Between drill resets, Rachael stole a glimpse out of one window of the plane. They were getting awfully low over the city. Given the lack of any missiles shooting at them, their invisibilty must be working. She'd worried a bit when she'd heard that, for reasons of basic thermodynamics, they couldn't hide their thermal infrared emissions — but thankfully, while infrared was used for weapons targeting, it wasn't (yet) used for aircraft detection. (Except maybe at night. Thank goodness they were doing this raid in broad daylight!) She lined up once again on her mark, in the makeshift section of the plane marked off for her squad to drill in. As they'd flown farther and farther away from Dockran's Island, she could feel herself fatiguing just a tiny bit faster in each drill. They all felt it. It was the price they paid for having their body's energy broadcast to them over a distance. But all the repetition was boosting her confidence, more than making up for this tiny extra lethargy. She was finally starting to get the hang of it. A few more reps and she'd have every move down cold.
Then the whistle blew.
No more drills. Go time was nearly upon them. "Third platoon, squads to your places!" her Lieutenant barked. Her sergeant pointed, wordlessly, and Rachael and her squadmates all hightailed it to the middle of the plane.
"Ten-HUT!"
All eyes toward the massive aft ramp-and-door, the Captain spoke one final time in front of his Company. "Nobody can see this plane from the outside, but that doesn't mean they don't suspect we're here. Everybody below is probably wondering where all the jet noise is coming from. Good news is, we don't need a real runway; this beast can land and take off in less than 300 feet, no matter how mushy the ground is. When we've come to a complete stop and turned around, this ramp behind me will slam down. This'll be your time to shine, boys and girls. You'll finally be putting those hours of drilling into action. Stay focused, and keep to the script — but also stay flexible. If something can go wrong, it will, and when it does you'll need to fall back on your knowledge of the mission parameters and your basic training to carry you through." He pointed skyward in salute. "Eternal Mankind!"
As one, the Company shouted, "ETERNAL MANKIND!!"
Then all noise ended, save for the dull roar of the plane's engines. Rachael, like most of the other soldiers in the room, rested her blaster carbine atop her armored shoulder. Across her other shoulder, she had a line of sight to a distant window, and could just make out the tiniest sliver of the world outside. They were close to the ground now, and still moving at quite the clip. She wondered how in heck they were going to come to a stop in 300 feet without turning everyone into pancakes.
Then the engine noise changed, and she could swear someone slammed on the brakes. Everyone lurched backward, as though falling toward the front of the plane. But . . . they were still airborne. The tiny scene out of the window was still off the ground. And it was slowing, slowing, slowing until the world barely crawled by and Rachael wondered how in heck this plane's wings could still generate lift. Then the floor thudded and bounced with the force of their touchdown, and the braking got even harder. She stumbled backward into the soldier behind her. The only thing that kept both of them from falling to the floor was sheer dread over how embarrassed they'd be.
Then the braking stopped and everyone got thrown to their left as the plane skidded around in a tight 180-degree turn. And when that ceased, the whistle blew again, and the aft ramp practically fell open onto the torn-up pavement outside.
No time to admire the scenery. Twin rocket lauchers flamed into life, their loads vanishing into the sunlight; then First Platoon double-timed it out through the open ramp. Armored boots stomped cacophonously against the cargo deck. Rachael would be on the move in four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . . GO!
Her boots clacked against the deck, and then — outside. She squinted against the daylight. Stick to the paved areas, they'd told her, there are land mines hiding under the grass. She and her squad trundled toward what she hoped was her objective. In the distance, she could just make out the Mint Police guards, startled into action mere seconds ago. The distant crack, crack of the guards' gunfire reached her ears, along with the sharp, chirping hiss of her own company's answering blaster fire. Her squad was crossing open ground with no cover, sitting ducks if they couldn't reach the building fast. They had to maintain a sprinter's pace. If not for the energy being broadcast into their bodies from Dockran's Island, they'd have run out of breath by now; as it was, they didn't even need to breathe.
A clack came from her left. One of her squadmates had just been hit. Tom? She glanced as quickly to her left as she dared. Not Tom. Sarah had just taken a round to the chest. It had bounced harmlessly off the rigid torso armor adorning all of them, but the impact knocked her off-stride and she lagged behind. The sergeant must've noticed this too; he barked "Weave!", and the whole squad — except for Sarah — ran erratically from side to side, giving their teammate time to catch back up.
