
Mere Mortal
There was nothing routine about Goshawks over Babylon.
Fast, stealthy, armored, each dropship could ferry a platoon of troops. It was the
military’s heavy-lift aircraft of choice. The STS used them for long-range
deployments, or to transport vehicles and armor. BPD most assuredly did not have any in their inventory.
These specimens had to be here for the Black Watch.
The only question was which organization they belonged to: the military, the
STS, or the New Gods. Regardless of the answer, Fox did not want to fight them.
“Acknowledged,” Yamamoto said. “We are moving. Heading
out via side 1. ETA fifteen minutes.”
“You don’t have five. They are closing in,” she said.
“Buy us time.”
She gulped. “I’ll do what I can.”
From here she had a clear shot at the dropships.
Blurry as they were, if she put enough fire downrange, a few rounds were bound
to hit. It ran against her instincts and her training, but she didn’t have any
other option. The camouflage defeated her ability to estimate range by eye, and
if she used her laser rangefinder the beam would simply be bent around the
dropship and redirected out into the sky. And, if she were truly unlucky, the
Goshawks’ onboard laser detectors would pick up the beam, and then they would
hunt her.
But even if she scored a hit, it wouldn’t achieve
much. Goshawks were heavily armored. The cockpit window was constructed of
ballistic glass, and the pilots were surrounded by a titanium tub. The gravity
mirror pods were encased in lightweight high-strength metal alloys. The
interior of the cargo bay was fitted with armor plates. The vital areas of the
dropship could resist heavy machine gun rounds and high-velocity shrapnel from
all angles.
Her 6.8mm GPC rifle didn’t come close.
As the Goshawks closed in, she ejected the magazine
and stuffed it into her thigh pocket. Twisted to her right, grabbed a fresh mag
from her plate carrier, and locked it in.
This mag was loaded with saboted light armor
penetrators. Unlike the rest of the men, she preferred to run twenty-round
magazines in her carbine. The twenty-rounder was much easier to shoot from the
prone than with a full-length thirty-round mag. As the sharpshooter, if she had
to fire more than a handful of rounds, she was either doing something wrong or
things had gone to hell.
Things had surely gone to hell now.
And she only had one spare twenty-round mag of SLAP.
In her mind, she loosed a string of curses. She
shouldn’t have left her ammo at the car, or at the very least, she should have
loaded all her mags with SLAP instead of a half-and-half load. The hunters were
pulling out all the stops, and she was way behind the curve.
If
I get out of this, I am going to break out the heavy iron, she vowed.
She canted the rifle to the left, cupped her hand over
the ejection port, popped the dust cover open, and worked the charging handle.
The loose round spilled out into her waiting palm. She tucked the bullet into
her thigh pocket, then took up her rifle again.
Reaching over with her left hand, she worked the
SmartShot’s control buttons. A menu blazed bright green in the optic. She
cycled through the options, reconfiguring the optic for her SLAP load. The
reticle reset, jumping to a fresh point on the glass.
The Goshawks slowed to a stop. The one on the right
hovered above an open-air courtyard in the middle of the estate. Its partner
positioned itself at the northeastern corner of the block, right above a
traffic junction, rotating in place to face Fortune City.
Placing its rear to her.
“Samurai, Deadeye. One Goshawk is hovering above the
central courtyard. The other one is at the 1-4 corner. Designate them Goshawk
One and Goshawk Two. They’re preparing to deploy troops.”
“Is there anything you can do?”
“Stand by.”
She breathed.
Watched.
Waited.
And the rear ramps dropped.
Now she had a clear view inside the cargo bay of the Goshawk
Two. Illuminated in dull red light, it was jammed with men and machines, vague
and indistinct. She turned on her thermal imager, and the view shifted to clear
black and white.
A chalk of assaulters stood inside the cargo bay,
ready for deployment. The cargo chief shuffled up to the end of the ramp, threw
out a fast rope, then sat down by a mounted machine gun and waved the
passengers forward.
The point man in the chalk wasn’t a man at all. It was
a hulking figure, eight feet tall, with simian arms that reached down its
knees, and bulky legs that bent the wrong way. Muscles bulged from all four
limbs, bright white in her scope. Its gauntleted hands ended in three enormous
claws. Its head was a smooth almond, ringed with eight unblinking eyes. Thick
armored plates, hard and angular, covered its torso, seamlessly melting into
flesh. More plates defended its elbows and knees, shoulders and forearms, groin
and thighs, integrated into muscle and soft tissue.
