Brute Force
By K.B. Spangler
Right after 9/11, everyone was in shock and the average member of the civil service community were horrified at what happened on their watch and desperate for ways to ensure it would never happen again. In the following year a wealthy businessman would offer the government an exciting new technology that would allow government agents to exchange information and coordinate on a level that couldn't be matched. All it would require is massively invasive brain surgery and a lifelong commitment on the part of the agents, so you know, nothing too big. They approved the program and used 500 volunteers from across the civil service. The agents in question were from everywhere, IRS, FBI, the military, CIA, etc. They received a cybernetic implant that basically connected their brains not just to the internet but gave them the ability to access any electronic device capable of being communicated with, even if it didn't typically have networking capability. Of course dealing with all of that would be overwhelming so an ever-so-helpful interface was added, it would appear as a cartoon version of President George W Bush. The interface proceeded to drive the agents insane (readers feel free to insert their own political joke here [Can I? Please?! There are so many!]). The powers-that-be, realizing they had made a teeny tiny mistake by utterly destroying the lives of 500 loyal Americans with improperly tested technology (or was it?) and that the voting public had a shocking inability to take such minor mistakes with grace and humor, decided to bury it as deep as possible. Before someone demanded heads roll for this one. So the 500 volunteers who wanted to serve their nation were all rolled together into a single agency with two departments and given quiet non-demanding busy-work and all the drugs they would need to make their lives marginally bearable. Five years passed and they learned that if they just stopped feeling feelings and thinking thoughts, that the interface was almost workable. It's about this point that an agent was assigned to shadow a very special young lady named Hope and things broke open.
Brute Force is the 4th book in the Rachael Peng series, which takes place after the public revelation of everything that happened in the above paragraph and the agents received the help they need to live as human beings again. Rachael Peng, as a former member of the Army Criminal Investigation Command, was seconded out to the Washington DC Metro Police. She often finds herself on the forefront of difficult and politically sensitive cases that could spell doom for herself and the remaining 400 or so cyborgs who are fending off political threats that could see them reduced to tools or worse. This is on top of dealing with the other parts of her life that complicate matters, such as being a 3rd generation American born Chinese woman, being gay, and technically blind thanks to a really bad reaction to her implant. Agent Peng may have used direct sunlight to reduce her eyeballs to barely functional bags of jelly, you see. That said, she kinda sees better than the rest of us combined, with her eyes down, her implant has taken over and allows here to see on a number of spectrums that are unavailable to us mere mortals. Among them is a spectrum that seems to allow her to directly observe someone's emotions (she sees them as colors, so for her the average person is a rolling combination of colors and shades that constantly shift according to their emotional state). This makes her really good at sussing out when someone is lying or hiding something. She can also see the density of objects and if she wants, see through things at times. This helps her be a really good shot among other things. So Agent Peng is a cyborg with superpowers with her own police unit that she fights crime with and she is gonna need every superpower and every friend she can get because crime has come knocking with boots on.
So Hope Blackwell, the woman who was instrumental to freeing the agents from their imposed hell; and Avery the barely-out-of-diapers first born child of a pair of agents (also the first born child of any agents) have been kidnapped by a militia being led by a Sovereign Citizen Lawyer (Oh look, a contradiction in terms!) named Jeremy Nicholson. A Sovereign Citizen (which I should note is a label not all members of the movement accept) to put it briefly is someone who believes that federal laws do not apply to them and they can declare themselves not citizens of the United States but citizens of their states and thus opt out of having to follow federal laws. Most of the time this involves refusing to pay taxes, but there have been times when it turns violent and sovereign citizens have killed police officers for a variety of reasons, including have a police officer pull over their car. So there's every reason to worry that the militia may turn violent (Kidnapping is violent. Ship sailed!) ... More violent and worse Hope and Avery aren't the only people they've kidnapped. The hostages and the militia have holed up in a ruined factory that was owned by Jeremy's father but closed down by a corrupt EPA agent decades ago. On top of that, this has turned into a media circus as the militia as made sure every news outfit who can reach them has been told what's going on. Jeremy claims he's doing this as a protest and tells everyone that Hope and the other hostages are there willingly (Because clearly the toddler can hold high ideals about Militias). No one's buying that and while everyone is worried about the confrontation with the militia turning violent, they're actually a bomb ticking away here. You see, Hope is perhaps the most dangerous woman in the world, being burdened with a number of mental issues (I'm pretty sure she has ADHD just to start with) and has a natural talent for the art of maiming and murder, as if she was the unholy spawn of Bruce Lee and Miesha Tate. If that wasn't bad enough she also great at escaping and if her meds should wear off while she's tied to a chair and being starved...
