Elven Lies (Court of Rebellion #3)

30. Chapter 30

30

S he didn’t see how things could get any worse.

While the battle raged everywhere and thick black smoke stung her nose and eyes, Rebecca ran through every possibility in her mind with the practiced speed of crafting strategy under even the most disastrous circumstances.

First and foremost, they had to finish what they started in freeing the prisoners and save as many of them as possible before it was too late. Whatever happened after that would also be on Rebecca’s hands, but she’d be damned if she let Harkennr’s victims suffer even more of a defeat on her watch.

“Get the civilians out of here!” she shouted before stepping in front of a terrified troll woman running aimlessly across the field of battle. Rebecca stepped forward to intercept the other woman, grabbed her by the shoulders, and looked her dead in the eye before pointing behind her. “Go straight back that way toward the road. Take as many as you can with you, but don’t stop, no matter what else happens. Understand?”

The troll woman’s mouth gaped open, and she started to stammer something in response, but it just took too long.

“That way!” Rebecca shoved the woman behind her and gave her another nudge in the right direction for good measure. “Go! Get out of here! Don’t stop!”

That was all the time she could spare before returning to the battle to offer cover fire while her operatives tried to do the same with any panicking civilians they could get their hands on.

But it wasn’t enough.

This was only getting worse, with the assault cannon spewing deadly lines of orange from the roof and all sense of order on the ground abandoned to the violence.

This was it, then, wasn’t it? The first Shade mission planned and executed to the best of their ability that these Shade teams still wouldn’t win because they were far too under prepared.

Rebecca had no time to mourn having made the wrong call. All she could do now was get as many civilians out of here and keep as many of her operatives alive for as long as possible. And, if offered the chance, to order a retreat that hopefully didn’t destroy them completely.

Before she could shout more orders to anyone, another deafening explosion ripped through the air. This time, though, it didn’t come from inside the warehouse.

Where was it?

Then the roar of multiple engines rose over the din of battle, followed by a bevy of automatic magitek rounds firing non-stop in the distance.

Rebecca kept firing herself, waving the panicking civilians toward her to usher as many of them as she could back toward the road.

Then a car horn blared. From around the northwest corner of the warehouse, a soft yellow light bloomed, growing stronger by the second as the deafening car horn only grew louder. With the squeal of tires and the churning roar of vehicle engines quickly approaching, the yellow light intensified.

Then a single vehicle Rebecca recognized as one of Shade’s barreled around the corner of the warehouse at a sharp turn, going way too fast. The rear tires squealed and fishtailed before the whole vehicle banked and drifted sharply to the left. The second it straightened out again without slowing, a convoy of three other large utility vehicles barreled around the corner next in hot pursuit.

The three utility vehicles careened into sight, one right after the other, each of them with multiple passengers firing weapons from inside the cab while a soldier on the back of each stood up top, firing mounted artillery at top speeds.

Right as the fleeing Shade vehicle took another sharp turn to throw its pursuers off course, the mounted artillery began a new assault. Weapons fire sprayed across the dirt and into the tree line as the gunners struggled to accurately perfect their aim.

Shade operatives on the ground shouted and dove away from their own vehicle hauling ass through the battle, swerving at all the worst times in all the deadliest directions.

During the short few seconds of the Shade vehicle barreling across the ground in a straight line before it changed directions, Rebecca got a brief but undeniably clear view of the driver.

It was Rowan.

What the hell was he doing up front with the bulk of the fighting? She’d told him to stay around back, where she’d fully expected him to go rogue anyway but in an entirely different way.

Not to bring even more of the fight up here to the front where they didn’t have the manpower or the ability to effectively deal with this new surprise.

Once the rest of her teams recognized the Blackmoon Elf behind the wheel, they all tried to divert their focus, firing on both the enemy targets still surging from the warehouse and now the three utility vehicles hurtling across the battlefield in pursuit of one of their own.

It was too much to handle all at once. No Shade team this size could accurately tackle the severity of a situation like this and come out of it victorious on the other side. They were totally screwed.

Rebecca fired at every Harkennr soldier in her line of sight, refusing to give up even when the odds were stacked unequivocally against them.

She exchanged fire with a warlock channeling his own magic through an augmented weapon for extra juice and noticed the next stream of blazing orange magitek cannon fire racing toward her across the ground, spraying up a constant eruption of upturned earth as it moved.

Rebecca dove out of the destructive path just in time, skidding across the ground on her chest and stomach, but the warlock wasn’t as quick to react.

His blood-curdling scream ripped through the air a second before the orange beam of light passed by where he’d just stood, obliterating him in half a second to leave nothing but the echoes of his scream lingering in the air.

Bruised and furious, Rebecca pushed herself to her feet and searched through the chaos again for the most immediate threat.

Finding Rowan in his misused getaway car was easy. He’d circled the front of the warehouse and now doubled back, the tires throwing up plumes of dirt as he fishtailed back and forth, his arms pumping the wheel this way and that to avoid Shade operatives while continuing the chase.

His vehicle hurtled dangerously close to a tall pole strung with electrical wire to power the warehouse. He swerved aside at the last second again and picked a new direction seemingly at random.

The constant, deafening rapport of gunfire from the pursuing convoy cut out for half a second as all three drivers desperately tried to avoid the pole and the power lines to get back on Rowan’s trail.

The driver of the first enemy vehicle fatally miscalculated and let out a terrified scream before ramming headfirst into the electrical pole.

