Phoenix Reborn

by Joseph Mackay

  As it was, he was almost too late, the handgun rising in time to fire off a shot before his dagger plunged into the woman’s side.

  The two held their pose for a moment until the man staggered backwards. He could feel that the bullet brusied him beneath his armor but came on with his dagger again.

  Marlena screamed with rage as she unloaded the gun into the man’s chest and face, pulling the trigger long after the weapon had run out of ammo.

  She was breathing heavily as blood soaked her flight suit on the right side of her body. In the same locker, she grabbed a medical kit and gave herself a shot of local anesthetic for the pain before patching the wound with a synthetic binding gel. She knew that it was by no means taken care of, but for the moment the wound wouldn’t kill her.

  Grabbing a crowbar off the wall, she walked slowly over to where Hati lay face down on the floor of her cargo bay and, in pain, climbed to the back and pried at the cockpit. Fortunately as she began, the armor opened up, seemingly on its own. Inside she saw the crumpled form of her youngest son.

  With all her strength she pulled the boy out of his ship and carried him up the stairs into the crew quarters. She placed him gently upon her bed and began to evaluate his wounds. He didn’t appear to suffer from any physical damage, other than the blood that was drying under his nose and a few bruises. His OMBI was smoldering and, despite her best effort, wouldn’t come off the boy’s arm.

  She leaned close to his chest and sighed heavily when she heard him breathing. Tears flowed from her almond-colored eyes as she passed out from her wound next to her baby boy.

  Chapter 19

  Against the Current

  Seeing his mother and brother make it through the slipstream, Alex turned his attention back on the fight. He didn’t like the odds too much, with five Battle Frigates firing on him and a large Battle Suit Vessel hammering down on him. It took some effort, but he managed to focus on the task ahead, calming his anxiety with a deep breath.

  The fight got worse for him as two more Ra squadrons launched from the frigates and Alex found himself fighting defensively to avoid taking damage. The pressure from Vertigo was intense; he’d clearly been training for this specific fight and his form was nearly perfect. Alex knew he could outsmart him eventually, but he was spending too much of his effort reacting to the fluctuating battle to be able to think for even a moment.

  He felt himself getting tired after more than an hour of fighting, and knew he was going to have to do something soon or risk getting destroyed.

  Fenris came in hard, swinging its long sword in a downward arc that Alex caught with his left blade. Using the blade in his right hand, Alex slammed the armored hull of the larger ship several times. The effort cost him several hits from Ra Fighter cannons against his force field.

  He was getting frustrated that they were able to whittle down his defenses like this. The increasing amount of concentration to keep his armor and shields up was causing him to sweat and feel dizzy. He knew he wouldn’t get a chance to slipstream without at least a few moments’ reprieve, and certainly not enough for the long jump back to Aeris.

  His mind was whirling with half-made plans and ideas, trying to get a break for even a moment to get his bearings. Fenris slammed into him again and he felt his external armor dissipate from the blow. He knew it was about to be over as the larger vessel grappled him with heavy arms and began to squeeze.

  Alex forced his mind to relax as he focused on escape. Not sure why he chose it, Alex thought about his bedroom in the house he grew up in and how safe it felt knowing that his family was close by. The stars around him rippled as he felt himself fall through the slipstream.

  On the other side, with Fenris still clinging tightly to Skoll, Alex found himself in Earth’s orbit. He realized his mistake almost immediately as the planetary defense platforms began to rotate and fire at him. He tried to turn so that Vertigo would absorb the brunt of the heavy cannon fire. It didn’t go perfectly, but after a couple of hits he managed to get his adversary to release him. Vertigo flew back and watched as the cannons overwhelmed the smaller vessel.

  Alex felt the impacts against his hull as if they were fists pounding into his body. Skoll’s hard, strange metal body did a good job absorbing most of the impact. But he could feel the vessel weakening under the barrage.