Each forearm bracer mounted a stubby short-barreled
gun, fitted with a horizontal magazine. Tactical pouches were strapped to its
calves and thighs, heavy with kit. A general purpose machine gun was clipped to
a D-ring high on its cuirass. An ammo chute ran from the MG’s feed tray to its
backpack.
A Hellion Autonomous Heavy Assault System.
A living weapon.
“I have eyes on a Hellion inside Goshawk Two.
Preparing to engage.”
As the words left her mouth, she suppressed a shudder.
How the hell could she engage a monster like that?
But on the bright side, these guys definitely aren’t
STS.
She could open fire without hesitation.
With speed and grace that belied its size, the Hellion
clambered to the edge of the ramp, crouched, grabbed the rope, and heaved
itself into clear space. The Goshawk oscillated, and the pilot sought to
compensate.
And the crew chief drifted into her crosshairs.
She thumbed her laser. The SmartShot did its magic,
and the reticle jumped to the left. She pivoted in place, saw the bright green
triangle appear over her target.
Fired.
The round caught him square in the face, snapping his
head back and punching him down.
Working the trigger, she fired an extended string, ten
shots into a tight circle describing the open cargo bay. As her scope bounced
and jolted about, she caught glimpses of a second Hellion, a line of human
assaulters behind it, a crewman at the far end of the compartment.
But she wasn’t shooting at the men.
She was shooting past
them.
The tungsten carbide penetrators tore through the
night, drilling through what little resistance they found, spearing the
dropship lengthwise. Sparks flew, thin streams gushed, a cloud burst from a
shattered panel.
And suddenly the Goshawk went down in a steep
nosedive.
She grinned. Evidently the titanium bathtub didn’t protect the pilots from shots
through the cargo compartment.
The Hellion on the rope held on for dear life. The
dropship tried to compensate at the last moment, but it was too late.
It crashed nose-first into the street. Men flew from
the open cargo bay, crashing into walls, streetlights, cars, windows, each
other. Momentum flipped the downed dropship around, slamming it upside down
against the asphalt. The rope whipped through the air, hurling the Hellion
against the wall of a high-rise. The Hellion, still hanging on, fell like a
rock, and abruptly went still.
“I’ve shot down Goshawk Two,” Fox reported.
A sniper. Shooting down a dropship. Unbelievable.
She didn’t dare to dwell on her feat. She just turned
to the other dropship.
Goshawk One was still hovering over the courtyard,
still deploying its passengers. An assaulter slid down the fast-rope, and a
second waited for his turn. The crew chief on his machine gun swiveled in
place, hunting for the sniper.
Fox shot the chief first.
Her second shot took the man on the rope, taking him
through the armpit.
The third shot popped the waiting assaulter’s head.
And a minigun shrieked.
Bullets cracked all around. Mounds of dust and debris
exploded in front of her face. She pressed herself into the ground, cursing
under her breath, going as low as she possibly could.
These Goshawks were armed with retractable
belly-mounted guns, stowed in the fuselage until it was time to unleash hell. A
blinding cone of light betrayed the minigun’s presence. Small fires whipped
around her, one-way tracers igniting vegetation and trees.
She was pinned. Nothing she could do but go flat.
And pray.
Abruptly the minigun stopped.
And a barrage of high-pitched gunfire reverberated
from within Fortune City.
She lifted her face from the dirt. The Goshawk was
speeding away, ramp still down, rope trailing to the ground.
Between the suppressor and the chameleon suit, the bad
guys wouldn’t have known where she was. Even with a shot detector, they could
only guess at her general position.
Still… it was close. Too close.
“Deadeye, we’ve driven off Goshawk One,” Connor reported.
“Are you still alive?”
“Yup,” she said. “Thanks.”
The Goshawk jerked in mid-air.
The fast rope strained taut.
She smiled. It must have caught on something.
A moment later, the rope fell free, and the dropship
took to the air.
Fox picked herself off the ground, turned sharply to
her left, and ran. She’d stayed at her old position long enough. Any moment
now, the enemy would—
The minigun shouted.
Hot rounds washed over the world. Dirt exploded behind
her. Trees shook and shivered. Bending over, rifle clutched to her chest, Fox
sprinted.
“All callsigns, Deadeye. Relocating to new firing
position.”
Her boots took her to a well-worn trail. She charged
down the steps, gripping the guiderail with her left hand. In her chameleon
suit, she was a wraith, a fuzzy blur flitting past the amber light posts. The
Goshawk continued firing, lashing down her old position with short, sharp
bursts.
The trail curved to the left. She followed it down,
sprinting at full tilt. The machine gun abruptly went silent. But the humming
of the massive gravity mirrors remained.
She emerged in a rest area, a terrace cut into the
hillside. Benches lurked in pools of darkness between the light posts.
