Rogue (7 page)

The leader of the three-man team that had gone into the room before them pushed the dead body of the G.L.O.V.E. security technician out of his chair in front of the numerous security monitors. Otto walked over, sat in the recently vacated seat and began to study the displays.

He could see G.L.O.V.E. security guards hurrying to their positions throughout the upper floors of the building, but they weren’t what he was looking for. He eventually spotted movement on a monitor in the upper left corner of the array and realised that he’d found his targets. Captured on the screen were several familiar faces. He reached for the transmit button on his comms unit and was about to relay the position of the fleeing group when he suddenly felt a sharp pain in his head. He sucked a quick involuntary breath through his teeth as the pain intensified. He knew that he had to report the position of the targets, but something was stopping him from speaking. He fought against the block, knowing what he was supposed to do, but still he couldn’t speak. It was as if somewhere inside his head a tiny voice was screaming at him to ignore orders, to let them get away. He took a long deep breath and forced himself to focus. Then he pressed the button and spoke.

‘All units, targets are heading to the roof via the east stairwell.’

‘Roger that,’ Ghost’s voice said in his earpiece. ‘Moving to intercept.’

Raven looked down the gap between the guard rails around the concrete staircase as she heard the sound of raised voices from several floors below. Heavily armed men were pouring into the stairwell, a couple of them looking upwards to spot their fleeing quarry.

‘Keep moving,’ she hissed at Nero and the lone G.L.O.V.E. guard, who were struggling to carry their injured burden towards the door at the top of the stairs. As they approached the door Raven pushed past them and opened it, popping her head through the doorway to check that the corridor beyond was clear. Seeing nothing, she beckoned the other two forward.

‘Get to the hangar doors. I’ll be right behind you,’ she said quickly. As the door closed behind the two men she looked back down the stairwell. Their pursuers were now just a couple of floors below her. Too close. She detached one of the two small cylinders that were strapped to the tactical webbing on the left side of her chest, popped off the small protective cap with her thumb and pressed the stud on top. She waited for two interminable seconds and then dropped the metal tube, already turning to run as it tumbled through the seemingly bottomless void in the centre of the stairwell. As it passed the level of the pursuing H.O.P.E. assault team it detonated with an enormous bang and a bright white flash of light. The few men on the stairs who had been wearing night vision goggles were blinded instantly, perhaps permanently. The others were stunned by the concussive force of the explosion and sent reeling, their hands covering their damaged ears.

As Raven ran down the corridor towards the hangar doors she knew that she had only bought them thirty seconds, a minute at most. More worrying was the fact that Darkdoom was no longer even groaning. He had gone silent and his skin was pale and clammy. If they could get him to the Shroud she could try to stabilise him, but he was losing too much blood. She only needed to look at the crimson trail that he was leaving on the ground to see that.

They reached the heavy steel doors that sealed off the hangar, and Raven stabbed at the button that would normally open them, unsurprised by the lack of response. She hit the switch on the hilt of one of her swords and configured the variable geometry force field along its blade to the sharpest possible cutting edge. She pressed the tip of the blade to the cold metal of the door and pushed, the crackling point of the sword sinking into the toughened metal with ease. She pulled downwards firmly, the blade sliding through the steel with a hum, the metal of the door glowing white hot along the thin line she was carving. Raven finished the first cut and proceeded to make another one, forming a low rectangle. She pulled the sword out again, sliding it into the scabbard on her back, and gave the door a solid kick. The weakened section fell into the room beyond with a loud clang and Raven watched as Nero and the security guard carefully manoeuvred Darkdoom through. She glanced back down the corridor as she followed them and saw the H.O.P.E. assault team pouring out of the stairwell and into the corridor just thirty metres away.

‘Go! Get to the Shroud,’ she yelled to Nero, pulling the last flash-bang grenade from her harness and tossing it back through the hole in the door. She heard it detonate as she ran across the hangar towards the waiting Shroud, the drop ship’s engines spinning up with a high-pitched whine. Above her was nothing but the dark night sky; clearly whatever had disabled the security system had also deactivated the holographic field concealing the landing pad.

Suddenly a masked figure in gleaming white body armour dropped to the hangar floor from somewhere overhead, blocking Raven’s route to the Shroud.

‘Going somewhere?’ Ghost asked.

‘Yes, through you,’ Raven replied, drawing the twin swords from her back.

‘I’ve been waiting a long time for this,’ Ghost said.

Raven struck, aiming a sweeping blow at the other woman’s head, but Ghost blocked the blow with her forearm. The sword struck the armour plate with a crackle, but did no damage. Ghost struck back, the straight edge of her hand snaking out and hitting Raven in the wrist, paralysing her hand so that the sword dropped from her numb fingers. Ghost followed up with a flat-palmed blow to Raven’s chest that sent her staggering backwards. Raven fought to take a breath while ignoring the sharp pain. The last time she had been hit that hard and that fast had been when she’d been fighting Cypher’s robotic assassins.

