by Rick Partlow
"In there." Glen jerked a thumb back through the door.
Tanaka pushed past him, unslinging his appropriated rifle and ducking through the partially-open exit into the cacophonous slaughterhouse which the auditorium had become. Valerie O'Keefe and her father lay huddled together against the wall just inside the door, frozen with shock and fright while the Invader troops advanced across the breadth of the chamber, killing anything human in their path.
Nathan grabbed a handful of Senator O'Keefe's lapel and tossed him bodily through the doorway, then leaned over to yank Valerie to her feet. He was pushing her toward the exit when something---maybe it was the way she stiffened in his grasp, maybe it was pure instinct---spun him around on his heel. Keeping his left hand on her arm, he brought up his Invader carbine with the other and chopped a long burst into the face of an oncoming biomech trooper, sending it jerking backwards nervelessly. Shoving Valerie toward the exit, Tanaka sprayed the rest of his magazine at a clot of advancing Invaders, then dove through the door just ahead of a fusillade of answering fire.
Glen Mulrooney kicked the door closed as the bodyguard emerged, and then they were sprinting down the alleyway with Shannon in the lead, Nathan struggling to reload his rifle as he brought up the rear. Shannon held up a closed fist to halt them as she came to the mouth of the passage, where the Capital Center opened up into Reagan Plaza. Tanaka came up beside her, jacking a round into battery from a fresh clip of ammunition.
"Did you see the President?" she asked, sparing him a glance.
"There were too many of them," he said. "If he's alive, the Invaders have him."
"That makes it even more important we get you to safety, Senator," Shannon told O'Keefe. "You might be all that's left of our elected government."
"Oh, my God," Daniel O'Keefe hissed, leaning heavily against the alley wall.
"They're all dead," Valerie whispered, looking back the way they'd come, toward the Senate chamber. "Oh, Lord, they're all dead."
"And it's still not too late for us to join them," Shannon snapped. "There." She suddenly pointed out across the plaza, past the ruined shells of a score of Invader drop pods. Tanaka followed her gaze to a far corner of the square, eyes drawn by the strobe of flashing lights.
A Capital Police flitter rested almost unnoticed next to a sidewalk cafe, its doors thrown open. Not ten meters from the ducted-fan hovercraft, the bodies of two uniformed police officers lay sprawled on the pavement, riddled with Invader slugs. None of the biomechs were in sight at the moment---she guessed they had moved on to the Capital Center.
"We need to get to that flitter," Shannon announced. "It doesn't look damaged---it could take us out of the city."
"To where?" Valerie demanded shrilly, pulling away from Glen and standing in the middle of the alleyway, arms wrapped around herself. "Where can we go? They followed us all the way from Aphrodite---where can we run to that they won't follow? Oh, God..." She began sobbing uncontrollably, shoulders shaking.
"Ms. O'Keefe." Nathan gently took her arm. She looked into his eyes, her face streaked with tears, looking very much like the little girl who'd just seen her mother die.
"Nathan?" she stammered, as if she'd just noticed him.
"Ms. O'Keefe, you must stay with us," he told her firmly but softly. "I swear to you, I will keep you safe."
"All right, Nathan,” she said, wiping at her eyes.
"Nathan," Shannon said. "Keep them here---I'm going to try to get across and get that thing started. If anything happens..."
"I will do what is necessary," he told her. "Take care, Shannon."
Shannon took one last careful look around, then headed out across the plaza in a zigzag route, running from cover to cover.
"How can she just run out there like that?" Glen wondered, shaking his head.
"She sees what must be done," Tanaka explained, fixing the man with an unreadable gaze, "and she knows no one else will do it. That is called courage."
Glen didn't answer, but the look on his face was thoughtful---and ashamed.
Nathan turned back to following Shannon's progress, feeling a surge of optimism as he saw that she was more than halfway to the aircraft, taking cover for a moment behind the shell of one of the Invader drop pods. Nathan was so wrapped up in observing Shannon that he nearly missed the faint scraping sound behind them as the door to the auditorium slowly pushed open.
"Nathan!" Valerie O'Keefe's cry brought him around, the borrowed rifle coming up to his shoulder as he fell into a crouch.
