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.

A slight hummmmmm sounded. The air behind Joshua trembled.

“What the?”

A blue glow dropped in front of his face. He jumped in fright. No one should have been able to get near him down there. Audio white noise played from the speaker that was duct-taped to the circular drone’s belly.

“How’s that possible?”

“I worked as a spy for Cyber,” said Waltz. “You might think your computers are locked down, but you seem to have forgotten who I used to be and what I used to do. What do you think a cyber warrior is anyway? Do you think it was hard to hack your security’s little air force?” asked Waltz with scorn.

The bolt struck Joshua in the chest and sent excruciating pain through his torso that spread out to the tips of his fingers and toes. Such totalic agony was wholly unknown to him.

“Fuck you!” he said.

     “No you won’t,” said the loud voice of Waltz. “And just so you know: that little guy I sent down to you . . . let’s call ‘em Hulk . . . Hulk won’t stop until you’re dead . . . and I am free.”

     “STOP!” squealed Joshua. He swung clenched fists into the air, but his feeble attempts fell far short of the bobbing drone. His t-shirt burned. “STOPPPPPP!”

     “This whole place will blow up,” he gasped, “and gas everyone with Ebola for twenty miles!”

“What did you say?” asked Waltz.

“I have to type in the failsafe code every hour or else you’re gone, I’m gone, everyone’s gone. Stop doing this to me, you fuck!”

“I’m listening. Talk fast.”

“Wangluo burrowed out the whole region for me. There are ventilation ducts running for a mile and a half radius around here. All around this, you’ll burn and boil your own putrefied organs!” cried Joshua. The electrocution ceased.

“Explain to me why you’d unleash Ebola on your own neighbors and betray your countrymen for Wangluo,” said Waltz.

“Because I read The Hot Zone and became inspired!” said Joshua with a mad bulge to his bloodshot eyes. Waltz felt sick to his stomach. The guy was joking about the mass murder. Can the Cyber protocol even make it on time?

But he was resolved to go forward. Risks were meant to be taken. Measured, not shaken, not stirred . . . just taken, Waltz thought grimly. God, I hope he doesn’t do it. He has a choice.

“If I can’t watch ‘em die of old age, then you can die watching ‘em suffer cellular liquefaction,” said Joshua. The drone steadied to a hover and began to shoot him again.

     “You sick bastard,” said Waltz incredulously. The drone ceased. “Why?”

There was a sound of typing. Keys clacked hard for a minute, while Joshua writhed on the floor and tried to pull it together. The heli-drone floated in front of him with its blue taser primed and aimed.

     “I grew the Ebola, they provided the dispersal tech. We felt Cyber needed to be crippled, and I’d just relocate to better facilities. So go ahead . . . kill me . . . and you’ll watch the second coming of the plague you fucking fascist pig.”

     HUMMMMMMMM

Smoke rose to Joshua’s nostrils as the bot sent thousand-plus volts of electricity into his gluttonous body again.

     “DIE PIG!”

“You are a psychopath,” said Waltz. The air cracked with thunder.

What Joshua did not realize was that the drone recording his admittance and the threat to unleash the custom-grown Ebola virus strain went not only to the government’s communications system and their monitors, but the live feed carried though to the Cyber President’s TV in the White House and all of the Cyber levels of personnel up to the Cyber Warriors (who would hear about it soon enough once their government building was abuzz and then forward it on to get the attention of the Cyber Elite).

This is a small excerpt from the R.J. Huneke novel CYBERWAR upcoming in October from Pentian Publishing. PRE-ORDERS are available here:  
http://pentian.com/book/fund/601

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. 

It seems the character Sheetrock wants to speak his mind, despite the book not being out yet. Well I have too much respect for the man to deny his simple request, so here is an exclusive excerpt from Cyberwar where the humble miner nicknamed "Sheetrock" gets to loose his mind.

I hope you enjoy it.

