“It terrifies you even more to think you can’t protect those you’ve been sworn to defend. Because you already know what it feels like to fail at that, don’t you? Dear old dad?”
Sophia’s head snapped up at Tarleton. Under the blue visor her eyes were wide. He couldn’t know that, could he?
“It took us so long to figure out who you are. It should have been obvious the whole time. You must have gotten such a rush out of flaunting it in our faces. But then you attacked Trenton, and we got a sample of that weapon of yours. Who has access to that much Helium-3? Who is the right age, height, build? It was staring us in the face the whole time.”
The blades had stopped spinning, but now, with a frenzied buzz that was part chainsaw, part insect, they began to rotate once again. Sophia stared up at them as Tarleton’s horrid words rang through her ears. They were making her very nervous.
“I tell you what. I’ll go easy on you. If you surrender now, take off the helmet, show all these good people who you really are, and agree to come with us as our prisoner, then I’ll let all of these innocent people go.”
A murmur rumbled through the crowd. It was a slow-building roar of defiance.
“If not, I’ll kill every last one of them,” Tarleton spat with a venom that felt like a punch to her chest.
The crowd slowly quieted.
Sophia felt a new tear streak down her cheek. She lowered her head. There was nothing she could do. Rage had control of her suit. The Aztech could end her in an instant, along with everyone in the stadium. There was no backup coming and no way to call it, even if there was. Even if Drayger tried to come to her rescue he could end up causing more harm than help: scaring Von Cyprus or the Doctor out of their wits might just end up unleashing the Aztech. There was no choice.
She nodded her head.
“Wonderful!” Tarleton cackled. “Take off the helmet,” he taunted, his voice sing-songy, mocking her.
Slowly, she lifted it off her head. She watched the blue visor slip from her eyesight for the last time.
A murmur rippled across the stadium.
“Very good, Sophia.” Tarleton clearly relished every moment of this. “Everyone, meet Sophia Linh, otherwise known as Helius. Helius, meet everyone.” Tarleton laughed again. “Now, it’s not that I don’t trust you, it’s just that...I want to hurt you.” Tarleton nodded to Von Cyprus—who sighed, raised his eyebrows, and sent a mental command to the Doctor.
Sophia felt her suit power up again, and instantly her arms raised out to her sides in a “cross” stance. She felt her legs stiffen and immobilize. The meaning of this action wasn’t lost on her. She was being symbolically crucified.
Another nod from Von Cyprus to Rage and the spinning blades exploded toward her, lasers firing from the ends of each blade.
They sliced clean through both of Sophia’s arms at the shoulders, severing them in one clean, instantaneous motion, cauterizing the wounds as they spun.
Sophia Linh’s severed arms chunked to the ground. They lay grotesquely on the turf below her.
Twitching.
She screamed in unimaginable agony. Her cries echoed across the stadium walls.
“Oh, now that’s so much better. You certainly won’t be causing any more mischief without those. I think we can start to build a real relationship of trust now, don’t you?”
Sophia’s face was a river of tears. Saliva, tears, and mucus dripped from her chin. “Go fuck yourself!” she spat in a hoarse whisper that bubbled up from the depths of her throat. “I’m going to kill you.”
“No,” Tarleton chuckled. “You are not. You’re going to watch.”
A slow buzz began to build all across the stadium. Sophia could not tell where it was coming from.
“Now, if we’re going to trust each other, we have to start being honest. You have been honest with me and revealed your true self. So let me be honest with you.” Tarleton paused for dramatic effect. “I lied a second ago.”
Above, a new army of drones, one hundred strong, darkened the sky as they hovered into position above Jacobs Field. In unison, they pivoted so that they were all pointed down toward the helpless crowd.
Who began to shout and panic.
Tarleton used the Helisphere’s PA system to drown them out, his menacing voice echoing across the stadium. “Earlier I said I would spare these innocent civilians. And I would have, were any of these traitors actually innocent.” The Pod glided down closer to Sophia so that she could clearly see the absolute ice in his glare. For the first time, as it moved in closer, she could finally see who was seated next to Tarleton in the Pod.