  He turned his thrusters downward and fired them as hard as he could, plunging through the atmosphere of Earth down toward the planet below. The ship began to heat up quickly as Alex tried to level his descent. The damage he had taken prevented him from maneuvering too well, but he managed to avoid being cooked alive in the cockpit of Skoll.

  It seemed like he was falling for a long time, and looking downward he saw the familiar coastline of California as he aimed himself toward the bay. He fired his reverse thrusters as he neared the water and managed slow himself as Skoll splashed down near Golden Gate Bridge.

  The ship sunk down and came to a rest at the bottom in the shallow water. Alex took a deep breath and rested a moment, accessing Skoll through his OMBI. He could feel the ship making repairs to itself, using the minerals of the water and sand around it. Alex wasn’t sure he believed that it was possible, but his OMBI’s connection to his ship gave him the distinct feeling that it would be ready for battle again.

  He wasn’t sure how long it would take, but he somehow knew it would take longer than he could afford to wait in the cockpit without food or water. He took a deep breath and opened the rear hatch, feeling the cold water of the San Francisco Bay rush in to meet him. When the cockpit was full, he emerged into the water and swam upwards toward daylight.

  He came out of the water only a few hundred feet from shore and swam to the abandoned coastline to find that the city had been left in ruins. Buildings crumbled all around and the streets were blasted apart from the fighting. Apparently the riots on Earth had become an all-out revolution.

  Alex took a deep breath and shut his eyes. He calmed himself down by breathing deep and started making himself a mental to-do list: food, water and shelter. A new goal in mind, Alex walked on unsteady legs into the city.

  ~ ~ ~

  William had been fighting back waves of UEDF soldiers for the last three days in Seattle, Washington when he received a hand-written note from a messenger. The kid he put in charge of monitoring enemy communications in the warehouse, near the pier that they’d been using as a base, had sent him the message.

  “Strange enemy chatter from California; High Value Target in play,” the message read in scribbled handwriting.

  William Mercer didn’t know who it could be that the enemy forces were trying to eliminate, but he thought that if it was important to Harruhama, it should be important to him. The battle lines had been set on the streets in the city and no one was moving for the time being, so he walked back with the boy who had delivered the message all the way down to the pier.

  Most of the buildings in Seattle had taken damage; only a few seemed unmolested by the war in the streets. As he walked through the blasted streets of Emerald City, William began to wonder if the cost of the revolution had been worth the goals. It had escalated beyond his original message of deception and murder when the guards in New York began firing upon the crowd. When the true colors of the EMC emerged, the people rose up.

  Walking into the warehouse, the man was nearly overwhelmed by the activity of the citizens, now fully organized against the EMC, taking messages and orders around to field commanders. The place seemed to hum with energy and, as he walked in, the people turned to cheer his name. “Dragoon,” they called him, celebrating the man who led them.

  William accepted that he was not as much a leader of the revolution as a figurehead, but he knew that the people needed icons to rally around. The men who had assumed command of the various rebel factions had warned him to stay alive at all costs. Even so, he had always found himself on the front lines, fighting beside the soldiers who were laying down their lives for the cause. He fought beside them every d
ay, trying to throw out the oppressive regime of General Harruhama and the EMC.

  When he got to the communication station, he asked for clarification on the note he had received.

  “Sir, the enemy leaders are moving in all available soldiers to seek out and destroy a target they are referring to as “Driftwood.” Apparently they want him bad enough that battalions are leaving the front lines to find out where he went.”

  “Where is he at?” William asked the boy.

  “From what I can tell, he crash landed in San Francisco seventeen minutes ago.”

  “Crash landed? Then he is either from the colonies or a defector. Either way, if they want him so bad, we should pull him out of there.”

  “Yes, sir, we don’t have many organized units in that area, but I will rally whoever we can to fortify the crash site.”

  “I’m going down there too,” William stated calmly.

  He wasn’t sure why he felt that it was so important to leave Seattle and go back to San Francisco, but somewhere in his gut, he felt like it was the place he should be.

