The Suns of Liberty (Book 1): Legion

by Michael Ivan Lowell

“Running low.”

  “Save enough for the flight back, just in case,” he told her. He gave Lantern a nod, and Lantern rose warily from his seat.

  Lantern stepped out of the cockpit. “I’m going to open the bay doors. Get ready.”

  Revolution, meanwhile, hit a speaker button from within the bay that sent out a message to all within earshot: “We are the Suns of Liberty. Please back away from the building and clear these streets. To those of you in the building, free our compatriot and you will be spared. This is your only warning.”

  On cue, a dozen or more drones cut away from the protection zone and came flying straight at them.

  The drones opened fire.

  The Sikorsky rocked and shuddered. Flames roared across the windows. The rotors on the copter exploded.

  The Sikorsky dropped and rolled and pitched onto its side.

  “Next time, maybe don’t announce we’re coming?” Ward shouted dryly over the roar.

  “They’re going to bring us down in the middle of the city!” Revolution shouted.

  “No, they’re not!” Sophia yelled and sprang toward the cockpit. She was the most experienced pilot. She could do more than just tweak the auto-controls like Lantern had done. But the Sikorsky was in a spinning dive. The Suns tossed and rolled in the belly of the bay. Revolution finally magnetized himself to the side of the bay wall and grabbed Lantern as he flung by in the chaotic spin—just as the bay door popped open and the wind rushed in.

  Sophia struggled to reach the cockpit and finally managed to collapse into the seat. She wrestled with the straps against the torque of the copter’s gyration and buckled herself in. She clutched the throttle and grappled against the Sikorsky’s chaotic yaw with everything she had.

  But it was no use. The rudder was gone. There was nothing any pilot on Earth could do now.

  They were going down and they were going down spinning.

  A death roll.

  Ahead she saw the empty green space of Bryant Park spin toward her. She lay hard on the throttle, and the copter began to fall in the direction of the park. If she couldn’t stop them from crashing, she could at least direct the crash—and hopefully save the lives of countless innocents on the ground.

  “Hang on,” she yelled. “This is gonna hurt!”

  In the park, people on lawn chairs, many watching live web coverage of the attack on Freedom Rise only a few blocks away, fled and scattered into the garden-lined periphery of the park.

  Just before...

  The Sikorsky ripped into the green grass of the lawn in a violent explosion of mud, dirt, and plant matter that spewed high into the air. The shredding rotors slung shrapnel in all directions. But the carefully constructed Stealth Hawk had been designed to avoid exploding on impact. Of course, that didn’t mean it couldn’t. Fortunately, this time the design worked as planned.

  Stealthhawk-1 skidded to a sudden stop with a brutal lurch. Revolution looked about for Ward, but he was nowhere to be found.

  Lying in a trench of mud, Ward peered back toward the crushed Sikorsky. In the chaos of the spin, he’d managed to hit the bay door release but had miscalculated his leap out of the bay and rammed into the side of the door on his way out, meaning he mostly crash-landed into the ground, much like the helicopter.

  Sophia was pulling herself out of the cockpit and fell off the side of the craft onto the ground, moaning in pain. Revolution lifted Lantern up and out of the bay door and then jumped down himself. The two of them staggered toward Sophia and helped her over to where Ward was lying.

  “You okay?” Sophia asked him when she got to him.

  Ward just nodded

  They all collapsed next to him.

  Exhausted.

  “Well, that was embarrassing,” Ward said finally.

  “That was their only warning, huh?” Sophia said.

  Sirens began to blare, and the red lights of patrol cars flashed on the outskirts of the park. The team just gazed at each other, too tired to flee or fight or do much of anything but lie there.

  Minutes passed.

  A roar and crack startled them, and they raised their heads to see a large police van crashing through the tree line onto the lawn of the park and heading right for them.

  Revolution shot to his feet and stood on trembling legs—were it not for his armor he wouldn’t have stood at all. For a moment he contemplated charging, taking the van out before it could do whatever the boys in blue had up their sleeves.

