“The children are all psionic,” said Anna. “Those are the people Archon wanted to ‘save.’”
“It doesn’t make any sense.” Buckley pinched the bridge of his nose. “They gave up all their advantages.”
“They are not interested in demands,” said Anna. “They are expecting the stolen starship to arrive and take them off Earth to a new home somewhere in deep space. Archon dreamed of saving psionics from a world that hated and feared them. He wanted to create a new life on some distant colony world.”
“We’ve established a mobile command unit at the starport, set up on Intra-atmospheric Pad 2 in the southwest.” Mikhail saluted Aaron. “Report there for further information.”
“Sir.” Aaron returned the salute.
Both holograms vanished.
Anna let out a long sigh.
Althea saluted her, making Kate giggle.
“Don’t be scared, Anna.” Althea held her hand. “You don’t have to be sad anymore.”
Kate thought of David.
About twenty minutes later, Edmonson Memorial Starport spread out below them as they flew between a pair of gleaming silver century towers. Two and a half sectors of almost-flat city surface formed a valley amid the skyscrapers. Northeast of center, the donut-shaped main building resembled the hub of a wheel, connected by white spurs to banks of landing pads. Angled walls surrounded areas designated for orbital craft, meant to contain the downblast from powerful engines. Landing zones for shuttles that didn’t leave the atmosphere lay off to the southwest, huge gleaming chrome pads without walls. Automated tramcars sat idle, scattered about on magnetic rails behind the landing areas.
Aaron guided the car toward the chaotic scene of flashing lights and military vehicles on the pad marked 02. Huge, six-wheeled A3Vs established a perimeter around a larger cargo truck with police lights. Kate held on to the seat as the car lurched downward, fascinated for a few seconds at the sight of the huge armored vans.
Kate glanced at him. “What do I do?”
“Just follow my lead,” said Aaron.
About twenty police in blue armor advancing toward the main starport entrance stopped short and faced back the way they’d come. Their posture changed, suggesting they had gone from infiltrators to sentries.
“Oh, shit.” Kate pointed. “Look at them.”
“Talis.” Aaron almost growled the name. “That bitch needs to die.”
He rushed the landing, putting the patrol craft down hard behind the mobile command trailer. Althea bounced off the seat to the floor and let off a whine. The middle third of the trailer, on the side away from the starport, had opened into a ramp, exposing a room filled with holographic screens floating over map tables, workstations, chairs, and quite a few people in Division 0 uniforms. Aaron pointed through the front seat gap at Althea.
“You stay in the car. It’s armored, you’ll be safe.” Without waiting for a response, he hopped out. “You too, Anna.” The driver side door closed with a thunk.
Kate shoved her side open and trotted around the hood, jogging to catch up to Aaron as he stormed over to a cluster of people huddled around a tactical map, Captain Buckley and Director Kovalev among them. Kate made eye contact with Buckley.
I’m fine, sir.
Later, Solomon. You look okay for now. We’ll suss it later.
Sir. She saluted.
At the right side of the tactical display, a man in a sand-brown coat frowned at a datapad in his hand.
As soon as she saw him, Kate felt a tight coldness around her throat and the urge to burn him to ash. She made fists but held back the itch.
“We have an unknown number of psionic criminals who appear to have exerted mental influence over everyone remaining in the starport,” said the man in the coat.
“Good day, Officer Master of the Obvious,” said Aaron.
The man smirked at him. “Major Reston, Division 9.”
At hearing ‘Division 9’ and not ‘C-Branch,’ Kate relaxed.
Aaron forced a smile, followed by a limp salute. “Major.”
“I was merely appraising your immediate superiors of the contingency and containment planning already in place. It seems the riot team has met a similar fate as the starport security personnel.”
“You can’t kill them all!” yelled an older man from Division 0.
A dark-skinned woman in her later fifties, Chief of Detectives by her hawk-shaped rank pin, adjusted the fit of an external hearing-augmentation rig. “We must keep this from spilling into the NewsNet. This will set back public opinion sixty years.”
