He grinned. “You got it.”
Rowan came into view on Gordon’s comm link, holding up a hand. “Wait, wait. You think you can go topside and just steal one? They’re all over the place up here. Those dropships can hold a hundred troops. There are only six of us. How are you even going to get to a transport? It could be filled with a dozen troopers.”
Byron wore an expression of steel. “I’ll play it by ear.”
Rowan sighed. “You’re so reckless. Remember the medical supply run on Murder City? You barely made it out. And almost got Astoria and Dirk killed.” When he heard himself say her name, he grew quiet and swallowed.
“I’ve learned a thing or two since then,” Byron said.
Rowan shook his head. “I don’t like this.”
“The most important thing is to get the payloads safely away,” H124 reminded him. “If we stay down here, they’ll find us.”
“We don’t know that. Gordon and I could wait until dark, continue to move farther away. You all keep moving through the tunnels. Eventually they’ll give up and leave.”
“And if they don’t?” Byron asked him.
Rowan opened his mouth, but no words came.
“I like Halo’s idea better,” Byron insisted.
Dirk chimed in. “Me too. I don’t relish the thought of hiding out down here, just waiting for them to stumble across us.”
Rowan frowned. “You said yourself it’s a labyrinth of tunnels down there.”
Their PRDs had been tracking their path through the dark underground complex.
“You have to be our eyes topside. Send us coords of a good place to get out,” H124 told him.
Gordon scanned the area with his diginocs. “They haven’t moved into the following area,” he told her, sending her the location.
She laid them over her map and nodded. “That’s not too far from here.”
Raven spoke up. “Let’s move.”
They ran now, rushing across catwalks and through old doors. Between gasps, they made a plan. Dirk and Raven would sprint toward the plane with the sleds. Once they were out in the bright sun, the copters would get a burst of energy. Byron and H124 would create a diversion to draw troopers away from them.
When they reached the coordinates, Gordon confirmed there were still no PPC troopers there. Dirk hacked another door, which led them to an emergency escape tube. There they climbed a ladder that ascended to the surface, leading to a locked hatch. Dirk grabbed the locking wheel and tried to twist it, but it was stuck fast. Byron joined him at the top, each hanging off one side of the ladder. Together they managed to unscrew the wheel, the old rusted metal screeching in protest.
“Everyone ready?” Byron asked.
Dirk climbed down, and H124 took his place on the ladder. Byron barely lifted the door to peer out. “I see them. About a quarter mile away.”
H124 also peeked through the crack, eyes watering in the bright sunlight. She could see two transports parked by the tube where they’d gotten the last warhead. Ground troops patrolled the area on both sides. To the far right, a few hundred yards away, another transport was parked. Nearby two soldiers tried to open another emergency exit hatch there, while a dozen troopers had branched off on foot. “That transport looks like a good bet,” Byron whispered.
Dirk looked up at them. “We’ll go out another exit. Hope they don’t spot us.” He and Raven ran further along in the direction they’d been heading, disappearing through another door, the maglevs struggling along behind them.
H124 and Byron climbed out, opening their hatch as little as possible, and lay flat on their stomachs. Other than a few small bumps and rises, the barren landscape offered almost no cover, and H124 started to sweat in the heat, feeling exposed. This was a crazy idea. What had she been thinking?
Ahead, the two soldiers succeeded in swinging open the other hatch. They called out to the troopers who had moved away, beckoning them back. The soldiers filed into the hatch one at a time, vanishing down into the dark. It wouldn’t be long before they found Dirk and Raven if they passed through the right doors.
When the last trooper had lowered out of sight, Byron and H124 took off at a run toward the abandoned transports. To her left, she saw troopers standing around a different hatch, and about half a mile away, the massive dropship waited on the ground, its gleaming silver sides glinting in the sun, its main hatch open, with two more sentries standing on the ramp.
