by Jacob Gowans
“You—you have the tank?” one of the snipers asked.
“And it’s fairly functional.”
“Excellent work, Sheep Leader. Destroy the blockade.”
One of Brickert’s team had a basic knowledge of how to operate the controls, so she drove while Brickert and his team worked out how to fire the main gun. Once they had that down, Brickert left three operators inside and bailed with the rest of his team. At first the agents behind the blockade thought nothing of the tank’s presence, but when Brickert ordered his team to fire their mindset changed.
The blockade’s defenses quickly fell apart under the assault. “Tell Horse Team to pull back from the blockade,” Brickert told the geese. “We’re going to ram it.”
When Justice’s team saw the tank mowing through the barricades and towers, they attacked from the north. Within minutes the two teams had obliterated the blockade and its defenders. Justice had lost both coms and half his team, but had two men who were well-equipped to operate the tank. “You want it,” Brickert told Justice, handing him a spare com, “you can have it. Where are we needed?”
“Pig Team is in shambles on the east side,” Justice said. “We need you over there to open the blockade while we clean up the north.”
It was exactly where Brickert wanted to be. “Is Natalia …?”
“I don’t know much. Take Sheep Team down there and find out.”
“Yes, sir.”
* * * * *
“These clones are as stubborn as the real Sammy,” Albert complained. And for good reason. The last three Hybrids wouldn’t die. They were too sharp. Too fast.
One more minute, the commander told himself. One minute, and I can see Emily.
He saw her face clearer now. It wasn’t the face of a teenager, but a woman. Long, healthy brown hair, bright eyes both fierce and kind, and lips that always had a grin hidden in the corner. He remembered that beaming grin the first time she held Albert after his birth. She looked up at Byron and laughed.
“He’s got your chin already!” she exclaimed. “See it?”
Soon.
Albert bled from his hand, a fleshy hole right through his palm from getting a blast off a moment too late and catching a jigger. Blood still covered his face from the elevator accident. It covered him so badly that Byron wondered how his son could see.
Do not worry about Albert, Emily. I will make sure he gets out of here alive.
Byron had taken another wound too—a glancing blow to the left shoulder. Unlike Albert, he had no body armor. His whole left arm was on fire. He kept the arm raised for fear that if he lowered it, he would never raise it again. He kept it raised for Albert. For Samuel. For his granddaughter. He had accepted that he was deep in death’s clutches, but he would not allow it to get his boy.
At 0759, Byron asked the computer to check the status of the network again. The computer responded that the network was still inactive. Something is wrong. Something has gone horribly wrong.
As blood dripped from their wounds, the Byrons stood and fought their tireless foes. Shielding, pushing, blasting them back. Always on defense.
“A Psion’s bread and butter is his shields,” he used to say back in the old days to his Psion Corps.
“Her shields,” Emily would correct him.
“We are going to need to hang on for fifteen more minutes,” the commander told Albert, shaking himself back to the present. “Network is still down.”
“Come on, Sammy,” Albert said. “You can do it.”
The three remaining Hybrids made a strong offensive as though they could sense their time was running short. Hand cannons fired as they jump-blasted up and around, but not quite over. Albert met them in the air and blasted them down while Commander Byron protected his son from below.
His left arm nearly dropped, but he clenched his jaw and fought through the pain and exhaustion. Albert kicked his legs up and pushed one of the Hybrids back far enough that it gave the commander an opening. He drew his syshée with his right hand and fired four times, hitting the Hybrid twice in the ribs.
The remaining two Hybrids redoubled their efforts, guns and bodies flying at Commander Byron. The commander took a deep breath. You can do this. If Samuel can fight five, you and Albert can take two. He stopped thinking and let instinct dictate his movement. This was what he’d trained for, what he’d been born for.
A shot from one of the Hybrids found his leg, but the limb was bionic. A Hybrid tried to dive under him, under his blasts, so Commander Byron broke his face on the metal limb. Before the Hybrid could recover, Byron aimed and pulled the trigger, but all he heard was a click.
