Aftershock (28 page)

Otto felt his heart sink as he saw Raven step out from the shadows of one of the buildings destroyed by their tank. She walked towards them, her hands raised in the air.

‘Far enough,’ Minerva said. ‘Lose the weapons.’

Raven slipped out of her tactical harness and let it drop to the ground. One of the Disciple soldiers ran over and picked it up as two more kept her covered with their rifles.

‘Hands behind your back,’ Minerva instructed. ‘Commander, tie her hands.’ The commander walked forward and pulled a thick cable tie from one of the pouches on his belt. He looped it round Raven’s wrists and pulled it tight with a zipping sound.

‘You couldn’t let them die, could you,’ Minerva said, walking towards Raven. ‘Sentimentality was always your weakness, Natalya.’

‘Who are you?’ Raven asked, her expression furious. There was something hauntingly familiar about the woman’s rasping voice.

‘Don’t you recognise your handiwork, my dear?’ Minerva said, lifting up her veil. The hideously disfigured face beneath was covered in scar tissue, the relics of what must have been horrific burns. Despite the disfigurement there was one thing that had not changed – her eyes. Eyes that Raven would never,
could
never forget. In that instant Otto saw something in Raven’s expression that he had never seen before. Fear.

‘That can’t be. You’re dead . . . I watched you die,’ Raven gasped, her eyes wide with horror.

‘No, Natalya,’ Anastasia Furan said, ‘you didn’t kill me, you just left me wishing you had. You betrayed me, you killed my brother Pietor and you helped that brat destroy Overlord. For that I am going to make you watch me kill these children with your own weapon.’ She put her pistol back into the shoulder holster inside her coat and took one of Raven’s katanas from the soldier that had been carrying them. ‘Then I’m going to use it on you.’

Anastasia walked towards Otto, Wing, Shelby and Franz.

‘I’ll even let you decide which one goes first,’ she said with a sadistic smile.

‘Just get on with it, you scar-faced old hag,’ Otto said, his voice filled with contempt, ‘or are you going to try to talk us to death like Overlord did. I honestly can’t tell you what was better – the fact that Overlord died in agony or that he was wearing your brother’s body like a cheap suit at the time. I suppose you’d call it two birds with one stone.’

Anastasia turned towards him, her face furious.

‘You obviously have a death wish, Mr Malpense,’ she snarled. ‘Well, consider your wish granted.’

She raised the sword above her head. Otto closed his eyes. The world seemed to slow as he used every ounce of his mental strength to push past the electromagnetic shielding that Professor Pike had installed round the tiny but incredibly powerful fuel cell that powered the sword’s variable geometry forcefield. He could not see but could sense the sword swinging towards his neck in slow motion as he commanded the fuel cell to discharge all the power it contained in an instant. The handle of the sword detonated like a tiny bomb with a bright white flash. Furan shrieked as the blade clattered to the ground, clutching at the shredded remains of her hand. The soldiers nearby staggered backwards rubbing their eyes, temporarily blinded by the light of the detonation. Otto opened his eyes and leapt forward, slamming into her and knocking her off her feet. They tumbled backwards together as Otto reached inside her coat and pulled the pistol from her shoulder holster and pressed it to her forehead.

‘Drop your weapons, all of you,’ Otto shouted to the Disciple troops, ‘or I pull the trigger.’

‘Shoot him!’ Anastasia hissed. ‘That’s an order.’ Otto cocked the hammer on the pistol, pushing the muzzle harder into her scarred brow.

The soldiers looked to their commander, unsure what to do. The commander raised his rifle, aiming it at Otto. In the split second before he could pull the trigger there was an enormous explosion above them. Everyone’s heads snapped upwards just in time to see the blazing wreckage of the Disciples’ helicopter gunship crash into the glass dome overhead. The dome disintegrated as the doomed aircraft hit it and the blazing remains of the helicopter and a shower of giant glass shards plummeted towards the startled occupants of the square below.

‘Run!’ Otto yelled at his friends as the Disciple troops scattered in all directions. Otto leapt to his feet and sprinted for cover in the fire station garage as Anastasia Furan staggered to her feet and ran in the opposite direction. The commander of the Disciple troops seemed frozen in place as the burning hull of the gunship fell from the sky and smashed down on top of him. The explosion knocked Otto and his friends off their feet, sending them sprawling. Massive glass sheets smashed down around them, exploding in sprays of deadly crystal shrapnel. Otto, Wing, Franz and Shelby all ran headlong for the fire station garage. They dashed inside as more and more glass tumbled into the square, huge sheets impacting like mortar shells. After a minute or so the dust in the square began to settle and the full extent of the damage became visible. The flaming debris of the gunship lay surrounded by tons of shattered glass and the church building was on fire, the flames spreading rapidly across its wooden structure. Several of the remaining Disciple troops had not made it to cover and lay where they had been cut down by the lethal rain of glass.

‘Stay down,’ Otto whispered to the others as he saw Disciple troops starting to cautiously emerge from the buildings they had taken cover inside around the square. One of them pointed over to the fire station. Otto was just about to shout to his friends to run when the air behind the advancing Disciple troops shimmered and one of H.I.V.E.’s assault Shrouds decloaked. The soldiers never even knew what hit them as the Gatling cannon under the chin of the dropship spun up and opened fire. Seconds later a dozen men in black body armour leapt from the loading ramp at the rear of the Shroud and spread out, forming a defensive perimeter.

