Shu couldn't win this, she knew. The car had been a powerful tool, now lost to her. Fighting this hard without its aid was killing her. Nexus nodes were broadcasting at emergency strength, using every watt of power they had available, exceeding their specs. Waste heat from the wattage was overheating her brain. The physical drain of the energy expenditure was draining glucose from her bloodstream, sapping her, starving this body's neurons.
She dropped to one knee in the doorway. A monk saw her, came to support her. She had to end this now.
Shu put everything she had into a final surge of thought, pushed the chopper down down down, drained power from its rotors. She had one last chance to get them out. She reached out to the limit of her strength, yelled into their minds.
• • • •
Sam grabbed the stick as the chopper started to turn. No good. Nothing she did had any impact on the craft.
A fireball burst up from the monastery ahead. Something had exploded. The chopper shuddered, started behaving erratically. They were almost there, up above the lake at the foot of the monastery now. They started to turn to the right, jerked back to the left, dropped, climbed, spun in the air, tilted and canted crazily. Sam hit controls frantically, with her hands, with the pilot's, tried to get the chopper to respond to her. Nothing she did changed anything. This was crazy.
JUMP INTO THE LAKE. IT'S YOUR ONLY CHANCE.
Shu. The controls were still unresponsive. The chopper was diving now, still doing its mad drunken dance, jerking this way and that, losing altitude. The lake at the foot of the monastery was just thirty feet below them now. The chopper leveled out, spun, stabilized. Sam heard something beeping from the cockpit. Saw the light.
MISSILE WARNING – NO LOCK.
Time to go!
Feng had cut Kade free of the plasticuffs and had his arm around him. Feng hit the emergency door release button and the door blasted outwards on explosive bolts. The night air welcomed them. There were two dots glowing in the sky out there. Exhaust flames from the missiles. Sam heard the missile warning tone change to the LOCK sound.
MISSILE WARNING – RADAR LOCK.
Oh, fuck.
Blowing the door had just blown their stealth and lit them up on radar. Feng jumped with Kade. Sam reached back on instinct, grabbed the belt of the SEAL whose elbow she'd stabbed, and jumped, dragging him with her.
For a moment there was stillness. She swam in cool night air. Everything receded.
Then the missiles slammed into the chopper above her, explosions filled the night with the tortured screams of metal and the deafening whoosh of superheated air. A giant force shoved her down and the water rose up to slam into her.
"Fuck!" Jane Kim swore.
Nichols had never heard her swear before.
"Banshee One is hit. Repeat, Banshee One is hit. Total loss."
Nichols glanced at the other screen. Banshee Two had dodged its two missiles. The two Rudras would be out of missiles now. All they had left were guns.
"Get them back into the clouds," Nichols yelled.
"They're hauling ass, boss," Williams said. "Climbing… climbing. Four hundred meters to the clouds."
On the screen the RTAF fighters were coming back around for another pass. It was a race. And it was clear the fighters had the advantage.
"Visual contact with the Rudras," Williams said, voice tense. "They're opening up with guns."
Onscreen, muzzle flames burst out from the nose guns of the two RTAF fighters, still half a click away. Two hundred meters to the clouds.
Nichols watched on screen as shells pounded Banshee Two, ripped off half the tail, tearing into the main rotors. The Banshee spun madly, tipped over into a forty-five-degree angle, rolled as it lost altitude at a sickening pace. It fell from the sky, spinning end over end, struck the mountainside at a hundred and fifty miles an hour. The rotor tore into the mountain and snapped, driving metal fragments into the chopper at high speed, igniting the fuel, sending up a huge fireball as Banshee Two tumbled in a flaming wreck down the side of the mountain.
"I think we've seen enough," came the voice of the ship's captain. "I'm taking us under."
No one disagreed.
In a monastery dormitory building, in a recently used cell, under a hard narrow bed, a slate's screen came back to life.
CONNECTION RESTORED.
14 MINUTES REMAINING.
49
VERMIN
Kade came back to consciousness in the back of a pickup truck driving up a steep and winding road. He was wrapped in a blanket and soaking wet. Feng had an arm around him. The Chinese soldier had lost his suit jacket and gloves somewhere, was down to a sodden white dress shirt and slacks. Sam was on the other side, bald-headed in drenched nun's robes, with a gun trained on an unconscious Navy SEAL.
Kade coughed. It was a wet cough. Water this time, instead of fire. Maybe he'd be buried alive next time. Or vacuum. Yeah. Vacuum.
Sam caught the gist of his thoughts, chuckled at him. "You're alive, Kade. Be happy."
"I'm…" cough cough cough "totally…" cough cough "fucking…" cough cough "thrilled."
Sam and Feng both laughed.
"We get you in front of a fire, yeah?" Feng said.
Kade nodded. That sounded good. He was shivering, even in the warm Thai air.
Shu met them at the top. She was a sight for sore eyes. She hugged Feng, hugged Kade, even hugged Sam.
Feng carried Kade off towards the massive hearth in the kitchen. The whole monastery was in chaos. There were army trucks with mounted machine guns and micro-missile launchers. Ananda was talking to a military officer. Conscious monks were dragging unconscious monks to the meditation hall as a makeshift infirmary. Sam threw the big SEAL over her shoulder, looking comical carrying such a bigger man, and said she was going to get him tended to and handed over to the Thai military. Shu said she had to speak to Ananda.
The kitchen had half a dozen Thai cooks in it. They were making giant pots of tea, even bigger pots of soup. Feng found a chair for Kade, dragged it to the hearth, deposited Kade in it almost gently. Everything hurt inside again.
The Confucian Fist found the smallest of the pots, poured tea for both of them, brought a mug of it to Kade.
"Thank you, Feng. And thank you for saving us. I owe you."
Feng nodded, crouched down in front of the hearth near Kade. "You should thank Su-Yong," he said. "This will cost her."
Kade nodded. "I will. It'll cost her how?"
Feng looked at the fire. "Bosses in China, they won't like this. Very messy. Very public. She… how do you say it? She played a lot of cards."
Kade didn't know what to say. He stayed quiet.
Feng kept staring at the flames.
"You know, when we meet, you called me robot? Slave?"