The Gods of War

by Graham Brown

  With his forearm around Inyo’s neck, James pulled him in close. “Call it off,” he demanded.

  Inyo held up the phone, one of the slugs had gone right through it. He dropped the shattered device. “It’s too late,” he said weakly. “You should have… listened. I did this for you.”

  James knew a lie when he heard it.

  “You did this for yourself,” he growled.

  With that, James spun, throwing Inyo over the edge of the building. The prime minister fell, flailing for several seconds, his coat opening like a cape until he hit the dark concrete below with a sickening crack.

  James never saw the impact; he was off and running. Running for his life, and the lives of countless others.

  CHAPTER 7

  At a landing pad by the waterfront, a few miles from the Arsenal Military Complex, a pair of civilian hover jets waited, engines running and ready to go. Despite their civilian status, these vehicles bristled with weaponry like their military counterparts. They belonged to Lucien Rex, part of his security service.

  Thirty feet away, a vicious looking man stood at a monitor. Magnus Gault had a narrow, craggy face, marked on one side by a jagged scar that ran diagonally from the bridge of his nose back across one ear and into his hairline. On the other side, a series of precise parallel marks looked like horizontal lines but were actually tattoos of micro text. They designated his allegiance to Lucien’s band of mercenaries and his rank, so to speak, among that group. Other tattoos hidden by his clothing would show the battles he’d fought in and the kills he’d racked up. After a dozen years in Lucien’s service, Gault wore plenty of mercenary ink.

  “What happened? Gault, do you read? What happened?”

  Lucien Rex sounded small and distant on the tiny speaker, at least compared to the whining engines of the hover jets behind Gault.

  Gault was studying a feed from a small camera installed in Prime Minister Inyo’s coat. He’d seen the confrontation begin and then nothing but shaking and static. The feed was finally coming back. All he could see was Inyo’s hand laying on the ground and blood pooling around it.

  He flipped a switch and spoke into a microphone. “I think we have a problem, sir.”

  “What kind of problem?”

  “Well,” Gault said. “For one thing, you’re going to need a new prime minister.”

  “What are you talking about?” Lucien asked.

  “Collins tossed him off the roof,” Gault said. “An interesting way of turning down your proposal. No grey area in that.”

  Lucien was silent for a moment. “Where is he now?”

  Gault flicked a switch. A tracking device installed on Collins’s vehicle was moving. “He’s on the run.”

  “So be it,” Lucien said. “Take him out.”

  “With pleasure.”

  Gault signed off, holstered his pistol and began walking toward the first of the two hover jets. He held up one hand and made a twirling motion. “Spool ‘em up,” he shouted. “We’re rolling.”

  The pilots went to work, and by the time Gault climbed onto the skid of the first jet the whine of the engines had risen to fever pitch.

  Gault had once been in the military, but a court martial and a dishonorable discharge left him with a bad taste in his mouth for the entire military order, especially Collins and his kind with their high and mighty attitude.

  Years later, an explosion that had sliced the huge scar into his face had only hardened Gault’s anger, as the blast was caused by substandard munitions the mercenaries were forced to use because the military wouldn’t release the grade A munitions.

  In his mind, Gault had plenty to blame the military for. Tonight’s festivities would be a little bit of payback, a tiny step in evening the score.

  James had made it through the officers’ club and down to the main floor before the commotion really hit. The gunfire on the rooftop had been muted and masked by all the noise in the club and on the base in general. The prime minister’s body landing in the main yard was a different story. Several people had seen him fall. Despite the damage done by the impact, they’d quickly realized who Inyo was, that he was dead, and that he’d been shot before falling from the roof.

  James was in the main lot when the alarms began sounding.

  He climbed into his car, gunned the throttle and spun the tires as he raced out onto the access road. In thirty seconds the whole base would be locked down. He had to be out of there before then or he and his father would be dead men.

  In seconds, he was approaching the perimeter, but the exit gate was locking down into place.

  Red lights were spinning on top of the control shack. “Halt your vehicle!” a voice yelled over the loud speakers.

  James stood on the gas, and the car shot forward. Even as he did, he could see the exit gate dropping; he’d never make it. He swerved left. A small convoy of supply trucks were coming in the entry side. That gate couldn’t be closed.

  Gunfire rang out from the tower and tracer fire cut across his path. He narrowly avoided the first truck, split the gap between the second truck and the edge of the wall, and shot out onto the road.

  He was a fugitive now. He would be linked to the prime minister’s death, labeled an assassin or a terrorist, but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was reaching his father before Lucien made his next move.

  He sped up the access road and turned onto the elevated track of the upper highway. There were few cars and he could just about fly.

  He swerved around a bit of slower traffic and then spoke aloud to the car’s computer. “Emergency contact: Jackson Collins, direct line.”

  A screen on the dash cycled. “Requested line inactive,” the computerized voice said.

  “Contact Presidential Security Team,” he said. “Authorization, Collins James; alpha, seven, seven, nine, seven, three.”

