CLAIRVOYANCE: Part 41
The three of them stood in the shadow of Bomber’s helicopter, staring up at the massive grey airship through the fog. Red and blue landing lights blinked slowly on and off along its sides. Gina followed the black dot of her father’s dropship as it made its final approach. A large panel swung out from the side of the skybase, marked with the Federation black sunburst, offering a helipad on which to land. The copter set down without drama, and the skybase soon moved on into the night.
“Will he try again?” asked Mahmoud, deep lines carved in his face. His worry echoed into Gina, and got an uneasy shiver out of her.
“I think he got the message.” She sighed. “At least for a while.”
Bomber scratched his unshaven chin and said, “That man doesn’t strike me as the kind who ever gives up.”
“Please, Bomber, let’s not. I don’t want to think about it anymore.”
She dug her fingernails into her palms to try and counteract her growing headache. The artifact was nibbling at the edges of her mind again, and she couldn’t stop it anymore. Awful images flashed onto her closed eyelids. When she opened her eyes again, she watched her own fingers disintegrate in a wash of nuclear fire, so real that she could feel the heat tingling under her skin. The paralysing fear in her heart was no fantasy at all.
It wasn’t until Bomber’s hand landed on her shoulder that she finally snapped out of it, and she responded by gripping his arm tight. Gina Hart didn’t like to show weakness, but Bomber made her feel like it was okay.
“Listen, I can probably carry three if you don’t mind sharin’ the back seat,” said Bomber, “but the big guy might be better off catching a ride with my wingman. That way you don’t have to squeeze.”
Mahmoud shook his head. “Thank you, Mr. Bomber, but that won’t be necessary. I’ve . . . I’ve decided to stay behind. I am going to help these people reorganise and rebuild their home.”
Gina could barely believe her ears. She rounded on him and grabbed the front of his shirt, her heart twisting inside her. She husked, “You said you’d be there for me. That I’m family.”
“You are, and I will be,” he said gently, taking her hands. “Sometimes decisions must be made from the head and not the heart. I want to go with you, Gina, but I have had to ask myself one important question. What good would I do? What good have I done?” He gestured behind him to the field in the distance. Pieces of the Fed stealth ship still burned there, left and forgotten. “Someone nearly kidnapped you and I was powerless to stop them. Here, to this showdown with your father, I contributed nothing. You are facing extraordinary dangers, Gina, but I am just an ordinary man. I catch algae for a living. You have your friends and your powers to protect you. I would only slow you down.”
“That’s not true . . .”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You know it is.” He sighed and leaned down, sweeping his massive arms around her, tears sparkling in his eyes. “You will be alright. If you need me, you know exactly where I am.”
Gina crushed him to her. Part of her wanted to beg and bargain and scream until he gave in. She wanted to, but it wouldn’t be fair.
“Thank you,” she whispered, “for everything.”
“No, thank you for breathing some life back into this old Cossack. You would make any decent father proud.” He tousled her hair, and his eyes gleamed. There was something heavy and hollow in his voice when he summoned the courage to speak again. “My . . . My daughter drowned, six years ago. We got caught in a bad storm and she fell overboard. By the time we managed to fish her out, she was already in deep hypothermia, and we couldn’t do a thing to save her. She had just turned twenty. She was always so full of life, and I had to watch her slip away from me.”
She stared up at him, shocked speechless, her mouth working uselessly to find some way to express her feelings. Mahmoud shook his head and wiped his face on his sleeve. He said, “I am ready to share this with you, Gina Hart. I’ve learned that there is nothing to be gained from hiding the past. We leave too much unsaid already.”
They finally let go of each other, and with a final smile, Mahmoud turned away from her. He went back to the tea house to round up stragglers. His booming voice and captain’s presence immediately established him as the man in charge. People began to follow his instructions and never even thought to question them.
Gina tore her eyes away and looked for Bomber. He’d made himself scarce, busying himself in the helicopter to give them some privacy. She found him muttering quietly into his radio. He didn’t even notice her climb up, so she deposited herself into the rear seat and decided to listen in. Eavesdropping was one of Gina’s guilty pleasures.
“What do you mean you’ve ‘lost contact’?” Bomber said slowly, trying not to lose his temper. “Have you tried switchin’ frequencies?”
Another voice buzzed from his headset. “I’m not stupid, Jake! Maybe it’s the comms system on this rustbucket, but I’m not getting anything from Base except static. You try it.”
“Problem?” asked Gina. She leaned in to rest her elbows on the seat in front of her.
“Just a hiccup, that’s all.” His lightning-fast fingers played on the touchscreen in front of him, then started on the mechanical knobs and switches next to it. Nothing seemed to work. Finally he grabbed the big radio tuning knob and started to turn it manually, left hand on his earpiece. “Base, this is Bomber. Respond. Base, respond!”
“This is Base,” the radio hissed and crackled. Despite the distortion, the voice was unmistakably Colonel Obrin, but his speech had the regular cadence of a pre-recorded message. “. . . Hawk, turn back. We . . . attack. I say again . . . under attack. Gabriel’s cutting our comms, we need help. We need . . .”
The transmission cut off. Bomber sat staring at the radio controls, wide-eyed and paralysed with horror. The hand on the radio tuner moved on its own, finding the secret frequency Toledo had installed for him, and Bomber stared at it for a moment before clearing his bone-dry throat.
“Toledo, if you can hear this, answer me right away. I need a confirmation. Anything. Just let me know you’re listening.”
Radio static echoed into the silence. Toledo didn’t respond.
“Shit,” he said. “Shit.”
After a moment, Gina placed a hand on his shoulder, and she squeezed gently. “We’d better get over there.”
Bomber nodded vaguely and took the controls in his numb fingers. The copter took off without fanfare, rotors hissing into the predawn gloom.
The fires were visible from miles away.
Bomber led the way, his advanced systems scanning for threats both in the air and on the ground. The less stealthy Kamov hung back and covered the rear in case of an ambush. Neither of them could see much through the smoke and heat, but the tell-tale outline of human bodies were obvious on Bomber’s infrared view. He silently copied it across to Hawthorn.
Flames roared out of every corner of the big hangar. Most of the support buildings had been flattened by heavy fire, the fuel storage replaced by a grid of blackened craters. Only the traffic control tower still stood, but it was black and silent except for the calm spinning of its radar dish. No lights on inside. No sign of survivors.
Both helicopters swung in to land. It was a bad tactical move, but Bomber intended to land, and he knew he couldn’t stop Hawthorn if he wanted to. A clear patch of the airfield offered enough space to set down, and Bomber was out of the cockpit before his wheels touched tarmac. He jumped down, laser in hand, and scanned the burning ruins of the airbase. Part of the hangar’s roof collapsed, and a tower of fire poured through the gap. It reached higher than any normal fire could, and the intense heat it blasted across the tarmac aroused Bomber’s suspicions. The colour was ever so slightly wrong to his enhanced eyesight. Too blue. The whole airfield had been firebombed before Gabriel went in.
“He knew,” Hawthorn spat. He stood up in his seat and threw his flight helmet into the back of the Kamov. “The bastard knew exactly when we were vulnerable!”
Bomber knelt by the side of an Army technician, unblemished, most likely killed by the shockwave. None of the bodies showed bullet wounds or any other sign of weapon damage.
Hawthorn continued, “It doesn’t make any sense, though. Why go after the base? There wasn’t anything of value here, nothing worth taking or destroying. Our birds were already armed and fuelled-up. As far as anybody knew, we were on our way straight to him.”
“Maybe he was counting on that,” said Bomber. “On us not bein’ here.”
He jogged the distance to the traffic control tower, across piles of rubble and trails of burning fuel. The door hung off its hinges. The lights inside had blown, dropping the place into pitch darkness, so he tagged his eyes to low-light conditions and leaped up the steps.
