by T. C. Edge
“Great work, Ragan,” shouted Tanner, giving praise where it wasn’t due. This was all Tanner, Ragan knew. Without him, they’d be dead.
Ragan was about to remedy the undeserved plaudit and turn it around the other way, when Tanner suddenly carved a new path once more, this time rising high and executing something resembling a twisted barrel role as he attempted to outmanoeuvre the jet behind.
Ragan’s words were choked down, locked into his throat. He turned his attention to survival once more as the falcon swept and swooped and surged like its namesake, carving up the clouds. During one particularly stomach-churning pass, Ragan caught a glimpse of the following jet through the windshield. It was brief, only, but enough.
“It’s the golden eagle,” he murmured.
“You sound surprised,” said Tanner, glancing over. “You said it was Quinn following. They were always going to chase us down using the best jet available. After this baby, of course.” He reached out and tapped the dashboard affectionately, holding himself together so well.
Then his eyes crafted themselves into a focused glare, his jaw stiffened, and he spoke a few words of warning.
“OK, hold on,” he said. “Things are about to get hairy.”
About to? Thought Ragan, quaking. What had they been so far!
The next couple of minutes were an aerial dance of violent, gut-wrenching tension. Ragan could do little but cling on for dear life as Tanner played a game of chess up there in the storm, desperately trying to work behind the chasing eagle in order to avoid any further fire.
Ragan’s mind was such a blur that he couldn’t think properly, couldn’t quite compute of what Tanner was actually doing. Through his muddled thoughts, he wondered why they weren’t trying to outrun their pursuers, being the quicker jet. He wondered, too, whether now might be a good time to call back to base and tell them to cease the chase.
Was all of this just a misunderstanding? Did Slattery really want them dead?
His ability to work through the problem was stunted, his attention quickly snatched away again as his vision started to close in. He managed to look back once more to find Chloe’s body still limp, arms and neck dangling. Nadia, too, appeared to have passed out, unable to hold on any longer. Even Tanner was having a bit of trouble, his eyes increasingly intense.
“Cliff…” Ragan managed to grunt through gritted teeth. “We can’t go on like this much longer.”
“Won’t take much longer,” said Tanner, staring. “I’ve got them outflanked. I’ll be in position soon.”
“In position,” repeated Ragan. “For what?”
Tanner looked over as if the question was a foolish one.
“To fire, obviously.”
“What!”
The vocalising of Tanner’s intent lit a new fire inside Ragan. He managed to spark back to life, overcoming his troubles, fog fleeing from his head.
“You can’t shoot them down, Cliff!” said Ragan. “They’re our men!”
“They were our men,” corrected Tanner coldly. “Now they’re our enemy.”
“We don’t know that yet! There must be a dozen men on that jet, men we’ve served with, lived with. We can’t kill them.”
“Speak for yourself,” said Tanner, voice firm. “All it takes is the push of a button.” He flicked a dial to his left, activating weapons mode. The falcon had an array of them, many devastating. The eagle would be unable to withstand a barrage for long, not now that Tanner was positioning himself to their rear.
“Cliff, listen to me,” said Ragan, voice catching as the jet suddenly went left. “We’re behind them now, so we don’t have to do this. We can get away without killing them. If you do this, then we’ll all be banished from the Crimson Corps for good. Is that what you want?”
“I want to kill those who are trying to kill me,” said Tanner, teeth bared. “You saw what happened at the farm. They shot without even giving us a chance to surrender. They tried to murder us, Ragan! Quinn’s never liked either of us, and neither has Slattery. Now he’s got his chance to take us out without anyone questioning it.”
“And what about the other men? Forget Quinn. What about the rest? You’re going to kill them too?”
“If…I have to,” said Tanner, slightly less sure.
“Well you don’t,” said Ragan. He reached to the controls ahead of him, and took up a pair of earphones, fiddling with the settings.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to patch myself into the eagle, tell them to hold off.”
“Are you mad! They won’t listen to you.”
