Veloshira released a loud hiss through her fangs as Chris entered the office rather than fall to his death. Her body became visible as she leaped at Chris, slashing and hacking away at his now weakened shields with her green glowing daggers. His rifle was missing—dropped it during his fall into the room—thus giving her another advantage as he faced her, launching punches and kicks to defend himself.
A quick leap backward put some much-needed distance between Veloshira and Chris. She needed it. Blood dripped from her face, too much for her liking. Chris was indeed a tough adversary, every punch and kick hit her in the face. She took a deep breath then lunged toward him again, this time rolling on the floor to avoid whatever else he had planned for her. She saw his backside as she came to, and then his shields shattered when her blades connected. The back of his heel spun and slammed against the side of her head, sending her to the floor, while her daggers went in opposite directions. Veloshira wasn’t finished yet, and neither was Chris. As she leaped back to her feet, his body charged toward her. The two fell to the floor, engaged in a series of grapples and holds as they rolled around—Chris trying his best to prevent her from going toward her daggers, Veloshira trying her best to prevent him from going toward his rifle.
Veloshira found herself on top of Chris, while his hands firmly wrapped around her neck. She couldn’t breathe, nor could she break free of his hold. Gazing down, she saw the one thing that was giving him and his team an edge against her. The thermal glasses, Veloshira’s hand rose up into the air, her claws deployed and came down for a swipe, slashing five bloody gashes across his face and hurling his eyepiece away. A second swipe sliced another and deeper gash across his face and eyes. His hands destabilized slightly, just enough for her to break free, and activate her cloak.
Chapter 17
►► Vancouver, Earth
► Sol System
Chaos, total chaos, was all Jacob was able to make out of the situation. The battle spilled over into the smoke-filled hallway as the HLF made tried to make their escape out of the suite and into the halls. Grace pulled Tom’s body back behind Jacob as he continued to fire his rifle toward Destiny and Jazz. Tom was alive, but injured badly, plasma burns thanks to Jazz ambushing him from his invisible state. Ken and Kasidey did what they could with their pistols from behind Jacob’s hulking body.
Weapons’ fire came to a sudden stop, Jacob could hear the footsteps of his enemies move quickly and then the sound of an elevator door shut. Fuck. “Michei, HLF are escaping, can ya see ’em?” Jacob transmitted, but there was no response. Now that he thought about it, he hadn’t heard anything from Michei since he went after Dollon. Jacob began to send another transmission, this time toward space. “This Sergeant Miles to the Winston Churchill, we may hav’ lost Michei, send in EVE.”
If the HLF regroups with Dollon, they’ll teleport out and would be able to strike again. Jacob knew very well EVE would ensure that wouldn’t happen.
“Copy that, Sergeant EVE is on her way,” the Winston Churchill officer reported back.
Chloe’s voice transmitted to Jacob seconds later. “Miles, we just landed on the twenty-seventh floor with you. What’s your status?”
“VIPs safe, Richards is down, possibly Michei too, HLF escaping.”
He heard Chloe sigh and then say, “Fuck, let’s get the VIPs to safety and regroup.”
“EVE is coming to us now in a transport.”
And about to display why the UNE wants to replace psionics with androids.
… … …
Chris began to breathe deeply as he knew Veloshira was stalking him from the shadows. She may not be truly invisible, but between the darkness, blurry vision, and droplets of blood dripping down from his eyelids, she might as well be. The only advantage he had now was the fact that she insisted on attacking him with daggers, daggers that were no longer in her hands. Come at me! he thought as he slowly sidestepped around. His request was granted; just not with the person he expected.
Dollon’s body quickly floated outside the shattered window, his telekinetic grip took hold of Chris and tossed him out the window like a rag doll. His spiraling body couldn’t tell what was up or down, left or right. The only thing he knew was that the ground was getting closer and he had no shields and very little power left in his suit to reduce his mass for a long time.
