No, that wasn’t true. He wished it would, but actually, it sent electricity shooting through him. His masterstroke, Lithium’s masterstroke, had worked just like a charm. Everything was falling into place.
Captain—strike that—Colonel Clay Arbor was indeed a man he could work with. Tom Sage’s big mistake was keeping a man like that, a patriot like that, on the sidelines for so long, using him only as a sideshow.
Lithium needed to be front and center. He would be—from now on.
“Look at that,” Howke said, pointing to the news coverage. “That’s why we can’t kill them. Not yet.”
On screen, Media Corp reporters were talking in excited tones over images of Lithium and the Legion. They profiled each member of the team: Lithium, Velocity, Fiddler, and Fang. X-Ray was kept out of the coverage. The images from the day showed them hauling out the bloodied and injured from the smoking lobby of Freedom Rise. The victims were all just innocent office workers, targeted by the Suns of Liberty. That’s how the coverage was spinning it.
The Legion were the new super team. The true super team, unlike the phony Suns of Liberty.
Of course, no reporter actually said those words, but the underlying message was clear.
Images of New Yorkers filling the streets outside of Bryant Park protesting the Suns of Liberty splashed across the screens next. More protests on Sixth Avenue outside the smoking entrance to Freedom Rise itself.
“First, we kill their name,” Howke said. And at that moment the coverage switched to a statement made by Arbor as he looked directly into the cameras outside the smoking entrance of Freedom Rise, which was framed perfectly in the background.
“He’s always been misguided, but now he and the Suns of Liberty have taken it too far. When you attack innocent people just trying to make a living, you’ve gone too far. We, the Legion, are here to protect you, and I vow today we will find the Revolution and his Suns of Liberty and we will bring them to justice.”
Then the shot cut to Lithium laughing as he signed autographs for kids waiting to meet him.
“Then we kill them,” Howke said. The gopher grin was back.
Tarleton wasn’t known for smiling much, but that brought a grin to his face as well.
“Now, the other problem is the Fletcher girl. You find out from Von Cyprus if he really is close to an alternative and how fast he can rebuild that chamber. I want Project Krill up and running, but I also don’t want to have to depend on it.”
“Already did it. We’ve got every asset we can spare working on it now.” Tarleton hesitated for a moment and then asked, “How much do you want to know?”
“Tom never wanted to know the details. I’m not Tom. I want to know what it can do. Just don’t tell me what you’re going to do with it until it’s done, clean, and taken care of. This next step in the process will need to be precise. Very precise.”
“I know.”
“How close are we to getting the data?”
“Ray’s working on it, but this Lantern guy they have, he’s good.”
“But Ray’s better, right? I mean, everyone says he’s the very best since what’s-his-name?”
“Yeah, since Diego Alvarez died.” Tarleton was impressed Howke would know that info given that Tarleton himself had only learned of it since they’d decided to form the Legion—and Tarleton was the CEO of the country’s largest defense contractor that actually dealt with Locator-type technology.
“Right.” Howke finally strolled over and took his seat in the center of the room—a sign to Tarleton the meeting had just ended. “I want the whole world, especially the Suns of Liberty, focused on the Legion. Then we’ll make our next move.”
Eric Von Cyprus unlocked the door and stepped into the room, two heavily armed Council Guardsmen flanking him.
“It’s all right, you can go. I’ll be fine,” he said to them, and the two Guards marched back out of the door.
Seated in front of him was Rachel Dodge, unbound and unharmed. The collar had been taken off, and she sat in this room that she recognized as an interrogation room. It looked to be soundproof, and she figured it was also digitally shielded.
Von Cyprus was holding her cloak folded over one arm. In his other was a clipboard with a thick stack of papers attached. He wore odd-looking metal sleeves that covered his forearms and came down into metal gloves. Otherwise, he was unremarkable. White shirt and khakis.
