She breathed deep, trying to release nervous energy building up in her. The end result was the freezing of the hairs in her nose, causing her to wrinkle it in annoyance. Rowen cautiously made her way to the alley entrance, cringing at the noise from crackling snow and ice underfoot. She was hoping to spot her father and Gibbs, the teams for the assault having trickled in one or two at a time throughout the day, trying to avoid notice, and it was past time that everyone should be in place. When they arrived the attack would begin, but they were still nowhere in sight. Looking out at the darkened city, she remembered when she first arrived last summer. It had been spectacular, with every shade of light and sound on display, buzzing with that unmistakable hum that was New York. The place was quiet now, a dark forgotten corner of the world, terrifyingly peaceful, the only light coming from the monstrosity the Russians were building in the center of the park. She couldn’t help but marvel at the alien structure rising above the tree line. The crystalline tower was tall and thin, bladelike, and faceted like a diamond, absorbing light into a vortex of dancing colors running up and down its length. Rowen had been scouting the park for months now and she had watched it grow from nothing over the winter months to the massive blade that stood now. She had asked Timur about it every time they had a meal together. He would only shrug, claiming he knew nothing, not even how it grew from day to day. She could never get close enough to see how it was built; to her eyes it was simply taller every day. Scarier.
The sound of booted feet brought her attention back to the darkened street, a sense of relief washing over her seeing her father and Gibbs, their dark camo fatigues making them almost invisible against the night. Her father was in the lead, moving with a practiced ease, almost silent. Just behind him Gibbs was doing his best to keep up, waddling along, looking almost childlike in the uniform and helmet that were simply too big for him, his pale skin glowing like a beacon in the dark. With a brief nod to both of them, Rowen opened the door to the beaten and battered news van. The inside was cramped for three, so Rowen simply stood outside as her father established his uplink with the fragile wireless network they had built up.
Her father had made something from nothing over the last year recruiting and outfitting their unit. Following Cardinal Washington’s orders, he managed to find a few dozen able-bodied men and women to expand their small unit. Their once-small team now consisted of a mix of active duty personnel and reservists who, like them, were stranded when the city fell. They also found a good many folks who were survivalists, preppers, those who expected the worst and had a knack for staying alive when others fled or fell. The offer of food (which they had in spades) and warmth was enough to convince folks to join them. The desire to kick ass and defend their homes helped too. Having more bodies had allowed them to organize, scavenge. But communication in the city was very limited, and running an operation like this was near impossible.
Her father’s new recruits had found dozens of usable devices and she had spent hours programming them with Timur, using their flight systems and remotely piloting them into every nook and cranny she could find while scouting, totally interconnected. The network gave her an unparalleled overview of the target areas, as well as the attack points for the other teams. It was like having a three-hundred-sixty-degree camera for the entire area. She could move and pivot as needed, zoom in on a single team member or pan out to see everyone at once. Combined with the body cams they managed to scour from the abandoned police stations, it was almost as if she would be right beside the teams. With the months spent scouting, she knew the terrain better than most, so her father assigned her to monitor their operations while they progressed and warn them before things went south. She knew it was to mostly keep her out of trouble, but the more time she spent on the job, she was surprised to find that she truly enjoyed it. She felt like a real asset to the team, not just some kid tucked away with a make-work job to keep her safe. Watching a battle unfold was like watching a living, breathing thing. She had begun to get a feel for the tempo of the attack, thrust and parry, the defense and feint of it all. It was exhilarating.
“Alright, people, ten minutes, no more. If we haven’t gotten into their system by then, the mission is a bust and we get the hell out,” her father said over the comms, synchronizing his watch.
“Alright, y’all, we’re in position, let’s make these assholes sorry they fucked with America,” said Ariel, his deep voice grinding with static over the channel. One by one each team checked in. When it was all said and done, her father gave her a final nod and the order to move out.
While they waited for the other teams to engage, Rowen slipped into the lone chair in the back of the dilapidated van as her father and Gibbs shuffled out, Gibbs giving her a nervous smile, following sheepishly behind. “You gonna be ok?” she asked, hoping things were alright between them. He still had some bruising on his face, and they had been busy. They hadn’t really talked since that day in the park, so she wasn’t sure.
