With Fiona leading the way, Zander pulled me from the ops center, kicking and screaming. “Zander, we need to help them!”
“We need to let them do their jobs.”
“Their jobs? You mean dying to protect us? We need to protect them, Zander!”
He slowed to a stop, conflict twisting his mouth.
“Zander, we cannot run away and have their blood on our conscience. We have to stay here and fight. You know what we can do.”
Fiona yelled to us. “Come on!”
“No, Zander. No. We can prevent the deaths of our friends. We can even prevent the deaths of those coming to kill them.”
He was struggling, I could see that. His instincts—and all that Hispanic machismo—told him to protect his wife; I prayed the Holy Spirit would convict him of his duty to protect more than me. Maybe the Holy Spirit was using the nanomites, because they picked that moment to chime in.
Zander Cruz, “Whoever breaks through a wall may be bitten by a snake.” Ecclesiastes 10:8.
“The nanomites are right. These attackers won’t be expecting us when they break through those walls. You and I really can ‘float like a butterfly, sting like a bee,’ but our sting will take them out of the game without killing them.”
Finally, he nodded. “Okay. Like you said, I’m newer and less experienced using the nanomites to fight, but yeah, you’re right. We can end this with less bloodshed.”
He pulled me closer to him, until his face was in mine and his breath was hot on my face. “But if you go and get yourself killed, Jayda Cruz, I’m never taking your advice again. You hear me?”
He planted one on me, a kiss both harsh and passionate—and then the wall beside the blast doors imploded.
I had my hands up even as we staggered under the overpressure. The nanomites flew from me in a dense stream, widening as the distance grew until a pulsing shield surrounded the two of us, deflecting flying debris.
“Zander! Widen the shield!”
He mimicked my stance; his nanocloud burst from his fingertips, and our shields joined, grew, and intensified. I had expected a bombardment of rounds to strike the shield, but the soldiers threading through the breach in the wall took one look at us and veered away, some toward Fiona on our left, most toward to our right where Mal and his team were firing from the ops center.
“Fiona!” I jogged toward her, throwing out a phalanx of nanomites to shield her at the same time, momentarily shifting the shielding.
Something punched me in the gut, low in my right side. The nanomites had taken some of the impact, but still . . . the pain knifed through me and bent me almost double.
“Jayda?” Zander extended more shielding over me. Multiple rounds pinged off the current the nanomites had projected to protect Fiona.
“Get Fiona,” I gasped.
Zander sent a rope of nanomites to her. The rope grabbed hold of her and jerked her to us, pulling her under the shield. When she, in response to her training, lifted the muzzle of her rifle to return fire, Zander pushed it down, “Don’t! The bullets will bounce back.”
Consternation crossed her face, but she seemed to realize how counterproductive—how dangerous—firing it within our shield would be.
“Jay, are you all right?” Zander asked me.
The nanomites answered for me. Zander Cruz, do not worry. The wound is through and through. We are mitigating the damage.
I felt both heat and pain in my groin and clenched my teeth, so I wouldn’t moan.
“Don’t worry about me,” I ground out. “We need to save our friends.”
He nodded. “Can you walk?”
“I think so.”
“Let’s move toward Mal to cover them.”
Zander and I, towing a blinking, bewildered Fiona in our slipstream, edged toward the ops center. The nanomites shifted the shield to deflect enemy rounds as we moved. Our shield soon took most of the fire intended for our friends, the shells bouncing or ricocheting away without penetrating.
It also seemed that, the closer we got to Mal et. al., the less the attackers fired on them. Or maybe they were loath to fire on us?
“Get behind us!” Zander shouted to our crouching friends.
They were too amazed (and possibly terrified) to respond.
“Come on!” Fiona urged. “We are safe behind them. Hurry!”
“Go, go, go!” Mal ordered. He and his men rushed to us. Once they were near enough, the nanomites narrowed and closed the shield, forming an impenetrable dome over us.
“Don’t fire,” Fiona explained to Mal and his men. “Just . . . watch.”