Look guys, speaking from my own experience, strength, speed, and size do matter in a fight. Bigger stronger people tend to win and the bigger and stronger you are the less skill you need to put people down. That said, with enough skill and raw screaming desire to hurt people? You can make up for a lack in size, strength, or speed. Add in this, none of the militia guys are big enough, strong enough or fast enough to make up for the difference in skill level between them and Hope. So if her discipline snaps? She will kill a good number of them before one of them finally shoots her, which will drive her husband - a man big and strong enough to lift cars for fun and skilled enough to spar with his wife even without his cyborg super powers - over the line. Before I forget, the factory is also full of stolen Chinese firearms, so it's entirely possible that the Chinese government is involved or at least someone wants everyone to think so. Rachel has to figure out what the bad guy’s game actually is, because there's more going on here than a protest about an unjustly shut down factory. Who is backing Nicholson, where did he get the equipment, how did he come up with this game plan and who is this plan really aimed at? Can she crack this before her bosses or before Hope cracks? Can she do this without turning it into a public relations disaster and triggering a political backlash against the Cyborgs that might just turn them into tools of the government without legal rights? But she also has to tackle this while dealing with ghosts of her past haunting her. An old enemy has shown up out of nowhere, wearing the face of her old army buddy and having moved into her neighborhood. So now Rachael has to deal with the fact that a cold blooded killer is attending the neighborhood cookouts; a cold blooded killer who knows too many of her secrets for her to just turn in to the police. So Rachael has to work backwards using a person she cant trust to hunt down the origin of a militia armed with stolen Chinese firearms led by a rich kid lawyer turned sovereign citizen, and do so without letting any secrets leak out. At least she's not under pressure right?
K.B Spangler does a great job telling a tense story with complex characters and motivations while keeping the plot moving at a good pace. Although I'll admit that I think she glossed over a good amount of what Sovereign Citizens actually believe and might have been a tad too generous to them (despite making one of them the bad guy). That said, Ms. Spangler does a good job presenting people who believe that they're doing things for the right reason, even while they're crossing just about every moral line imaginable. Of course her protagonists also do a number of shifty things, but I would argue they never get near as dirty as their enemies. Her books tend to show a very good understanding of how things work in the federal government and present a convincing example of the culture within the civil services that actually make our country functional, even when they're under attack. Rachael is a great character and plays well off the others, although I have to admit that I am disappointed that Santino (her partner) was barely in this book. In fact a good amount of the supporting cast doesn't really get to involved in this one, with most of the supporting work taken up by fellow agents like Josh Glassmen or the gentleman I'm going to refer to as Wyatt. To be honest Wyatt and Rachael don't play off each other as well as Santino, Hill, and the others do. That might be because I just flat out don't like Wyatt. I just don't find an outright psychopath (or is he a sociopath with violent tendencies?[Depends on personal history. Psychopaths are born, sociopaths are made… usually but not always from psychopaths]) a compelling character and if we're going to be honest, I may have been really looking forward to Rachael finally tracking him down. It's still a fun read with a well thought out plot, good crisp action, and as always snappy dialogue. Brute Force by KB Spangler gets an -A.
Next week, we go further into science fiction with Poor Man Fights by Kay Elliott, this Sunday our very own editor would like to discuss something in our first From the Editor's Chair. Keep reading!
Red text is your editor, Dr. Ben Allen.
Black text is your reviewer Garvin Anders.
Other reviews in this series are:
Digital Divide http://frigidreads.blogspot.com/2016/11/digital-divide-by-kb-spangler.html
Maker Space http://frigidreads.blogspot.com/2017/01/maker-space-by-kb-spangler.html
State Machine http://frigidreads.blogspot.com/2017/04/state-machine-by-kb-spangler.html
Greek Key http://frigidreads.blogspot.com/2017/06/greek-key-by-kg-spangler.html
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