That little power would have to do—about ten seconds’ worth to be exact. Timing was key now. If he used it too early, he’d return to his normal mass and begin to fall again; too late, and he’d be painting the sidewalks with his blood and plastered organs. Chris heard the sounds of people below screaming, probably at his plummeting body. If he was close enough to hear them, then he was damn close to the ground. He commanded his protect suit to reduce his mass with what little power was left, and he became light as a feather instantly for ten seconds exactly before returning to his normal mass and face-planting on the sidewalk—Alive, with everything intact.
He saw with his limited vision frightened people and confused police officers whisking them away, while another group of officers took cover behind their cars, exchanging gunfire with someone who was holed up inside the lobby of the condo. HLF—they must have broken through.
… … …
A cop dove back behind cover as the bullets from Destiny’s rifle ripped through the air towards him. Both Jazz and Destiny hunkered down behind a security desk, while Vuyin and Tetsuya hid in the stationary elevator, periodically peeking out to lay down some supporting weapons’ fire. Jazz lost track of how many police and SWAT officers were outside.
“The fuck is taking Dollon so long?” asked Jazz.
“That mind shield influence is wider than we thought, the best he can do is jump port himself and Veloshira across the road!” Destiny replied.
As nice as it would be for the cops to focus on someone else, losing Dollon or Veloshira wasn’t part of the plan. Someone needed to take the heat off everyone. It was the only way for them to regroup and escape. If Onatiasha was here, she would have walked right out there with her shield raised while everyone took cover behind her; bullets didn’t do much to her. And then Jazz remembered about his current state.
“Unless,” he murmured.
“What are you doing?” Destiny asked as Jazz’s body vanished from sight.
“In the words of my generation,” Jazz said, “fuck tha police.” Hannah shot Jazz in the head twice and he didn’t die. Fast healing, body armor, medical systems, and stealth? He questioned why he took cover in the first place. It wasn’t necessary for him, especially with the weapons these guys were using. “Tell Dollon to pick us up now,” he told Destiny, and then he ran outside into the chaos.
Jazz exited his cloaked state with his plasma katana glowing green and unleashed a cyclone of strikes towards the imposing police. One by one, they retreated after taking note that Jazz wasn’t dead despite sixty or so bullets hitting him. He saw a spacious bullet hole through his left hand quickly seal up and morph into a circular scar. The pain was…intense even though his suit’s medical systems were injecting him with powerful painkillers. Even so, he held his ground and savagely swung his blade, forcing them to back off like a people fleeing from a rampant tornado.
Blue light appeared behind him from across the street. It was Dollon with Veloshira in tow. About fucking time, he thought as two white fireballs launched past Jazz, exploding on impact against the SWAT team’s vehicles. Jazz’s swiss-cheesed body slowly limped back toward Dollon, while Destiny, Vuyin, and Tetsuya did the same. Jazz made it about halfway toward him before he felt what little strength he had left in his body slip away, and he collapsed.
The last thing Jazz saw as he fell to the ground was a UNE transport ship silently maneuver itself to hover above Veloshira and Destiny’s team. Everything to him became burry shortly afterward.
… … …
“Jazz!” Destiny cried out to her collapsed old friend.
Both Destiny and Veloshira moved with a sense of urgency towa
rd Jazz, it was only a matter of time before the cops got back into action. How Jazz survived as long as he did, taking a thrashing like that was unknown to her. Part of her wanted to leave him; he was casualty of war, an unfortunate one. Her instincts, however, said he was still alive, somehow, someway.
“Oh, fucking hell!” Destiny heard Tetsuya scream from behind.
She stopped see what got Tetsuya fired up. A UNE transport ship silently flew above them. Its main entrance door was wide-open as a woman wearing full body armor leaped out, landing right on top of Dollon. The impact shattered his shields and sent him crashing to the ground much like Jazz. A dart-shaped object exited from the palm of the woman’s hand as she aimed it toward the back of Dollon’s head. Destiny looked at what happened horrified as the dart quickly drilled a hole through her husband’s head and entered.
