Chapter 60 - Breakdown
Thursday, July 30, 2308
Chief Warrant Officer Reid called Major Ross, “Sir, we just got our asses handed to us! Snow is out, and I’m limping back to Montrose on a residual charge. I hope you guys are on your way back?”
“What do you mean? You’re leaving them alone?!” Ross shouted in reply from the passenger seat of the speeding transport. “Chief, I need you to put Snow on auto-pilot and turn around immediately!”
“They bought in five Maxwells, Major. I’m happy to go back, you know that. But Captain Snow and I are both Last Legs. If she doesn’t get some medical attention… Well, her suit isn’t going to save her.
“We knocked out both the remaining wolves, but we lost one of the gun-trees and this one isn’t going to make it very far. I hope you wired Vinnie up tight, because whether I go back or not, it is locked down.”
“Do not go back, Chief. Do you hear me?” Croswell said. “Their orders are to take the children alive. They won’t go in heavy-handed. Proceed to rally point Montrose. We will meet you there.”
“I called the Preacher, and the rest of Charlie team, none of them are any closer than twelve hours. I also activated a despooler on Ashley’s Micronix, so whatever signals are bleeding out of St. Vincent’s they won’t be able to record them. We need to get to work on jamming that scanner of Bergstrom’s or even if they do manage to escape, it won’t be for very long.”
“Are you still streaming those signals, Chief? Can you forward them to us?”
“Hey, is this true? Phillips’s dead?” Reid asked.
“I asked you to forward the signals, not scan the latest headlines.”
“Copy, sir. Mirroring to your amplifiers now.”
Von Kalt regained control of the battle suit, but there was no returning to the fight. He’d expended most of his ordinance, and he was bleeding altitude. He was still considerably higher than most of the hanging city, but unless he moved inland, sooner or later he was going to drown.
The alarms ringing in his head made listening to the progress of the assault on Saint Vincent’s impossible. If he didn’t get out of the suit soon, he wouldn’t.
Von Kalt crashed into the courtyard of an abandoned shopping center, shattering the marble tiles under the wolf’s heavy terillium-armor plates. He triggered the ejection handle and the suit blasted him across the parking lot, the parachute unfurling behind him. Von Kalt tucked and rolled as he crashed to the courtyard tiles. The guidelines, and kevlar-terillium chute, wrapped around him like Cleopatra in a carpet.
The battle suit, no longer occupied with protecting the meat-puppet pilot, attempted to right itself and exploded. Fiery shrapnel hit the deputy director hard enough to bruise him, but didn’t rip through the chute.
A few minutes later he’d extricated himself and taken a cooler seat across the courtyard. The sky-mall gave Von Kalt a perfect view of the ongoing hostilities at St. Vincent’s. The Maxwell vehicles hung overhead like vultures, while white and orange flashes sporadically erupted from the motel, followed by billowing plumes of smoke and tongues of fire.
His ears had only just stopped ringing when his communicator took up the challenge. It was Stanwood.
Von Kalt accepted the call but didn’t speak.
“Oh my God, what happened to you?” Stanwood asked.
It must have been clear, given his beaten, battered and burned visage, that all was not well. He didn’t answer but looked back to St. Vincent’s.
“I’m monitoring form my end, I’m glad that’s you down there. A rescue craft is inbound.”
Von Kalt looked back to Stanwood’s holographic image projected before him.
“Phillips is dead. Croswell and Ross were in the room.”
Von Kalt took a deep breath. He didn’t say a word, but his glare spoke volumes.
“Conway has ordered you to stand down. He wants you to call back the Maxwells. Apparently Fox, the sick fuck that he was, implanted his own kids with five-kiloton failsafe devices.”
Von Kalt broke his silence. “So what? They’re in the middle of nowhere.”
“The order was for them to be taken Alive, Director.”
Von Kalt looked at the burning motel and the hovering assault vehicles. He snapped the communicator closed and tossed it over the nearby ledge.
Ross returned to St. Vincent’s at dawn. The sun's first rays revealed the extensive damage to the exterior of the motel, highlighting the wholesale carnage on the balconies. He noticed that several of the soldiers had been blatantly wired with explosives, right where they lie, like some macabre battlefield joke.
Ross triggered the remote for the garage doors and was greeted by the sight of a dozen more dead soldiers, dead and still wet. He noticed that none of them were armed and doubted they had arrived that way.
He took the cruiser off autopilot and found a section of floor where he wouldn't be setting the transport on top of a corpse.
The major cautiously picked his way past Ashley’s hasty-ambush lines and made his way to the basement.
He dialed the phone, but Ashley was already there, disengaging the shotgun and opening the door.
Ross killed the call and entered. He did a double take at all the assault rifles and handguns. He met Ashley’s eyes but said nothing.
