Ashley Fox - Ninja Orphan
Chapter 41 – Wrecking Homes
Ashley stepped out of the command center onto an exterior patio and pulled her gasmask off. She immediately found herself face to face with two-dozen, coughing, puking guards. Unarmed, they hesitated, their weapons forgotten in the panic.
Ashley’s guns came up as the soldiers charged her. Her weapons tore threw through the front line, hitting them in the chest, the neck and the face. The case-less ammo spewed from her weapons. Even at this rate, it would take her a while to burn through the thousand round magazines.
The next wave attacked with anything they could find. The air around her was suddenly alive with projectiles, mostly patio furniture, broomsticks, chairs, chair legs, flying at her head.
Discovering her handguns useless against flying furniture, she drew the Little Dragon. Ash darted through the guards’ ranks, opening an artery here, severing a tendon there, every movement a perfect strike, block or parry. For every hit the guards score, Ash made five. One after another, they fell, until all who would stand against her couldn’t. Ash alone remained on her feet.
Ashley cleaned her sword and sheathed it. The rooftop was a dead end; there was nowhere to go from here. Tear gas still wafted from the command center. She looked down at her filtration mask. It was covered in gore. She didn't reach for it.
Ash pulled her hoverboard from beneath her pack. She stepped onto it, took a deep breath, opened a door and kicked back inside. She shot across the large room, toward the stairwell. She didn't breathe again until she'd dropped several floors.
The board, a Vertical 4 Classic, was composed of a light terillium alloy, soaked, cured and varnished in the liquid T256 isotope. When fully charged and properly ridden, the Vert 4 was unstoppable, an icon of hoverboard engineering. As it flowed over the ground, the ride was tailored for the rider.
The V4 was smooth, it corrected mistakes, choosing the best and safest paths ahead, navigating around any impending difficulties, and was especially good at compensating for stairs. The model's built-in auto-correction algorithms set the standard for everything else on the market. Newer models were either significantly better than the V4, and disgustingly overpriced, or considerably worse, costing only slightly less.
When Ashley and her V4 dropped into the stairwell, it was as though she were surfing down a water slide, wall-riding the tight turns at the landings in a constant counterclockwise spin. She stretched out into the drop, her right arm reaching up high, her left down ahead of her. She let the board plot the course and focused on balancing with it.
Back home, less than two weeks ago, Ashley had lived in a top-shelf residential district. While she had ridden stairwells before, she'd never attempted anything like this. It was like a half-pipe, except she was carrying a gun, a pack, and a sword. She found herself working to balance the sword and rifle, while still compensating for the bulky weight of the armored vest and the backpack.
Sinking onto the board, she flew downward, faster and faster. The hairpin one-eighty at each landing came faster and snapped harder each time.
The gas was long gone, the floor numbers blurred by. She tucked in her arms, let out a sigh and spun downward at a blinding speed.
It was difficult enough to focus on riding, let alone planning, but she knew that when the stairwell hit the center floor, it would flatten out and open up. She couldn't continue downward indefinitely. But how was she going to slow herself down?
In the distance the final floor spun toward her, only half a dozen flights away now. She tried to slow for it, leaning back, taking more of an arc at the landings.
She saw the doorway she'd need to hit when she crashed into the flat opening below. She lined up, anticipating the force she'd need to stay in control and ride out the next few seconds. The floor came at her with dizzying speed.
She kicked and ducked, the force exerted on her body by the sudden change of direction pushing her down onto the board, while flinging it upward.
Crouching as low as she could, Ashley barely missed the top of the doorframe. Her head cleared it by the smallest of margins. It would have knocked her out. Apparently even the V4 had its limits. Ash didn't want to find the board's breaking point.
She steered over to a patch of close-cropped lawn. She stumbled off the board and collapsed.
For a couple of minutes, she didn't move. Then she struggled out of the backpack and ditched the gun belt.
Lying on her back, the Micronix was digging into her butt and she was feeling nauseous. She rolled onto her side and tossed her cookies.
After puking up everything in her stomach, then coughing herself blue, she lay still, just breathing.
Ash looked over at her Vert 4. It spun in lazy circles, the front end tipped and anchored while the power back drifted half a foot off the ground, kind of like Evan's had, all those years ago, after he'd kicked it at her in the clearing.
The Micronix. It had fallen out of the sky. The original.
As far as she knew, it was still in her locker. Hopefully Geoff had it.
That day.
Bobby and Evan had been exposed.
Bobby had carried the infection home, exposing his father, Mr. Dunkirk. But he’d been killing for years.
Ashley paused.
It was the sensation.
Time.
She felt it again, now.
She sat up.
Ash heaved again, but her stomach was empty.
A cold sweat hit her and she struggled to her feet.
The vestibular humors in her ear were rolling, giving her the false sense of moving when she was still and making her feel still while moving.
She took a breath and felt, for a moment, as if every pore had opened and had taken a big drink of oxygen. She exhaled and her skin tightened. She took another breath and the sensation lessened somewhat. Two breaths later it was gone.
The knife. In her pocket… In her locker… They were both here now. The prototype, it was a direct computer-brain interface, The Micronix. As a computer, her father had been able to do almost anything with it. Geoff could use it, but Ash hadn't been interested.
Chairman Pierce had known her father. She had learned that later.
Yet it wasn't just the knife.
It was also her father, every time. It was his life that had put her here. Ashley shook her head. On some level, everyone's circumstances could be traced back through their parents. Even one's grandparents could be held responsible, if one looked far enough.
Ashley knew her father hadn't created the world. What had happened here was not his fault. Her father hadn't tried to rape Sky. Her father hadn't kicked Geoffrey down the massive escalator. Her father wasn't hanging out with a gang of serial killers who were trying to eat her.
