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"Come on, Scott," Rook was saying, her mind made up. "Let's switch the
canisters and get out there."
Scott issued a silent nod of consent and went down on one knee by
Marlene's side while Rook and Lunk moved off. "You better stay behind," he
told her. "I don't want to risk bringing you any closer to that place. I can
see what you're already going through."
"I-I'll be all right here," she stammered, as though chilled to the
bone. "But promise me you'll be careful, Scott."
They touched briefly, and he was gone.
In the central hive, Sera had been alerted to the wave of death her
brother was unleashing against the populace. She sat rigidly at the top of the
mushroomlike dais now, hands clasped tight to the arms of the throne, as views
of the destruction reached her via a circular projecbeam.
"This is intolerable!" she screamed to her Enforcer guards, who stood
unflinching below the dais cap. "Corg is deliberately sabotaging the
experiment! The defeats he has suffered at the hands of the Humans have
affected his conditioning!"
Everywhere the projecbeam took her, the scene was the same: buildings
ablaze, Human life-forms in postures of agony, and more. But all at once Sera
gasped as an image of Lancer filled the holo-field. He was out in the madness,
his Gallant stiff-armed in front of him, returning insignificant blasts of
vengeance against the overwhelming power of Corg's war machine.
The Earth rebel who has caused so much disturbance within me! she kept
saying to herself. But Lancer's presence meant that Ariel must be nearby. Sera
leapt from the dais and headed straight for her command ship.
If Sera had continued watching the projecbeam a moment longer, she would
have realized that Lancer's shots were not to be so easily dismissed. True, an
H90 seemed insignificant when compared to Corg's mobile arsenal, but Lancer
and Rand had nevertheless managed to clear the streets of more than a dozen
Urban Enforcers.
"That's that," Lancer was saying now as number fifteen fell, its chest
plates laid open and oozing green nutrient fluids.
Annie, Jorge, and Simon stepped out from cover to join them in the
street. Most of the ground troops had moved further south, but in their wake
the city crumbled and burned, turning night to day.
"At least no one in the company got hurt," said Jorge. "Everyone made it
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into the subway tunnels in time."
"I wish the rest of the city was that lucky," Annie added, stifling a
sob.
Lancer checked the blaster's remaining charge and frowned. "We better
get underground ourselves."
Suddenly Annie raised her arm and let out a bloodcurdling scream. Two
Trooper ships had dropped to the street out of a slice of orange sky, their
cloven hooves ripping into the pavement.
Lancer and Rand raised their weapons at the same moment and fired,
instinctively finding the same target. The Trooper caught both blasts just
above its scanner and ruptured like a lanced cyst, spewing thick smoke and
sickly fluids. The second turned to watch its companion go down, then swung
back around, its cannon tips aglow with priming charge. But out of the blue
something holed the thing with a perfectly placed shot to the midsection, and
it too dropped, almost crushing Rand and Annie on the way down.
Simon, Jorge, and the freedom fighters looked up in time to see three
Veritechs swoop through the canyon formed by the buildings and fade into the
glow.
"It's Scott!" Rand shouted, amazed. "How the hell did they find us?!"
"I don't think they did," Lancer said, watching the VTs bank out of
sight. "Just be glad that they chose to zero in on that particular Trooper."
He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned.
"Lancer, I've got an idea," said Simon. "I want you to help us go ahead
with the show." He paid no attention to Lancer's look of disbelief. "I know
it's a lot to ask, but we're going to need help if this city is to survive:"
Lancer thought it over; over Simon's shoulder he could see Annie and
Rand nodding their heads in encouragement. "Sure," he said at last.
Jorge fucked his fingers together with an audible snap. Ejole! "This'll
be the show of a lifetime!"
The three Veritechs flew north to the edge of the worst conflagrations
and split up to double back. The thruster fires of Invid Trooper ships were
just visible in the southern skies. "Let's make sure the streets are clear of
any ground units," Scott told the others over the net. "Then we'll go after
the ships."
"Nothing on my scanners," Rook reported a moment later.
"Mine either," added Lunk.
Scott looked out over the city and shook his head in despair. The Invid
had cut a north-to-south swath of death four blocks wide along the west side
of the island. Searching for any signs of Enforcer activity, he dropped down
into the canyons again and was almost at street level when his radar displays
suddenly came to life.
"Hold on, I've got something!"
By the time he realized what it was a blast had seared the upper
sections of his fighter, nearly destabilizing it, but he managed to pull the
Beta up and out of its plunge and soon had a visual on the enemy ship even as
the displays were flashing its signature.
"Command ship," said Scott, staring down at the orange and green
crablike thing that was hovering below him at rooftop level. "It's that damn
command ship! Let's take it!"
Corg, as though reading Scott's designs, chose that moment to loose his
first stream of annihilation discs. Scott banked sharply and fell; the Invid
ship shot up at the same time, and Human and alien ended up exchanging places,
discs, and laser-array fire in an aerial duel. Rook streaked in from behind
and landed two heatseekers, but Corg's ship shook them off and stung back,
igniting a row of rooftops with its misplaced shots.
Scott and Rook went wingtip to wingtip to launch a salvo of missiles,
but again the Invid outmaneuvered them, diving down into the city's hollows,
where Lunk almost fell victim to the command ship's wrath.
"That thing is dangerous!" he shouted over the net as explosive light
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lit up the inside of his cockpit.
"All right, let him go for now," said Scott. He turned to make certain
the Invid was willing to give it a rest and exhaled with relief when he saw
the ship arrow off. "We've got to find Lancer."
"Yeah, but where do we start looking?" asked Rook, disheartened by the
inferno below, to say nothing of the complexity of the city's intact landscape
and terrain.
"Just keep your external receivers open," Scott told her.
Hopeless, she thought. Just what kind of sign does he expect us to see
from up here?
Two hours later, the three Veritechs were still circling. They were all
running dangerously low on fuel, and there had been no sign of Lancer, Annie,
or Rand. Or the Invid, which was a lucky break. Then Rook picked up something
on the receiver and reported her coordinates to Scott and Lunk. She supplied
them with the frequencies as they came into view on her display screen.
"Tune in and tell me who that sounds like."
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