“I’m about to go into a park overrun by Russian soldiers and killer drones, trying to do something that’s never been done before...how could I not be ok?” he said, raising his eyebrows and blowing out his cheeks. Rowen’s forehead creased with worry. This would be his first time anywhere close to a combat situation, and he tripped over his own feet at the best of times. He wasn’t supposed to be in the line of fire—his sole purpose here was to insert a block chain communication protocol into the Russian system, giving the backdoor into their network that they desperately needed—but things could easily turn in the field.
“Don’t worry, I’ll be watching your back. Just don’t do anything stupid, ok?” she said as he gave her a quick thumbs up before racing after her father.
She had just begun to settle in, struggling to slip her comm set over her unruly shag of hair, when Ariel’s voice exploded in her ear, wailing like a beast. Flipping to the cameras in his area, she saw him charging ahead of his team squarely at the enemy barricade that marked the entrance to the north end of the park. She watched in amazement as crystallized sheets of ice appeared over his legs, arms, and chest like plates of armor and frozen blades longer than a man’s arm appeared in each fist, flashing with deadly purpose. Even in near darkness, she could see the fearful reactions of the soldiers that stood in his way. They fired blindly, shots falling wide or ricocheting harmlessly off the compact man who appeared suddenly in their midst, blades whirling faster than she could see. Ariel was a nightmare in motion, a quicksilver demon who moved from man to man carving limb from limb, breaking bones and bending steel. He was made all the more terrifying when their weapons did little more than irritate him, their bullets like water beading on glass, slipping off his icy skin and doing little harm.
Rowen could see it in the way he attacked, his brutal strikes. He enjoyed inflicting pain. It wasn’t enough for him to beat the enemy; he degraded and humiliated them with every blow. His team behind him did little more than lay down covering fire, taking out the occasional straggler while Ariel wreaked havoc.
Seeing everything was under control, she turned her focus to Augusta, Ariel’s affable brother, who had a completely different approach. He was content with simply acting as artillery. The giant simply walked up and down the south side of the park, tossing abandoned cars at the Russian barricades. Rowen couldn’t imagine anything more terrifying than just standing at your post and suddenly seeing a car careening toward you out of nowhere. It looked effortless for the big man, like casually throwing a football around with friends for fun. He was the only one not to have a support unit with him, having told her father that he preferred to work alone, and he had done a good job of proving it thus far.
Mary Beth’s team was the one that captivated Rowen the most. Unlike her siblings, her unit worked like a well-oiled machine. She hand-picked only those who had experience with weapons and spent time training them with a cache of rifles they had scavenged from sporting goods stores scattered about the abandoned city.
It a few s
hort days she’d crafted her team into capable snipers, able to eliminate a target in the dark at a few hundred feet. She and her unit had spent the day secreting themselves away in many of the abandoned apartments facing the park, patiently waiting for the order to strike. At her command, dozens of shots rained down like cracks of thunder at the unsuspecting soldiers guarding the east entrance to the base. Rowen was mesmerized by the tapestry of violence: crimson blood gushing across hands and necks of men as they bled out on the cold concrete. When it was done, a single poor soul was left standing, unmoving, trembling in place.
Mary Beth strolled out from the darkness, whistling a happy tune, her black duster trailing in the cold wind. The soldier, seeing a lone woman appear from the dark, fumbled with his weapon, stammering in a high-pitched broken English that she stop. The buxom woman only grinned, obeying his orders, slowly raising her empty hands above her head and coming to a halt, her Berettas slapping against her hips. The sharp tempo of her whistling never stopping, faster with each repetition. Rowen could tell she was enjoying herself, swaying her hips to the tempo. The Russian finally had his weapon and nerves under control, and hands shaking, he leveled the AK at Mary Beth, who merely stared him down. Then, without warning, a burst of fire exploded from the weapon, the AK’s muzzle like a comet in the night. Rowen gasped as she saw Mary Beth stagger and turn away.