The one person who hadn’t stood.
Ben Drayger.
She locked eyes with him. His whole face seemed to quiver. “I’m sorry, Sophia. I didn’t know! I swear I didn’t know what they were going to do. I never would have—” his whiney voice echoed over the stadium.
“Silence!” Tarleton commanded. “You’ve been well paid for your services, Commander Drayger. A check for ten million dollars is now deposited in your account.” Tarleton couldn’t help but beam a broad, psychotic smile as he spoke those words and thought about the impact they were having all across the Resistance at that very moment.
He turned back toward Sophia. “This is a message to all those who are watching this broadcast, which by the way, is being beamed out to every remaining Resistance stronghold, not to mention those two other teams of Suns.”
Tarleton waited. Again he let the dramatic pause fill the air. “I give no quarter to traitors!”
And with that, the drones opened fire on five thousand helpless victims.
Sophia closed her eyes. The sounds were enough. The roar of the weapons, the screams of the dying.
It seemed to last forever.
The wrenching and rending of metal. The stench of death.
Finally, all fell quiet.
She opened her eyes. There was no one left.
Sophia just glared at him with pure, unadulterated hate.
Tarleton scanned the grisly scene and rubbed tension out of his forehead. The CEO shook with psychotic anger. “You all have driven me to this!” He regained his composure and glared at her. “Let’s add one more fear to your list, shall we? You were the strongest of the Suns of Liberty. The key to your strength has never been brawn, it’s always been that remarkable brain of yours. So that, dear Sophia, is the last thing I will take from you.”
The Aztech launched out at her, dropping from the sky in an instant, raising a titanium fist high in the air and bringing it down in a sickening crack across her skull.
It was last thing she would hear or see.
On the ground, Sophia’s body was crumpled, lying in an unnatural position, a gross indentation in her skull, blood pouring from her ears and nose.
For Sophia Linh, the world offered no more light.
CHAPTER 41
The Revolution fell to his knees inside the hangar of the Blackhawk. Lantern had collapsed in the corner, still glued to the horror in his HUD. Revolution had seen some horrendous things in his life, seen the atrocities of war. But what Tarleton had just done to Sophia was unspeakable, unimaginable. Not to mention the massacre of five thousand souls. The man was truly evil.
And Drayger—
Drayger had betrayed them all.
Leslie had locked hands with Livingston Roosevelt as they rode in the cushy confines of the EU Ambassador’s private jet. Media Corp had broadcast the entire event live. They had watched it on a small tablet in complete horror. Neither were even aware of the plane’s attendant approaching them from the front of the spacious cabin.
“Mademoiselle, we have our escort,” the attendant said in his heavy French accent, pointing out the windows as two Vipers settled in on either side of the plane. “We have entered Washington airspace and will be landing at the Capitol momentarily.”
“Thank you, Robert,” Leslie said, wiping away a renegade tear. The attendant smiled broadly when she pronounced his name co
rrectly.
Ward and Rachel landed, having seen the entire thing play out over their HUDs. When the final blow hit, Ward lowered them into some random street in the middle of Reno. They landed on the sidewalk, people all around, and embraced. Rachel ripped off her flight helmet and let it clunk to the ground. She hugged Ward hard and wept into his shoulder. Ward fought his own tears, trying to be strong.
He felt anything but.
He would have killed for a shot of serenity serum.
When the onlookers realized what they were seeing—who they were seeing—several made to approach them. It wasn’t every day that two members of the Suns of Liberty came to town.
Ward would have none of it.
“Stay the hell back,” he barked in wavering voice, raising his wrist cuffs.
The crowd froze, backed away, gave them room. Their numbers began to swell. Some even wept with them.
They had seen it all on live TV.
Inside StealthHawk-2, Revolution rose to his feet.
“Open the coms.”
Revolution heard the click and knew Lantern had done so.
