The Suns of Liberty: Legion: A Superhero Novel (25 page)

    
“Suns, we’re on a schedule,”
Revolution
reminded them, still looking up at the awesome sight.

    
“Right. Let’s get to it,”
Sophia said.

     She dove.

     They followed her down to the target, now lit up in
digital red. They could not see inside the facility, but the basic area of
Rachel’s location glowed in their HUDs. They couldn’t tell what floor she was
on, only that she was in the center of the building.

     Sophia blasted a hole in the roof and rocketed inside.

     The facility was clearly on lockdown. Most of the crew
was gone. They flew into an empty office floor complete with cubicles and desks
and computers. Revolution could feel his vortex engines starting to lose the
charge they had gotten from the storm. He and Drayger would not be able to fly
much longer. So he told Sophia to keep going, and she incinerated the floor and
down they went.

     The next floor was filled with spare parts for drones,
vehicles, and other kinds of weapons, some of which were not identifiable, but
it was clear they were weapons. They had firing mechanisms for missiles,
lasers, bullets, bombs…you name it. The area was big. Much bigger than the top
floor with the offices. The ceiling was as tall as a hangar bay’s. Rachel’s
signature was still in the center of the building and getting clearer, but
unlike at Freedom Rise, Lantern could not map out any of this building.

     The Revolution wondered what kind of tech it would
take to completely block out his digi-sphere scan?  And why would this building
have more protection than Freedom Rise itself? 

     As they burned into the third floor they found out
why.

     This level was as big as the previous but spread throughout
were half-finished pterodactyl drones, each perched on large black workstations
that were elevated off the floor. The stations were spread across the room in
exact rows, making the whole thing look a bit like a giant chess board.

     At the end of the room were a dozen deactivated
rover-bots. They looked like the classic robots from an auto assembly line—long
steel arms attached to a cylindrical body—but were mobile and could drive themselves
around the room at will to work on the various drone stations and assist their
human counterparts in production.

     On the large wall just in front of them was a sight
that made their blood run as cold as ice.

     The Man-O-War.

     Its red glowing dome and massive tentacles spread out
around it.

     They froze in midair. Which meant Revolution and
Drayger simply slammed to the floor, their Vortex engines out of propellant and
momentum. Revolution’s armor cracked the concrete floor with a sound that could
wake the dead.

     “Nice, guys. They probably couldn’t hear that down in Florida,” Sophia hissed.

CHAPTER 25

V
on
Cyprus heard the ceiling rumble and felt the vibration.

     At that exact moment, the alarm on his motion detector
registered an impact. It was one floor above him. His first thought was that
the storm had caved in the upper floors and that now his life depended upon the
exoskeleton around the main lab holding exactly as it was designed and
withstanding the entire top of the facility collapsing on top of it. He was on
his com immediately. “Commander,” he said to the Guard in charge, “sounds like
the roof may have blown in. Get a team up there and check it out. We can’t lose
any of the equipment.”

     He tried to check the video feed, but the storm was
playing havoc with the reception. He could see movement, but everything was
blurry. He was afraid the wind had blown in the walls and what he was looking
at were a bunch of drones being tossed about and destroyed.

     “Doctor, I think we are in the eye. We shouldn’t be
taking any wind damage right now,” one of the Guardsmen said after a moment.

     The Commander spoke back, “I’ve got a team on its way,
should be getting there any second. We’ll find out.”

“It’s
just a replica,” Ward breathed. Revolution wasn’t worried about the Man-O-War.
His parabolic hearing was catching the thudding steps of the troops coming up
from the floor below them.

     “We’ve got company.” He spun to Ward, “You ready?”

     Ward fired up the canisters.

     It was a turkey shoot. The room had not been made for
defense. There was only one way up, and the Guardsmen came out two and three at
a time in three consecutive waves before they caught on. Ward hit them all. And
just like that, nearly half their numbers were down.  The comatose bodies of
the men blocked the doors for the others, but they had also wisened up.

     “Spread out and take cover,” Revolution said. They
each scrambled behind a drone station. The bulky machinery provided perfect
cover. They spread out, each taking one section of the large room. Revolution
could hear the Guards whispering to each other. They were talking about
removing the men at the door so they could have a clean entrance. Revolution
texted the info to Ward—who got ready. Soon they could see them reaching out
and dragging the prone Guards at the door back into the hallway with them.

     Ward took careful aim.

     The next hand that snuck out from behind the doorway
moved quick, but—

    
Thunk!

     A dart stabbed into it, and the man it belonged to
slumped forward into the doorway. His partner reacted—reached down to pick him
up and Ward nailed him too. That was ten in total.

      Then nothing. Revolution heard no noise, no talking.
They were just waiting. Probably on reinforcements.
“Let’s flush them out,”
Revolution said to the others over his com.
“Helius, take out some drones.”

     Sophia took aim and blasted a drone near the door. It
exploded in fire and metal and shattered across the concrete. She took out
another. And another. And another.

     The most important priority for a Council Guardsman assigned
to this facility was protection of the merchandise. Failure to do so could get
you shit-canned in a hurry. So the remaining ten Guards had no choice—they came
bounding out.

     Ward was ready. So was Drayger. He hit them with
paralyzing fear that made them stop short in their tracks. The hesitation was just
momentary, though. To trained solders like these, even the most horrific nightmarish
thought only slowed them down for a second, maybe two. But that was all Ward needed.
He nailed five of them.

