Chapter 56 – The Black Willow Gun Trees
Sunset, Wednesday, July 29, 2308
The invisible surveillance trailer drifted in a bending loop, locked into a track that delivered line-of-sight with the western side of District Thirteen and Bergstrom’s attached hangar.
Inside, First Sergeant King monitored the transmission steams from the tiny micro-transmitters he’d sprayed through Dr. Bergstrom’s section of the orphanage. Stanwood had called three times, and Bergstrom repeatedly claimed to be on track to deliver his first ‘Micronix Scanner’ by nightfall.
Stanwood had in turn, called Von Kalt and the deputy dutifully returned the call to Dr. Bergstrom.
Now, as the sun continued to sink toward the Pacific Ocean, Bergstrom approached final preparations in his hangar. Assistants ran through checklists on the armored war machines, making sure they were fueled up and the ammunition magazines were loaded and made ready.
King’s trailer and attached Black Willow Battle Suit both had their own phase-cam and were operating under a hundred meter avoidance protocol; meaning the auto pilot, on it’s anchored loop, would maintain a hundred meter cushion from any passing vehicles or drifting vendors.
The Angel City skyscape, with three hundred days of summer, had always been one of the more crowded utopias of the modern world. To ask for much more than a hundred meters would be difficult.
Given their invisibility and the autopilot protocols, a knock at the trailer door surprised King. He opened it without getting up.
Croswell activated the magnetic anchor on his battle suit, linking it to the trailer, and climbed out. He fearlessly launched himself into the open sky, leaping across the significant gap between his suit and the trailer.
The Secretary of Defense crashed into the trailer, needing every bit of the two steps he had to stop, before smashing into a bank of surveillance equipment.
“That was a bit excessive, don’t you think?” King asked from his place at the surveillance terminal.
Croswell laughed. “Gotta push yourself a little harder every day.”
“That’s what she said.” King smiled.
Croswell laughed. “No Snow, No Ross?” he asked.
“ETA five mikes,” King answered.
“Goddamn Stanwood. He gave me his word he’d drop it, that little bastard. We’re going to visit him next.”
“His calls were being relayed through a D.C. substation.”
“I don’t give a shit where he is. I’ll find him,” Croswell said.
“Well, here’s his little buddy, right on cue.” King pointed out an approaching vehicle.
“All right. Let’s get in our gear.” Croswell asked.
“Just let me finish routing these streams into our suits,” King said.
“I’ll be waiting for you.” Croswell took two steps and grunted as he leapt from the trailer.
King laughed and sighed, rising from the terminal. The First Sergeant called his suit over and lightly stepped from the trailer into the modular cockpit. The suit was more of an armored vehicle, a man-shaped tank, stocked with a variety of cannons and missile banks.
Inside, the surveillance streams were arrayed in a strip across the top of the windshield. King settled into the suit, his arms were its arms, his legs were its legs, regardless of the fact that his hands and feet, at their most extended, never reached outside the suit’s main cabin, in the chest.
There was no head, per say, just a cluster of scanners and cameras. Twin long barreled sniper rifles protruded from the sides of what would have been its jaw-line. Above them, antennae reached out at twenty-degree angles. Centered between them, like a mow-hawk, three missiles were stacked, one atop the other, in a narrow magazine.
The armored limbs served both offensive and defensive roles, boasting heavy armor plates and gun barrels in a variety of caliber. Flanks of missiles were mounted to each hip and six-barreled Gatling guns on both the shoulders and on the outside of the massive feet. Anti-gravity drives on the soles of the feet, the floor of the cabin and the underside of the forearms managed elevation, pitch, roll and acceleration velocity.
King’s feet were strapped into the flight controls, while his hands managed the three-dozen weapons systems, displayed on the windshield and dashboard. The video and audio from Bergstrom’s lab was piped in as well. King listened and occasionally glanced up as the suit ran through its preflight spooling operations.
Director Bergstrom introduced Von Kalt to his assistants and the other pilots.
“You ready for this?” Croswell asked.
“Are we not waiting for Ana and Kelly?”
“They’ll either be here or they won’t,” Croswell said. “I want to line up on the right side of that hangar door, and when it slides open, wait for me, but once I open up, just let ‘em have it.”
“Sounds good to me,” King replied.
Croswell explained the next step, “I’ll take the outside, and as they begin to react, I’ll slide up and around to a perpendicular position, but aiming at a downward trajectory. That will keep the bulk of the orphanage out of the line of fire.”
“Until they fire back, that is,” King replied, piloting his tank into position.
“Well, that will have to be on them, then,” Croswell answered, taking up a position to King’s left. “I’ll open up first. After the first volley, if I can effectively suppress them and keep them from getting out, I’ll move up out of the way to reload. That’s when I want you to swing inside.”
“The good old Jab-Cross.”
“Exactly. After you blow your load, fall out and I’ll swing in to give them another helping.”
King laughed. “We’re going to cut this place in half.”
On the feed from inside the hangar, Bergstrom was helping the pilots get situated.
“Okay, you see that big device against the outside wall?” King asked, pointing to the outside wall of the hangar, where Bergstrom had spent the bulk of his day.
“Yeah,” Croswell answered.