“With this many Division 0 personnel in the area,” said Reston, “it’s already obvious this situation has significant psionic involvement. We need to show the public we can deal with these events.”
“Half of them are children,” yelled Anna, jogging up behind Aaron.
“Shite,” muttered Aaron.
“Who’s this?” asked Major Reston.
“Annabelle Morgan, Mi6/CSB,” said Anna.
Everyone, Aaron included, stopped what they were doing and stared at her.
She and Aaron exchanged glances. Aaron turned red and appeared to be trying not to laugh.
“I doubt that,” said Reston.
“I’m probationary,” said Anna. “Offer’s been extended, but I haven’t signed on the dotted line yet. You can talk to an Agent Hughes for verification.”
They looked at each other again. Aaron’s eyebrows shot up.
Kate knew the look. Guess I’m not the only one who joined to save their ass. Better than prison.
“It doesn’t matter if I’ve signed or not.” Anna stepped onto the ramp. “I know the composition of the group inside. There are eighty-nine people remaining. Forty-seven of them are under the age of sixteen. About half are locals, the rest are refugees from ACC territory where they shoot psionics on sight. They won’t react well to an armed containment team. It will remind them of where they came from and make them lash out. They are desperate, lonely, scared, and many have been spoon fed a diet of idealistic codswallop for the better part of the last four-ish years.”
“Your real threat,” said Aaron, “is Talis Lir. She’s an Awakened suggestive and telempath. That’s the only possible way they’re influencing all those people at once. There’s no telling what kind of control she’s got, probably even over the other psionics.”
“Maybe the Corporates have the right idea,” said Reston, earning dire looks from everyone in a black uniform. “At least with the suggestives. If you can’t contain this, we’re going to kick jurisdiction over to the military. C-Branch will sweep and clear the starport.”
Kate gasped. “They’ll kill everyone. Talis won’t be able to control synthetics with AI brains.”
Another Division 0 patrol car landed near the trailer.
Anna exuded ice. “I’d suggest against that, Reston. If one of those children dies, I’m going to hold you personally responsible.”
“I’m trembling,” said Reston in a flat tone.
“You’re a C3 doll aren’t you?” asked Aaron.
“That is correct.” Major Reston leaned toward him, eyes narrowed.
“You’d better listen. Machines have a nasty habit of buggerin’ themselves ‘round ‘er.”
“Sounds like the threat is one person,” said an older woman.
Kate looked at the new arrival’s chest. Her nameplate read ‘Carter’ in all caps, with a much smaller font spelling out ‘Jane’ below. The rank insignia under the large zero on the left side consisted of five stars, each made of separate onyx chips.
Carter, Jane looked at Kate’s confused expression with a hint of a smile. “Something troubling you, Officer Solomon?”
“I’m sorry, ma’am. I’m new. I don’t recognize your rank insignia… I was just wondering if I should be saluting.”
More like shitting your pants, said Aaron’s voice in her head. That’s Director Carter. The head of Divison 0. The big boss.
“Now, Solomon
. No need to be nervous. I’m merely an empath.” Carter returned Kate’s clumsy salute, adding a wink. “This is a special situation.” The woman shifted her attention to Reston. “What’s this I hear about murdering children? And is everyone forgetting the enormous starship falling on our heads?”
“Our tracking satellites have picked up the CSS Angel approaching Earth,” said Major Reston.
“That’s being handled, Ma’am,” blurted Kate.
“Oh?”
“It will sound ridiculous. Please read my mind,” said Kate.
“Try me.” Carter smiled.
“After the half-angel girl chased the demon away, the ninja’s samurai brother came back to his senses and flew through the astral world to get back to the ship so he could possess it and try to stop the crash.”
The Division 0 brass went silent.
Carter raised an eyebrow. “Well, I don’t know what to be alarmed with more. The meaning of what you just said, or that you seem to believe it.”