‘Looks like the cavalry’s here,’ Otto said with a relieved sigh. ‘Guys, this is going to sound weird but don’t tell them anything about what Laura did. Let me handle it.’

He looked at his friends, seeing his own confusion, anger and sadness reflected in their eyes. One by one they nodded their agreement.

‘OK, let’s go.’

Otto, Wing, Shelby and Franz walked slowly out of the fire station and a couple of the G.L.O.V.E. troops spotted them and raised their rifles.

‘Hey, same team!’ Shelby yelled.

‘Hold your fire,’ Colonel Francisco bellowed as he ran down the Shroud’s loading ramp.

‘I think I can honestly say that this is being the first time I have ever been happy to be seeing Colonel Francisco,’ Franz said quietly, a relieved smile on his face.

‘I’m glad to see that at least some of you made it,’ the Colonel said. ‘Sorry it took us so long to get here. If it hadn’t been for that beacon, I doubt we would have ever found you.’

‘Well, you can thank Raven for that,’ Otto said, suddenly frowning. ‘Hold on, where is she?’

Anastasia Furan ran along the corridor leading out of the hidden facility, trying to ignore the agonising pain from her shredded right hand. She had endured far, far worse before now. She reached the shattered exterior doors and stepped out into the daylight. The transport helicopter was waiting, its rotors spinning at full speed, ready for take off. She hurried across the snow-covered ground as the rear ramp of the helicopter lowered and climbed inside with the help of two of the Disciple soldiers on-board. Laura, Tom and Penny sat huddled at the other end of the compartment with Nigel lying on the stretcher next to them.

‘Get us out of here,’ she yelled at the pilot who pulled on the collective control and sent the giant twin-rotored chopper climbing into the sky. Anastasia looked out of the rear hatch and felt a chill as she saw a familiar figure sprinting across the snow towards the slowly climbing helicopter.

‘We need more altitude,’ she yelled.

On the ground Raven aimed her grappler at the rear of the transport which was now twenty metres off the ground and fired. The dart attached to the helicopter’s metal skin and Raven hit the retraction control, sending herself shooting into the sky, trailing behind the helicopter as it tipped forward and swooped away from the mountain.

One of the Disciple troops on the helicopter braced himself just inside the open hatch, drew his pistol and aimed at Raven as she whipped around on the end of the monofilament line a dozen metres behind the helicopter. The motors in the grappler screeched in protest as they tried slowly to pull Raven towards the back of the transport, fighting against the massive turbulence that tossed her around like a fish struggling at the end of a line. The soldier fired and missed twice before Furan snatched the gun from him with her good hand. She didn’t aim at Raven – instead she took careful aim at the silver dart embedded in the helicopter’s fuselage just outside the hatch. She fired and the bullet struck the dart with a spark, dislodging it and sending Raven tumbling away into the sky. Furan ran to the rear hatch and looked down at the dark green treetops that flew past below. She handed the pistol back to the soldier and hit the switch to close the rear hatch.

‘Goodbye, Natalya,’ she said as the hatch closed with a thud.

‘We’ve finished our sweep, sir,’ the G.L.O.V.E. soldier reported. ‘There’s no sign of anyone else inside the facility. The Shroud even performed a thermal scan of the cavern from the air and there’s nothing.’

‘Understood, lieutenant,’ Francisco said. ‘Get the rest of your men back on-board the Shroud. We’re heading back to H.I.V.E.’

Francisco walked up the ramp to the Shroud’s interior and watched as the medic finished checking over the four Alphas.

‘They all seem fine,’ the medic said as Francisco approached. ‘A little dehydrated and some cuts and bruises but nothing serious.’

Francisco nodded and walked over to where the four exhausted-looking Alphas were sitting.

‘There’s still no sign of Raven or the other missing students,’ Francisco said. ‘I’m taking you back to H.I.V.E. Nero’s orders.’

‘We’re just going to leave?’ Otto said angrily. ‘How do we know that the Disciples aren’t holed up somewhere nearby with Laura and the others?’

‘We don’t have time for a full search of the area and Disciple reinforcements might arrive at any moment,’ the Colonel said, shaking his head. ‘We have to get out of here.’

Shelby suddenly burst into tears, her shoulders shaking as she sobbed. Wing put his arms around her and hugged her.

‘We will find them,’ Wing said. ‘I swear to you.’

The last of the G.L.O.V.E. troops filed on to the Shroud and Francisco headed towards the rear. He walked down the ramp and looked around the debris-filled town square. The fires started by the destruction of the gunship that they’d shot down were spreading and there was little they could do to stop them. Soon the whole facility would be ablaze. He was just about to head back up the ramp when he saw a familiar figure walking slowly towards him across the square.

‘You weren’t going to leave without me, were you?’ Raven asked, raising an eyebrow. She was walking with a slight limp and her bodysuit was torn in several places, blood covering her face from a nasty gash in her hairline.

‘You look like hell,’ Francisco said, smiling.

‘We’ll see how you look after you fall from a helicopter,’ Raven said. ‘The other Alphas are gone. I tried to stop them being taken but I was too late.’

‘Nero’s ordered us back to H.I.V.E.,’ Francisco said.

‘Good, I need to speak to him. Our situation may be worse than we thought,’ Raven said, frowning.