by T. C. Edge
“I’ve done my bit,” he said pointedly. “Now you’d better find out how the hell they tracked us here. If they come again, I won’t hold off.”
Ragan nodded, unshackled himself, and set about his search.
3
Exhaustion. It was all Jeremiah Slattery could feel. Exhaustion with a peppering of anger.
He stood in the briefing room of the command centre at the old military base of Project Dawn, his palms planted to the main table, his eyes square on the bright, vibrantly lit screen ahead. On it, he saw the red blinking light, indicating the position of the falcon, shoot off in the opposite direction it had been going. Another light - this one blue - continued on its path ahead.
“Sir,” said Jason, Slattery’s chief personal aid, “it looks like Hunt’s retreating.”
Across the room, Benedict Oppenheimer breathed an audible sigh of relief. He’d been on edge for the last few minutes, ever since Slattery ordered Captain Quinn to shoot down the falcon. It hadn’t happened. The falcon had managed to avoid all of the eagle’s attempts to blast it from the sky, even managing to outmanoeuvre the plane and get around its back. It had been in prime firing position, all but ready to strike. But it hadn’t. Why?
Slattery thought he knew, though hardly gave it much thought. Hunt, self righteous as he was, considered himself a man of honour. Shooting down a jet filled with men of the Crimson Corps wouldn’t be his way. But then again, they had killed two of Quinn’s unit only half an hour before…
The fight down at the farmhouse had been viewable within the briefing room from the perspective of Captain Quinn and his men. With tiny cameras fixed to their helmets, a dozen small video feeds had loaded up on the wall-screen in the briefing room, giving Slattery, Oppenheimer, and Jason a first person view of the battle.
If he wasn’t so fatigued, Slattery might have found that a thrill. An old memory, perhaps, of a life he once lived. But not today. Today, he watched on, semi-comatose, as the short skirmish played out.
It had started from beyond the ridge to the west of the farm. The eagle had landed softly and beyond sight, unnoticed by Hunt and his team. They’d approached quietly to find a strange scene unfolding - Mikel, the nano-vamp, standing near to the others, who were writhing in pain and flailing about, acting quite unusually. The vamp appeared to be speaking with the Phantom girl, whose hands were glowing with that strange, electrical discharge power her unique nanites gave her.
As the men advanced down the ridge, however, Mikel took quick note of their presence. The nano-vamp fled immediately, hurrying into the falcon’s escape-pod jet, and flying off out of sight. Chloe had attempted to bring the jet down with streaks of lightning, but the vamp had gotten away.
As he’d watched, Slattery - though barely able to think - was able to settle one of the mysteries of the previous couple of days. Namely the fact that Mikel and Hunt’s team were not working together. It seemed more likely that they’d taken the vamp captive in order to get their hands on the data. Perhaps, Slattery had so recently thought, they really were trying to retrieve it for the cause?
What followed served to debunk that thought. Captain Quinn and his unit had advanced down the hill and through the farm, quickly hurrying towards Hunt and his team. They’d fled at the sight of the incoming Crimson Corps soldiers, rushing immediately for the falcon, causing Quinn to take action in disabling them. As Slattery had ordered, he’d done so with knock-out, non-lethal rounds, though none hit their mark.
Hunt’s crew had managed to get aboard the jet, magically doing so without being hit. The ramp had pulled in, the door closing, and as it did, two members of the group - thought to be Chloe and Nadia Grey - began firing back with live ammunition.
Two of Quinn’s team had been killed, one of their deaths playing across the video feed in the briefing room with gruesome brutality. A single round had found its way through the soldier’s visor, passing just beneath the camera affixed to his helmet and surging straight through his eye and into his brain. The video feed snapped back, showing the poor man’s vantage as he toppled to the ground, a pool of blood beginning to gather in the brown soil before him.
Another man had also been hit with a direct, killing shot, though this one got so close to the camera as to disable it as it hit. The feed, therefore, went immediately black. It was, to Slattery, a common sight. Oppenheimer, meanwhile, had struggled to keep down the coffee he was drinking.
