Voss saw a bright light angling down at him, fired the Rossmore, and heard a metallic clang as the slugs struck. Instead of exploding, the badly damaged Drone kept coming, and crashed into his chest!
The impact put Voss on his ass, and electricity crackled around the machine as it struggled to lift off. The Drone was about five feet off the ground and wobbling badly when Voss sat up. He fired the shotgun and felt a series of pinpricks as the machine exploded and small pieces of shrapnel hit him.
“Nice one, Mr. President,” Lucy said, offering him a hand. “It looks like we have what we need. A leader who can shoot straight.”
As Voss came to his feet, he saw that the battle was over. Drone carcasses littered the tracks. Some of them smoked and sputtered impotently as components shorted out.
“What have we got?” Kawecki demanded. “Any casualties?”
“Yeah,” Rigg said solemnly. “Mason took one in the ass.”
“It snuck up behind me,” the big man said defensively. He had short hair, dark skin, and a moon-shaped face.
Kawecki chuckled. “I’ll put you in for a medal. Okay, check your weapons, and let’s get going. Target practice is over.”
After a ten-minute walk, the team arrived at a spot where a construction project had been under way. Lucy led the group back behind a pile of lumber to a point where three sheets of plywood were leaning against the wall. Once the sheets were lifted out of the way, a hole was revealed. “You’ll have to crawl on your hands and knees,” she commented. “But it’s okay to leave your packs on.”
The woman led the way, and one by one the men followed her. Light flooded the tunnel, and when Voss stepped forward, he was completely unprepared for the sight that greeted him. Lucy saw the look on his face and nodded knowingly. “This station is located underneath the public area in front of City Hall. It was intended to be a showpiece when it opened in 1904. But passenger service was discontinued in 1945 and the station was sealed off later on. We use it as a gathering place, and one of our people is a damned good engineer. He tapped into the Chimeran power grid and restored the lights.”
“It’s beautiful,” Voss said as he looked down the tunnel. The first decorative arch featured intricate tilework, the next boasted insets of colored glass, and brass chandeliers hung in between. The effect was stunning.
“Come on,” Lucy said. “The rest of them are camped in the mezzanine.”
As the team followed Lucy into the lobby-like mezzanine they saw that dozens of soldiers, ex-soldiers, and citizen freedom fighters had responded to the nationwide call. Some of them knew one or more members of the incoming team, so there were lots of raucous greetings, friendly insults, and man-hugs as old comrades were reunited.
Kawecki, Mason, Rigg, and the rest were soon lost in the social melee. Voss was standing by himself when Lucy reappeared with a bespectacled man at her side.
“President Voss? This is Doctor Fyodor Malikov. I understand that you two have been in frequent radio contact but have never met face-to-face. Doctor Malikov, this is President Thomas Voss.”
“Tom is fine,” Voss said, as he shook the other man’s hand. His handshake was surprisingly strong for one who looked so frail. Judging from appearances, Malikov was in his late fifties or early sixties. He was mostly bald, with a halo of white hair and a full beard. His face was gaunt and his clothes were tattered.
Voss knew Malikov had been forced to flee Europe for the United States after the Chimera broke out of Russia. He’d been instrumental in creating the serum that the Sentinels relied on and the new Hale vaccine as well. This vaccine could not only alleviate human suffering by making humans immune to the Chimeran virus, it could reduce the number of pod farms and the forms they produced.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you in person,” Malikov said. “How is the vaccine production going?”
“We aren’t producing as many doses as we’d like,” Voss replied, “but it’s ramping up. And getting the vaccine out to the people takes a lot of effort, as you can imagine.”
“I understand,” Malikov said. His eyes were bright. “Meanwhile ve must either shut the tower down or destroy it.”
“And how is that going to work?” Lucy wanted to know.
A long moment of silence passed as Malikov looked down, then up again. “I don’t know,” he confessed.
“You don’t know?” Voss demanded incredulously. “We brought all of these people here to New York, and you don’t know?”
“That’s the reality of the situation,” Malikov said defensively. “Vonce ve get inside, and fight our way up to the control room, I’ll figure it out.”
“And if you don’t?”
Malikov met Voss’s eyes. His gaze was unapologetic. “Then we’re going to die for nothing.”
The attack on the tower was scheduled for 0830 the following morning, but for Kawecki and the rest of the soldiers the evening was a rare opportunity to get together in groups of five or six and shoot the shit. And whenever soldiers gather, talk inevitably turns to old battles and old buddies. So as Kawecki and some of the surviving Sentinels sat on their packs and passed a bottle of Jim Beam around, the subject of Joseph Capelli was bound to come up.
“I say Capelli did the right thing,” a soldier named Budry said as he took a sip and wiped his mouth. “Hale hadn’t had an inhibitor treatment in a long time. The poor bastard was about to turn. Joe did him a favor.”
“That’s bullshit,” Yorba replied bitterly. He had a head of unruly hair and a beard to match. “Hale was the best we had! And maybe Malikov could have saved him. Plus this is the U.S. Army, goddamn it! Or what’s left of it. Since when is it okay to shoot your commanding officer? No, I’d say Capelli got off easy. They should have put the SOB in front of a firing squad.”
“How ’bout you, Captain?” a Sentinel named Russ inquired, as the bottle came his way. “Was Capelli right or wrong?”
“The asshole was wrong,” Kawecki said darkly. “I fought alongside Hale and he was a fine officer. And, if I run into Capelli, I’ll blow his fucking brains out. Any further questions?”
“No,” Russ said with a boyish grin. “I think that covers it.”
“Good,” Kawecki said as he stood. “This meeting is adjourned. Go get some sleep. We have a whole bunch of stinks to kill in the morning.”
It was July 4th, and Voss had been up all night. Not because he had to be, or wanted to be, but because he couldn’t sleep. Now the task that once seemed so achievable, and even glamorous, was beginning to look like a suicide mission. The tower was much larger than he had imagined it to be, and it was crawling with stinks. Worse yet, Malikov wasn’t sure of what to do if they made it to the control room. So, having allowed his visions of glory to get the better of him, Voss was going to die.
But it was too late to change plans or back out. All Voss could do was shoulder his pack and follow a double column of soldiers up the Lexington Avenue Line towards the intersection of 42nd and Third. That was where the alien tower had grown to dwarf the Chrysler Building and touched the sky itself. A six-inch-thick Chimeran power conduit led the way.
A scouting party had been sent ahead and reported everything was quiet so far. But that couldn’t last for long—and it didn’t.
The battle began fifteen minutes later as they passed under 35th Street. The first sign of resistance came when three elongated Hunter Drones dropped out of a ventilation shaft and opened fire. The effort wasn’t enough to stop Voss’s team, so Voss assumed the machines were supposed to simply delay them.
If so the tactic wasn’t very successful, because Kawecki had been expecting something of the sort and his men had two L210 LAARKs (Light Anti-Armor Rockets) prepped and ready to go. The Drones barely had time to open fire before they were destroyed in quick succession.