***
The island jutted up out of the water a dozen or so metres in the air. It was almost perfectly circular, layered in varying shades of rock sediment, with a large cove on one side. The wind had picked up and giant waves crashed over the cliff edges, sweeping them clean, though the topmost layer of the island still clung in desperation to its foliage.
Like cake with a piece cut out, thought Jayson as he peered out of the cockpit windows. And the icing scraped off.
He flew in a gentle curve over the drop zone and mashed down on the trigger for the cargo ramp. Two specks fell out below him and, once he was sure Matt and Zoe had touched down safely on the island, he veered away toward the city.
Even though the wheels of commerce had come to a crashing halt decades earlier, Hong Kong was clouded with more smog than ever. The pollution from the drone facilities produced thick noxious fumes that billowed into the sky from street-level buildings. The wind could not blow it away fast enough. Jayson was glad for the controlled atmosphere of his ship.
A voice came over his iPC, reverberating through the bones to his ear canal. ‘I’m in position, setting up shop now,’ said Zoe, all business.
Matt’s voice filtered through next, his usual cheeriness replaced with an edge of caution. ‘Looks like we’re early to the party. Nothing in sight, no supplies. I really don’t like this.’
‘Standby,’ Jayson said, brushing Matt’s concerns aside. He pushed the jets to full power and buzzed past the windowless skyscrapers. Jayson could see the light and smoke filtering through the empty floors. It was too quiet.
‘There’s nothing here,’ Matt said. ‘Wait. Incoming. Single bogey.’ He ducked down behind shrubbery to gain what little concealment there was available. With armour on top, Matt couldn’t rely on the Academy jumpsuit’s camouflage.
‘I see it,’ Zoe said, shifting her scope to tilt up at the small craft heading toward them.
‘Patch me through to your iPC view,’ Jayson said. ‘Both of you. Now.’
Two small picture-in-picture rectangles appeared in Jayson’s iPC. They partially obscured his vision, forcing him to fly as if he had one eye closed. But he could see what Matt and Zoe saw through their eyes. Matt was hiding in a clump of trees to one side of a clearing, and Zoe had set up her sniper position on the hill to his south. She tracked the small object with her scope as it landed on the top of the island, right in the middle of the clearing next to Matt.
‘What is it?’ Jayson asked.
‘Too small for a pilot to fit inside,’ said Zoe. ‘It’s no drone. Remote controlled maybe. You see anything from there?’
‘No activity in the city,’ Jayson shook his head in confusion.
‘It’s a capsule,’ Matt said. Then he whooped. ‘For the supplies! Of course, it’s just a delivery drone.’ He emerged from his hiding spot and sauntered up to the package.
‘Clever girl that Ms Gimranov,’ Zoe admitted.
‘You sure Matt?’ Jayson had a bad feeling about this. It’s been too easy, even by my standards, he thought. Jayson flipped his comm frequency over to an open channel and broadcast a dummy friend or foe message. He opened his mouth to order Matt to wait for him before opening the capsule, when a response pinged back to him. From a drone. The first ping began a cascading domino effect. Thousands more drones pinged back at Jayson’s ship. They emerged in a torrent from the lowest levels of the city, concealed in the smog until they were on top of Jayson. They had him surrounded.
Jayson fired up his guns and sent thousands of rounds of hot lead pelting into the nearest drones. The guns overheated, but he punched a hole through the trap and dodged fresh drones as they formed up again.
There was too much happening at once, and Jayson could see everything falling apart through his teammates eyes.
Matt hit a button on the side of the capsule. The top slid off and he peered inside. ‘Oh my God,’ he said. A brilliant purple energy field ballooned out from the opened capsule. It passed through Matt like a Stunner blast. He caught the brunt of it with his jumpsuit, but the force knocked him to his knees. His armour was useless against it and he’d have been killed without the suit underneath. The field slowed when it reached a radius of two metres around him, and stayed in place. Matt was trapped.
Zoe let Gilda loose on the capsule. Jayson watched through Zoe’s iPC as her bullets curved around the purple energy field. She fired off a dozen more rounds. Only two bullets managed to hit the sphere. One exploded into shards, the other passed through but missed the capsule, hitting the ground at Matt’s feet. Her view of him became black - someone had stood in front of her at close range. She pulled her eyes away from her sniper scope to stare into the blank helmet-covered face of an assassin.
‘Get the hell out of there!’ Jayson yelled. The iPCs toned down the volume to avoid deafening his team. ‘Who the hell is that Zoe?’
‘Kinda. Busy. Here-’ Zoe said the words one at a time. Jayson couldn’t keep track of her view; she was jumping around the island in a blur to keep her distance from the new attacker.
