Win a signed copy of R.J. Huneke's thriller Cyberwar from the Goodreads Book Giveaway below!

When hackers seize the world governments everything changed for all of humanity. A new sense of hope arrived in the streets and young people everywhere embraced the new world order. However, what appeared to be a new found freedom soon turned out to be a new tyranny far worse than anything they imagined. 

William Waltz formed part of the new elite that guarded the regime, that is, until the regime turned on him.

Ten copies are available for contestants from the US, the UK, and Australia!

As the release date for the novel Cyberwar draws nearer, a recent report marks at least one film representative is already expressing interest in optioning the upcoming thriller.

At this point the possibilities are endless, but Hollywood is calling.

First reported by Rune Works (the Press Relations company representing Cyberwar) after a recent talk with the publisher Pentian CEO Enrique Parrilla, who stated that yes, “an [as yet] unnamed studio in L.A. has already expressed interest in optioning the rights [for Cyberwar].”

As Los Angeles and the rest of the world wait for the book’s launch – possibly in stores as soon as October 1, 2014 – the buzz surrounding Pentian’s first major US release on the fiction market is amassing a lot of interest.

Thriller and commercial readers stand ready: there has never been a book like this!

In the description of the suspense work a grim present or possible future is laid out under the guise of a new regime . . .

It all went to hell when the world’s greatest cyber warriors chose to wage war for themselves and not on behalf of the politicians that hired them. Hackers, they used to be called.

To Xera, William Waltz was a broken spy and a fugitive, manipulated by the Cyber Elite that ruled from Canada to Peru. If she helped him, the Cyberwar could be avoided . . . but the assassin named “Sheetrock” tracked them to use his bio-hacked body to delete them both.

The research on cyber warfare and political protest, as well as a strong female protagonist set this riveting story apart.

The target audience for this book is the readers of commercial thrillers. Cyberwar resembles a cross between Miller’s Sin City and Fleming’s James Bond novels.

The book has been finished and is now a series. The release date is slated from the publisher to be in bookstores sometime in the coming weeks.

Read the opening excerpt here: 

It all went to hell when the world’s greatest cyber warriors chose to wage war for themselves and not on behalf of the politicians that hired them. Hackers, they used to be called. Somehow the term for “one who hacks a computer” was deemed offensive during the Occupancy War and subsequently placed on the Banned Vocabulary List. 
Many decades earlier, at the end of the twentieth century, cyber warriors were defined simply:

cyber-warrior
noun
1. Cyber-warrior is a person who engages in cyberwarfare for personal reasons or out of political or religious belief. 
2. A spy that can infiltrate the highest levels of security
3. Cyber-warriors wage war using information technology and may attack computers or information systems through hacking or defending them from their counterparts.

___________________________________________________

There was an overlong shadow just outside of the Devil’s Shed. The facility’s alias was local folklore; the graying storage container’s door had what looked like two demonic horns of rust near the top. No one in town knew its real purpose. 

William Waltz squatted just below the enormous demonization and waited patiently. His face was covered in grease to eliminate any glare that the rain might make on his skin; this was nothing unfamiliar to him, as his father had a career as a bike mechanic and in his short life had shown ‘skinny William’ the value of getting dirty when it served a purpose. Thirty years of grit had made him a world-class locksmith.

The code magnet had to pull enough of a reusable ocular scan from memory to fool the door’s access scanner. The lock’s subterfuge, a functioning power switch box, hung open from hinges. The box’s red handle remained in the “Off” position as a decoy. 

Waltz held the B9 scatter pistol as though it was glued to his right hand, and he stood utterly still. In the sweeping rain, the only streetlamp was a good fifty yards away, and though the glint of its light could be seen in the drops that clung to the silenced black barrel, he was effectively invisible if he did not move. 

Twenty minutes had already passed this way. The customized code magnet would infiltrate the scanner’s memory sometime within twenty-five. Come on already. I really have to take a leak, he thought wryly. Sitting still was not one of his favorite tasks.

