The Rovers left exposed on the surface, unable to make it to the hyperloop door on time, shouted and scattered as H124 heard the terrifying thrum of the airship’s main weapon warming up.
Chapter 11
H124 braced herself for the brilliant blast that would destroy her and a chunk of the land around her, but it didn’t come. She glanced over at Raven, who was transfixed on the airship with a defiant jaw.
A gravelly voice boomed out from the airship. “We’ve come for the A14 and the blast deflection craft. Hand them over and no one gets hurt.”
“What the hell?” H124 breathed. “How did they even know about them?”
Raven shook his head, his mouth a grey slit. “They are listening in somehow.”
“How do they expect to use them? They don’t know anything about how they work.”
“They’re probably paranoid. Think we’re going to let the asteroid drop on Delta City like how they tried to destroy BEC City with the fragment.”
She frowned. The PPC may have failed in that, but they’d found another way to destroy their competition.
A troop dropship came over the horizon, its low engine thrumming, its sides glinting in the sunlight. It dropped low to the ground, disgorging hundreds of troops. Then a second dropship glided into view, stopping near the airfield. Transports of soldiers emptied out, moving to flank Sanctuary City on all sides.
H124 was frozen, watching as more and more soldiers came forth. Raven appeared panicked.
“We’ve got to hide the deflection craft!” she told him.
Coming to, he blinked. “Follow me!” He took off at a sprint, maglev in tow. She followed, feeling as if they were a huge target with the massive blast deflection craft hovering along behind them.
Spotting them, five soldiers driving a transport sped in their direction. Why hadn’t she gone to the armory with Byron? There hadn’t been time. She and Raven kept running, glancing back to see the troopers gaining on them. They couldn’t run faster than the transport or leave the blast deflection craft unattended.
The soldiers quickly caught up with them. One was punching furiously on his PRD, and suddenly the maglev stopped. The blast deflection craft teetered slightly, and H124 stared up at its gigantic bulk, expecting it to come crashing down on her. But it stabilized.
Raven waved through his PRD screens, commanding the maglev to follow. But instead it started to move slowly toward the transport. Raven tried again, the blood draining from his face, then looked to H124. She brought up her display, trying to command the maglev to return to them, but it wouldn’t respond. It picked up speed, moving into position beside the transport. The soldiers turned, heading back toward the closest dropship, the maglev and blast deflection craft following.
Frantically, Raven searched the area around him. “Onyx!” he shouted. “Onyx!”
The hacker was nowhere in sight. He brought up his comm link, but she didn’t answer.
Though they couldn’t catch up, she and Raven ran after the maglev as it sped away, and watched in disbelief as it powered up the ramp into a dropship and disappeared. Immediately the ship rose up and shot off into the distance.
H124 stopped running, a stitch in her side, blinking at the spot in the sky where it had vanished.
“Where is the A14?” the voice boomed from the airship.
All around them, troopers stormed into Sanctuary City buildings, shooting and killing any Rovers they encountered. They shot out windows and placed detonator charges that brought down walls. The commissary collapsed in a cloud of dust and debris.
She saw enemy transports speed along the airstrip, checking all of the hangars and demolishing the buildings after they were searched. She spotted Gordon on the far end of a hangar building. He dashed to another structure, keeping out of sight.
One Rover, a young man with long blond hair, ran from the seed storage vault with a crate. The soldiers didn’t spot him right away, so he made it to a grove of trees and hunkered down. A wave of troopers passed him obliviously, fire and smoke billowing around him and masking his location.
He took off after they were gone, heading for a group of undamaged buildings near the airstrip. He’d only taken a few steps when another squad of soldiers appeared from the opposite direction, spotting him at once. He tried run back, to find more cover, but the trooper in front raised his energy rifle and fired. H124’s breath caught in her chest when she saw it hit the man. The weapon must have been turned up to lethal, because as the energy snaked around his body, the young man’s face blackened. His hair went up in flames as he fell, screaming, then convulsing and burning on the ground. The squad never slowed, but ran right over his prone body, trampling him. The last trooper turned and smashed a boot into the man’s face, stomping him again and again until his head was a caved-in mess. Then the soldier turned and caught up with his platoon, not once glancing back.