“We need to explain what’s been happening. Things have gotten out of hand.”
Ragan continued to work the comms settings, trying to get a signal with the eagle. All he heard was static. He tried again, then several more times. Nothing.
“Goddamnit,” he roared, pulling the headphones off. “Storm’s screwing up comms. Too much interference.”
“Or they’ve just blocked any signal from getting through. A storm like this shouldn’t effect comms at this range.”
Tanner spoke matter-of-factly, but the implication of that didn’t sit well with Ragan. They’re not even trying to let us communicate, he thought. They really do want us dead…
Tanner saw the realisation spread across Ragan’s face. He huffed.
“You see. They don’t care about us anymore. Who the hell knows, maybe Martha isn’t the only one who’s betrayed us. The council’s become a pit of snakes, Ragan. Slattery, Oppenheimer, Westham. They’re all as bad as each other. Power hungry men who probably want the data for themselves to trade for profit. It’s all these rich people care about.”
He spoke with a heavy note of bitterness, a symptom of being raised poor, tossed from one foster home to another. His eyes glared and he continued the chase, the eagle now coming into sight through a clearer patch in the storm. Tanner smiled, a callous grin.
“I have you now,” he growled.
Ragan disappeared to his thoughts. Maybe this was right. Maybe Project Dawn did have more than one member working for themselves. If Martha could deceive them, then anyone could. He’d trusted her above all others, and she’d betrayed him, given him up to be feasted on by Mikel. Given Chloe up, Tanner and Nadia. All of them, and for what? Why, Martha, he found himself wondering. Why…
He came to, watching through the windscreen. The eagle was close, shining gold as a silver streak of lightning lit up the skies. Tanner’s hand was ready, eager to attack. His thumb hovered over a button. It pressed slowly, hesitating. Was he having doubts?
Ragan looked over again. Tanner’s eyes weren’t quite so narrow now. He held the look of a man battling an internal decision. One he clearly didn’t want to make, no matter what he said.
“Don’t, Cliff,” Ragan said quietly. “You don’t want that on your conscience. Trust me.”
Tanner looked over.
“My conscience is plenty dirty already,” he grunted. “A few more kills won’t change that.”
“But that was war, Cliff. This isn’t. This is something else.”
“Is it, Ragan?” asked Tanner, flashing him with another glare. “War is a state of kill or be killed for grunts like us, nothing more. And if we don’t kill them now, then…”
“Then what?” cut in Ragan. “We can turn, and escape. We don’t need to do this. All we need to worry about is finding the data. What else matters?”
Tanner’s face curled up, a heavy frown falling over his eyes.
“That goddamned data,” he mumbled, shaking his head. “It’s cost so many lives. Maybe it’s best to just let it play out. See what the hell happens.”
“You’re not serious?”
“I’m dead serious,” said Tanner. “Look at this storm, Ragan.” His eyes looked out upon the dark skies, heavy with rain, lightning, thunder. “We can’t hold back forces of nature like this, and we can’t hold back progress either. Whether in a week, month, year…whatever, someone’s going to unlock P
rofessor Phantom’s secrets. All of this is probably just for nothing.”
The two men fell silent for a moment, the storm seeming to calm. Tanner’s thumb loosened a little on the button, drawing back. Ragan stayed quiet, thinking. Chloe had said the very same thing only days ago. Was this cause really worth it? Was it worth killing for, dying for? Would their efforts really come to nothing after everything that had happened?
He couldn’t bare to think like that. If he did, then who was he? A man who’d betrayed his own country? A spy in the CID, working for a cause that might just be corrupt? A soldier, hunting and killing to try to hold back an impossible tide? A tide that, as Tanner said, as Chloe had said, would come anyway. A tide that was inevitable.
He shook his head at the thought.
“I can’t believe that,” he said eventually, voice quiet. “I…won’t.”
“Well, it hardly matters now,” said Tanner. “The data’s gone. We’ve failed. And our own people are hunting us. All this data’s done is ruin lives.”