It was a long time to wait. For William Waltz it was torturous purgatory; a limbo without any semblance of time, except for the agonizing screen’s circulating tumblers. It was hell.

The Wangluo operatives had already abducted a member of the Cyber Coalition ambassador’s office, Moreen DeMarco, and she was to be beheaded on live Internet channels if Waltz did not intervene quickly. The tiny woman was filmed on a chair with a black bag covering her head and upper torso; she held her passport in quivering hands for the cameras. Wangluo denied all affiliation with the radicals who held Ms. DeMarco in a secret location. But Waltz had found them out, confirming the ambassador’s representative was being held in the embassy via her tracking nodules.

The Boston Clam Jam blasted in his headphones with the drums throbbing, Ba-Da BOOM BUM, Ba-da BOOM DUM. It urged Waltz to action, as if there was not anymore pressure for him. His legs shook feverishly, once his typing stopped. He waited.

The United Nations Wangluo Embassy was hallowed ground. He was at a stalemate while the eyes in the sky kept watch over everyone. Without the cameras going blind, he could do nothing. The world would not allow for any transgression on such neutral territory, and the world would answer swiftly with war to protect “the peace.” It was the one safe haven each country’s diplomats could rely on without question, and it was one of the few things that had been able to stalwart peace and stymy a world war.

“Thank the gods for coffee,” he said to himself as he watched the long lines of worms unzipping the protective grids of the security system code. 

The draught of black java was steaming, and the silken tendrils found their way over the keyboard, up and up into his nostrils. It would be his third cup of the night, but he needed it to stay more than awake and warm, to stay focused and alert beyond measure of all but the most adept cyber spies.

Though the Colombian bean was incredibly rare and terribly expensive due to the coffee plant blight in Central and South America, Cyber had responded kindly to his working tool and provided him with a supply monthly. Waltz was low maintenance in regards to the tools he required for his trade. 

Many Cyber Warriors relied on tech implants into their bodies, which meant their bodies were physically in constant upheaval with their own immune systems and their anti-bodies. A simple scrape alongside an A-block phone bio-implanted in the forearm brought heavily amplified infection. Something as simple as brushing cement caused suffering more often than not. The interface of the cellular with the electronic tech was not yet perfected. Such infection required super-engineered antibiotics the like of which only government disease control centers, like Cyber’s and Wangluo’s, were capable of engineering safely.
The indigo clusters pulled apart and disintegrated on the screen. Flashes and swirling numerals marked the security system’s attempts to raise alarms and push Waltz out. The window was short: twenty minutes and all traces of the invasion would disappear. 

He was in.

With a slow, sloppy pull from his mug, Waltz finished the coffee and ran across the rooftop. Night and the thick rain had given him the cover needed to evade the restaurant’s meager cameras, and they had no thermal sensors. Unfortunately, the grid Waltz’s virus had just taken offline was wholly separate from the establishment across the street.
As he rushed to the ladder on the side of the building, a heavy firedoor swung open and bashed him off of his feet. The security guards were more than the typical retired cops, they were tall, square, blocks of muscle that took advantage of his falling. They quickly pummeled his head and ribs. All thought, the racing streams riding the coffee buzz, abandoned Waltz. 

“Clearly you guys are Russian mafia-” 

A fist cracked his jaw and cut him off. His nose was next and the smell of blood filled him. He struggled to get off of his back while the two giants kicked and jabbed with freakish speed.

“Ex-KGB?”

An elbow connected with his temple.

“That’s a joke, guys. I’m sure you have no fucking idea who the KGB were.”

Waltz entered the fetal position and tried to roll. Heavy boots swarmed his back from one guard and his ribs and gut from the other. The thin layer of Kevlar beneath his clothes was the only thing saving him from being crippled permanently.