Rachel figured either the steel gloves or the clipboard were for show, because you couldn’t do both. No way he was shuffling through those papers wearing the gloves. Was he there to intimidate her, or was he the real thing?
“Rachel Dodge,” Von Cyprus read from the papers, laying the cloak on the floor, taking the chair in front of her. “Ex-CIA. Now, evidently, an active member of the Suns of Liberty.” Von Cyprus waited for a response from her but was unsurprised she stayed silent. “You weren’t on our radar at all. But then, I guess that’s your thing, isn’t it?” He dropped the clipboard to the floor.
Rachel said nothing.
“I’m Eric Von Cyprus. I run this place.” He motioned at the entire facility.
“Maybe you’ve seen my work? The Man-O-War, for instance?”
Rachel smirked at him.
“Oh, that was just the beginning. A trial run, really. I’ve completed much grander toys than that since then. Now, I’d bet you’d like to spare your friends from having to play with my toys.” Von Cyprus stepped up almost within reach of Rachel and said to her, “Because mark my words, if they don’t come in from the cold soon, I’m going to play with them, Ms. Dodge. And when I play, I play hard and I play to win.”
Von Cyprus sneered and raised his arms so that the metal sleeves glimmered in front of her face. “For instance, this toy, I call my electrosleeves. A bad name for them, since they don’t use electricity at all. They actually employ a new substance some have called dark energy, but that’s not entirely accurate. It’s far more deadly than that. I call it black energy.”
And with that Von Cyprus reached out much faster than Rachel had expected. He snatched one of her arms in his metal hand.
Rachel tried to pull her arm away, but at that very moment a charge of some kind swam through the metal and the scientist’s grip became amplified a thousand fold. There was no way she was going to break his clasp.
“Now, we’ve got a long time to get to know each other. Let me see if I can make a strong first impression.” The sleeves suddenly shimmered in the strangest glow Rachel had ever seen. She almost swore there was a black mist floating around the sleeves, except this was no mist at all. It was actually a glow. A black glow.
An explosive charge of energy from the sleeves hit her, and the next thing she knew she was on her knees, tears streaming down her cheeks, and she could hear a hoarse, guttural scream bellow from deep in her throat.
“That’s your skin being negated from physical reality.”
Rachel screamed again.
“Oh, I know, it feels a bit like being burned alive, but I assure you, Ms. Dodge, the truth is far more delicious. You are being erased from reality, one skin cell at a time.”
Von Cyprus released her, and she dropped the rest of the way to the floor. Her wrist was bright red where he had grasped it. The skin was simply gone.
“Now, let’s start things off easy. How about we begin with this cloak of yours. You’ve seen what I can do. But I have to tell you, I’ve never even tried to break the code of invisibility. Always thought it was impossible like everyone one else, but here you have a real-life invisibility cloak. I want to know how it works.”
“Fuck you,” Rachel moaned, grasping her arm just above where Von Cyprus had mangled it.
“Oh well. I really have wanted to see what this thing can do,” he said, wiggling all ten fingers. “Shall we try round two?” He leaned down, and Rachel looked up to see both hands reaching for her—
When a cell phone rang.
Von Cyprus stopped. Frowned. Shut down the sleeves. He leaned back up and fished t
he phone out of his pocket. Seeing who was calling him, he peered down at Rachel. “Sorry to be so rude, but I really do have to take this.”
And with that, Von Cyprus left the room.
“Mr. Tarleton, what a pleasant surprise,” Von Cyprus said.
“Cut the crap, Eric. I want those mirrors on the first truck out of there. Ana’s headed right at you and I don’t want any delays.”
“Well, then you’re in luck,” the scientist said. “They left here over an hour ago.”
“Good.”
“And some even better news is I’ve already started interrogating the girl and in the process had my first real test of the black energy.”
“And...”
“And so far, so good.”
“Batten down the hatches. I’m locking you down for the night, and air support’s backing off until this thing blows through.”
“Air support? What about my baby?”