Tanaka's finger was tightening on the trigger when the door swung outward and a man in a dark dress suit fell through, slumping on the alley floor, barely conscious.
"Jesus," Senator O'Keefe exclaimed, running up to the man, ignoring Tanaka's yell that he should stay back.
Glen rushed to help him and, together, they hauled the big man by the armpits, bringing him back to the mouth of the alley where Tanaka and Val waited.
"Who is he?" Valerie asked, staring at the man. He was solidly-built, perhaps in his forties, with hair shaven close to the scalp and the face of a Marine drill sergeant. As Valerie spoke, his eyes fluttered and opened with a flash of thundercloud-grey.
"The President!" he exclaimed, shrugging away from O'Keefe and Mulrooney and straightening with sudden intensity, eyes flashing around in confusion. "Where...who are you people?"
"I'm Senator O'Keefe," the older man told him. "Who are you, son?"
"Klesko, Presidential Security Detail," he snapped. An agonized hiss escaped his lips. "Oh, Christ, they took him!"
"The Invaders?" Glen asked him.
Before the man could answer, Tanaka saw Shannon signalling from the flitter that the way was clear.
"Time for talk later," Nathan announced. "We're moving out." He caught the security chief's eye. "Agent Klesko, are you armed?"
The big man felt under his jacket and came up with a compact, boxy machine pistol.
"Never had time to get it out," he admitted ruefully.
"I will lead," Tanaka told him. "You watch our rear." He swept a stern glance across the others. "You must all move quickly and go exactly where I go. Is this understood?"
"We're with you, Nathan," Daniel O'Keefe assured him. He seemed to have shaken off his shock; his voice was clear and purposeful.
The bodyguard led them out of the alley at a trot, glancing carefully back every few seconds to make sure the others were keeping up. Glen had an arm around Val's waist and was half-carrying her to make sure she didn't fall behind. Though her loose-fitting, privately-tailored dress hid the fact well, it was painfully evident that she was entering the third trimester of her pregnancy as she struggled to keep the pace. Tanaka bit back a curse, slowing so as not to put too much distance between them, though all his instincts screamed at him to find cover.
It seemed so surreal: the five of them running across the plaza with not another living soul in sight, as if they were the last humans left on Earth. Overhead, an automated airship projected a holographic advertisement for the latest wrist computer, crawling along in cheerful ignorance like an absurd monument to a long-dead civilization. That haunting illusion was abruptly and violently shattered by the howling scream of turbojets and the angular, angry lines of an AG-10 Osprey strike fighter.
Glen and Val ducked reflexively as the swing-wing aircraft ripped through the air only a hundred meters overhead, missiles streaking off hard-points under each wing. Smoke trails from the weapons traced a line to targets on the other side of the Senate building, the resonating rumble of their detonations nearly throwing all of them off their feet. The fighter banked left, away from the mushroom of black smoke climbing into the darkening sky, circled back and came in for another run at the Invaders.
"Go," Tanaka urged the others, who had stopped in their tracks to watch the spectacle. "Keep moving!"
He grabbed Glen Mulrooney by the arm and pushed him forward, sending all of them stumbling on through the plaza. Coming in lower this time, the Osprey's jetwas
h was an exhalation of hot breath down their backs, the roar of the engines tearing at their ears. A savage sound of ripping cloth echoed off the plaza floor as the plane's nose cannon spat out a hail of high-velocity slugs at unseen Invader positions.
Valerie screamed and clasped hands over her ears, but Glen kept her running, and Nathan held out a moment's hope that the distraction of the attack might aid in their escape. If they could just get to the flitter while the Invaders were still pinned down.
From the front of the Senate Building a line of smoke streaked into the sky, intersecting the Defense Command aircraft as it pulled up from its strafing run. The pilot had no time for countermeasures as the point-blank missile slammed into the rear of his plane, consuming the twin turbojets in a swelling sphere of flame.
Tanaka and Klesko bore the civilians to the ground beneath them, knowing what was coming, feeling the rush of wind as the burning fighter passed overhead and crashed through the roof of a sidewalk cafe' not a hundred meters away. A column of fire consumed the structure, and a sheet of burning fuel washed out from the wreckage, a wall of flame that cut the plaza in two, blocking their way to Shannon and the flitter.