His pocket vibrated. There were only fifteen minutes left to save Moreen DeMarco’s life. There were only fifteen minutes left to prevent an all-out cyberwar. Shielding his face as best he could, Waltz put together enough thoughts to form a swift plan. 

Fifteen minutes.

Time slid away, like the rain on the slippery metal roof. In between pummeling blows, he reached back and pulled the laptop from his pack. The guards anticipated his using it as a shield. Instead, he rolled with it to the nearest deep puddle and plunged it home.

God, I hope the super-ion battery’s charged enough, he thought. 
As the guards each aimed to break the device in half with their punting of it, Waltz seized their ankles. As he grasped their pasty, almost luminescent skin in the night’s storm, he leaned his own elbows into the sizzling computer, and the three of them were jarred with agonizing electrocution.

“AARRRRRGGGGG!”

They were thrown in three different directions away from the shorted machine. The already dark and shadowy world dimmed to black.

* * *

ZZZZZmmmm. 

The vibration of his A-block woke Waltz to a start. He had training in the most adverse of circumstances and dealing with a digitally electrified world’s infrastructure on a daily basis, he was quite resistant to all but the deadliest of high voltage shocks.

He turned and threw up, the coffee boiling his esophagus horribly as it exploded across his black suit and then sputtered onto the rainy rooftop in Eastern Russia. Oh man, he thought, there’s only ten minutes left. I have to get her out, if it kills me.

Being born with a fair share of hard lumps offset by a good amount of luck, Waltz sat up and realized that despite their enormity, the mafia restaurant security guards were still unconscious. Their white dinner jackets were soaked with grime; their heads were lying against doused steel, and their sunglasses were cracked. But they were asleep. 
Waltz was free to go. Then he noticed the miniature ocular computer on the side of their glasses. They had been filming him. And he did not have time to undo the oncoming assault of mob guys protecting their territory that were surely on the way.

“No wonder the embassy allowed the restaurant to open right across the street from it,” he said. “No one in their right mind would trespass here.” He laughed at himself and coughed, holding what was surely many a bruised and broken rib. 

“Stay focused, genius. Time’s running out on her.”

Despite being barely able to walk, he rummaged along the rooftop until he found an air conditioning unit and the 220-volt lines coming into it. His experienced hands were unbroken and did their work on autopilot:  wires were exposed, the ground’s disconnected, and the rest were shorted against the metal casing. Sparks, smoke, and fire erupted upward. 

Waltz shielded his eyes and hurried away to the nearest ladder. He slowly lowered himself down the three-story building, wincing with every movement and every rung of the slimy ladder. Thunder rocked his recovering eardrums.

Since the cameras were down, he walked through the front gate and right on into the embassy. The U.N. representative, his name plaque said he was Sergio, looked curiously at Waltz’s drenched suit and beat up face and started to pick up a phone to call security over.

The buzz went off again. Five minutes was left until the system went back online and captured him.

Five minutes.

“Oh that won’t be necessary my good man,” said Waltz in perfect Russian. “Can I call you Sergio?”

“You may,” said Sergio answering in Russian. “Are you alright?”

“No, I am not. I was just mugged. They took my laptop, my wallet, and left me to-“

“Oh my god, are you alright?”

“I’m afraid I’m hurting a great deal. I need help, Sergio.”

“Let me call you a paramedic-“

“What’s going on here?” said a guard cutting off Sergio.

She was armed with a M6 semi-automatic rifle approached with her barrel pointed toward the floor. Her head was shaved. She looked ready to go ten rounds in a boxing match without showing a bruise.

Cameras lined the desk, the walls’ crown molding, the ceiling and many of the floor tiles. Big Brother’s eyes were everywhere. And Wangluo was blind for almost five more minutes.

Suddenly, Waltz slumped and feigned shifting woozily. He collapsed to the floor. As the guard leaned down, he grabbed her M6 and clocked her across the side of the head. She fell to the tile, passed out. 

