Stealth Retribution Read online

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Part 1: Stealth Revival

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Part 2: Stealth Retribution

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Part 3: Stealth Redemption

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Postscript

  Other Books by Vikki Kestell

  A Prairie Heritage

  Girls from the Mountain

  About the Author

  Stealth Retribution

  Nanostealth | Book 3

  Vikki Kestell

  Also Available in Print Format

  Retribution. Also known as “payback” or a more dated word: “vengeance.” Arnaldo Soto has taken Emilio and intends to use him as bait to trap Gemma. It’s an effective strategy, because Gemma will do anything—anything—to save the young boy.

  The woman known as Gemma Keyes is gone, her molecular structure destroyed and reassembled as . . . something else. In Gemma’s stead emerges a fierce weapon: part woman, part nanotechnology, her cellular composition conjoined with the nanocloud, their union formidable and indissoluble. She and the nanomites are now more than a match for her enemies—but Gemma has promised God that she will not visit retribution on Arnaldo Soto for taking Emilio.

  The nanomites have made no such promise.

  The conclusion to the Nanostealth series

  will blow your mind.

  Nanostealth

  Book 1: Stealthy Steps

  Book 2: Stealth Power

  Book 3: Stealth Retribution

  Stealth Retribution

  © 2017 Vikki Kestell

  All Rights Reserved

  Dedication

  To all those who have

  wandered far:

  the LORD is calling you.

  “I have swept away

  your offenses like a cloud,

  your sins like the morning mist.

  Return to me,

  for I have redeemed you.”

  Isaiah 44:22

  Acknowledgements

  I have acknowledged and thanked

  my wonderful team many times,

  but they deserve every kudo I can apply.

  Thank you,

  Cheryl Adkins and Greg McCann.

  I am honored to work with such

  dedicated and talented individuals.

  I love and value both of you.

  Our gestalt is powerful!

  Special Thanks

  to James Rutske

  for his technical expertise.

  Cover Design

  Vikki Kestell

  Prologue

  I lifted my hands to examine them. As I did, the light fixtures banding the cavern flickered; current jetted from the wavering lamps and slammed into my chest. The drawn energy coursed through my muscles and reverberated in my bones. It swelled and spread down my arms until it reached my fingertips, ready to burst forth.

  With a curious and almost detached air, I watched as my body attracted more energy from the light fixtures. Electricity crackled around me, infusing me with might. I flexed and curved my fingers; tongues of current sizzled in the palm of my hand and built into a ball of pulsing blue fire.

  Not far across the cavern, Dr. Bickel, Zander, and Agent Gamble, their expressions grave, could only watch. The nanomites had prevented them from interfering while the mites had effected this last, this final metamorphosis. Unable to come closer, my friends waited for the outcome. They waited for me.

  Me. The transformed me. At the first, the nanomites had “simply” invaded me and had refused to leave. Then had come “the merge” and its powerful effects upon me. Now I faced this, the latest iteration of Gemma Keyes—or should I say, the “new and improved nanocloud”? The revived and restored nanocloud . . . superior in every way, the composite of six tribes and, at last count, more than twenty trillion nanomites. The nanocloud that had annexed and incorporated the person I'd been—all of who and what I was.

  Mine is not an honorary tribal membership, nor is ours a partnership where the nanomites and I are “joined at the hip,” so to speak. It is so much more, and I was testing . . . probing to determine what was what.

  This I knew: The nanomites and I were melded. We were irrevocably bound to each other. We were an amalgamation. My cells and molecules added mobility and organic functionality to their nano-sized electromechanical devices. At the same time, the nanomites’ computational abilities and vast knowledge banks were fused to my brain’s synapse trees, furnishing me with, well, with extraordinary knowledge and insights—and much more, if my assumptions were correct.

  I drew another deep breath and felt my body respond, my strength rise. The electricity I attracted from the cavern’s lights (without conscious intent) swelled and snapped; it bent toward me and flowed into me. I raised one hand toward the electrical source, and current jetted into my palm—arcing and building within the span of my fingertips. I rotated my wrist, and the energy sizzled. Intensified.

  “Gemma?”

  I brought my hands together and stared with fascination as the shimmering bolus strengthened. It swirled between my extended fingers. As I moved my splayed hands apart, tendrils of electricity climbed from my fingers onto the ball; they wrapped themselves about the sphere to hold and feed it. The orb grew larger; its vibrations thudded through my chest.

  “Gemma?” From yards away, Zander’s repeated question radiated concern.

  I stared at the globe of electricity sparking and thrumming in my hand. What could I do with it? What would happen if I . . . tossed it?

  I thought that I knew the answer.

  Nodding to myself, I brought my palms together, enveloping and squeezing the ball of fire until it shrank, diminished, and disappeared. The current receded up my arms, into my body, throbbing and vibrating as it went, until I’d absorbed it, holding it in readiness—for what, exactly, I didn’t yet know.