“That’s their scanner. From what I understand it works like radar, only it’s not very mobile. He said it’s probably good for thirty miles in every direction. He claims he’ll be able to forward them coordinates on any active amplifier in the city,” King said.
“He hasn’t tested it yet?” Croswell asked.
“Apparently not, or they’d be scrambling,” King said.
“That’s some pretty serious arrogance.”
“Yeah, well, he wouldn’t be Bergstrom otherwise, would he?”
“I suppose not.” Croswell laughed.
In the hangar, the first two wolves were airborne.
“Here we go,” Croswell said.
King heard the Gatling guns on Croswell’s unit engage their motors, humming as they spun up, but not firing yet.
The second two wolves had been activated and lined behind the first two. The wolves were just dumbed-down versions of the Black Willow suit, carrying about a third of the firepower and none of Fox’s secret phase-camouflage.
The phase-cam had been just one of the Black Willow team’s global ace in the hole. No one had been able to mimic it. Bergstrom had boasted about his inevitable ability to understand and recreate a similar version of the technology, but he never had.
As the last two wolves hovered into place, Bergstrom triggered the hanger door.
Croswell waited. King waited. The wolves waited.
King’s angle along the district prevented him from being able to see Dr. Bergstrom, deeper in the lab. He watched him on the surveillance streams from the micro-transmitters.
Bergstrom crossed over to his newly completed Micronix Scanner. “I’ve calibrated it for the most range possible, so let’s give her some juice.” He reached out to it, switching it on.
The piercing electronic scream, caused by the immediate proximity of King and Croswell, shattered the otherwise quiet afternoon.
The wolves stumbled from their few feet of altitude and fell to the floor
of the hanger. Bergstrom jumped to the controls, cranking them down in a fraction of a second.
In the same moment, King realized their phase-cam was completely compromised.
Then Croswell opened fire, ripping into the forward wolves; his heavy rounds denting their armor and driving them back as they struggled to recover from Bergstrom’s sonic surprise. Croswell launched his loaded missile banks, nine rocket powered warheads streaked into the hangar.
The wolves were tossed about like leaves before a late autumn wind.
Croswell swung up and around to reload.
King jumped into the fray, landing on the hangar floor, streaming rounds from every barrel he could fire at once. He leapt in the air, switched from guns to missiles, and let go with his nine.
As King rolled toward the far left side of the hangar door, the missiles ripped holes in the far side of the structure. Only three of the wolves were still intact, the forward units had taken the brunt of the attack and come apart. King appeared to hesitate, and the remainder of the squadron opened fire with guns and missiles.
Croswell watched King tumble, burning, from the lip of the hangar. At least one of his drives and a stabilizer had been compromised, given the way he rolled.
Croswell prepared to enter the hangar but pulled back as seven more missiles streaked away from King’s unit. They arced from his damaged tank and returned toward the open hangar, seeking out the remaining wolves.
Croswell laughed. King hadn’t hesitated; he’d been getting a heat lock. The secretary pulled back as five more missiles streaked toward the hangar. King had gotten his damaged tank under control and fired again, three missiles, then his final warhead.
When Croswell hovered down, the hangar was a billowing cloud of smoke and debris.
Over the radio, King called out, “We’ve got two fleeing to the north.”
Croswell dropped down below the hangar. A massive hole had been ripped in the far end. In the distance, two wolves could be seen ducking under the hovering plates of the industrial district.
“What’s your status,” Croswell asked.
King activated his personal anti-gravity harness and ejected from his Black Willow battle tank just a few moments before it exploded.
“That’s not the answer I was looking for.” The secretary muttered.
Croswell retracted the barrels from his right forelimb and extended a three-pronged mechanical hand. He chased after the tumbling and unconscious first sergeant, catching him and re-engaging his phase-cam.
Croswell retreated to the now visible surveillance trailer and docked his invisible battle tank. Inside, he triggered the trailer phase-cam again and after a moment of sputtering, it engaged.
“Fucking Bergstrom,” Croswell muttered.
On the monitors he saw Captain Snow and Major Ross pull up outside the trailer and laughed.
As they entered the trailer, Croswell’s phone rang. He answered.
“Secretary Croswell…” they heard someone say.
“Yes sir, Mister President,” Croswell answered.
“I need you to come down to my office with all remaining members of the black willow operations.”
“You know there’s only two of us left, sir. Myself and Major Ross.”
“In my office, ASAP.”
“Yes sir,” Croswell replied.
Conway disconnected, and Croswell closed the communicator.
He looked up to Captain Snow and Major Ross. “Looks like we’re going to the east coast.”
“I’ll load some extra magazines,” Ross answered.
Croswell laughed.
He looked over to Snow. “You should go directly back to Saint Vincent’s. Two of the wolves escaped, and the slippery little turd Bergstrom did too. He’ll have another scanner fabricated by midnight.
Croswell looked over to Ross, “Call Reid and have him join her.” He looked back to Ana, “We’ll be back as soon as we can.”
Ross laughed. “If at all. And where is the package?” Ross asked. “How long does it take the Secretary of Defense to work up some shitty fake IDs?
“Where do you think we’re going?” Croswell smiled. “Chill with the negative waves already.”