WingSpan (Taken on the Wing Book 1) (44 page)

“Interference getting weak, Rye,” Atom says. They hunker down half a block from the town hall in a shitty stand-off with a dozen Aphids. Atom brings his own type of class to the front lines. Smallish and wiry for a third gen, he comes off as nervous since he constantly licks his lips but he’s really just annoyed at his still knife. Atom claims Aphid blood feels good on his skin and since the bright green stuff soaks his knife hand, Atom must be in heaven.

“Fucking A,” Rye intones as he pulls out his tablet. Fifteen minutes earlier he sent Angel to the schoolhouse and five minutes after that he lost contact with Tong as he went after her.

“You think Angel did that?”

Rye’s stomach rolls at the thought. His last Comms Officer tried to eat them a clear path through the Aphid interference and in doing so gave away his position. The Aphids caught on to him long before Rye could scan the area and by the time they got to him the man was dead, hanging by his feet with his skin pooled around his head.

“She wouldn’t be that stupid,” he allows, more to reassure himself than anything else.

“Shit,” Atom breathes as he scratches his neck with his blade, smearing green all over his skin. Between the green blood and a streak of red from a cut on his head he looks like an evil candy cane.

Rye hides his disgust.

“Two Core transmitters, one faint but I can’t tell if it’s Tong or Angel. Static too heavy.” Rye smacks his tablet in a vain effort to improve the reception but this looks as good as it will get. Clever girl, Angel. She degraded their signal just enough and didn’t get greedy. One of the humans is in bad shape and whether it’s Tong or Angel it’s going to be a very bad day. He needs them both in his life.

The rough pop of an explosion to the south knocks Rye to his ass and not due to the shock wave. One of the human life signs blinks out.

Only the injured human remains on his display. Whatever blew in the schoolhouse changed his life forever by taking either his brother or Angel.

“Scarlet,” Rye calls and she looks up from Webber. The man has a round in his arm and isn’t in any trouble but he’s out until she stops fussing over him. “Now, south. Atom, you too.”

The three break away at a run as the rest of the team tightens up the line to make up for their absence. Aphid gunfire peters off and stops and Rye looks back to see his soldiers prepare to advance.

A section of the schoolhouse second floor topples inward and black smoke curls thick around the hole. As Rye ducks behind another building, he takes a moment to run his hands over his face. They still smell of
her
and he can only hope the readout on the tablet is wrong and unreliable. He has no trouble going through fifty undetected Aphids if it means Angel and Tong are okay.

God, she loves him and she’s braver than him for saying it. She’s damn good for a first gen or even a second for that matter and came very highly recommended. Much of her record was sealed, of course, since most operations are classified but the legendary and very senior Comms Officer who signed off on her assignment with Rye took the time to escort her to
Barrington Station
himself.

Now, Rye has to face the very real possibility Angel is dead or dying alongside his dying or dead big brother.

“—oing on, Rye?” Scarlet asks. She doesn’t even look up. Both arms sink elbows-deep in her med bag since she’s always taking stock of her supplies. Each clamp, bandage and med-tab plays on her giant mental board game and she’s a dozen moves ahead.

“Angel and Tong,” Rye breathes as they run the last block to the schoolhouse. “Ambushed inside.”

“Fuck,” Scarlet mutters, articulate and colourful. Her long red hair dangles half out of the knot she keeps at the back of her head and the smokey wind snakes strands around her shoulders.

The main hallway lays empty and Rye and Atom check the rooms for Aphids as quickly as they can, keeping Scarlet in the rear. Second door on the left opens to the small Aphid mainframe. It only takes a second to see that Angel isn’t there, only some of her hardware, and Rye signals to take the second floor.

Several smouldering chunks of debris litter the stairs but old damage marks the fire door at the bottom. Ivory enamel paint covers parts of the buckled and torn surface. Rye has seen it before in dozens of schools. Antibacterial and easy to keep clean. So much thought had gone into the properties but nobody ever made it another colour.

More charred bits cover the landing including an Aphid head. The three inch high pale green ridge running over the top lacks much of the flesh which once covered it and a small calibre round punched out one eye.

Angel.

Damn it, if she’d just stayed put...

There’s nothing but silence from the top floor and Rye nudges the head aside with his boot.

Atom kicks it off the landing. The head makes a solid thunk as it hits the wall above the blown out door and bounces twice at the bottom of the stairs.

The ceiling above opens to the sky and the harsh sun reveals a garish mix of Aphid parts and rubble. Some property of the natural light makes the green blood glow vibrantly in spite of the dust and smoke trapped by what remains of the walls. Angel’s knife rests hilt-deep in a green torso.

“One human life sign,” Scarlet mutters to her tablet and Rye nods his permission for her to get to work. His own tablet shows no active explosives. With the sun in their eyes they can’t see into the dark cavity ahead, the section of the second floor that still has a roof, but without Aphid life there’s no danger.

“Enough gunk to account for three greens,” Atom assesses. Rye thinks the same thing and as he strides after Scarlet he spots what’s left of at least two more. Both appear to have been killed in close combat then smeared across the floor and over the body that has the medic’s attention.

“Rye,” Scarlet calls. “Tong.”

Damn, where’s Angel? Maybe she wasn’t in the building when it went up.

Tong blinks as Rye kneels beside Scarlet and she assesses him. The panel on her medical tablet strobes green. Tong’s heart beats strong and more bandages than even Scarlet could have done already bind his thigh.

