“No doubt about it, buddy,” Ward said to Drayger, having forgotten all about his prior animosity toward their newest member.
Drayger actually grinned. “No offense, but I’m not in any danger of bleeding out, right?”
Ward shook his head.
“If it’s all the same then...I’d like to stay,” Drayger grunted. The drugs were good, but to keep him conscious, Ward had needed to give him a small enough dose that his body was still registering pain on some level. His speech was choppy and slightly slurred. “We haven’t taken down Rage... You might still...need me.”
Revolution lifted his head as if in thought.
For Ward, there was nothing to think about. “No, I’m afraid that’s out of the question. You need to go now.”
Revolution turned to Ward. “Neuro’s right. We may still need him. Keep him comfortable, but alert.”
Ward shadowed the Revolution as he strode toward Sophia. “Look, I understand what you’re saying, but he really needs to go now. The likelihood of a good reaction with any kind of robotic appendage is often dependent on the speed with which it’s introduced to the host’s system after injury.”
Revolution did not stop. “I’m aware of that. But he wants to stay, and we need him. He isn’t the only person who’s made a great sacrifice today. It’s his choice.”
Ward was about to respond when Sophia saw them heading her way.
“Boot-jets are toast,” she declared, “but I think I can get the bracelets up and running. Just going to take a little more ti—
Suddenly a tremendous flash of light blinded them from the direction of the compound.
They all spun.
And there, floating fifty feet above the ground, was the Krill.
“Arbor said they had their own Fire Fly. I hoped he was bluffing,” Revolution said.
Lantern scanned the thing’s readings, and his eyes snapped up from his RDSD. “He wasn’t.”
Suddenly the Krill’s huge insect-like eyes, once the visors for Michael Crustac, now essentially the video screens of the Krill’s controllers in Freedom Rise, swiveled toward the fresh crop of Minutemen, who had all drawn their weapons.
With a single sweep of its hand it shot out a beam of energy that hit the group of Minutemen like a terrible blade. It cut them in two. Blood and gore spewed into the air.
And everyone else dove for cover.
Everyone except Revolution. His eyes instantly darted over to his most powerful asset.
Sophia. The Krill’s robotic eyes shifted to her at the same time. And why wouldn’t they?
She would be the first target to eliminate. She was still on the ground, a sitting duck in her condition.
Revolution charged in her direction. “Helius! Get your ass up and get to cov—”
The Krill sent a blast in her direction, and the Revolution leaped in front of it with all his might. The blast hit him full force in the chest, and he was launched above all their heads and slammed into the ground a hundred feet behind them. He just lay there.
But it gave Sophia time. She scrambled for cover, but there was no real cover to find. She dove behind one of the now hollowed-out, charred cars along Beach Street, just as the Krill’s helmet beam blasted it to hell. Sophia was sent careening through the air. When she hit the dirt, she stayed down.
Lantern gasped. Just like that, their two biggest guns were down. He watched in frustration as the Minutemen tried to fire back, but their bullets were simply absorbed by the glowing machine. What they needed were laser rifles. Then he thought about the slain Council Guardsmen whose bodies were on the south side of the compound. Each of them had been carrying a laser rifle. He peered over the wall again, waited until the Krill was firing the other direction, and shot up, sprinting toward the south side.
He didn’t make it.
A huge explosion shook the ground. Lantern lost his footing and fell. It had come from behind him, and when he looked back, what he saw was truly horrific. The Krill had targeted the planes on the interstate, sending a long beam of light all the way to I-95 that had taken out six aircraft that were in the process of landing. They exploded in one long succession. A tremendous fireball that seemed to stretch across the entire horizon. Falling on the already landed planes and their unloading occupants.
Ward saw the fireball, and his throat tightened. All those people. Led like lambs to the slaughter by the Suns themselves. Revolution made it all look so glamorous—he knew so very well. And none of them knew what they were getting into.
One minute they were there, the next, they were obliterated. That is not what they’d meant by Minutemen, Ward mused darkly.
The next thought Ward had was blasted out of his brain as the very air around him exploded in blinding light. The last sensation he felt was being hurtled through the air—and he swore he saw the black of space. Then he saw nothing.
CHAPTER 48
“Krill, take out those landing aircraft on I-95,” said the command voice in the robot’s head. The machine aimed and sent another bolt of energy toward the planes.
But the bolt was ripped out of the sky by an equally powerful beam of chartreuse energy.
The Krill and its handlers were startled. The machine scanned the area and then found the source of the beam:
The Fire Fly had arrived.
Flashing to life so near Paul Ward that he had been blasted across the pavement.
And the Krill knocked her out of the sky in response. A brutal blast from the helmet beam sent her rocketing across the open air.
She regained control right above the Revolution, who was just blinking awake.
He gawked up at her and swallowed. “Fiona!”
“I’m not here for you,” she said. “I’m here to make sure no one else gets hurt by what you started.” And with that, she zoomed back toward the Krill—
—only to have a virtual blade of energy come rushing right at her face.