  The screen cycled and then flashed red. “Request denied. Authorization invalid.”

  James slammed his fist into the dashboard and stepped harder on the accelerator, whipping around a curve barely in control. He thought of one more option.

  “Emergency call,” he grunted as he fought to keep the vehicle from tumbling off the highway and dropping a hundred feet to the surface streets far below. “Terrorist action imminent.”

  This was the equivalent of a 911 call to the military controllers. It was supposed to get priority and put him in touch with the local defense force no matter what his other status might be. “Request denied. Account no longer connected to Unified Signal.”

  They’d cut him off completely. That was a bad sign. Before he could come up with another plan, a wave of gunfire cut across his path. It came from above.

  James cut to the left as twin streams of rapid-fire plasma melted sections of the guardrail and obliterated a small delivery van.

  The explosion and flash of orange covered the highway ahead of him, but James raced through it.

  “Damn!” he shouted as a second burst pelted his car with chunks of the roadway.

  The next curve took him between a pair of burned out skyscrapers that were linked together by a dozen makeshift bridges. The hover jets chasing him peeled off, high and right. But on the far side, they quickly dropped back into position again.

  James killed his lights, took an exit and swerved onto a ramp that took him to a lower roadway. This one cut across the city diagonally. It was still sixty feet above the surface, but it ducked under the main highways, and that would give him some cover.

  “Where the hell did he go?” Gault yelled from the gunner’s position at the side door.

  “Lost him,” the pilot said.

  Gault pressed the comm switch. “Falcon Two, do you see him?”

  Hesitation and then, “We’ve got him. He’s dropped a level and turned east. He’s gone dark by the looks of it. Switching to infrared.”

  Out the side door, Gault watched as Falcon Two peeled off to the right.

  “Stay with him,” he ordered.

  He gripped
the door as his own craft banked into a turn, and as they straightened out, Gault switched his sighting mechanism to infrared.

  James knew the capabilities of the craft following him. He knew they’d find him quickly, even in the dark, but racing at breakneck speed on this lower level might give him a chance. He was only a few minutes from the Fortress. Even if he crashed onto the steps, his father’s most loyal men would be there, and whoever the hell was following him wouldn’t stand much chance.

  He went around another turn, sideswiped one vehicle and then scraped the guardrail for fifty feet before he got control back again. A long straight away lay up ahead, crisscrossed by so many cables and bridges that it was almost tunnel like. He shot down it, raced out into the open again and immediately came under fire.

  The first blast missed to the right, but the second rocked the back of the car. The rear window blew out. The wind howled through the car and the flames whipped forward, licking at the back of James’s neck.

  He fought to control the car, kept the accelerator floored and looked forward. The Fortress was dead ahead. Its towering, almost volcanic shape looming in the distance like a beacon.

  And then there was a flash, bright enough to illuminate the entire city in false daylight for a second or two. The blinding glare faded, replaced by a fireball hundreds of feet across. It lit up the top third of the Fortress and billowed outward spewing black smoke, orange flame and streams of molten debris like a starburst.

  James had no time to exclaim. No moment to process the realization, or even to feel anger or remorse. The shock wave from the burst hit him at almost the same instant that another storm of gunfire tore the side of his car.

  The sheet metal was ripped apart and both wheels on the right side were blasted free. The car went airborne, came down on the guardrail, sliding along it at the same breakneck pace which James had been driving and then flipped and tumbled over the edge.

  The car flipped as it fell, doing a complete roll before hitting one of the slag heaps that piled up against the pillars of the highway like sand dunes. Still moving forward, the car slid down the slope and across a small open lot, trailing sparks and flames. The gas tank separated and exploded, and the body of the car slammed into a wall under the recessed overhang of a blacked out fifty story apartment building.

  Gault saw the hit. Saw the car go over the rail and caught sight of the gas tank explosion from the corner of his eye as the two jets raced past. They shot the gap between the next group of buildings and climbed out over the city.

  As they pulled up, he could see the top third of the government building burning in the distance. The explosion had been massive—probably a thermo-fusion bomb. He’d been worried about the military units intervening in his pursuit of Collins, but Lucien had insisted they’d have other things to deal with. This was more than Gault had expected.

  He tapped the comm switch, transmitting to Lucien. “Target’s down,” he said. “I repeat. The target is down.”

  A long moment of silence followed, and Gault wondered if the huge explosion had somehow effected communications.

  Finally, Lucien’s voice came back through the speakers. “We need confirmation.”

  “ATC is ordering all civilian craft to land,” the pilot called out. “We have to get out of here. This city is going into lockdown.”

  That didn’t surprise Gault. With the explosion at the Fortress the military would be out in moments. Shooting first and asking questions later. He relayed the message to Lucien.

  “I need you to make sure James Collins is dead,” Lucien replied without hesitation.

  “We blew him off the damn highway,” Gault replied. “He’s on the surface level in a fireball.”

  “I don’t care where he ended up. Unless you saw him take his last breath in person, you go find him and make sure he didn’t survive.”