Another explosion shook the training center, and a second hole opened up, this one behind us. A line of attackers rushed in. A few opened fire, but their rounds accomplished nothing. With all of Mal’s team within the dome, the rounds pinged off the wall of electricity, most harmlessly. A few bounced back to wound the shooters.
The attackers began to realize that their firepower was useless. Disbelieving of what their eyes told them, they slowly lowered their weapons to stare at the sight of the sizzling wall of fire around us.
“Nano, how many attackers are within range?”
All but three, Jayda Cruz. Three remain in the corridors outside the training center.
“We’ll have to get them afterward. Zander?”
“Yeah?”
“Time to take them out.”
I closed my eyes and drew down on all the current available to me. Zander, taking his cue from me, did the same. A hum crackled across the training center. It intensified by the moment. The lights in the clubhouse flickered and dimmed, and tongues of fire licked at our protective dome. The dome quaked and shook and, within the trembling, vibrating dome, Mal and his team felt the current building—and they cowered under it.
Then, slowly, the clubhouse floor dropped away, and Zander and I rose. Electricity snapped around and through us and darted to our fingertips. We gathered it into our hands, grew it into pulsing orbs, and took aim. We hurled bolus after bolus of energy into the attackers’ ranks. Guided by the nanomites, the bolts connected and “punched out” the soldiers, one and two at a time.
As the other attackers saw their compatriots falling like dead men to the floor, they panicked. Some tried to run back through the holes blasted in the training center walls, but we caught them before they could escape. The last half dozen men, at the sight of bodies stacked up amid the rubble of the breaches, gave up. Befuddled and confused, they dropped their weapons and tried to surrender.
“Aw, we’re not gonna hurt you,” I said to myself. “Not much, anyway. Just give you a nap—which is better than you deserve.”
We dissolved the shield, dropped to the floor, and advanced on the remnant, flinging fire from our fingertips, knocking them out.
“Three more out there,” Zander said, pointing through a hole in the wall. “Can you make it?”
“Yeah, but let’s use the doors.” My gut felt like an active volcano, and I didn’t fancy a climb over the stacks of unconscious bodies.
Zander held his palms facing outward, toward the training center entrance. The fortified, hydraulically sealed steel doors thrummed and trembled. They shook, shook harder, then burst open.
Zander and I, the nanomites guiding us, hunted down the three remaining attackers. We found the last one hiding in a corner, weeping.
“Please don’t kill me! Please!”
I said softly. “We’re not going to kill you, and we haven’t killed any of your friends. You’ll be all right.”
Sobbing in relief, he never saw the pulse that knocked him out.
“What next, Jayda? So many witnesses . . .”
“They won’t remember—and neither can anyone from Malware.”
“Oh. You mean the old ‘destroy the newest synapses’ trick?”
“Yup.” I spoke aloud to the nanomites. “Nano? How long did the assault last?”
Twenty-seven minutes from the first roof breach, Jayda Cruz.
&n
bsp; “And how far back did Zander and I first expose our ‘powers’?”
Nine minutes, fourteen seconds, Jayda Cruz.
“Mark that point and delete all memories back to that moment, please? From everyone here except us.”
I had an idea and glanced at Zander. “What if we asked the nanomites to . . .” I explained my idea.
“I like it, Jay. I like it a lot.”
“Cool.” I gave the nanomites instructions, and a spurt jumped from us to the man at our feet. Half a minute later, the nanomites returned.
We are done with this man, Jayda Cruz.
We went back to the training center. Dust from blasted concrete and smoke from expended rounds hung heavy in the air. We found Mal and his crew bunched together where we had left them. They were arguing among themselves. At our return, they lapsed into watchful silence, wary and uncertain.
“Nano, start working on the attackers, please. I’d like to talk to Mal’s people first.”
I took another step and gasped. “Ow.”
Zander put an arm around me and helped me toward them.
“I suppose our secrets are out,” I murmured, “although I’m certain you have lots of questions.” I shrugged. “Normally, we avoid public displays of our abilities, but we just couldn’t allow more people to die today.”
