Chapter 25 Curtain Fire

Background color
Font
Font size
Line height

The scent of phantom rainfall tricked the senses while Jessica and Sub Terra soared toward the storm. Faceless tides of wind braced every passenger on deck, their grimaces lit under the red diodes throughout the cabin: an ensemble of determination, anxiety, and fear. And just outside, outlined in the dark, an array of airships bobbed and weaved across the night sky.

There was a taut rope over and underneath the cabin floor. "Is something pulling that?" Jessica asked when a hand suddenly sprouted.

"Hey!" Two men grabbed hold of the hand and pulled Shannon's body up. Jessica nearly dropped when she saw her friend pant on the floor, crouched.

"That was freaken wild!" Shannon gasped.

On the verge of pulling her hair out, Jessica stammered, "What's your malfunction, Shannon? This is—it's a dangerous place to be. Hija-su-pinche-madre-fock-en-mother-of-a-cyber-loving-bitch-face-fuck-is-wrong-with-you?"

Shannon grimaced. "I wasn't going to let you guys go it alone!"

"We aren't alone!" Valerie retorted. "We've got a big ass group of trained people with guns!"

The grim eyes in Raptor's helmet said as much as Jessica expected. "We're locked onto our course," he said matter-of-factly. "There's no way to get off." As hard as she wanted to protest, nothing could be done. She would do the same in Shannon's shoes, but this wasn't some tour to survey from the sidelines. Better to be down there, indoors and away from the storm.

New Sumer darkened underneath her swerving field of vision. From a sea of neon to a checkerboard of lights to nothing but a series of flickers in the dark, the entire city vanished. Raptor handed Jess an earpiece, and Beelz's husky voice came through, to answer the question on her mind.

"Thanks to our agents, the city's power grid is offline. But Goliath won't be, not for long, just long enough to facilitate our breach into their headquarters."

Monarch's voice entered. "Lynx delivered on her word. We caught Asgard with their pants down in the forest, and thanks to their fleet, the city's defenses didn't tag us. Malvis is out of our hair, and the emergency broadcast should have cleared the target area of civilians. But that was the easy part. We're in for the fight of our lives, so stay frosty and watch each other's backs."

"Four minutes, thirty seconds," said Amon. "That's your window to breach. Per the plan, Pisces will commence the attack on the 75th level." The sound of finger snaps followed in the background.

"Expect the brunt of their resistance on the top levels," rejoined Beelz. "We'll have eyes on the landing pad, in case they try to extract VIP cargo. Good news is they're not expecting us. Advance teams, once the floors are clear, our secondary objective is the extraction of essential data. 

"Lynx, you'll be dropped in as soon as it's clear. Aquarius and Scorpio will neutralize 77."

Jessica pressed her hand to the microphone. "And where will you be, Beelz?"

"I will be two steps ahead."

She has her own plans.

The key to keeping her friends safe, Jess realized,  was keeping herself focused. At the very least, Valerie looked ready for the storm ahead. Homegirl's visor slid upward and revealed a face of loyalty and resolve, and no make-up for once, like on Shannon.

Raptor stepped in the middle of the cabin. "Pisces, Keep it tight! This is the chance we've been waiting for, so remember your training. No heroics. Watch the person next to you and keep your eyes on the prize. " He approached Jessica and Shannon, handing each of them a vest because he'd accept nothing less than their protection. Though she winced to admit it, Jessica was glad it was him and not Dexter at the head of the pack.

On Shannon, the vest expanded and unfolded into micro tiles over her joints. Handling the vest in the same manner, Jessica noticed eagerness on everyone's faces. And before they could betray a breath of grief, it began.

Overhead, the dark form of Goliath conquered the horizon. Incomparable to any other structure in New Sumer, the silhouette bore into their vision like a black hole, the airships like flies to its industrial mass ready to swallow them whole. Its magnificent base wedged outward like a pyramid, while the center floors erected upward until they pierced the night sky. Between heaven and earth, it could hold its own microcosm of secrets, which they couldn't hope to unravel in one night. The incarnation of darkness and presence, intertwined, awaited them.

Over a dozen airships split off into several vectors, each assuming its unique altitude and position around the gargantuan building.

"All squads report in," Monarch started.

"Taurus is a go."

"Scorpio is a go.

Raptor pressed his comm. "Pisces is a go."