In response, Quinn had acted in the manner that any squad leader would, calling for his men to turn to live fire. They’d peppered the jet as the doors came down, enraged by Hunt and his team’s clear betrayal. What had been only a theory up to that point was immediately confirmed by their actions. They peppered the jet’s exterior, trying to disable it somehow, but managed to do little more than scratch the thing. Before they could revert to different means of taking down the jet, it had fled skyward at blistering speed, leaving the unit stranded below.
Slattery didn’t even need to give the order. Quinn’s squad regrouped, picked up their dead, and returned immediately to the eagle. Only once aboard did Slattery speak with Quinn, telling him what he already knew.
“I want you to follow that damn plane, and shoot it out of the sky! Do you understand me, Captain?”
Quinn’s grunt of agreement had been so fierce that Slattery could all but see the look upon his grizzled face.
“With pleasure, Colonel,” he’d growled. “Just tell us where to go.”
Fifteen minutes later, the planes came into contact. The falcon had been adopting a hovering position up in the increasingly stormy skies, roughly a hundred miles or so from the farmhouse. They were cloaked, and will have thought themselves invisible. Not so for the eagle, with the directions provided by Oppenheimer’s secret tracker.
The ensuing aerial battle had been tricky to truly comprehend and appreciate from the briefing room, which didn’t have a visual feed of it barring the simple satellite image now on the screen. They did have audio, however, which lent the event some drama. For Slattery, it only heightened his rage as each attempt to shoot down the falcon ended in failure, the fleeing jet utilising their countermeasures extremely effectively.
Added to Slattery’s anger was Oppenheimer’s behaviour, nervously twitching any time his precious jet, donated to the cause, came close to being hit. He seemed to be almost rooting for Hunt, the pathetic old fool. Could he not see how critical this was?
Now, however, the chase had just ended, and Hunt’s team had gotten the upper hand. Slattery knew Tanner to be a highly proficient pilot, and imagined it must have been him at the wheel, given the jet’s wild aerial acrobatics. They’d flanked the eagle, getting behind it using superior manoeuvring and speed, and might easily have shot it down, or attempted to at least. It was a small mercy only that they didn’t.
As the red dot shifted position, seemingly heading back in a westerly direction, the comms link from the eagle flared. Jason activated the connection.
“Colonel Slattery,” grunted Quinn’s voice. “Hunt’s disappeared from sight. We need directions, sir.”
On the map, the blue light was now turning west, though had clearly lost contact with their prey. It began drifting slowly, losing ground quickly.
“Sir?” repeated Quinn, his voice urgent.
“Yes, Captain,” said Slattery. His voice felt weird coming from his mouth now. Hollow. Almost like he was hearing it through water. His exhaustion was growing too much, and the sudden break in the tension had stolen away his final shreds of energy. His mind wavered, his train of thought beginning to edge off the tracks.
“Sir?” said Quinn once more, increasingly firm. “Where is the falcon, sir?”
Slattery blinked, and gulped. He looked at Jason, who appeared as a blur before him.
“Tell him,” he said to the young officer.
Jason looked on, worried.
“Colonel, I think you need to sit down. You’ve gone very pale, sir.”
There was a body to Sl
attery’s side all of a sudden, one he hadn’t seen coming. Long arms tipped by wizened fingers reached out and ushered him towards a seat.
“Jeremiah, you’re pushing yourself too hard,” came Oppenheimer’s smooth, deep voice. “Take a seat. Rest a while.”
Slattery managed - just about - to shove the older man off. He shook his head and took a step away, almost stumbling. He managed to reach the table, flattening his palms on its surface to steady himself.
“I’ll rest when the job is done,” he grunted. He drew a long breath. “Jason, coordinate with Captain Quinn. Direct him to the falcon…” His voice wavered. “I want it shot down. Now, Lieutenant!”
“Of course, Colonel,” said Jason hastily, turning to the screen. He began typing on the glowing keyboard built into the table, speaking hastily down the line to Captain Quinn, relaying coordinates, speed, trajectory, altitude, and other details that…
He stopped. The sound of light tapping ended. His voice cut off abruptly.
