by S. S. Segran
“I want to be ready!” he yelled back. “Between the Camazotz, the Scourgers, and who knows what else, I’d rather be as prepared as possible!”
He placed his haul inside the cargo hold and fed the queen some Megalara to keep her alive. “You look just as ugly as your kids,” he said. “But lucky for us, you don’t have wings.”
He hopped back out. The colonel had taken shade under the wing, while Nadia remained crouched on top of it.
“They came from the ports,” Razif was saying to her. He looked exhausted and angry. “Black syaitans killing good soldiers like they were nothing. I couldn’t do anything to save my men. The power died right before they attacked; when we saw the sky, we thought it was EMPs. Lucky we have protected equipment that still works.” His hand slid to the military VHF radio at his belt.
Nadia wiped her forehead. “It’s hell, sir.”
“I don’t know what to do now,” he muttered. “I wanted to find my family after the monsters left, but I just found out that . . .” His fingers clenched around the radio. “. . . that they died in the attack.”
“I am so sorry,” Marshall said quietly.
The colonel gave a terse nod, looking away, then leaned against the plane’s fuselage, favoring his right leg heavily. Strips of cloth that had been wrapped around the thigh of his other leg were completely bled through.
“Marshall—” Nadia began.
“Was already thinking it.” He leapt back into the plane, then re-emerged with a small bottle and a first-aid kit. He unscrewed the cap and held out his hand. “May I?”
The colonel eyeballed the bottle’s silvery contents. “What is that?”
“It will help heal you faster.”
Razif stared at him, then at Nadia, then at the logo on the plane. “Okay.”
Nadia unwrapped the makeshift bandages and cleaned the wound. When she’d finished, Marshall spilled some of the powder into the laceration. The colonel hissed but held still until the Sentry was done, then Nadia got to work covering up the injury with clean gauze.
“What is that?” Razif asked, testing his leg in wonder once she had finished.
Marshall smiled. “A little homemade remedy. Give it a few hours, you’ll feel better.”
The man’s weathered face relaxed for the first time. “Thank you.” He flared his nose up at the fuel hose. “I think it’s almost done.”
Nadia hoisted herself back onto the wing. Marshall briefly admired her easy movements, then ducked back into the hangar filled with weapons, giving it a last sweep for anything useful. His gaze landed on a handheld M2 .50 caliber machine gun and he grinned fiercely. But before he could make a move toward it, the sound of rotors grew steadily louder. He poked his head out of the open doors to see two approaching planes. Friendlies? he thought.
Then his heart sank.
The planes came closer, engines roaring to announce the new arrivals: two unmarked V-22 Ospreys. One of the tiltrotor planes landed couple of hundred feet in front of the DC-3. The other took up station hovering a little higher behind its counterpart. Six commandos spilled out from the back of the first Osprey, weapons pointed at Nadia and the colonel.
“Hands up!” one of them boomed over the deafening roar of the planes. Something was amplifying his voice but Marshall couldn’t see what. “Up, I said! Where’s the queen?”
Phoenix! Marshall blasted out telepathically.
Looks like they can track the queen after all, Nadia responded drily. I don’t think they’ve seen you yet.
Can you keep them distracted and cover me at the same time?
Yes. She brought her gaze toward him. You’re good to go.
Marshall darted across the tarmac between her, Razif and the approaching mercenaries. Once inside the DC-3 and out of Nadia’s line of sight, he reappeared. Taking some explosive gels from his backpack, he slipped back outside with Nadia again shielding him. He skirted the oncoming mercenaries and ran toward the Osprey on the ground, setting the timers for the shortest possible countdown, and stuck them under one of the nacelles. Turning on his heel, he sprinted to safety.
Seconds later, bone-shattering explosions ripped the Osprey apart. What remained of the plane listed to the side and the aircraft fell, metal grinding on asphalt in a high-pitched shriek. Rotor blades spun free, one burying itself deep in a nearby truck. The mercenaries whipped around, aghast.
