Psion Omega (Psion series Book 5) (44 page)

Duncan radioed the NWG cruisers and told them the
situation, but of the four remaining cruisers, one was badly damaged, and two
were locked in dogfights. The fourth was kilometers away trying to protect the
marchers in the water and surveying the area for hazards. So Duncan had only
one option: try to take down the hawk with his sniper rifle. “Hawk has eyes,”
he told his fellow gunners.

All three snipers in the nest shot at the CAG
cruiser, but it was like throwing pebbles at a rhino. The ship moved too fast
to get an accurate shot, which meant they needed a miracle to get a hit on the
pilot through the windshield.

“How are we doing on those rocket launchers?” the
Sheep Leader asked.

“Sorry,” Duncan responded, “we’ve got a new target.
Can’t help you at the moment. Word is that the marchers are headed down
Pennsylvania Ave toward the blockade. You need to clear the path for them.”

The cruiser was now headed straight toward the tower
where Duncan’s nest was located.
Maybe he
don’t see us. Maybe he’s just turning around.
Even still he aimed his scope
at the windshield and pulled the trigger. A miracle indeed. The brains of the
Aegis pilot blew out the back of his head.

“Nice shot, Dunk!” one of the other snipers
hollered.

“How many marchers?”

“I don’t got a number,” Duncan answered as he fired
at another CAG cruiser. “Just clear the path.”

“They’re going to get mowed down by the drones!”
Sheep Team Leader protested. “Send them in from the north. The northern
blockades are clear!”

“It’d take hours—”

A sharp, ear-splitting whistle cut him off, and a
missile from a second cruiser slammed into the building underneath the goose
nest. Duncan was thrown over the platform railing, saved by the harness he wore
which connected him to the building. Rifle still in hand, he dangled over the
edge. Behind him, his two nest mates hung unconscious or dead, he couldn’t tell
which. The platform groaned as it slid, and the top part of the building slowly
started to collapse. Duncan had time to fire one more shot.

Our Father who
art in Heaven
. He hefted his rifle up to his eye, waited for the
rocking to lessen, and found a target in his scope: an Aegis wielding a rocket
launcher, aimed at Sheep Team’s location. The rocket flew in a burst of smoke
straight at the team.

Hallowed be Thy
name.
A loud groan came from the building accompanied by the squeal of
metal scraping over metal. The rocket exploded moments before hitting Sheep
Team. Another miracle.

Thy kingdom
come.
Duncan put the Aegis in his crosshairs just as the enemy reloaded his
launcher and put Sheep Team in his sights once more.

Thy will be done
. A deep groan
came from the building. Duncan fired first, killing the Aegis with a single
shot.

On earth
—The
building crumbled with a loud lurch, and Duncan Hudec fell.

* * * * *

Janna Scoble flew her cruiser in a loop to get a better angle on the
CAG cruiser. The attack on the Hive had started hours ago when, in the early
pre-dawn hours, resistance fighters breached the Hive, captured a man named
Chad, the Hive’s caretaker, and shut down all of its systems except the
parabolic antennae needed to transmit a code. She didn’t know what the code
would do, and didn’t want to know. Her mission, along with twelve other
cruisers, was to protect the Hive for as long as possible.

Six months ago, Janna Scoble joined the resistance.
She had spent three months before that trying to convince her husband about her
passionate beliefs, but couldn’t sway him. After his third refusal, she stopped
asking. Her decision to go without him was not easy, and one she was sure many
people would not make, but something deep inside her told her to go. So she
went.

A month after her arrival to Glasgow she learned she
was pregnant. After a week of sleepless nights, debating whether or not she
should return home, she met with Lara and Thomas. They assured they would
support whatever decision she made. Janna ultimately chose to stay. The tipping
point was meeting two young men named Brickert and Sammy. As a nurse in the
infirmary, she learned about their actions in Detroit, how one had risked all
to save the other from a collapsing building. She realized that she, too, could
risk all for her cause.

