“Bobby, do any of your patrol vehicles carry six men?”
He realized Steele was looking past him and looked over his shoulder, “No.”
“Bobby I know you're not sure what's going on, but I really need you to trust me on this, things are about to get really messy...”
“What the hell is going on Jack?” he slid his firearm out of its holster.
Jack dropped to a crouch, pulling on Bobby by the shoulder, “Get your men to hard cover, if they've got long guns, they'll need them.” He pulled the hybrid 1911 from its holster and Bobby Fortuno shot him an angry look.
“You're holding? Jack..!”
Steele pointed at the officers, “Now, Bobby! Now!”
The SUVs, one black, one white, skidded to a stop facing away from each other in a 'Y', six heavily armed men piling out of each vehicle, taking cover behind their armored bodies. “We're here for Mister Steele! You local boys can be on your way, we'll take it from here!”
Bobby shot Steele another angry glance, incredulous, “Who are these guys and what the hell did you...”
Steele's TESS chimed, the holographic screen popping into view above his wrist, the smiling face of his wife, Alité, Queen of Veloria, smiling at him. “Hello my husband, how is your trip going? Well I hope...”
Bobby Fortuno's eyes nearly popped out of his head, “What the Sam hell...”he breathed.
Steele faced the holographic screen so she could see the sergeant crouched next to him, “Alité, this is an old friend of mine, Bobby Fortuno. Bobby, this is my wife, AlitéGalaýa-Steele, Queen of Veloria.” Bobby nodded blankly as she spoke to him in a language he couldn't understand. “Listen, honey... I've got a bit of a situation here, can I call you back in a little while?”
“Of course. Please be careful, my sweet.” The screen winked out, the hologram dissolving.
“What. The fuck. Was that? What... What...”
“You've got a choice!” yelled one of the men concealed behind the SUVs. “You can give him to us, or we're going to take him! You've got 20 seconds.”
“Sarge, we can't get a signal on our radios...” called one of the officers. “We can't call for backup!”
“Pull your guys back,” said Jack.
“Nothing doing...”
“Bobby, this is going to get bloody, I don't want to see any of your guys get hurt.”
“I suppose you're going to handle this all by yourself,” he replied sarcastically. “Who are these guys? Why do they want you?”
“CIA, NSA, maybe contractors. I' don't know...”
“What?! What the hell are you into?”
“You have five seconds left!”
“Bobby, do you believe in UFOs?”
“I... I... what? I don't know, what does that have to do with...”
Jack keyed the mic on his earpiece, “Lisa, ARC off, weapons hot. If they shoot...”
“Got it,” she interrupted, her gloved fingers flipping off the Automatic Reflective Camouflage system. The dark, menacing Reaper, shimmered in the sunlight as it slowly became visible, solid in its stealthy alien glory.
The question in his mind of who Jack was talking to, vanished, Bobby's mouth hanging open in disbelief, as did almost everyone else. The first ones to recover from their astonishment were the men behind the SUVs seeing the Reaper as the prized golden goose, worth more than Steele himself. “Time's up! Take it boys!”
Time slowed for Steele as fully automatic fire erupted from the SUVs, cutting into the police cars, the rounds passing through and kicking up divots of dirt and grass on the other side. At a serious firepower disadvantage, the police fired back from behind the hard cover of their cruiser's engines, vehicle wheels and oak trees lining the sidewalk. Their handguns were no match for the suppressive fire from the tactical team, some of who peeled out to the trees along the curb to increase their angular advantage. The air was filled with smoke, noise, splinters of wood and glass flying like hail.
Lisa Steele's hand on the flight stick, the articulated turret under the nose followed her gaze, steered by her right eye in relation to the pipper on the HUD. She squeezed the gun trigger and the Cryo Gauss Guns pumped out chain-linked super-frozen spikes of specially designed steel alloy, a metallic clatter as the guns cycled the spikes in the loading tray from the cryo tank. The spikes shattered, exploding like grenades as they passed through the armored SUVs.