Shannon spat a curse and hit the controls to close up the flitter's hatches, feeding the drive fans a jolt of power even before they swung shut. The hovercraft jerked forward, spinning around 360 degrees before Stark got it under control and gunned it across the plaza. She pulled back on the control stick and jammed her foot into the throttle, bouncing the flitter over the fiery barrier and curving around only meters from Tanaka and the others.
"Hurry!" Nathan yanked Valerie and Glen to their feet as the flitter's gull-wing doors hissed open ever-so-slowly.
"Look out!" Klesko gestured with the muzzle of his pistol, shoving Senator O'Keefe behind him.
Tanaka spun around and saw emerging from behind the Senate Building the ungainly bulk of an Invader Hopper, bounding toward them with the howl of laboring turbines and the whine of servomotors, a halo of smoke still trailing from its missile launch pod from the round that had taken out the fighter.
"Get in," the bodyguard urged Valerie and Glen, practically throwing them into the rear passenger compartment of the Police vehicle.
He turned to help Klesko get the Senator in beside them, but from the corner of his eye he could see the rust-colored anthropomorphic tank swivelling toward the flitter, the heavy cannon between its legs tracking in their direction.
"Shannon, go!" Tanaka ordered so forcefully that Stark followed without thought, pushing the accelerator to the floor with the doors still open and Senator O'Keefe's legs hanging out the side.
The flitter shot away so suddenly that Agent Klesko, who'd been half-leaning against it to help Daniel O'Keefe into the cab, fell forward off balance and wound up on one knee when the Hopper's cannon fired. Tanaka threw himself to the ground as the round plowed into the remnants of a statue of Ronald Reagan, blowing it to plastiform splinters and nearly blowing out the two men's eardrums.
Shannon pulled the flitter into a tight turn, feeling the drag of the open doors and whispering a prayer that none of her passengers would fall out of the vehicle. She knew that the Invader machine would be trying to target the flitter with a missile, but she wasn't ready to abandon Nathan and Agent Klesko.
"Cover me," Nathan snapped to Charlie Klesko, breaking into a sprint without waiting for the man to acknowledge, running toward the enemy machine.
The Hopper's main gun tracked the flitter around in its arc and fired off another round, but the shot missed by a good meter, detonating against the maglev station. Shannon finally had the doors closed and she stood the aircraft on its side, pulling negative gees as the flitter darted sideways through the machine's line of fire. The Hopper's circular footpads drummed the pavement as it stepped gingerly around, to bring the aircraft back into its firezone.
Nathan Tanaka and Charlie Klesko circled around the thing's legs, the Security agent keeping a watch the way it had come, his machine pistol held at arm's length. Tanaka scanned the machine, looking for weaknesses, something he could use to give Shannon and Valerie time to get away, knowing he only had seconds.
From one of the four circular openings in the boxy missile launch pod on the machine's right shoulder the rounded grey snout of a nose-cone jutted, shunted forward by internal rails. Tanaka didn't hesitate---there was the chance the warhead couldn't be detonated by a bullet, the chance that nose was armored, the very great chance that the blast of his success could kill him and Klesko---but the first and only priority was protecting the woman to whom he'd committed his life and the woman to whom he'd been willing to commit his heart.
He raised the Invader rifle to his shoulder, centered the open sights on the missile and squeezed the trigger. The buttstock jolted his shoulder and the steel-core, boat-tailed bullet punched through the thin metal of the missile nose-cone and into the lump of plastic explosives within.
Two hundred meters away and fifty meters off the ground, Shannon cried out involuntarily when she saw the flash from the Hopper's launch pod, and the twilit sky was illuminated by the fireworks of the machine's complement of anti-aircraft missiles cooking off simultaneously. A concussion of heated air and thunderous sound buffeted the little aircraft, putting Shannon into a fierce struggle with the flitter's controls. Hardly able to hear the screams from the passenger compartment above the ringing in her ears, she finally brought the hovercraft back to level.