Jayson remembered that he was supposed to pick them up for extraction. It was going to be more like a rescue, but he was too far away. More drones emerged from the depths of the city and surged up toward his location. He couldn’t save anyone with them chasing after him.
‘Oh no,’ Jayson breathed.
Hundreds of the little mechanical beasts were already within range. They opened fire on Jayson’s ship, each with swarms of miniaturized missiles. Jayson banked hard away from their oncoming trajectory and dived into the narrow gaps between the skyscrapers. The missiles curved toward him, but were not smart enough to dodge the buildings. Fiery explosions pelted down like rain on the ghost town and the concussions rocked Jayson in his seat. Chunks of twisted metal and concrete cascaded around him, Jayson dodged left and right out of their path. The drones had turned to give chase, and more were emerging from the city underneath Jayson. Too close for missiles now, they opened fire with machine gun rounds, sending tracers of bullet fire arcing through the smoggy sky.
Jayson reacted on instinct; he rolled the ship around 360 degrees, then pulled a sharp turn around an intersection, gaining a few seconds of respite. He checked the image in the corner of his eye at how his teammates were faring, and gasped in despair.
Matt was stuck in the force field. Flares of energy leaped out from the spherical shape trapping him in place. He fired his weapon at it, threw pieces of his armour at it, nothing got through. The armour pieces fell to the ground in a blackened, sizzled heap upon contact with the field. Two dark assassins converged on him and drew their weapons, though they walked up to him with a casual easy stride. His mysterious captors’ attention was fixed on the battle, taking place on the other side of the island between Zoe and their comrade. Matt could do nothing but watch.
Zoe had reacted with lightning sharp reflexes upon being surprised by the assassin in her scope. She dropped the bulky sniper rifle and leaped to her feet, drawing a smaller pistol. The assassin charged at her. She couldn’t fire off a Stunner round at that close range. If the assassin’s suit was in any way similar to the Academy’s, it would dissipate most of the shot’s effect anyway. Zoe switched her pistol’s ammo type to fire a slug. It was an over-large rubber bullet, but Zoe was a crack shot. She caught the assassin right between the eyes, snapping his head back with the force of the impact. He collapsed to the grass, limbs splayed. Zoe had no time to celebrate; she caught the ghostly shimmer of active camouflage on the ridge around her. More assassins.
‘Give me thirty seconds, Zoe! I’ll be there.’ Jayson burst out from a tunnel just metres above the pavement of a once busy highway. He’d lost most of the drones on the other side, they’d followed him through in single file and lost his position. Jayson now sped back toward the island as fast as the engine would allow.
‘Get Matt!’ Zoe said. ‘I can handle these guys.’
Matt’s captors had turned to him when they saw their ma
n fall from Zoe’s shooting. ‘You’re from the Academy,’ one said.
‘An Academy brat captured Mr Meyrick a few days ago,’ said the other. They acted as if they were having afternoon tea in a garden. Matt’s heart sank as he realised it came from absolute confidence. He could almost see their grins underneath the blank helmets. They looked back over the island at Zoe when she made a move against her own attackers. Matt roared and charged, running into the purple bubble that enveloped him. An electric bolt ran through him, just enough not to be lethal. It left Matt singed and panting in pain.
‘That’s better,’ said one of the assassins, their attention drawn back to him. ‘Who has the General’s iPC? Tell us now.’
Matt sank back on his knees. The purple sphere began to shrink around him. Matt’s shoulder grazed the edge of the force field and he howled in pain. His will broke and he babbled the answers to their questions. But the bubble didn’t stop shrinking.
Jayson had to turn off the iPC feed coming from Matt. He couldn’t bear to hear the screams. His hands slipped off the yoke and he looked west toward the horizon, but found no solace there. He’d forgotten about death, and the reminder took the wind out of him like a punch in the gut.
Zoe was getting desperate. She produced a small cylindrical can from a pouch strapped to her thigh, thumbed a button, and threw it straight up in the air. Nothing seemed to happen at first. Then four more assassins appeared as if out of thin air, spaced around Zoe from every angle. The electromagnetic pulse had disabled their suits’ camouflage, winking them into sight in an instant. The plan was to put them on an even playing field by disabling everyone’s jumpsuits. Zoe was working on the assumption their suits were the same as hers.
The assassins paused. They had her outnumbered. The smallest assassin drew a sword and made an almost imperceptible gesture to the others, ordering them to advance. This one then sprinted toward Zoe with sword in hand, a sword too heavy for the size of the person wielding it. Two other assassins unsheathed a pair of crossbows and used their enhanced strength to load the weapons in seconds; the last attacker jumped unnaturally high, seeming to float at the apex, in an attempt to come down on Zoe and crush her from above.
They were competing against each other to claim the kill. They might be visible now, but the other advantages of their suits were still active.
‘A little help,’ Zoe said in a small voice.