He took them two or three at a time, searching for targets, while Gina and Hawthorn tried to keep pace behind him. He scanned each floor before going up to the next one, but they were all devoid of life. Dead bodies sprawled across floors, desks, and machinery. Every cabinet or container had been ransacked.
Bomber was about to move out again when Gina caught his arm. Her soft voice whispered, “Bomber, let’s just go. This place is dead. I don’t want to find out what’s been left behind.”
His eyes swivelled to hers for a moment. He considered her words, but it wasn’t in him to turn back. Not even when he should. He shook off her hand and carried on to the top of the stairs.
The control room had been wrecked. Chairs, counters and machinery gathered in heaps of rubble. Bullet holes riddled the concrete walls around the room. Despite the traces of violence, however, he couldn’t see any sign of blood or gore. Nobody was injured in this engagement.
Finally his eye fell on the one remaining chair in the room, snug up against the one remaining counter, with an excellent view through the window. A man’s feet rested up on the counter top in amongst the shattered glass fragments of an old computer screen. The chair creaked as its occupant absently rocked back and forward.
“Colonel?” he called into the gloom. “Colonel Obrin?”
“Almost right,” said Gabriel. He kicked the edge of the counter to spin his chair around. He lounged in the nest of vat-grown leather like a patient cat, aloof and practically purring out of sheer satisfaction. At the back of the group, Gina gasped when she recognised him and froze solid. All her strength and confidence seemed to drain away at the sight of him.
Despite the hate churning in his gut, Bomber stopped just short of pulling the trigger. There was a strange lack of threat in Gabriel’s body language as if his arrival on the scene was largely irrelevant. He lowered the muzzle a fraction and glowered down the laser’s black metal spine.
“Why?” he demanded.
Chuckling, Gabriel steepled his fingers under his chin. “Don’t strain your brain too much, chameleon. I’m just here to give you a message. I think it’s time you got a little slice of the truth.”
“I could shoot you right now.”
Gabriel rose slowly and shook out his long-limbed body as if he’d been sitting there a while. “Let’s be brutally honest here,” he continued. “I’ve taken every precaution that no, you could not do any such thing. Not that it would matter even if you could. Go ahead, try to pull the trigger if you don’t believe me.” He undid the top two buttons of his black silk shirt and folded it back to expose the skin over his heart. “Come on, right here. Let’s get the drama out of the way.”
The familiar impulse to pull the trigger travelled up through the nerves in Bomber’s arm, and the muscles began to respond — only to find his hands too hard to lift. It was as if the air had suddenly become heavy, impossible to push through. Even with his finger on the trigger and his nerves screaming to move, he couldn’t get the joints to bend.
“What– What have you done?” he forced through gritted teeth, still fighting against his own body. “Hawk, I can’t fire . . .”
“I can.”
Hawthorn elbowed Gina out of the way, slipped his pistol from its holster, and launched two bullets through Gabriel’s chest.
The body slumped backwards across the counter. Hawthorn stepped forward to confirm the kill, keeping his gun trained, but Bomber still couldn’t bring himself to add his own shots.
“That’s for Stundog,” he said hatefully, hawking a gob of spit onto Gabriel’s pale, waxy face. “For Banjo, and Kirby, and me.”
Then a hand closed around the barrel of his gun, tearing it out of his grip. Gabriel got his feet back under him and drove his shoulder into Hawthorn’s ribs, followed by a vicious elbow to the chin. Hawthorn went sprawling. He landed on his back dazed and senseless, spitting blood.
“You military types never fucking listen, do you?” Gabriel rasped in between heavy breaths. He clutched the wound in his chest, but to Bomber’s astonishment, he could tell it had already stopped bleeding. “You least of all, Simon, or Bomber, or whatever the hell you’re calling yourself nowadays. You know that little niggle you get whenever you think about the way you escaped from my airship? That’s because it never actually happened. I fabricated those memories to hide a few changes I was making. Right now, you couldn’t hurt me any more than pigs could fly.”
Bomber managed to shake his head, red-faced and trembling in helpless fury. “That’s a lie,” he said. “You would’ve just killed me.”
“That was the original plan. However, when that memory block in your head blew up, I held you together because Gina wanted you alive, and it’s not a one-way street. I got a lot of your past blown into my head.” He smiled nastily and pushed himself back upright, now strong enough to stand without leaning on the counter. “It took me a while to absorb everything. At first I thought you were just another jarhead psycho, a dangerous liability. When I realised you knew Keith Obrin, though . . . That changed everything. It made me realise what a fucking Godsend you were.”
Sick realisation bubbled in the pit of Bomber’s stomach. “You used me to get to him.”
“Correct!” Gabriel giggled. “I knew Obrin wouldn’t be able to resist the chance to put our chameleon to use. You were the perfect sleeper agent. I just gave you a few nudges in the right direction and watched you go.”
“You’ve been following us all along?” asked Hawthorn, wiping the blood from his chin. He glanced ashen-faced back and forth between Bomber and Gabriel.
“Of course. Obrin’s a slippery son of a bitch, and I needed the advantage,” Gabriel explained. “Every time I figure out where he’s set up his latest stronghold, he’s prepared an escape route, some way to fade at a moment’s notice. Three times I’ve tried to grab him and he’s slipped through the cracks. Last time, I only managed to catch you two.” He gestured at Bomber and Gina. “What I needed was a pair of eyes on the ground, a way to figure out his plans before he was ready.”
“And now you’ve won,” Bomber rasped. “Just fuckin’ kill me. I’m sick of listenin’ to your voice.”
Smiling, Gabriel limped across the room to stand face to face with him. “Don’t get me wrong, chameleon. I’m grateful. Enough to let you keep breathing, on one condition.”
Bomber raised an eyebrow out of mild surprise. “Which is?”
“I don’t want to see you again. Ever.” He paused to let his words sink in. “Understand that Keith Obrin is in my care, where he can’t do any more harm. Don’t bother coming after him. He’s gonna give up what he knows one way or another, and while I’m sure you could eventually find him and break him out, you’re better off alone. Believe me, you don’t owe that man anything.”
“And what if I don’t agree to those terms?”
“Do you even need to ask?”
Only two bright scabs remained on Gabriel’s chest when he took his hand away. He took the time to button his shirt back up, traced the bullet holes with his fingers, and patted Bomber on the cheek as he whispered, “You think you know what you’re messing with. You don’t have a fucking clue.”
Nobody tried to stop him on his way out the door. He paused at the top of the stairs, and his eyes found the back of Gina’s head, hugging herself tightly. He seemed on the brink of saying something when the sight of Bomber next to her put him off. “Keep in touch,” were his lost words before he descended the winding steps.
He left nothing in his wake.
None of them could bear to look at the others, least of all Gina. She kept her head down on the way back outside, where Hawthorn peeled off to check on his craft. She didn’t know what else to do but follow Bomber’s silent, menacing silhouette back to the helicopter. Gabriel was nowhere to be found.
She had to tell him. She didn’t want to, but he deserved to know.
“Bomber–” she began, but he cut her off almost immediately.
“He played us. All this time we’ve been doin’ exactly what he wanted, dancing to his fuckin’ tune.”
His hand went to his head as if to steady himself, but shrugged her off when she tried to help him. He pulled himself up the ladder with jerky, barely-restrained motions. Gina could sense the pain throbbing in his head, but also something larger behind it. The press of two years of memories busting through his mental walls one by one.
“What will you do?” she asked softly, landing in the back seat, and watched Bomber fiddle with the various switches around the cockpit.
“I don’t like bein’ played, Gina,” he said, grimacing. “I’m gonna make him regret this. I know what I’m up against now. I’ve figured it out.”
“But it’s over! You’re free to live your life again!”
Suddenly he spun his chair in a half-circle, rounding on her in the relative privacy of the cockpit. There were a lot of conflicting emotions in his heart and she wasn’t sure which would come out first. He said, slowly and carefully, “It’s a cheap, easy way out. Not a life. I’d rather go down fighting.”