Reload.
Back in the day, Byron could reload as fast as anyone. Less than a second sometimes. Today he was a second too long. Albert jumped blasted again to push the last two Hybrids back again, but took a shot to his unprotected leg, up near his waistline. The commander jammed his magazine up into the grip, pulled back the slide, and fired in one smooth motion.
One left.
“Come on, you bastard!” Byron bellowed at him, partly in anger, and partly to get his own blood pumping. “You think I am going to die alone?”
He glanced back at Albert, who had too much blood flowing from his leg. The femoral artery. “Use the goo!” the commander ordered his son.
“I’ll be fine,” Albert hissed through his teeth.
“Use the goo!”
Drops of blood fell from the commander’s own body, mostly from his left arm, but also his leg. The Hybrid standing across from him was whole. Byron’s arms sagged, begging to fall by his side. The stubs of his legs were sore and weary. Each hot breath he took stung all the way down to his lungs.
“Computer,” he called out at 0813, even as he stared down the last Hybrid, “network status.”
“Network connected but inactive.”
Come on, Samuel. You have to come through for us. You have to.
“I told you to come and get me,” he growled at the Hybrid. “Are you deaf?”
The Hybrid roared and pounced. Byron ran at him. Their shields pressed against each other. Byron tensed up and summoned everything he had left and pushed harder. The Hybrid slid back and let out an unintelligible scream. As he pushed back, Byron almost lost his footing.
“You are a waste of good DNA.” Byron leaned in more and continued to blast as powerfully as he could with his hands.
The Hybrid kicked out a foot and tried to blast the commander’s foot out from under him. As the Hybrid did so, the commander jerked his body aside. The sudden loss of pushback caused the Hybrid to fall over. He pulled his gun out as he fell. The commander did likewise. Each pointed the gun at the other and fired. The commander’s syshée connected with the Hybrid’s face, leaving behind a nasty mess. But the Hybrid’s bullet found the commander’s soft unprotected belly.
* * * * *
Brickert’s team raced eastward on foot. As they ran, they received intel from the eagles and geese where to go. “… last spotted at the intersection of 7th and Pennsylvania,” one goose reported. “Pig Blockade is still standing.”
“Marchers are going to come through the Monument Mall,” another one informed. “Leaders are trying to reroute them. That area is a kill zone.”
The CAG cruisers launched missiles in the distance. Very few NWG cruisers remained. This worried Brickert. They ran almost two kilometers through the streets until they reached an old Navy Memorial plaza with a huge globe etched into the concrete walk. The blockade here was lines and lines of razor wire supported by concrete crowd control barricades and gun towers. Almost a dozen drone guns had been mounted near the front and CAG agents with rocket launchers sat on nearby rooftops.
“Do we have any air support available to help with this blockade?” Brickert asked the goose nest.
“You keep asking for air support, man. We’ve lost almost all our eagles. You gotta make do. I can lend you two snipers.”
“Fine,” Brickert responded, “tell them to tak
e out the rocket launchers first.” Then to his team he said, “We’ve got to get through this maze. Use the concrete barricades as cover. Our top priority is the drone guns. Once they’re down, we’ll move forward over the blockade to find Pig Team. How many grenades do we have?”
“I’ve got two,” a woman from Squad D reported.
“I’ve got one,” a man from the same squad said.
“If anything happens to those two, make sure we recover their grenades,” Brickert told his eight remaining team members. “We’ll use them on the drones as soon as we’re close enough. Squads A and C form Squad A, Squads B and D are now Squad B. I’ll go with Squad A since it’s smaller. Squad B, head north to the fountains for cover. We’ll go right and draw their fire. Signal when you’re in position to hit the drones.”
Brickert led his team in the opposite direction. “How are we doing on those rocket launchers?” he asked the goose nest.
“Sorry, we’ve got a new target. Can’t help you at the moment. Word is that the marchers are headed down Pennsylvania Ave toward the blockade. You need to clear the path for them.”