Long-range binoculars were mounted on fixed posts by the guardrail that defined
the edges of the terrace.
There was no cover or concealment. Just what she
brought with her.
She planted herself by the guardrail, orienting
herself towards Fortune City. Snapped the bipod closed, gripped the legs as
though it were a makeshift forward pistol grip, and rested her fist on the
rail. It wasn’t as stable as she liked, but it would do. And with heavy weapons
in play, she didn’t want to spend an extra moment extricating herself from a
bench if she came under fire again.
Through the sights, she scanned the disaster unfolding
on the world below.
Many men lay motionless on the road, on the roofs,
inside windows, atop cars, wherever else the Goshawk crash had thrown them. A
few stragglers were slowly recovering, rising to their feet, crawling for help.
A pair of Hellions rallied at the crash site, machine guns trained at the hill,
teeth bared at the world.
A block to the northwest of Fortune City, the other
Goshawk hovered at a traffic junction, facing the hill. She zoomed in to the
max, but all she saw was a blurry mass, gently swaying from side to side,
sandwiched between a pair of high-rises. At street level, a crouching Hellion
leaned around the corner, hefting its GPMG to cover the Goshawk. The pilots had
to be using the dropship’s armored bulk and the high-rises to shield a second
attempt at fast-roping troops.
She had no shot.
“Samurai, Deadeye. Goshawk One may be fast-roping
troops at the junction of Edmonton and Crowley. I’m going to draw their fire.
Extract via side 3. Say again, side 3.”
“Copy that. Buy us as much time as you can.”
A lump formed in her chest, threatening to rise up her
throat. She gulped it down and trained her crosshairs on the kneeling Hellion’s
head. Thumbed the laser switch. Elevated the rifle, bringing the green triangle
to bear on its face. Flicked off the safety.
Exhaled.
Fired.
The Hellion’s head rocked back.
A moment of stillness.
And the monster howled in fury.
She lowered her sights a smidge and fired again.
The bullet disappeared into its gaping maw.
It shut up.
And opened up.
Instinctively she ducked low. The GPMG roared at a
slow cadence, so slow she registered every individual shot. A fusillade slammed
into the dirt well below her with heavy smacks.
She displaced to her left. Two, three, four muzzle
flashes illuminated the world below, betraying more Hellions and their machine
guns. As she set up on the guardrail, the Goshawk’s belly gun spoke again. The
hail of lead screamed high, chopping down a tree behind her to the right.
Her sights settled on the Goshawk.
The belly gun fired once more, a bright cone of light
that chased the shadows surrounding the Goshawk, revealing a distorted visage
of a smooth, almost organic-looking, fuselage.
She lased the muzzle flash.
Brought the reticle on target.
And fired.
Again and again and again, working the trigger as fast
as she dared.
CLICK.
And the minigun fell silent.
And the Goshawk dipped below roof level.
She grinned. The Goshawk might be armored, but not its
retractable belly gun. She wasn’t sure if she’d hit the weapon itself, the
optics or the ammo feed, but the gun was silenced and that was all that
mattered.
The Hellions adjusted fire, sweeping their bursts
towards her.
She sprang away from the guard rail, dropping to the
dirt. Heavy bullets sparked against the rail and scorched the air above her.
She ejected the magazine, carefully stowing it in her
dump pouch, then grabbed her remaining mag of SLAP, firmly inserted it into the
weapon, and worked the forward assist. She backed up to a bench, rising to her
feet, then rested the bipod on the table. She bent over, contorting herself
weirdly, adjusting herself to suit her new shooting position, folding her left
arm across her chest. It was awkward, but manageable, and far more maneuverable
than sitting down.
She zoomed in on the nearest muzzle flash. A Hellion
armed with an M83 carbine. Nearby, its GPMG and ammo backpack lay discarded on
the road, next to a man sprawled across the asphalt, the receiver bent and
broken.
It had to be the first Hellion, the one that had been
on the fast rope when the Goshawk went down. It had survived the impact against
the wall and the long drop, but its weapon hadn’t. She had no idea what kind of
sorcery built the damned thing, but surely it had come from the darkest pits of
Hell.
She trained her crosshair on its face. The headshot
hadn’t worked earlier, so she lowered the sights a little more and lased its
throat. Brought the reticle on target.
Fired.
A thin stream of blood gushed from the wound. The
Hellion snarled, adjusting its aim. It was still shooting wide, but not for
long.
Its eyes glowed white-on-white, hotter than the rest
of its face. She raised her sights, her unconscious mind running a dozen
back-of-the-envelope calculations, pivoted slightly to the left, and fired.