“No, Bomber, listen,” she pleaded on the edge of desperation, while he dropped his gaze to brood at her knees. “Even if you could beat Gabriel, what good would it do? It’s too late. Obrin’s gone and there’s nothing we can do about it. You have to know when to give up.”
Bomber’s expression didn’t change. However, no matter how blank his face might be, Gina could see into his heart, to the loves and fears he kept so close. She realised he couldn’t turn back now. It would make him somebody else, somebody not Bomber. Bomber would see this through to the end at any cost. And he would win.
“I understand Gabriel’s connection with Hephaestus now,” he said, tapping a finger against his breastbone to illustrate. “The bots are inside him. They’re what keeps him comin’ when any other body would just drop. If Hephaestus lives up to the hype, that’s gotta make him the next best thing to immortal. We just need a change of strategy.”
She sighed. “It should be another reason for you not to go.”
Shaking his head, he reached out to lift her face up by her chin. He added rustily, “It’s him or me, Gina. You gotta choose your side. Now.”
No thought or determination was involved when her body answered the question. It didn’t consult her conscious mind at all. She crossed the distance between them in an instant, finding the strong lips between patches of unshaven growth, and the next moment she found herself straddling him in the pilot’s chair. At first he tried to say something, but the press of her mouth against him kept him quiet.
When his top came off under her trembling fingers, disappearing into a growing pile of clothes on the floor, Gina Hart knew exactly what the next few minutes of her life were going to be like.
CLAIRVOYANCE: Part 40
Gina refused to speak to anyone else. She sat by the pond in the warm night air, alone, while her emotions swung back and forth between extremes. One moment her heart would say, Artificial wombs are so expensive . . . The next, Pick up a fucking wire hanger and get this thing out of me!
Even Gabriel kept nagging at the back of her brain, wanting to know what was wrong, but she quickly got tired of dodging his questions and locked him out.
She didn’t know what to do. How on Earth did you break news like this?
The horizon turned a light grey before she finally succumbed to the pull of the Network. She kept her eyes closed as she entered the tea house and climbed the stairs, beyond caring about whether or not anyone saw her. She let her clothes drop around her ankles, lay down in one of the pods, and submerged herself in the unconditional warmth and understanding of a hundred other minds. They welcomed her into the glow. Every one of them knew what it was like when life knocked you on your ass.
Some began to offer advice, but stopped when it became clear Gina didn’t want it. Everybody kept a respectful distance from that point on.
She drifted for a long time, going through her little store of happy memories, bringing them back to life in no particular order. Warm summer nights at Onounu’s old flat learning how to use the Spice trance, drugged out of her mind, but joyful all the same. Staring out across the Black Sea without a care in the world. Matching Mahmoud drink for drink. Her skin prickling with goosepimples as Gabriel’s arms snaked around her. Tasting Alfie’s lips one last time.
When they were over, though, all she could think about was the ruined city and its harrowing streets. Silhouettes of crippled buildings hovered in the mist as if stalking her. She swallowed hard, and immediately got annoyed at herself. She shouldn’t even be here. She ought to be sorting things out in the real world. Making a choice, any choice.
It was just that the choice scared her shitless.
She felt Jupiter’s presence added to the Network, his thoughts and emotions reverberating through the oneness. He materialised in her little chunk of make-believe and smiled at her with something bordering on contrition.
“I guess I have some apologising to do,” he said. “You’ve been through a lot lately. I should’ve found an easier way to give you the news, and been more forthcoming. I’m too used to not being able to trust people. I don’t blame you if you’re upset with me.”
She smirked, then turned her back and stared off into the fog. “I’m not upset with you. I . . . I don’t know, nothing makes sense anymore except while I’m in here. I can’t think straight. This thing is really driving me nuts.”
“You’re still walking and talking. Most people wouldn’t be.” He joined her where she stood and stared out to the distant city. “I would’ve dropped by sooner, but we had a new patient to deal with. She’s a real handful. Mind like a steel anvil. You might be able to lend a hand, if you feel up to it.”
“Heh . . . You know, it’s easy to lose sight of it, but you really do try to help people, don’t you?”
“When I can,” he said, resting a hand on her shoulder. “For what it’s worth, I think you’ll beat it. You’re something new, Gina, something stronger than I ever would’ve believed. I’m not even sure my treatment is any good to you, but I’ll do everything I can.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.” She flashed him the ghost of smile and patted her stomach. “Guess I can’t afford to go crazy now, huh?” she whispered, her voice caught halfway between hope and misery.
Jupiter remained tactfully silent until Gina collected herself again. She said, “Alright, let’s go see your patient.”
She thought about disconnecting, and felt the Network slowly fade from her consciousness. She slipped her skin back on like a pair of comfortable shoes. That soft, selfless unity still tugged at her desires, offering her a place to hide forever, but she was determined not to hide anymore.
She sat in her pod and watched Jupiter wake up. He stepped out without the slightest hint of shame and began to put his clothes on. She followed his example.
“How did things go at the warehouse?” she asked him, belting her jeans. “Did you get anything out of the computers?
His expression turned sour. “There’s good news and bad news. Good news, we took the stock and equipment. Bad news, it looks like Alejandro was telling the truth. The ‘source parts’ can’t be reproduced by anything short of a full nanoscale lab. But . . . If we’re frugal, we can make enough Spice to keep us going for a few more years. Maybe long enough to figure something out.”
“I hope you’ll be okay.”
“We will muddle through, like always.”
They turned a corner and stopped at another wooden door, as intricately-carved and painted as the rest of the tea house. It opened to reveal a small white cell, padded walls, and an old bed equipped with thick nylon straps. There was a woman tied down on it, unmoving, while Jupiter’s assistant Mai-Lin sat by her side whispering soothing words.
Jupiter began. “A friend of mine brought her in, apparently gone feral. What’s strange is that she’s got anti-telepathy training and she’s sure as hell using it. She won’t let anything inside.”
Even with Gina’s extended awareness, she could barely feel the presence of a mind on that bed. She reached out only to slip off again. Something didn’t feel right. It was a bit like trying to get a grip on Darius, or . . .
Gina caught a glimpse of short bleach-blond hair over dark eyebrows, hard eyes and sharp cheekbones. Her heart went cold as the woman lifted her head and grinned.
“Hello again, dolly bird,” she said. “Daddy sends his regards.”
Jane sat up, the straps on her wrists coming loose as if by magic. Steel buckles disintegrated at her touch. There was a soft hiss of air, and Mai-Lin hit the back wall in a spray of blood. Jupiter had time to watch it, wide-eyed, before swinging back to face the dark shape in her hand. It was pointed at him.
There was nothing Gina could do. Another soft hiss cut through the air, and Jupiter crumpled to the floor while she stood frozen in horror.
The next moment Jane was on her feet with one arm clamped cruelly around Gina’s throat. “Alpha, target acquired,” she whispered with satisfaction. “Pickup in two-zero-zero seconds.” She jabbed her weapon into the small of Gina’s back. “You, outside. Now.”
Gina stumbled out the door, struggling uselessly in the headlock, and wished she could find the breath to scream for help.
“I’ll tell you one thing,” Jane said as she dragged Gina down the stairs. This late at night, there was no one nearby to hear the commotion. “You’re a real pain in the arse to get hold of, Emily. Let’s come along quietly for a change and forget the hide and go seek.”
Gina choked out, “My name’s not Emily!”
“Do you honestly think I care? Shut the fuck up.”
Although Gina kicked and clawed like a mad thing, nothing seemed to even slow Jane down. The stronger woman only tightened her grip until coloured spots danced in front of Gina’s eyes. It was hopeless. Jane had called herself a FedPol special agent; there was probably as much metal as flesh underneath her skin.