Raking the two trucks with a short burst, produced baseball-sized holes, the engine blocks exploding, first one then the other, shredding both trucks, lifting them several feet off the ground, the front wheels and tires blown off, sailing through the air in flames. The gutted wreckage crashed to the ground, a shower of glass and plastic flying out in all directions, a fireball erupting with a roar as one of the gas tanks split open on the pavement. “The Reaper cometh, bitches!” screamed Lisa.
The men closest to the SUVs lay scatted in pieces, their body parts shredded and strewn across pavement, grass and sidewalk. Steele took the opportunity to advance quickly on the right side of the street, shooting on the move. The first man, slow on recovery as he raised his weapon, took a charged particle projectile from Steele's 1911 in the chest, the round punching through the ballistic trauma plate of his vest, driving pieces of it through his body, tearing out a section of his spine, physically taking him off his feet. A small portion of a second man's face peeked out from the trunk of a hefty oak tree and Jack's artificial eye targeted him, drawing a red outline around his calculated position. Steele squeezed off two rounds, passing through the side of the tree, shearing off a two-by-four sized section of the trunk and taking the man's head off in the process, a sloppy red mush running down the trunk of the oak, a gory pink mist drifting through the air. Bobby's officers rushed the stunned survivors on the other side of the street, taking two of the men in custody.
Bobby eased up next to Jack who was standing over a man laying in the street past the burning wreckage with no legs below his knees. Still alive. But just barely. “Who do you work for?” asked Steele, emotionless.” He crouched down, “C'mon, buddy. You've gotta know you're not going to make it, nobody will know... just tell me.” The man opened his mouth to talk and blood bubbled out, gurgling, running down the side of his face. Steele stood up, “May God have mercy on your soul.” He turned and headed back towards the Reaper, sliding the 1911 back in its shoulder holster. A flaming tire had crashed through the living room window of his parent's old house and by the looks of it, the house was going to suffer in a big way, flames licking out and up under the eaves. He couldn't help but smile to himself. The neighbor on the other side of the street had a seat from one of the SUVs sitting on the peak of his roof like someone had placed it there on purpose.
“Hold on a minute Jack, where do you think you're going?”
Steele looked over at Bobby walking at his side, “To look for my parents.”
“Jack I can't just let you go... you're a material witness and participant in...” he looked over his shoulder at the burning carnage, “a war zone.”
Stopping at the nose of the Reaper, Jack turned and casually draped his arm on the barrel of one of the Cryo Gauss Guns like he was leaning out the window of a car. Fire engine sirens wailed in the distance. “Bob,” he said calmly, “I know there's a lot to take in here...”
“Ain't that the truth...”
“But you've got to trust me, there are dark forces at work here...” Bobby Fortuno eyed him with a critical gaze. “Not like devils and sorcery,” waved Jack, “but bad people doing evil things.”
“No shit, Sherlock...”
“What I'm saying is, it's good versus evil. Evil has infiltrated our way of life and it surrounds us. It must be stopped. You can't fix it, you can't change its mind. You have to end it when and where you find it. Sometimes you have to do bad things to do the right thing.”
Bobby waved his hands “Who do you think you are? Captain America or something?”
Jack walked around to the ladder, his helmet
dropping over the side into his hands. He turned it around and pulled it over his head. “No man, that's the guy with the shield,” he joked, indicating the Reaper with his head as he sealed his helmet to his flight suit. “I got me this. And a few other things....”
Lisa stood up and climbed over the console to the back half of the cockpit, “Hiya Bobby,” she waved.
He blinked hard, doing a double take, “Lisa?” He looked at Jack who was halfway up the ladder, “Little Lisa?” he asked, holding his hand at waist height.
“Yep,” confirmed Jack, climbing into the cockpit.
“That's me!” She dropped into the rear seat, nearly out of sight.
Fire engines had arrived, their crews disembarking, covering the wreckage with chemical extinguishers, running and hooking up hoses to tackle the former Steele residence which was nearly engulfed, the occupants standing on the lawn looking on in dismay.
