Wheels squealing, the Xterra flew around a corner to churn forward down the next street, darting through the dimly lit darkness towards what could only be described as fire in the sky.
"Damn, the whole freakin' skyline's lit up!" Dee said anxiously, clutching the Shiva tightly in her hands as she huddled in the passenger's seat. Beside her, hands tightly holding the steering wheel, a grim Mordecai nodded savagely.
"I suspect that some of my less-than-patient comrades have decided to take the battle directly to whatever Brotherhood members they have located in the city," he growled hoarsely. "If so, the devastation could be extreme!"
"You don't have to tell me that!" Dee hissed as she ran once more over the Shiva's operating instructions, handed to her on a small tablet as the three of them had charged down to the parking garage by Mordecai. Duffy had a second weapon in his hands, eyes glued to the small screen of his tablet that explained how the Shiva worked. The small reading light that was attached the back of Dee's seat, letting him see the words, danced its light wildly across the screen with each pothole the SUV's tires caught.
"I got to see the last one, remember?" She frowned. "But I don't get it: is somebody completely ignoring the Shield to fight so obviously out in the open now?"
"I suspect that might be the case," Mordecai replied grimly, his mind churning as he considered the possibilities. Unfortunately, every thought chain came back to only one person: Katengaur.
Without the big psionic to act as a deterrent to the rogue lone gunman and her plans to strike at the Brotherhood directly, it was logical that she had somehow circumnavigated Raven to launch such an assault. At least, that's what he hoped was happening. The members of the Avalon nation should be better trained than to simply launch an unprovoked attack in full view of the Normals!
Of course, that didn't take into account the other nations that were still in the midst of their struggle against the Brotherhood. 'Damn!' he thought darkly as he guided the streaking vehicle down the street. 'This thing could get really confusing, really fast!'
As the Xterra spun around yet another corner, the three of them tensed as they saw the roadway ahead of them alight with eldritch power and energies. Regardless of who started this mess, they were about to find out just how extensive it had become!
"Pull over right there!" Dee commanded, pointing to an alleyway that abruptly loomed just to their left. "The downed chopper should be around here somewhere!" Cutting across traffic, Mordecai complied, slamming the Xterra to a halt just inside the alley's dark embrace. Then the doors were flying open to spill the three of them out.
"Just how much recoil do these buggers have?" Duffy rasped worriedly as he held the Shiva awkwardly in his hands.
"None," Mordecai hissed in reply, pulling a third Shiva from beneath his coat. "Angle of attack?" That a question slung at Dee, who was already scanning the nearby buildings with experienced eyes, the night sky lit up with dancing oranges, blues and scarlets, her ear to the big emergency services radio in her other hand, currently turned to the police band. Normally brightly-lit streetlights were either burnt out completely, or flickering fitfully with a dull, half dead glow. Despite the lack of steady light, Dee quickly found what she was looking for.
"There!" She husked, pointing to a building close to where the seething fire in the sky danced. "The pilot says they're trapped behind that building there." It appeared to be looking down into the next intersection where, by all appearances, it seemed this newest clash of the psionics was taking place. "If we can get to the roof, we might be able to hold the Brotherhood away from the chopper!"
As three sets of eyes tracked over the building Dee had indicated, they discovered the fire escape leading to the roof than ran vertically up the wall facing the street. A perfect route upward.
"Here," Mordecai barked, tossing Dee and Duffy thick woven nylon straps, ceramic clips on their ends. "They fit here, and here." He demonstrated how the clips attached to recessed loops built directly into the Shiva's chassis. Following suit, the two humans attached their clips then slung the bulky machine pistols over their shoulders, mimicking the big man in black. Then the three of them were sprinting across the street, heading towards the apartment building and its fire escape.
By the time a gasping Duffy dropped onto the flat roof of the apartment building beside Dee and Mordecai, thoroughly winded from both the sprint across the street and the charge up the fire escape, the man in black and the red haired detective were already scanning the street below.
"Holy shit, Mordecai!" Dee rasped disbelievingly, not wanting to believe what her eyes were telling her about what was happening below them as she peered over the edge of the roof. The three of them now lay flat on their bellies.