She reinforced her point with another painful yank on Gina’s neck. “Don’t even think about trying any telepathic tricks on me this time, or I’ll put a bullet through your pretty little head and take you back to daddy that way.”
Reaching the bottom of the stairs, Jane half-ran through the front room, restraining her captive to damp down the noise. There were people speaking casually in the kitchens. Gina tried her hardest to raise a shout, but sound refused come out of her throat.
“Don’t bother,” Jane said. There was no threat in her voice; she just sounded bored by Gina’s attempts. “In a minute and a half there’s going to be a copter dropping down through those buildings and your little friends will never see you again. May as well get used to it.”
She dragged Gina off into a small utility room, one with a back door into gardens, and the cheap lock simply disintegrated when she shot it. Desperate panic built inside Gina’s chest. Jane was right. Nobody would be coming to help her, and there was nothing she could do.
Then a hint of calmness drifted in from somewhere. She started to remember that, despite Jane’s threats, she was not helpless. She was more than a telepath. All she had to do to tap that power lurking in her brain was concentrate.
Her eyes drifted shut. She reached out with her mind, bypassing the solid wall of avoidance techniques and iron discipline that was Jane. The woman was as single-minded as a robot. Instead her mind focussed someone, anyone in a position to do something. Unfortunately there was only one person she could pick out in that mass of unfamiliar minds, maybe the only one who would understand her message. When he noticed her presence, she grabbed his mind by the proverbial throat.
Help, she said, blasting words into him like volleys of gunfire. Somebody’s trying to kidnap me. There isn’t much time.
The edge of fear in her thoughts was obvious. Although confused, Darius staggered to his feet fuelled by amphetamine energy, and gradually pulled himself together enough to work out what had happened. She could hear him speak, but it was as if his voice were being played back in slow motion from the bottom of a well. His vision was two tiny tunnels of light surrounded by darkness. She could feel the drugs pounding behind his eyes, his vision tinting red at every heartbeat.
In her own battered body, she hissed at Jane with her last strength, “You’ll die. Put me on that copter and I’ll blow your pilot’s mind to pieces. I’ll make him crash.”
Jane laughed and hit her in the back of the head.
The blow knocked her halfway unconscious, and she went limp in Jane’s arms, drifting. She could barely feel herself hitting the grass outside, the faint whistle of stealthed rotor blades at the edge of her hearing. Air whipped at her cheeks in the helicopter’s downdraft. Something dangled in front of her unfocused eyes, and she slowly realised it was a rescue harness.
Distantly, she could hear Darius calling out to her. His presence grew closer, but she was already hanging on to consciousness by her fingernails, unable to focus. Gina, he echoed between her ears. Wake up!
She stirred in shock at the calm control in his ‘voice’, the energy and focus that hadn’t been there a few minutes ago. They’d hooked him up to the Network. Jupiter never would have allowed that.
He went on, We’re on our way, but we can’t do much against that chopper. You’ll have to take it out yourself.
Take it out? she asked incredulously. How?
A missile hissed down from the sky like a streak of white fire and slapped the copter sideways. Fire engulfed the fuselage. It separated into pieces as Gina watched, each going off in a different direction. The rotor assembly chewed into the ground, ripping itself to pieces in a storm of grass, dirt and carbon-fibre shrapnel. The front half of the fuselage dropped into the garden like a flaming brick. The tail section whirled away into the distance, tumbling end over end until it finally vanished from sight.
Little chunks of the Fed stealth ship rained down slowly around Gina’s feet, scorching black pits into the manicured grass. Clouds of toxic smoke rolled around at random in the fickle City breeze.
Darius was frozen by the spectacle, watching from the corner of the tea house, until the piece that caught his attention dropped out of sight. He stammered, That works.
The look in Jane’s eyes could’ve buckled steel plate. No matter how she controlled herself, an echo of sheer, boiling fury bubbled up through her defences. She didn’t say a word. Instead she checked the ammo counter on her weapon, tightened her grip on Gina, and started back for the tea house.
She stopped when she saw faces appearing in the little pools of brightness cast by the tea house spotlights. There were dozens, maybe hundreds. Many looked thin, half-mad, but they surrounded Jane by sheer number of bodies, pressing up against the fence to deny her any escape route.
Mahmoud and Darius stood side by side at the front of the crowd, immovable.
“Miss, you have no idea who you’re trying to grab,” Darius said, staring Jane in the eye without flinching. “She’s not leaving here. Not with you. I suggest you climb into your helicopter and get out of here while you still can.”
Gina blinked . . .
. . . And Hawthorn whooped as he zoomed in on the tea house gardens through his monocle. He relayed a copy of his video feed to Bomber. A black shape hovered a few metres over the immaculate grass, ruffling it with downdraft. “Found him,” he said triumphantly. “Does it strike you as at all curious for a Federal covert ops craft to drop from a skybase already en-route, fly to private property in the middle of the City, and just hover around like it’s performing a hot dustoff?”
“Maybe a little bit,” Bomber admitted, glancing up from his targeting box. The missile’s projected path replayed over and over in the VR display, a thin black shadow barely visible on the infrared camera, until it touched the Fed copter and blossomed into bright white. The faintest of smiles tugged at his lips before he shrugged it off. His military training told him not to feel anything, but the trigger seemed alive against his finger, charged with electricity. He squeezed it with a sense of satisfaction.
He turned his visor transparent for a moment. The ordinary view from his cockpit window told him everything he needed to know. A little ball of fire flashed somewhere far below him, an angry orange contrast against the neon brightness of the City. It only lasted for a moment before it disappeared forever.
It was a sacrifice. A burnt offering to those who would never be forgotten.
Bomber closed his missile bays and came about, hovering between the Feds’ target and their most likely source of reinforcements.
“That one didn’t know we were coming. The rest will,” he said. “What’s the ETA on the airship?”
“Top speed on a FedPol skybase is about forty klicks an hour. They’ll be close enough to drop ground troops in thirty minutes.” He glanced at his beeping radar. “I’m reading three more contacts launching from the skybase. Looks like jet fighters.”
“Turnin’ to engage,” Bomber grunted, but Hawthorn made a hesitant noise and broke formation. He closed on the tea house and pitched his copter from side to side above the gardens, straining to get a look from his cockpit. His monocle only showed radar contacts.
“There’s a situation on the ground,” he said, forehead pressed against the glass. “I can see a lot of people and they don’t look happy.”
“We can deal with it when these jets are out of our hair.”
“I don’t think they have the time, Jake. I can’t get a good look, but something’s not right. You’d better go and see.”
“Don’t be stupid, Hawk! You’re good, but you can’t hold off three Feds on your own.”
“Hey, Feds I can handle. Gina needs you. This place is gonna be crawling with unfriendlies in less than an hour, and it’s all gonna be for nothing if we don’t get her out of there, yes?”
Bomber couldn’t think of anything to say to that. He didn’t want Hawthorn to be right. Holding off three Feds in that Kamov would be a suicide mission for anyone, unless he could grab Gina and get back in time.
Grinding his teeth, he turned towards the tea house, sent his copter into a nose dive, and unlocked his seatbelt. “I’ll put down in the parking area,” he grumped. “Get their attention, keep them busy but do not engage. If you get in trouble, you call me. Got that clear, Hawk?”
“Yes, Sir,” said Hawthorn. He wrenched at his flight stick, setting a course to meet the enemy head-on.
Bomber flicked the autopilot to life as he swooped in over the big circle of gravel outside the front door, giving it control over the landing procedure, and then leaped out of the cockpit, plummeting the remaining twenty metres to the ground. His repaired legs absorbed the shock without complaint. Gravel crunched under his feet while he ran to join the bodies gathering on the field to his side, struggling to see over their heads. The crowd was big enough that nobody even realised he didn’t belong. He hid the laser against his body, but kept a tight grip for reassurance. Nervous sweat beaded on his forehead. He hadn’t been this worked up since . . . since he watched the last remnants of his life disappear in a nuclear fireball, fourteen years ago.