“Wait a minute Jack, wait... What am I gonna say about all of this?”
“Blame it on me...”
“Again, no shit Sherlock. It's going to look pretty bad that I let you go!”
“I promise, It's all going to make sense soon... I'm going to drag this planet, kicking and screaming if I have to, into the 25th century.”
“Man, you are really not making sense,” Bobby waved in despair. “You are talking like you're from outer space or something...”
Steele silently tapped his nose with a gloved finger and pointed at his friend indicating he'd finally gotten it, on the nose. “You and your guys have cell phones... take pictures, take video.” Steele was progressing through his checklist as he chatted, glancing over the side, “Here's what you say, Bob; Forces of unknown origin attacked Admiral Jack Steele, envoy and commander of the United Federation of Worlds, Task Force Lancer, endangering your officers and the general public in the process. With great risk to your own safety, you and your officers ended it. Admiral Steele slipped away in the confusion, unhurt. His wife, AlitéGalaýa-Steele, Queen of Veloria, sends her sincere appreciation for your assistance...”
“Aw c'mon Jack!” shouted Bobby, throwing his hat on the ground, “You're fucking killing me here, I don't even believe that crap! Internal Affairs is gonna ream me on this!”
Steele pulled on the canopy lever, the long canopy motoring forward. “Keep an eye on the network news Bobby, you'll be OK. I promise.” The Reaper became buoyant, a blue glow under her landing feet. “Pictures!” shouted Steele before the canopy dropped into place, hissing as the seal made contact.
The black alien craft rose, nearly silently, in full view of firemen, policemen and neighbors who had congregated to see what was going on, their upturned faces watching the event. It appeared to simply float, the landing feet retracting, disappearing into the hull. The turret under the nose rotated back and forth with the movements of the pilot who paused to salute, along with the co-pilot, to the people on the ground. A news helicopter who had been doing a traffic report over the nearby expressway, deviated to get a look at what they thought was a strange aircraft, circling it, the cameraman recording it and the bizarre scene below it.
■ ■ ■
Steele looked over his shoulder, “Where is he?”
“He's trying to keep up with us.”
“Dammit, I don't want to light em up and suck him into a vortex...” He nudged the throttle a little higher, releasing the anti-gravity actuator, reaching forward and flipping it off, the Reaper in standard flight. He lifted the nose a little, the ship accelerating smoothly, gradually.
“He's falling back...”
Steele watched the helicopter's signal on his sensors; at a mile and increasing he throttled up smoothly. At five miles he gave the throttle a hard nudge, the rotor craft quickly dropping off the edge of the screen as the Reaper thundered across the sky.
It was dark by the time they crossed over the Gulf of Mexico, the Reaper dropping down over the water to fly under the radar. “What's the plan, Jack?”
“I want to check my house, see if mom and dad came down here.”
“I figured that. I mean are we just parking this thing on the grass or what?”
“I think we can get it up against the house on the beach side without anyone seeing it...”
Six hundred miles an hour seemed slow in comparison to the Reaper's real ability, but at fifty feet off the surface of the water it seemed faster than it was. Lisa was watching the same high definition full color sensor screen as Jack, and when the outline that popped up as unidentified registered in her head she couldn't help but shout, “Sailboat! Sailboat! Sail...”
Jack leaned the Reaper over, jinking hard, kicking the rudder to pass around it, the twin masts of the schooner flashing past them on the left. “He needs to watch where he's going,” Jack commented coolly, “people are flying here...”
“Sure, because he's got, like, the whole ocean to boat around in...” shot Lisa sarcastically.
Steele throttled back and toggled on the anti-gravity, letting the Reaper slow on it's own, coasting over the inky black water, waves rolling along just a few feet below them.
“Hey , um, none of my business, but weren't you supposed to comm someone back?”
Steele felt a jolt of electricity through his spine, “Oh crap! I forgot.”
“Smooth move...”
“TESS, Alité Galaýa Steele.”