When they reached the abandoned transport, Byron slid into the driver’s seat. H124 climbed in beside him. These vehicles were different from the ones she’d seen in New Atlantic shuttling around soldiers. The inside had no seats except the two up front. In the back stood a side-loading door, a rack of energy rifles, sonic weapons, and flash bursters, and some kind of large cylindrical weapon mounted near a rear hatch.
Byron used his PRD to hack into the transport’s navigation system. She turned in her seat, craning her neck to keep an eye on the troopers by the other hatch. So far they hadn’t noticed them. She looked back by the dropship, staring beyond it. A squad of soldiers headed toward the collection of ancient buildings where Gordon was hiding. “We have to hurry!” she said. “They’re about to find the plane.”
At that, the transport’s engines hummed to life, and she felt it lift gently off the ground. Byron grinned at her. “We’re airborne.”
He veered the transport around, speeding toward the squad of soldiers nearing Gordon. H124 scrambled back to the weapon rack. She handed up an energy rifle and sonic weapon to Byron, then took the same for herself.
She cranked her rifle up to the lethal setting and moved to the side-loading door. Waving her hand over the control she opened it. A blast of hot air hit her as she kneeled, ready to fire.
Byron moved alongside the squad, who took no notice of the transport, which to them could have just been dropping off more soldiers. As he passed by them, H124 let out a stream of fire, catching them unawares, taking out half the squad. They turned, horrorstruck, and loosed their firepower on the transport. Byron hit a handful of them with his energy rifle, then swung the transport around, heading for the troopers at the hatch where they’d first entered.
The remaining soldiers from the injured squad gave pursuit.
Byron slammed into the group at the hatch, taking out at least a dozen. H124 fired her rifle out of the open door, hitting even more. She could hear their commanding officer shouting orders over their panicked cries. The troopers who had entered the underground system came pouring back out of the hatch. Byron veered toward them. Again H124 fired, the snaking, bright energy knocking them all down. Byron sped away, drawing their fire. A few survivors climbed into transports and took off after them. She pulled out her diginocs and looked back to where Dirk and Raven had been heading. She saw them emerge from a hatch, sprinting toward the buildings where the plane hid.
But all eyes were on her and Byron, the troopers pulling out and streaming toward them. She counted two transports in pursuit.
Other troopers, farther away on foot, ran back toward the dropship. The guards on the ramp stood aside as they poured in. She heard its engines kick on.
“Dropship’s about to take off.”
Byron wheeled violently to one side as a transport came up behind them. She almost fell over, grabbing onto a stabilizer bar to keep her balance. Struggling to stay upright, she stumbled to the back, grabbing onto the cylinder that was mounted on a stand. She studied the controls, spotting a fire button and several control switches for intensity and range.
“What is this thing?” she asked Byron.
He craned his neck back to see as he veered wildly to the left, forcing her to grab the walls of the transport. “It’s an EMP gun.”
“A what?”
“Electromagnetic pulse weapon. Fire that sucker at these bastards behind us!”
She waved her hand in front
of the rear hatch window. It slid down. One of the transports was right behind them, so close that it would soon ram them. A soldier leaned out of the passenger window, leveling an energy rifle at her. She cranked up the controls on the EMP gun and aimed it at their transport. She pressed the fire switch, and the enemy transport’s engine cut out. The trooper tried to fire her rifle, but it wouldn’t work. The transport crashed to the ground, the inertia driving it along the dirt, sending up a huge dusty cloud.
“Way to go, Halo!” Byron shouted, punching the air.
The gun’s charge went down to seventy-five percent. It had to recharge before it could fire again. The second transport in pursuit veered away, trying to move up alongside them. She tried to swivel the gun, but the stand wouldn’t allow it to move to a ninety-degree angle.
“Can you get that other one?”
“The mount won’t let me!”