H124’s heart pounded. Everything slowed. She watched as Rovers were shot in the back, falling, Sanctuary City on fire, flames shooting up into the trees and consuming the branches.
“Raven…” she breathed.
He grasped her hand.
A trooper spotted them and leveled his energy rifle at them. H124 sucked in a breath and dove to the side. Raven did the same. She hit the ground hard, glancing up to see the trooper’s chest burst. Someone yanked her up by the arm. The barrel of Byron’s Henry repeating rifle was still smoking.
“Why are you two standing out in the open?”
“They got the blast deflection craft,” she told him as they all sprinted for the nearest cover, the only remaining wall of the radar building.
Smoke billowed out from the doorways of the buildings, the underground tunnels now on fire.
A loud boom resounded in the distance. Raven ran out around the side of the building to look east.
“What are you doing?” Byron shouted at him.
A trooper spotted Raven, firing his rifle. It hit a metal girder next to him, white hot energy coursing through it, melting it. Byron pulled him back to cover.
“They’re bombing the outer city…the forests, the crops. It’s all on fire! I…I saw a herd of caribou out there…” His whole body shook. “I don’t know what to do!” He looked at them in desperation. “What do we do?”
Byron gripped his arm. “We get out of here alive.” He slung two energy rifles off his back. “They’re at the lethal setting. Don’t even think about arguing with me, Raven.”
H124 took one, the cold metal reassuring. She focused on the smoldering buildings, the dozens of soldiers pouring in and out of them, the troopers shooting Rovers as they tried to escape.
She took aim at one trooper as he emerged from the mechanical engineering building, bringing his rifle to bear on a fleeing Rover. H124 fired, the electricity streaming out, hitting him full in the chest. He jittered and collapsed, a corpse by the time he hit the ground.
“What’s the plan?” she asked.
Byron reloaded his rifle. “They still don’t know about the hyperloop. We take out as many as we can, then hold off here until they go.”
Raven gripped his energy rifle. “There are some old maintenance tunnels running on the southern side of the city. We haven’t used them for years, and access from the living areas was sealed up from the inside. There’s no water or food down there, nothing like the survival tunnels under the city. But at least the troopers won’t know they’re there.” He pointed to the south. “There’s an old maintenance hatch in the forest where we can access them. Let’s get as many survivors as we can and hold out there until the troopers leave.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Byron said, a slight smile coming to his face.
With the security leak, they didn’t dare send out a message over the Rover network to rendezvous at the hatch, so instead they had to search for survivors one by one.
H124 surveyed th
e chaos, the burning buildings, the troopers looting and destroying, then looked toward where the hatch lay. Already that part of the forest had caught fire. She could see a herd of elk fleeing the flames, their golden coats flashing in the sun. She stifled a cough as smoke drifted in their direction.
“This isn’t going to be easy,” Byron said, mirroring her thoughts. “Brace yourselves.”
Chapter 12
As they snuck through Sanctuary City, a group of soldiers spotted them and reeled around, their squad leader barking orders. As the troopers brought up their rifles, she barely had a chance to dive and roll. She stayed down, belly in the grass, and fired at them, hitting two troopers in front with an electric shock. They went down, bodies shuddering on the ground.
She started crawling away toward a patch of taller grass, but fire from the rest of the squad kept her pinned down. She raised the barrel of the energy rifle above the tall, verdant vegetation. A jolt from an enemy gun blasted her weapon. The rifle sizzled in her hand, heating up fast, and she slung it off. The metal barrel melted, the cylinder drooping and hissing in the grass.
