Written in Fire

CHAPTER 43

Shannon could feel the heat from the burning drone even from here, the flames so pale they were nearly invisible, and even as she sprinted down the runway, she couldn’t quite believe what she was doing.

Behind her, Nick yelled something, but she couldn’t hear it and she couldn’t stop, not while the other UAV was already picking up speed, the engine whine loud enough to penetrate the gunfire and the crackle of melting composites.

She’d flown gliders hundreds of times, loved the feeling of them, the dance with wind and gravity, larking across the desert. Loved the knowledge that even though they were reasonably safe if you knew what you were doing, they were not merciful. Lose focus, lose the wind, misread a situation, and the ground was a hard teacher. It was the same thing she liked about going on mission, that feeling of hundred-proof life, and it couldn’t exist without risk, without gambling against fate. She had always known that one day she’d lose. She just hoped it wasn’t today.

The pilot crumpled under the wing wore a leather jacket and an astonished expression. There were bags near his feet. He’d probably been hoping for a last-second save against the militia and had waited too long. Soren’s knife had opened his throat so cleanly and so deep she could see the white of vertebrae. She hoped he had been a better pilot than fighter; there wasn’t time to check the body of the plane, to confirm that the wheels were unblocked, to ensure that the cable was properly attached and the release well-maintained. She just leapt his corpse, hauled herself into the cabin, and started flicking switches. The battery worked, the indicator lights snapped on, and then there was a streak of motion out the side window, the drone already barreling past, picking up speed rapidly. No time for niceties like safety, then. Time to do or die.

More like do and die, sweetie.

There’s only one way to bring down that drone.

Shannon buckled her seat belt and, with a prayer that the automatic systems were online, reached for the button marked CABLE RETRACT.

There was the familiar jolt of the winch engaging, and then she was thrown back in her seat as the glider jerked forward.

Cooper dropped his empty assault rifle and caught the shotgun in the air, then yelled, “Wait!” Couldn’t think what to add after that, and it didn’t matter, because Shannon didn’t.

He was about to start after her when a figure stepped from the hangar. Lean and graceful and filled with menace. Cold fingers seemed to wrap around Cooper’s torso. As though his heart had a memory, knew what it faced. The man who had only weeks ago slid a knife into his chest. Who had put his son in a coma and killed Cooper without breaking a sweat. The fear that gripped him was primal. Brain stem stuff, deep and certain, and with every step Soren took, it magnified.

Then a thought occurred to him.

They had to stop that drone. Neither his life nor Shannon’s meant anything compared to that. She would realize that. He knew his warrior woman, knew that she wouldn’t hesitate.

But maybe he could spare her the choice. Soren had launched the drone; he might be able to stop it. To bring it down before Shannon was forced into the only course of action available to her.

Cooper raised the shotgun. The stock was still warm from her cheek. Soren was twenty feet away. He stopped when he saw the gun come up. He had no intention to read, no plan Cooper’s gift could use. Calm as unmoving water.

Yeah? Make some waves.

Cooper aimed, exhaled, and pressed the trigger. The gun bucked in his hand.

In the instant his finger began to squeeze the trigger, Soren spun like a dancer, took two quick twisting steps and stood smiling and unscathed.

Fear’s talons dug in. Soren’s T-naught was 11.2. Even the fraction of a second it took Cooper to pull the trigger stretched out to full Mississippis for him, seconds during which he could see the angle of the gun, gauge Cooper’s aim.

It wasn’t dodging bullets, but it was—

This is a pump-action Remington tactical shotgun. Seven shells.

If you fire rapidly and wide, you can catch him.

But she was shooting at the drone. How many times? Five?

Assume you have one shot left. Two if you’re very lucky indeed.

—close enough. Cooper took a step left himself, aimed, faked a trigger pull. Soren didn’t budge. The time dilation again. Trying to fake him out would be like a man on crutches trying to juke Muhammad Ali.

Behind him, he heard a snap and a whir, and knew what it was. The gliders were launched via massive winches that yanked them a mile in seconds. Shannon had just taken off. He had at most a minute before she sacrificed herself. And that was assuming she could make it at all; if not, the drone would loose its payload and everything they had done would be moot. The militia would kill Natalie and their children, and the virus would kill the country he had fought for his whole life.

Can’t dodge, can’t plan, what can you do?

Get reckless.

Cooper yelled through gritted teeth and charged at Soren, the shotgun held in one hand at waist height. He could see the man’s confusion flicker quickly, and for just an instant Cooper’s gift had a hold. There was no time to aim, just hope, and so he pulled the trigger as he ran, the recoil ripping his wrist back, pain shooting up it.

The blast jerked Soren halfway around. When the man turned back to face him, there were deep gouges across his right cheek. His ear had been shorn away. Blood flowed slick and dark down his face. His smile had vanished.

Cooper considered gambling on another shell in the gun, but if it was empty everything was over, so he just kept going, bringing the shotgun up to hold it by the barrel, the heat of it scorching his hands as he swung it like a club.