“Do you have a fix on that Pod?”
Lantern hadn’t moved; he still couldn’t speak. He nodded.
When Revolution spoke again his voice was low and dangerous. The sound of it was a physical presence. All he said was, “Track it.”
To Lantern, it sounded like Tarleton’s death sentence.
And then, the dead man spoke.
“I know you’re listening,” Tarleton’s voice crackled through their coms. “Revolution, it was so distressing to find out that you’re still alive.”
The message was going out to all of them. Drayger had keyed them into their com signal. Something Lantern would have to fix.
“Since you won’t give yourselves up or turn yourselves in, I’m now going to demonstrate just how utterly hopeless your cause truly is.”
“I’m gonna kill you, Tarleton,” Revolution hissed.
“Right now what you’re going to do is turn your video feed onto the universal channel.”
Revolution nodded to Lantern, who did so. The universal channel was an open-access channel for any high-level government operative to use if all else failed. Kind of a last resort. As such, it was rarely used.
An image of the vice president’s official residence, Number One Observatory Circle, popped onto the screen from a wide-angle view that showed the entire mansion, most of the expansive lawn, and the heavily forested outer grounds.
“I’m sure Elizabeth Lee has been a real hero to you all lately. She just arrived at the residence ten minutes ago from an overseas trip. An enhanced, satellite-guided 6,000-pound GBU Bunker Buster is on its way as we speak.”
Lantern was up now, and he and Revolution shared a worried gaze. This was not going in a good direction.
“The bitch has been quite a thorn in my side for some time now. And just as you all will find out soon enough, I get rid of thorns by ripping the plant out by the roots. Observe.”
On screen, a flash of light streaked by the camera—
The mansion exploded.
A massive ball of fire bloomed into the sky. The walls of the elegant structure ruptured into a billion fragments. A starburst of flying debris and shrapnel blasted into the sky of downtown Washington.
No one could have survived.
Windows across this well-kept section of D.C.—well-maintained, emerald-green lawns with cast-iron gates, colonial trim, brick and stone of the finest upper-class brownstones—shattered.
Everyone in the city felt the impact.
When the flames cleared nothing was left but smoking ruins.
“You’ve got twenty-four hours. If you have not surrendered by then, I will hit you so hard you’ll wish you’d just been having tea with the vice president. And you’ll know just how easy I went on your friend Helius. Twenty-four hours.”
The line went dead, the screen black.
Revolution turned to Lantern. “Find us a new com channel, switch everyone to it.”
Lantern went to work.
Anger flooded the Dark Patriot’s senses. “I’m going to kill him,” Revolution breathed.
Lantern said nothing, just kept working.
Revolution knew he had to find out where Tarleton was going if he were to do that, and if Tarleton was going to be holed up in Freedom Rise that task would be nearly impossible. They’d found that out before, and now the forces aligned with Tarleton were almost unimaginably strong.
There was also the issue of the threat the chairman had just issued. What was his next target? What was Tarleton’s ultimate plan? Could Leslie rally the Congress and the president to oppose the Council before Tarleton had a chance to execute it?
“Do we have the video of that missile strike?”
“No, it auto-deleted.”
“Can you retrieve it?”
Lantern peered up at him, nodded. “It’ll take time.”
“Get it, after you have the coms reestablished.”
The Council was self-destructing. They had to help accelerate that process, while trying to find and kill Tarleton.
“Then I want you to put everything you have into tracking Tarleton. Find out what his plan is. Find a way to stop it.”
“Coms are up,” Lantern said.
Revolution took a long moment and then spoke into the com so that they all could hear. “Suns, there are no words for the loss we have suffered today. Five thousand people slaughtered in cold blood. Our own Sophia.”
There was dead silence across the com.
“The time has come,” he continued. “We rendezvous back at Boston. Then we find Tarleton and we wipe him out.”
ANDREWS AIR FORCE BASE
WASHINGTON, D.C.