Thinking fast, Fiona moved by reflex and formed a large field of energy around herself. The Krill’s energy blade haloed off the force field, and a loud boom thudded across the field of battle as the two energies dissipated loudly.
She’d blocked the shot, but she’d left herself open, and the Krill’s AI, now having pegged her as enemy number one, went to work.
It lunged at her and extended its clawed gloves, ramming them deep into her luminescent skin as only another entity made of the same energy could.
Fiona screamed in pain, and countered with one her own bolts of light.
They traded blows back and forth, their power shaking the foundations of every structure within a five-mile radius.
Below, Ward opened his eyes. His head was pounding again. He sat up and just tried to breathe. Calm. Calm was what he needed. Fiddler’s dead. Fiona’s here. Things are coming together, he told himself. The pounding in his skull eased.
He had to think. What could he do? The Krill was luminescent. He had nothing that would affect that. But it was also a machine.
The Disabling Darts!
Could they even get through the energy to impact the machine, though? Ward glanced over the wall and watched the Krill. After a moment, he noticed that the machine’s luminescent energy would fade anytime it wasn’t directly engaged with Fiona or firing an energy blast. It was like the Krill needed to charge itself and was conserving energy.
That might give him an opening!
Ward raised his arm and aimed the darts. He felt the Disabling Darts slither into place. He waited.
Saw the shot.
And fired!
The dart zinged toward the Krill—and was promptly burnt up as the energy again surged over the machine as it and Fiona traded another blow.
He tried again.
Same result.
“Good idea,” came a voice from behind him. He spun.
It was the Revolution. Back up, fresh blood oozing out of the two bullet holes.
Fiona blasted the Krill again.
A massive sphere of
luminescent fire exploded across its body, engulfing the Krill as it shot through the sky. She was clearly more powerful than the machine, but no matter how many times she pounded it, the Krill seemed to regenerate. Somehow it was using Fiona’s own power to restore itself. The Krill’s engine-heart was the key. But she had no desire to reach back in there and encounter those Shard-things that surrounded it again, whatever the hell they were. Dark energy, anti-matter, who knew?
She tried a different tactic.
“Michael, can you hear me? Are you still in there?”
The Krill paused for a moment. Everyone saw it—Fiona, the Revolution, Ward, Drayger, Lantern. Everyone.
“Michael, don’t let this thing control you. Don’t let it destroy you.”
It was like a voice from hell itself, but bubbling out of the monster machine came a human response. Pained, garbled, but audible. “It’s too late for that,” the voice said.
“No, it’s not too late!” Fiona shouted. “Concentrate! Like you did when you came to save me!”
Below, Revolution slammed his fist down onto the low concrete wall, and a piece of it chunked away. He didn’t even notice. “There’s a man inside that thing!” he said. “It’s a suit, not a robot!”
He spun toward Drayger. “Neuro, hit that thing with everything you’ve got. Make it feel good. Make...Michael, whoever he is, want to show himself.”
Drayger’s mind raced. Though he usually employed fear as his main weapon, he could actually manipulate any of the eight basic human emotions: anger, fear, sadness, disgust, surprise, anticipation, trust, and joy.
Drayger shifted his body, and Lantern helped him so that he was pointing his arm over the wall. He focused on trust and joy. His eyes squinted.
Revolution spun back to Ward. “Keep hitting him with the disablers. Man or machine, we’ll take him down either way!”
“I can feel him!” Drayger yelled. “He’s in there!”
The machine began to quake. The energy was no longer just fading when the Krill disengaged from Fiona. Now it was flashing back and forth from energy to machine, constantly—like the strangest strobe light any of them had ever seen.
Revolution telescoped his visor in on the helmet of the Krill, and remarkably, he could see a human face strobing inside it as well, almost as if the very flesh of the man inside was regenerating and disintegrating every few seconds. He was sure that was impossible, but that’s what it looked like.
The spectacle took Fiona by surprise as well, and as she gawked at the machine, the Krill programming took over for a split second and ripped her across the sky with an energy-blade backhand.
A prize fight in three dimensions.
“You have to tear this thing’s heart out, Fiona! It’s the only way,” Michael Crustac’s distorted voice boomed out at her. “Blast me! Make it resist!”
She did. She braced herself in midair, one leg extended out behind her, the other bent at the knee as if she were leaning on something—and screamed out as she let loose one long constant burst of her energy. No stopping until the Krill was no more.
Below, to those on the ground, it felt like the Earth itself was going to open all around them. The roar of Fiona’s blast was all consuming. The feel of the power charging the air and molecules around them was exhilarating at the same time it was suffocating.
Revolution saw what was happening. The Krill began to glow transparent. The inner workings of the suit/machine/man displayed themselves for all to see. And at the center, the heart, was a rough copy of one of Leslie’s luminescent Orbs. The Council, most likely Von Cyprus, had copied the design as best they could and put one squarely in the center of their latest death machine.
But surrounding the Orb was a secondary sphere made up of what looked to be, for lack of a better term, sun spots. They were small, coal black, and floating, suspended all around the Orb. He wondered if they were some kind of defense. Only one way to find out.
