Enemy One (Epic Book 5) (55 page)

“GET ’EM ON BOARD!”
Scott shouted at the top of his lungs, waving on his comrades as they ran up the hallway of
Hami Station
and toward the waiting
Pariah
, its rear bay door open against the open front door of the facility. Ahead through the smoke and sprinklers, the shapes of the interior team could be seen desperately making their way forward.

Yelling through the cabin speaker, Travis said, “I don’t have infinite ammo up here, get them in fast!”

Many from the ground team were heavily injured, namely David, Boris, and Lilan, all of whom were screaming in pain as they were being assisted by their comrades toward the
Pariah
. It was impossible to make out the extent of their injuries, but blood was everywhere. Scott had never seen Nightman armor torn through like that before. Whatever weaponry had struck them was well beyond the capability of standard E-35 assault rifles. This was something new.

Grabbing David by the shoulder as Valentin led him in, Scott assisted his friend to a seat. The former NYPD officer’s thigh was a mess—the bullets that had hit it had torn through his leg guards like a hot knife through soft butter. What
were
these weapons?

There was no time to truly wonder. The instant the last of the interior team was inside, Scott yelled to the young slayer, Pyotr, who was standing closest to the rear bay door button. “Raise the door!” As the slayer complied, Scott shouted for Travis to take the
Pariah
up. “Dust off,
now
!”

“With pleasure,” Travis said, engaging the vertical thrusters again as the cursed transport lifted from the ground.

Moving awkwardly through the troop bay, Scott cried out to everyone present. “Strap in and get ready to take off! Travis, what’s the status of Tiffany?”

Through the console comm, Travis called for the Superwolf pilot. “Tiff, where are you?”

*
      
*
      
*

TIFFANY WAS IN THE middle of a dogfight when Travis’s comm call came through.
“I cannot talk!”
the blonde screamed, yanking the stick and kicking back the throttle in a desperate attempt to yet again shake a hot-on-her-heels aggressor.

The Valley-Girl-turned-Superwolf-ace had spent the past ten minutes in the midst of an aerial melee, dodging javelin missiles, trident missiles, and the incessant spraying of cannon fire from her adversaries.

At the onset of this particular sky battle, the blonde had been outnumbered six-to-one, facing the additional four Superwolves and two Vindicators from
Hong Kong
. Against every odd, she’d managed to take out half of her opponents, downing a pair of Superwolves and one Vindicator, leaving her with the same number of both aircraft left to deal with. The battle, however, was not without blemish. Not only had she depleted her missile supply, but her Superwolf had taken its fair share of cannon fire. Though it wasn’t enough to knock out any critical systems, it was a brutal reminder that despite her abilities, she was not immune to being hit.

Just the same, for the first time in the entire battle, she
felt
like she was on the verge of having the upper hand. She’d used the dunes of the Gobi Desert below to out-maneuver the missiles that’d been fired at her, and despite the difficulty she was having shaking this one particular Superwolf from her tail, she’d slowly but surely been gaining momentum in the fight. Eventually, though, one of their shots would ring true, and the commandeered Superwolf would find itself spiraling out of control much like the ones she’d shot down herself.

As she went vertical yet again in an effort to lose the Superwolf behind her, Travis’s voice crackled through once more. “We’ve picked up the ground team! We’re on our way back to base now.”

“Roger that!” Tiffany shouted, yanking back on the stick and turning it to barrel roll and level off. Weaving left and right, she finally managed to shake the fighter at her tail.
“Finally!”
Switching to the enemy pilot’s frequency as she maneuvered herself to tail him, she screamed with rage, “You are
totally
dead!” Pulling the trigger, she peppered the Superwolf’s fuselage with bullet holes before it, too, weaved out of her sights.

*
      
*
      
*

“ALL RIGHT.” TRAVIS swung the
Pariah
’s nose to the north. “Hold on, everyone, we’re about to fly!”