Now, twenty-seven years old and seven months
pregnant, she flew a cruiser because she was one of the few resistance members
who’d survived the bio-bomb
and
had
flying experience. Her father had been one of the last commercial pilots before
the air rails effectively ended the commercial airline industry. She couldn’t
count how many times he’d said to her, “Everyone is born with wings, Janna. We
just have to learn to fly with them.”

The CAG cruisers launched their missiles at the
Hive, only to be foiled again and again by the resistance pilots. From what she
could tell, the resistance had neither superior training nor the advantage of
numbers, just sheer willpower and determination to win. They destroyed the CAG
ships at a rate of two for every one resistance ship lost. Janna had managed to
destroy one and damage another, which another resistance pilot picked off. Her
cruiser had taken some stray bullets, but nothing too substantial.

“We’ve got four CAGs coming in a diamond formation,”
the Elite air captain, Kallen Dinsmore, announced. “I need all cruisers in my
quadrant to come to my coordinates.”

“Roger that,” one pilot said.

“Roger,” Janna said as well.

In moments, the three cruisers joined together to
stop the four CAG ships making a run at the Hive. The front three fired
missiles, which were all matched and eliminated by the resistance’s own
missiles. “Fire at will,” Dinsmore ordered, “More ships to my mark.”

Two of the CAG cruisers took gunfire and veered
away. The third tried to get a second missile off, but a new resistance ship
entered the fray and intercepted the missile with his own. The fourth CAG ship,
however, careened straight at the Hive.

“Get that bogey out of the air!” Dinsmore said.
“Someone nearby who has missiles, take it out.”

Janna was nearest but she was out of missiles. She
looped around to improve her angle of attack, her guns firing on the ship, but
she was unable to take it out. A nearby resistance cruiser launched a missile,
but a CAG cruiser nulled the missile with one of its own. Janna’s console told
her the fourth CAG cruiser was preparing to launch its missile. Janna had no
way of stopping it.

Except one
.

“Thank you for my wings, Daddy.” She patted her
bulging stomach. “We got this one, don’t we?”

Janna jerked her controls and directed her cruiser
directly into the CAG ship’s path. She collided with the CAG cruiser just as
its missile released. She jammed on the eject button, but knew she would not
make it in time. Fire and heat filled the cockpit as the missile detonated,
followed immediately by the explosion of the CAG ship.

* * * * *

The air reeked of sulfur. It was November in D.C. but felt like July.
The heat came from the molten pavement, the smoldering stumps of trees, and the
fires in the buildings lining Washington Circle Park at 23
^rd
and K
Street. But Kawai had been in hell long before the battle began. It had started
when she woke up and Li was gone, killed by the bio-bomb.

There hadn’t been many boys to fall for in the
village where she grew up. Some she knew so well they were more like brothers.
Many had no ambition, a few had far too much. Her discovery by Commander Byron
due to an incident during a gymnastics competition had been a welcome blessing.
She had never once missed her village.

Over the course of two years as a member of Psion
Beta, Kawai had developed strong feelings for three people: Martin Trector,
Sammy Berhane, and Li Cheng Zheng. Martin died in Rio, Sammy couldn’t tell one
female from another unless her name was Jeffie, and Li …

Kawai didn’t want to think about him anymore, but he
was all she could think about.

“Kawai, where are you?” Nikotai, Cow Team’s leader, shouted.

“Squad Bravo is down,” Kawai reported back. It took
every last bit of self-control she had not to cry. The haze and smoke was so
thick from the rockets, she couldn’t see. “Rockets. I—I tried to blast
them, but I could only save myself.”

The blockade her team had been charged with
destroying had only been partially demolished from the car she’d driven into
it. Most of the southern half had crumbled, but the explosives hadn’t all
discharged, leaving too much of the blockade intact. The Aegis and other agents
had made them pay for the damage with drone and rocket fire.