She knelt beside it, hands moving over its connection to the stand. Her fingers found a latch there. She snapped it open. But when she tried to lift the gun, it was too heavy. She’d wouldn’t be able to hold it. She had to prop it up. The charge display read eighty-five percent.
She lowered it down off the stand, then moved to one of the side windows. Waving the pane open, she returned to the EMP and dragged it across the floor. The transport was close now but wary, changing its course, weaving, clearly concerned about another EMP blast.
She leaned the gun against the wall, then hefted it up onto the windowsill. The enemy transport was only a few feet away. The pilot saw her and sped off to the side, trying to pull ahead of them. In the back, she saw a solider at their own EMP weapon, struggling with the stand’s limitations just as she had. She checked the charge on the gun. One hundred percent. She fired. The enemy’s engine cut out. The transport slammed into the ground, hitting a small rise and vaulting up onto its side, then tumbling, rolling, the troopers inside tossing about. It slid to a stop in the dust. Dirt clouds obscured the wreck.
“Nice!” Byron called back. He whipped the transport around.
She stuck her head out and looked up. The dropship was in pursuit. She pulled out her diginocs, looking toward the buildings where Gordon hid. It was too far away to make out much detail. Then she spotted it. A tiny speck of movement. The plane. Taking off in the distance, moving in the opposite direction.
“They made it! They’ve taken off!”
Byron’s voice went grim. “And our problems are just beginning.”
H124 looked behind them. The dropship was lowering, keeping pace with them. The main ramp opened, and a stream of transports poured out. Troopers stood on their roofs, strapped into racks, all holding energy and sonic weapons.
She hefted the gun back to the rear window, and looked at the charge. Eighty-seven percent. “It’s not ready to go again!”
Transports continued to stream out. She counted more than a dozen, and a few moments later, twice that amount. The EMP read ninety-eight percent.
Byron weaved as the troopers started shooting at them, the energy blasts hitting their transport. On top of a bigger transport in the middle of the enemy group, she watched two troopers readying a massive sonic weapon, the same kind she’d seen decimate Black Canyon Camp. They swiveled it around, aiming at her. Her EMP beeped, indicating it was fully charged. She fired without hesitation, targeting the sonic weapon transport. Its engine cut out, and it smashed into the dirt, crashing end over end, crushing the troopers on top.
Caught in the collateral blast, two adjacent transports also plummeted, sending up huge billows of dust as they rolled to a stop.
But there were still dozens more, and the EMP took too long to recharge. It was back down at seventy percent. The other transports fanned out, making it so that she couldn’t hit more than one target with a single EMP blast.
Suddenly the dropship, in the middle of spewing out two more transports, flew up and to the side erratically. The deploying transports fell out of the hatch, too high up. They crashed nose-first into the ground, one of them falling over upside down. The dropship careened off to one side, then blasted away into the distance, completely out of sight.
She heard another engine replace the dropship’s deep thrumming in the sky. She looked up, where Gordon’s plane shot by. Raven’s face shimmered on her comm screen. “Took me a while to hack into the dropship. Controls are a little different than the airships Onyx designed the hack for.”
“Uh…Halo?” Byron said, as she turned to him. “We kind of have a problem. Or as I like to think of it, an opportunity.”
She rushed to the front of the transport, and looked out to where he pointed. They’d reached the end of the flat grassland. Stretching out before them now was the endless landscape of canyons and cliffs they’d seen from the air. In just a few minutes, they were going to drive right off a cliff. “You still got that flight suit?”
“I’ve only got the one, and it can’t hold two people!” Her heart hammered as she flashed back to that rooftop in Delta City when Astoria’s flight suit malfunctioned. She hadn’t been able to help her. She couldn’t go through that again.
Next to them, the enemy transports gained ground. If they got within reach of their EMP guns…
Rowan’s face flashed on her vid screen. “You’re going to go off the cliff!” he shouted.
“Byron knows.”
“Goddamn it!” Rowan shouted.
They had two choices: Try the flight suit, or be blasted into oblivion by the enemy transports.
