by Zara Novak
“The amulet is leading us straight to Harkin,” Hunter said. “But Rachel thinks she can cut out a few steps and find the tomb.” He looked at me. “Right, Rachel?”
I looked up from my notes and saw a screen full of expectant faces staring at me. “Is that right?” Davian said. “What are you doing?”
“Some basic trigonometry and mapping,” I said. “Now if you’ll let me concentrate—”
“Assist her Rocky! I need to scream at Hunter!” Davian shouted. A second later another screen on the cockpit lit up and I saw Rocky’s face.
“I’ve split the call,” Rocky explained. Davian was still shouting into the screen facing Hunter, who had quickly hit mute to silence his commander. “What are you working on? Do you need help?”
I very quickly explained the anthelion triangle to Rocky, and how it’s central point could inadvertently lead to Halo’s new resting place. “I get it!” he shouted eagerly about halfway through my explanation. “Let me run it through some mapping software and we can calculate it precisely to a few feet. I can have you an answer in—”
Rocky froze then, prompting me and Hunter to look up at the screen. Rocky’s attention was slightly off camera. I noticed that Davian’s muted image had paused too.
“Hey,” Hunter said loudly. “Why have you both stopped?”
“Hunter it’s your airspace,” Rocky said in a warning tone. He instantly dropped what he was doing and wheeled over to another terminal, taking his tablet with him. “You’re in the Xexos-4, right? The same one I had stashed on the back dock?”
“Yeah, why, what’s up?”
“Well I’m tracing your position on the radar, it looks like you’re flying north-west, presumably to find this last point in Minnesota.”
“That’s us, data confirmed,” Hunter said. “Now tell me what you can see that has you sweating so badly.”
“Your onboard radar only stretches so far. The radar I have here extends three times that distance. You’ve got company heading your way, directly from the front, it looks like a whole group of jets.”
“Jesus Christ…” Hunter said to himself.
“Harkin,” I said in realization.
“It has to be,” Rocky said. “He must have got your location from Saydra. She must have finally cracked under his interrogation. He’s using her psychic powers against her.”
The image quickly snapped away from Rocky as Davian stole the tablet once more. “Oh, very fucking funny, putting your commander on mute, you prick! Now you listen to me and listen carefully, you haven’t got time to run away from this Hunter, you’ll have to fight!”
As he said the words the blips came onto our local radar. It showed ten points moving towards us at a very fast speed.
“What a lovely welcome party,” Hunter muttered. “Ten jets. Commander, I’m not fucking Briggs, I can’t win in a dogfight against ten jets.”
Just then another guardian pushed onto the frame. He was another giant man, but with short and curly chestnut hair. “You’re not Briggs, but I am,” he said to Hunter. “Are you listening carefully?”
“All ears,” Hunter said.
“You don’t have to win,” Briggs said, “You just have to survive. If you unload all your missiles now and launch flares it will distract them so you can dive to the ground and find a safe landing spot.”
“I like the first part,” Hunter said.
He started flipping switches and hitting buttons.
As he did missiles screamed from the front of the jet, tearing through the night sky in front of us. I counted twelve from each side. They streamed into the distance and I saw the points on the radar scatter. Next up was the flare. After Hunter deployed that he pushed the joystick forward and we started to descend rapidly.
“Brilliant!” Briggs said. “Textbook, now you just need to—”
The image cut out and was replaced with one of Harkin.
“Hello!” he said cheerily. “It’s come to my attention that you’re not willing to cooperate.”
“Go fuck yourself Harkin,” Hunter growled.
“Did you know I have your psychic, Hunter?” Harkin replied. He turned the camera around and revealed a woman bound to a chair. “She’s been quite helpful, very helpful in fact. She knows how this whole thing ends, and all I need now is that amulet. You and the girl? No longer necessary!”
As he said the words an alarm started flashing in the cockpit. “Warning! Projectile incoming!”
“Shit!” Hunter said, throwing the jet into a tight spiral to dodge the missile. It zoomed right over the cockpit window, missing us by inches. “Are you crazy?!” he shouted at Harkin. “If you blow us out of the sky, and we all lose!”
“Oh, I’m sure the amulet will be fine,” Harkin laughed. “And I have my psychic witch to help find it. The pieces of your blown-up bodies… they don’t matter. Now if you want to escape with your lives—”
“Sorry Harkin,” Hunter shouted over the cockpit. “I’ve got another call on the line, but don’t forget to go and fuck yourself!” He terminated the call and the guardians came back up on screen.
“Hunter?!” Davian shouted. “We’re scrambling backup now; we’ll be there as fast as we can!”
“Not fast enough!” Hunter shouted. “Rachel, hold on!” He pushed the stick further. We broke through the cloud and saw the lights of the world below us. The surface was fast approaching. I gripped the arms of my seat, wind roaring all around the straining cockpit.
“Warning, warning! Several projectiles incoming!”
Flashing red lights, the wail of wind, the judder of the jet, and the threat of imminent death. Hunter whirled the jet through a string of missiles, but our luck could only go so far. The first blast caught the right wing, sending us into an out of control spiral that left me reeling.