Then he spoke once more, drawing Slattery’s failing eyes back to the screen.
“Sir,” Jason said, voice fractured. “It looks like they’ve found the tracker.”
Slattery’s blurring eyes refocused on the screen with some difficulty. He looked at the satellite map. It no longer held two dots, but one. A blue one.
The red dot was gone.
“They must have found it and disabled it, sir,” said Jason nervously, looking over.
Slattery stood up from the table, his heart beating strangely fast. His eyes drooped, his limbs slumped. The darkness began to gather, seeping in from the sides, the top, the bottom of his sight, like a slick of oil spreading quickly over clear water.
He felt himself teeter, and before he could even perceive the sensation of his legs giving way, or his heart constricting violently, or his frame collapsing heavily to the floor, the blackness took over.
He’d pushed himself too far, for too long, all for the good of this cause.
And this was his reward.
4
“Chloe, can you hear me…Chloe, are you all right?”
The soft words trickled into Chloe’s ears like a potion, comforting and warming and waking her from a troubled sleep. Her mind had been accosted by devilry in her dreams, of warped shapes of men marching across the lands, decimating all before them. She’d seen New York, her old home, turned to ash. She’d seen LA in the same state. She’d seen countless other cities and settlements burned and destroyed, an endless fire raging across the world, unquenchable, untameable. Unbeatable.
The future, Chloe thought as she writhed and wriggled behind her eyes. This is the future my father has created…
She felt a light jolt, and woke, suddenly, to find Ragan’s face so close to hers. He gasped and quickly calmed at his touch. His hands were gently placed upon her - one to her cheek, another to her shoulder - coaxing her awake. He breathed a sigh of relief as her eyes opened, quickly alert, nanites flaring, firing up.
“How are you feeling?” he asked her, soft smile rising. He looked worried.
She blinked, and looked around. She was still in her seat, locked into her harness. Ahead, down the passage, Tanner continued to pilot the craft, which had now levelled out, cruising quickly but calmly through less stormy skies.
She frowned, and shook her head, trying to stir a memory. Then it came; the attack, the other jet behind them. They’d been shot at, forcing Tanner into some frantic aerial stunts. It had quickly grown too much for her; the force, the pressure. She’d lost consciousness, the darkness flooding her vision. But where were they now?
“What…happened?” she croaked, frowning.
Ragan clipped open her restraints, releasing her. Her chest heaved with the sudden freedom.
“We lost them,” Ragan said. “It was the eagle, another jet used by the Crimson Corps.”
“They tried to shoot us down…” Chloe said absentmindedly, voice shallow, small.
Ragan nodded, eyes downcast.
“We’re on our own now,” he said.
He pulled her up from her chair, her head throbbing. She winced and rubbed her brow, as Remus hopped along her shoulder, watching her with concern. She looked around and found Nadia at the rear of the plane beside the briefing table. Upon it, a little device sat, blackened and cracked, emitting a light trail of smoke.
“What’s that?” asked Chloe. Ragan led her over.
“Tracker, one we missed,” said Nadia. “It’s how they knew where we were.”
“How did we miss that?” Chloe asked. She looked to Ragan. “Didn’t you disable all tracking devices when we went dark?”
“All methods of tracking us that I knew about, yes,” said Ragan. “They should only have been able to zero in on our position using the transponder, or via comms link. I deactivated the former, and we never made contact. I didn’t think to scan the jet for further traps.”
“So you never knew about this?” asked Chloe.
Of course he didn’t, she thought. Otherwise he’d have disabled it before.
“Must have been installed in secret,” said Ragan, shaking his head. “My scanner picked it up, hidden on the underside of the briefing table.”
“Jeez. Slattery has as bad trust issues as I do,” remarked Chloe.
“I’m not sure he even knew about it himself,” said Nadia, inspecting it. She looked up, hazel eyes lit by the interior lights above. “Think about it - no one came looking for us in those woods did they? We went dark right after Devil’s Pike. If Slattery knew, someone would have tracked us to the woods. They had plenty of time.”