  Gault knew better than to cross Lucien. He looked to the pilot. “Take us back around. Make it quick.”

  CHAPTER 8

  James opened his eyes to the smell of burning fuel and the sight of shattered glass. The windshield of his vehicle was a super polymer so it didn’t break or crumble, but there were so many cracks and fractures crisscrossing it that it was almost white instead of clear.

  Somehow he was alive—the vehicle’s airbags and a type of instant restraint system that locked him into place had seen to that—but he was disoriented. For a minute he had no idea where he was.

  As the airbags deflated, James looked around. The vehicle had spun around during its fall and slammed backwards into the walled exterior of a large building, which overhung it by at least twenty feet. The nose of the car, or what was left of it, now pointed back the way he’d come.

  Through the cracked windscreen, James could see fire flickering in the distance. Debris and junk littered the open space. He saw the base line of another building across a small plaza and the slag heaps of junk and debris piled up around the pillars of the highway’s support system.

  He was down on the ground level. And if he was right about where he’d landed, this was not a spot he wanted to end up in, not in a rich boy’s, fancy car. Not in the middle of the night.

  As if to prove the point, he saw shadows moving towards him in the flickering light. They emerged from under the highway and climbed out through the empty window frames of the other darkened buildings.

  James knew he was in trouble, even if the attacking jets didn’t come back. A car like his, even a wrecked one, had value down here. Easily stripped parts could be sold for months of food. The frame and sheet metal could be melted down or sold for scrap. His clothes, his money, his personal effects, all of it held the same kind of value. Even his life could be ransomed.

  He felt around for the gun he’d taken off the prime minister. He couldn’t find it. He tried to move but the belts of the instant restraint system held him. He reached for the release and punched it. The belts retracted enough for him to squirm free.

  He searched for the gun once again but to no avail. He reached for a locked compartment in which his own side arm was hidden, but without power to the car, he couldn’t open it. He yanked on the handle as the first shadows reached the car.

  Grubby hands appeared around the doorframe and pulled in unison. The door was bent and wedged tight, but the combined power of several people began to bend it back.

  James yanked the handle of the weapons compartment. It wouldn’t budge. He slammed his fist into it, denting the metal.

  Guttural shouts outside the car rang out. A few people jumped on the remnants of the hood. The car began rocking back and forth as the mob pulled and released and pulled in unison.

  James yanked on the dented weapons compartment again. It moved but not enough. He slammed his fist into it once more bending the metal further as someone smashed a pipe into the windshield. New cracks spread in a circular pattern.

  The door was bent further. A dirty, bearded face appeared in the gap between it and the frame. A hand reached in and grabbed James’s collar. He yanked free and pounded the weapons compartment repeatedly. It flicked open just as the door was pulled wide.

  Three sets of arms grabbed him, as he shoved his hand into the gap and grasped his sidearm. He was yanked out of the car and pulled into the mob of people.

  He shook free of the first group of hands, but others grabbed him, grabbing for his dog tags and pulling at his coat. All James cared about was the weapon.

  As the coat was pulled off one arm, he slipped free from the other. A second later his ID packet fell from the pocket. Half the group lunged for the contents, fighting over it like pigeons in the park. Still others fought their way onto the car, while others were grabbing at James, trying to dig anything they could out of his pockets.

  “Get the hell off me!” he shouted. He elbowed one guy in the face, slugged another, and shoved a third derelict away before getting enough space to fire a shot into the air.

  “Back off!”

  The crowd spread out and James
found some breathing room. Half of them looked to the car, but the pecking order there had already been established. If they wanted anything out of this, they would have to get it from the man with the gun.

  A good dozen of them tried to encircle him.

  James waved the gun around, keeping them away. Limping and covered in blood from a gash in his forehead, he edged his way toward a graffiti covered concrete wall.

  One guy whipped out a knife, but James blasted him in the leg. He dropped in pain and the crowd stepped back. James released his watch and tossed it into the crowd. He did the same with some tokens from his pocket. A new fight broke out, and James got clear of them.

  He backed away, checking behind him and waving the gun back and forth to keep the crowd at bay.

  Without warning, all the activity stopped. A few of the scavengers looked up into the night sky.

  James heard the hollow sound of whining turbine engines and spotted a pair of shadows cutting across the dimly lit sky.

  “Street-sweepers!” someone yelled, using a slang term for the crowd control version of the heavily armed hover jets, which were commonly deployed against riots and demonstrations.

  The people broke in all directions, most running for cover. Some making last, desperate attempts to remove a part from the wrecked car. James got caught in the stampede. Hobbling on an injured leg and watching as the rag-tag group of surface dwellers scattered in all directions.

  Some went for the broken windows they’d come out of, others raced into dark alleys and recesses between the buildings. No way in hell he was following them into either.

  He made for a ditch twenty yards away and hurdled the small pile of rubble in front of it, only to find it wasn’t a ditch but the entrance to a sloping tunnel. He slid down, missing the make shift ladder and tumbling out into darkness twenty feet below.