Chapter 46 – You Can’t Go Home Again
On the first level athletic complex parking garage, Ash sat in the passenger seat of a convertible muscle car. The Meta/Micronix dug into her hip. The canvas top was up, Kaz sat in the driver's seat, while Sky and Geoff were huddled in the back, cramped and buried in rifles, cases of ammunition and gear.
Ash listened to two radios; they had one tuned to the police band and another handheld unit for reports from the teen commanders.
The cops were in a tailspin. The police had returned fire but only briefly. Dante's bold gambit paid off.
Ashley had deliberately left the hostages in the stadium so they would be protected during the firefight, but once the police assault became a rescue operation, chasing falling adults, it hadn't taken much effort to figure out what happened. Ash clearly remembered Dante volunteering to guard the hostages. It had seemed odd and now she knew why.
"We need to keep them alive," she had said.
"I understand." Dante had looked her in the eyes.
She confirmed the forced exodus by radio, but decided not to confront him over it. His idea, however ruthless, had worked. After all, he had released hostages, alive. It would be difficult to argue with his success and now was not the time. Instead she kept the orphans focused on their efforts to protect the parking garages and the others still hiding in the dorms.
They listened to the radioed reports. Once they got news of the police breaching the stadium, Ashley climbed out of the stuffy car. Kaz joined her, followed by Sky and Geoff who climbed out of the crowded back seat.
The sounds of gunfire came to them from everywhere and nowhere. All around them, kids ran back and forth with supplies for their teammates.
Kaz triggered the ragtop, retracting it into its compartment. Since she had such a central role in the on-screen diversion, Ashley's fire team wasn't involved with the initial assault. If the police had spotted her outside the stadium, before they realized the broadcast was a scam, that jig would have been up.
Besides, Ashley didn't want Geoffrey running around in the mix. It was easier to watch him if he was with her. She had insisted that he stay with Sky, in the car, keeping both of them out of harm’s way.
Now that the police had discovered their ruse, there seemed little reason to remain in the cramped vehicle. Passing orphans waved to them, but no great catastrophe met with her getting out and stretching her legs.
All across the district, the Angel City Officers were ruthlessly pinned down by the coordinated teens. The orphans had acquired all the district's small arms and they didn't hesitate to fire on the cops.
In spite of the chaos, the police and National Guard had secured a landing site on the backside of the Old Orphanage. They streamed ships in until there wasn't any more room to anchor. In the end they had more than two hundred officers with boots on the ground, but their command was fragmented, severely hampering their effectiveness.
For the most part the orphans showed little or no restraint. They killed indiscriminately and without mercy, as if their lives depended on it.
Soon the officers were reduced to isolated pockets of soldiers holding defensive positions. Without clear objectives, they were easily outmaneuvered and picked off.
The Police department's crisis control center, a massive flotilla, was anchored outside the district, beyond the range of the children's weapons.
In the control room, a junior officer approached his superior.
"Mayor Westbury, again sir," he said, handing the phone to Major Schoneville.
Westbury demanded the major commit all his soldiers in a surprise attack.
"Well, it wouldn't really be a surprise, sir. It would be more of a second wave.”
The mayor's reply was not heard.
"Yes, sir. Right away, sir." Schoneville hung up.
The control room was silent. The men waited, looking at the officer.
He raised his head. "Direct order, open fire, all weapons.”
The men passed the command down the line. A ripple went through the ranks and the assembled soldiers opened fire on the district.
They opened up with everything they had, mostly small arms fire. They hadn't come prepared for a siege war. They didn't stock rockets or missiles for regular patrols.
As soon as the gunfire started, Dante again began forcing citizens out into the empty sky. The National Guard and Coast Guard had foreseen this tactic and deployed large numbers of nets and rescue craft. Still, the wicked maneuver did influence some officers to hold their fire, if only so as not to strike the falling citizens.
Across the city, Mayor Westbury watched the firefight with a pair of binoculars from his balcony. He laughed, giggled and danced about like a rather large, ungainly child.
Leonard sat alongside, silently enjoying the sunshine, thinking he might have to buy Detective Cole more than one beer to apologize.
For eleven minutes the cops and guards rained wave after wave of hot fire at the orphanage. They only paused to launch troops in transports.