The round blasted clean through its eye, exploding it
in a gush of white.
It howled, swung right, and fired again.
It was still shooting wide, but it was bracketing her,
slowly closing in on her position. The other Hellions joined in the act, their
GPMGs thundering away.
A human would have run for cover by now. But Hellions
weren’t human. Fear wasn’t in them. They were living tanks, proof against
almost all small arms fire. With her puny rifle, she couldn’t scratch them.
But there was one last thing she could try.
She lowered her sights, resting the crosshair slightly
above its center of mass.
Fired.
A metallic cloud sprayed from its weapon. The monster
jerked. Paused. Canted its carbine, inspecting the upper receiver. And angrily
threw it down.
How
about that, she marveled.
Snipers do not, as a rule, shoot guns. Especially STS
snipers. Headshots were far more reliable at neutralizing Elect and Husks. Even
if they disarmed one, an Elect was always
armed with the powers of his god. There were very few situations where shooting
a gun out of a threat’s hands was a viable option.
This was surely one of them.
The machine gun fire redoubled. She stepped through an
arc, swinging her rifle to bear on the next muzzle flash. A Hellion taking
cover behind the crashed Goshawk, spraying down the hill. The angle was poor
and the crest blocked her view; she could only see the upper half of its body.
But it was good enough. She made a few minute alterations and pressed the
trigger.
And missed.
The round smashed into the threat’s enormous hand.
It jerked away, shaking off the strike. Fox didn’t
know if the bullet had done any damage, and she didn’t care. She adjusted her
aim, going for the point where the ammo chute fed into the machine gun.
And fired.
The weapon exploded, disintegrating in a cloud of
shrapnel.
She grinned.
The Hellion looked down at its destroyed weapon,
tossed the parts aside, shrugged out of its backpack, and went hunting for a
replacement.
What
does it take to kill these bastards?
Even as she framed that thought, a thunderous
fusillade reverberated in the night. Muzzle flashes sparked from high-rises and
the base of lamp posts. Small figures raced across the street, bounding
forward.
The troops from the second Goshawk had rallied.
She retreated from the bench, going prone. Moments
later, bullets ripped through the air where she once stood. They had her
measure, and now they were closing in for the kill.
“Deadeye, Samurai. We’ve sneaked past the enemy and we
are clear of the objective. What’s your status?”
“Still alive,” she replied. “But they’re bringing down
the heat on me. Any moment now, they’re going to assault the hill.”
“Roger that. Mission complete. Extract now.”
“Acknowledged.”
She crawled away. The fire redoubled, heavy rounds
searing high and low and all around her. A tree caught fire, throwing plumes of
thick smoke. The flames leapt from tree to tree, threatening the woods. The
Hellions roared out a challenge.
A switchback marked the end of the rest area. She
picked herself up and sprinted away. Behind her, the shooting intensified even
further, as though emboldened by the lack of return fire.
The switchback conveyed her to the other side of the
hill. She picked up the pace, dashing downstairs, making a beeline for the
parking lot. The concrete was slippery, and twice she lost her footing. Only
her hand on the guardrail kept her from falling on her butt.
The gunfire petered out. Police sirens screamed. Blue
and red lights illuminated the cityscape in the distance. Tiny black dots
flitted through the air—drones, she suspected, converging on the area.
She wondered how the Seekers would explain themselves
to the cops and the press this time. No doubt there would be backroom deals,
closed-door conferences, cash flowing from one hand to another. Every time the
STS put down a criminal Elect, the Speakers of the New God that granted them
their powers would trot out some excuse or another, the police would accept the
explanation, and the media wouldn’t dare to press the issue.
It was just the way things were done in Babylon.
In her years in the PSB, she had seen more than her
fair share of cover-ups. Whenever the authorities exposed or disrupted a plot
by criminal Elect, the New Gods deployed the finest lawyers money could buy to
defend them in court, or quickly disavowed those who died. The New Gods acted
as they pleased in Babylon, and all the PSB could do was attempt to contain the
worst of their excesses. Even after the STS was stood up, nothing had changed.
The only difference was that now, the New Gods took
far more casualties—and the humans, relatively less.
But this time tomorrow, the Black Watch would be
fugitives. The Seekers, the BPD, the PSB, they’d find a way to pin this fiasco
on them. She knew it deep in her bones. And there was nothing she could do
about that.
In the face of the New Gods, there was only one thing
she, a mere mortal, could do.
She kept running.
![Hollow City: A Superhero Vigilante Thriller (Heroes Unleashed: Song of Karma Book 1) by [Cheah, Kai Wai, Plutarch, Thomas]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51OdFgsAI%2BL.jpg)
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