‘I’m going to take you apart piece by piece,’ Ghost said. It was impossible to tell through her smooth white faceplate, but Raven felt sure that the other woman was smiling. Ghost flicked her wrists, and triangular black blades shot out from beneath the armour on her forearms.

Raven backed away. She could hear the rest of the H.O.P.E. soldiers pouring into the hangar somewhere behind her. Ghost raised a single hand, ordering them to hold position as she advanced towards Raven again. She struck impossibly quickly. Raven barely had time to raise a katana to block the killing blow aimed at her neck, deflecting Ghost’s wrist-blade just enough that it only opened a gash in her shoulder. Raven winced and struck back, but her blade bounced ineffectually off her opponent’s armoured chest plate.

‘You can’t win,’ Ghost said, and kicked at Raven’s thigh. Raven gasped in pain, dropping to one knee and raising her sword to block Ghost’s blade as it swung towards her again. Ghost pushed downwards, forcing Raven’s sparking blade back towards her own face. Raven pushed with all her strength, but the other woman was impossibly strong and she could feel the power draining from her arm as the blade moved closer and closer.

‘Hey!’

Raven glanced past Ghost and saw Nero standing at the bottom of the Shroud’s loading ramp, a large pistol levelled straight at Ghost. Raven felt the pressure on her sword ease the tiniest amount as Ghost turned her head to face the Shroud. Nero pulled the trigger and the flare gun fired, the hissing red ball of fire shooting across the hangar and striking Ghost’s faceplate. Ghost staggered backwards and Raven leapt to her feet, running for the drop ship.

‘Kill them!’ Ghost yelled at the H.O.P.E. assault team, her hands covering her face.

Raven ignored the bullets that whizzed past her as she raced up the ramp into the Shroud’s cargo bay.

‘GO!’ Nero yelled over his shoulder as he slapped at the button that closed the boarding ramp. Up on the flight deck the pilot maxed out the throttle, the Shroud’s engines roaring as it shot up out of the hangar.

Ghost watched from the hangar floor as the Shroud lifted up into the night sky.

‘Targets are in flight,’ she said calmly.

Otto looked up from the pavement outside the G.L.O.V.E. building, watching the Shroud climbing into the sky.

‘Now, Malpense,’ Trent’s voice crackled in his ear, ‘bring them down.’

Otto reached out with his senses, feeling for the flight control computers on board the fleeing aircraft. He could feel the systems he wanted, and he did not need long. He twitched his head slightly and the Shroud veered off course, straight towards a nearby building, its manual controls locked out and throttle jammed at full thrust.

The sudden pain in Otto’s head came from nowhere, a searing agony that broke his concentration and released the systems on board the Shroud. Otto dropped to his knees, screaming and clutching his head as black Animus fluid trickled from his nose. He gave one final gasp and then tipped forwards, hitting the pavement with a thud, unconscious.

On board the Shroud the pilot swore under his breath and wrenched at the controls, pulling on the joystick and banking the Shroud hard to the right. The left engine housing smashed through the plate glass of one of the corner offices in the building that they had been on a direct collision course with just seconds earlier, the Shroud bucking with the impact. The pilot fought to bring the aircraft back under control, levelling out and scanning his control panel for warning lights before steering towards clear sky and engaging the cloaking field with a relieved sigh.

‘What happened there?’ Nero asked as he climbed up to the flight deck.

‘I have no idea,’ the pilot said, his face a mix of confusion and relief. ‘I had a dead stick for a few seconds and we almost hit a building. I’ve never seen anything like it – it was like the damn thing was trying to crash itself.’

Nero thought back to the fate that had met Jonas Steiner’s private jet and realised he knew what might have caused that to happen.

‘Get us back to H.I.V.E. as fast as possible,’ he said. ‘We have to get Darkdoom to the medical facility.’ Nero knew that there were hospitals closer than H.I.V.E., but taking Darkdoom to one of them would be suicide. H.O.P.E. was sure to be watching and waiting for them to do exactly that.

‘ETA is just under two hours from now,’ the pilot said, ‘and that’s red-lining it all the way.’

‘Understood,’ Nero replied. He just prayed that would be fast enough.

He climbed back down into the Shroud’s passenger compartment where Raven was fighting to stabilise Darkdoom’s condition. Her hands were covered in blood and she was struggling to get an IV line into the wounded man’s arm.

‘Is he going to survive?’ Nero asked.

‘I’ve done all I can here,’ Raven replied, shaking her head slightly. ‘It doesn’t look good, Max.’

‘We’ll be back at H.I.V.E. in less than two hours,’ Nero said. ‘The medical team will be waiting on the pad.’