Soren stepped aside and jammed two locked fingers into Cooper’s shoulder. His hand tingled and his fingers opened automatically and the gun flew off to skitter across the tarmac. He tried to use the momentum to crash into Soren, get him on the ground and land on top of him, but his opponent just wasn’t there, he’d slid sideways and kept one foot out and braced to catch Cooper’s, and now it was him falling, one arm numb, the other unable to get up in time to keep his face from colliding with the concrete, an electric shock through his teeth and a flash of white in his skull. Everything jumped, became two worlds that didn’t line up. Before he could process the stereoscopic images, Soren grabbed Cooper’s hair, yanked his head back, then slammed it into the concrete again. Fireworks exploded behind his retinas.

His body was distant and trembling, nothing working quite right, but he tried to rise, had to get off the ground, the ground was death in a fight, but there was a pressure against his shoulder, Soren’s foot, he realized, pushing him so that instead of rising to a crouch he flipped over onto his back.

For a moment, Soren just stood looking down at him, a black silhouette against a burning city.

Then he reached down and drew a hunting knife.

“Do you remember,” Soren said, “what you did to Samantha?”

The cable stretched taut ahead of her glider, the carbon fiber body racing down the tarmac, air whistling beneath the wings, that sense of yearning in it to take to the sky, bouncing less and less, and then the easy smoothness as wheels left runway, the cable still tugging. She’d blown past the drone, and there was the final yank and then release as the cable uncoupled, hurling her upward like a child throwing a paper airplane. As always, it felt like her stomach remained behind.

Normally, the thing to do would be to use the momentum of the launch to gain as much elevation as possible. Gliders loved the rocky desert, the howl of wind and the bounce of updraft, and with care and skill, could soar for hours. But this wasn’t a pleasure trip, and she didn’t have hours. Shannon grasped the stick with steady hands and pulled into a hard starboard roll, barely three hundred feet above the ground.

Still high enough for a marvelous view of hell.

Tesla wasn’t her home, but the Holdfast was, and watching the capital city under siege was like being a Chicagoan watching enemies overwhelm DC. The battle lines were easy to see from up here; it was a real-life view of the battle map on her d-pad, only instead of using colors to represent the action, she could see the flicker of gunfire, a constant back-and-forth crackle like grains of gunpowder strewn in a circle and lit ablaze. At this height the attackers and defenders looked the same, ants locked in battle, fighting with weapons and hand-to-hand in the streets, their bodies lit by a thousand fires, Molotov cocktails and burning barricades and, she saw, quite a few of the buildings. Countless columns of greasy black smoke rose and smeared the view with a blanket of ash. The city looked like a Bosch painting, all smoky black and bloody red and writhing agony.

Shannon tore her eyes from it, focused on the runway. Somewhere down there Nick was facing Soren, and she threw a prayer his direction and then forced herself to scan for the drone. They were built for stealth, so there were no running lights, no shining surfaces, but its motion gave it away; there it was, in the air now and climbing. The glider took to the sky faster because of the winch, but that was the only advantage she had and it was fading fast. Unlike her craft, the drone was powered, which meant both more maneuverability and, soon, greater speed. If she was going to catch it, she had to do it now.

Not to mention that it doesn’t have far to go.

She pitched downward in a hard spiral. The move built her speed at the cost of elevation, and while common enough as a soaring tactic, she didn’t have much altitude to waste. If this were a fighter jet with roaring engines and mounted cannons and a targeting system, she could lock onto the drone and wipe it from the sky. But it wasn’t. And besides, she didn’t know how to fly a fighter jet.

Shannon lined up on the drone below her, plotting the vector of its motion against her own as she dove, the distance between them narrowing fast. Wind roared over the thin body of the glider, the material humming with it as she dove.

She’d have one try. If she missed, she might have time to pull up and regain altitude, but by then the UAV would be out of range. Her hands moved fluidly, the glider an extension of her body; she maneuvered it with the same precision she moved her limbs, the drone growing rapidly. It banked steadily, and she matched the motion, aligning the trajectories to intersect neatly.

Ten seconds.

Soren had launched the drone; he must have a way to control it. Cooper would have figured that out, and would be trying to bring it down.

Shannon stared at the drone. Barely blinking. It loomed larger and larger. She could see details now, the vapor trail from the engines, the registration number on the tail, the seams of its wide wing. She imagined it sputtering, the engines dying. Willed it to pitch downward into a fatal dive. Pictured it simply exploding, the self-destruct triggering the fuel tanks.

Five seconds.

It did not sputter.

Four.

It did not dive.

Three.

It did not blow up.

Two.

Come on, Nick. Don’t make me do this.

One.

Cooper’s vision was hazy, black gauze creeping in from the edges. His brain was trapped in a vise, like the worst hangover of all time, every beat of his heart ringing crystalline agony. His mouth was full of copper, and one of his teeth had broken, the exposed nerve shrieking. The sounds of battle had faded away, replaced by the thin thunder of breathing. He threw an awkward punch as Soren knelt to straddle him, but there was no power in it, and the man brushed it aside as he dropped down, knees pinning shoulders. The victory maneuver of a childhood brawl, and normally something Cooper could have countered easily, but his body was weak, he couldn’t get any leverage. Every move he made, his enemy had time to read and counter.