“Or maybe they were just waiting to see how things played out?” suggested Chloe.
“Possibly. Then again, I know what Benedict Oppenheimer’s like. He’s just the sort to keep a personal tracker on board for his own use. He was the one who donated the jet to Project Dawn,” Nadia explained, seeing Chloe’s confused expression.
“Whatever the case, it doesn’t matter now,” said Ragan. “We’ve crossed a line. There’s no going back to base and making this right. And I don’t even trust to get in contact with Slattery now, even to try to explain things. Whether they’re trying to kill us for their own ends, or because they think we’ve gone dark to steal the data ourselves, it doesn’t matter. We’re in this alone.”
His words left a heavy sensation of isolation in the air, one that Chloe was used to. She’d sequestered herself away from the world for so long that this felt so depressingly familiar. Yet now, she had allies, friends she could trust and count on. Their experiences together were yet in their fledgling stage, but she felt a kinship with them, and now more than ever. All were outcasts like her, taken in by Project Dawn. Now, that last connection had been severed. It was the four of them only, alone. And while a stark change in fortune for the others, for Chloe it was a step in the right direction.
She looked at Ragan and Nadia now with an affection she could never have expected. She felt bonded to them, Ragan in particular, even after so short a time. She didn’t realise it - or perhaps she did, but only refused to think about it - but she’d longed so heavily for this affinity with others, this connection. Even amid all that was going on, she was buoyed by being in the company of this group.
So as Ragan and Nadia battled with the implications of what had happened, thinking themselves cut off, alone, lost souls with no affiliations at all, Chloe thought the opposite. She’d never had affiliations. She’d always been alone. And she’d take these three above an entire organisation of anti-technologists. She’d take them over a nation. Even if the NDSA was to welcome her back with open arms, she’d brush the offer aside, and stand next to these three instead.
She didn’t need a cause to fight for. She didn’t need to operate within an organisation in order to feel purpose, or a point to her life. She needed nothing but her own heart to guide her, her path pointed out by her morality, her soul, her sense of good and evil.
This was her group now, her tribe, her family.
This was her cause.
The short silence was broken by Tanner coming from the cockpit, expression unlike Chloe had yet seen it. He appeared tense, serious, his jaw clamped shut and eyes icy and narrow. It seemed the stress of escape was still in his veins. The joker in the pack had become their saviour, and Chloe saw him in a whole new light.
“You girls OK?” he asked as he came. “Sorry about all that just now. I didn’t see any other way…”
Nadia stepped towards him as he spoke, then wrapped her arms around his chest. He looked taken aback, even more so when she let him go, grabbed his face in her palms, and pulled him into a fierce kiss. His eyes bulged with shock, lips hanging open as Nadia withdrew.
“That’s for saving our lives,” she said. “You were…amazing, Cliff.”
A twinkle reappeared in Tanner’s eye, one side of his mouth curling into a small - still surprised - grin. “I should save your lives more often,” he mused.
“Well don’t be expecting a kiss from me,” said Ragan. He stepped forward and took Tanner’s hand, shaking it firmly.
“I guess that’s your equivalent,” smiled Tanner. His eyes turned to Chloe, playfully expectant.
She drew forward, lifted to her tiptoes, and kissed him on both cheeks, one after the other. “Thank you so much,” she whispered. “I’ll return the favour one day.”
“You already have, Chloe,” said Tanner. “You and Remus saved us all down at the farm. Something you’ll realise when you spend time with us - we all owe each other about a dozen life debts.”
“Then I’ve got some catching up to do.”
“Having seen what you can do, I’m sure that won’t take long,” said Tanner. His eyes then moved to the table, spotting the broken device. “You found something, then? A tracker?”
Ragan filled Tanner in on what had happened, and the group set their minds back into gear. It was as though their slump had been cast aside by the frenetic aerial chase, the group drawn closer together by the threat to their lives. The issue of returning to base had also been put to bed. All agreed now that there was no going back.