“Well, that was none too kind,” she said, turning back to the hapless soldier. “I wouldn’t do that again if you know what’s good for ya. To be honest, you looked kinda pretty from the other side of the road, so I told my friends back there not to mess up your face. Would be a shame to shoot ya now.”
Rowen could see the look of terror in the guard’s eyes as Mary Beth closed the distance between them, playfully throwing his bullets back at him one by one, her smile never wavering. Rowen grimaced, noticing a dark stain appearing down the man’s pants, a small pool of liquid at his feet. Mary Beth came nose to nose with the man, gently taking his rifle from his hands. “On second thought, from up close, it’s more like you looked good from afar, but far from good, so...why don’t you run along and tell your friends we’re here? We can all have a party—it’ll be fun,” she said with a laugh, giving the soldier a small shove to get him moving. “Get on now!”
Rowen was so enthralled by Mary Beth’s antics that she wasn’t paying attention to the other teams, not doing her job. She stood up suddenly as she felt the van shake, thinking that there was an earthquake. “What the hell,” she whispered to herself, rapidly scanning the other screens to see what was happening. Finally she was able to pinpoint the source of the commotion. Ariel was far out of position, far out of range of the cameras, having gone far deeper into the park than planned. His original position was occupied by his unit, looking lost, surrounded by broken and battered corpses. Not seeing anything on her screens, she poked her head out the van door, only to stagger once again as another explosion rocked the street. Ahead in the distance she could see fires burning to the north. “Ariel, come in. What the hell are you doing? You’re way out of position; get back to the north gate,” said Rowen, slipping back into her chair, trying to remain calm. Looking back at her screens, she could see the plan was working. Her father’s team had managed to access the comm tower and neutralize the few soldiers left to defend it.
“Hey, Red,” said Ariel, shouting in her ear. She could barely hear him over the din of violence. “Sorry, but I got tired of pussyfootin’ around with these fuckers, so I went for a walk in the park. I’m goin’ through ’em like they ain’t even here.”
Rowen shook her head, not sure what to do. She was almost sure that Ariel would not take orders to fall back from her. He tolerated her at best, thinking she was little more than a brat he had to deal with, but she knew when people didn’t follow orders bad things happened. Just as she finished her thought there was another burst of light from the park, accompanied by a high-pitched buzzing noise that was coming from all directions. “Ariel, what did you do? Pull back, pull back!”
Rowen waited in tense silence, holding her breath, thinking everything was under control, when suddenly the comms were all flooded with strange popping noises like dozens of firecrackers exploding all at once. On her screen, Ariel came bursting out of the darkness, covered in bruises across his face and naked torso. Behind him were hundreds, thousands of small objects she couldn’t quite make out. Zooming in, she could see they were tiny four-propelled things with a single eye at their center, blood red in the dark, buzzing around, loud and obnoxious. They looked like a child’s toy, no bigger than a man’s palm, swarming like locusts out of the darkness. Rowen gasped when the first one dived full-speed into the compact man, exploding like a gunshot when it landed on his skin, leaving an angry red welt where it had impacted, incinerated. Hundreds more swarmed around him like a hornets’ nest that had been kicked over, each explosion staggering him as he ran, shards of crystal and ice breaking off as he ran past his unit. The first wave of drones following him slowed momentarily, targeting the surprised men and women. The tiny machines darted toward them, exploding just millimeters from their faces, each pop, each blinding flash leaving a horrid red canvas of headless soldiers in its wake.
Rowen bore witness to it all, unable to look away, knowing there was nowhere to run as
the drones spread out like a biblical plague, attacking with deadly precision, without mercy.
“What’s going on; what’s that noise?” asked her father, his voice barely audible over the wild hum of the swarm.
“Dad, are you safe? Are you being attacked?” asked Rowen, relieved to hear his voice. She could not see his team anywhere. “I can’t see you; where did you go?”
“There was a small outbuilding not far from the tower, a control station. Gibbs said it would be easier to work from here. We wanted to keep out of sight for as long as possible. Report, what’s going on out there? Our area is clear for now, but we need to be able to move at any time.”