“We’ve got more immediate problems than the starship, Ma’am,” said Aaron. “An awakened empath is controlling armed men, and possibly up to ninety some odd psionics.”
“Empath?” Carter smiled. “We’ll see about that.”
69
Falling Angel
Althea
Alone in the car, Althea crawled forward to kneel, leaning past the gap between the front seats to watch the people in the giant box full of flickering lights talk. A black-haired man in a brown coat gave off impatience and a little worry. The men and women in black uniforms radiated fear at various levels. Anna swung back and forth between anger and sadness. Althea grinned and waved at Carter, but got no reaction. She pouted for a moment before remembering the ‘windows’ of this car were black armor plates on the outside.
Carter, flanked by Aaron, Kate, and a handful of other police in black walked out of the big box and jogged over to the smaller six-wheeled ones. They gathered in cover behind a tire a few inches taller than Aaron. Carter peered around the nose end of the boxy truck. A moment later, her confidence became anger. A minute after that, worry. She swooned and grabbed onto the tread to keep from falling.
The blue police opened fire on them, though their aim seemed distracted and half-hearted when Carter tried focusing. Some of the officers behind the barricade returned fire. At the sound of shooting, the rest of the defensive line got involved. The officers in blue grunted and staggered backward a step at a time as bullets hit their armor. Some shots penetrated, some glanced, but none of them showed any signs of surrender.
“Stop!” Althea screamed, but no one heard her inside the car.
She climbed into the driver’s seat and swatted at the door, grabbing and twisting anything that looked like it might open it. A bullet clanked off the roof, but she didn’t cringe. She pulled at another handle, giving up when she figured out it was only something to hold onto. A momentary pang of guilt hit her as she remembered commanding David to open the door so she could jump. For the life of her, she couldn’t remember what button he’d pushed.
Carter waved her hands about. The officers on the perimeter slowed their return fire, but not all of them stopped. Two of the figures in blue armor fell over, dead. Althea screamed and kicked at the door.
“Let me out! Let me out!”
When her foot had no more success opening the door than her hands had, she sat still for a few seconds, trying to catch her breath. She tried to remember how people had opened car doors in the past. She’d been in these vehicles a few times now and never thought twice about it. Everyone always opened the door for her. Althea pictured the way Aaron moved when he got out. She knelt in the seat and stared at a silvery padded bar at the midway point. It looked like something to rest your arm on, but she gripped it in both hands and pulled upward.
The door hissed and rose on mechanized struts. She slithered under it and ran toward the line of armored vehicles.
“Stop! Stop! Stop!” she yelled.
“Kid,” shouted a man to her left.
“Hey, someone grab that girl!” yelled a woman.
People ran at her from the large box. Telekinetic force encircled her, holding her back.
Althea grumbled as she floated; her sprint became legs pedaling in open air. She focused on the armored officers and released a pulse of radiant calm with as much energy as she could summon. Everyone stopped moving, gazing into space as if wondering what air was. The telekinetic grip released, letting her drop to her feet.
Arms rigid at her sides, Althea marched past the line of A3Vs into the open space between them and the seventeen remaining police officers in blue. Carter blinked at her. Althea felt a modest push as the woman tried to fight off her empathic calm, the only person she’d ever even noticed trying—aside from crazy people who had no emotions to touch. Althea didn’t want the nice lady from Division 0 to get hurt; she squashed the effort.
A placid smile like a kindly knitting grandmother spread over Director Carter’s face. “That adorable little girl is so strong. Everything’s going to be all right.”
Althea advanced at a slow, but deliberate walk. The long stretch of plastisteel tarmac chilled her feet, and the stink of burned ballistic propellant soured her nostrils. She focused on the police in front of her, their emotions swimming with fervor. The image of a dark-skinned woman with high cheekbones and long hair like thin golden ropes saturated their every thought. She was their queen, their goddess, their entire reason for existing.
For her, they would do anything—even die.