“Come on, Sergio. You’re going to bring me inside to where you’re keeping the Cyber lady, Moreen DeMarco.”

“You can’t-“

“Move or die, Serg,” said Waltz, “it’s up to you. But choose quickly.”

The somewhat round U.N. agent led the Cyber Warrior through a few long hallways in the lush mansion hurrying as though his fervent waddling was the only thing that would save his life. Sergio gingerly opened the door to the wing’s powder room where Ms. DeMarco was gagged and tied to a heavy wooden chair. There was a bucket below her, filled with refuse, but not a sign of the guards.

Waltz pointed to the floor in front of Sergio to indicate he stay put. Sergio looked down, and got bonked on the back of the head. Waltz caught him and lowered him to the wooden floor. The weight of Sergio was sheer agony, as it was to move so quickly.

Waltz slipped to the bedroom door, which was ajar. Inside the dim room was a thick fog of cigar smoke where half a dozen men sat in a circle cheering with fistfuls of paper as a woman rolled a set of dice. He caught the crimson glow of someone’s bionic eye, but they were focused on the bottle beside them and the rattle of the cubes. Fuck it, he thought.

Waltz stepped back to Moreen DeMarco and untied her. As she took off the blindfold, he held his finger over his lips in a sign of silence. She nodded, took out the gag, and pointed to her bruised and battered legs and signed for him to pick her up.

What does she want me to do, fall over? I know she’s small but I’m barely walking here. Damn it, why did I have to go and knock out Sergio? He could’ve lifted the bitch.

To his utter horror she opened her mouth to persist:

“Pick me up,” she whispered.

“I will murder you right here and now, and make you watch as I gouge my own balls out with that fork,” he said pointing to a catering cart nearby, “if you speak out loud again.”

He did his best to lean down and let her put a slender arm over his shoulder. As she rose, her feet stumbled and nearly fell out from under her. She grasped hold of his side with her other hand, and he felt something pop; a rib moved in a wholly unnatural way.

Waltz straightened her up and with his free hand bit into his fist as pain threatened to make him pass out. His lungs throbbed and swelled and restricted his breathing. 

The stars started to fade from his vision when his phone vibrated another warning: he had two minutes to exit unseen.

I’ll never make it, he thought. 

They ambled out of the powder room and he looked both ways, immediately regretting again knocking out the only guide he had for the building, Sergio. He had no idea where to go to reach the exits he had mapped out and get out on time; there was just the way they had come, the lobby, and it was sure to have people investigating the sloppily disposed of guard that he had foolishly left on the middle of the floor in his hurry. 

I’m not thinking clearly, he realized. It’s only the pain. The pain is not going to get the better of me. I can drown it out. His ear buds had long since fallen out, but the sound of guitar soloing filled his head anyway and pushed away the paralyzing agony.

He stopped and turned Moreen around. They headed back to the powder room. 

“You can’t take me back,” she protested.

“Shut the fuck up,” he whispered. His eyes glowed threateningly, preternaturally, almost as if they were bionic and red, but they were not – they were just furious. The music came back and he sought peace, found peace.

* * *

The alarms sounded blaringly. Waltz’s song snapped off in his head. He hurt so much. And the clangor made his head heavy with pain.

From the cramped storage of the catering cart, he sat with his charge on his lap. How they fit in that tiny coffin, he did not know. Every time Moreen shifted her weight needles fired in his broken body. He hated her guts. 

They were wheeled down to the shipping area where the food carts were swapped for ones laden with more sustenance for the guests at the embassy. Talk of the escape and the lack of any video evidence added mystery to the story; it was thick in the voices of the staff. They were just meagerly paid servants, but Cyber was feared all the same . . . and for good reason.

THE END.

This is a work of fiction exclusive to Cyberwarseries.com and was written by author R.J. Huneke. It explores the protagonist of Cyberwar, William Waltz, and takes place before the events of the book, but within the world of Cyber. 

