The dread nought complet.., p.1
The Dread Nought Complete Series Boxed Set, page 1
DREAD NOUGHT
COMPLETE BOXED SET
BOOKS 1-5
MARC STIEGLER
This Book is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.
Copyright © 2021-2023 Marc Stiegler
Cover Art by Jake @ J Caleb Design
http://jcalebdesign.com / jcalebdesign@gmail.com
Cover copyright © LMBPN Publishing
LMBPN Publishing supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.
The distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact info@kurtherianbooks.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
LMBPN Publishing
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Version 1.00, April 2024
eBook ISBN: 979-8-88878-834-9
CONTENTS
Triple Cross
Double Tap
Power Play
Zero Sum
Infinity Option
Other Books by Marc Stiegler
Connect
DEDICATION
For the Dark Mistress...the caviar is for you.
TRIPLE CROSS
DREAD NOUGHT BOOK 1
1
A CHANCE ENCOUNTER
Having finished her study of the store’s security cameras, Cassie adjusted her face mask beneath her oversized sunglasses and stepped outside. She turned right, leaving the camera shop with its bright, shiny toys behind. Moments later, she hunched to avoid hitting her head on the rusty metal scaffolding supporting the construction overhead.
The scaffolding hung too high above her to threaten her, but she found New York uncomfortable and strange. She trusted neither the buildings nor the people. She picked up speed as she walked parallel to the one-way traffic.
As she came out from under the scaffolding, she pulled her Cincinnati Reds baseball cap lower over her face.
Why wear the sunglasses and the cap? They might seem pointless to those who passed her. After all, direct sunlight almost never reached the street here, with its endless rows of tall stone and concrete buildings jammed together as far as the eye could see. But in her line of work, Cassie figured it was best to avoid offering fodder for easy identification by the myriad vidcams surveilling the street, even though she probably wouldn’t hit the camera store’s vault until next week.
Cassie scanned the scene for additional escape routes. Only one break in the relentless line of harsh facades existed, an alley that served primarily as a pay-to-park lot. Vehicles were jammed up on both sides of the single lane, packed as tightly as the buildings surrounding it.
It might do.
Around her passed pedestrians wearing black and gray with the occasional splash of white, perfect camouflage against buildings that shared similar shading. A speckling of people wore black or white or gray masks, indistinguishable from hers. Memory of the pandemic had faded into willful forgetfulness, but people had become comfortable enough with masks on the street that some people still wore them, and no one thought twice about it.
Factions in the government occasionally muttered about outlawing masks—they played havoc with the feds’ facial recognition software—but the mutterings always subsided into silence. The death of those efforts left Cassie sighing with relief. Her job was hard enough.
An unnatural splash of color exited the Sassoon Salon just beyond the parking alley and turned toward her. A young woman about Cassie’s age and height, maskless, flounced out with her long blonde hair bouncing behind her. Her sweater looked like the kind of brilliant blue and yellow jersey a cheerleader might wear. She even carried a shiny silver stick—too short to be a majorette’s baton but otherwise identical—and she was twirling it with unthinking ease.
A white van pulled up beside the blonde, proudly marketing its purpose on the side: HVAC. Refrigeration. Heating. Electricity.
Four men in black suits with black ties and black masks jumped out of the van to surround the girl. A man and a woman farther down the street wearing DKNY t-shirts and shorts appraised the evolving confrontation and crossed the street to stay clear.
Two of the suits tried to grab the cheerleader while the others turned to wave off anyone who might approach.
Cassie swore, “Why me?” into her mask. “It’s none of my business. Right?” Her feet instinctively turned to carry her across the street to avoid the confrontation.
She took a deep, angry breath, then continued muttering, “And yet, crap like this keeps happening to me. Coincidence, right? Right. But what difference does it make?” The suits reminded her of the ones who’d taken her boyfriend a few years earlier while she stood watching, helpless and useless. Not today.
She pursed her lips before yanking off her mask and her glasses. Erasing the anger from her face and giving the suits a full dose of her widest-eyed innocence, she approached the battle of thugs versus cheerleader with an easy swinging gait and a bright, clueless smile.
The intended victim of the grab had proven remarkably acrobatic. She had slithered out of the hands of her polite attackers twice. Meanwhile, the man blocking interference from Cassie’s part of the sidewalk faced off with her in a set position that made her think of the Hulk staring down a massive opponent. He pointed at the other side of the street with commanding, controlled determination. “Sidewalk’s closed, ma’am.”
Out of her black leather sling purse, Cassie pulled the two-pound exercise weight that fit neatly into her hand, stepped up close, and punched him in the throat.
The suit staggered back, squeaking out a warning.
Cassie paused for only a moment to grab her first opponent by the jacket and push him to the side before jumping at the next nearest attacker and swinging again. This one, however, had taken his partner’s gurgled warning to heart and blocked the punch. Cassie followed up with a kick to the groin, from which he twisted away.