That was insane.
Where did Dunkirk come into it? He had been killing for years, but Ashley was also a killer now. She'd trained for it, and this had been her test. She'd trained well.
Ash had left the knife in her locker that first night when she'd gone to take a shower. It seemed like a lifetime ago.
Ashley shook her head. Now was no time to have a religious experience. She coughed a couple times and blew out foul puke breath. She looked around for a drinking fountain. There was one right nearby.
After a drink, she pulled the Vert 4 over to her pack and lay down, using the hoverboard as a pillow, the weapons clutched to her chest.
The detective's handgun was black, the officer's silver. The bracers and vest were stamped in black and fringed in the red. Her face was stained red, her clothes and hair, thick and heavy with blood. She lay canted to the left, so the Micronix wouldn’t dig at her.
After a few minutes she managed to calm her body down, but her brain was way too excited to relax. She pulled on the backpack, slung the rifle, holstered the handguns and slid the sword through her belt.
She was so weighed down with gear; she would have had a miserable time walking. The stairs would have been impossible, but the Vert-4 hoverboard made ever
ything possible. It made her footsteps silent. It made her stronger than she really was. Ashley realized it was perhaps her most valuable possession.
She drifted through the garden like a wraith and reached the athletic complex without meeting any unlucky citizen-soldiers.
Dr. Morgenstern's head was still wrapped with gauze when he and Colonel Keller arrived on the street outside Dunkirk's childhood home. Only moments after Reverend Wolfe left, they parked in the very space he had vacated.
Smoke was pouring from Dunkirk's house. It was obvious it was on fire, but still to early to have caught anyone's attention. They crossed the street and entered through the unlocked kitchen door.
Despite the blinding bandages, Morgenstern moved as though he could see perfectly well. He and the Colonel were surprised to find Martin pinned to his living room floor, bleeding and struggling to breath. Upon seeing them, Dunkirk attempted to speak, but succeeded only in blowing blood all over himself.
Morgenstern shook his head in disappointment. Keller knelt and stared into Dunkirk's burnt and ruined face. He showed him the black edged machete.
Dunkirk closed his eyes.
The blade made a deep thwack as it bit into the hardwood floor beneath the man's neck. Dunkirk's head rolled away from his body and Keller scooped it into a plastic bag.
A couple miles away, Reverend Wolfe parked outside a police station.
He lifted the sleeping child from the back seat and carried her through the front door of the building, up to the reception desk.
The young desk sergeant looked up, "Can I help you?”
"Yes." Reverend Wolfe handed the toddler to the Officer. "I found this lovely child wandering the streets. Please return her to her parents.”
The officer took the child and held her in his arms. He looked at her. "I've got a little girl too. We'll find your parents, sweetheart, I promise.”
"Where did you find her?" he asked, looking back to the Reverend.
The officer froze. He was alone. He hadn't heard the door open or heard the man leave. He was just gone.
Captain Snow adjusted the black fabric strung between the old orphanage and the special projects wing. It concealed the torch-wielding soldiers from wandering eyes. The soldiers phase-cam systems couldn't suppress a torch's flame, but behind the black velvet, they could work without fear of discovery. The operators focused behind their welding masks, burning through the struts.
Standing on the roof, Kilo pulled out his control module and double-checked the detonators as Snow scanned the district for activity.
Everything was quiet.
Splitter finished his cutting his assigned braces and joined them on the rooftop, making an awkward situation downright chilly.
King waved, signaling that he and Sorpresa were almost finished.
Captain Snow's phone vibrated, the administrators on 7982 were ready. She gestured and the three of them climbed down into the braces.
From their belts, the agents connected terillium lanyards, replete with lockable d-rings, to the structure. They fished the cable out longer than necessary and fed a loop through a gap in the strut, snapping it into the ring. If they had to disconnect in a hurry, the thick cable could be twisted out and it would spring from the gap - much easier than trying to maneuver a d-ring through a strut, while dropping at terminal velocity.
Grey realized that everyone, even Sorpresa, had watched to see if he would buckle up like a newbie or not. When he noticed that they'd been watching, they all laughed.
Grey had held-his-own with the torch, both fast and accurate, a skill only acquired after hours of practice. Kilo had spent more than one night with the combat engineers.
Boarding and commandeering a freestanding structure was one thing. Stealing one that's bolted down was quite another. The wing did have its own terillium drive, but it could not be counted on for accurate maneuvering power.
Just strapping in at the top of the slide was a serious commitment. As the winds picked up, the team felt the anxiety acutely. Big units often shifted when first separating from their mother structures, and struts had a habit of impaling engineers.
As Sorpresa finished with the final brace, Snow gave the signal for the others to power up. They charged their gravity drives and pulled their cables tight.
Snow pointed at Sorpresa. He adjusted his elevation controls until the lanyard pulled tight.
Snow gave a final signal and the soldiers directed their gravity drives in a concerted effort, increasing the pressure against the back wall structure, pushing the wing from the bulk of the district.
The final bits of metal, anything still slightly connected, began to snap off. There were a few pings and with a high-pitched metallic scream it broke free.
The wing's drives had been powered down, and the unit shifted like a bolder at the edge of the cliff. A moment later the building slid over the lip of the gravity well, plunging from the district.
The cables of the lock-box had been designed to prevent the escape, or entrance, of vehicles. The building wasn’t using its magnetic drives, and the cables couldn’t have held it anyhow. They caused only the slightest pause as the wing dropped.
It slid over the charged city, flying out to sea like a piece of ice on glass, the buildings below keeping it aloft for now.
The soldiers hung on, the city lights flying fast below them.