“Sorry, Dad,” said Rowen, trying to keep the tremble out of her voice, “Ariel went off-mission, deeper into the base. I lost track of him, then there were explosions and then a massive swarm of a new type of drone that I’ve never seen before came pouring out. They’re killing everyone! Ariel is hurt, and his entire team is down.”
“Son of a bitch! What about the other teams?” he asked, his voice tense but in control.
Scanning the monitors in front of her, she could see Augusta was faring poorly, swatting at the tiny drones like a flailing monster. Rowen saw blood streaming from wounds all across his massive frame as drone after drone exploded in a fury. Only Mary Beth and her unit looked to be holding their own, her hands and Berettas a blur, the nickel-plated weapons looking like dark streams of silver as she covered her team’s slow retreat.
“Sorry, Dad, Augusta’s not doing so good. Mary Beth and her team look to be holding her own, but I’m not sure how long she can last. There are thousands of these things.”
There was silence on the channel for a moment. “Tell everyone to pull back, get to safety if they can. We’ll hunker down here. Gibbs, I need to know how much time you need.”
“Five minutes,” said Gibbs, his voice tinged with panic. “I’m almost there. This is some real next-level stuff, but I think I got it.”
“Ok, Dad, what do I do?”
“Nothing. Go silent, I need you safe. No transmissions of any kind until I give you the all clear, understood?”
“Yes, sir,” said Rowen, trying to slow her breathing, calm her nerves. She did as she was told, reluctantly turning off the van’s transmitter and powering down the remaining equipment, plunging her into silence and darkness, waiting. Alone with only the company of moonlight streaming through the side windows of the van, she did her best to control her nerves. Moments turned to minutes, and she lost all sense of time, grinding her teeth in anger at not being able to do anything. To her annoyance, the front of the van faced a brick wall, and the back windows were blacked out, leaving he
r clueless as to what was going on. Every sound was amplified. The howling winds buffeting the van sounded like a gale force hurricane, the wind shaking and rattling the myriad of wires and old electronics that filled the small space, grating on her nerves. Her mouth felt like a desert, and her stomach would not be silent. The sound of gunfire echoing on the wind gave her hope, a reminder that some of her team was holding on. But as time dragged on, the piercing sound of bullets in the night was replaced with the harsh whine of the distant drones, moving closer and then receding like they were patrolling, circling the park.
She had not heard the sharp shock of one exploding in a long time, and she wondered if that meant everyone was dead. Was she all that was left? What would happen if she was alone in this abandoned city? She clenched and unclenched her jaw, furious at herself. Everyone she knew and cared for was out there while she hid in the van like a coward. They had left almost half of their personnel at base, not wanting to risk everyone, but what would she do without her father to hold everything together? She doubted they would let an ugly, little girl they barely knew stick around. A cruel sense of dread began to overwhelm her as her thoughts circled to places she didn’t care for. She crossed her arms defiantly and chewed on the inside of her cheek, fighting the urge to power her equipment, to see what the hell was going on. She would follow orders.
Rowen drew in a sharp breath when she realized the high-pitched whine of the drones wasn’t receding this pass. They were getting closer, much closer. How did they find her? Looking around at the mess that surrounded her, she desperately checked and rechecked that every piece of equipment was powered down, that a signal could not be traced back to her. She cringed as she knocked a tablet to the floor, the impact thundering like cannon fire in the dark. She could hear something now, a chalkboard scraping across the roof that made her skin crawl. A chill ran up her spine as she realized there was nowhere for her to go. She would die here. Pulling her SIG from its holster, she checked it quickly, her hands steadier with the weapon in them. She counted fifteen rounds in the clip with only two reloads. She had not expected to be part of the fight. She would make a stand here—against whatever was out there, making every shot count. She pulled out a set of rubber earplugs and put her back to the screens, knowing it would be harder for the drones to come through from that side. She stood at the ready, baring her teeth. “C’mon fuckers.”
Ascension: Children of The Spear: Book one Page 25