I was suddenly aware of Hunter. He was up from his chair and fastening something around me. “What are you doing?!” I shouted over the jet’s drone, trying hard not to pass out from the g-force.
“Parachute! We have to eject! We’re going down! Are you ready?!”
I tried my best to nod back at him. He equipped a parachute for himself and sat back in the chair. “We have to eject from the seats, but we’ll go at the same time. I’ll find you in the air, I’ve done this a hundred times before!”
He squeezed my hand one last time and he pressed a red button at the console’s center. Nothing happened.
He pressed again.
Nothing.
“Hunter?!” I shouted.
“The eject system!” he said. “It’s damaged from the hit. There’s only enough gas to eject one seat!”
I already knew what was coming next. He did it before I could even stop him. Hunter flipped a switch and hit the button again. The world went into momentary slow motion as my seat launched up and out of the craft. I screamed, not for fear of what would happen next, but because Hunter was trapped in the jet.
The deafening rush of wind filled my ears. My seat span at all angles before my straps fell away, letting the seat fall to the earth below. Then my chute activated. The force took my breath away as my speed abruptly changed. I was no longer falling to my death; I was soaring down to the ground.
I had no idea how high up I was, but I estimated I had a few minutes of soaring until I would touch down. The sound of jets roared in the air overhead. Things were surprisingly quiet, until I saw our own jet spiral down.
“Hunter!” I screamed.
The plane hit the earth about a mile to my right, coming down in thick forest and illuminating the night with a bright ball of fire. I felt my heart twisting in my throat. Tears started down my face. I couldn’t breathe.
Was Hunter… was Hunter dead?
I came down in thick forest. Steering the parachute was too difficult. I got caught in a tall pine, ended up wrapping around the thing and getting the shit beaten out of me by branches on the way down.
The chute’s strings kept me from smashing against the ground like a
n egg, but they left me dangling a few feet above it, bruised and battered from my crash landing. I was in a dark forest, stranded in the middle of nowhere, sobbing to myself at having just seen my mate die an almost certain death.
My head hurt like a bitch, and my temples throbbed from my chaotic landing. Eyes growing heavy, I lost consciousness for a short while until I heard voices shouting in the distance.
“Up here!” they said. “The witch says it’s this way!”
My heart dropped to my stomach as I saw light in the trees. Long shadows twisted across the ground. Red eyes flashed in the darkness. Flashlights finally caught me. I had no energy left to fight or run.
“There! Up there!”
The men were practically laughing when they finally reached me. I couldn’t run even if I wanted to. I was dangling upside down, at head height with them.
“Ah, Doctor Stone,” the vampire said. He was clearly one of Harkin’s goons. “Mr. Harkin will be delighted to hear that you survived the attack. We’re here to escort the amulet back to him, but as you’re alive, we’ll be taking you too. Sorry about your friend. He didn’t survive the crash.”
“Go and fuck yourself,” I hissed at the goon.
The men just laughed amongst themselves. “I think this will be a lot easier for all of us without your smart mouth, don’t you?”
He swung his elbow through the air and connected it with my face.
Everything turned to darkness.
14
Hunter
I chose Rachel as soon as I knew the eject systems were damaged. With one switch I could re-route the remaining gas cylinders to her chair, meaning she would be able to escape alive. As soon as I hit the button her chair launched out of the jet, and I knew that she was safe.
That just left me trapped in a jet that was going to smash into the ground in the next twelve seconds.
With the ejector seat not working there was no point in staying in the chair. I had a chute and all I had to do was jump out manually. Easier said than done when the jet was spinning around two times a second.
I unbuckled myself, wrapped my hands around the cockpit—which now had no window—and pulled myself up. The wind was ferocious, and the jet’s rapid spinning was both disorientating and nauseating. I was about to pull myself out when I heard the jet’s AI blast another warning into the night.
“Inbound projectile, warning, warning!”
I saw the thing heading right for me. One last missile to blow the jet sky high and send me to hell. With one last kick I jumped from the ship just as the missile hit. I was caught up in the resulting fireball for a few seconds before the jet and I separated very quickly. I was spinning through the night, falling towards the ground as I tried to fan out any wayward flames on my body.
The fire went out pretty quickly thanks to me falling through the air, but I’d underestimated the damage the explosion had done when I pulled the cord for my chute. The bag opened and the chute went up, but as soon as I felt myself slow down, I knew that something was wrong, I was still going far too fast.
When I looked up, I realized that half of the chute had been burned up in the explosion, there were parts of it still on fire now. Two of the four strings tying me to the chute snapped simultaneously and then I was falling again, twisting through the air with a hunk of burning cloth chasing after me.
Something exploded in the distance, probably the jet Rachel and I had just tumbled out of. I was falling—nearly at full speed, but not quite—with the ground rushing towards me at 60 meters per second. I had about fifteen seconds before I would hit the floor and become a vampire puree. I had to think.
Fast.
My training had prepared me for an event like this, but the added bonus of being tied up in a burning parachute had never been factored in. It meant this real problem was much harder.
