‘Bet it’s tuned to you,’ Andrea replied as her shadows rolled over the awaiting defences. Two more blasts of energy lanced out of the darkness, this time doing nothing more than blowing out ceiling light panels and making the room darker. A couple of P90s opened up on automatic, peppering the area with bullets which the armour the agents were wearing was not going to stop. The shadows shrank away to reveal Andrea, her sword afire with black flames, swinging at one of the agents behind the tables as the man fired randomly. The black blade passed through, apparently leaving not even a scratch, but he fell anyway, collapsing onto the floor of the canteen where he lay beside the bodies of three agents he had shot in his panic.
The second wildly firing agent turned his attention to Miss Liberty as she vaulted the tables. With a wide-eyed, panicked expression on his face, he concentrated his fire directly into her stomach; twenty rounds of armour-piercing ammunition slammed into her force field at point-blank range and did absolutely nothing. He was still squeezing the trigger even when the gun ran dry. His grin had taken on a strained, maddened edge. ‘Why won’t you die?!’ he screamed.
Miss Liberty smiled at him. ‘You should go to sleep now,’ she said, and hit him in the jaw. He dropped like a bag of cement.
‘I think you should all put your weapons down,’ Cygnus called out. ‘There’s no need for the rest of you to get hurt but hurt you we will if you don’t give up now.’ There was a pause, and then one of the agents dropped her weapon to the floor and raised her hands. Fairly quickly after that, the others followed suit.
The super-soldiers were another matter. They were largely flaked out on the floor already. All except for one of them who had slipped to his knees but was still upright to some extent. He had been the second one with an energy weapon, but he had dropped that and was just staring at his hands as though he could not quite believe what he was seeing. Cygnus frowned, not sure she could believe what she was seeing either. The man had shaved his hair back to fuzz, but that fuzz was now grey, and his skin looked a little slack. He had even lost muscle mass. When he looked up at Cygnus, she realised he had lost more than that; there was a lack of recognition in those eyes more profound than anything she had ever seen before.
‘What’s happened to him?’ Miss Liberty asked.
‘Premature aging,’ Cygnus replied. ‘Far more than Twilight’s terror usually causes. It’s like he’s got dementia or something.’
‘I think the boss should get his money back on those soldiers,’ Andrea said. It was a joking phrase, but there was a hint of sadness in her voice. ‘They’ve fared less well against me than the normal agents did, and I think Kopf has shortened the soldiers’ lifespans. Shortened them a lot, from the looks of him.’
‘Oh, this Doctor Kopf, or whatever he calls himself, has got to go down,’ Miss Liberty stated emphatically. She turned to the nearest surrendered agent and grabbed the front of his armour, lifting him off his feet and pulling him toward her. ‘Where is he?’
~~~
‘Those don’t look normal,’ Zap said as he spotted a squad of four hulking men in combat fatigues at the end of the corridor which was supposed to have Josie at the end of it.
‘Da,’ Svetilo said. ‘Not normal. Those are super-soldiers Twilight told us about.’
‘Oh. What do we–’
The men spotted the newcomers and began charging toward them. ‘Shoot them!’ Astraea snapped, and Zap more or less just reacted. Lifting his arm, he unleashed a bolt of crackling energy at the leader of the squad. He went down, stumbling from a run to a messy roll as the bolt exploded into an arcing mass of electrical energy. The charge struck his three companions, but they seemed to shrug it off without a thought. They were fifteen feet away now and a little too close for comfort; Zap switched to a new expression of his power he had been practising in class for a while. A smaller bolt of electricity leapt from his fingers. This time there was no explosion, but sparks danced across his target’s skin and the soldier fell, sliding along the floor as his nervous system misfired. Behind him, the leader was still on the ground, jerking a little as the charge danced through his nerves.
That left two still standing, and Astraea and Svetilo waiting for them. One of them managed to dodge under Svetilo’s blow, but the other stopped hard as Astraea planted her fist in his stomach. She used her full power, however, and the man just grunted and readied himself to fight.