He pulled out his i-hook. “Fiona!” he yelled to her. “When I fire this, energize it!”
She nodded.
He fired the hook. It zipped at speed toward the Krill’s luminescent body. It was too fast for the human eye to follow, but for Fiona, when she concentrated like she was doing now, it moved in slow motion. While still blasting away at the Krill with her left hand, she sent a blazing-fast wave of energy with her right that showered the i-hook in luminescence. A millisecond before it impacted the Krill, the i-hook started to glow.
It shot through the black spots, hit the Krill, and stuck.
Despite the energy swirling around it, the i-hook had found enough steel left over to allow it to magnetize to a part of the machine. Fiona’s energy just prevented it from burning up.
Fiona was still blasting the Krill. Revolution could see the machine was trying to push Fiona’s constant torrent of energy away, focusing all its attention on building some kind of force field.
But then the Krill’s head slowly turned toward him. The unearthly voiced boomed out, directly at the Revolution. “I’ll connect it to its heart,” Crustac said to Revolution.
The Krill’s hand, trembling and shaking as man fought machine for control, reached in and repositioned the i-hook. “There!” Crustac yelled to them.
Sophia stood between Revolution and Ward. She finished re-wiring the bracelets and hoped she had successfully channeled all the power the boot-jets still had into the blasters. “Well, here goes nothing.” And she fired up the bracelets, which let loose a powerful propulsor blast.
It was just enough.
The Krill rocked from the blast, and it shifted colors from yellow-green to red. One step closer to getting the Krill to overheat, just like the Man-O-War.
“It’s working! Fire them until they run out,” Revolution told her.
That’s when the first plane hit.
CHAPTER 49
From out of nowhere, one of the Cessnas came screaming in at top speed and rammed the Krill, erupting in a massive fireball. The powerful impact, combined with the steady torrents of energy from Fiona and Sophia, drove the Krill backward, against the pull of the i-hook. Revolution could feel the “heart,” as Crustac had called it, begin to rip.
The pilot’s brash sacrifice shocked them all. Ward and Sophia stared at each other, wide-eyed.
A second plane slammed into the Krill, this one too exploding on impact.
Again Revolution felt the heart rip.
The debris from the explosion blasted everywhere, and Ward ducked for cover.
“Who the hell are these guys?” Ward asked.
“Retired. Air Force, mostly. They remember before there was a Council. Before the depression,” Revolution said somberly.
A roar bellowed up from the ranks of the Minutemen. Admiration laced with sadness, rage, and shock.
Ward felt a lump grow in his throat.
But then Revolution turned to the Minutemen who were gathered behind them, relegated to cheering spectators. And Ward’s stomach soured as he heard the Revolution’s words.
“Minutemen, now is your time! Attack!”
Ward snapped back to reality. The order was equivalent to mass murder. These men and women stood no chance against the Krill. Just getting too close to it would kill them. The best they could do was provide some kid of distraction, but it was just as likely the Krill would simply ignore them.
Ward could not stand by and just watch this. “Are you crazy?” he screamed at Revolution.
Revolution said nothing.
Ward glared back at the Minutemen, who were now marching toward them. He could see the extreme fear in their eyes. What hope had they against such a powerful foe?
This was too much. They were already winning. They didn’t need this sacrifice.
Ward raced over and stood in front of the troops, and seeing the famous Spider Wasp, they stopped. “You don’t have to do this! You don’t have to go! This is suicide!” he implored.
They shared nervous glances, the fear hanging on their faces.
A Minuteman stepped forward.
He was older, his face grizzled. Old enough to remember before the Freedom Council, before the depression, just like the pilots. And in that face Ward could instantly sense the loss, the rage, the deep, debilitating sadness from God knew what tragedies he had suffered—more than would have crushed most. But the man stiffened. “Son, if you don’t get out of our way, it’s gonna be you committing suicide.”
And with that, the old man rushed forward, knocking into Ward—who had little choice but to step aside and let them pass.
The other Minutemen followed without hesitation. The look of dread still hung on their faces, but not one hesitated. Not one turned back.
Thunderstruck, Ward felt the lump in his throat burn. Revolution wasn’t forcing these men, these women. He was letting them play the role they wanted to play. Not because he wanted to use them as a diversion or as cannon fodder, but because he was honoring their choice. They were choosing to be truly heroic.
Ward felt a chill run down his spine.
It was a choice the man in the metal had devoted his entire life to preventing others from having to make.
A tear streaked down his cheek. His knees weakened and he fell to them. He reached toward the line of Minutemen, but it was far too late. Too late to stop them, too late to help them, too late to take back the words he’d said to Revolution these last few months.
He peered over at his friend. The man in the metal. The Dark Patriot.
What had he given up to become the Revolution? So that others would not have to make such a sacrifice? So much. More than most would ever dream. So much his friend never dared speak about it to anyone. So much was his darkness.
The Suns of Liberty (Book 1): Legion Page 32