Marshall, crouched behind a cluster of large wooden containers with netting tossed over them, peered around the side. He saw Nadia striking out with a roundhouse kick, sending one of the two closest mercenaries tumbling back, before propelling herself up onto the DC-3’s wing and swinging around, feet lashing out with stunning precision. The colonel had his gun raised and was firing away. Marshall leapt into the tussle, grabbing one mercenary and spinning him into another before launching himself at a third and choking him out. He tried to get to the fourth one but was bulldozed onto his back, hitting the ground hard. Before he could blink, he was eye-to-eye with the barrel of a pistol.
A shot rang out and the mercenary’s head snapped back with a spray of scarlet as he went limp. Marshall shoved him off with a gasp, meeting Razif’s eyes in thanks. Razif frantically waved one hand toward the weapons-filled hangar. “The M2!” he bellowed.
The whirring of the second Osprey faded out as it climbed away to safety. Sprinting into the hangar and jamming in a pair of tactical earplugs, Marshall found the handheld M2 and hoisted it, huffing at its weight.
The remaining Osprey began swinging around to the DC-3’s left side, back end on full display. The ramp started to lower, revealing a man behind his own mounted fifty-caliber machine gun.
So if they can’t retrieve the queen, they’ll destroy her? Marshall thought. They’ve got to be getting real-time orders, otherwise they would have shot us before we destroyed the first plane.
Nadia connected with him again. I need to start up the Dak, so you’ll have to keep them off me!
Marshall opened fire on the Osprey in response, steadying himself against the recoil. The gunner on the Osprey hit the DC-3’s side a couple of times before the pilot was forced to close the ramp and transition from hovering to airplane mode, beating a hasty retreat from the machine gun’s four-mile range.
Marshall lowered the heavy weapon with a grunt. Nadi, how much longer?
Another minute!
The Osprey came back around, trying to get in another run, but Marshall rained bullets on it, the muscles in his arms screaming. The enemy aircraft sped off, putting distance between it and the Sentries.
Alright, come on! Nadia barked.
Marshall placed the machine gun down and ran toward the plane. As he passed the colonel, he called out. “Come with us!”
Razif shook his head, heading instead for the M2. “They will come for you as you take off! I’ll try to keep them away as long as I can! Go, complete your mission!”
Marshall gave a two-finger salute and got into the plane. By the time he settled into his seat beside Nadia, she’d already taxied the aircraft onto the runway. Within moments they took off. A mile behind, the Osprey had already spun around and was heading straight for them.
“I’ll have to break left and head north as soon as we gain enough airspeed,” Nadia said into her headset. “If they can pass us and open up their ramp, we’ll be sitting ducks.”
Marshall looked out the side of his window. A spray of tracers reached out to the Osprey as Razif fired the M2 from the ground. The Osprey jinked violently to escape the projectiles and made a swift turn away from the airbase.
“Looks like Razif’s given us a reprieve,” Marshall said.
“It will be a short one,” Nadia pointed out. “You can count on Phoenix not to give up just yet.”
“We’ve got maybe five, six miles on them. They can hit three-hundred-and-fifty miles per hour. Best not to let them catch up.”
“That’s going to be hard. My girl tops out at two-hundred-thirty.”
“Then they’ll be on
us in less than two minutes once they turn around and go full throttle.”
“There is no way we can outrace them,” Nadia growled. “But . . . maybe we can outmaneuver them.”
Marshall shot her a tense grin. “Fighter pilot talking, huh? What were you thinking?”
“I’m not sure yet. The Osprey has tiltrotors but stubby wings. The Dak has more wing area. It’s a toss-up to see who gets the upper hand.” Nadia tightened her hold on the control column. “Let’s try something.” She pulled the yoke back, putting the plane into a shallow climb just as the Osprey banked around. “Those side windows can be opened. I need you to keep your eyes on that bird. There’s a compact mirror in my bag, smallest pocket.”
Marshall reached behind her seat to grab her bag and rummaged for the mirror. When he found it, he held it out the window as the wind beat painfully against his bare arm. “It’s not great, but it’ll do. Oh, look at that, they’re almost on us.”
A shadow appeared directly above them. Marshall stuck his head out to look up. The massive underbelly of the Osprey greeted him. As the plane passed them, ramp opening, Nadia yelled, “Hold on!”