“The Delaware? She’ll stay with you as long as she can, but then she’s going to fly clear of the storm until it loses strength.”
“What about the girl?”
“You can pick her back up after.”
“She’s CIA. She’s not going to be easy to break. How far do you want me to go?”
“As far as it takes. The world doesn’t even know that she exists.”
Outside, at that very moment, the storm clouds descended.
Lantern entered the room to Revolution’s living quarters through the open door. “Sir, permission to speak freely?”
Revolution, scanning the rough layout they had of the facility in Trenton, nodded. “You always have permission.”
Lantern closed the door behind him. “You’ve been derelict in your duty, sir. You should replace me as a permanent member of the Suns of Liberty.”
Revolution dropped the papers to his desk. “What?”
“The mistakes I have made are intolerable, sir. I don’t deserve full membership. I can be support staff, or I’ll—”
“Diego,” Revolution said sternly, and hearing him use his first name stopped Lantern cold. “I may have been derelict in my duties. I won’t argue that. But it’s not been by keeping you on the team. No one else can do what you do. We’ve all made mistakes. And we will make them again. But the Suns of Liberty don’t exist without you. Shake it off.”
“But, sir—”
Revolution shook his armored head. “That’s an order.”
Lantern nodded.
Revolution stiffened. “Dismissed.”
Lantern nodded and turned to leave.
“One other thing,” Revolution said. “Just how good is X-Ray?”
CHAPTER 23
It emerged from the dark like a black moon of death, covering the rain-battered horizon. Impossibly huge. The USS Delaware was larger than any of them had imagined. Lantern had already cloaked them; otherwise, the armada of drones that was housed inside the gigantic machine would have been unleashed by now.
They would have been overpowered in sheer numbers alone.
The great vehicle turned in the sky. It was fat and oblong. Its body resembled a slightly flattened blimp, but built of solid black steel. Large retractable wings jutted out from the sides with eight monstrous turbines firing on each. Twin giant rocket engines jutted out of the aft end of the ship, both taller than the craft itself, trailing powerful fingers of flame across the black sky.
Beside them were two enormous lateral propellers that allowed the Delaware to hover like a helicopter. From this distance, they looked like two colossal flying saucers hovering on either side of the twin blazing rocket engines. The flame from the engines illuminated the propellers in a ghostly glow.
The Stealthhawk-2 banked and turned. Sophia engaged the autopilot and leaned over toward Lantern in the copilot’s seat. “Try not to wreck this one, please.”
“Funny.”
Sophia was getting to like piloting these choppers. She didn’t want to lose the only other one they had. “Can you track the storm and keep her at a safe distance?” she asked him.
Lantern nodded. Hurricane Ana was on his scope, complete with the most minute weather detail if he needed it. Lantern had learned a lot from adopting some of the innovative techniques the late Ramsey Hollis (aka Hunley) had used for aquatic scanning. Lantern had adapted them for wind and atmospheric measures.
“We have to go,” the Revolution said.
Ward glanced at the Revolution, and even through his helmet Ward’s doubt was draped on his face.
“The Air Force and NOAA have been doing this for more than a century,” Revolution said to him.
“Yeah, in big, ginormous airplanes,” Ward said, adjusting the small backpack that was slung awkwardly over his wings.
They each had one, packed with equipment for later. Sophia, with the most powerful thrusters, carried twice the load of the others—Rachel’s gear for her return flight home.
Lantern’s Hollow burned to life in the bay of the helo, and they all moved toward the door. Ward embraced Revolution with a sigh of resignation; Sophia put her arms around Drayger. The Hollow turned to all of them and said, “Remember, you’re going to have about fifteen minutes in there. After that, the eye will close and the other side of the storm will hit.”
Lantern opened the door from the cockpit.
The wind blasted in.
So Ward and Sophia wasted no time. They rocketed out immediately. Sophia led the way.
And then they were flying.
Ward hardly ever thought about the possibility of being shredded by the chopper’s rotors anymore. He congratulated himself that he’d finally gotten used to leaping out of a helicopter.