“How many marchers?”
“I don’t got a number. Just clear the path.”
“They’re going to get mowed down by the drones!” Brickert protested. “Send them in from the north. The northern blockades are clear!”
“It’d take hours—” An explosion came from above, one of the rooftops of the towers overlooking the battlefield. Brickert swore under his breath. The goose nest had just been destroyed. No response would come now, nor would any help come to take out the rocket launchers.
His squad had moved in thirty meters when they were spotted. The first rocket flew toward them in a curling pattern, hissing like a viper and trailing hot white smoke. Brickert shot blast after blast at it with one hand while shielding their exposed flank with the other. “Come on,” he muttered. “COME ON!”
Finally he hit the rocket and it exploded less than fifteen meters away. The force of the explosion was strong enough that it almost knocked him over. The Aegis holding the rocket launcher prepared to fire again.
“Move! Move!” Brickert told his squad.
* * * * *
Duncan Hudec sat on the goose nest, watching the battle through the scope of his sniper rifle. Up high, through the scope, it was an entirely different battle. It reminded him vividly of his days in the Elite Black Ops when they had stormed terrorist strongholds in the desert mountains. From such a vantage point, the entire battle became nothing more than ants scurrying around from hole to hole. And with the sniper rifle in his grip, Duncan assumed the role of the boot.
Hudec was one of three men stationed at his location. All in all there were four nests and fourteen snipers. Between CAG snipers and cruiser missiles, they’d already lost two nests and half the gunners. And he was pretty sure that one of the cruisers wheeling around in the air had just spotted his location.
Duncan radioed the NWG cruisers and told them the situation, but of the four remaining cruisers, one was badly damaged, and two were locked in dogfights. The fourth was kilometers away trying to protect the marchers in the water and surveying the area for hazards. So Duncan had only one option: try to take down the hawk with his sniper rifle. “Hawk has eyes,” he told his fellow gunners.
All three snipers in the nest shot at the CAG cruiser, but it was like throwing pebbles at a rhino. The ship moved too fast to get an accurate shot, which meant they needed a miracle to get a hit on the pilot through the windshield.
“How are we doing on those rocket launchers?” the Sheep Leader asked.
“Sorry,” Duncan responded, “we’ve got a new target. Can’t help you at the moment. Word is that the marchers are headed down Pennsylvania Ave toward the blockade. You need to clear the path for them.”
The cruiser was now headed straight toward the tower where Duncan’s nest was located. Maybe he don’t see us. Maybe he’s just turning around. Even still he aimed his scope at the windshield and pulled the trigger. A miracle indeed. The brains of the Aegis pilot blew out the back of his head.
“Nice shot, Dunk!” one of the other snipers hollered.
“How many marchers?”
“I don’t got a number,” Duncan answered as he fired at another CAG cruiser. “Just clear the path.”
“They’re going to get mowed down by the drones!” Sheep Team Leader protested. “Send them in from the north. The northern blockades are clear!”
“It’d take hours—”
A sharp, ear-splitting whistle cut him off, and a missile from a second cruiser slammed into the building underneath the goose nest. Duncan was thrown over the platform railing, saved by the harness he wore which connected him to the building. Rifle still in hand, he dangled over the edge. Behind him, his two nest mates hung unconscious or dead, he couldn’t tell which. The platform groaned as it slid, and the top part of the building slowly started to collapse. Duncan had time to fire one more shot.
Our Father who art in Heaven. He hefted his rifle up to his eye, waited for the rocking to lessen, and found a target in his scope: an Aegis wielding a rocket launcher, aimed at Sheep Team’s location. The rocket flew in a burst of smoke straight at the team.
Hallowed be Thy name. A loud groan came from the building accompanied by the squeal of metal scraping over metal. The rocket exploded moments before hitting Sheep Team. Another miracle.
Thy kingdom come. Duncan put the Aegis in his crosshairs just as the enemy reloaded his launcher and put Sheep Team in his sights once more.