She tilted the DC-3 to the right at a hard sixty-degree angle; Marshall heard thumps as his unsecured bag of weapons sailed toward the back. The Osprey’s bullets careened past, just barely missing the left wing, and Nadia put more distance between them as the Osprey overshot. Not to be outmaneuvered, their adversary made a sharp turn. Still, Nadia had forced them to the DC-3’s rear again.
“Hey, Nadi?” Marshall said, worry sinking in. “Can this old girl take another turn like that?”
Nadia laughed into her headset, but it was tinged with nerves. “She’s tough! She saw worse in World War Two!”
“They’ll probably try to get in front of us again.”
“There’s not much else they can do. It’s good that the Osprey was designed to be a troop and cargo hauler, and not for aerial combat.”
Marshall stuck the compact mirror out the window. “They’re closing in, but it looks like they’re dropping their altitude!”
An oath flew from Nadia’s mouth. “I was afraid they’d do this. If they get under us, they’ll be able to fire up at us and I won’t be able to see them.”
“What can we do?”
“What’s our vertical separation?”
Marshall stole a quick look. “About a hundred feet.”
Nadia’s eyes flicked to the ticking hands of the clock as she counted under her breath. “Three . . . two . . . one! Hang on!”
She lowered the nose, and the plane went into a steep descent. Marshall tracked the Osprey as it dove to avoid the DC-3 before climbing back and speeding past the slower plane to get into firing position. His heart hammered in his throat when he saw the gunner on the ramp taking aim at them.
“Get one of your guns!” Nadia shouted.
Marshall unbuckled himself, rushed toward his bag, and started to drag it toward the cockpit. Bullets slammed through the windshield, straight down the cargo hold and out the back, leaving three holes in their wake. Sunlight shone through them.
Marshall stared at the punctures. Thank goodness this plane isn’t pressurized.
“I can’t wait for you!” Nadia cried.
The next thing he knew, she took the plane into a proper dive. He held onto the netting in the cargo hold for dear life until, at last, she levelled off. When he finally made it back to his seat, he saw that they were right under the Osprey. “What the . . .”
“They can’t get a firing solution on us with the ramp in the way,” Nadia said. “Shoot at their fuel tank before they get ahead of us!”
Marshall realized what she wanted him to grab the guns for. He seized a pistol, flicked off the safety and jammed his hands out the window, firing upward. Bullet casings fell to the earth a few thousand feet below. He knew his shots had struck home, but nothing happened. “It isn’t working!”
“They must have self-sealing tanks,” Nadia groaned. “Your caliber won’t have an impact.”
“I might have something else.” Marshall flicked the safety back on and holstered the weapon in his waistband, then picked up the grenade launcher. As he screwed on one of the two warheads he’d grabbed, the Osprey tilted its nose up and ascended to fall behind the DC-3.
“They must have heard the shots,” Nadia said. “At least they’re back on our six again.”
“What now? Can you pull the same stunt, go under them?”
“I don’t think they’ll fall for it again. We might have just run out of options.”
“Can’t say that’s comforting. When they come back, it’ll be with a vengeance.”
Nadia just shook her head, worrying her bottom lip with her teeth.
They were about four thousand feet above the ground now, bearing down on Kuala Lumpur once more. The cityscape shimmered in the sun, heatwaves already working across some of the buildings. The twin towers, barely two miles ahead, pierced the sky in a display of grandeur. Nadia tilted her head as she studied them. “Hm.”
She pointed the DC-3 directly at the buildings—then lowered the flaps, slowing the plane as she dropped altitude once more. Marshall glimpsed the airspeed gauge and perspiration broke out down the sides of his face when he saw they’d decelerated to seventy miles per hour. “Uh, Nadi? What are you doing?
“Bringing my girl to her stall limit,” she answered.
“Yeah, yeah, okay. Cool. Why?”
The Osprey soared over them but was forced to slow down to keep pace with the DC-3. It rotated its nacelles back up to keep itself from stalling, almost converting to helicopter mode. Both planes were now a mere thousand feet above the ground and still descending. The Osprey opened fire. Marshall heard the DC-3’s wings being struck repeatedly, followed by subsequent tremors that shuddered his teeth. “We’re not going to make it,” he said.