Rachael took the opportunity to draw a bead on one of the closer guards, and fired. Her blaster carbine hissed like an airbrake, and a blue-white bolt flashed between her barrel and the guard, punching him in the gut. The man doubled over and collapsed. Compared with bullets, blasters had a higher chance of knocking your target out, and a lower chance of injuring or killing it. A marginally lower chance. The guard would . . . probably live.
The same couldn't be said for whomever had been manning the two machine-gun towers at the corners of the building. Both towers were smoking wrecks, victims of First Platoon's rocket launchers. Two fewer sets of Mint Police to worry about. As Rachael's squad pressed forward, the sounds of gunfire came from from fewer and fewer directions. They were clearing a path. They might just pull this off.
She reached the side of the building. Another squad had already burned the bars off the nearest window with a plasma torch, and were just now pushing the ramp into place. "Get in there and secure the beachhead!" came the command from her sergeant; she tromped up the ramp right behind Tom and springboarded her way inside off the windowsill. The hallway was wide, richly carpeted, with elegant ceiling lamps and framed paintings dotting the walls. It felt incongruous against the chaos of the charging Mint Police. Rachael fired off two more quick rounds from her blaster, nailing a would-be attacker before he could get his gun raised. The shootout escalated all around her as more Mint Police and more of her teammates poured in, then collapsed under a withering barrage of coordinated blaster fire. The beachhead was as secure as it was going to get.
The first motorized cart made its way in through the breached window. Now the cutting team was front-and-center again. The main vault was in the basement. They could have fought their way to the elevator, ridden it down and hoped no one would cut power, and then fought their way to the vault; but why bother when you could just cut through the floor?
The floor gave way cleanly and fast. It was a damn good thing the builders of this depository hadn't known about their plasma torches.
The basement floor lay nearly twenty feet below. Time to start bolting in another ramp. More Mint Police popped their heads into view down below, but by now the word must have spread; they turned tail and ran as soon as they saw the invading soldiers. One of them didn't turn tail fast enough and got brought down by a blaster bolt. The new ramp now in place, Rachael's squad clomped down into the basement behind two others, and came face-to-face with the awesome majesty of the U.S. Bullion Depository's main vault. They'd picked their entry point perfectly.
The massive vault door, unsurprisingly, was closed and locked. Their plasma torches wouldn't be able to cut through that in anything less than a full afternoon. But . . . they wouldn't have to. The locks on the vault were state-of-the-art when they were built, but hadn't been upgraded in decades — and the super-sensitive listening gadgets the two safecrackers were now slapping into place on the door had.
"Secure the surrounding area!" a Lieutenant called out. "These two need to work undisturbed!"
"You heard the ell-tee!" Rachael's sergeant barked. "Sweep back behind our ramp and nail any Mint Cops comin' in the long way!"
Rachael and her squad tramped back, and found themselves completely exposed. The architects had wisely built the corridor leading from the elevator to the vault with no protrusions or doorways to use for cover. All they could do was lie prone, and hope they'd get off the first shots when trouble appeared.
They didn't have to wait long. The elevator chimed less than half a minute later. The instant the door started sliding open, one of Rachael's squad mates opened fire. Dumb move, Rachael thought. Now they'll know we're here. He should have waited for the doors to open wide enough to give 'em a clear shot at one of the Mint Cops, then opened fire. Well, they were committed now. Shots rang out from the elevator and ricocheted off the walls and floor. Jana took a round to the top of her helmet; it didn't penetrate, but the jolt dazed her. The rest of Rachael's squad kept pouring fire into the elevator. It was hardly a fair fight. The Mint Cops toppled like bowling pins; in less than ten seconds they were all down and out, with none of her squadmates wounded.
Rachael noticed the elevator doors starting to close, squinted for a fraction of a second, then dashed forward.
"Stowe!" her sergeant barked. "What the hell are you doing?!"
She kept going, and got her hand between the closing doors just in time. They started cycling back open.
Her sergeant yelled after her, "Stowe, do not be a hero and go after them upstairs!"