Thank God.
As he held on tightly to a guard rail, Scott’s mind raced to grasp their situation. Donald Bell was dead. Lilan, David, Boris, and William were all seriously injured. But
Hami Station
was destroyed and they had the access codes for EDEN’s satellite network. That was the mission. That was what would keep their hopes alive. This had been a bloodbath—but it was about to be over. Considering what they’d just done and who’d they’d been up against, they were almost getting away easy.

Soon, they’d be home free.

*
      
*
      
*

LISA TIFFIN HAD SEEN everything unfold. The explosions of the satellite dishes, the engulfing of the three V2s, the catastrophic unraveling of a mission that, for Vector Squad, should have been easy. Despite her relatively new status as a Vector, she had never seen the elite fighting unit as caught off guard and flummoxed as this. Had she not been desperately trying to find a shot through the smoky haze below, she might have even found time to be embarrassed. But there was no time for that. Vector had been sucker-punched—but this fight was far from over.

The sniper had seen the Fourteenth’s Vulture dip down into the fog. She knew they were picking up their ground team. She knew the transport would rise again. Her sniper rifle was ready.

Lisa’s eyes were glued to where the Vulture had descended—looking for any sign that the transport was lifting off the ground: a landing light, the movement of smoke, the sound of a vertical thruster engaging. Anything that could be picked up from her distant perch. At long last, that sign came.

Emerging nose-up above the smoke, the Fourteenth’s transport rose like a phoenix, its vertical thrusters blasting fire beneath it as it came to a hovering standstill some forty meters off the ground. Just enough to let the ship’s pilot see through the fog. Just enough for a Vulture that was flying blind to get its bearings.

The
Pariah
pivoted in her direction, its shimmering cockpit glass reflecting what little sunlight could penetrate the smoke and dust. In mere seconds, it would blast off straight ahead, leaving
Hami Station
behind to burn as the outlaws slipped through Vector’s fingers. In mere seconds.

She’d have to be quicker.

Raising her sniper rifle, Lisa free-handed it from her perch on the tower. Her aiming eye peered through the scope, a second to spare to find its most vulnerable point. The one weakness that every Vulture possessed. The one thing that, if taken out, would slam the brakes on the outlaws’ escape.

As her crosshairs found her target, Lisa held her breath and squeezed the trigger.

Tuesday, March 20
^th
, 0012 NE

1619 hours

Hami, China

“JAY, SECURE THAT hacking kit!” Scott yelled, pointing back into the troop bay from his seat next to Travis. “If that thing breaks, we just did all this for—”

Crack!

Scott jumped as the sound rang out. Small pieces of some kind of debris tattered against his faceplate and body armor. Withdrawing his hand and whipping his head back around, he searched frantically for the source of what sounded like a
very
bad sound. It took but a half-second to find it. It was the windshield. Square in the center of the pilot’s side of the cockpit glass was a small, circular hole, cracks spindling out from its center. “What the hell is
that
?” he shouted. “Travis,” he looked at the pilot, “did someone just—”

The words
shoot us
never came out, for the moment Scott looked at Travis Navarro, he went rigid. Travis’s head was slumped over, the faceplate of his helmet shattered inward. Behind him, staining the entire back of the pilot’s seat, was blood and brain matter. Time stood still.

That blood is Travis’s. Travis just got shot in the head. Oh my God…

…Travis is dead.

The gravity of the moment lasted barely a moment before realization and emotion gave way to a horrible reality. Travis was dead. Their
pilot
was dead. No one was flying the
Pariah
!

“Oh my God!” Unlatching himself, Scott dove into the pilot’s seat—or at least as much as he was able—forcing himself into a position where he could awkwardly grab the controls.

Joystick moves, throttle goes!

That was all that Scott knew. Pulling the stick to the left, Scott’s stomach turned as the
Pariah
’s nose aimlessly rolled that direction. Behind him in the troop bay, the collective of operatives fell toward one side of the ship.

From the troop bay, a pained David yelled, “What the hell’s going on up there? Are you guys doing a barrel roll?”