Mal coughed and cleared his throat, but had trouble forming words. “You . . . and him . . .”
“It’s okay, Mal. We know how bizarre it is. We’ll explain more in a minute.”
I swept my hand to indicate the thirty-some bodies. “To clarify, these guys aren’t dead, just unconscious. When they wake up, they will remember breaching the training center, but nothing about us. They will have a vague recollection of breaching a room filled with knockout gas, and—poof—lights out.”
Mal found his voice. “Uh, Ripley, there’s no such thing as a safe KO gas. That’s the wishful fantasy of spy movies. Use of a KO gas can stop breathing altogether—meaning casualties.”
“Yeah? Well, I guess they’ll think you’ve created a new and safe gas, won’t they? In any event, they won’t remember what we did to them, and that’s the important thing.”
“Whoever sent them watched the battle live via these guys’ helmet cams.”
“We can’t mitigate for that. We’ll have to deal with them another way.”
McFly spoke up. “These guys are gonna be very unpopular with whoever sent them. Triple our numbers and they couldn’t bag you two?”
“Yes, but they’ll be alive. Sadly, they will be worthless to their handlers.”
“What do you mean?”
“They will experience a mystifying reluctance to practice the art of war . . . ever again.”
Mal put his hands on his hips. “You can do that?”
“I think so.”
He looked around at his team. Baltar was shaking his head in wonder. Fiona grinned like a Cheshire. The others seemed to relax a little. Only a little. Our relationships with them weren’t going to be the same any time soon.
“You know you can trust us to keep your secrets, Ripley, John-Boy. Um, you do trust us to keep your secrets, don’t you? I mean, you must, because . . .”
Zander and I looked away; we couldn’t meet his eyes.
“What? You don’t trust us? You’re going to wipe our memories, too?”
Zander spoke. “It’s less about trust and more about operational security.” He crooked a half smile at McFly. “Like you drilled into us, right?”
With a reluctant shake of his head, McFly agreed.
Jayda Cruz, Zander Cruz, the police and FBI have arrived and are about to enter the clubhouse.
Mal’s crew was growing agitated, so I addressed them. “BPD and the FBI are on scene. Sorry about this, but we need to hurry. Mal, you and your team will remember everything about the battle up until Zander and I, uh, did our thing. Just like the attackers, you’ll wake up thinking some kind of gas knocked you out.”
I was planting the subliminal hints in Mal’s crew that the nanomites would leave intact.
Mal’s crew protested, but to no avail. They were already falling like cordwood until only Mal, Zander, and I remained standing.
He turned in a circle and realized his team was “out.”
“We’re not going to knock you out, Mal.”
He shifted a nervous glance to us. “You aren’t?”
“No, we need you to do something for us.”
“Okay . . .”
“Your crew will be confused, but malleable to suggestion. We need you to ‘remind’ them that the attackers filled the training center with gas to knock your people out. As improbable as it will sound, ‘remind’ them that the gas also knocked the attackers out. You, Mal, recovered first just as the feds and the police arrived to take the attackers into custody.”
“And you think my people will buy that line of horse pucky?”
“They will, because you will insist that’s what happened, and they won’t have an alternative that makes any sense. After you’ve spun that tale a few times—adding a few convincing details—their brains will accept and incorporate your explanation into their memories.”
We heard shouted commands in the open corridor. Coming closer.
“We’ll use that bug-out route now, Mal.”
“Wait. One more thing. Did you notice that, as soon as the attackers recognized you two, they didn’t shoot at you?”
“They had their orders; they need us alive,” Zander answered.
“Well, someone screwed up, cuz I took one in the gut.” I glanced at my bloodied shirt. The nanomites had staunched the bleeding but, deep inside, I burned like a house on fire.
“Gotta go, Mal. Be safe, bro.” Zander put his arm around me and we hobbled toward the panic room.