"Gemini is a go," said Beelz.

The black vest quickly snapped together under Jessica's red. She fastened her goggles to the sound of prayer nearby, listening as the rest of the squads sounded off. 

"Surely He will deliver you from the snare of the fowler, and from the deadly plague. His wings you will find refuge."

"Orion is a go."

His faithfulness is a shield and rampart...

"Aquarius is a go."

I will not fear the terror of the night...

"Leo is a go."

... or the arrow that flies by day...

"Sagittarius is a go."

...the plague that stalks in darkness,

"Capricorn is a go."

...or the calamity that destroys at noon.

The airship hovered outside of the 75th level, pausing in a realm between space and time – Time simply failed to pass at its normal rate. Suspense encapsulated Raptor as he lifted a large gun with a foregrip and eight cylindrical cartridges. Jessica had played enough video games to recognize a grenade launcher when she saw one.

"Commence Operation Curtain Fire."

Raptor fired the first shot. A high-velocity shell punched a hole in the glass, and more crackles ensued from every single airship. Fiery explosions would dot Goliath's surface, resonating like thunder in the wake of a thousand shards. Visors down, the operatives throughout separate latitudes latched onto cables and jumped from the decks and into the breach. Raptor went first, followed by Valerie.

Jessica positioned herself on the edge of the deck for a better view, then peered through the smoke using thermal vision.

"Floor 75 is occupied by several unknowns!" she said. "The level below that is empty!"

"You can see what's going on?" said Shannon.

"I can."

Pisces' airship began patrolling the exterior. It circled the squads' advance every step of the way, while carnage of varied degrees echoed from within. When Raptor, Valerie, and the team touched boots to the concrete maze, Jess committed their thermal impressions to memory. Their forms quickly stomped to the other end of the floor, across blown office space, training their rifles around every corner. A single unknown humanoid remained, and as the team advanced closer, the individual raised a pistol. Raptor fired a single shot that dispatched the unknown quantity.

"75 clear," he said into the mic.

Blood had been spilled. Instead of dwelling, Jessica upturned from the gunfire to Beelz's team on the 80th floor, adjusting the X-ray sensor until she noticed something else. "There are multiple Azareans on 77," she said. "I think they're expecting you, Raptor."

"Copy, Lynx. Raider 5!"

A breath of turbulence, then a gunship hovered into her 2:00 field of view. Its silhouette froze before its hull-mounted minigun ignited into a blue flame, a deafeningly loud volley. Almost looking away, Jessica watched the Azareans on 77 get torn to pieces. When the volley ended, Raptor and his team diligently proceeded up the stairs, while an airship reinforced the room with another squad through the shattered windows. 

Two souls managed to survive the airship volley, their bright yellow outlines cowering on the floor in fear. Jessica pressed her microphone and spoke fast. "You've got two people who I think are non-combatants, Raptor."

"All the corpses belong to Goliath internal security," he replied, angling over the deceased. Further inward, he reached the cowering people Jessica mentioned. "Two civilians. Standby..."

The room lights powered on. Their return cranked Jessica's nerves into overdrive as a rotating turret lowered from the center of the ceiling and set its sights on Raptor's group. She blinked.

"Geddown!"

Raptor and his people dove for cover, but two members were immediately carved by a barrage whose lethal cadence matched a bell chime swooning a thousand miles an hour. 

"We're pinned down!" Raptor cried.

In the middle of the chaos, Jessica activated the Vambrace. "Target that turret, Babel!" She pressed herself against the rear of the cabin to compensate for the airship's motion.

"I've locked onto its targeting parameters," Babel said.

Jessica tapped a few final keys. "Shut down!"

The horrifying noise stopped. Jessica found her feet, took position beside Shannon, and surveyed the building. Several seconds passed before the dust settled and squad Pisces peeked to inspect the remains. Raptor crouched over his fallen subordinates, checking their pulses out of mere habit.

Jessica couldn't stop drumming her foot. "Val—"

"Checking the room now," Valerie cut off. She emptied her gun clip into the ceiling turret and watched it dilapidate into scrap. "You should be able to come down now."

"Right."

Fingers clasped, Shannon prayed in silence.

"Get ready," said the pilot. A soaring screech then skipped across the sky and collided into the back of the airship. Fast and fiercely, the world spun. The pilot lost control. "We've been hit! Mayday, mayday!"