Ross, Croswell, and Reid had all caught the same-streamed bits of Ashley’s interrogation of the prisoners.
Where was he supposed to start that conversation? Don’t break the fifth-wall? God give me strength.
"I have the papers. It’s time to go," he said.
"But we know who did it! We have evidence!" Ashley said.
"What evidence?" Ross asked.
"Their confessions! They told me..."
"Before you blew their faces off?" he asked.
Ashley hesitated to answer the obvious flaw in her logic.
"None of these cameras are spooling, so there's no recording of their confessions, and lucky for you, there's no recording of their executions."
Ashley had no reply.
"Now. Let's get out of here," Ross said.
Von Kalt had never called off the assault. Stanwood had been forced to take remote control of the op all the way from D. C. The deputy director couldn’t have cared less.
As Stanwood had promised, one of the Maxwells broke off and stopped to pick him up. He made no effort to board the flying pig. Two sergeants had to run out and half-drag half-walk him aboard.
The Guard Commander was incensed. He wanted to rescue the wounded or at least recover the deceased. He swore that this wasn’t over.
Apparently suffering from shock, Von Kalt made no attempt to reply.
They reached the armory sometime later, and Von Kalt was taken directly to the medical ward and treated for his injuries.
In the National Guard medical ward, Von Kalt held the Metachron. He became neuro-digital water; he flowed over the facilities’ systems, effortlessly filling the cracks and hollow spaces until he was the system.
When the two fully-loaded drones came online, the operators were already locked out. The soldiers panicked and alerted their superiors, who panicked even more, having less control.
The hangar doors opened and the drones lifted off, streaking away from the armory. Inquires as to the volume of escaping warheads only fueled the chaos of rising pulses and tempers.
Von Kalt was never suspected, as he, for all appearances, was fast asleep. He was greatly pleased with this solution, as he would no longer be required to deliver significant amounts of DNA to that snake Bergstrom.
Watching the chaos through various satellites and traffic cameras, Von Kalt wondered if he’d be able to distinguish between the pops caused by the warheads and those cause by the children’s failsafe devices.
"We're not just going to leave all these guns?" Ashley asked.
"We are leaving all these guns," Ross said.
Geoff threw himself onto the couch. "They're here! Get Down!"
Ashley and
Ross looked at him as if he was crazy, but then two devastating explosions rocked the facility.
The structure screamed as it cracked apart in several places. Two more rockets hit, damaging the gravity drive and throwing the motel's horizontal balance into seizures. The plate's ability to stay balanced had been upset, and the facility was losing altitude.
The furniture slid fore and aft, threatening anyone trapped between it and a wall. They dodged the sliding mattresses, the table and various electronics as Ross corralled them toward the sedan.
Geoff made it in first, climbing into the back seat, followed by Ashley, who held the door open for Ross. He climbed in and got behind the driver's seat, starting the car.
Ashley pulled the door closed as the building took a rather severe tilt, throwing her against the glass. Ross triggered the remote to release the breakaway hatch, but the sedan refused to separate from the falling building.
Ross threw the vehicle into drive, trying to pull away by force, but the hatch wouldn't break free. He put the car back in park and opened his door. He'd have to do it by hand.
Before he got out, Ross reached inside his jacket and pulled out the diplomatic pouch, containing the false identification and reservations that would get them across the border. He handed it to Ashley without a word.
Ash and Geoff watched as Ross tried and failed to pop the hinges by hitting the emergency release levers.
Finally he pulled out his pistol and shot them off.
The first one gave easily, the second practically exploded.
The third and fourth ripped free as the car returned to its fixed elevation, rocketing away from the falling motel.
Ash and Geoff watched Ross fall away from them.
He stood at the hatch, shrinking as the distance between them increased. They watched as he continued to shrink.
The facility turned, they could no longer see him. The rockets and internal explosions had destroyed the motel's structure.
A few seconds later, it smashed into an oceanfront community. Any of the munitions that hadn’t been detonated went up in a series of booms and ka-booms.
The explosions were so forceful that none of the soldiers’ bodies were recovered from the wreckage. There were plenty of weapon fragments and bodies belonging to innocent civilians, but no evidence of what precipitated the attack.
Of course, neither Ross nor the children were found among the debris, as once the unit was far enough away from Ashley and Geoff; he’d activated his phase camouflage and flew away from the falling motel.
Things had definitely taken a turn for the surreal.
Croswell had just executed the White Hose Chief of Staff, after framing him for conspiracy in the entire Bergstrom mess.
Ross had been surprised; Croswell hadn’t filled him in on his plan. Maybe he’d made it up on the spur of the moment. My God, lunatics and mad men surround me.
It was little trouble for the experienced vet to keep up with the cruiser’s autopilot. He followed Ashley and Geoff and for now, as long as they were safe, he’d keep his word not to break the fifth-wall.
What the hell was Fox thinking?