The orphans themselves fired from behind cover when and where they could. Three times they turned assault craft back. Some were killed on both sides, but no new ground changed hands.
From her place deep in the garage Ashley was hearing troubling reports. Despite the fact that no one had been firing from God's Hotel, orphans and police alike reported that it had taken a significant amount of damage.
Ashley hadn't posted any shooters there, deliberately to keep it from becoming a target. The police also knew the resort facility was designated as the toddler's residence and had refrained from firing at it.
Ashley and her crew ran over to the northwest side of the garage. They were up above the hotel and had a perfect view of the chaos.
It was burning in three places and the front area was massively destroyed. Dozens of windows had been shot out and the fires fed columns of thick black smoke high into the air. The bodies of murdered citizens and small children were strewn all across the grounds.
Sometime Earlier…
Keller and Morgenstern reached their destination. They'd crossed the athletic complex and boarded the maintenance section of God's Hotel. To reach the main floor, where most of the children and adults had congregated, their best route was through the maintenance corridors, into the administration section and through the abandoned security offices.
As they passed the holding cells, Morgenstern, with his enhanced vision, saw that a soldier had been imprisoned. He also saw that Splitter wore powered up phase camouflage, making him undetectable to the naked eye. Morgenstern explained their good fortune to Keller.
The senior ranked colonel entered the cell and ordered Staff Sergeant Splitter to remove the phase cam control unit.
Splitter was, at this time invisible and it was clear that Keller couldn't see him, yet there was no way past him and through the door.
He remained silent.
Keller drew his weapon and turned, handing it to someone in the hall.
Morgenstern stepped into the small cell, raised the weapon and fired at Splitter's head.
It only took a couple minutes to strip the camouflage unit and attach it to their rolling weapon system. Keller cranked it up to full volume, giving them a twelve-foot radius of invisibility, and made their way to the building's front atrium.
There were almost a thousand adults gathered with the resident toddlers on the hotel grounds. Children and adults milled along the shore of the miniature lake that dominated a large part of the grounds. They hung out in the gardens and sitting rooms, filling the spaces through out the ground floor of the building.
Keller and Morgenstern moved to the front of the building, an unseen lethal presence in the midst of those who had voted for life and equality.
With a ripping sound not unlike an invisible bolt of lightning, Keller and Morgenstern opened fire. The red-hot slugs ripped through the crowd, destroying everything in their path, plant, animal or otherwise. Within moments they'd
decimated the lobby and ground floor.
Captain Snow had been caught off guard by the brutal attack and only got off three rounds before they moved inside.
She dropped, chasing them, but the moment she found a clean shot, they withdrew further, destroying everything they came across. The machine gun reduced all matter to hand-sized chunks, furniture, people and walls, pulverized into single servings. The children and citizens had no idea who was firing on them, or which way to run.
As Captain Snow pursued the murderers, they entered an elevator, ascending to spread death among the least-deserving children and nurses.
Snow could hear them firing again on the upper floors. She flew out to the front of the building and fired at them through the walls and windows.
The shots from her fifty-caliber rifle ripped through glass and wood, but veered and ricocheted of the terillium armor plates of the death machine.
People screamed and ran in every direction. Even though she was able to track Keller and Morgenstern across multiple spectrums, she had nothing resembling a clear shot. She was obscured at every turn, while their targets surrounded them.
Snow was overcome by the massacre left in their wake.
Flames licked the walls and the grounds of the resort. Bodies of children and adults alike were carelessly strewn, broken, red and black among the smoldering grounds.
Frustrated, she relayed the situation to Grey, King and Sorpresa, who didn't even know the hotel had been attacked. After locking up Splitter, they had been airlifting wounded kids to ambulances parked around the district. Before long, they were escorting ambulances into the district, hiding them from view and getting them back out invisibly.
Grey had just finished double-checking the charges on the far side of the district when Snow called for support.
Keller and Morgenstern escaped the inferno of God's Hotel through a freight entrance on the far side. Captain Snow had begun mobilizing some of the surviving nurses.
The killers were halfway across the bridge to the athletic complex when the battery in Splitter's phase cam reached the end of its charge. Having cranked the device to its highest imaging radius, they'd burned the unit out. Now half the district, and a number of cops, watched as they wheeled their guns across the open trestle.
As most of the gunfights had paused to admire their handiwork, no one missed them.