“Whatever happened,” Scarlet shrugs. The set of her mouth says she disapproves of the amateur dressing. “He’d have bled out by now without it.”

Rye knows what that means. Brain death and no chance to get him in cryostasis until he could be repaired. Angel did that. If Rye has to guess, Tong was surprised by the two now dead Aphids and injured. Maybe he took care of a couple of the ones at the stairs but Angel had been there and shot the one in the head. Two had been dead before she got there and put her knife in the third and saved Tong’s life or she wouldn’t have reached him.

“Rye,” Tong’s voice grates through the thickness of pain meds and he grabs Rye’s sleeve then points into the corner where the two dead Aphids lay. “Angel.”

“Uh,” air punches from Rye’s lungs. He can’t get on his feet and crawls to the pile of bodies. A camouflaged human knee sticks clear of the green, bloody mess.

“Scarlet,” he gasps but she’s ahead of him, pulling dead Aphids off Angel.

By the time Rye gets to her side, Scarlet has her tablet out. The display strobes an angry red and Rye’s hope fades.

“Tong is stable,” Scarlet mutters to herself and holds a hand over Angel like she’s afraid to touch her. Angel’s neck bends at a terrible angle and it’s clear her head is close to severed. Her burnt off fatigues reveal black and red skin.

“Bag her,” Rye chokes out.

“Rye,” Scarlet shakes her head. “Wait.”

The display flashes yellow then red again. Every few seconds another flash of yellow brings new hope.

“Lock her down for cryo, Scarlet.”

“Shit,” Tong moans behind them.

Scarlet rolls Angel to her stomach and snaps a thumb-sized black med-tab to what remains of the back of her neck. The lights flash on, green then red.

“Not enough circulation,” Scarlet says but Rye knows that. He busts off Angel’s chest armour and tears open the buttons of her shirt. Scarlet readies another med-tab and sticks it between Angel’s exposed breasts.

The lights on this one turn blue and as they get clear, it jolts her with enough electricity to jump start her heart. Her lungs expand and a small trail of blood runs under the curve of one white breast. The device drove two spikes in through her ribs. It loads her up with drugs to dehydrate her body in order to supply enough fluid to her veins and arteries to distribute the other meds going in the back of her neck. Other drugs seal up the breaches in her circulatory system to stop the bleeding.

Once circulation resumes, the lights on the back of her neck turn blue. The med-tab on Angel’s neck soaks her brain and internal organs in a massive dose of drugs to protect her tissues from the cold of cryo and oxygen deprivation until she gets there. Not a promise of life by any means but a chance. If her injuries are recoverable then she could be repaired.

“Nothing more I can do, Rye.”

“I know.”

Scarlet takes her tablet to Tong’s side and brushes her fingers over his cheek. The two have always been close so he isn’t surprised to see his medic comforting his brother.

To hell with it.

Rye takes Angel in his arms and cradles her between his legs. The unsettling grind in her lower back and pelvis adds to the pain in Rye’s heart.

Her eyes flutter open but it’s just the meds in her body and her brain reacting to the chemical preservatives. The blue light on her chest brightens with the beating of her heart and accelerates as the temporary fluids from her tissues leak out past the seals other meds made in her circulatory system but the light doesn’t change colour. The preservatives have been in her long enough to do their job.

As the light flashes become irregular, a rough sob breaks from Rye’s chest and Scarlet flinches at the sound. Her hand stays on Tong’s cheek and when Rye looks up the breeze has cleared much of the smoke from the top floor.

Atom stands beside them holding one of Angel’s silver data units.

“It’s full,” Atom reports but he can’t look at Rye. He’d been fond of Angel, too. Not in the way Rye was but Atom was brotherly to all females in the unit. “Whatever she did… she got what we came for.

“Fuck, Angel,” Atom stomps away and drops his ass on the top stair.

Rye rests his lips on Angel’s cheek until the light fails.

“I love you, too.”

Chapter 3

“You promised I’d get laid,” Tong whines. At least he keeps his voice down so everyone in the coffee house isn’t alerted to his unsatisfied state.

“That I did,” Rye concedes. He isn’t much into getting laid and hasn’t been for six years. Not after Angel. Other than a single drunken, paid incident he hasn’t given much attention to women and certainly not blondes. Drunken, yes. Paid, yes. Rye left the money on the bed and walked out without touching her.

Tong, on the other hand, is his usual insatiable self.

“But we’re on Earth,” Tong tries and Rye looks up from his black coffee to see Tong’s grin. Milk foam from whatever the hell he ordered covers his moustache.

“And we’re here to work.”

“Awe, man.”

There’s always been a problem with Aphids finding their way to Earth but lately, sightings in high, cold places like the Whistler Dome have brought in Core surveillance. The ski resort was covered several decades ago and is a year round play place for humans. Aphids have a hard time with the cold and altitude but something changed. They are here and in other places humans once thought safe.

The assignment seemed like a waste of time at first but Rye’s commander hinted the Aphids found a way to incorporate human DNA with their own. The Aphids had never been able to use tech implants like humans, too incompatible, but with human DNA it might be possible. There was only one place the Aphids could get a wide selection of human DNA and that was from humans. Word was DNA modifications made it possible for Aphids to live in places like Whistler.

Rye joked maybe they could put something in the water to make human DNA lethal for Aphids but the glare from his commander said he hit close to the mark.

Just get me a fucking body, Rye.

Some bullshit assignment it turned out to be. Nothing but humans and his horny brother.