PRE_ORDER this upcoming novel Cyberwar for as little as $10 on the publisher's site here: http://pentian.com/book/fund/601

Local author R.J. Huneke will be reading an exclusive excerpt from his upcoming thriller novel, Cyberwar! 

Come down to Crazy Beans coffee house in Miller Place, NY to hear parts of the book before the publication date. Sign up for contests to win free Cyberwar copies and exclusive art/perks, join in on a Q/A and receive FREE Book Posters Signed by the author!

Cyberwar is a thriller novel from author R.J. Huneke and will be published by Pentian Publishing working with Rune Works. Act now and visit Pentian's site here if you would like to read an excerpt from the first chapter and/or invest in Cyberwar to receive royalties from copies sold (for a limited time only).

Once again the characters will not quiet themselves unless I let them have their moment to speak out, and Xera wants to be formally introduced, just as she was to William Waltz in Cyberwar. 

She is one of the most willful, courageous, endearing and vengeful Valkyries I have ever had the pleasure to meet. She is also a crux in Cyberwar. And I love her.

Read the excerpt, revel in it, enjoy it, share it, and when you want to read more be sure to enter the world of Cyberwar at Pentian.com here.

~RJH

Once again, Waltz found himself checking his pockets for the A-block phone that was not there. He walked slowly to the end of the hall in the dark and felt wholly unprepared. Before his hand could touch the door there was a buzz and someone spoke to him.

“Tell me who you are and why you are here,” said a silky voice.

“My name is William Waltz. Is this Xera?”

“Is that why you’re here? What do you want with Xera?” she said.

“Yes,” he said.

“Yes?”

“Yes, that’s why I’m here. I’m not comfortable discussing business with someone from the other side of a door,” he said coolly. 


Shadows draped the hallway and added to his unease. He was not used to being given the third degree before even getting a look at his interviewer or his surroundings. Fear gave way to anger and annoyance. He turned to stalk away.

“Business, Mr. Waltz?” He stopped and rounded back.

“Yes. With Xera. Is there a way I can see about meeting with her?” he asked.
 
“She is indisposed for the foreseeable future I am afraid, Mr. Waltz,” said the voice growing playful and sultry. 

“It’s important.” 

“I’m afraid you’ll have to come back another-“

“I can’t! You tell her that a powerful client is going to be dead if she doesn’t intervene right now,” said Waltz quickly. “If I seem on edge, it’s because I’m not used to being the one that’s threatened, but there it is.”

“Looks like I’ll be able to coax more than one word conversations out of you after all. Last question: where did you hear the name Xera?”

“Smokin’ Joe Ricca. He’s a bit of a slob, but not a bad guy. I occasionally barter with him in Port,” answered Waltz.

“I’m going to buzz you in. I can’t get to the door just now, but you can come in and tell me all about your . . . business,” she said. A loud buzz shook plaster dust from the ceiling. He stepped into Xera’s and was happy to see that at least one lamp was on.

*     *     *

Despite a single lamp on an end table, Xera Finn’s place was a house of shadows. The deep gray lines and black circles criss-crossed and draped Xera’s, keeping the place hidden in every way. Only a bathroom at the far end of the hall offered any real light, and it spilled from the door that was ajar, like sunlight following a lunar eclipse. He squinted and heard rain begin to pelt the roof outside.

In actuality, the light in the bathroom was not that bright. William Waltz entered the doorway and saw that two lampshades, made of thick frosted glass, covered a pair of fifty-watt incandescent bulbs that protruded from each side of the wall behind the sink; he would not have been able to shave in that kind of light.

He stepped fully into the room and stared down at an extraordinary pale woman. She was stretched out in a corroded iron bathtub with one stocking-ed leg over the rim, while her head rested back on a rolled up towel. Her dark, piercing eyes looked at him in a relaxed, observant manner and her hair hung in wet strands toward the floor, as though it were fingering her very brain. He caught his breath.