Glancing around, she couldn’t find Raven or Byron. She crawled on her elbows into a grouping of trees, then got to her feet and ran, zigging and zagging away from the enemy squad, heading for the shelter of a nearby horticulture lab. Just as she almost reached the door, it banged open and another squad of soldiers poured out. In the confusion and smoke, they didn’t spot her, and she veered away quickly, whipping around the corner and pressing her body flat against the wall. She heard them sprinting in the opposite direction, the sizzling and whining of their energy rifles fading away.
She dared to peer out, knowing she’d completely lost track of her friends. She tried to spot them through the chaos of marching phalanxes, fleeing Rovers, and explosions wracking building after building.
To her left, another retinue of troopers approached, moving as a solid mass, their boots marching in double-time through the smoke.
She withdrew from the safety of the building, spotting a cluster of bamboo nearby. At a crouch, she ran toward it, staying low, and entered the dense growth of tall, green plants. They swayed in the breeze, knocking against one another in a musical serenade. The quiet of the bamboo grove struck a harsh contrast to the destruction raining down beyond.
Still moving at a crouch, she peered out, hoping to spot Byron or Raven. She hoped Gordon and Dirk had made it to the hyperloop doors. She hadn’t seen Dirk since they’d gotten the news of the probe spotting Sanctuary City.
As she moved along, not watching her feet, she tripped over something sticking out of the ground. Grabbing onto a solid stalk of bamboo, she caught herself. Turning, she spotted a bamboo cutter hastily dropped in the dirt, its handle sticking up. Next to it leaned a bamboo stalk that had been partially cut through, but remained upright.
Her head snapped up as she heard voices. On the far end of the bamboo patch, Dirk came into view, two PPC soldiers closing in on him. He was unarmed.
“Would you look at all those scars and tattoos?” one of the troopers sneered. “You’re Badlander scum, aren’t you? What do the Rovers want with you?”
Dirk backed away, trying to keep the soldiers from flanking him.
H124 cursed the loss of her rifle. She had no weapon, and the two soldiers were certainly armed. One raised his energy rifle. “Your kind are a waste of space. Scavengers scrambling in the muck. A quick death is too good for you.” He gritted his teeth, advancing on Dirk.
H124 bent down and grabbed the bamboo cutter. She went to work on the existing cut in the bamboo, sawing quickly through the rest of the stalk. She caught the pole as it started to fall, then used the cutter to trim off the end.
It made a handy staff, long and tough, yet light enough to wield.
As soon as the two soldiers were facing away from her, exposing their backs, H124 burst out of the bamboo grove, slamming the pole horizontally into their backs. They went down hard. Dirk raced forward and kicked one so savagely in the head that she heard the man’s neck snap. The second one struggled to get to his gun, so H124 turned the bamboo pole end-first and ran toward him, driving it into the back of the man’s neck. He cried out, the blow catching him partially on the helmet. An angry cut opened in his skin. H124 swung the pole swiftly, catching him in the ribs. He fell and rolled into a fetal position.
Dashing forward, Dirk ripped the rifle off the man’s body and fired it point blank into his face. His skin bubbled and melted as he screamed in agony. Dirk fired again and again until the man’s features turned into a viscous soup.
Then Dirk stopped, chest heaving, rifle gripped so tightly that his hands shook.
Finally he looked at her. “Thanks.”
A cry of help brought their attention to a group of soldiers advancing on three Rovers carrying boxes of books. Dirk ran toward them, H124 trailing closely behind. A sudden blast hit the ground between them, sending up a plume of dirt. She checked over her shoulder, horrified to see three soldiers carrying a fifty-caliber weapon. She careened to one side, crouching and running with the pole. The three Rovers fled. She lost Dirk in the madness.
Stepping into a plume of smoke, she came upon a lone solider standing over a Rover, grinning down as he trained his gun on her. H124 surged forward, swinging the pole up to sweep the soldier’s feet out from under him. He crashed down on his hip, and H124 drove the pole into his stomach. He groaned and rolled into a ball. She lent her hand down to the Rover. The woman took it and swung upright, then ran off, trying to skirt around the fighting.