“No,” Nadia agreed. “But I have to stay on this flightpath to keep them right in front of us. How high is the skybridge between the towers? About five hundred feet off the ground?”
“Looks like it.”
“Then we’ve got one shot left. I’m bringing us lower. It’ll force them to descend as well. Aim for the legs of the bridge!”
“RPGs aren’t exactly great for precision aiming at long distance,” Marshall protested.
“We don’t really have any other choice, do we?”
He winced. Holding the weapon, he leaned out of the plane, aimed—
But just as he pulled the trigger, another of the Osprey’s projectiles nipped the DC-3’s wing, sending it into a wobble. The warhead went wide, leaving a swirling trail of smoke behind it. Marshall dodged back inside, cursing, and screwed the last warhead on. Bullets hailed on the DC-3, forcing the Sentries to dip below the windshield. Nadia had an iron grip on the controls but Marshall could feel the plane starting to lose some of its functions.
Something glowed in the twin towers’ glass. At first thinking it was the sun, Marshall soon realized what it was. He dared a glance out his window.
The DC-3’s wingtip had been obliterated and the entire appendage was on fire.
“Sure, why not.” He turned back to the Osprey. It was almost under the bridge, maneuvering to get a good angle on the DC-3. Marshall dropped below the windshield once more and the next slew of bullets shattered the remains of the cockpit glass. The Sentries cried out, avoiding the fragments with little success.
“Marshall!” Nadia pleaded.
“I know!” Taking a breath, he pushed himself halfway out the window and fired. As he watched the warhead rocket toward the skybridge, the launcher was obliterated in his hands—courtesy of the gunner up ahead—splintering the wood and steel body. Marshall howled, dropping the remnants of the weapon, and ducked back inside. He glanced at his arms; blood dripped down his skin.
Unable to determine where the wounds were, and grateful for the adrenaline that kept his pain at bay, he looked up in time to see the warhead strike the base of one skybridge’s sup
port legs. The bridge shuddered as it swung loose, swaying back and forth between the two towers before collapsing under the stress of the impact. It caught the Osprey just as it passed under, smashing into one of the rotors. Broken blades flew out in all direction as the plane tilted sharply to the side. Unable to correct for the loss of one rotor, it flipped all the way over and flew inverted for several seconds before plummeting to its end. A fireball erupted, sending a pillar of murky smoke up between the two towers.
“You did it!” Nadia screamed.
But there was no time to celebrate. The DC-3, quavering with its last bit of life, flew between the skyscrapers, only two hundred feet off the ground. Nadia fought with the controls and rudder, steering the plane towards the park with the manmade lake. Marshall tried to hold on to something, anything, as the aircraft sailed through the green space. He was rocked in his seat as trees sheared the plane’s wings off. They cleared the groves only to skid across the lake before coming to a dreadful stop in the center.
Marshall was out of his seat as the plane’s nose started to tip upward. Water sloshed in, drenching the Sentries from the waist-down. “Nadia, get out!”
She followed him. “No! You get the queen, I’ll get the laptop!”
They moved as fast as they could. Marshall reached the middle of the cargo hold first and hoisted the queen’s cage in one hand above the rapidly rising water, then grasped the Megalara basket before it was immersed. A vehement oath exploded from Nadia as she scooped up the sodden laptop. “Better pray this thing still works!”
They struggled against the current to get out of the plane, kicking off toward the shore. In their frenzy, they got close to land quicker than they expected. It wasn’t until they passed a few floating bodies that they realized a Scourger was lurking on the opposite shore, watching them intently.
“Get across the street and see if you can find an older car!” Marshall shouted.
The Scourger was hot on their tail the moment they were out of the pond. Waterlogged and with the adrenaline wearing off, the Sentries pushed themselves, searching frantically for a vehicle. They had to leap over people lying on the roads. Marshall had seen devastation during his time in the service, but this was something entirely different—something purely evil and twisted in its core. The Scourgers had been created with a single drive in mind: eradicate what was left of the human species.