Beneath them, a haze of black smoke floated over the plaza, obscuring the site of the explosion. Shannon desperately angled the flitter's main fan towards the concealing cloud, trying to clear it and find Nathan. The smoke wafted across the plaza in spiraling eddies, spilling slowly off the ostrich legs of the Hopper. They were all that was left of the machine, standing there comically, as if some cartoon character had dropped an anvil onto the machine's cockpit and taken it through a hole in the ground, leaving the legs behind.
Not thirty meters away from the machine lay a human body, sprawled and unmoving, and a second was about ten meters beyond that, equally insensate. And a pair of Invader biomechs were coming toward them.
"Mulrooney!" Shannon exclaimed.
"What?" The man pulled himself forward, sticking his head into the cockpit over the back of her seat.
"Take my rifle." She grabbed the Invader weapon off the floor and shoved it over her shoulder at him. "I'm going to open the hatch on the right and come down between Nathan and those enemy troops---I need you to cover me while I go check on him and the other guy."
"But..." Glen started to protest, holding the rifle gingerly as if it were about to bite him, but thought suddenly of what Tanaka had said to him. If he didn't do it, who would? He looked at Valerie, saw her staring back at him. "I've never shot a gun," he told her, but in a tone that surprised her, as if he wanted her to teach him.
"Safety's off," she explained quickly. "Just pull the butt in tight against your shoulder, line the front sight between the two rear blades and in the center of your target and give the trigger a quick squeeze---only for a second at a time; you don't want to empty it in one burst."
He only nodded, not understanding it all, but knowing there wasn't time for more. Shannon hit the hatch control, and brought the flitter almost straight down, nearly bouncing it off the pavement only a couple meters away from the body closest to the wrecked Hopper. Shannon scrambled through the partially-open hatch, pistol in hand, and Glen leaned out behind her, resting the barrel of the rifle across the side of the flitter.
The Invader biomechs, their armor blackened and pierced by the strike-fighter's earlier attack, were a bit sluggish in their reactions, clumsily bringing up their weapons and firing an off-target burst at Shannon. Bullets ricocheted off the pavement around her as she ran around the nose of the flitter. Glen gritted his teeth and pulled the trigger. The rifle battered his ears and kicked painfully against his shoulder, the muzzle raising as he held the trigger a breath too long. He quickly let his finger slack off
and brought the weapon back on target, seeing---much to his amazement---that he'd actually hit one of the troopers: the thing was down, a line of holes from its sternum to its shattered faceplate.
The other biomech turned, spraying its rifle at the side of the flitter, and Glen had to duck away with a startled cry as the shots ricocheted off the armored side of the police hovercraft.
"Glen!" Valerie screamed, covering her ears at the ringing of the burst on the hull.
Mulrooney swung back over the edge of the hatch and brought the rifle back to his shoulder, emptying the magazine in a long, frantic burst at the Invader. The biomech danced backwards, twenty of the thirty rounds Glen fired punching through its chestplate, and it finally collapsed, still trying to move but unable to.
Glen let out the breath he'd been holding, letting his death-grip on the rifle relax. He'd actually killed something.
On the other side of the flitter, Shannon ignored the firing, all her attention focused on the singed, smoking form face-down on the ground in front of her, the pistol-grip of his rifle still grasped in his blackened right hand. She heard a low moan and her heart jumped as she thought it had come from Nathan, that he was alive. Then she realized the noise had come from her own throat.
Steeling herself, she grasped the bodyguard's shoulder and turned him over. She gasped, despite her mental preparations. There was no blood---but only because the heat of the blast had cauterized the massive wounds. There was nothing left of his chest and throat but a mush of charred flesh and metal fragments, though his face was miraculously untouched. His eyes were opened, staring out with such clarity that she thought she could see the life and the strength behind them.
But he was clearly dead. She choked back the tears that welled up in her eyes and stepped away from him, moving on to check Agent Klesko. She couldn't fall apart yet. Klesko was injured, but alive. The whole right side of his body had been singed by the blast, and a hunk of metal from the Hopper had buried itself in his right hip, but even as she approached him he groaned in pain and rolled onto his left side, hand searching blindly for the machine pistol laying beside him.