There were ways to hit the ground and survive a fall from an airplane—believe it or not—but that was the last option, and currently my only option.
I guess that was my plan then.
I scanned the approaching ground as quickly as I could. There was forest, a lake, fields of wheat and a river winding through a rocky gorge. The forest was probably my best bet. It would hurt like hell, but the branches could slow me down enough that by the time I hit the ground I might be going slow enough to survive.
Maybe.
But then I noticed something else, my bright red eyes glanced a silhouette in the darkness. The outline of a barn. That could be perfect. The fall would kill a human, probably even a vampire, but a guardian like myself?
I might only die a horrible death.
With one arm free I clutched the tattered controls and steered my fall towards the barn roof. I just about managed to line myself up with the roof. When I was five seconds out I screwed my body up into a ball and—
I smashed through the roof like a boulder through glass.
Roof tiles and wooden beams shattered around my hulking frame as I crashed down towards earth. My burning chute was torn from my body as I plummeted through rafters.
I never thought a barn would kick the absolute shit out of me, but I bounced through a tangle of wooden columns, thoroughly battered as I crunched through the floor of the loft section.
I finally got a happy ending when I felt myself collapsing through a tall tower of something soft and dry. I was finally still, motionless and lying on my back, looking up through the holes that my body had blown through the roof and loft above me.
Looking around I saw tall piles of hay on all sides. I had thundered right through the top of a haystack and tore right to its bottom. It felt like more than one bone was broken. Every breath was agony and I didn’t even want to think about sitting up.
But I was alive.
The ground felt warm and wet beneath me. I was bleeding. Just a question of how much.
I managed to lift my head and looked down at my torso. There was quite a lot of blood.
Not ideal.
With no other choice I wrapped my hand around my right wrist and pressed the button on the subdermal chip buried just below the surface of my skin. I had just activated the emergency beacon, telegraphing my location to my guardian unit.
Eyes drifting, I started to wonder if Rachel was okay, and how many minutes I had before I was going to die.
Hopefully the guardians could get to me before then.
“Found the ugly son of a bitch, he’s in a bad way. Let’s get a drip on him immediately. Striker, can you suture these wounds? They don’t need to look pretty.”
I drifted in and out of consciousness, fading between unknown realms of black and a blurred and confusing reality. Bright lights blurred in my vision. Sounds echoed on all sides. I heard Davian shouting profanity-laden commands as I tried to keep my eyes open.
“Ash!” Davian shouted. “Go talk to Briggs, see how far out we are!”
Darkness.
“Striker! Is he going to live or not? We need this son of a bitch alive!”
Nothing.
“Rocky if this intel isn’t good I swear to god I’ll—!”
Black.
The next time I opened my eyes things were quieter. I saw Striker, the lone wolf of our unit. I was lying in a medical bed and he was standing over me, looking at charts and monitoring flashing screens besides me.
“Rachel,” I said.
“She’s alive. You on the other hand. Not so close.”
“Where is she?”
“Harkin’s men got her. We’re on the way to get her back now.”
Rage consumed me. I moved to sit up, but every small movement was agonizing pain.
“Easy now,” Striker said. “You’re in a bad way.”
“How bad is it?” I wheezed.
“You’re still one ugly son of a bitch,” he said, barely cracking a smile. “How do you feel?”
“Like I picked a fight with a barn and lost.”
“Oh, you lost big time, but… you are alive, and you’re going to pull th
rough, so I think we can call it a win.”
Striker was like the rest of us in a lot of ways. He was a huge tank of muscle and testosterone, but he was also the quiet one of the group, the one that stayed on the edge. His long ash brown hair ran down to his shoulders and was almost always tied back. A quiet an assuming knowledge lingered on his sharp features. Most of his thoughts were communicated silently.
I tried to sit up, but all I could feel was pain. “Blood?”
“I’ll get you more now. Hold on.”
He moved across the room and I took in my surroundings properly for the first time. We were in the medical bay on Xerxes-1, the unit’s designated airship. “Are we heading for his HQ?”
“Yep. Heading north west for Minnesota. You’ve been out for about thirty minutes, and probably another ten before we got to you. We have fifteen minutes until we land.”
Striker came back over and connected a fresh bag of blood to my drip. The dark red liquid flowed down the plastic tube and into my body, filling me with a warm and invigorating rush. It gave me the little strength I needed to sit up.
“What can you do to get me combat ready in fifteen minutes?” I said. Striker just laughed at first.
“You broke both arms, both legs and have compound fractures across your body. You had a wooden beam sticking through your hip and lost so much blood you nearly died.”
“But here I am.”
“Here you are,” Striker reiterated.
“My bones are already healed, my hip looks…” I glanced down. It was bandaged, but I knew the skin would have healed over by now. “Better, and I’ve got a body full of fresh blood, so what’s the problem?”
“Look,” Striker said as he set his clipboard down. “We both know that our healing abilities are extremely advanced, even beyond that of most vampires.”
“Yep.”
“But what you’ve just gone through is the equivalent of intense chemo. I have never seen a guardian take that level of physical punishment and survive. The fact that you’re even talking to me right now is a medical marvel.”