~RJH

Some people have a song constantly playing in their head. Sheetrock was one of these, and he knew it. The young drill captain figured the smart people fed their soul with music every day, because one: Jesus loved music, and two: rolling down the river of audio helped keep the record from skipping. Whereas those that despised the music echoing in their brains, scoffed openly of it, and resisted it to the extreme, those people often got jarred into the realms of insanity. They beat on the player Jesus had given them and as a result their records did, on occasion, skip. 

No matter the near-death run, the loss of his colleague and lover, or the freezing cold downpour, the David Byrne horns in his head blared on, and he welcomed the beauty of the earth, grimy as he was treading the soaked wooden dock. He whistled while his cargo unloaded, weighed, and purchased. It had taken all of an hour; it was the reason Sheetrock chose to land in Port Jeff in the first place: easy access to the scales and the buyers. Within another hour a quick sale had commenced.

With the payment transferred instantaneously upon completion of the cache transaction, Sheetrock walked swiftly with a slight limp toward the town’s bank (his knee had blown out in a ten kilometer benefit run and the rain’s moisture did it in). He had already handed each of his crew a payroll check that they knew would come into fruition once they had finished emptying the ship’s cargo hold, but he wanted to confirm with his own dark eyes that his personal account totaled twenty-eight million and change. He could finally afford to spend it all.

There was a slow methodical scraping as his muddy miner’s boots found the doormat outside the federal bank on the corner of Main Street. The heavy footwear were sealed, along with the black leathery jumpsuit that was made for rigorous activity in the oxygen deprived canals of space. He had not bothered changing. He was too eager. 

At least the rain’s washed the dust off my ass, thought Sheetrock as he walked into the bright lights of the taupe room. The large man could not have looked more out of place. A mile or two up the road was the derelict sidewalks of the Station, where none of the black market shufflers would ever have looked at his unshaven face and his stained and patched up space suit and given it a second glance. In the bank, he was almost two feet taller than the shortest tellers, and they stared open mouthed as though he was the second coming of the Messiah.

There was no one in line, but Sheetrock was a slave to ritual so he entered the velvet rope lane and followed it in three snaking switchbacks before a prim, older woman with the biggest eyeglasses he had ever seen waved him over.

“Hello. I’d like to make a withdrawal-“

“Fill out the pad, sir,” she said before he could complete his sentence. He reluctantly bent and wrote sloppily on the screen with a pen that was tied to the counter and did not allow his long arms to lift it far enough to be comfortable writing in the lines.

“As for the amount . . . Rosemary,” said Sheetrock noting her nametag, “I put in for it two weeks ago, but I don’t know exactly how much is in there. I want all of it.”

“Very well, sir.” 


She tilted her round head back to look him over and confirm his face with the scan she had on the screen in front of her. It was a feat that seemed a difficult one without there being any visible sign of a neck on her, and the blue eyes behind her enormous glasses bulged in the magnification as she took all of him in.

A frantic clacking of keys was heard, as she composed herself. Rosemary, the banker, seemed to be in a perpetual hurry.

“That’s the amount you have there, sir.” She pointed down toward his screen. “The supervisor’s already verified your request and approved it. Do you have a suitcase or some kind of carrier for the withdrawal?” she asked querulously.

“Jesus please be with me today,” his whisper to himself was a growl that she heard quite plainly. “I’m soaking wet and fresh off the ship. Does it look like I have a suitcase with me, Rosemary?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Do you have some kind of transportation case?” he asked impatiently. The round face tilted a little, like a bird’s.

“Deposit cases are available for two hundred dollars each. Are you sure you don’t want to go-”

“Listen, little lady, lord knows that twenty-eight million’s not going to fit into the envelopes you normally give me my cash in, now is it?”


*     *     *


Two large gray storage containers were brought in front of the counter, where Sheetrock paced. He signed for them hurriedly, and a resonant tone crackled and cut off the elevator music that had been playing. Everyone looked up, startled. A booming electronic voice took over the loudspeakers:

“THIS IS A CYBER ALERT: A 7 P.M. CURFEW IS NOW IN EFFECT UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. PLEASE RETURN TO YOUR HOMES NOW.”