But that wasn't her intent. She stepped gingerly over an unconscious Mint Cop, then turned to the button panel on the elevator's inside wall and pulled a red knob. Then she high-tailed it back to her squad and stood right in front of her visibly angry sergeant. "I pulled the emergency stop, sir," she said. "That should keep any more of 'em from using the elevator for a while."
Her sergeant's expression softened and he raised his eyebrows. "Good thinking, soldier." He keyed his walkie-talkie. "Elevator secure, squad returning to reinforce the ramp entrance."
By the time they rejoined the platoon at the vault, not only had the safecrackers gotten the door open, the first motor-cart had rolled into position and two men were already shoveling gold bars onto it. Rachael recognized one of the gold-handlers as Hans, her last boyfriend; his robotic right arm made him hard to miss. The other she'd never met, but she'd heard about him. His name was Vlad, and he had a cybernetic arm of his own. The only difference was, it was Vlad's left arm that was artificial.
Each of those robotic arms was quite strong. Together, the two of them were loading gold onto that cart as fast as ten normal men would. Maybe that's why they were chosen for this job.
"So, how'd you lose yours?" Vlad asked Hans.
"Never had a real right arm," Hans replied. "Thalidomide robbed me of that when I was still in the womb. You?"
"Factory accident," Vlad said. "Stupidly rested against a machine I shouldn't have. Would've taken my whole shoulder off if I hadn't hit the E-Stop in time."
And just like that, the first cart was fully loaded with nearly a ton of gold, and whirred away back up the ramp to the first floor. A second cart motored into position to take its place. Hans and Vlad wasted no time in loading it up like the first, and before long, it too was away and a third motor-cart was up for loading. Rachael checked her wristwatch. There was still a good ten minutes before any interference from the Army base could get there. She grinned. The morality of robbing Fort Knox aside, this heist felt kind of thrilling. They might actually pull it off.
Then a red-and-black streak whooshed past her and slammed into Vlad, knocking him against a rack full of gold bars. The streak stood still just long enough for Rachael to make out its details. It was a man wearing red tights and a black cape, with the dimly glowing outline of a capital letter I on his chest.
"Oh crap," her sergeant yelped, "It's Infra Man!"
The newly-arrived threat flew out of the vault and snatched the blaster carbine out of one of her squadmates' hands before he could use it. Three of her other comrades fired blue-white bolts right into the body of the man in tights, but he didn't even flinch.
"Abort!" the lieutenant shouted. "Abort, abort, abort!"
"Abort!" her sergeant repeated. "Retreat to the pick up point, on the double!"
Boots thudded up the ramp. Too many boots. The ramp wasn't wide enough to evacuate this many troops all at once. Rachael fought for position and finally managed to squeeze between two members of another squad, then found herself buoyed up the ramp by the near-panicked troops pushing her from behind. She glanced over her shoulder and caught a glimpse of Infra Man knocking another platoonmate senseless; it only required a casual back-handed swipe, he was that strong. Sickeningly, she heard him quip in that smug super-hero voice, "This isn't how you should save up for your golden years!"
Gods damn it, none of the Perpetual Army's bright, shiny weapons were going to have any effect on Infra Man. Even their heaviest rocket launchers wouldn't do much more than tickle him. If their weapons weren't so bright and shiny, and had a few rust spots on them, maybe they could've used the rust to neutralize his powers. Curse their obsessive equipment maintenance!
The fleeing crowd poured out onto the top floor. Rachael broke out and made a beeline for the window ramp. She didn't look back, but she could hear the wave of panic behind her, with Infra Man at its center. It sounded closer to the top of the ramp in the floor now, closer to the level of her floor. That just made her run that much harder. She leapt up onto the windowsill that served as their makeshift entryway, then out onto the grounds outside. Her sergeant, and her squadmate Kayla Barnes, were right there with her. She could see their transport plane at the edge of the grounds, right where they'd left it. Kayla broke and dashed straight toward it across the grass.
"Barnes, NO!" the sergeant shouted, "Stay on the concrete!"
