Titanium (Bionics) (10 page)

Seeing as how the rest of us don’t have impenetrable skin, I whip out my comm. device and quickly put in a call to
Jenica.

“Swan, this is
Janner. We have a problem.”

Jenica’s
voice crackles over the line and I quickly turn the volume down so that the M.P.s can’t overhear. They’re nowhere near close enough, but one can never be too safe.

“I’m kind of busy here,
Janner!” Jenica snaps, her voice tinged with annoyance and strain. The sound of the Hovercraft’s weapon and the hum of hover bikes zooming through the air fills our frequency with background noise.

“Just thought you’d want to know these bastards have an Annihilator out here,” I say casually. “No big deal.”

“Shit,” Jenica yells as she fires again. “We’ve got to find a way to take it out! What is your position?”

“A few hundred y
ards from where you are, in a southeastern direction. I’ve got eyes on the big boy; they’re wheeling it toward you now. Sol has eyes on it from the sky so I think I’ll see what she’s got in mind. Just wanted to give you a heads up.”

“Roger that,
Janner, do whatever you have to. Take it out. Now!”

The line closes off and I immediately pull up Blythe’s frequency. “What do you think, B?”
I ask, watching as the Annihilator creeps through the underbrush, slowly making its way to the clearing. I’m separated from it by several feet of brush and trees, so I continue watching its progress from relative safety.

“Rosenberg here,” Laura says from the other side of the comm. device. “We’ve got a plan, but we’ll need your help.”

“Go ahead, I’m open to any ideas that don’t involve us getting fried by that thing.”

“I need you to catch Blythe. I’m going to fly as low as I can and she’s going to jump to you. Then I’m going to crash this thing into the Annihilator.”

My eyes widen at her crazy-but-genius idea. “Are you nuts? You’re going to get yourself killed!” I hiss over the line.

A feminine laugh filters through before Laura says, “Kid, when the blasts hit in ’06, I took
a six inch shard of glass to the chest, and so much shrapnel they had to replace my tits with a metal plate and my heart with one that has a V-6 engine. I’ve already cheated death once— I think I can do it again. This isn’t a kamikaze, okay? I’ll jump at the last second, once I’m sure the bike is aimed at the Annihilator.”

I don’t like
it; the risk of losing Laura is too high. In the short time I’ve know her, I’ve become attached and I want her on our team permanently.

“Use you
r head, kid,” she says when I am silent for too long. “Even if you lose one man, it’s worth it to save the rest of you from getting your faces melted off. Trust me.”

She hasn’t steered me wrong yet, so I’d be an ass to ignore her plea for trust.

“All right, Rosenberg, you’re up. I’m about a hundred yards from the target now and they’re approaching the clearing. If we’re going to do it, we need to do it now.”

“I see you,” Laura says just as the hum of a hover
bike’s engine grows louder. “Heads up.”

I have about two seconds to react before Blythe’s body comes hurtling at me out of the sky
. I catch her and we both go hurtling into the underbrush. I turn to my back so that I take most of the impact, bringing Blythe down on top of me as we skid across the dirt and brambles below. I barely have time to register the sting of branches scoring my back through my t-shirt before Laura’s bike comes whizzing out of the sky at full speed, aimed right at the Annihilator.

The M.P.s scatt
er like cockroaches, all but two of them getting out of dodge in time. An orange ball of flame billows upward, followed by thick black smoke, as Laura’s aim proves true. I swiftly switch me and Blythe’s positions, placing her under me and covering my head as shards of metal and fiberglass rain down in a cloud of smoke, dirt and debris. I flinch as a shard of falling shrapnel embeds itself in the back of my shoulder, but I remain in my position until I am sure most of the falling wreckage has cleared. When I lift my head, a flaming hunk of metal rests where the annihilator used to be. What’s left of the bike lies in pieces around the now useless weapon and the bodies of two M.P.s are in just as many bits on the ground.

“Did she make it?” Blythe asks, reminding me that I’ve got her pinned to the ground. I stand and give her a hand up, brushing my clothes off and ignoring the shooting pain running up and down my arm from the shrapnel. Whatever is in my shoulder is in deep and hurts like hell.

“I don’t know,” I rasp between deep breaths of smoky air. The ash and smoke are so thick, I can barely see. I am unprepared for the attack, but Blythe is not. By the time I realize the two M.P.s that survived the blast are on us, Blythe has stunned one with her gun, and smashed in the face of the other with her bionic arm.

“Nice,” I mumble with a nod of thanks.

“It’s the least I can do after you let me use you as a human shield,” she jokes, nudging me with her elbow.

“Ah,” I groan, flinching on contact.

“What’s wrong?” she asks, grabbing me by the arm and turning me to inspect my shoulder. Her gasp confirms what I already suspected. “It’s in deep,” she says as she gently pokes at the skin around the chunk of metal sticking out of my back. “I don’t think I can pull it out by hand.”

“Let’s not try it then,” I say, instinctively inching away from her searching hands. “
I’ll be okay for now.”

“Are you kidding me?
That’s barely a scratch,” jokes Laura’s voice from behind me. I turn to find her striding toward us through the trees, her once shiny chest plate now charred and blackened. A nasty burn covers the left side of her neck and her face is stained with ash, but a huge grin is spread across her face.

“You’ll live and so will I,” she says as she inspects her ARX for damage.

I laugh as we turn and tramp back through the woods, back toward the clearing. “Rosenberg, two, Death, zero.”