By way of knee and elbow, he managed to force his way to the fence, lifting himself up with one hand and foot to get a better vantage point.
It was the first time he’d seen Gina since watching her fall in an airship lifeboat. His heart froze in his throat. A million feelings twisted through him while his eyes swivelled to her face, to the arm around her neck, to the tiny smugglegun pressed against her temple.
The laser’s handle ached in his hand, begging him to raise it, but he cursed inwardly when he realised he couldn’t. These people might panic at the sight of another gun, which would foul his shot as well as draw attention to him. He knew he was only going to get one chance.
He dropped down and ran for the tea house door . . .
. . . “Everybody back away or I’ll blow her head off!” were the words that brought her back, ringing in her ears as she gasped for breath. She wrenched at the arm around her throat but couldn’t budge it. Jane kept her pinned in front as a human shield.
The mass of people refused to move. Gina had never seen so many telepaths united in one purpose. Their minds burned with Spice trance, some bright and distinct, others only flickering at the edge of sanity. They shared one thing, though; anger rolled off them like steam, a black need to exact vengeance for Jupiter’s murder. They wanted blood.
And then there were a few, a handful, who were there for the sake of Gina Hart.
Jane didn’t waste a moment to assess the tactical situation, which did not favour her. She quickly decided the best way to even things up. She moved too fast for Gina to see, lashing out with her little gun, and obliterated one of the spotlights in a flash of hot gas. A few people cowered as hot sparks rained on the crowd. She systematically shot out all the lights around the field, plunging everything into the dim grey of a City night. The crowd lost focus and degenerated into a mass of milling shadows, night-blind, packed in like confused and panicking sardines. People began to push and shove to get away from each other.
Gina managed to gasp, “What the fuck are you doing? There’s no other way out of here!”
“I told you to shut up,” Jane said, dragging her along by the hair. “No amount of self-sacrificing idiots is gonna slow me down.”
She kept Gina between herself and the tea house to stop any hopeful snipers. There was the soft zip of a variknife uncoiling. In the half-light Gina could barely see the crossed steel wires of the outer fence, but the snap of releasing tension sounded clear as a bell when Jane cut through them.
Heavy footsteps thudded on the grass, and Mahmoud’s voice boomed over everything, calling out for her. Jane ignored him. There was another presence, though, quieter and more cunning. Darius kept his eyes closed, navigating solely by his Spice trance as he catapulted across the field, putting his shoulder squarely into Jane’s back.
She hit the wire with a painful grunt, and the pressure on Gina’s throat finally released. She fell down coughing, gasping for breath, while Jane threw Darius off like a rag doll. His limp body hit the ground with a dull thump. He didn’t move after that. When Gina staggered upright to run, Jane was already in front of her, blocking her escape.
It was too much. She balled her fists in frustration and fury, shouting, “Just leave me alone! I don’t want anything to do with him! Can’t you get that through your head?”
“Too late,” Jane said coolly. “He’s on his way here, you know. If you make him land to get you, he’s gonna bring an armour platoon with him, and nobody will be getting out of this place alive. Tell them to back off while they still have the chance.”
Gina’s anger blew away on the wind. She couldn’t even begin to answer that; she just stared wordlessly, working her conscience around the idea of being responsible for these lives. For Darius, for Mahmoud, for Bomber. She’d put them in danger with her stubborn pride. Jupiter had already paid the price for it.
Her heart knew what had to be done. She hung her head and said, “Fine. You win. I’ll come quietly.”
“That’s the first bit of good news I’ve had all day,” Jane replied. She bent the fence back to open a hole, then reached for Gina’s arm to pull her through.
Something prickled at the back of Gina’s neck. The familiar presence she’d felt a minute ago resurfaced again. She reached out, easily stretching her mind across the field, and found Bomber on one knee on the tea house roof. He brought the laser up, resting it in both hands, and levelled it on his target.
Don’t, she found herself thinking. Don’t miss.
He gave a tiny nod and exhaled.
The laser pulse travelled through the air invisible and soundless until it hit Jane in the side of the head. There was a brief flash of light followed by a cracking, sizzling noise. She dropped without a cry, without last words, just a body with a blackened hole where an ear used to be.
Gina looked at it and felt nothing until Bomber’s arms swept around her.
He didn’t know what to say. There was so much to express, but where to start? He tried to think of words that could convey his relief, his empathy, the feel of her against him.
“Gina, I . . .” he whispered haltingly, but was cut off by her mouth pressing up against his.
Strong fingers tousled his hair and held him in place as she kissed him. Her lips were forceful and needy, desperately looking for any kind of human warmth, but he’d take whatever he could get. He cradled her in his arms and kissed her back.
Finally she quieted down, sniffling, and wiped her eyes on her sleeve. It came away dry, and she looked at it. “Guess I’ve cried enough lately,” she croaked. Her throat was red and bruised. Bright blue eyes raised to take in his face, wide as dinnerplates. “I wasn’t sure if I’d ever get to see you again . . .”
He’d imagined this moment a hundred times, but none of the words in his head seemed to measure up. All he could manage was to wipe her cheeks with his thumbs and work up a smile. He could still hear the clank of the lifeboat releasing, her scream as she dropped away. “I’m so sorry. It was the only way I could think to save you. I never stopped lookin’ for you.”
“I know.” The smile on her face was the best thing he’d seen in weeks. “There’s been so many times I wished you were here. And not just to bail me out of a bad spot.”
Bomber’s heart thumped in his throat. He wanted to tell her that everything would be alright. That he’d protect her. Even that he was falling for her. It was just so difficult to breathe, or speak, or think. His throat had gone dry as dust. He swallowed, trying to get his voice working.
“I wish I was better with words,” he sighed. “What I mean to say is, I don’t open up well to anyone, Gina. I’m not the kind of guy who shares things. But . . . I want to get to know you, and I want you to get to know me.”
Thankfully, words no longer mattered. She threw her arms around his neck and held on tight, saying with her body what her voice couldn’t convey. A strange warmth seeped into him, something beyond physical, as if her embrace connected them heart to heart.
He started when the searching beam of an electric torch landed on them, but Gina squeezed his arm to reassure him. “It’s okay,” she said. “They’re friends.”
They climbed to their feet and walked hand in hand back to the tea house. There was no hurry. They had a perfect, peaceful moment together, and it lasted until they reached the first intact set of spotlights on the side of the building.
A big brown-skinned man leaned over the prone body of someone else, an average-looking guy with a strange lankiness to him. Bomber felt their names bubble up in his mind without ever having learned them. He suppressed a shudder. Even being near Gina seemed to have its consequences. He sent her on ahead by herself while he knelt beside the two.
“I saw him hit the ground,” he said to Mahmoud. “How bad is it?”
“Not good,” Mahmoud replied. “He’s dead.”
Bomber’s eyes widened in dull surprise. He felt the man’s neck for a pulse, but found nothing. The head rolled away limply at his touch, barely connected to the spine. Death would’ve been instantaneous. The only thing Bomber could do was cross himself and fold the poor bastard’s hands over his chest.
Mahmoud gave him a long measuring look, as if deciding something. Finally he said, “She has enough to deal with for one night, yes?”
“The night ain’t over yet,” Bomber sighed, then glanced at the people milling about around him. They had no idea what was coming for them. To Mahmoud he said, “If you have any pull with these people, get them organised and ready to run. There’s a Fed airship comin’ into drop range in about twenty minutes. Anybody who’s still here can expect either a bullet in the head or a couple of sessions in a Federal prison cell, you get me?”
Nodding, Mahmoud rushed off to find someone who could help him spur this crowd into action.