Jessica and Shannon clung for dear life. A swirl of scenery passed outside the cabin doors, and turbulence squeezed their muscles until they ached. This couldn't be the end. 

"Land on 75! 75!" Jess cried.

"Hang on!"

In battling physics, the ship's beak tipped toward Goliath HQ. In battling the joystick, the pilot eventually rocked and swerved into the 75th floor. Rubble and debris quickly rained every tumble of the way, but Jessica held on even after it hurt.

"Raider 1! Raider 1! What's your status?"

***

A resonant hiss resounded in her ears. When everything stopped swirling in a haze, Jessica inched her head above the overturned surface of the cabin. She was still alive. Her first concern, Shannon, had already risen from the metal husk, leaning out of the crooked doors, first, to survey the room.

"Everyone okay?" she said.

"Part of me might be," moaned the pilot, trying to lift himself out of the tilted cockpit.

Jessica groaned and dizzily hauled herself over the side of the cabin, nearly falling flat when the bottom of her feet hit the ground. Then, she rockingly tip-toed over to Shannon, which was a matter of eluding the glass and the flames. Regaining her senses, she leaned over the dented beak of the airship and helped pull the pilot's arms. His torso and legs eventually slid out of the steel frame.

"Thanks!" he panted.

"Can you walk?" said Shannon.

"I think so."

Eyes pulsating in every direction, Jessica veered from the pilot and crushed her knees for a second to breathe. "You managed to land without killing us, so we seriously owe you."

"Consider us even when you're done with this place."

"Jess!" Down the stairwell stepped a lean operative whose visor revealed Valerie's face. She canted from a frown to a smile of relief. "Are you guys alright?"

Jessica glanced at the ceiling, mind on the battle above and the surprises that lay in store. Then she lowered her gaze to the layer of sweat on Shannon'. "You okay here?"

"I'm alright. Why?" she replied.

"Whatever shot us down came from above." Jessica jogged across the room. "We can't afford to slow down." As she scurried up the stairs, Valerie nearly stumbled in watching her back.

A disarrayed, destroyed junkpile: Glass and splintered laboratory space littered their surroundings, the resinous scent of smoke proliferating the 77th floor. Raptor stood in the middle of it, over the sparks of the turret heap. Nearby, a stranger in a white lab coat was cowering in his broken nook, the subject of Raptor's interrogation. Alongside the lab coat stood a calm stranger in a blue jumpsuit. The scientist was slipping peeks at the black pillar on her left, an ovular piece somehow undamaged by the combat.

"What's inside?" said Raptor.

The scientist hesitated, so Raptor looked to the mustached Janitor whose jaded frown disguised any signs of trauma. "I wipe the floors," he gruffly complained, "and I'm quitting after today. Someone else cleans whatever's inside that." That's when a Pisces operative stepped closer, ready to snap.

"The lieutenant's talking to you, Azarean lapdog!"

"Getting him excited is zero percent effective!" Jessica retorted. "We need answers, not some scientist dude quaking in his boots."Raptor glanced at them both before he fixed on his subordinate.

"Keep an eye out."

As the rattled operative begrudgingly started patrol, Jessica crouched beside the scared scientist. "I need you to assist with a few security protocols before a bunch of innocent people become victims," she said. "I know about Goliath's secrets – Biogenetics, Artificial Synthesis, and Mutant Biopsy are just a few. There's no accounting for the sum of their weirdness, so do any of my mentions relate to whatever the hell's inside those black walls?"

The scientist, slowing his breath, nodded. "I'm a biologist," he muttered. "I study terrestrial fungi and bacteria, then extrapolate their viral potential. We synthesize certain values from our experiments that, in scarce circumstances, lead to weaponization."

"English would make this go a lot faster," said Raptor.

Jessica leered over her shoulder. "Goliath is studying biological warfare."

"It is not pre-determined!" the scientist defended. "Inside that safe room, you will find canisters to unique depressants and hallucinogens. A unique batch. We wouldn't house true biochemical agents in the city."

"That's... good to hear?"

"They're still worth looking into," said Raptor. "Can we get in?"

"These were synthesized for Azarean subjects," the scientist hesitated. "But if you insist—"

"I insist."

Stumbling in stutters, the lab coat used his keycard to access the safe room. True to his word, the black walls slid above a transparent screen surface, to reveal a large pair of metal canisters shrouded in vapor. While Raptor examined the refrigerated environment, Jessica tapped the scientist's shoulder.