The man grabbed her wrist and reached for her throat. Cassie’s free arm snaked past his attack. He caught her throat while she jammed her thumb in his eye. He gasped, released her, and stepped back.
At this point, the cheerleader snapped out her leg behind Cassie’s opponent, tripping him. As he fell backward, both Cassie and the cheerleader pushed him down until his head went crack! on the sidewalk.
Cassie jumped back up to confront the other two assailants, but they were both lying on the ground, one of them shaking like he had just been electrocuted. Amazed, she muttered, “We won.”
The cheerleader tapped her on the shoulder. “Not quite yet.” She pulled Cassie to the open door of the van and pushed her in. After leaping in herself, she climbed into the cab and tapped the driver on the side of the head with her now-full-length baton, whose rubber tip had slid down to expose a pair of short electrodes. The driver jerked, then slumped, and the cheerleader rushed with swift, graceful movements to unbuckle him and push him onto the street. She plunked into the driver’s chair and stomped on the gas. The van bounced twice as they accelerated, and the cheerleader winced. “Sorry,” she muttered under her breath.
Cassie wanted to ask what she was sorry about, but she was forced to swallow the words as the movements of the van hurled her against the edge of the van’s still-open door. As the crazy blonde swerved, a notebook marked Eyes Only flew across the interior and bounced on the sidewalk. Cassie grabbed wildly for the back of the passenger seat lest she involuntarily follow.
The cheerleader smiled over her shoulder. “You probably want to close that door. Then come ride shotgun.”
Dale Strickland, a team director of the Dread Nought Corporation, watched from a second-story window of the office building across the street as Remy Tambook bounced out of the Sassoon Salon. When a white van rolled up next to her, he swore. “Dammit, AID just showed up. Timmy, what’s your ETA?”
The earbud crackled as Timmy answered in disgust, “I’m still two minutes out. Bunch of tourists decided to cross the street in front of me.”
Dale couldn’t see that he had much choice. Though Dread Nought generally tried hard to avoid shooting wars with AID, his boss had declared Remy’s acquisition imperative at any cost. “Jake, you got a shot?”
Jake grunted. “Barely. The van’s in the way.”
Dale started to tell Jake to shoot anyway when another woman, a twenty-something with jet-black hair about the same length as Remy’s and about her size and build, strode gaily onto the scene. Something about her seemed more determined and focused than her easy, swinging stride and wide-eyed innocence suggested. He paused to see if the newcomer changed the equation in any useful way.
Besides, it was uncool to accidentally shoot bystanders.
The battle took no longer than he’d expected, but the outcome astonished him. He shared the brunette’s surprise when Remy appeared from behind the van, having apparently vanquished two of the assailants on her own, to assist in the final takedown of the Good Samaritan’s second foe.
Remy’s victory threw Dale’s timing off enough that he barked his orders a moment too late, “Jake! Shoot the tires!” By then, Remy had tosse
His Dread Nought van, a black vehicle advertising Linens a la Carte in an elegant pink font, slammed to a halt just before hitting the AID driver, who fortunately seemed to be unconscious and therefore unaware of his shattered lower body.
Timmy spoke wildly. “Who’s this? Where’s the target?”
Jake answered, annoyed, “She just grabbed the AID van.”
Dale continued, “That’s the AID driver in front of you.”
Timmy backed up a few feet. “Should I follow them?”
Dale frowned when the white van turned far down the street and disappeared. “She’s gone. Again.”
Jake swore. “That’s the luckiest damned chick in the universe.”
Dale shook his head. “Is she really? Lucky, I mean?”
Cassie sat quietly, wondering how she’d wound up here as the blonde wove through the city.
When they stopped for a red light, the cheerleader turned and beamed at her. “You can call me Remy, by the way. Thank you for rescuing me.”
Cassie frowned. “Did I actually rescue you? I get the feeling you would have done just fine without me.”
Remy answered noncommittally, “It’s always better to have an ally.”
Cassie turned interrogative. “Who were those guys anyway? Why were they chasing you?”
Remy gave her a sidelong glance. “Are you really sure you want to know?”
Cassie had suspected she might get the runaround, so she had prepared. She reached into her pocket, where she had slipped the wallet of the first man she had hit with her exercise weight as she pushed him aside. “AID,” she muttered. She squinted at the ID card. “Analytical Intelligence Division.” She grunted. “Division of what?”
Remy bounced in her seat. Cassie grabbed at the door handle as the van swerved wildly when Remy released the steering wheel to throw up both hands in a High-V cheer. “Most excellent! Cassie, you’re just as resourceful as I’d hoped you’d be.”
2
A CONUNDRUM
Cassie was stupefied. “How the hell do you know my name? What kind of a setup is this?” She looked around in concern. “Let me out.”