Bomber headed into the gardens to find Gina. Somehow he knew where she was without even looking; laying on a stone bench by the side of a duck pond, hands folded over her stomach, staring straight up at the sky. It couldn’t have been called stargazing, not in the City, but there were occasional flashes of colour from the signal lights of airships, helicopters and tall buildings.
He sat down beside her outstretched legs and smiled. She looked barely present in her own body, the lights left on but nobody home.
“Penny for your thoughts,” he said.
Raising her head, she gave him a slightly confused look. “What’s a penny?”
“Never mind. I don’t mean to rush you, but we really gotta go. There isn’t much time.”
“I don’t think so,” she said to the sky. “Seeing you made it all clear in my head, Bomber. I’m done running away. I watched two people die tonight, and I’ve had enough. I won’t let them hurt any more of my friends. Something’s got to end, here and now.”
“You think you can hold off a Fed assault force by yourself?”
“If necessary.”
“You’re joking.”
“Watch me.”
She raised herself up to a sitting position, and the steel in her eyes woke another cold shiver in him. Maybe she could. The thought frightened him. Had she really gotten that powerful?
Tender fingertips brushed his cheek. “Don’t be scared. It’ll be okay.”
“No, Gina, it won’t be okay,” he argued. He couldn’t hide his anger and frustration anymore. “Think about what you’re doin’ for a second. The Feds are like a fucking cancer, even if you beat them once, they’re just gonna come back harder and stronger. Stay with me. I need you.”
“To get at Gabriel?” she asked, reading his mind. “For some military operation?”
“For me! What if you lose, what if you get hurt? I couldn’t live with that anymore.”
“Then I won’t lose.” She swung her long legs over the side of the bench and rose with the grace of a dancer. Her hand reached out, beckoning to him. “Trust me.”
That was the question which brought it all into the focus. Despite everything, he did trust her, and he’d follow her anywhere. Even into the lion’s mouth.
Bomber took her fingers and let her pull him to his feet.
“Why wouldn’t they just drop troops and wipe this place off the fuckin’ map?” Bomber asked Gina on their way to the front of the tea house. Anxious people clustered everywhere, evacuating the compound with all the possessions they could carry, but Gina moved through them unimpeded. She parted them with the tiniest mental push, so small she barely even realised she was doing it.
From the front she could see heavily-loaded cars and vans stream away from the grounds with as many people as they could carry. Maybe that was for the best. They were safer somewhere else, at least for now.
It was such a curious feeling to have every part of her focussed on the same goal. In some way or another she’d always been fighting herself, she’d always gotten in her own way, but now the calm clarity in her mind and the icy anger in her heart worked together to sharpen her to a knife point. Everything was under tight control. She felt ready to draw blood.
The front part of the garden stood empty now, its parking spaces abandoned, which meant they’d have some peace and quiet to talk.
She announced, “They won’t launch a ground assault. They won’t do anything until we’ve met face to face.”
“I don’t see how you could be so sure,” said Bomber.
“It’s my father. He won’t let this go without another lecture.”
He absorbed the information quietly. Despite his natural uneasiness, he was willing to let her run the show, and that meant a lot coming from Bomber. He had his own ways of showing things like trust and affection. They’d been through so much together. And, of course, he loved her. She could read that in his mind plain as day, a hot glowing feeling in his chest whenever he looked at her.
Love wasn’t something she could think about right now.
Together they stood and waited while everyone around them disappeared in the City fog. Mahmoud came up to join them, silently taking a place at Gina’s side while Bomber spoke tersely into his radio. She could hear the conversation echoing in his mind.
“Jake,” said a strained voice, someone she knew through his eyes. “Radar’s detected another launch, troop transport headed straight for your location. I can’t intercept without losing these MiGs somehow. They’re flying circles around me, and I think they’re getting tired of playing tag.”
“Don’t worry about the transport, just keep your distance and hang in there. You’re okay as long as you’re not tradin’ bullets.”
“I’ll do my best. Hawk out.”
Forcing calm, Bomber returned to Gina’s side, then divided his time between scowling at the sky and looking around for a good sniper position. He felt vulnerable out in the open. Gina understood, but she needed him now, for the way he made her feel stronger just by being there. Together they spotted the heavy dropship descending like a shadow out of the clouds. At first it looked like a fat drop of rain, but soon its black bulk pulled into hover over their heads, dazzling floodlights turning the night to day.
“Place your hands on top of your heads and remain still,” an amplified voice thundered down at them. “Do not make any sudden movements. Do not reach for weapons or other items. This area is now under Federal Police authority. Ignoring this warning will result in the exercise of lethal force.”
Powerful downdraft whipped Gina’s hair in every direction. Nobody on her team moved an inch. The dropship repeated its threat, louder and more aggressive, but Gina stood her ground, staring up with her hands tightly at her sides.
The standoff continued for minutes, until it was finally broken by the ship’s side door shuddering open. Four hulking suits of armour piled out and hit the ground running, posing with their computer-aimed machine guns in full view. Director Vaughan wasn’t far behind them. He stepped out of the dropship just as its undercarriage touched the ground.
He was dressed in grey Federal uniform, immaculately neat and proper, not so much as a hair out of place. Silver pins and badges gleamed on the black slash across his left shoulder. The muscles of his hard, lined face didn’t move when he looked at her; he spared her friends one distasteful glance, then cleared his throat.
“Emily,” he said dryly. “I’m sure you have something to say to me.”
She looked into the face of her father and tried to feel something. Anything. Emily Vaughan just remembered a distant man, absent even when he was at home, working day and night. Someone who would sooner throw her some money as a distraction than talk to her about anything. Obsessed to the point of madness with the idea of upwards mobility. He worked day and night to better his lot, until his social standing became a goal in itself. Eventually it consumed him.
And here he was, the petty, domineering, hollowed-out husk of a man. He hadn’t changed. She stared at him, finally beginning to feel.
All she could do was laugh.
“Fuck me,” she gasped in disbelief between mad giggling fits. “You’re expecting me to apologise, aren’t you? You really, honestly think I’ve done you wrong.”
The Director wrinkled his nose. “I see you’ve forgotten any sense of decorum your mother and I tried to teach you. Running away wasn’t enough, was it? You murdered one of my men. You had your friends fire at me. At me.”
Gina crossed her arms under her breasts, as much to project a sense of impudence as to stop herself from shaking. Anger burned like hot coals behind her eyes, and the laughter quickly died away. “You’re a lunatic.”
“I didn’t come here to be insulted, Emily. I came to take you home, where you belong. And I brought someone who might help you listen to reason.”
Director Vaughan half-turned and took a step to the side to watch the dropship. Gina’s eyes went wide as she watched the tall, skinny frame of her mother descend the steps down to the tarmac. She wore a simple white dress to compliment her midnight-black hair, older but no less elegant, her apparent age lost somewhere in the nebulous decades between thirty and fifty. She crossed to her husband’s side, smiling awkwardly, and had to clear her throat before she was able to speak.
“I thought Edward had made a mistake when he said he’d found you,” said Deborah Vaughan. “You’ve grown so much. Oh, Emily . . .” Tears started to flow. She buried her face in a handkerchief while her husband put an arm round her shoulders. “Please come home to us. We can start again, I promise. We just want our daughter back.”
It wasn’t fake. Gina could see that in her mother’s mind, and she wasn’t ready for it. For a second she was sixteen again, packing her bag without any kind of feeling in her heart. She opened her window and climbed out into the rain, shimmied across the tree branch that took her to the edge of the security fence, and jumped over. The street below welcomed her. She wasn’t angry, or upset about leaving. She never hesitated to walk away from that house. Maybe it was petty, maybe it was a mistake, but she had her reasons. The idea that she’d be missed seemed laughable.
Swallowing the lump in her throat, Gina looked at her father again and husked, “She speaks for you as well, does she?”
There was a tiny hesitation in the Director’s eyes, and his face hardened slightly. “Yes,” he ground out.