  Ten minutes later he was aboard the VS91-transport he had flown in on, flying high above the city and heading south. Still piloting the ship, Jared Blackwell told him it would take a couple of hours, but William told him to hurry all the same.

  ~ ~ ~

  As it turned out, Alex didn’t have to walk very far to find shelter. He came up into the Presidio of San Francisco into the Old Coast Guard Station, where he found a small outpost. As he got closer, the men standing guard pointed weapons his way and yelled at him to approach with his hands raised.

  Alex did as he was instructed, as these were not soldiers, but civilians. When he got close enough he yelled out to them.

  “I am with the ‘Independent Colonies’ against the UEDF, we are on the side of the ‘Free Men’!” he yelled.

  The men seemed to ease up and yelled for him to get closer. When he got to the doors, they let him inside. The inside of the guard station had been transformed into a temporary barracks for these men, who offered him food and water.

  Alex drank and ate while telling them where he had come from. They didn’t seem to have a leader, telling Alex that the man who had brought them to this place had been shot a few days before by UEDF soldiers. Naturally the boy volunteered for the job.

  “We need to set up a parameter and make sure we aren’t cornered here. How many men do we have?”

  “Eighteen,” one man informed.

  “Okay then, nineteen now. What are your names?”

  The men spoke quietly, obviously tired from the fighting. Getting all their names, Alex introduced himself and they set about fortifying the old building.

  After a few minutes, commotion broke out on the lawn outside the station as another unit of nearly sixty Free Men arrived. Stating that they had orders to come looking for a UEDF target, they were welcomed by the men at the outpost. When they saw Alex, they seemed relieved and informed him that they had been ordered by their commanders up north to protect him. Those same soldiers sent reports back to their commanders as scouts went out to rally other bands of Free Men until after a couple of hours; Alex had a small army of almost a thousand soldiers at his command.

  The Free Men quickly filled the old barracks and aircraft hangers of the Presidio, awaiting their orders. Bad news came with the last group of revolutionaries when they informed him that a massive force of UEDF soldiers was also approaching their location looking for Alex, with them a large Battle Suit Vessel.

  ~ ~ ~

  Knowing he was outnumbered and probably didn’t have a weapon available that could damage Fenris, Alex set his troops into fortified, defensive positions in the hills, around trees and in buildings. He didn’t have much of a plan to fight a better-armed force, except to use the terrain to his advantage as much as possible. He knew that Vertigo was with the enemy force and would see that he committed most of his defenses around old Fort Winfield Scott’s officers housing, deep in the Presidio. He hoped the ruse would give him the surprise he needed.

  Once his troops were deployed, Alex climbed the long-off ramp up to where Highway 101 became the Presidio Parkway. High above his chosen battlefield, he watched a large enemy force move in from the East, led by Fenris and a smaller force enter from the South. The large Battle Armor Vessel walked slowly, scanning the area. Alex held very still, knowing that Austin favored his motion sensor to visual cues and hoped that his friend’s habits hadn’t changed in the past four months. As it was, the wind had died down and the grounds were still. No doubt some of the soldiers laying in ambush were moving, but Austin wouldn’t be worried about any kind of a weapon that the ground force would have.

  As they moved through the Main Post of the Presidio, the two enemy forces connected and began proceeding west toward the old officer’s housing. When they crossed under the bridge Alex was waiting on, he pushed against an abandoned car that was hanging precariously from the edge of the bridge. His strength enhanced by his OMBI, Alex managed to budge the car without too much effort. The vehicle fell down almost right on top of Fenris before it detonated from the dynamite that Alex had manifested into it though his neuro-sync. The blast knocked Fenris back, along with engulfing a large number of UEDF soldiers in flames.

  The Free Men soldiers began to pop out from their hiding places, spraying small arms and machine-gun fire into the surprised soldiers. The ambush started off successfully as, no doubt the UEDF troops had not been expecting Alex to have rallied so many defenders.