She grabbed the flight suit out of her pack. “You take it,” she told Byron, heading forward through the transport.
He shook his head. “Strap it on. I’ve got an idea.”
“It can’t support both of us.”
Byron glanced back at her, his eyes gleaming with adrenaline. “Maybe it can just slow our descent, and we’ll only sort of plummet to our deaths.”
“Sounds like another one of our usually well-thought-out plans.”
She could hear Dirk over the comm link. “Get lower!” he was shouting to someone. “Reel it out!”
They raced toward the cliff. Three hundred yards. Two hundred. H124 strapped on the flight suit. Byron put the transport on autopilot and climbed into the back with her. She grabbed some straps from the weapons rack and strapped Byron to her body, then fired up the flight suit controls on her PRD. As soon as the transport went over the edge, they’d have to jump out of the door.
“Reel it out more! We need more!” she heard Dirk yelling.
The ground sped by beneath them. A transport had pulled up beside them, and she could see two troopers struggling to aim the EMP while another scrambled furiously to detach it from its mount.
The ground began to blur. Her heart raced as they went over the edge, the yawning expanse of canyon opening up beneath them. She felt herself go weightless as Byron grabbed the edges of the side door, propelling them out into the air.
She deployed the chute, watching the empty transport plummet. Two enemy transports, caught up in the thrill of the chase, also went over. The others pulled up short.
She angled away from the cliff, but it felt nothing like diving into Delta City. They were too heavy, and the suit couldn’t compensate. Over the air surging past her ears, she heard a droning engine. She glanced up to see Gordon’s plane. The rear cargo bay door yawned open. Dirk and Rowan stood out on the amp, held in by straps.
Gleaming metal flashed in the sun, and she saw a thin winch cable lowering out of the open hatch. She angled the suit for it. But they were coming down too fast, too chaotically. She managed to straighten them out. Gordon slowed the plane, and Byron stretched out his hands. The cable lashed in the wind, whipping around them. It caught her painfully on the shoulder, and for a moment she worried it would tangle in the chute. Then Byron’s hands closed around it. He made a loop in the bottom of it, using the hook to secure it. Then he step
ped into the loop, and she felt a crazy, powerful jerk.
The ground rushed up to meet them. She could see spires of mud and sandstone, the grey and white and red bands of strange rock, just before Gordon lifted the plane. They narrowly missed a spire. She felt another violent tug as they surged upward. She hung tightly onto Byron’s chest, pressing her face against his back as they jolted up, her stomach plunging down.
Above, Dirk and Rowan reversed the winch, reeling them toward the plane.
The wind caught them, whipping them out of control. She adjusted the chute with her PRD, trying to steady them. She gazed back to see the tiny white dots of the transports at the cliff’s edge, and the colorful aggregate of spires deep down in the canyon below.
Alarmed shouts sounded closer. She looked up to see they were only a few feet from the plane’s ramp. Dirk and Rowan reached out, grabbing Byron’s hands. They hefted them up into the plane. Dirk ran over and slammed the button to close the hatch.
The wind shrieked and howled. She stood on the ramp with shaky legs, still holding on to Byron with everything in her.
Then the ramp sealed, cutting out the wind, leaving her deafened by the quiet. Byron whipped off the straps binding them, and turned and hugged her fiercely. She pressed her face into his warm neck, her heart still thudding.
“That,” he said, “was amazing!”
“Don’t ever do some crazy thing like that again!” Rowan yelled.
Byron burst out laughing.
“I thought it was pretty damn cool,” Dirk added, managing a smile.
“You all okay back there?” Gordon called.
She rushed to the cockpit and gripped her friend’s shoulders. “That was some amazing flying.”
He reached up and squeezed her hand. “You had me pretty scared.”
“I had me pretty scared.”
Chapter 9
British Entertainment Corporation City
Shattered Skies Page 9