TESS' screen popped up above his wrist and he moved it in front of him, “Acquiring nodes and relays, stand by.” TESS' face retreated to the upper right corner to make room for the comm screen, the Velorian crest hovering above a plain blue-gray background.
“Hello my husband.” The video came a moment before the video feed, Alité appearing dressed in a white nightgown. “I was beginning to think you forgot me.”
“No, no, we were just a little busy...”
“You forgot,” she teased pointing at him.
“Yeah,” he admitted sullenly, “sorry.”
“It's alright. Now you can talk to me while I climb in bed,” she cooed. “All alone in this big bed, what ever shall I do?” she breathed seductively.
“Oh, yippee,” mumbled Lisa from the back seat, “just shoot me now.”
“Who is there with you?” asked Alité attempting to see through the comm screen.
“Hi,” waved Lisa, over her brother's shoulder, the top of her helmet and face mask visible.
“Sister Lisa,” said Alité sounding relieved. “Are you two flying?”
“One of us is,” complained Lisa.
“Yes,” Jack interjected, interrupting the over-the-shoulder conversation. “We're heading to the beach house. Mom and Dad weren't in their home, they've moved and I need to contact a few friends, see if we can locate them.”
Alité sat Indian style on her bed, pulling her nightgown around her, “Do you think they are in trouble?”
Jack shook his head, “I don't know. But I intend to find out.”
“Bring them home, Jack, Colton needs a grand-papa and a grand-mama.”
“I promise. How are things going there?”
“Going well. Lots of rebuilding. A group of volunteers started working on the palace. I think there's a lot of guilt over what happened... But people are working together again, in all sorts of ways.”
“That's very positive. Any signs of the troublemakers?”
“The Peacekeepers have done a wonderful job. With the help of the UFW military I seriously doubt there are any left. The base has been very busy and ships come and go pretty regularly. We have approved UFW military leaves on a limited basis. The beach seems to be very popular, we set up an air shuttle to get them back and forth.”
They chatted for a bit longer until the Florida shoreline appeared ahead. He assured her he would talk to her again as soon as he could. As the beach approached, Steele pulled the throttle into the negative, firing the breaking thrusters. Suspended on anti-gravity the Reaper drifting smoothly up over the sand toward the house. Swinging the tail, the ship coasted sideways up
to the darkened house, the starboard wing hanging over the deck on the back of the house. A splintering crunch made him jump as he countered their drift with the stick, “What the hell was that?”
“I think you just took out the deck railing with the tail...”
“Crap.”
“Yeah. Don't scratch my bird, dufus.” She toggled the landing gear, the system whining, extending. “Gear down, set to auto leveling. Go ahead and set her down.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
EARTH, NORTH AMERICA : STRANGE SIGHTINGS
“Good morning, I'm John Griff on the anchor desk...”
“And I'm Amy Halloran.”
“And this is a Channel 4, Special News Bulletin...” continued the news anchor. “Violence broke out on the north side of Chicago late yesterday afternoon, turning a normally quiet neighborhood into a deadly war zone. Rolling brown-outs were reported across the north side of the city, preceding the altercation between police and a group of well-armed, unknown assailants. It is still not known what prompted the assault or what the goal of the men happened to be. An intense gun battle ensued and several police officers were wounded with non life-threatening injuries. They were treated and released from local area hospitals. Only two of the estimated dozen or so assailants survived the pitched battle and are currently in police custody.”
“Channel 4's News Chopper One was in the area, John,” interjected Amy Halloran, “and captured some startling footage, not only of the scene but what was leaving the scene... We have Channel 4's, Chopper One pilot, Tom Bridge here in the studio with us; we'll let him narrate his footage. Tom..?”
A helicopter video feed appeared on the screen. “Thank you Amy. We were doing the traffic report over the I90 – 94 interchange when smoke caught the attention of our cameraman and he spotted this object floating over the scene. As you can see, from this distance it looks very much like a flat disc-like object, such as what most people describe when seeing an unidentified flying object... But as you can see, when we get closer...”
Wings of Steele: Revenge and Retribution Page 44