"What the hell is going on down there?"
"War!" Mordecai grated tightly in reply.
And war it was, but unlike any war that Dee and Duffy had either experienced directly, or had seen on TV. There were no screams of the dying, no hum of bullets passing through the air, and no harsh crunch of explosions. Yet there were plenty of bodies, scattered haphazardly across the battleground that the intersection had become. And the wild, seething energies that had cut them down surged freely through the air below them, searing it with actinic discharges and rendering the very air itself deadly.
Squinting against the discharges and the flares of psionically created light, Mordecai grimly began to search for the sources of the energy bursts, his hand on the Shiva that lay close to his head. It didn't take his expert eyes long to find them.
There, dressed in their characteristic black leather trench coats stood a cluster of determined Brotherhood psionics, surrounded by heavily battered shields as they grimly returned fire across the intersection at their attackers, hurling shockwaves and plasma bolts with experienced efficiency. There were perhaps fifteen of them in total, not counting the unmoving Brotherhood bodies already lying in the intersection. And, just as the destroyer cadre had when they had first began their attack against the Avalon listening post on 16th Avenue, these psionics were standing out in the open, relying on their shields to protect them instead of physical shelter.
Frowning at that as he remembered the futility of the Brotherhood's assault on the Avalon listening post, Mordecai tracked his eyes along the intersection, following the incoming fire that was hammering away at the Brotherhood psionics. And just as quickly he found their source.
Two women, sheathed in black from head to toe were standing about a meter apart, legs braced shoulder-width as their psyken shields rippled from the impacts of multiple shockwaves. They seemed to be waiting for something, as if they were prepared to watch the Brotherhood heavies do their worst before actually retaliating. Mordecai grimaced as he recognized the one on the right, her short-cut blonde hair and boyish figure almost unmistakable.
"Can you see them, Mordecai?" Dee hissed tightly. "Are they advancing towards the chopper? Do we need to jump in there to try and stop them? Or do we wait for backup?"
"Want my vote?" Duffy rasped, looking shell-shocked.
"Not really," Dee fired over at her partner before addressing Mordecai again. "But I do want yours, mister."
"I ..." Mordecai began, fully intending on telling the tall redhead that he intended on staying put, not wanting to drop in between two hardwire lone gunmen and their quarry who, for all intents and purposes, were as good as dead. The two groups were so focused on each other, it was likely they didn't even know they had brought the police chopper down with collateral fire. But the crunch of booted feet on the gravel roof behind them was enough to cut his words off short.
The big man twisted hard, snarling silently as he brought up the Shiva even as he fought the impulse to reach into his mind and summon the psionic fire he yearned to hurl without regard. And immediately he heard a soft chuckle from the trench-coated man that he found standing a mere three meters away, having teleported into place from the street below.
"Well, well, well," the man husked in a heavily accented voice. "What do we have here? Three little Normals sitting in a row! And with guns, too." The man's face, sheathed in shadow, leaned forward until Mordecai knew he was addressing him. "What do you plan on doing with your little pop gun, friend? Shoot me with it?"
"As a matter of fact," Mordecai ground out, "I do. Mode to rapid fire."
"Rapid fire," a tiny, sexless voice chirped from a speaker in the Shiva's stock and a blue indicator flashed on the weapon's chassis as the weapon silently switched to rapid-fire mode.
Bulky-looking, Mordecai was pleased to find that he could easily handle the weapon one-handed, the ceramic machine pistol almost weightless in his big hand. Additionally a set of gyros in the weapon's body at specific gravity points kept it perfectly balanced. With a wink of blue light, a laser pointer appeared to paint a dot on the man's chest.
The Brotherhood psionic was still laughing to himself when the Shiva spoke, its rapid-fire mode softly chittering as it slung high-powered ceramic slugs in an almost continuous stream at him. The man's shields flared as the slugs hammered into it. Then he was grunting as they penetrated to slam relentlessly into his body, the impact throwing him roughly back. Arms flailing wildly, he was smashed backward to drop limply onto the roof, his life battered out of him. With a final flicker of light, his shields died, the mind holding them in place dying in that instant.