     The Revolution broke cover and sprinted toward them
with a speed they’d never even seen. The big man tackled three at a time,
knocking them unconscious with one blow, while the other two opened fire. The
first Guardsman had a high-powered rifle. A dangerous, impressive weapon. It
could rip a man apart at this distance. Against TO-4 however, its devastating
rounds simply bounced off and shredded the concrete walls around them.

     A dart whizzed forward, stabbing into the Guard’s
shoulder and he fell.

     But the last Guard was armed with something different.
It was a pistol. Big, bulky, shiny silver. It looked a bit like a Desert Eagle.
But it wasn’t. Revolution saw it just long enough to tell what it was
not
and then, his heart stopped.

     A yellow-green projectile shot out of its nozzle and
headed right for him. There was nothing he could do. It was a torso shot, and
he did not have enough time, even at full speed, to get out of the way. He
lunged. But the bullet hit.

     For so long he and Leslie had theorized about what
would happen if one of these luminized bullets struck his armor. She had
posited everything from nothing at all to it might rip right through the armor
and him and just keep on going.

     As it turned out, the reality was somewhere in between
those two extremes.

     The bullet struck, and immediately the armor’s
absorption unit went to work. The luminescence shot across the armor, but with
all of the unit’s attention focused on the energy, there was nothing left to
handle the kinetic force of the bullet itself. This would not have been a
problem had the absorption process worked fast enough—the bullet would have
simply bounced off like all of the others—but it didn’t.

     Instead, the luminescent energy helped to open up a
hole just large enough for some of the shredded metal round to slice through.
It burned into Revolutions’ skin just below his shoulder muscle and just above
his heart.  

     Too close.

     But the impact and the pain hit together and it spun
him around, and to all of their horror, the indestructible man fell to the
ground.

     At the same time, the Guard turned and fired three
more rounds in the others’ directions, giving himself cover, and he leapt
toward the wounded Revolution. This guy was good.

     He pointed the pistol at Revolution’s head and pulled
the trigger.

     But at the last possible second, something stopped his
finger. His muscles froze.

    
With fear.

     Ward saw Drayger’s face locked in concentration, and he
needed no other invitation. He aimed, spun the canisters to fire—

     And never got the chance.

     Sophia blasted the Guard with a beam of power that
literally ripped his upper torso away from his lower and burned it into oblivion.

     The hideous lower carcass spasmed and plopped to
floor.

     There was no blood. The severed body was instantly
cauterized by her powerful propulsors.

    
“Compañeros, you’ve got less than ten minutes until
the eyewall hits,”
Lantern told them over their coms.

     The Revolution rose to his feet, blood dripping out of
his chest, but he seemed to have recovered. And that was because inside his
armor, the painkillers were flooding his blood stream like a tsunami. He peered
around the room calmly, appearing to take in the situation with statesman-like
clarity, but the truth was he needed the moment to clear his head of the drugs.

     Lantern crackled in his HUD.
“Sir, the Hollow has
located Stealth. He can lead you to her.”
The Hollow burned to life right
in front of him.

     Revolution pointed to the hologram. “Spider, Neuro,
follow it to Stealth. Get her out of there. You have two Guards at her door,”
he said, looking at the feed coming in from Lantern’s Hollow.

     “And, Lantern, we’re blown here. So blow it out of the
sky,” Revolution said.

    
“Yes, sir.”

Lantern
was invisible in the night sky, but he had a clear view of the
USS Delaware
on the horizon. It was a good ten miles away from him and it still appeared
huge.

     Lantern hit the button on his RDSD and sent the
digital detonation signal to all sixteen MagCharges that were spread out across
the
Delaware
’s
metal topside.          

     They exploded as one. Sixteen simultaneous blasts,
each capable of taking down a twenty-five story building—the most powerful
MagCharges there were. The top of the great machine was simply blasted away in
a giant starburst of flame as an enormous ball of fire shot up into the night
sky, illuminating the rain in an awesome and terrible sight.

     The charges had been set according to an old plan
originally drawn up by John “Saratoga” Bailey, who, of course, had gotten
access to the secret design specs of the ship. Bailey had figured the Suns
would go up against the
Delaware
sooner or later, and as was his usual
habit, he had already devised a plan to destroy it.

     Bailey’s plan placed the charges across the top of the
ship so that when the roof blew, it would send chunks of burning debris raining
down into the lower compartments. Even if the initial blow was not catastrophic—and
as Lantern peered out the cockpit window at the burning behemoth on the
horizon, he thought it surely had been—the subsequent damage would do the trick.
And, since the drones all exited the ship from the topside, they too would be
taken out in the explosion.

     Just then a deep, ominous boom thundered out from deep
inside the belly of the ship and Lantern smiled. He wished so badly that Bailey
could have been there to see it.

Ward
and Drayger bounded out to rescue Rachel. They ran past the fallen guards, but
Drayger stopped short just as they reached the door.  He’d seen something none
of the others had.

     The last Guard’s gun with the luminescent bullets.

     Revolution had simply assumed it had been obliterated
by Sophia’s blast. But there it lay. Drayger snatched it up and ran after Ward,
never looking back.

     He damn sure had a weapon now.

     Ward and Drayger stepped over the comatose bodies of
the Guards, passed the stairwell, and headed down a long narrow hallway. The corridor
turned to the left up ahead of them. The Hollow faded from sight, and in
another second, they both saw a video feed from just on the other side of the
bend in the hall. They could see the two Guards at the cell door where Rachel
was being held. The Guards stood at the ready, weapons aimed in Ward and
Drayger’s direction, waiting on them. As soon as the two Suns turned the
corner, they were going to be blown to kingdom come.