Kayla took two more steps, then the ground exploded beneath her. Land mine! Her body flew limply upward like a ragdoll, then crashed to the ground in a crumpled heap. From this distance, Rachael couldn't even tell if her body armor had spared her life or not — and there wasn't time to check, let alone drag her to safety. All that mattered was getting to the plane before that . . . that terror in red-and-black caught up with them. With her. She sprinted the entire distance along the concrete. She would've passed out from exhaustion by now, if not for the broadcast energy from Dockran's Island that was still being fed into their bodies. Even in defeat, Eternal Mankind showed its worth.
At last, Rachael made it to the plane's rear loading ramp and scampered aboard. She kept running, past her other comrades who'd made it back before her, past the one-and-only motor-cart full of gold that they'd managed to get away with, all the way to the front of the plane right behind the flight deck. The pilots' agitated chatter filled her ears. "Ready on the throttles, engine temps all nominal!" "How the hell did Infra Man get here! He was supposed to be at a charity shin-dig in Tennessee all afternoon!" "Maybe they cancelled." "Our luck! How many troops aboard so far?" "Uh, looks like most of 'em." "Good, we might not have to —" "Oh crap! I see him! That's Infra Man, he just came out of the building!" "Dammit! Raise the ramp, we're taking off now!"
Behind her, the loading ramp lifted off the ground and at the same time the engines roared and the plane lurched forward. Through the closing rear entrance, she could just make out the panicked, frantic waving of a few troops who didn't quite make it. She tallied the heads who did make it aboard, looking for her squadmates, but it was hard picking out one face from another with their helmets still on. Hans was here — she could tell by his robotic right arm — but Vlad wasn't. She didn't have to look for Kayla to know she wasn't here either. She was still looking for her sergeant when the floor tilted and the plane lifted off.
"Gear up," the co-pilot called out, raising a lever. Then: "Infra Man just took off!"
"Stealth on!" the pilot said, flipping a switch. The window next to Rachael seemed to shimmer for a fraction of a second, then returned to a normal view. "Banking hard right!" Rachael felt herself pressed into the floor.
Then alarmed, the co-pilot said, "He's turning with us! He's following us! We should be invisible!"
The pilot muttered a curse. "I forgot he has infrared vision. He can see our engine heat. Damn it! Keep the throttles firewalled, retract the flaps all the way. I'm gonna level the nose and stop the climbout to give us as much airspeed as we can get."
"Are you nuts, captain?" the co-pilot replied. "I've heard his top speed is two thousand miles an hour!"
The pilot sneered at him. "We're about to put that rumor to the test."
Rachael felt a lump in her stomach. If Infra Man caught up with the plane, he could pull it out of the sky. He was more than strong enough. She stumbled over to the right side of the plane and stared out a window. There he was. Short black hair, red tights, black cape fluttering behind him, with his fists outstretched to his front as though willing him to fly faster. But . . . was he actually getting closer, or —
"He's falling behind!" the co-pilot said. "I think he's maxed out at about one-eight-zero knots!"
So we can outrun him, Rachael thought. Good. If he can't catch up to us, he can't grab —
A ruckus came from the back of the plane. The troops on the right-hand side clamored over one another to get away. Rachael could see smoke, and a reddish glow. An ominous hissing sound cut through the troops' commotion. Then two slender red beams of light arced through the cabin before going out. Holy cats. She'd forgotten about Infra Man's heat vision!
"Confirm hull damage," she heard the co-pilot say. "Stealth still engaged, all engines still operational. Doesn't look like he hit any control surfaces or hydraulic lines."
Rachael glared out the window at the dwindling super-threat. Uh oh. His eyes were glowing red again. The beams lanced toward them . . . and dissipated before they reached the hull.
"No damage this time, captain," the co-pilot said. "I think we're out of range!"
The pilot picked up the cabin mike and broadcast to all aboard: "Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We've experienced some light turbulence, but the remainder of our flight should be uneventful. We'll be climbing to our cruising altitude of thirty-one thousand feet momentarily."
Rachael exhaled in relief, then settled back in with her squad. She didn't feel like saying much. Her first real mission, and everything went sideways. She closed her eyes, and could still see Vlad slamming into the rack of gold bars, and Kayla getting laid out by a land mine, and those screaming faces outside as the plane's rear hatch ground closed. And all to rob some gold. None of this was what she'd signed on for.
Author's notes for chapter 2:
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