"Holy fuck," Dee whispered as Mordecai slowly climbed to his feet.
"Indeed." The big man replied, staring hard at the unmoving body of the Brotherhood psionic. "Well, at least we know they work!"
"What the hell was that?" a heavy-set mover snarled as he slung a series of shockwaves and plasma bolts at the two hardwires that had ambushed them nearly twenty minutes ago on their way to reinforce positions that had come under attack by several rebel nations.
"I dunno," one of his companions growled in reply, her hair matted with perspiration from her efforts to keep her shields coherent despite the brutal attack the hardwires had launched against them.
"It sounded like some sort of weapon!" Then they were both ducking as a series of potent pulse blasts were ripping through their numbers, tossing a handful of bodies aside without regard, shields shattered and bodies already well dead.
The assault was relentless for a number of moments, crushing already damaged shields and snuffing out life like a swirling wind takes the dancing flame from vulnerable candles, leaving them dark and lifeless. Then, as it had before, it paused. Almost as if the two hardwires were giving them the chance to regroup.
"We got three Normals on the roof top, there!" one of the softwires with teep abilities husked, pointing to one of the buildings lining the intersection, now filled with fallen comrades.
"Merde!" the mover commander, a square-shouldered woman with short-shorn, dark brown hair and a long scar marking her right cheek, running from the corner of her eye to her jaw, across her high cheek bone, barked tightly. Her dark eyes found the building that her telepath was pointing out and her face twisted into a grimace of frustration and anxiety.
"We can't afford to have the Normals discover us in the middle of a battle with these hardwires!" she hissed in a heavily French-accented voice. A stiffened finger stabbed out at three of her movers. "Take care of them!"
"Down and wiped?" one of them asked, an American by her voice. The commander's head snapped back in forth in a quick shake.
"Dead and buried!" she indicated with a snarl before turning her attention to the unmoving hardwires standing a few meters away.
Dee was just about to ease her head back over the roof's edge when it abruptly exploded in a shower of slivered concrete. Crying out with dismay and a sudden surge of fear, she crabbed back with anxious desperation, feeling fiery lines stitching across her face from slivers of concrete and brick slicing through her skin. Thankfully none were close to her eyes.
Duffy too swallowed a low oath as he scrambled back.
"Bloody hell!" he snarled at Dee and Mordecai, eyes wide in the dim light. "Those daft bastards are shooting at us!"
"Then shoot back," Mordecai grimly replied, turning to take a half step back to the roof's edge, sighting along the Shiva's barrel. Then, with a gentle depression of the trigger, he was hosing the clustered Brotherhood psionics below with deadly messengers of death and destruction.
Each cartridge that filled the Shiva's rectangular magazine was unique. Instead of a metal casing, each ceramic slug was encased in the very propellant that it used to hurl itself out of the weapon. A mixture of relatively stable chemicals, the propellant was heated to just above seventy-five degrees Celsius to achieve a liquid state. In that state, the propellant was easily manipulated into whatever shape that was required.
Using a small device similar to the micro-forge called a micro-smithy, the liquid propellant was poured into the appropriate molds before the slugs were fitted to them and the combined bullet chilled to make the propellant solidify. The finished cartridges then were easily loaded into magazines or containers for room temperature storage.
A internal gas system within the Shiva, high-pressured and completely self-contained, moved the cartridges into position before the firing mechanism, a micro-beam laser punched forward to penetrate the propellant, igniting it by driving it instantly over 100 degrees Celsius. The propellant casing completely vaporized, providing the propulsive force to send the slug on its way, without the need to eject an empty casing. It was a technology that could smoothly and rapidly fire without blockages or misfiring, seamless destruction with the simple pull of a cushioned trigger.
"Right." Duffy grimaced, then spoke in a low voice to his gun. "Mode to rapid fire."
"Rapid fire," the weapon's sexless voice replied, the internal A.I. acknowledging the command. As soon as the blue indicator light flickered on, Duffy was leaning over the edge of the roof and firing.
In the same instant Dee rolled to her knees, giving her a clear view of the Brotherhood psionics below. Blood oozing from a number of cuts on her face, she lifted the Shiva to her shoulder.