Emily Vaughan had had her reasons. And, seeing her father just then, she knew they hadn’t changed.
“You’re about thirteen years too late, dad,” she said, trembling from the effort of keeping control over her anger. “I’m never gonna stop being the blemish on your perfect record. You can’t erase me or hide me away by getting me back home, and I’m going to make damn sure you never hurt any of my friends again.”
“Debbie, get back in the helicopter,” the Director ordered, and his tearful wife went without protest. He stared at Gina impassively. “Are you threatening me, Emily?”
“Yes, I am.” This time her voice rang like cold iron. She bared her teeth, still sick at the memory of Jupiter and Mai-Lin bleeding to death on the floor. “Do you understand that? Two innocent people died tonight, shot in cold blood by that goon you sent to abduct me. They were friends of mine. Their blood is on your hands, and you have no fucking idea what I’m prepared to do to you.”
The blank-faced suits of armour barely shifted at her words, too confident of their superiority to entertain the idea that she could do any real harm.
“I never ordered her to use lethal force,” he added as if it absolved him of blame, “and I can’t believe you’re so far gone that you’d hurt your own father.”
“Then maybe you need a demonstration.”
Fury surged like lightning in her veins. She reached out to her father and the Fed troopers in front of her, so safe behind their armour, made relaxed and complacent by their endless legal and physical power. Their minds echoed the contempt in which they held the world around them. Nothing could be more justified than blowing out their neurons one by one until they flatlined and went down the cold, black slide into braindeath. She knew she could do it. These were shock troops, not infiltrators; they never received Jane’s kind of telepathy avoidance training. They didn’t have any kind of defence against Gina’s abilities. It would be so easy to give in and squeeze until the lights behind their eyes went out.
The dead city blazed in her mind’s eye, this time not as a torment, but as a weapon. A way to share her pain with those who deserved it most. Temptation sang to her from that dark place, ringing in her ears. She held at the brink and listened to its siren song. It wouldn’t be any different from blowing the brains out of a slave trader’s head, or frying the synapses of one of her kidnappers. It was justice. Who could blame her for returning the gift of death to this pack of butchers?
The answer was right in front of her. She watched her father’s hard, unforgiving face, and she knew. Killing out of some sense of vengeance, no matter how worthless their lives might be, was something Director Vaughan would do. Not Gina Hart. Gina Hart had taken life, and she’d regret it to the day she died.
It was just a tiny adjustment to her original plan to paralyse them instead. Helpless limbs spasmed in armour, then
stiffened and stopped responding. A few frightened shouts rang out before the four Fed troopers lost the ability to speak. Gina just about afforded them the mercy of not letting them choke on their own tongues.
With her real eyes, she watched the troopers slump in place, held upright only by the rigidity of their armour. It brought Gina nothing but satisfaction. These animals got what was coming to them.
Edward Vaughan was not a fearful man. He watched in momentary horror, but quickly tore his eyes away from the empty shells of his bodyguards and took control of himself. “It won’t work. The whole Federation will be after you. I won’t be able to protect you anymore, Emily, please–“
“Stop calling me that!” Her scream stopped everything. She lunged forward and grabbed her father by his lapels, shaking him, shouting in his face. “My name is Gina Hart. I’m not here to talk or negotiate with you. I am here to tell you what’s going to happen, and if you listen very carefully, you might be able to walk out of here under your own steam. Are we penetrating your thick skull yet?”
For once in his life, Director Vaughan didn’t have anything to say. Gina let him go and backed away a few steps, where Bomber silently took her hand and squeezed it.
“I’d take the good advice,” Bomber said, “because if this woman asks me to start breakin’ all the bones in your body, I ain’t sure I’m gonna be able to stop.”
Gina lowered her eyes and dropped her voice to a tired whisper. “Take your people and go. Don’t ever come back. The next time I see your face, I will tear your throat out, and you won’t be able to stop me. Nothing will.” She glanced sideways at the four armoured statues. “They’ll start coming around in an hour or so. Whether there’s anything left depends on how good your shrinks are.”
No further communication seemed necessary. Her father stood and stared at her while, behind him, the helicopter crew pulled their paralysed comrades to safety. Gina turned her back on him and walked away with Bomber and Mahmoud in tow.
She placed her hands on a shoulder each, thanking her lucky stars that they were here to keep her sane for a little longer.
CLAIRVOYANCE: Part 39
He turned the flight helmet over and over in his hands. Painted on the side was Pia Gonzalez’s name and callsign in red-yellow lettering, now peeling from age and neglect. The memory foam inside had reset, ready to mould itself to fit a new face, and Bomber prepared himself mentally for the process. It wouldn’t be pleasant.
The past had a funny way of catching up with you, he decided. These past few weeks had been a long uncomfortable trip down memory lane. Familiar faces, emotions that had been better off buried . . . Stuff he really didn’t want to deal with. He tried to distract himself with the present and the future. His thoughts turned to Gina, to what he might find when he reached her. He still felt flashes of her presence around him. Maybe she was watching him even now.
He stood up, helmet under his armpit, and fled the claustrophobic stuffiness of the office. It was an empty box sandwiched into one corner of an old aircraft hangar. Even with the big hydraulic doors shut, Bomber found it easier to breathe in the bigger space. How Colonel Obrin got his hands on the place was anybody’s guess.
Pia’s helicopter stood in the middle of the hangar, discarded tools and parts strewn all around it. Toledo and a team of Army technicians were still elbow-deep in the copter’s guts.
He rapped his knuckles on the carbon-plate fuselage to get their attention. “Out of time, boys,” he announced. “We need to get her ready.”
Most of the techs scurried off immediately, but Toledo stayed behind, wiping his hands on an oil rag while two unfortunate souls put everything back together and sealed the open panels. “Nice machine. You shouldn’t have any trouble getting her to fly.”
“Pia kept her in good shape,” Bomber said.
A slight smile touched his lips, and he dropped his voice. “I took the liberty of installing a little hack in the communications system. There’s a new frequency in case you need to contact me without anyone else listening in.”
Bomber quirked an eyebrow at the pleasant surprise. “Who knows?”
“You and me.”
“Nice work. Can it be traced or detected?”
Toledo shrugged laconically. “There’s always a chance.”
“Let’s just hope we won’t need it,” said Bomber. He ran gloved fingers over the copter’s sleek grey fuselage, appreciating its lines like the body of a beautiful woman. “Help me run the pre-flights. I want everything ready to go.”
His feet recognised the well-worn steps up to the cockpit. The bucket seat enfolded him with a sense of warm familiarity. Soft plastic responded to his input, screens coming alive, flight stick adjusting itself to the shape of his hand.
“Stealth systems are green, Captain,” the controller’s voice warbled from the radio. “Nobody should see you, just be careful you don’t hit anything when you take off.”
‘Captain’. Now there was something he hadn’t been called in a while. Something about it didn’t feel right. He couldn’t think of himself as Captain Jacob Dusther, United States Army Aviator, anymore. Those days were gone.
He said, “Call me Bomber.”
“Wilco. Pre-flight check commencing. Tick ’em off as they come up, Bomber.”
They went through every mechanical and electronic part in the copter, one by one, verifying a green response from each system — or at least a yellow within tolerances. There hadn’t been time to get everything up to a hundred percent. It was kind-of therapeutic. It sharpened his mind for the upcoming battle.
Last to check were the pilot controls; he was about to force himself to put on the helmet when another voice cut into the comms circuit. “Jacob,” said the Colonel, “I’d like a word before you go.”
“What about, Sir? Should I get the Major?”
“This doesn’t concern Hawthorn or your mercenary friend. Meet me in the control tower, alone. Please.”
The odd timbre of Obrin’s voice caught Bomber’s attention. He climbed down from the cockpit, loosened the collar on his flight suit and, out of sheer habit, checked his hip holster. The laser sat snugly inside. He made sure it was in reach, then headed across the tiny airfield to the traffic control tower.