“At least let me ditch the van first.” Remy pointed out the window at a passing video camera. “You probably don’t want to get recorded hopping out of a stolen van.”
Cassie clenched her fists. “They already recorded me hopping into a stolen van! While it was being stolen!”
Remy conceded. “Ok, valid point, but that video will be scrubbed clean. AID is not going to let anyone see a recording of them trying to kidnap me.”
“Which brings us back to the question, just who is AID anyway?”
While slowing down for another red light, Remy looked at her thoughtfully. “You still want to know? As you wish.” The light changed, and they accelerated again. “AID is a covert black ops division of the NSA.”
Cassie shook her head. “Hold on. I don’t know much about the government, but I know the NSA doesn’t do ops. They’re just computer nerds, collecting data from all around the world.” She squinted into the distance, trying to remember more. “They aren’t even allowed to collect surveillance here in the United States.”
Remy shook her head at her naïve partner. “You really believe they don’t spy here in America? When the surveillance satellites spin over our heads, do you think they shut the cameras off? When a possible terrorist on an airplane or a boat crosses into American airspace, do they stop watching?”
Cassie frowned. “OK. But they still don’t do ops. The CIA is the one that tries to assassinate enemy leaders and stuff.”
Remy’s voice turned triumphant. “See what a great cover story that is? Who’s going to believe there’s an NSA assassination squad?”
That shut Cassie up. She knew there was something screwy with the logic, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on the problem.
As they turned into a parking garage, Cassie realized Remy had done a great job of deflecting her from the real question. How the hell did Remy know who she was?
Up and up, around and around the circular drive Remy wheeled. Almost at the top, she parked the vehicle into a corner slot.
Cassie climbed out of the van and watched as her new friend—or new enemy?—went through several antics.
First, Remy slid the rubber ball back up over the end of her baton, snapping the rubber tip into place. Then she slammed the baton tip-first into the concrete pavement with an outsized bang. The baton collapsed to its original size, one-third the length of a regulation baton.
She then pulled off her jersey.
Cassie blinked. A smug thought passed through her mind that, based on what she could see filling the bra, her own pair was at least as nice as Remy’s. She objected, “Hey! Keep ‘em holstered!”
Remy paid no attention but continued turning the jersey inside out. Once she had wriggled it back into position, she presented a different persona to the world. The inverted sweater showed a full-face portrait of Christina Aguilera.
A pair of dark sunglasses virtually identical to Cassie’s followed, and her long blonde hair was wound up in a bun hidden beneath a black cap. She frowned at Cassie. “You are not adequately protected,” she muttered. “Let me see what we’ve got.” She shuffled stuff in her purse until she found a face mask imprinted with the visage of Bette Midler. “This’ll do.”
Cassie, more bemused than irritated, pulled on the mask along with her glasses and her cap. “What’s the point of this?”
Remy stared at her. “Faces on clothes play havoc with the facial recognition systems used by the public video camera networks. With a shirt like mine or a mask like yours, we can’t be tracked by automation. They have to go with a full-up manual manhunt.”
She clucked her tongue. “Really, I’d expect you to know things like this, given your line of work.”
That led Cassie back to wondering how the hell Remy knew so much about her. But she needed to defend herself. “I always figured a simple mask, glasses, and a hat would do the trick.”
Remy sighed. “Sure, sort of; that works most of the time. But just covering your face marks you with a suspicious non-identity, whereas giving them an alternate face gives them an incorrect identity. Much better.” She started walking down the circular drive at a pace that made Cassie trot to catch up. “Let’s go.”
Remy took the stairs, not the elevator, and two levels below, she guided Cassie to a bland unmarked white van with very dark tinted windows.
Cassie stopped a few feet away. She stood uncertainly. “Well, you seem to be safe now. I guess I’ll be going.”
Remy laughed. “Nonsense. Let me at least fix you lunch.” Her voice turned sober. “Besides, they’re looking for you too. You’ll be much better off with me for a while.” She beeped the doors to unlock, circled the van, and slid into the driver’s seat.
When Cassie continued to stand there, Remy rolled down the passenger-side window. “Hop in.” She laughed once more, the sound somehow coaxing despite the sarcasm the words that followed could have conveyed if spoken by almost anyone else. “Really, where else do you have to go?”
Cassie continued to stand there, growing angrier by the moment. How would Remy know where she did or did not have to go? Really, this bitch rated as the most annoying person she’d met in the city.
Of course, upon reflection, Cassie hadn’t exchanged more than ten words with anyone since getting here, so how would she know if anyone else was more annoying?
Eventually, Cassie acknowledged to herself the much deeper reason for her incandescent irritation. The worst thing about Remy at this moment was that she was right. Cassie had nowhere else to go. She’d rented an apartment for thirty days—not bad, but far from a penthouse paradise. “Aargh.”
