The Dark Edge Chronicles - Hardwire

Final Showdown

As the body toppled limply to the ground, missing most of its chest and left shoulder, Kensey ducked back behind the mailbox, grimacing. 'Strike that! At least one hardwire present.' Then his head snapped around as the howl of a police siren split the air, red and blue flashing lights abruptly visible at both ends of the street. Seconds later a black and white police helicopter roared by overhead, spotlight playing through the cloud of dust and particles that was just starting to dissipate.

"Damn!" Mordecai snarled, beads of sweat running down his face despite the haze of icy particles floating around him from the effort of jamming psi communication and disrupting Normal communication channels both, within range of the building and the cadre outside. He could feel the cordon of Normal law enforcement closing in on this location.

"Normals! They'll be crawling all over this place in minutes. We have to end this now!" Turning to Jenn, he spoke in short, terse sentences. "I'm dropping the dampening field. Go and find the other teams. We need to be out of here in five. Don't take no for an answer. Go!"

"Right!" Holstering her pulse gun, Jenn turned and bolted down the hallway towards the stairs.

As soon as the little brunette was on her way, Mordecai turned back to the door and did a quick scan of the street. 'Hmmm. At least thirty down and dead. Six badly wounded ... that leaves six from Mindfire and twenty-seven still functional cadre members. Time to do a little mopping up.' With a hiss, a virtual blizzard appeared to swirl around the crouching man in black as he sucked more energy out of the air.

The car that Jarker and his comrade had tried to hide behind abruptly moved. The sudden shift quickly caught the attention of every psionic still left alive out on the street. Eyes wide as the psyken wave front rippled over them in a tingling rush, they turned to watch mouths agape as the burned-out hulk slowly lifted off the seared pavement. Then Kensey was throwing himself forward, his own considerable mover abilities coming on line as he focused on the charred hulk.

It was an obvious distraction. With the Normals charging in hard, the renegade wanted to finish this confrontation quickly. And, by using a very old trick, he was hoping to catch his cadre looking. 'Not if I can help it!' he silently snarled, pulling ambient energy in. He would simply knock the car down and ...

The focused shockwave caught the heavyset destroyer commander full in the chest, despite being mostly behind cover. Picking him up like he was a rag doll, the shockwave pasted him back against a nearby building, crushing him against its brick facing like he was made out of straw.

Gasping as his lungs, punctured and ruptured by the broken shards of his own ribs, began to fill with blood, Kensey dropped limply to the sidewalk. His breath began to bubble wetly as he felt his life leaking out of him even as his vision began to swim. But it was clear enough to catch the last moments of both Mindfire and his cadre.

Now a good two meters off the pavement, the car swung smoothly around, shimmering in its sheath of psyken. Then, just as smoothly, it flipped onto its end to drop without a sound onto the pavement, balanced on its crushed from bumper.

The shriek of tearing metal that came next echoed across the battle field as the car abruptly began to rip itself in two, starting at the ground, psyken surging around the vehicle's battered hulk in a veritable storm. As the stunned cadre psionics watched, the tear continued up until, with a final whine of protest, the car tore itself completely in two. The two halves then proceeded to compact as, psyken as thick as fog humming through the air, a second burnt-out hulk appeared, floating silently through the air to position itself a hand span above the two rough cylinders of metal that now stood where a car once had.