“I need someone else in the cockpit right now!”
Scott yelled. Get higher. They
had
to get higher!
Vertical thrusters, vertical thrusters! Where are the vertical thrusters?
He had no idea. Leaning over Travis’s body, Scott pulled the joystick back, sending the
Pariah
’s nose pitching skyward.
Good enough!
Punching the throttle, the
Pariah
was suddenly sent rocketing ahead. Once again, the occupants in the back shouted in unified surprise.

*
      
*
      
*

AS THE FOURTEENTH’S Vulture burst with forward thrust and took off into the distance, Lisa pulled her head back from the scope and watched it streak away. There was no question that her shot rang true—she could tell by the drunken way the transport was swaying. Queuing up Chiumbo on her comm, the sniper from Essex said, “I just took out their pilot. The Fourteenth are flying lame.”

*
      
*
      
*

THIS WAS NOT GOOD! Contorting his body to clumsily unlatch Travis from the pilot’s seat, Scott kept one eye on the sky and one on the joystick. With every second that passed, Scott found himself fighting to course correct in order to keep the ship going in a straight line—and each correction seemed a bit too much. All he knew was that they were going up at about a forty-five degree angle. Again, he screamed back into the troop bay,
“I need someone up here—now, now, now!”

It was Becan who burst through the cockpit door. “Wha’ the hell is goin’—” When the Irishman saw Travis’s body, he gasped.

“Get him out of the seat, get him out the seat!” Scott said, shoving Travis’s body to the side as best he was able.

Snatching Travis by the armpits, Becan dragged him out, freeing up the pilot’s seat. For the first time, he was able to look ahead as Travis would’ve. The very first thing he saw—and felt—was the bullet hole. Wind was whistling through it at speeds the glass probably wasn’t designed for.
I have to go slower or this glass is going to shatter.
Gripping the throttle again, he said, “Hold on!” He pulled it back to the half-way point, as the forward thrust of the transport immediately dropped off—fast. Becan was flung into the clean part of the glass with Travis’s body, while Scott once again tried to level the ship off.

“Wha’ the bleedin’ hell happened?” asked Becan as he struggled back to a stand with the fallen pilot. “Is he
dead
?”

“Yes, he’s dead!” Scott pointed to the copilot’s seat. “Get his body in the back then sit in that vecking chair!”

Becan sounded outright panicked. “Oh, God!” Nearly falling back through the cockpit door, he released Travis’s body at the precipice of the troop bay entrance, where the ship’s forward momentum took over, sending the pilot’s corpse flying back into the masses.

“Holy veck!” said Jayden. “Is Travis
dead
?”

As soon as the Texan said it, Boris’s head spun in that direction.
“Travis?”
When he saw the pilot’s body, the technician inhaled sharply.
“Travis!”

Scott shouted to Becan,
“Shut the door and sit!”

Slamming the cockpit door shut, the Irishman did as he was told, practically falling into the copilot’s seat as he struggled to strap in. “Wha’ the hell happened?”

“Someone shot him! A sniper, someone. They shot him in the head!” They were wasting time on the already-known. “We gotta fly this ship!”

Becan started, then stared at him.
“We?”

“Who the hell else is gonna fly it, Becan?”

“But I don’t know how to fly a bleedin’ Vulture!”

This felt like they were stalling. Were they stalling? What exactly
was
stalling? “I don’t either, but if we don’t figure out, this is gonna be a really short flight!”

Becan searched frantically across the control panel. “Wha’s what in here? Is there an autopilot?”

“I don’t know! I don’t even know if it works.” The
Pariah
had been stripped of virtually every internal component by General Thoor. Scott had no idea what the ship could or couldn’t do. “Look in the glove box. Grab the instructions!”

Looking in every direction, Becan asked, “Does this thing
have
a glove box?”

Scott spared a glance to Becan’s seat, where indeed there was no glove-compartment-equivalent to be seen. “A sleeve, a pocket, an anything where Travis might keep the instructions!”

“I don’t think Travis needed to read the bleedin’ instructions!”

“
Veck
! Find something. Figure something out!”

Reaching forward, Becan pressed one of the buttons on the console. Several indicator lights started to flash, and he jumped back.