  Alex manifested a four-tubed rocket launcher from his OMBI, being one of the strongest weapons he had available, and fired downward on the staggered Battle Suit as it attempted to gain its footing. The rockets knocked it onto the ground, but didn’t do much real damage to the heavy vessel.

  Unfortunately, Alex didn’t have anything better to hit it with, so he kept the barrage going as quickly as he could manifest new rockets. He noticed that Austin hadn’t raised his armor or force field, recognizing that the natural hull of Fenris was enough to defeat anything that Alex, on foot, could hit it with.

  Alex reached through his OMBI out toward Skoll and tried to determine if the ship was ready for another battle, but it occurred to him that it might be a lot longer than he hoped. Focusing instead on the battle below, Alex fired another rocket barrage for good measure and ran down the street toward the city. He moved with the grace of a cat, his legs enhanced by his OMBI’s connection to his body. As he ran on, the bridge exploded behind him and he felt himself flying forward.

  Apparently Austin had enough of getting attacked from above, and decided to destroy the bridge. Huge pieces of rubble rained down below the bridge, causing chaos in the ranks of both armies. Alex raised his own armor before he slammed into the car in front of him. Even armored he felt the impact rattle through him as he bounced off the vehicle.

  His strange metal armor made sparks against the ground as he skidded to a stop. He was just getting to his feet when Fenris leapt up onto the remains of the bridge and came toward him. Alex knew he was in trouble; he couldn’t defeat Austin head to head while the other boy had such an advantage. The armies below were slaughtering each other by the score, the Free Men using their defensive position to inflict massive damage on the UEDF troops.

  Alex raised his force field in time to absorb the impact of a stream of large chain gun fire from Fenris, which brought the shield right back down again. He knew Austin was toying with him now and that he didn’t have anywhere to run.

  Behind the Battle Suit, a VS91-transport shuttle appeared on the horizon, coming in very quickly. Alex had thought his enemy was about to get reinforcements until he noticed the thing setting a collision course with the battle armor that was bearing down on him.

  Alex reached through his OMBI, focusing on Fenris, which was under the complete control of Vertigo. He felt the machine’s body physically changing as Austin manifested a long sword. He reached farther inside, finding the CPU and grabbing at it with all hi
s force of will. He was not the pilot of the ship, so he was at a severe disadvantage in taking control away Austin. Alex had never tried to disrupt someone else’s vehicle before but found that he was able to at least stop it from advancing for a short time.

  He felt like he was in a battle of wills with his old friend, a fight where the other boy had every advantage. Alex tried everything he could to interrupt the sync between man and machine, but found himself thrown back out before too long.

  “That was a nice try, Gortha pig!” the mechanical voice of Austin Hughes said through the speaker.

  Fenris dropped the heavy sword, causing it to dissipate quickly, and instead manifested cannons on its arm, taking aim at Alex’s position on the bridge. Alex watched as the VS91-transport came in at full speed into Fenris’ back, causing the large ship to lurch forward over the edge of the bridge and fall hard onto the ground below. Using the distraction, Alex reached through his OMBI again, grabbing out with his will at the larger machine, which was now more disconnected with its pilot. Unsure of exactly how he did it, Alex put it into a full shutdown cycle and locked the access with a random encryption as quickly as he could think of it.

  He turned his attention to the transport, which had bounced off the Battle Suit and crashed at the edge of the Presidio into a line of houses. Alex ran as hard as he could to the crash site. Even with his enhanced speed, it took him several minutes before he got to the shuttle. He tried to open the door, but it was stuck. Reaching through his OMBI, Alex found a deep inner strength and ripped the door up, removing it from its track completely.

  Climbing inside, Alex saw the dead pilot, crushed between the building and his seat. Further in, Alex saw the form of a man laying still, and barely breathing.

  The man looked back at Alex and tears began to fill his dark-blue eyes. Alex moved quickly, grabbing a first aid kit off the wall and binding the man’s bleeding leg as fast as he could.