Thy will be done. A deep groan came from the building. Duncan fired first, killing the Aegis with a single shot.
On earth—The building crumbled with a loud lurch, and Duncan Hudec fell.
* * * * *
Janna Scoble flew her cruiser in a loop to get a better angle on the CAG cruiser. The attack on the Hive had started hours ago when, in the early pre-dawn hours, resistance fighters breached the Hive, captured a man named Chad, the Hive’s caretaker, and shut down all of its systems except the parabolic antennae needed to transmit a code. She didn’t know what the code would do, and didn’t want to know. Her mission, along with twelve other cruisers, was to protect the Hive for as long as possible.
Six months ago, Janna Scoble joined the resistance. She had spent three months before that trying to convince her husband about her passionate beliefs, but couldn’t sway him. After his third refusal, she stopped asking. Her decision to go without him was not easy, and one she was sure many people would not make, but something deep inside her told her to go. So she went.
A month after her arrival to Glasgow she learned she was pregnant. After a week of sleepless nights, debating whether or not she should return home, she met with Lara and Thomas. They assured they would support whatever decision she made. Janna ultimately chose to stay. The tipping point was meeting two young men named Brickert and Sammy. As a nurse in the infirmary, she learned about their actions in Detroit, how one had risked all to save the other from a collapsing building. She realized that she, too, could risk all for her cause.
Now, twenty-seven years old and seven months pregnant, she flew a cruiser because she was one of the few resistance members who’d survived the bio-bomb and had flying experience. Her father had been one of the last commercial pilots before the air rails effectively ended the commercial airline industry. She couldn’t count how many times he’d said to her, “Everyone is born with wings, Janna. We just have to learn to fly with them.”
The CAG cruisers launched their missiles at the Hive, only to be foiled again and again by the resistance pilots. From what she could tell, the resistance had neither superior training nor the advantage of numbers, just sheer willpower and determination to win. They destroyed the CAG ships at a rate of two for every one resistance ship lost. Janna had managed to destroy one and damage another, which another resistance pilot picked off. Her cruiser had taken some stray bullets, but nothing too substantial.
“We’ve
got four CAGs coming in a diamond formation,” the Elite air captain, Kallen Dinsmore, announced. “I need all cruisers in my quadrant to come to my coordinates.”
“Roger that,” one pilot said.
“Roger,” Janna said as well.
In moments, the three cruisers joined together to stop the four CAG ships making a run at the Hive. The front three fired missiles, which were all matched and eliminated by the resistance’s own missiles. “Fire at will,” Dinsmore ordered, “More ships to my mark.”
Two of the CAG cruisers took gunfire and veered away. The third tried to get a second missile off, but a new resistance ship entered the fray and intercepted the missile with his own. The fourth CAG ship, however, careened straight at the Hive.
“Get that bogey out of the air!” Dinsmore said. “Someone nearby who has missiles, take it out.”
Janna was nearest but she was out of missiles. She looped around to improve her angle of attack, her guns firing on the ship, but she was unable to take it out. A nearby resistance cruiser launched a missile, but a CAG cruiser nulled the missile with one of its own. Janna’s console told her the fourth CAG cruiser was preparing to launch its missile. Janna had no way of stopping it.
Except one.
“Thank you for my wings, Daddy.” She patted her bulging stomach. “We got this one, don’t we?”
Janna jerked her controls and directed her cruiser directly into the CAG ship’s path. She collided with the CAG cruiser just as its missile released. She jammed on the eject button, but knew she would not make it in time. Fire and heat filled the cockpit as the missile detonated, followed immediately by the explosion of the CAG ship.
* * * * *
The air reeked of sulfur. It was November in D.C. but felt like July. The heat came from the molten pavement, the smoldering stumps of trees, and the fires in the buildings lining Washington Circle Park at 23rd and K Street. But Kawai had been in hell long before the battle began. It had started when she woke up and Li was gone, killed by the bio-bomb.