Ragan looked back at Chloe once more. Ruined lives. Such an irony that her father destroyed hers, when he was only trying to protect it.
He looked back round, setting a gentle, coaxing tone to his voice.
“Cliff, the girl’s are out, they’re unconscious,” he said softly. “Look.” Tanner glanced back. The sight of Chloe and Nadia, heads rolling on shoulders, arms limp, had some effect. Some of the anger seemed to be drawn from his face, some of the hate vanquished. “Come on,” went on Ragan carefully, “let’s just turn around and get out of here. If we shoot down the eagle, they’ll just send the rest of the corps after us.”
Tanner blinked slowly, still battling. He looked reluctant to withdraw, but couldn’t bring himself to fire. He let out a puff of air, a heavy sigh. And drew his thumb away.
Ragan sucked in a long breath, shutting his eyes, and Tanner quickly turned. The motion was sudden, taking Ragan by surprise, the jet carving off as they passed through a thick cloud, covering their retreat. Tanner set a straight course again, and then put on the afterburners. There’d be no catching them now.
He looked across to Ragan, the speed of the falcon levelling out, the pressure fading.
“I’ve done my bit,” he said pointedly. “Now you’d better find out how the hell they tracked us here. If they come again, I won’t hold off.”
Ragan nodded, unshackled himself, and set about his search.
59
Exhaustion. It was all Jeremiah Slattery could feel. Exhaustion with a peppering of anger.
He stood in the briefing room of the command centre at the old military base of Project Dawn, his palms planted to the main table, his eyes square on the bright, vibrantly lit screen ahead. On it, he saw the red blinking light, indicating the position of the falcon, shoot off in the opposite direction it had been going. Another light - this one blue - continued on its path ahead.
“Sir,” said Jason, Slattery’s chief personal aid, “it looks like Hunt’s retreating.”
Across the room, Benedict Oppenheimer breathed an audible sigh of relief. He’d been on edge for the last few minutes, ever since Slattery ordered Captain Quinn to shoot down the falcon. It hadn’t happened. The falcon had managed to avoid all of the eagle’s attempts to blast it from the sky, even managing to outmanoeuvre the plane and get around its back. It had been in prime firing position, all but ready to strike. But it hadn’t. Why?
Slattery thought he knew, though hardly gave it much thought. Hunt, self righteous as he was, considered himself a man of honour. Shooting down a jet filled with men of the Crimson Corps wouldn’t be his way. But then again, they had killed two of Quinn’s unit only half an hour before…
The fight down at the farmhouse had been viewable within the briefing room from the perspective of Captain Quinn and his men. With tiny cameras fixed to their helmets, a dozen small video feeds had loaded up on the wall-screen in the briefing room, giving Slattery, Oppenheimer, and Jason a first person view of the battle.
If he wasn’t so fatigued, Slattery might have found that a thrill. An old memory, perhaps, of a life he once lived. But not today. Today, he watched on, semi-comatose, as the short skirmish played out.
It had started from beyond the ridge to the west of the farm. The eagle had landed softly and beyond sight, unnoticed by Hunt and his team. They’d approached quietly to find a strange scene unfolding - Mikel, the nano-vamp, standing near to the others, who were writhing in pain and flailing about, acting quite unusually. The vamp appeared to be speaking with the Phantom girl, whose hands were glowing with that strange, electrical discharge power her unique nanites gave her.
As the men advanced down the ridge, however, Mikel took quick note of their presence. The nano-vamp fled immediately, hurrying into the falcon’s escape-pod jet, and flying off out of sight. Chloe had attempted to bring the jet down with streaks of lightning, but the vamp had gotten away.
As he’d watched, Slattery - though barely able to think - was able to settle one of the mysteries of the previous couple of days. Namely the fact that Mikel and Hunt’s team were not working together. It seemed more likely that they’d taken the vamp captive in order to get their hands on the data. Perhaps, Slattery had so recently thought, they really were trying to retrieve it for the cause?