The soldiers were fast too, both of them attacking before either of the women could recover to strike again. Svetilo’s opponent threw a punch at her face which skimmed past her nose. Astraea’s had better aim, but his fist slammed into her shield, resulting in an impressive display of light. Neither of the men were paying attention to Zap, which turned out to be a mistake as he hit Astraea’s one in the back of the head with a bolt of static and the man’s legs collapsed out from under him. That did not stop Astraea from kicking him in the ribs, however.
Svetilo’s return punch hit its target and sent him spinning back down the corridor. ‘Da!’ she yelled. ‘That is what you get for messing with Russian girl!’ Her victim started to struggle to his feet, and then collapsed. Reaching down, she grabbed the back of Astraea’s opponent’s collar, lifted, and slammed his head into the floor. Twice. He stopped moving entirely. ‘Khoroshiy boy!’
‘Uh, one of the others is getting up,’ Zap said.
One of the ones he had disabled was, indeed, pushing to his feet. Astraea had lost her victim, so she stepped forward, lifted into the air a little, and swung forward, her booted foot lashing around to slam into his face. Blood splashed the wall and he slumped back to the floor, stunned again. Landing, she pulled the man upright and locked her arm around his neck from behind. He started fighting back after a second, trying to break her hold, but she kept up the pressure while Svetilo stepped past her to take care of the last man, the first one Zap had downed. He threw a punch right at her face, but she pushed the blow aside with her left arm and drove her fist into the soldier’s chest. Again, her blow sent him flying back down the corridor. Brian could have sworn he heard ribs cracking even from thirty feet away.
Astraea was still hanging onto her man as he struggled to free himself. They were sort of evenly matched, but she had the advantage in position and, for a trained soldier, he did not seem to be using much in the way of tactics. He was weakening. You could tell, even if he kept trying to break free.
‘You want help?’ Svetilo asked. She was grinning. She was grinning quite a lot.
‘No, I got this,’ Astraea replied.
‘You are sure? I could give him little tap on the head.’
The man’s legs gave way under him and he stopped struggling so much. ‘No, I think I can manage to choke one guy into unconsciousness. I’ve decided that super-fights are not for me. Next time, I’m just going to nuke them into pacifism.’
‘That could save much time. I think you can let him go now. His lips are turning blue.’
Astraea dumped the unconscious soldier onto the corridor floor and watched as he took in a shuddering breath. His eyes remained closed. ‘Okay. Yeah. I should steer clear of toughened thugs. Let’s get Fleet.’
The room they had been aiming for was maybe twenty feet on each side and fifteen feet in height, and a lot of the space was taken up by a big black pod. The thing was smooth, its edges curved, and there were cables running out of it and up into ducts in the ceiling and floor. Thick cables. There was only one obvious control panel on the thing and it had exactly two buttons on it: both were large, one was green and the other red, and they were labelled.
‘She’s your damsel to rescue, Zap,’ Astraea said.
Stepping forward, Zap pushed down hard on the green button, which was labelled ‘OPEN.’ Nothing happened for several seconds and he glanced around at the two women, getting shrugs in reply. Then there was a sound like a pump starting up and water running through a pipe. After another few seconds, part of the pod began to lever upward while another section levered out toward the floo
r. Zap rushed around to the lowering doorway and found more or less exactly what he had hoped to find. Perhaps he had not been expecting her to be naked aside from a big helmet and a belt around her waist. Unaccountably, he found himself embarrassed that Svetilo and Astraea were seeing Josie naked.
‘I’ll get her out,’ Astraea said, stepping into the tank. She was stepping into about a foot of fluid, probably water. ‘These boots are waterproof and higher than the waterline.’ The belt went first. It was tethered to the side of the tank via a couple of thin cables and was presumably there just to keep Josie centred. The helmet took a little more effort. It was locked in place and Astraea had to break the band around Josie’s neck to get it off. Then the faceplate levered up and the helmet with its various cables fell away into the water. Astraea lifted the girl and handed her out to Zap, who settled her onto the floor before his fingers stroked her blonde hair free of her face.