The volume of firepower that rang out from the garages chased the two veterans behind the heavy shields of their cart. They pushed forward, desperate to reach the corridors of the complex and escape the line of fire.
From her place in the garage, directly above them, Ashley set her last three grenades to contact detonation, pulled the pins, and dropped them over the ledge.
The grenades hit the bridge right in front of Keller and Morgenstern and triggered the explosives set by Grey earlier, utterly destroying the wheeled machine-gun mount.
The smoke cleared to reveal Morgenstern lying unconscious fifty feet back, near the entrance of the bridge. Keller was nowhere to be seen.
On the radio, some of the orphans reported seeing him fall.
It wasn't clear how he'd avoided the district's security nets, but he wasn't spotted in any of them.
As Grey flew toward God's Hotel, he too saw the colonel and pathologist attempting to cross the bridge with their wheeled guns.
He watched Ashley drop her grenades. Huddled behind the swat shields, the explosion knocked Morgenstern unconscious. Keller was tossed over the edge.
Grey dove for the falling colonel. He didn't want a bunch of rescue workers catching the homicidal sociopath. That wouldn't end well for anyone, except maybe Keller.
The colonel's leap hadn't carried him very far when Ashley's grenades set off the charges under the bridge. Even Grey felt the concussion, and much closer, it knocked Keller unconscious.
Grey caught the falling colonel and carried his dead weight high into the atmosphere, his phase camouflage rendering both men invisible.
Inside his sealed armor, Grey was capable of climbing to twenty-five thousand feet. Keller was only wearing loose swat armor. He had no protection from the harsh climate of higher elevations and no oxygen to supplement the necessities of consciousness.
Grey pulled an elevation disk from his pack and strapped it to the unconscious officer. He set the disk to thirty thousand feet, its highest setting, and let Keller go, up into the wild blue yonder.
Grey let his own kit softly carry him back down to the action below.
Eventually the police and the orphans stopped firing at each other. The orphans had to be low on ammo and it was getting close to noon.
Eleven forty-three, seventeen minutes until the detonations would begin.
Grey scanned the action with his helmet cams as well as his newly enhanced vision. The orphans held their posts, containing the police on the old orphanage. Many were close to their chosen vehicles. Anyone who hadn't found a vehicle was hiding out in the dorms, armed to the teeth.
Grey pondered the mission's objectives and realized he was witnessing a compromise on the part of the powers-that-be. The military industrial complex had been satisfied with the hibernation of the beta wing.
The crimes committed by the mayor's cousin and her crew would be covered up in the destruction of the old orphanage. The social activists would be spared the spectacle of the entire orphan population being executed for rebellion, despite the fact that dropping them out of the supply chain was equally terminal.
Grey landed on the old orphanage and headed for the central gravity drives. The charges had been set on the main elevation controls, the terillium disks, as well as on the bridges and braces. This unit was going to come apart from the district and then explode into a hundred thousand little pieces as it fell from the sky, unless he stopped it.
Grey knew Mayor Westbury was involved with what had happened here. Westbury had been a prison governor, once upon a time. His cousin, Agatha Dorchester Maime, had been one of his assistants.
The least Grey could do was preserve the crime scene for the lab boys. He reached the drive bays unseen and pulled his detonation control from its pouch. He called up all the devices and one at a time, disarmed them.
He left only the charge on the central power coupling activated. When it detonated, the commands from the control panel would be interrupted. It could be easily repaired, if necessary.
The unit would fall with the others, but wouldn’t be destroyed. It would drift to a stop first, while the other buildings would glide out over international waters, where the orphans would be out of the jurisdiction of the law enforcement personnel who currently surrounded them.
This unit would crash on the shore of the Pacific Ocean. The ACPD would be forced to investigate it. Even though the National Capitalists and their bioengineering wing would remain secret a while longer, Governor Maime's crimes would be front-page news before the week was out.
Mayor Westbury stood at his open patio, watching the district through a telescope. He watched the clock, eleven forty-seven. He watched twenty news stations on a sectioned monitor that had been moved out onto the expansive patio.
Leonard didn't know what to think. He didn't know how to judge himself for his role thus far. What precedent could provide a measure for his personal culpability in this fiasco? To what layer of hell was he to be assigned? The only thing Westbury needed was a violin.