  “Stay here,” he told the others.

  He didn’t want to fight the NYPD. They weren’t like the cops in Boston. He didn’t have a long history here. These guys really were just following orders. And they’d patched things up for the most part with the BPD. No need to complicate the situation back home over a brawl with some brothers in blue down here.

  The van was still headed right for him. It was not slowing down.

  He lifted his arms, readied his cylinder grenades. His scarlet cape flapping lightly in the breeze. He could hear the others now rising to their feet. And that made him reconsider. Maybe if Paul was up here, he could take out the SWAT team without violence. He turned to motion for Ward when—

  A strange sense of calm washed over him. The feeling was uncanny. He held his hand back toward the others, warning them not to attack, and they halted their advance. The four of them just seemed to be waiting.

  The van swung about, kicking up more grass and dirt from the Great Lawn, so that its back doors were now facing them. Revolution expected those doors to come flying open and a SWAT team to come bounding out at any moment. Still, he felt surprisingly calm. The others still hadn’t moved either. Maybe they were just all too tired to care anymore.

  Instead, heavy footsteps tromped through the bed of the van. One set of footsteps.

  The doors finally swung open and a lone SWAT officer in full riot gear came out, unarmed, waving them into the back of the van.

  “C’mon, get in. I can get you out of here.”

  This was no police van. It was the one thing that a police van never is: empty. Every SWAT van Revolution had ever seen had a long row of seats on either side for the crew, and weapons aplenty. Revolution figured that the vehicle had been converted to look just like the real thing, right down to the vehicle number.

  “No offense, pal, but we’re not going anywhere,” Ward said.

  The SWAT officer grinned and pointed to his nametag badge. It was on a loose flap that fell over the black of his flak jacket. He lifted it and underneath was the old “Don’t Tread on Me” flag from the original Sons of Liberty. The officer blazed a wide smile at the Revolution.

  “Name’s Neuro, and I’ve been waiting to meet you all my life.”

  An exaggeration, given that the man standing before the Revolution was at least in his midtwenties, though it was hard to tell under the large facemask he was wearing. But he had a young, boyish face that seemed to be three-quarters jaw with a wide, easy smile. He was thin and animated.

  In fact, he seemed nervous, but not in a threatening way. If this kid was a threat, he was hiding it better than anyone Revolution had ever met. And he’d met a lot of nervous enemies in uniform during his life.

  The situation outside the park was growing worse by the second. They needed a way out. Revolution peered around the edges of the large park. Squad cars were everywhere. The New York City Library loomed behind him—probably filling with snipers. They were low on firepower. It was going to get ugly. Revolution was not designed for restraint, nor was Sophia, and Ward was low on darts. That meant they’d have to brawl their way out, and that meant the cops were going to get hurt.

  There was no way to rescue Rachel now, anyway. He needed to get his team to safety and come up with a new plan to free her.

  “Drive us out of here, then.” Revolution said to the young man. “And you know that if this is a trick, you won’t live to see how it ends, right?”

  “No trick. I’m Neuro. I’m Neuro,” he said nervously. “I can get us o
ut of this. I already saved you once today,” Neuro said, grinning apologetically.

  “What did you just say?” Sophia asked him, stunned.

  “Uh...never mind, later, later.”

  Whoever this kid was, he had balls, you had to give him that. He was clearly scared shitless, and yet he had waded right into the middle of all of this. And Revolution had the feeling they would discover he’d done more than just crash his van through the police line today.

  Already saved you once today. Hmm. Revolution thought about how he’d mysteriously woken up in free fall earlier. He’d felt like his whole nervous system was being revved up. Could that have been this Neuro guy?

  “The name’s Benjamin Drayger. Friends call me Ben. I’m Neuro, though.”

  The kid stood off to the side and offered them entrance in a grand gesture, pointing to the Suns with one hand and to his van with the other. “Please,” he said. And there was that grin again. “Please.”