Vuyin attempted to intervene and paid the price. The woman’s fist crashed across his face so hard his head twisted backward while his skull caved in, crushing his brain. Destiny’s and Tetsuya’s rifles exploded with an onslaught of bullets; however, the woman’s shields held and ripped with is usual azure grace. Veloshira’s plasma rifle joined in afterward as she secured Jazz off the ground.
The strange part? The woman made no attempt to run for cover, and Destiny could see why. Two eRifles unloading everything they had, one of them being in extremely close range plus a plasma rifle and her shields still held up. Tetsuya ceased his assault and slowly backed away, toward Destiny and Veloshira. Destiny, however, kept on firing; she couldn’t stop, not while her husband lay lifeless before that woman’s feet.
“Please discontinue your attacks and surrender,” the woman finally said.
After coughing up a river of blood, Jazz regained consciousness. He rose to his feet with a confused look on his face after taking in the sight of the strange woman who got shot at with a seemingly endless supply of power to her shields. “Who…the fuck is that?”
“Looks like fucking a robot...” Destiny shouted.
“Correction, my name is Electronic Versatile Entity, or EVE for short,” the woman said. “This will be your final warning from me. Please surrender, and I promise you will experience a short and painless interrogation.”
Like a zombie rising from the dead, Dollon’s body became animated and ascended to the skies a meter below the hovering UNE transport. Only, he wasn’t the same. His head was still slumped over, yet his arms extended forward, and the cybernetics on his arms began to glow orange. “Oh, my fucking god,” Destiny whispered.
“Brainjacked,” Jazz said. “He’s been brainjacked. As of now, he ain’t on our side.”
The four ran toward the burning police vehicles. Dollon’s brainjacked body shot several white fireballs toward them, adding to the heat and flames that slowly began to consume the streets. The rainwater on the ground hissed and rapidly turned into steam following the explosions. Two overturned police hover bikes caught Destiny’s attention. Tetsuya and Veloshira on one, she and Jazz on the other, she figured while directing everyone else’s attention to their new means of escape from Vancouver.
… … …
“Impressive, eh?” Jacob said to Chloe.
Chloe, Sarah Jacob, and Grace watched Jazz and his newfound friends struggle to deal with EVE’s unexpected surprise attack.
“You brainjacked him,” Sarah muttered.
“Not just any brainjack, brainjack two point oh,” said Grace. “Radiance-invented, human-enhanced. EVE’s quantum computing allows her to control a brainjacked psionic with ease. It is unlike normal brainjack devices where you have a soldier fiddling around with the display trying to control the psionic. With this, EVE can still perform her duties in the field; control her brainjacked target with little to no risk to human lives. She gets blown up by a psionic? We’ll build a new one. Best part is she can control up to ten psionics at simultaneously.”
Chloe quickly began to understand why EVE was to be the replacement of psionics. The UNE wouldn’t need to bring psionics into combat; they’d just control enemy ones and turn them on their friends, all while removing them from the playing field.
Sarah’s index finger pointed toward two police hover bikes fleeing away from the action. None of the riders wore a police uniform. “Looks like they’re getting away!”
“EVE, swing th’ transport over to us and pursue our HLF friends,” Jacob transmitted to the android.
… … …
►► Trans-Canada highway, Vancouver, Earth
► Sol System
Two police hover bikes zipped through the evening traffic in a chaotic manner, leaving in their wake a large number of vehicle collisions, terrorized commuters, and confused pedestrians…and a UNE transport quickly closing the wide gap between them. Destiny and Tetsuya were at the controls on their respective bikes while Jazz held on to Destiny in the back seat of her bike, while Veloshira did the same on the bike Tetsuya rode.
Jazz felt the wind and rainwater blow across the sides of his face, generated by the insane speeds they were traveling at. Buildings and other vehicles came into sight as quickly as they came out of sight. Before he knew it, their getaway had led them to the trans-Canada highway, heading eastward. Destiny continued to force the bike to perform a variety of deadly stunts, cutting off other cars and driving extremely close to other vehicles. A truck nearly flipped over as its brakes slammed hard to avoid hitting the two fleeing bikes.