  With eyes closed, I took inventory, examining what I found, tucking the revelations away until I had time to ponder them.

  “I’m all right, Zander.”

  I turned and walked toward my friends. My heart was calm and settled, even though I’d crossed over into a place from which I could not return.

  In actuality, that demarcation—the line of no return—had been crossed earlier, but I hadn’t known it at the time. I hadn’t known then that “the merge” from a few weeks past had wrought physical changes in my body so significant that my body could not survive apart from the nanomites. In my ignorance, I’d held on to the hope that, at Dr. Bickel’s command, the nanomites would vacate my body, and my life would, to a considerable extent, return to normal.

  I had clung to the prospect that when we saved Dr. Bickel, I would get my life back. Rescuing Dr. Bickel from Cushing’s captivity was supposed to have rescued me from imprisonment with the nanomites!

  But w
hen the Taser had decimated the nanocloud? It had been my death warrant as well as theirs, Dr. Bickel had explained.

  “I believe the nanomites have made, um, certain alterations to your anatomy, Gemma. As I said a while back. Changes at the cellular level.”

  “Are you s-saying they can’t leave?”

  “Well, no, not precisely. I’m saying that they could leave, Gemma,” he paused a long time before he framed the second half of his response. “I’m saying that they could leave, but if they did, I fear that you . . . would not survive.”

  The truth at its simplest was that, should the nanomites withdraw from my body, I would die—which also meant that if they died, I would, too. And as a result of the Taser’s discharge, many of the nanomites had already perished. As the mites that survived struggled to regroup, I was left in a stroke-like condition, my body weak and growing weaker.

  In an attempt to save me, Dr. Bickel had revealed the treasure he had hidden in a niche in the cavern wall—stacks and stacks of silicon wafer carriers or clamshells. Each clamshell contained a single wafer containing uncut, unprogrammed nanomites; each clamshell was marked for the nanomite tribe it contained.

  “Before I fled my lab in the AMEMS department at Sandia, I printed as many wafers as I could in the time I had. My technicians, Rick and Tony, kept the printer running without pause, day and night, right up until the morning Cushing and Dr. Prochanski set the timer on the bomb,” he’d explained. “You can see that I have multiple stacks of wafers for each tribe—enough nanomites to rebuild the nanocloud many times over.”

  Dr. Bickel had presented a sample of the printed wafers to the mites that had survived the Taser’s burst of voltage. He had assumed the active mites would cut the unprogrammed nanomites from the wafers and power and program them, thus reconstituting the nanocloud’s depleted ranks. However, he never imagined that the nanomites would free and power all the printed mites—but they had.

  The resulting number of active nanomites exceeded twenty trillion.

  Twenty trillion!

  Twenty trillion new nanomites comprised the reconstructed “nanocloud.” (Nanocloud: the combined tribes’ powerful gestalt—the combination of their knowledge, abilities, and cooperation that exceeded the sum of the individual tribes.) When the nanocloud came online, my body should have healed. Should have regained its near-preternatural strength.

  Instead, I had only inched away from encroaching death. The nanomites had pulled me millimeters from the brink upon which I’d been standing but no farther.

  I knew then . . . something else was very wrong.

  When the mites had called me apart for a confab at the far end of the cavern, my suspicions had grown and been confirmed. Near the cavern’s ceiling, where the light fixtures ringed the cavern’s walls, I’d found them: a haze, a misty fog filled with beautiful colors.

  The reconstituted nanocloud.

  “Nano. You . . . you aren’t in me?” I’d asked.

  Some of us remain in you, Gemma Keyes. We are six. However, we are larger now, and we face a dilemma, Gemma Keyes. For this reason, we have requested the confab.

  A dilemma? What in this universe did the nanomites consider a “dilemma”?

  Gemma Keyes, we are six. You are Gemma Tribe. You have carried us. We cannot bear being apart from you, but . . . you asked for a count of our ranks. You understand that we are larger, much larger. When we were smaller, we effected changes to your body that provided us with a hospitable environment. When you became Gemma Tribe, we effected other, more fundamental changes to your body.

  “Yes, I know.” Fearful of what was coming, I had started to shake.

  We made those changes without adequate forethought and without your express permission. This was . . . shortsighted of us. We understand that now; we understand that we placed your body’s continued wellbeing in jeopardy, because you cannot live without us, Gemma Keyes.

  I’d swallowed. “Yeah. I know that, too.”

  We did not foresee the day this fact would threaten your existence.

  “What . . . what does that mean?”

  The dilemma, Gemma Keyes. Our present ranks are too many to inhabit your body—the nanocloud is too large: It would kill you. The alternative, Gemma Keyes, would require further changes to your body—deeply fundamental changes at the molecular level. These changes would be necessary for your body to accept and accommodate the new and improved nanocloud.

  So, there had been no choice, really. Going back to who and what I’d been before the merge was not possible—and without the reconstituted nanocloud, my body would have died. Had nearly died.