‘Josie?’ he said, looking down at the unmoving girl. ‘Josie, can you hear me?’
Her eyes flickered open and she looked up at him. ‘Josie?’ she asked, her voice soft. ‘Am I Josie? Who are you?’
~~~
‘They’ve split up,’ one of the agents watching the camera feeds said. ‘It looks like Twilight and Miss Liberty are heading for level three. Cygnus has stopped on this floor.’
‘What about the others?’ Theakstone asked.
‘There’s still no sign of Frostburn. I think he’s guarding their exit. Svetilo, Astraea and the unknown have rescued the girl, Fleet, and are taking her back up the fire stairs.’
Theakstone suppressed his anger, barely. ‘Kopf will have to deal with Miss Liberty and Twilight. Cygnus is not to make it to this room.’
‘We have agents and super-soldiers defending the route here, sir,’ another agent said. ‘The soldiers have those new energy weapons. They were designed to take Cygnus down, right?’
‘Yes,’ Theakstone agreed. He picked up his own rifle. ‘They were. What about reinforcements?’
‘They say it’ll take a couple of hours to get a suitable assault team ready,’ one of the communications personnel replied. Everyone in the room knew they did not have a couple of hours. ‘We’re on our own, sir.’
~~~
Splitting up was probably not the best of ideas, but Cygnus was alone as she marched down a corridor toward the operations room of the bunker. It was on the second level down and it was being defended. Bullets flew at her, a fair few of them hitting home, but she ignored them. Every round either flattened against her force field or ricocheted off it. The agents were retreating ahead of her and she was in no hurry to stop them. She had maybe sixty or seventy feet of corridor left to go before she arrived at the door, and all the time in the world to get there.
Four of the thuggish super-soldiers were set up at the end of the corridor, in front of the door. They allowed the regular agents to back up into the operations room, readying the same, stubby, ugly-looking rifles as the ones others had used in the canteen. Cygnus saw a light over the ops room door turn from green to red just before the soldiers opened fire. Briefly, Cygnus could not see where she was going. She was fifty feet away now, and the beams were bright streams that struck her force field with violent ferocity. This time there was no pain.
The soldiers appeared unconcerned that their barrage had not dropped their target. They moved almost as one to eject the power cells for another volley. Cygnus was not planning to give them the chance. She shifted her power set, raised her arm, and fired. A stream of charged particles lanced out, splitting the air with a shriek. She swept the stream across the area in front of her. She was in no mood to go easy on the people defending the room ahead. She had heard what had happened to Fleet, for one thing. Yes, Kopf needed to be put somewhere where he would never hurt anyone again, but the same could be said for those running this house of horrors.
Raising her arm again, she fired her beam, this time sweeping a circle and aiming just at the door.
~~~
‘My God! She just obliterated them!’
Theakstone glanced at the screen the agent who had spoken was watching. There was no sign of the four soldiers who had been the penultimate line of defence. There was a lot of oily, black smoke, but no sign of the men. Had she vaporised them? Was she throwing around that kind of power? From the way the two-inch steel door was buckling, she probably was. ‘Open fire as soon as she shows her face,’ Theakstone ordered, lifting his rifle and taking aim on the door.
‘Sir, nothing we’ve got can stop her,’ someone said.
‘That is not what I want to hear, agent!’
Anything else which might have been said was cut off as the door collapsed onto the floor, carved into sections by Cygnus’s lethal energy beam. The edges of the steel were still glowing as she stepped through the hole, closing her eyes to let the barrage of various forms of ammunition hammer against her screen. Theakstone fired his rifle, dropped the cell, loaded another and fired again. He unloaded a third cell before the magazines on the twenty or so P90s ran out of bullets, and then the room fell into silence.
Cygnus opened her eyes. ‘If you’re quite finished. Put your weapons down before I decide I should fire back.’ There was a pause, and then rifles clattered to the ground, followed by handguns.
‘Kopf said these rifles would stop you,’ Theakstone said. He had dropped his weapon, but he was still defiant.