Jazz’s head turned back, curious to see the aftermath of the newly formed traffic accident Destiny created. What he ended up looking at took his eyes off the highway behind him, and the skies above. The UNE transport was close, very close. He was able to see the face of the pilot through its forward windshield as its slide entrance door was wide open.
Two figures slipped out from the moving transport. One was Dollon’s lifeless and now brainjacked body, hovering in the air alongside the transport. The other landed on the highway below, like some kind of damn superhero making a grand entrance. It was EVE. The mechanized joints within her neck pivoted her head toward her targets. Seconds later, EVE rose up and began to run toward the two fleeing hover bikes. Her movements were precise, avoiding all cars around her, leaping over crashed vehicles—her speed was incredible. She was running faster than everything on the highway; her legs and arms appeared as a blur to Jazz as he looked back with a dreadful gaze not knowing who the bigger threat was—the marathon-running android or its brainjacked psionic who rose higher in the skies with orange glowing arms. Another fire shower was approaching.
“Whigli, change of plans,” Destiny yelled into her commutation device. “We’re going to need an emergency teleport out of here.”
“You can’t be serious!” Whigli’s voice replied.
“You’re the only combat-ready psionic we got left, and you’ll be stepping into a hot zone.”
“I’ll do what I can, but I’m still a tad bit sore.”
Jazz rose up slightly and yelled into her commutation device. “Hurry, man, or I won’t live long enough to tell you more about Chidorli.”
“On my way,” Whigli’s voice replied shortly afterward.
It was another lie on Jazz’s part, but it was needed. It got Whigli’s ass out of bed and his head focused on the critical task. If Jazz was going to be successful here on Earth, he was going to need all the help he could get from people he trusted, and those people needed to be working with clear heads. Lying about Chidorli was a necessary evil.
“Destiny!” Jazz called out to her after the communication ended. “Imma bout to do something real stupid, again.”
… … …
“This is getting a bit risky,” Chloe said as she looked down at the sheer number of cars and trucks populating the busy highway.
Androids and brainjacked psionics during a battle had it uses, but using them in a highly populated civilian area like a highway? The rules of combat on Earth must have changed quite a bit since she was gone. She got up from her seat within the UNE transport, and m
oving her body toward the open door that EVE had jumped out of, she saw Jazz’s plasma rifle erupt multiple bolts of plasma toward the advancing android.
Most shoots missed, creating small burning craters on the pavement where they landed. It was about this time most people driving took notice of the real danger that was near them. Several drivers in a panic scurried off to the sides, a few others slammed on the brakes, especially those who came close to colliding with Jazz’s plasma rifle’s gifts.
EVE adjusted her course with ease, sidestepping idle cars and straight-up jumping over others. A small opening in the traffic ahead allowed the two fleeing bikes to slip through, putting more distance between them and EVE. Chloe saw that Jazz was no longer on any of the escaping bikes. He stood on top of an enormous tractor trailer of a truck, its driver clearly oblivious to the danger going on behind him.
Jazz slipped away into his cloaked state.
She grimaced and ran toward the front of the transport, her finger cocked toward the truck in question and yelled, “Bring us above that!”
“Somethin’ wrong, Major?” Jacob asked from behind Chloe.
“Johnson’s gone into stealth on top of that truck,” Chloe replied as the transport repositioned itself to fly above the moving truck. “I’m going to have a word with him.”
She hurried back toward the open door of the transport. Down below Chloe saw the back end of the truck’s trailer and the road of the highway itself moving. Without a second thought, she leaped out of the transport, the mass of her body reduced, allowing her body to sink down toward the action below.
Her body fell down perfectly straight and slowly with her rifle in hand as if she had taken a dive into the deep end of a swimming pool. Chloe’s mass returned to normal as her feet made contact with the metallic surface of the top rear end of the tractor trailer. A breathtaking view of the nighttime Vancouver skyline could be seen in the distance, a view she’d have to put on hold later. For now, an invisible old “friend” was somewhere in front of her.
Uprising of the Exiled (Splintered Galaxy Book 2) Page 25