EIGHT HOURS LATER
Clay Arbor opened the door and stepped into the large, concrete, underground hangar.
He was fully outfitted in the greens, browns, and battleship grays of his Lithium armor.
Ben Drayger shuffled in behind him.
“I just want to check on something,” he told Drayger.
On one side of the room was the cage in which Kiernan Rage was routinely kept during the off hours. It was complete with a desk, a bed, a toilet, and the Doctor himself—all clearly visible.
On the other side was a much larger cage. It stood all the way to the ceiling—a good twenty-five feet.
Inside of it was the deactivated Aztech. Manacled to giant titanium restraints that wrapped around most of its body, arms, and legs. A large computer console stood in front of it, all that was needed to keep the robot constrained.
Drayger spotted the Doctor and immediately drew his Luger, aimed it at the cage, and—
“Relax, kid,” Arbor said, pawing the pistol and forcing Drayger to lower it.
“That son of a bitch!” Drayger said, tears forming on his eyelids.
Arbor knew he was thinking about what the Doctor had done to Helius, via the Aztech. “The freak was just following Tarleton’s orders. Take it up with your new boss.”
The Doctor lay upon the bed, staring up at the high concrete ceiling.
Drayger’s eyes next locked on the Aztech. He stared at the machine with a combination of fear, disgust, and awe. It was like seeing a sleeping dragon.
The Doctor sat up and glared at the duo bemusedly.
“Here to check on me yet again, eh? You still don’t trust Eric’s containment system, do you, Captain?” Kiernan Rage rose from his bed. “Smart.”
Arbor shook his head. “It’s Colonel now, actually.”
The Doctor cocked an eyebrow. “Colonel Clay Arbor, hero of the African Conflict. Now, evidently, pawn in the name of liars and thieves and official scoundrels.”
“Don’t tell me your sympathies lie with the traitors? Just like your daughter, huh?”
“My daughter cannot be trusted. She is a woman.”
Arbor snorted. “You’re observant, aren’t you, sweetheart? You said you had information that
I would want. Tell me, and you’d better not be wasting my time.”
Doctor Rage strolled toward the front of his cell.
“I am very observant,” he said. “I see all things. I see a new world, and you heading down a path of sinful destruction.”
“Yeah, yeah. Repent. I heard it before. Is that it?”
The Doctor just stared at him, grinning with a twinkle in his eyes.
Arbor motioned to Drayger. “C’mon, let’s check the big nasty.”
They started toward the Aztech.
“Not just that. Talk to the slave. It will tell you.”
“Tell me what?” Arbor was skeptical.
The Doctor motioned wildly toward the Aztech. He bellowed with glee. “I’ve been inside its mind. I’ve seen what it knows, what they are planning. You, the super patriot, the my-country, right-or-wrong man! Turn it on, ask it.”
“I know what they’re planning. I’ve seen the next step.” Arbor turned to go, but the Doctor grinned at his back.
“And the step after that?”
Arbor eyed Rage with suspicion. But the Doctor had his interest now, because there was no step after that.
“Ask it,” Rage hissed again.
Arbor eyed the large control panel restraining the Aztech. He knew the Aztech’s mental and vocal functions could be accessed. It had become a bit of a game with the guards. Turned out the big robot was pretty good at predicting sports scores, weather patterns, stock tips, just about anything.
Drayger blanched, raised the pistol back toward the Doctor. “Okay, now, this sounds like a setup. You know that, right? I mean, I mean, yeah. Definitely a setup.”
“I’m not as dumb as I look, kid,” Arbor said, still eyeing the Aztech’s control panel. “Besides you shoot that glass and you’ll release his brainwaves. So, put the damn gun away.”
Drayger did so.
The Doctor scoffed. “This is how you treat your followers? I give mine a reason to fight, a reason to live.”
Arbor snorted, strolling toward the giant machine. “You don’t have any followers.”
“You’re not really going to do it, are you?” Drayger asked.
The Suns of Liberty (Book 3): Republic Page 27