Althea’s eyes glowed brighter as she pushed the invading emotions out of them. One by one, the police officers shook their heads and collapsed to their knees. She walked among their ranks, pausing when her foot landed in blood. The aura of empathic control emanating from the building fought against her with too much force to allow her to heal while maintaining her counter-empathy at the same time. They were hurt, yet none seemed in danger of imminent death.
“Hide behind the big monsters.” Althea pointed to the rear at the trucks. “Go.”
She left a trail of bloody footprints to the main starport steps. A pair of women in white armor rushed out and aimed rifles at her. Thralldom compelled them to kill anyone trying to enter, but minds burdened under the artificial adoration hesitated at the sight of an unarmed child. She gathered her energy around them, pushing against an opposing effort from inside the building. Tiny growls slipped past her teeth as she trembled from the exertion. Talis’s influence receded like a wall of dense gelatin pushed back inch by inch.
The starport security officers reacted with dread; both women seemed aware they had been controlled. They held their rifles over their heads in a gesture of surrender and stumbled past her toward the police line. Althea ascended the steps at a burdened creep, advancing into the weight of oncoming telempathic power. Along the way, six more armed figures in white confronted her, one after the next. Each swooned when she freed their minds. By the time she reached the top, sweat covered her.
Althea crossed a wide flat space to the main terminal doors, which refused to open. She set her feet and strained, tugging on the handle. Clomping noises grew louder. Someone jogged up behind her. Althea whirled, back to the glass.
“One moment, mite,” said Aaron.
She shivered, wondering why her radiant calm had not made Aaron ‘have his reaction.’ He’d warned her not to do it to him, and she’d forgotten to exclude him. Perhaps his mind accepted the emotion of calm. She removed him from the effect, and the glazed look left his eyes. He reached up and made a pushing gesture at the air. Cracks raced across the transparent material in the doors seconds before they flew off their bolts, sailing a good distance into the atrium and wedging like shuriken in the side of an information display. Twenty holo-panels cut out in an instant as the silver wall behind them exploded in sparks.
She stepped around shattered bits of glass and debris from an earlier gunfight. A group of security officers came charging down th
e main concourse, their battle cries faded to confused grunts as her aura of calm took them. Like a magnet repelling an opposing polarity, Althea shoved Talis out of their minds, shielding them from the aura of devotion saturating the air.
A woman’s grunt echoed in the dome far ahead, amid the nervous whimpers of people gathered in a crowd at the center of the hub. They sat amid boxes, some on bundles of clothes and bags, others flopped on the ground asleep. Families, where they had formed or remained, clustered together.
“What is happening?” asked a Middle Eastern sounding man. “Where is the ship?”
A slender woman with chocolate skin and long, dark blonde hair in narrow dreadlocks down to her waist stumbled out of a door labeled Security Operations. The office stood at the corner of where the wide store-lined concourse met the rounded central area. She had a hand to the side of her head and looked angry as well as exhausted. She, too, appeared to be sweating.
“Talis,” whispered Aaron.
“Who the fuck is doing that? I didn’t think there was anyone… No empath is stronger than me.”
“You’re wrong on that count.” Aaron winked.
“The ship is not coming,” said Althea, in a tone of eerie detachment.
About twenty young voices shouted “Althea” in almost unison as the crowd noticed her. A few added, “you’re alive!” Their surge of relief and happiness gave her strength, and she crushed the dark woman’s radiant emanation.
“What are you doing?” Talis glared at her.
The woman generated a wave of ‘love me,’ which rolled toward her with the weight of a burdensome mass. Althea curled her lip into a snarl, holding the image of Karina and Father close to her heart. No. She pushed the false love aside with a loud grunt and shoving hands. The dissipating energy knocked Talis back a step.
“Please stop this fighting and hurting. I don’t want anyone else to die.”
Talis scowled. “Well, aren’t you a sweet little angel.”
“You’ve got no bloody idea,” said Aaron.
Althea gave her an earnest look. “Please stop.”
Angel Descended (The Awakened Book 6) Page 58
