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A savior? Vosch asked me. Is that what I am?
Across the aisle, Sullivan is watching me. She looks so small in that oversized uniform, like a little kid playing dress-up. How odd we ended up together like this. She disliked me from the moment she laid eyes on me. About her, I just thought there wasn’t much there there. I’d known a lot of girls like Cassie Sullivan, shy but arrogant, timid but impulsive, naïve but serious, sensitive but flippant. Feelings matter to her more than facts, particularly the fact that her mission is a futile one.
Mine is hopeless. Both are suicidal. And neither is avoidable.
My headset crackles. It’s Bob. “We’ve got company.”
“How many?”
“Um. Six.”
“I’m coming up.”
Sullivan starts when I unbuckle. I pat her shoulder on my way to the copilot’s seat. It’s okay. We were expecting this.
Up front, Bob points out the incoming choppers on his screen.
“Orders, boss?” With only a hint of sarcasm. “Engage or evade, or you want me to set her down?”
“Hold course. They’re going to hail—”
“Wait. They’re hailing us.” He listens. I have a visual on them now, dead ahead, flying in attack formation. “Okay,” he says, turning to me. “Three guesses. First two don’t count.”
“They’re ordering us to land.”
“Now it’s my turn: ‘Up yours.’ Right?”
I shake my head. “Say nothing. Keep flying.”
“You do realize they’ll shoot us down, right?”
“Just let me know when they’re in range.”
“Oh, so that’s the plan. We’re shooting them down. All six of them.”
“My bad, Bob. I meant let me know when we’re in range. What’s our speed?”
“A hundred and forty knots. Why?”
“Double it.”
“I can’t double it. Max is one-ninety.”
“Then max it. Same heading.” Right down your throats, here we come.
We leap forward; a shiver ripples down the chopper’s skin; the engines howl; the wind screams in the hold. After a couple of minutes, even Bob’s unenhanced eye can see the lead chopper coming straight at us.
“Ordering us down again,” Bob yells. “In range in thirty!”
“What’s going on?” Sullivan’s head pokes between us. Her mouth drops open when she focuses on what’s bearing down.
“Twenty!” Bob calls.
“Twenty what?” she shouts.
They’ll pull up, I’m sure of it. Pull up or break formation to let us pass. They won’t shoot us down, either. Because of the risk. The risk is the key, Vosch told me. By now he knows about the dead strike team and the commandeered chopper. Constance wouldn’t have done that and Walker’s been captured. That leaves just one person who could have pulled off something like this: his creation.
“Ten seconds!”