Dax
Janner, Blythe Sol, and Laura Rosenberg

Memphis Hideout of Restoration Resistance

August 18, 4010

6:30 am

By the time we reach the clearing, there have been losses on both sides, with the majority of those being on the side of the M.P.s. While the ones hiding in the tree are of concern, it’s the three massive tanks firing
at the hovercraft that pose the biggest threat. If we can take them out, we’re home free.

The Rejects have arrived, along with the others that came in on foot and I see them mixed in with our own, fighting ruthlessly. I spot the guy with the bionic arms, swinging down from his perch in a tree and landing on the back of a tank before grasping the head of the M.P. manning the turret and snapping his neck like a twig.

“No!” I bellow, racing toward the tank and leaping up onto the top of it with him. Monkey Arms frowns at me as I push one of the M.P.s out of his grasp and stun him with my ARX before taking down three others in the same way.

“What’s your problem, man?” Monkey Arms asks, his face a mask of rage and bloodlust.

“My problem is, we don’t kill unless we have to. I thought I made that perfectly clear to you and your band of freaks. Taking lives is an action we save for desperate situations. You purposely broke that man’s neck when you could have just as easily knocked him out!”

“Take it easy, mate,” says Baron from the ground as he head
-butts one of the M.P.s into unconsciousness, cracking through the fiberglass front of the guy’s helmet with his metal-domed head. “Joe here’s just having a bit of fun.”

Ignoring them both, I jump d
own into the tank’s turret. “Rosenberg, you know how to drive one of these things?” I ask as she runs by, her ARX firing into the trees. Her eyes widen and she grins.

“You bet your ass I do.”

I nod. “Good. You drive, I’ll shoot.”

Laura jumps into the driver’s seat below me and
steers me toward one of the other tanks, which is parked a few hundred yards away, still firing on the hovercraft. Jenica returns fire from her place at the controls. The tank bounces over uneven ground, but is swift as we approach the second tank. I fire a warning shot, hoping to scatter some of the M.P.s before I blow the thing to smithereens. One is all I give them, though; I uphold the Professor’s peaceful Resistance mumbo jumbo, but only to a certain point. I’m ready to go home and these sons of bitches are in my way.

I let loose with everything in the tank’s arsenal and within seconds, the tank is blown sky high, flipped upside down with smoke billowing from its engine. A few bodies lay in the w
reckage, but those that remain are merely stunned by the members of our team who have been lying in wait for this moment.

Laura turns toward the third tank, but
Jenica’s already on it, the hovercraft’s weapon blowing holes into the tank’s tough exterior. I add my weaponry to hers and take out the second tank, rendering it as useless as the first.

Now left without their tanks and their precious Annihilator, the M.P.s are turning tail to run, disappearing into the woods in the opposite direction of the hideout. Laura and I leap from the tank and give chase, stunning as many of them with our
ARXs as we can. Blythe, Blade, Spikes, Monkey Arms, and all the others join us, and pretty soon, every last one of them is gone.

A cheer goes up from the crowd
, our victory sweet after hours of wondering if we’d ever make it out alive. I scan the crowd, counting those that remain, sad to see that we have lost many members of our security team, but knowing that it is necessary. In the end, those who remain at the hideout are safe because of our sacrifices. I notice that we’ve lost two of the Rejects and while I can’t say I care too much for any of them, I can see the sadness in the eyes of those that remain. Their brotherhood is as strong as ours, so I know that Baron, Spikes, and even Monkey Arms are in mourning as well.

Jenica
exits the craft and Gage jumps down from his perch on top, and the two head in our direction. I try not to let it show, but my gut is knots as I watch Gage rush forward and crush Blythe in his arms.

“Thank God you’re okay,” he says as he holds her away long enough to look her over before hugging her again.

“Me?” Blythe laughs. “You’re the one we were all worried about. I’m glad you made it out.”

“You did
good, Janner,” Jenica says as she steps between me and Blythe and Gage. Thank goodness too, because I’m about three seconds away from giving into the impulse I’ve felt since meeting Gage and kicking him square in the face. I focus on Jenica and try not to stare at them over her shoulder as they talk in hushed tones.

“Hey, this is the person you should be thanking,” I say, grabbing Laura as she walks by. “
Jenica Swan, this is former Army sergeant Laura Rosenberg. She was an integral part in helping keep the hideout safe, as well as getting rid of the Annihilator. We were lucky to have her on our side today.”

The two women shake hands and Laura smiles warmly.
Jenica, of course, keeps her stoic expression, a stony mask she hardly ever takes off.

“Nice to meet you,”
Jenica says as her hand drops back down to her side, “and thank you for all you’ve done. We should get moving before they come back with reinforcements. I wouldn’t be surprised if they had a hovercraft or two nearby. We still have over a hundred people to load up before we can lift off.”

“I’ll ride ahead and get everyone ready,” Laura volunteers, already throwing one leg over the seat of a hover
bike. “We’ll be at the entrance and ready to board quickly. Dax had us stockpile food and supplies too, so if we have time, it might be good to load that up.”

Without giving us time to answer, Laura is off and whizzing over the trees, leaving the rest of us to board the hovercraft. I turn to find the Rejects standing on the outskirts of our group
and am glad to see that they don’t appear interested in coming with us, which takes the task of telling them they aren’t welcome on board our craft squarely off of my shoulders.

“You’re a good leader and a strong fighter, mate,” says Baron as he steps forward and extends his hand toward me.