“WE NOW JOIN JILLIAN Framer reporting live from Capitol Hill. Good morning, Jillian, what is the status of Senator Delancey’s confirmation hearings?”
“Tom, an hour ago, the Senate Rules and Administration Committee moved to send Senator Delancey’s confirmation to the Senate floor for a vote—and my sources tell me that the House Administration Committee will do the same, either later today or first thing tomorrow.”
“Jillian, what does that mean for Senator Delancey?”
“It means that the senator could be confirmed by both the Senate and the House within the next twenty-four hours and be sworn in as the next Vice President immediately afterward.”
“Jillian, I believe you reported earlier that the shortest vice-presidential confirmation was six weeks for Gerald Ford in 1973?
“Yes, Tom, and Ford was sworn in as Vice President an hour after the vote. If Senator Delancey is confirmed today or tomorrow, following less than two weeks of hearings, it would be an unprecedented display of bipartisan unity. Back to you, Tom.”
Chapter 29
THE CLUBHOUSE’S BUG-out route dumped us two blocks over, safely away from the scene of so much LEO activity. It had been a shock to remember that we’d left our car in the clubhouse’s garage—the garage decimated by the Black Hawk’s .50cal gun.
“Uh, Nano? Won’t the FBI be able to trace our car back to us?”
We eradicated your vehicle’s VIN and other identifying numbers before the battle, Zander Cruz.
“Very forward-thinking of you.” I was in pain and groaned as I spoke.
We do our best to prepare for any contingency, Jayda Cruz. “The plans of the diligent lead to profit as surely as haste leads to poverty.”
Zander propped me up against a twenty-four-hour laundry and called a cab to come and get us. Since we couldn’t return to our apartment, the safest place for us was the house where we met weekly with Gamble and Trujillo. Zander had the cab drop us a block from the house. I agreed with his caution, but that one block seemed like a mile.
I was too exhausted to climb the steps when we reached the back door. Zander carried me up and inside. I held one hand to the burning ache in my groin and cried out when he laid me on the
couch.
“Sorry, babe. I’m so sorry.”
Every five minutes on our journey from the bug-out hatch to the house, he had peppered the nanomites for updates on my status. Invariably, they had replied, Zander Cruz, we have the matter in hand and are effecting repairs. You do not need to seek medical treatment for Jayda Cruz.
All I knew was that someone had stuck a hot iron low in my abdomen, in front of the right side of my pelvic bone.
“Nano, please help Jayda sleep now,” Zander whispered.
“No, I don’t thin—”
I did not get to vote on that one.
THEY HAD KEPT VIGIL all night, planning and giving orders for the early morning strike, only to watch in frustrated amazement as it failed—and spectacularly so. Now the woman paced up and down the room, a cold rage building with each step.
“I am appalled, Danforth. Our strike force was three times the size of the defenders inside that building. And now it is our men who are in FBI custody?”
“You watched the live feed of the battle. You saw what happened.”
She stopped and pointed her finger at him. “I told you the Keyes woman had powers—you saw them yourself when she rescued Trujillo. You should have prepared; it was on you to make adequate arrangements.”
“Adequate arrangements? Neither you nor I knew or understood the extent of Gemma Keyes’ abilities—or, apparently, that both she and her husband now have the same powers—so in what way was I to ‘prepare’ our teams for what we just witnessed?”
He mimicked giving orders, “‘Oh, by the way, Captain, your targets will deploy bullet-proof electrical shields—but, hey, we expect you to overcome those on the fly. Your targets will also throw lightning bolts and possess antigravitational powers—but we require that you prepare for and defeat those insignificant obstacles.’ Is that what you had in mind?”
“I expected strategic thinking from you, Danforth. I see that was my mistake.” She sniffed. “May I at least presume that the men in the FBI’s custody will hold their peace?”
“They are suitably distanced from either of us and can tell the FBI nothing other than they received orders to take down a terrorist nest. Moreover, NSA agents, armed with the proper legal authority, will arrive shortly to release our people from FBI custody.”
Deep State Stealth Page 31
