The Vanguard Vixen

F.O.X.3 Titan Trait (Two)

A hundred yards out, up in the sky, materializing out of empty darkness, a pencil-thin beam of red light slanted across the night, searching the ship's deck. Then finding its mark, it came to a stop in the centre of the deck.

Vivian threw her chain then.

The rocket launcher beneath the chopper emitted its flash of light, and at the same instant the chain wrapped around the tail of the helicopter, and Vivian pulled.

The image took only an instant to register for the captain. In that horrific moment, he felt all the action on the deck blur into a collage of shapes and sounds. The glowing eyes atop the mast where Vivian was pulling a chain that had wrapped around the helicopter tail, and the stark red laser slicing across the night sky.

In the distance, after the flash of white light appeared, he watched in disbelief and horror as a perfectly straight line of exhaust fire followed the path of the laser beam directly toward the ship.

The missile sailed off course, just missing the edge of the ship and sinking harmlessly into the water. The aircraft veered sharply as Vivian pulled and it held for a second, before the helicopter lurched backwards on its shattered tail, spinning in mid-air for a moment as it fell, and then crashed into the ocean in a hissing cloud of steam.

Luke closed his eyes, unable to breathe. He could hear the wreckage gurgling and sputtering as it sank, being dragged away from the ship by the heavy currents. He saw her drop from the top of the mast to the deck and land gracefully, her eyes standing out against even the stars in her night sky background. She was yelling. Luke felt her powerful hands trying to pull him to his feet, but he couldn't move.

At the far end of the ship, like a dragon peering into the opening of a cave, another black helicopter had dropped down low and was facing them. For an instant, he thought it was going to fly directly at them through the centre of the boat. But the helicopter began to turn at an angle, aiming.

Vivian sprinted across the deck toward the end of the ship. The chopper fired at her, but she slid low under the line of fire, and got to her feet, running a bit more to gain the momentum she needed, and then she jumped.

The pilot reacted faster than Vivian expected and tried to turn the helicopter away, but Vivian managed to grab onto the steel railing below the helicopter with her right hand. There was a soldier on the inside who got up immediately and aimed, trying to shoot her. She chuckled a bit as she remembered something Commander Adrian had told her about when he had been in a similar situation. In surprise at seeing her laugh, the soldier hesitated. Vivian pulled herself up, launching herself upward and airborne, which in turn made the chopper tilt over, and made the soldier fall out through the open door. As Vivian fell back down she grabbed the railing once again with her right hand and caught the falling soldier with her left.

Inside the helicopter, the pilot grappled with the controls to try and set the aircraft back into a balanced position, since the combined weight of the two people hanging over the side was threatening to send it spinning to the side.

"Don't let me fall! Please don't let me fall!" The soldier cried.

Vivian looked down at him in surprise.
"Aren't you a Seal? Surely you do know how to swim."

The soldier looked down at the murky waters with obvious fear in his face. Vivian smiled at him.

"Well, you better learn fast."

And then she dropped him.

The sudden loss of weight added to the previous efforts of the pilot to counter that weight made the chopper tilt the other way, and it allowed Vivian the split second she needed to climb into the helicopter. Vivian snatched the pistol from the holster around the pilot's waist, pointed it at his head, and sat down in the co-pilot space.