  Despite a little voice in back of their heads screaming not to do it, they all independently decided it was a good idea and stepped up into the van.

  CHAPTER 20

  Drayger stomped on the gas. Arrayed along the edge of the park was an armada of squad cars. The officers were all probably wondering why they couldn’t get through to the SWAT team in the park, or who’d given the order for them to go in.

  As the Suns drove closer it became apparent that, in fact, they already knew why they couldn’t contact the SWAT team.

  At least fifty officers, ducking behind their squad cars, drew their pistols and aimed at the approaching van.

  “Quick, I need someone to take the wheel,” Drayger shouted.

  They stared at each other. Was this kid someone they could trust or not?

  “Please!”

  Lantern, being the closest to the front, relented and climbed into the passenger seat, grabbing the wheel.

  Drayger lifted his arms out in front of him and squinted in concentration. They all peered out at the officers.

  No change. Nothing.

  “Uh, what are you trying to accomplish there, slick?” Ward asked.

  “Dammit!” Drayger breathed. He jammed the brakes and the van skidded to a halt, kicking up mud and grass. They lunged forward. And suddenly Drayger was struggling to get the SWAT helmet off.

  Underneath it he wore a golden headpiece that wrapped around the back of his head and came to two points across his forehead.

  He tried again.

  Arms out in front of him, eyes nearly closed. And this time the change was immediate. All across the crowd of officers, behavior changed radically. Some ducked back in their squad cars, others grabbed up their radio mics, a few actually just ran the other way.

  “Wow,” Ward said, watching it all.

  “Ms. Helius, I need you to cause a distraction for us.”

  “Uh, yeah,” she said, glancing over at Revolution, who shrugged and nodded. “Okay.”

  “Blast a tree or a bush or something. Just to show your power!” He said it like an excited child ready to watch some fireworks.

  Which made Sophia give him a second-guessing glance.

  “Please, it’ll scare the crap out of them, just what we need!”

  Under her cobalt-colored visor, she raised her eyebrows. “Okay.” She and Lantern switched places. She rolled down the window and blasted one of the large oak tree branches on the large tree at the opening of the park where Drayger had burst through earlier.

  The officers ducked for cover, some yelled out warnings—as if the shot at the tree had been aimed directly at each of them.

  Drayger floored it.

  The van burst out of the bush line, jumped the curb, flew into the air for an instant, crashed back down on the roadway, and in a matter of seconds was flying past the line of squad cars.

  “Holy shit!” Ward yelled. “That actually worked!” He scrambled to the back of the van to watch the cops’ reactions. “I can’t believe that actually worked!”

  Ward was now peering back behind them through the tinted windows. What he saw made him change his tune. “It didn’t work, it didn’t work!” he yelled, scrambling back from the window. “They’re coming after us!”

  Drayger was focused on the road ahead. “Well, you did kind of blow up a building, you know. I just bought you some ti—” Drayger caught Sophia glaring at him in the rearview mirror, and he shrunk in his seat.

  “They’re coming,” Ward said again. “Oh shit! Look out!” he yelled, as he dove for the carpet.

  Bullets strafed the van. Glass exploded inside, shattering all over them. The van swerved wildly, clipping parked cars, as Drayger tried to duck.

  He shot back up in his seat. “I need someone else to drive!”

  Lantern moved to take over and Drayger slid into the back.

  The officers opened fire again.

  With bullets whizzing all around him, and unlike the others, with no protection from them, Drayger raised his hands.

  The gunfire ceased.

  “This’ll only buy us a few moments. They’ll regain their courage soon enough,” Drayger said.

  Sophia gazed out the windows in amazement at the cops who had stopped pursuing. “Kid, who are you?” she asked, shaking her head.

  Drayger flashed his wide smile and headed back up to the driver’s seat. “I’m your newest member.”

  Neuro drove them out of the city without any further incident. Leslie informed them that the Big Apple Minutemen had been called up and were giving them cover to get out of the city.