  The only option, besides death, had been to go forward.

  But I’d been too scared and too heartbroken to give my immediate consent to the nanomites, so I’d stalled. And I’d grieved.

  You see, before I’d left my friends on the other side of the cavern to meet with the nanomites, Zander had declared his love for me. He’d come up to me, cupped my face in his good hand, and said, “I’ll be praying for you, Gemma. Whatever happens, you belong to Jesus now. He has you. And whatever happens, I’ll be right here, waiting for you.”

  Then he’d kissed me. A real, honest-to-goodness kiss.

  “I love you, Gemma. I’ve been wanting to say that for a while.”

  His beautiful gray eyes had sought mine, looking for an answering declaration.

  “I know. Me, too. I love you back, Zander.”

  That was before the nanomites had given me the bad news: No coming back from this.

  No regular, normal life.

  No happily ever after for Zander and me.

  Oh, Zander!

  So, I’d grieved . . . and a full-on hot mess like that takes a little time.

  Eventually, I had given the nanomites the permission they’d asked and for which they had patiently lingered.

  Hours later, the changes were complete.

  ~~**~~

  Part 1:

  Stealth Revival

  Chapter 1

  I stopped a few feet from my friends, and they, wordless and apprehensive, studied me until Gamble asked, “What has happened, Gemma? You look . . . different.”

  “Do I?” I heard Gamble from a distance. I was turned inward, listening to the mites as they spoke—and they had much to tell me. “Hearing” them felt simpler. Less “them and me,” more “us.”

  While the nanomites spoke, I tried to take an internal inventory. My mind seemed much more attuned to my physical workings, and I glimpsed bodily functions that were, in many ways, abnormal. Accelerated. I didn’t query the nanomites on what I suspected, because their answers would have been irrelevant.

  What was done was done and could not be reversed.

  I think my friends could tell how preoccupied I was. As I focused on what the mites were saying, my companions held whispered deliberations.

  Dr. Bickel, his observations slow and thoughtful, said, “If the nanomites freed all their printed fellows, I calculate that the nanocloud is much larger than it was before—on the order of seven times the previous size.”

  He struggled to reach a conclusion and put it into words. “Hmmm. Yes. See here, if we rightly consider the increased size of the nanocloud and factor in the conjoined computing functionality of all its members, we would be mistaken to view the nanomites in terms of mere ‘additive’ strength.”

  “Additive strength? Explain, please,” Zander demanded.

  “Certainly. I’m saying that rather than supposing the cloud to be stronger than it was previously simply by the addition of seventeen trillion nanomites to its original three trillion for a total of twenty trillion or more, we should, instead, ascribe exponential wherewithal to the nanocloud.”

  “You said the cloud is ‘seven times the previous size.’ Does that make the nanomites ‘seven times’ more powerful than before?”

  “That is multiplicative. I said, exponentially greater: that is, not seven times its original might, but seven to the seventh power.
Approaching a million times more powerful.”

  “What? But, what does that mean for Gemma?”

  “The sheer numbers are one matter; we must wait and see how those numbers affect Gemma. The more concerning issue is how the nanocloud—the gestalt of the whole—functions in that exponentially greater manner—and how their greater functions impact Gemma.”

  “But . . .” Zander didn’t finish, and I felt his eyes on me.

  Changes. I glimpsed those changes. Felt them. The mites had called them “alterations”—deeply fundamental modifications at the molecular level. Put that way, they sounded horrific. Experientially—what I was experiencing—those changes were not horrific or scary. They were . . . powerful.

  We. We were powerful. I was still figuring out how much and in what ways.

  But what would Zander think? Would he be appalled? Would he pull back from me in fear? In disgust and loathing?

  Then I remembered, and my heart fell. I would never have a life apart from the nanocloud. As part of the nanocloud, I was no longer my own being.

  Did Zander’s feelings matter anymore? No.

  Zander started to come closer, but I shook my head, and he stopped. I looked down and sighed before answering his earlier question.

  “Dr. Bickel is right; the nanomites did cut and activate all the printed mites on the wafers, and very few of them died in the process.” I glanced up at my friends. “Counting the nanomites that survived the Taser’s shockwave and the damaged mites they were able to save and repair, the nanocloud numbers at close to twenty-one trillion.”

  Cocking my head, I drew on newer, updated numbers and corrected myself. “The exact count as of this moment is 21.786 trillion.”

  I stared at Zander. Only hours before, this man had declared his love for me—and I for him—and we had sealed that declaration with a kiss. What must I tell him under these changed circumstances?

  “I’m so sorry, Zander.”

  He licked his lips and chose his words with care. “Why are you sorry? What have they done to you?”

  “They kept me from dying.”

  Zander’s relief caused him to swallow. “So, you’re all right? They’ve healed your body?”

  I looked down, then away, and wiped a hand across my eyes to hide the moisture that leaked from them. Tiny flashes and flickers followed my fingers.