21. Phae
Phae
D ammit all to hell.
Everything I’d wanted to avoid was hitting me at once. Terrorists, Emmy Black’s annoying laughter, a kidnapper I’d happily leave for dead if Marc wasn’t with me. And our reunion was an argument. Terrific.
Jez reported they had nineteen live rounds left, plus a couple dozen blanks.
One of the three men in the house had tried to play hero, and now he was bleeding out from a chest wound.
Frank had been hit in the shoulder. Heath had a full magazine, but he also had a sobbing Serena to protect, and he was moving her away to safety, which none of us could argue with.
As for me, I had seven rounds in my primary weapon, another nine in my backup, and two civilians, one of whom was concussed.
Marc was looking at me funny. Priest and Mimi were allegedly twenty-five minutes away now, but they might as well be on Mars, and Storm reported at least sixteen hostiles were converging on my position.
So, just another Sunday, really.
And I had a plan. Of course I had a plan.
I unstrapped my backup and held it out to Marc, butt first.
“The only friendly with a dick in these parts is Heath. If you see any other man approach, shoot him.”
He stared at the pistol. “I can’t shoot a person.”
“Sure you can. Just block out the world around you and focus. Huck tells me you’re still reasonably proficient at hitting a target.”
“A target. A piece of paper. Not a living, breathing human being.”
“If you prefer, you can become a dead, rotting corpse.”
He turned away, running his hands through his messy brown hair. “Damn, Phae. What happened to you?”
“While you were busy playing an operator on the big screen, I was becoming one. Any more questions? Or do you want me to focus on neutralising the enemy?”
“I—” he started, then shut his mouth. Good move.
“I’m real glad I wrote my will before I came here,” KD said.
I kicked her in the shin, and she yelped. “Stop being so negative.”
“You should’ve planned your funeral too,” Marc muttered.
“Asshole.”
I might have failed at being a daughter, failed at being a sister, and failed at being a girlfriend, but I didn’t fail at doing my job.
With Storm acting as my eyes, I slid the crow out of my backpack.
She was bigger than the hummingbird, but she had to be thanks to her cargo.
I powered her up and settled in with the controller—which looked like the love child of a cell phone and a gamepad—while Marc examined the chamber on my gun.
Of course there was a round loaded in it. Did he think I was stupid?
“Do I have an exit?” Jez asked.
“Yup—they’re focused on Dusk right now,” Storm told her. “Marc’s the jackpot. What about your casualties?”
“One’s unsalvageable, the other is non-critical.”
“Can you get out on the east side?”
“There’s a window. Anyone in the mangroves?”
“One significant heat source, but I don’t think it’s human.”
“A crocodile?”
“More like a large monkey. I could take a closer look, but I’d lose visibility over Dusk.”
“Stay with the main target; I have it covered.”
Secretly, I was damn relieved Jez said that because she had Emmy as her sidekick and I had Marc. And Marc looked as if he was about to puke. Oh, gosh, so that heartfelt letter he’d written me saying he’d do anything— anything —if I’d just rethink our relationship came with a caveat? Who knew?
Storm was in my ear, giving me a blow-by-blow account of enemy movements as I settled against the tree trunk.
Five at your ten o’clock, moving east. Two skirting the clearing, five o’clock.
Either Emmy or Jez tagged another man by the house, carefully, because neither of them could afford to waste ammo.
I held the crow aloft and launched her on a wing and a prayer, fully aware this wasn’t the ideal situation for her first live test. There were too many hazards.
Not just the trees, but bullets flying all around.
She didn’t have to get in close—that was the job of her precious cargo—but I couldn’t deny I was nervous.
The crow was still a prototype. Eventually, we hoped to fully automate the targeting system, but for the moment, it still had manual checks and balances because nobody wanted to accidentally eliminate a civilian, did they? I glanced down at KD. Almost nobody.
Crows were fascinating creatures. Did you know they liked to pick up insect hitchhikers?
Mostly ants, because the ants shit formic acid onto their feathers to help keep them clean, but we’d decided to go with something slightly bigger.
I tapped the button to release the passengers.
This swarm wasn’t quite as benign as the one Storm had tried using to herd a turkey.
Eighty percent of the MAVs were hornets, loaded with plastic explosive; the remainder were the smaller mosquitoes, complete with snake venom.
Dice had extracted that herself—the menagerie she kept out back did serve some purpose, other than to freak the shit out of Tulsa.
And did you know the collective noun for a group of crows was “a murder”? The crow was our murder mothership.
Following Storm’s directions, I located the closest pair of hostiles on the crow’s camera and tagged them. Selected a weapon. The crow tracked its target and allocated a hornet. The hornet buzzed in, and I hit “yes” to clear the final safeguard.
There was no boom , more of a wet thwack , and sixteen became fifteen.
When an injury had temporarily forced Storm out of her beloved jets and into the drone program at Creech AFB, her biggest complaint was the lack of humanity. Death by drone felt too much like a video game.
Now I got it.
Oh man, I’d seen what a hornet could do to a watermelon, but this… The wannabe terrorist had lost his head and a good portion of his shoulder as well. And it barely felt real.
Not to me, anyway. His buddy froze mid-stride and opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came out, not before I hit him with another hornet.
“What’s that noise?” Marc asked. “What are they doing?”
“Trust me; you don’t want to know.”
Men began shouting. Running. Hornets hunted them as KD curled into the foetal position and wept.
So much death. And inside, I broke a little more too.
Thugs weren’t the only thing dying today; it was also the final nail in the coffin for my relationship.
Despite our differences, I’d always loved Marc.
I always would. And deep down, I’d always harboured a secret hope that when I aged out of doing what I did and he got sick of pretending for money, ditched whatever Hollywood trinket was sharing his bed, and took up painting again, we’d grow old together.
But now? Now he’d never look at me the same way again.
Thwack.
Another one gone.
Another piece of me shattered.
Maybe that was why I tunnelled in on myself? Why I focused on the screen instead of my surroundings? None of this is real. Hostiles were bugging out now, tripping as they scrambled through the undergrowth.
Thwack.
Thwack.
The crack of a gun came from close by, too close. In my peripheral vision, Marc stared at my Glock in horror, and beyond him, a body pitched forward out of the trees, landing in a crumpled heap.
Fuck.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“I just…I just…” he started.
I snatched the weapon out of his hand and scanned the trees, searching for danger. Nothing. No movement.
No sound.
Only Storm’s whispered, “Oh, shit,” in my ear.
KD’s sniffles.
My own heart as it hammered against my ribcage.
Then Jez, calm and steady. “Coming up behind you.”
And it was my turn to weep.