  Of course, that meant that in most cases they were either being killed, captured, or at least injured. All to aid in the escape of the Suns of Liberty—a team with immensely more power. The Revolution wondered about what the Minutemen were going through for them. All in the name of a terribly botched mission. A mission that was a setup from the start. The only consolation they could take away was that they had done an enormous amount of damage to the building and to the drones. But was that worth the lives of these faithful volunteer Minutemen?

  Their sacrifice was paying off, though. Any pursuers were few and far between. Each time a black and white came by, Drayger would do his faith healer thing and the officers would hesitate long enough to lose them in the pursuit. But this was only going to take them so far, he warned.

  Drayger explained that what he was really doing was manipulating their fear. He and his research partner had invented a neural transmitter that could send a signal to stimulate the parts of the brain that controlled emotions. The most powerful of which was fear.

  Lantern had interrupted the conversation to warn them that Guard helicopters, X-1 Apaches, had been launched and were on their way. The Minutemen were relegated to the street; they could do nothing to help them with a bunch of X-1s. So Revolution had Leslie send a van from the Resistance to pick them up, and they ditched Neuro’s in a back alley in Scarsdale, near Saxon Woods Park.

  The drive to Boston gave them time to secretly look up data on their new friend. Leslie sent the Revolution all the information the HQ had on Ben Drayger, a.k.a. Neuro, which wasn’t a lot. He was in the Hero Movement registry, but not much was known about him.

  That was one of many reasons Revolution didn’t order the entire group back to Freedom Rise to rescue Rachel. Given the tactics of the Council in the past, they all had to confront the possibility that Drayger could be a spy. If he wasn’t, his abilities opened up new possibilities. Based on what he’d already seen, Revolution wondered if Drayger could do the same thing to the Council Guard that he had done to the police.

  On the other hand, if he was a spy and he used his abilities against the Suns in the heart of Freedom Rise, the results would be disastrous. There was no doubt in the Revolution’s mind that they would all be captured or killed. Lithium and his team had been holding back, settling for a PR victory instead of a literal one. But a second attack on the Council’s HQ might not be met with such restraint.

  He and Lantern had an entir
e text-only conversation about it. But Lantern could no longer see inside the building. They decided it just wasn’t worth it. There was no way to say where Rachel was or if she was even still there, or worse yet...

  If she were even still alive.

  Arbor opened the door to the control room to the cackles of insane laughter. What the hell was going on? And then he saw.

  It was X-Ray.

  Kendrick Ray sat there with a high-tech joystick in his hands, remotely controlling a group of five intercontinental Spores as they ripped apart Minutemen in the streets of New York. Spores were metal orbs covered in long steel spikes, each of which fired deadly laser beams. The latest and most lethal UAV drone technology.

  Five separate screens holographed before Ray’s crazed eyes. The screens seemed to meld into one at times; other times they were clearly separate. Just looking at it could make you schizophrenic, Arbor mused.

  But not Ray.

  He sounded—and looked—just like a kid playing a video game.

  Debris was everywhere on screen. It rained down on the targets in front of the Spores as they fired. The red beams of energy would sear into a line of Minutemen vehicles and they would rip apart or veer off into a building or another vehicle. Ray was turning the streets of New York into a war zone all by himself.

  And he seemed to be having the time of his life.

  He was so detached from what he was really doing. He took joy in killing because it wasn’t real to him. Arbor killed because it came with the job. And he was proud to do his job, liked it. But he’d never enjoyed killing. At least not normally. Sort of depended on the target.

  Ray would probably enjoy killing his own mother if he could do it with a joystick.

  “Gotcha, suckers! Oh, nice dodge! Take this!”

  Another massive explosion.

  Ray turned back to Arbor. “Did you see that?”

  Arbor had no idea what he was supposed to be seeing. It all looked the same to him on the chaotic, confusing screen. Something had blown up, that’s all he could tell.

  A crackle in his helmet-com saved him from replying.