“We have to get behind those rocket towers,” Nikotai
pressed. “I need you to provide cover.”

Two rows of cement crowd barriers stood between the
nearest rocket towers forty meters away. Six drone guns had been mounted on the
barriers before Cow Team’s car had collided into the blockade. The drones acted
as sentinels that riddled holes in anything that looked dangerous or moved too
fast on the western side of the blockade. So far Cow Team had taken out four of
them, but a pair still remained.

“Can you make your way back to my location in two
minutes?”

Kawai reached Nikotai in ninety seconds. Of his
original fourteen team members, eight remained. Nikotai pointed north. “They’re
coming. I don’t know how many, but the marchers are coming. And if we can’t
take out this blockade, they’re going to get cut down. And that’s on us.”

Dave Hudec, second in command of Cow Team, nodded.

“Kawai, you need to get us through using your
shields. All seven of us are going behind you. Can you do that?”

“I can try,” she said meekly.

“I can’t count on a try. Can you do it?”

“I can do it.”

Nikotai seemed satisfied with her answer. “Dave has
grenades. So do Ilima and Dustin. I’ve got plenty of ammo. We just need to get
into position to take out the towers and drones.”

Kawai led the team to new cover behind two cars
stacked one on top of the other, the top car upside down. Both were smoking
hulls. The rounds of the two remaining drone guns clanked off their frames like
hail on a window during a storm. Nikotai had to shout to be heard over the
noise. “Keep an eye on that rocket tower, Kawai! And there’s a second tower
behind him, two Aegis with rifles.”

“What now?” Hudec yelled to Nikotai.

“Take Kawai, Matthews, and Todd. Knock out those
drones. We’ll stay here and draw the attention of the rocket tower.”

The task Nikotai had given Hudec was not an easy
one. One drone was twenty meters to the right, the other a little farther to
the left. Kawai could not easily shield everything and everyone. She needed
another Psion.

I need Li
.

“We’ll take the closest one first,” Dave Hudec said.

Shielding for Matthews and Todd was easier than
Hudec. He was a bear of a man, while Ilima Todd and Dustin Matthews were both
much shorter than Kawai. But Hudec had more combat experience from his days
with his brother, Duncan, in the Elite Black Ops. Todd and Matthews were
volunteers—survivors of the bio-bomb attack on Glasgow—and it
amazed Kawai they had managed to avoid catching a bullet this long.

Nikotai’s superb aim prevented the Aegis in the
rocket tower from getting off another round of missiles, but both drones and
the rifles took aim at Hudec’s group.

“Get us to that barrier!” Hudec ordered, pointing to
a molten cement barrier just tall enough for them to crouch behind.

The drone gun was only seven or eight meters away.
Kawai concentrated on shielding the group from it as they ran across the park.
Ilima tripped and hit the pavement. The drone gun picked up on her movement and
ripped into her.

“Get away from her!” Hudec roared. Seconds later,
one of the drone’s rounds caught the grenade on Ilima’s person and detonated
it. The rest of the group ran for cover. “Give me your grenade, Matthews!”

“Why?”

“Because I need it.”

“What? You think I’m gonna die?”

“Just give it to him,” Kawai said. “We’re not going
to let you die.”

Dustin Matthews handed it over. Hudec pulled the pin
and waited a beat before tossing the grenade into the blockade. Two seconds
later, the boom came and the drone stopped firing.

“Let’s go.”

Other than passing what was left of Ilima Todd and
marking her GPS location, the crossing to the second drone was uneventful. The
Aegis fired another rocket at Nikotai’s group, obliterating much of what
remained of the damaged vehicles, but Nikotai made the Aegis pay for it with
his life. Now he and his two companions hunkered down behind a heap of park
benches.

“In position to take out the second drone,” Hudec
said.

“Rocket tower is down,” Nikotai said. “Do it.”