H124 looked back at the soldier just as he was drawing a flash burster from the holster at his hip. She had started to swing the pole around, intending to hit his hand, when suddenly his lower arm disappeared in a spray of blood and bone. The flash burster went flying. The soldier screamed in pain, grabbing the stump of his arm, and seconds later another round tore through his neck.
H124 spun, pinpointing the direction of the shots. She saw Byron standing twenty feet away, the barrel of his Henry repeater smoking. She ran to him, spotting Raven crouched down a few feet behind him, talking to a woman with a head wound.
“Let’s keep moving,” Byron said.
Stealthily they crept from one outbuilding to the next, avoiding the troopers as the soldiers blasted off doors, wielding flamethrowers as they exited the searched buildings.
Acrid smoke spiraled around H124 and the others, and they used it for cover. On the far side of a residential building, they came across four Rovers huddled behind the smoking wreckage of a west-facing wall. Raven waved them over. At a crouch, they joined groups.
Slowly they made their way toward the forest, pausing at each section of cover—a building not yet burned, a dense cluster of trees. They picked up fifteen more Rovers along the way. Finally they entered the treeline. Dense black smoke spiraled through the shadowed trunks. The hatch lay a mile away, and H124 was relieved to see it had been so long since anyone had used it that any footpath leading out this way was now overgrown. The soldiers wouldn’t know to look for them out here.
They picked up twelve more Rovers who had taken sanctuary in the shadows of the forest, some pressed up against fallen, mossy logs.
Raven paused over a piece of ground covered in vibrant green moss, grey lichen and fallen pine needles. “This should be it.” He knelt and started feeling around in the soil. “It’s a round hatch,” he added, putting both of his hands to work.
H124 knelt and helped him, feeling for the rough edge of metal beneath the soft moss. The tips of her fingers scraped against something hard as she probed the ground. “This might be it.”
Raven moved to her position, and together they explored beneath the soil, finding a round edge. Her fingers stopped at what felt like a handle. She excavated it, revealing a rusted latch. Other Rovers quickly bent down, removing the rest of the dirt off the hatch, and Raven threw it open.
H124 stayed topside, helping people down. Many had armfuls of equipment and old books, and one person held a delicate, curling fern in a pot. A musty scent issued up from the hole, one of mold and stagnant water. She stifled a cough as a sudden gust of wind kicked up, mixing the smell of mold with smoke.
She and Byron were the last to go below, lowering the hatch after themselves and sealing them all in the dark. Someone switched on a headlamp, infusing the place with a feeble glow.
She thought of the people trapped in the hyperloop area, hoping they had left and weren’t waiting for the rest of them. Someone had to get out of here and continue this work. She felt sour bile rise up within her. Now that they’d lost the blast deflection craft, she didn’t know how that work could proceed. At least the A14 was safe, she hoped.
Her eyes found Raven’s in the dark. “What about Rivet?”
“With this leak, we can’t risk contacting her. If they’re listening in, the last thing we want to do is reveal her location. We’ll just have to wait and hyperloop down there. Rex has a drone watch system in place there, too, so they’ll have a heads-up if the PPC locates them.”
H124 hated this, biding time, wishing there were more she could be doing. She hoped Gordon and Dirk had found safety. She gazed around at the distraught faces, and Byron met her eyes. For now, they just had to wait.
Above them airship blasts shook the earth, raining down a thunderous dirge.
* * * *
When everything grew quiet above, Raven lifted the hatch and peered out. She heard him gasp. When he vanished over the lip, she climbed after him, instantly choking and coughing from the smoke. At first she couldn’t see anything but billows of black ash. Then a breeze parted the smoke and she saw that the forest had been incinerated in every direction. It wasn’t even on fire anymore. Nothing was left to burn. Charred, broken tree trunks dotted the desolate landscape. In the distance, blackened lumps littered the ground. At first she thought they were rocks, but then she saw a branch sticking up from one of them. No, she realized, not a branch. An antler. The lumps were the burned remains of the elk and caribou, littering the grassland to the east.
Shattered Skies Page 11