What followed served to debunk that thought. Captain Quinn and his unit had advanced down the hill and through the farm, quickly hurrying towards Hunt and his team. They’d fled at the sight of the incoming Crimson Corps soldiers, rushing immediately for the falcon, causing Quinn to take action in disabling them. As Slattery had ordered, he’d done so with knock-out, non-lethal rounds, though none hit their mark.
Hunt’s crew had managed to get aboard the jet, magically doing so without being hit. The ramp had pulled in, the door closing, and as it did, two members of the group - thought to be Chloe and Nadia Grey - began firing back with live ammunition.
Two of Quinn’s team had been killed, one of their deaths playing across the video feed in the briefing room with gruesome brutality. A single round had found its way through the soldier’s visor, passing just beneath the camera affixed to his helmet and surging straight through his eye and into his brain. The video feed snapped back, showing the poor man’s vantage as he toppled to the ground, a pool of blood beginning to gather in the brown soil before him.
Another man had also been hit with a direct, killing shot, though this one got so close to the camera as to disable it as it hit. The feed, therefore, went immediately black. It was, to Slattery, a common sight. Oppenheimer, meanwhile, had struggled to keep down the coffee he was drinking.
In response, Quinn had acted in the manner that any squad leader would, calling for his men to turn to live fire. They’d peppered the jet as the doors came down, enraged by Hunt and his team’s clear betrayal. What had been only a theory up to that point was immediately confirmed by their actions. They peppered the jet’s exterior, trying to disable it somehow, but managed to do little more than scratch the thing. Before they could revert to different means of taking down the jet, it had fled skyward at blistering speed, leaving the unit stranded below.
Slattery didn’t even need to give the order. Quinn’s squad regrouped, picked up their dead, and returned immediately to the eagle. Only once aboard did Slattery speak with Quinn, telling him what he already knew.
“I want you to follow that damn plane, and shoot it out of the sky! Do you understand me, Captain?”
Quinn’s grunt of agreement had been so fierce that Slattery could all but see the look upon his grizzled face.
“With pleasure, Colonel,” he’d growled. “Just tell us where to go.”
Fifteen minutes later, the planes came into contact. The falcon had been adopting a hovering position up in the increasingly stormy skies, roughly a hundred miles or so from the farmhouse. They were cloaked, and will have thought themselves invisible. Not so for the eagle, with the directions provided by Oppenheimer’s secret tracker.
The ensuing aerial battle had been tricky to truly comprehend and appreciate from the briefing room, which didn’t have a visual feed of it barring the simple satellite image now on the screen. They did have audio, however, which lent the event some drama. For Slattery, it only heightened his rage as each attempt to shoot down the falcon ended in failure, the fleeing jet utilising their countermeasures extremely effectively.
Added to Slattery’s anger was Oppenheimer’s behaviour, nervously twitching any time his precious jet, donated to the cause, came close to being hit. He seemed to be almost rooting for Hunt, the pathetic old fool. Could he not see how critical this was?
Now, however, the chase had just ended, and Hunt’s team had gotten the upper hand. Slattery knew Tanner to be a highly proficient pilot, and imagined it must have been him at the wheel, given the jet’s wild aerial acrobatics. They’d flanked the eagle, getting behind it using superior manoeuvring and speed, and might easily have shot it down, or attempted to at least. It was a small mercy only that they didn’t.
As the red dot shifted position, seemingly heading back in a westerly direction, the comms link from the eagle flared. Jason activated the connection.
“Colonel Slattery,” grunted Quinn’s voice. “Hunt’s disappeared from sight. We need directions, sir.”
On the map, the blue light was now turning west, though had clearly lost contact with their prey. It began drifting slowly, losing ground quickly.
“Sir?” repeated Quinn, his voice urgent.
“Yes, Captain,” said Slattery. His voice felt weird coming from his mouth now. Hollow. Almost like he was hearing it through water. His exhaustion was growing too much, and the sudden break in the tension had stolen away his final shreds of energy. His mind wavered, his train of thought beginning to edge off the tracks.