Soren was lean, his kneecaps bony as he drove them into Cooper’s shoulders. Half his face was coated in blood, a trickle that oozed down his neck and soaked his shirt. His cheekbone was visible in the worst of the gashes, the meat of muscle laid bare. Reflected flames danced in his eyes and glinted off the edge of the knife, making it seem alive. Cooper tried to buck, but Soren could feel the play of muscles, had all the time in the world to redistribute his weight.

“You started,” Soren said, “with her eye.”

The knife slid down, the move slow, theatrical, giving Cooper time to see it coming, to anticipate the burning tear as it cut his flesh open, to imagine it plucking his eye from his skull. He wondered morbidly whether he would be able to see it happen through that eye. The drone was away, the militia was winning, Natalie would die in the battle, his children would be yanked from bunkers and murdered as the city burned around them and the world fell to darkness, and there was nothing Cooper could do about any of it. Soren had beaten him again, just as easily as before, but it would not be quick this time. Cooper could see the relish in the man’s face, the madness whirling within him, the pleasure he would find in dispensing agony as civilization cracked and collapsed.

The knife drifted downward. The tip caressed his cheek. Penetrated. Scraped against the bone of his eye socket. The pain was sharpened by terror. He knew what would happen next, could imagine the blade digging, the agony, the permanence.

A blast of blue radiance flared like a lightning strike.

For a moment Cooper thought it was his eye going, but no, Soren saw it too, he was staring at the sky, his features carved in electric blue and darkness, a word forming—

That light is the same as when the other drone blew, liquid hydrogen burning explosively.

And Soren is staring, but it’s not surprise or distraction that really has him.

It’s despair.

Shannon took out the drone. She gave her life to do it.

And gave you an opportunity.

Are you going to waste her sacrifice?

—“No,” he and Soren said at the same time, but where the other man was lost in his own time, staring upward in the slow revelation of his defeat, Cooper forced all thoughts of Shannon from his mind, knew what she would want him to do, that she hadn’t thrown her life away, she had given it, and it was up to him to honor that, and Cooper put everything into a fast buck of his hips, throwing his arms up to lock Soren’s wrist as he kept the momentum going, the two of them rolling, Soren’s back hitting the ground as Cooper rolled atop him and twisted his arm, the man fighting back now, but inertia and strength were on Cooper’s side and he used them, bending Soren’s wrist back and driving the knife through the soft underside of his chin, the flesh stretching and then parting as Cooper slammed the heel of his hand into the pommel, driving the blade through the tongue and the palate and into his brain. Soren spasmed once, twice, and then Cooper got a firm grip and twisted the handle with everything he had and it was over.

He collapsed atop the monster’s chest. Limbs weak and trembling. A shriek ripped from his lungs, a sound that wasn’t a word. Was barely human. An animal howl of rage and pain and dominance.

Then he pushed himself to his feet, wobbling.

At the end of the airfield, blue flames danced like demons as pieces of metal and plastic rained from the sky.

He took a breath, made his feet move, a fall that became a step that became an awkward loping jog. Everything hurt. Blackness throbbed at his vision even as the fire grew brighter, hotter. He reached the UAV first, a twisted sculpture of flame, a licking inferno that forced him aside, but it wasn’t the drone he was interested in. He kept moving, passing pieces of her plane, a teardrop wing bent awkwardly, the tail intact and upright, a rubber wheel belching smoke. The fuselage had snapped, the forward portion ahead and inverted. He ran to it, grabbed the handle, jerked his hands back from the heat, then took a breath and reached again, flesh scorching as he ripped the door open.

Shannon hung upside down, still belted to the seat, her torso packed hard in a white substance like Styrofoam but already melting, the impact foam dissolving to run thick and soapy to the tarmac, and something inside him gave the same way, a wash of warmth.

She opened her eyes. Met his. “Oww.”

“You fucking nutcase,” he said, laughing and gasping. “I thought you were dead.”

“No,” she groaned. “Not quite.”

His burned fingers were clumsy, but he managed to undo her seat belt, her weight sliding into his arms, the two of them collapsing amidst the bubbling remains of the safety foam. She lay in his arms, both of them panting, lit in blue. Finally, he said, “A parachute was too much trouble?”

“Old-world thinking, Cooper.” She smiled, and he bent down to kiss her, never mind the agony from his ribs, the shock from his splintered tooth.

There was another explosion, the UAV jumping and then crashing down again. They startled apart. Shannon said, “Soren?”

“Done.”

“Good. That’s good.” She shifted, then winced. “I think my leg is broken.”

“That’ll teach you.” He smiled, stood up, bringing her body with him, one arm draped around his shoulder, her body soft and warm against his.

“We won,” she said.

“Almost. One more thing to do.”

“What’s that?”

“What you’ve been bugging me about since we met.” He tried a wobbling step, found it okay, took another. He kissed the side of her hair, her hair smelling of smoke and sweat. “Tell the truth.”