"What did you mean when you said these are meant for Azareans?"

"Once they graduate final testing, the strains will be mass-produced," he answered. "That's what they told us."

"Who's they?"

"Guys," Shannon called, rising up the stairs with the pilot around her shoulder, "are we there yet?"

"Medic, give that man first aid," said Raptor.

The closest operative untucked the pilot from Shannon's arms. "Don't worry, I have him," she said softly, then laid him aside and unlatched a medkit from her hardpack, and the pilot gave Shannon a bitter-sweet thumbs up in parting.

Raptor grabbed the scientist. "Do you keep records of your experiments?"

"Without an interface, all I have are my hand-written rambles in my desk." Unfortunately, a brief survey begot nothing but broken terminals and scattered debris. 

"We don't have time for this," Jessica drawled. 

Sweatily, the scientist reached under a charred cubicle and retrieved an oblong case, which he hand-delivered. Inside was nothing but a chip and scribbled sheets. 

"Equations," Jess muttered— handing the papers to Raptor—but kept the chip. "Kudos if you can solve them. But later." She started toward the next set of stairs. In turn, Raptor delivered the notes to his nearest subordinate. 

"Lynx, wait, you don't know what's up there!"

Ignoring any and all protest, her feet took her to the top, where at long last, she found a floor not utterly wrecked by the fighting. It even had that new room smell. 

When Raptor caught up to her, he let low his assault rifle and tapped his commlink. "Beelz, come in."

"Now's your window to extract any wounded," the woman replied.

"Where are you?"

No answer.

Jessica, meanwhile, explored the uninhabited space of carbon fiber racks and sleek, streak-free tables. None of the low seats had legs. The rows of silicon terminals—no screens, just dark pads—touched a pathway that split two sections of the room. Running parallel to the terminals, a glass screen delineated a series of dimly lit storage lockers on the other side. 

When Shannon and the other operatives arrived, Raptor gave the signal to investigate. The squad began a vigilant search, scanning every nook through their weapons' sights. Stung by curiosity, Jessica reached the round panel on the cusp of the glass screen.

"Scan anything hanky, Babel?"

"A standard fingerprint algorithm," he replied.

"Looks like an armory. Maybe, we can just break the glass," Raptor said.

"And risk triggering some kind of payload?" Jess scowled. "Nuh-uh."

" If you can crack it, by all means."

"If you'd like," started Valerie, "I can cut off one of the hands below us and see if that works."

Ignoring Valerie's suggestion, Jessica powered the Vambrace. "Accessing all previous entries," said Babel, preceding streams of violet over the interface. Jessica manipulated them with simple finger strokes, sifting through a sea of alphanumerics.

"I realize now, Azareans are either amazingly ignorant or arrogant," Jessica hummed. "They write their administrative functions with their own language, and think the grace of its complexity alone would stop a human from accessing their TPUs." Everyone gaped within a snapshot of cluelessness. Contradictorily, Jessica hummed in whimsical concentration. With sequence after sequence that she swiped, the Vambrace incised a set of neon fingerprints on the door pad.

"Access granted."

"I really need to get one of those," Raptor and Shannon said together.

With proximity, the closest locker became transparent, revealing the contents of an Asgard uniform. A weapons rack extended from the wall; pistols on the bottom, rifles on top. They were in an armory. A second rack extended. Empty. Perhaps because the weapons lay downstairs, next to their dead users. Jessica wasn't interested in weapons, however. The lockers at the other end of the armory grabbed her attention. Upon approach, their screens revealed metallic slippers. "Take a look at this," she said. Curiosity placed a pair in her hands, and so she promptly sat down and removed her shoes

"Girl, you sure you want to do that?" said Shannon.

"I have a healthy curiosity, Shannon. If these are what I think they are, they're worth taking."

"Slippers?"

The cryptic footwear slipped over Jessica's socks, and her standing upright triggered the metal's sequential fold. Seamlessly, several layers adjusted around the girth of her feet and ankles. Once the metal boots attached themselves, she softly kicked the floor. Nothing happened.

"Tag it and bag it," said Raptor. Everyone else inside the armory grabbed one item from every unique display.

"No need to let it go to waste, right?" Jessica

You are reading the story above: TeenFic.Net