locked.

Michaels slid in, blocked the punch with a left heel-hand to the kid’s face while scooping the kick aside with the back of his right hand. He pushed with his left hand and lifted hard with his right, palm toward the floor like he’d been taught, and Raven went back and down, stretched out horizontally. He slammed into the mat flat on his back, and the impact knocked the wind out of him. Before he could move, Michaels dropped next to him, swung his right fist up and over and down in a hammer blow that landed smack in the middle of Raven’s chest. He pulled it some, but it still hit hard enough to make a nice thwock! on the sternum. Then he opened his fist, slid his hand up to the kid’s throat, and pinched his windpipe. With any pressure, he could break Raven’s voicebox, and the kid knew it.

Raven slapped the mat, to show he was done, but Michaels kept the pressure on the throat pinch. He said, “On the street, you can’t tap out. If I squeeze, you’re a dead man.”

The look of panic on Raven’s face was what Michaels wanted. He relaxed his grip, rocked up onto his feet and stepped away, turned in a half-circle with a crossover siloh back-step, and looked for more potential attackers.

There weren’t any. He relaxed, moved back to where Raven still sprawled, and put out a hand to help him up. The kid waved him off.

Michaels wanted to make sure the lesson stuck, so he said, quietly, “Thanks for not hurting me too bad, son.”

Raven shook his head. Youth would be served — but not today.

The Hawaiian grinned real big again and said, “Okay, so what’d he do wrong?”

A short redheaded woman with freckles said, “He got out of bed this morning?”

Everybody laughed — well, except for Raven there, just sitting up.

Raven came to his feet, gave Michaels a choppy nod, and said, “Okay, it works pretty well for a fairly big guy like the commander. But how about somebody like little Red Riding Hood there against somebody my size?” He pointed at the woman who’d spoken.

Michaels looked at Toni, and shook his head as she stepped onto the mat.

“Let me show you,” she said.

Poor kid just had to learn things the hard way, didn’t he?

On the Bon Chance

Santos thought about gold.

Ouro, the shining yellow metal that was the real measure of wealth. Missy was talking about fiber optic trunk lines crossing rivers underneath rail bridges, but Santos was wondering when he could get to a coin dealer to buy more Maple Leafs. He could do it on-line, of course, but he didn’t trust computers. Too easy for them to crash, especially now. He grinned a little at that.

No, he would rather get to the Mainland and one of the dozen or so dealers he used, each who knew him under a different name, none of which were his own.

The spot price was down a little from last week, only ten or twelve dollars, and the coin prices were higher than spot prices for bullion, of course, to cover minting and such, but still, this would be a good time to buy.

Missy said, “—the main cables cross here, and here—” as she pointed at a map of the United States.

Canadian Maple Leafs were the standard for gold coins. They were pure—99.99 percent gold, unlike the American Gold Eagles, which were only 22-karat, alloyed with a few grams of silver and copper. Krugerrands were only 90 percent gold, even more alloy in those, though they were good for working the berimbau string. Chinese Pandas were so-so. The Australian Kangaroos and Koalas were better, nearly as good as the Canadian, but the Maple Leaf was the way to go, for gold. Everybody in the world knew this.