But flying straight into a hurricane, that was another matter.
In the distance, the massive afterglow of the Delaware’s great rocket engines consumed the horizon. It was an awe-inspiring sight.
When they were well away, Drayger asked Sophia, “So, let me get this straight. The plan is to hitch a ride on the most dangerous, destructive war machine ever built in the middle of a freak hurricane, using that freak hurricane as cover by flying through it, and attacking a facility we know absolutely nothing about—but clearly is of the utmost importance to the Council, due to the presence of the Delaware—during the brief break in the eye of the storm. Then, after somehow defeating whatever is inside the super-secret, super-important love shack, we’re going to escape by flying back through the massive hurricane again.”
Sophia wasn’t hearing a question.
“Does this kind of thing happen often?”
“This would be a first.”
They stopped talking as the oxygen seemed to be sucked out of the air. The heat from the ship’s engines rippled over them.
The roar was deafening, all-consuming. The amount of power it took to rocket this monster through the sky was immense.
The wind from the storm rose; lightning flashed in the distance. A reminder that another equally deadly foe was stalking them.
They approached the ship’s aft end. It was like flying between two miniature suns.
The Hollow told them to stay low to maximize Lantern’s digital shield, keeping the craft’s sensors from finding them.
The hot blasts of flame stung their faces. Sophia could hear Drayger grunting from the pain as she soared between the massive engines.
And then they were past them. Past the roaring, stinging fire and gliding toward the great, black expanse of the ship. On cue, Sophia and Ward let loose their companions, who fell to the surface of the Delaware. Revolution glided, touching down gracefully. Drayger more or less dropped and rolled, or at least that’s what he should have done. Instead, he thudded with a loud...
Whump!
It looked like it stung, but he gave Sophia the thumbs-up, even as he lay sprawled on his back, wincing.
Ward and Sophia landed as softly as they could, and they all four froze. The ship undoubtedly had impact detectors. They all held their breath, hoping Drayger had not been too lou
d.
All but Revolution had been outfitted with hastily fitted magnetic soles for their boots, the holds of which could be adjusted through thought-commands. The howling wind made them instantly grateful Leslie’s team had come up with them. Soon, they would be standard issue, but tonight’s hasty mission demanded an earlier-than-planned field test.
Lighting flashed, and the clouds loosed a downpour. The raindrops struck with enough force to leave welts, so they raised their protective face shields. Revolution retracted his cloak into a shoulder compartment, leaving only the barest trace of the material along his shoulder and neckline. It was weird to see him without the cape. Ward knew he could detach the cape, but he’d never seen it retract.
This was the moment of truth. Either they’d made it undetected—or any moment from now, the concealed doors that lined the massive topside of the ship would explode open and belch forth the world’s largest armada of deadly robotic drone soldiers from every direction.
They scanned the ship for any sign of them.
A concealed door opened.
CHAPTER 24
A hatch opened on the ship’s massive crown less than fifty feet behind Sophia. Right between her and Drayger.
Out climbed a spidery-like drone that clung to the black steel by robotic magnetized suction cup legsThe drone was moving slowly, fighting the increasing winds.
They all froze.
It crept forward toward Sophia—who, ever so slowly, raised her right hand and readied her blaster.
Ward did the same with the disabling darts.
It stopped. Then it reversed course and started crawling in the other direction—
Directly toward a terrified Ben Drayger.
“Shit,” Sophia breathed. Drayger had no way to disable it. He couldn’t even blast it. Poor bastard. If he was going to stick around, they really ought to look into getting him an all-purpose weapon. His mind games were useless against these drones.
Sophia noticed something else. The angle she had on the drone put Drayger himself right in the crosshairs of her bracelets. If she blasted the thing from here she could hit him and either kill him instantly or knock him off the ship. There was no way the magnetic boots would hold up to her propulsor—not at the strength she would have to use to destroy the machine.
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