Electronic security scanned his face and buzzed him through. He followed the stairs to the top, to the main control room. Going by the dust this place hadn’t been used in a while. Much of the ageing equipment had been cut open, new technology crudely wired in. Colonel Obrin stood by the window and looked out over the field. Little clumps of activity showed down below, carefully disguised as a civilian operation to fool the ever-watching satellites.
Obrin said, “You’re wondering why I called you.”
“It crossed my mind, Sir.”
“I want us to be honest with each other, Jacob.” He turned to Bomber and drummed his fingers on the railing. His forehead wrinkled more than usual, and his bushy eyebrows dipped into a frown. “I like to think of myself as a pretty good judge of character. When we met again yesterday, I saw something in your eyes that I haven’t seen in a very long time.” He paused as if to figure out a way to phrase something difficult. “You . . . know about the memory block, don’t you, son?”
Bomber crossed his arms with mock casualness. “Jez told me. Something about two years goin’ missing in my head, and that you might be involved.”
“She’s right. I used to know a sergeant by the name of Jacob Dusther, long before you ever set foot in a damn helicopter. Hell, I remember when you first reported to my unit at Quantico. Another recruit fresh off the farm.”
Sighing, he grabbed a near-empty bottle of scotch from the top of a console and poured himself another double. Bomber began to realise just how drunk the Colonel already was. The old soldier carried it off remarkably well.
“I had a project and a team. We were using experimental nanotechnology to help create a new breed of soldiers. Cybernetic implantation, biological alterations, everything. With the nanos we could control everything. Implants never got rejected. Healing took days instead of months. Even your equipment could repair itself, damnedest thing I ever saw.
“We trained you to be the best this world ever saw, and it worked. Everything ran like clockwork. Until politics got involved,” he spat bitterly. “In the end, the best I could do was . . . rehabilitate you into other projects. That’s how you wound up in F Squadron.”
“Why tell me this?” asked Bomber, unsure if he ought to be angry or not. “Why now?”
“To warn you, son. They didn’t want you to recover those memories. Ever. If you mess with the block you might end up a vegetable, or worse.”
That settled Bomber’s decision. Slow, warm anger began to throb behind his eyes. “You already sent me off to die once, Colonel. I don’t see a reason for the change of heart.”
Obrin grunted and stared at the bottle. “I deserved that. Just . . . Indulge an old man. Is there anything left in your head from those days?”
At first Bomber started to deny it, but something stopped him. A faint crawling sensation nagged at the back of his skull. It was like a phrase on the tip of his tongue, just out of reach. The smell of disinfectant. Vague images of a dimmed room, hard metal on skin, viscous liquid everywhere. Coldness giving way to heat. Hands. Voices.
“Is there any danger of him remembering?” asked the Colonel. His words rang with iron control. Something whirred and started to press into Bomber’s skull, followed by a high-pitched grinding noise, and the faint smell of burning filled the room.
“Not without killing him. Hypnotic conditioning will lock this entire area of memory against soft techniques, and the implants will prevent medical intervention. You, um.” The voice paused. “You realise he won’t be the Jacob Dusther you knew. He won’t want to think about his past. He’ll grow calmer, cooler, and more aloof as time goes on. Constant supervision will be necessary for the first few months.”
“I’ll keep an eye on him. I’m fond of the kid.” He chewed the inside of his cheek. “I can arrange places and stations for the others, but Dusther is the real problem. Make sure you get it right.”
“Yes, Sir.” She hesitated as if wanting to say something more, then thought better of it.
The Colonel took a deep breath. His footsteps receded slowly into the distance.
“Jacob? Did you hear what I said?”
Bomber snapped back to the present. Rigid muscles protested against his movements, but he made them look natural as he faced Obrin. “Sorry, Sir. I really don’t recall.” He added, “I should get our bird up in the air.”
The Colonel dismissed him with a nod. Bomber climbed back down the stairs and returned to the hangar, trying to recapture the flashback, to shake something more out of the closed box of his memory. Nothing more came out.
Bomber laboriously adjusted the copter’s pilot seat, then spent a long time tweaking every control to his style and satisfaction. Pia always liked them on the twitchy side. The only time Bomber had ever tried to fly her bird, many years ago, he came within a hair of running it into the ground.
He looked up when the hangar’s hydraulic doors began to creak open. A tractor rolled inside towing a bulbous, vaguely shark-like shape behind it. It was a short-bodied helicopter with coaxial rotors, one set of blades above the other, a type of attack ship in service during the Recommunist revolts. The name ‘Kamov’ was emblazoned in red down one side of the nose. Unusually, most of its weapons appeared intact, heavy cannons and missile racks still present in good condition. Crews in civilian clothing readied fuel lines and dragged up ordnance dollies, preparing the thing for combat.
Finally the cockpit popped, and Hawthorn stood up to wave at Bomber’s staring face. His voice crackled over the radio, “Told you I got your wing.”
“You’re crazy, Hawk!” Bomber shouted, standing on his chair with hands gripping the headrest. “That thing’s gonna stand out like a fuckin’ neon sign!”
“If they’re paying attention to me, they’re not paying attention to you. Might give you the edge you need. It’s not like I’m giving you a choice, Jacob, so just appreciate the company.”
Frustrated, Bomber dug around for his radio headset and wrestled it onto his cranium. “You cannot be doin’ this, Hawk. I’m about to put myself pretty far into the Colonel’s bad books and you don’t want to be there with me!”
“What, you mean abandoning the mission to save your girlfriend from the Feds?” the Major deadpanned. “I’ve actually been looking forward to meeting her.”
There was a long pause. Bomber didn’t often find himself lost for words, but this was one of those times. He managed, “She’s not my girlfriend . . .”
Hawthorn chuckled. “Just you keep telling yourself that, Jake.”
A series of metal clangs reverberated through the hangar as an ordnance robot loaded the Kamov’s missiles. Fuel pumps filled its tank with a low, mechanical drone. The crews coordinated by way of shouts and aggressive hand gestures.
“You damn well better not fall behind,” growled Bomber as he tore off the headset. Then he put it back on a little sheepishly, picking up the helmet, and switched frequencies. “Control, am I cleared for take-off?”
“Affirmative,” came Colonel Obrin’s voice. “Godspeed, Grendel.”
“Call me Bomber.”
He switched back to a private frequency, gritted his teeth, and slammed the helmet on his head. The memory foam crawled over him, finding all the organs, then cleared room for things like eyes and breathing. It expanded slightly when it hardened, giving support in all the important places.
Tractors pulled both helicopters out onto the airfield. From there it was a matter of switching on the autopilot and telling it where to go. He punched in the Feds’ projected course from Jock, then planned his interception. The real challenge would be to shadow them until they led him to the right place.
The copter barely seemed to move when it left the ground. It glided into the air, effortless, and Bomber let his hands feel the tiny vibration of the craft around him.
Then he dug the holorecorder from his pocket and pressed play.
It flashed to life, filling the air with five young faces, laughing and messing around on their way back to base from the local bar. They teased and jeered at each other. A young Jacob Dusther drunkenly kissed a half-undressed Sarah Caine, while Andrew Hawthorn and Jamie Caine touched hands whenever they thought nobody was looking. Pia waved and made silly faces at the recorder.
The gate guard waved them through without even looking. The group quickly dispersed after that. Bomber and Sarah staggered off in the direction of her trailer. Jamie slunk away without a word, while Hawthorn said an awkward goodbye to Pia. Left alone with her recorder, she suddenly looked very lonely. It only lasted a moment. She soon recovered her smile and held the recorder up to capture the stars on her way to her trailer.
Bomber felt a bittersweet smile tug at the corners of his mouth. He wasn’t the only one lost in the past.
“Good times,” he said, and turned it off.