‘What you and Kopf seem to refuse to understand,’ Cygnus replied, making her way through the desks and consoles, ‘is that I can adapt. Kopf was right. Those rifles could kill me. They’re tuned to the same frequency as me, but I can tune my defences to block that out. I just haven’t previously. You’re Theakstone, right? Gerald Winscott Theakstone, the director of this sick little operation?’
Theakstone pulled himself up to his full height and still had to look up into Cygnus’s eyes. ‘I am.’
‘Good. You’re under arrest. Please tell me you’re going to resist, because punching you in the face would make this experience so much more pleasant.’
‘I will not.’
‘See, I knew you were a total bastard and that just confirms it.’
~~~
On level three, Andrea’s shadows shrank from around her as she came to a very solid-looking metal door which had been dropped down to block off a corridor. She frowned, looking around. There was a screen mounted on the wall to her left with a camera above it and a single button below. An intercom of some sort, she figured. Stepping up to the door, she cautiously reached out a hand and then withdrew it sharply.
‘Problem?’ Miss Liberty asked, coming up behind her.
‘The door’s warded,’ Andrea replied. ‘I can’t see past it. I can’t see anything inside the area beyond it. And if I reach out to touch it, I can feel something pushing back. It doesn’t exactly hurt, but I think it would if I tried to get through.’
‘That’s–’
‘Fascinating.’ Both women looked around toward the screen. It was now alight, and the face on it was quite familiar to Andrea. ‘I had theorised that your recent change in abilities was the result of greater integration with the shadow entity,’ Kopf said. ‘That integration would seem to be complete, Miss Morgan. You and the entity are one and the magic of the wards affects you physically.’
‘I’m sure that’s very exciting for you,’ Andrea replied, ‘but you’re still stuck down here. We’ll crack this shield door and Miss Liberty here will be most happy to drag you out.’
‘I invite you to try. That is six inches of reinforced steel. Meanwhile, I have my escape plan well in hand. I will be leaving shortly.’
‘There’s no other way out of–’
‘Ah, Miss Morgan, you continue to underestimate me. There is a secondary fire escape in this section of the bunker, and I ensured that it was warded against your extraordinary sight.’
‘Then I’d better get started,’ Miss Liberty said. She stepped up to the door, balled her right hand into a fist, and drove i
t into the metal. Nothing much happened.
‘I realise you are strong,’ Kopf said, ‘but–’
‘It’s hardened steel,’ Andrea said. ‘You’re going to have to hit it like you mean it.’
‘Right,’ Miss Liberty replied. Then she drew her arm back and punched the door again. The metal buckled and then broke. The door ripped up from roof to ceiling, and a huge section of the middle of the thing tore away, flying down the corridor beyond. ‘Like that?’
‘Just like that.’
‘It seems I must expedite my departure,’ Kopf said. ‘We will meet again, Miss–’
‘Kopf!’ The sound came from the screen, but it was not Kopf’s voice. Whoever it belonged to was furious about something. Presumably it was something Kopf had done.
The screen now showed the back of the old scientist’s head. His voice was muted because he was not facing the microphone, but he was still audible. ‘Sergeant Quail? Calm yourself, Sergeant. You have nothing to be–’
‘You did this to me,’ Quail raged, still off-screen. ‘You said I’d be some sort of super-soldier.’
‘I did explain that–’
‘You said I’d be powerful, valuable, and now I can’t even go back to my old job!’
Andrea turned to Miss Liberty. ‘If you want that old bastard alive, I think you’d better hurry.’ Miss Liberty did not say a word, but she was flying through the hole she had made in the door an instant later.
‘You’re going to pay,’ Quail continued. ‘You Nazi cocksucker, you’re going to pay!’ The screen went to black very suddenly, and Andrea stood there looking at it for several seconds. Whoever Sergeant Quail was, he seemed pretty determined to beat the life out of Kopf.
‘Hopefully,’ Midnight said from the shadows still pooled around Andrea’s boots, ‘the do-gooder won’t get there fast enough to stop Quail.’
Liberty Page 23