What neither of them expected was a man's hand to reach up over the patio railing. A second hand joined the first, and then a head came into view. The intruder, plainly dressed as a Reverend, with a black suit, collar and cross, was huffing and puffing. He was clearly winded.
Leonard rose and gestured to one of the patio chairs.
Westbury frowned, “Offer the burglar some water, why don’t you?”
Then the man’s identity suddenly came to both of them. They had never met Reverend Wolfe, but his file was on the desk Obviously, this was the man Director Trafford was searching for.
The
FBI director and his team currently occupied a group of suites below the mayor’s office, searching for the Reverend over the District Thirteen security cameras.
Wolfe leaned against the railing, exhausted by his climb. Obviously reading their faces, the Reverend held out a reassuring hand. "I'm just here to talk," he said. "I don't want any trouble.”
Waltman lifted the handgun at his side. He didn't remember reaching for it, but there it was, just the same.
The Reverend, however, was faster still; he raised a large pistol at Waltman, and fired.
The secretary felt his gun-wielding hand suddenly grow numb, the weapon leapt from his hand, but he saw no blood.
Had this man just shot his gun from his hand?
The Reverend raised his left hand, gesturing for patience, "Just one question and I'll go right back the way I came in.
“Who was it? Not on D13, I mean, in the government. Just tell me who it was, and I'll leave, calm and peaceful." Despite his honey-coated tone, Wolfe slowly inched forward, his pistol leveled at the mayor and his secretary.
Westbury caught his breath. "Director Trafford, with the FBI, is right downstairs. I'm certain he'd like to speak with you, shall I call him?”
"Who sent him?” Wolfe asked.
"I imagine you did, indirectly,” Westbury answered.
"Well let's focus on Directly then. Someone called you and cleared him. Now you're going to tell me who that someone was.”
A wasp had flown in and was agitating the air between them. Allergic, Mayor Westbury was terrified of them. He waved and swatted at it.
The insect flew away.
"Who?" Wolfe demanded.
“Go fuck yourself. I’m not telling you anything!” Westbury shouted.
Wolfe laughed.
A moment later, the large mayor screamed and flailed at his own chest. He slapped and pinched at the wasp, having already been stung.
Flinging the insect away, Westbury collapsed into his chair. The black stinger protruded from an angry red welt just above the mayor's open collar.
Waltman moved to the large man, but Wolfe raised the pistol.
"He's allergic!" the secretary shouted.
"Then he'd better tell me what I want to know.”
Westbury's breath was already growing short. The wound was swelling with each passing heartbeat.
"Miller," the obese mayor rasped. "Senator Miller is who you want.”
Reverend Wolfe stepped toward the railing, but not lowering the gun.
Waltman turned to grab the phone, before he even spoke the word help. Wolfe was gone, over the side, true to his word.
A few minutes later, the mayor was breathing, albeit unconscious. Director Trafford and the on-staff medical team had stabilized him.
Trafford showed Waltman the insect's stinger. It looked natural enough. The director then placed it under a portable microscope his team had on hand.
Waltman was astonished to find the device was not organic at all, but clearly mechanical.
"This guy, Wolfe, whether he's the inventor or simply a representative of larger players, wherever he gets his technology, its top-shelf stuff. Even the military isn't this precise.”
Waltman laughed.
"What's so funny?” Trafford asked.
"He’s a Reverend. Get it? He works for God.”
"God has no jurisdiction here." Trafford wasn't joking.
Waltman couldn’t help himself and burst into laughter. For all he knew, the Reverend might actually work for Senator Miller, and Westbury was being punished for having spoken the man's name, but he doubted it.
"So then it's not allergic shock at all?" Waltman asked.
"Nope, neurotoxin cocktail. There's no telling when he'll come out of it, or if. To my knowledge the previous victims still haven't, but they haven't died yet either, so…”
Waltman nodded. He plainly disliked the redundant Director.
In the distance, the charges set on District Thirteen began to detonate.
The assembled medical techs and law enforcement personnel turned to watch the fireworks.
This was what he always wanted, Waltman thought to himself. Poor Moses. What kind of karmic justice is at play that he's missing it?
Waltman watched with the others, the once mighty Ex-Mayor Westbury, comatose and already forgotten, unconscious behind them.