The deafening crash rang out across the battle, joined by more shouts and the squeal of shredding metal. The vehicle’s occupants were thrown forward, their weapons scattered across the ground as driver and passengers flew from the cab like popcorn from a pan over the stove.

The gunner up top was equally unlucky and flew off in another direction before disappearing. His heavy artillery ripped free from its mount on the back of the scrunched utility vehicle, missed the pole altogether, and crunched to pieces against the building’s outer wall.

The second and third utility vehicles managed to escape, their drivers once more desperately redirecting their course to stay on Rowan’s heels as he zigzagged all around the warehouse like a madman.

“Get out of the way!” Tig bellowed, ushering Shade operatives away from the building’s west wall. “It’s going down!”

The grating squeal of ripping metal and snapping parts filled the air, joined by the thick twanging of live electrical wires snapping before they whipped in every direction, sparking and sputtering and threatening to set the entire battle ablaze.

Rebecca found herself momentarily frozen in awe as she watched the pole and all its lashing, sparking power lines like giant electric snakes fall sideways off its base. She looked up toward the assault cannon on the roof and couldn’t have looked away from the ensuing destruction even if she tried.

The pole and power lines picked up speed as they fell until the pole crashed down toward the roof too fast for anyone to escape. Including the soldier operating the artillery cannon up top.

He saw the threat bearing down on him at the last second, scrambled to get away, and disappeared beneath the heavy wood and metal crashing down on top of him with a deafening clatter.

The magitek cannon erupted beneath the crushing weight and all the live wires sparking down on top of it. The immediate explosion washed the entire battlefield in an inescapable blast of heat and concussive force.

Rebecca, all her operatives, and Harkennr’s forces on the ground were all thrown off their feet in the blast and scattered across the dirt. Even Rowan’s getaway car and the two utility vehicles bearing down on him wobbled off course beneath the blast, each of them tilting dangerously forward on two wheels before crashing back to the ground and skidding dangerously across the dirt.

For a moment, the entire battle came to a temporary standstill while everyone on the ground recovered and fought off the disorientation of such a concussive force.

Rebecca scrambled to her feet with the rest of them and couldn’t help one final amazed glance at the roof, which still propped the electrical pole halfway up despite the front southwestern corner still crumbling to pieces from the explosion.

By the Blood, she never would have expected Rowan’s insanity to give her teams the upper hand again. Even on accident.

A quick cheer from the Shade teams erupted in all directions before the firefight and sputtering clap of weapons fire returned.

The sound jerked Rebecca back to the present. She pivoted to open fire on more Harkennr soldiers careening toward her. They fell in quick succession, then she spun again to pinpoint the next part of the battle where she might be needed most.

The first thing she saw made her freeze, her gut clenching in horror.

Rowan cranked on the wheel again to veer sharply to the right. His vehicle drifted again across the dirt to switch directions as the top gunner of the closest enemy vehicle behind him opened fire with a wild spray of augmented rounds.

The shots would have found their mark in Rowan’s vehicle if he hadn’t veered off at the last second to reveal what had previously been in his path.

Maxwell fired his weapon at the enemy, covered in dirt from head to toe, terrifying with his furious snarl and the speed with which he took down the enemy.

Maxwell, standing directly in the enemy vehicle’s line of fire now that Rowan had swerved away.

A strobing silver round caught the shifter in the back of his shoulder and sent him stumbling sideways with a roar of pain. The first enemy vehicle continued after Rowan driving like a lunatic, but the third hadn’t stopped swerving out of control. The driver still desperately tried to course-correct in a panic.

Just not quickly enough.

“Hannigan!” Rebecca bellowed, but even that was too late.

As her shout burst through the air, the final enemy vehicle fishtailed out of control, heading straight toward Maxwell.

The shifter just stood there, more stunned than anything after having just been shot through the shoulder with an augmented round. He never saw the utility vehicle coming for him.

The sickening crunch and thump of the front bumper hitting him from behind and the sight of the shifter tumbling through the air like a lifeless stunt dummy that merely looked like him stopped Rebecca’s heart completely.

She couldn’t breathe.

Even when Maxwell’s body hit the warehouse’s exterior metal wall with deadly force and crumpled to the ground, she couldn’t breathe.

She hardly registered the battle around her anymore but took off toward Maxwell as fast as she could physically move her own body.

She didn’t hear the furious scream ripping from her throat as she surged forward, gunning down anything in her path that so much as moved.

She hardly noticed the growing whine and ensuing roar of a new powerful augmented weapon showering the battlefield with sparking purple rounds as one of the freed civilians who’d commandeered the weapon emerged from the warehouse to unleash holy magitek hell on his captors.

The only thing Rebecca saw was Maxwell lying in an awkward pile at the base of the warehouse’s western wall amidst the fractured remains of the heavy vehicle-mounted artillery machine.

All she felt was the searing burn in her lungs as she raced toward him, the aching pain in her legs that just wouldn’t move quickly enough, and the hot sting of tears welling in her eyes and blurring her vision while she just kept racing forward.

Then she was there, dropping to her knees in the dirt beside Maxwell’s motionless body.

How could this have happened? None of this was supposed to happen!

Rowan was supposed to stay back behind the warehouse to give her the perfect reason to banish him from Shade for sitting out the entire battle. No one was supposed to get hurt.

Maxwell wasn’t supposed to get hurt.

How could this have all possibly gone so fucking wrong?

Oblivious to the battle raging all around her, Rebecca reached for Maxwell, then froze and withdrew her hands.

Ancestors help her, this was bad. What had she done?