"Rapid fire!" she hissed.
"Rapid fire," the weapon replied and, as the blue indicator flickered on, she opened fire with a soft chitter of discharge, sending her own stream of destruction downward at the clustered psionics.
The three lines of rapidly moving ceramic slugs intersected at the knot of Brotherhood psionics, shields immediately flaring from the first wave of impacts. Then two were down, blood spurting from bullet wounds in their chests. And three more, shields being easily penetrated by the high impact ceramic shells quickly followed them.
"What the hell??" the American mover screamed as his companion went down in a flurry. "Bullets that can penetrate our shields?"
The hardwire with the short blonde hair frowned as she watched the Brotherhood psionics across the intersection from her and her companion getting scythed down by the weapon fire from above. She was not a plain-looking woman, with striking green eyes. But any beauty that she was stolen by the hard expression on her face, her full lips twisted in an almost perpetual scowl.
Yet it was her companion that spoke first, a slender, pale-skinned woman with honey colored hair and eyes that were as blue as the mountain lakes of her native Denmark.
"What you make of that, Katengaur?" Sonja asked softly as the two lone gunmen stared at the scene unfolding in front of them. Any trace of her native language had been long burned from her tongue.
"An interested third party?"
The German hardwire snorted softly.
"If you mean Raven's little fledglings, I doubt it," Katengaur said dryly. Her English was just as inflectionless as Sonja's was. "The Avalonians use weapons based on Mordecai's psionic technology." Her hard eyes narrowed. "The weapons cutting those Brotherhood morons down ... that's something completely different!"
The willowy hardwire let her eyes follow the line of attack up the side of the building nearest to them, frowning as she caught sight of three people in various stances on the building's roof, odd-looking weapons in their hands. Weapons that were, with soft flares of light, firing bullets capable of penetrating psyken shields.
Whoever they were, they were good. They didn't even flinch when the Brotherhood movers attempted to counterattack with directed shockwaves and plasma bolts, the psionic weapons ripping into the building itself, making it shudder with the multiple impacts. Instead they simply poured more firepower down into the intersection, making mince meat of the Brotherhood psionics.
"Whoever they are, they're doing a good job of taking out the Brotherhood scum." She looked over at the pale-skinned Sonja. "Our task here is done. Let's continue the hunt."
Sonja nodded and, with a thought, opened a teleportal. In the wink of an eye, they were gone.
The hardwires' departure went unnoticed as Mordecai, Dee and Duffy grimly continued to fire down at the Brotherhood psionics. The silvery walls that Mordecai called shockwaves, were now streaking all around them. But, whether the psionics below were too stunned by the devastating attack to make good their aim, or some other force was protecting them, the walls were missing by wide margins. Instead they disappeared after a short distance beyond them, or hammered ineffectually against the building itself.
Taking advantage of their disarray, the three on the rooftop cut the last of the psionics down with a final flare of dying shields. As the bodies dropped to the ground, Dee was digging out her radio.
"All units, this is Detective McMaster. Hostile forces have been subdued. Move in and secure the area. I repeat: move in and secure the area!" She rasped into the radio's transceiver. And almost instantly a number of police helicopters, belonging both to the PD and the RCMP appeared out of the darkness to close in on the intersection. The dimness was swiftly pushed back by the insistent beams of high-powered spot lights and, lights flashing a familiar blue and red, several police cruisers come in from connecting streets to close in on the intersection, followed by the red and yellow of the FD and paramedics.
Nodding in satisfaction, Dee slipped her radio back into its place in an inside pocket before turning to first Duffy, who was coming to his feet, and Mordecai, who was slowly lowering his Shiva.
"Nothing like calling in the cavalry! I kinda figured they were just about on top of us, anyway. Well, we're still alive, if you can believe that." She grinned wearily. "Maybe we should go down to see if any of those Brotherhood goons are suffering from the same condition, hey?"
"A good idea." Mordecai nodded, slipping his Shiva under his jacket into a holster he had made for it. "You go ahead. I got a couple things to take care of, first. I'll meet you back at the truck in a few!"