“Don’t fire,” Carlee said. “Maybe it hasn’t seen us. It shouldn’t be able to.”
Dozens of markers suddenly burst from the Apostle, spreading out in the air as they raced toward them.
“It’s seen us!” Stefani said. Her voice calmed now as she steadied herself for the battle.
“How can you be—” Carlee stopped herself as strange projectiles shot past them and exploded on the ground a few miles ahead. “Jeff, man the guns.”
The sound of Stefani’s gunfire filled the air as she unleashed her sniper rifle on the approaching Apostle. Jeff used his hood to navigate to the weapon system on the fortress and grabbed control of all of the weapons. He ordered them to track the incoming target with a few mental orders.
“What should I use?” Jeff asked.
“Everything!” Stefani and Carlee shouted at the same time. He sent the orders, and the massive cannons blasted three-foot balls of supercharged energy at the approaching target. The fortress shook from each of the mighty guns and hummed as the rest of its arsenal discharged. Orange streams of plasma spiraled from the rear of the fortress, and dozens of anti-aircraft guns scattered tracking grenades into the sky behind them.
“Hold on!” Carlee’s warning was too late; the fortress fired its emergency thrusters, sending Jeff slamming to the base of one of the main cannons. It turned too sharply, causing the bottom of the fortress to scrape against the ground with an awful shriek.
“What’s going on, Carl?” Stefani shouted. She had slid a few feet across the ground but somehow had kept her gun in the firing position. She continued to take shots at their approaching doom.
“It planted some sort of . . . force-field barrier up ahead. We have to go around it!”
“Can’t you take care of it?”
“I . . . we’re going so fast . . . and there so many layers and . . . maybe . . .”
The fortress steadied itself, and Jeff checked on his progress. The incredible display of power flying from their transport had done nothing to slow the Apostle, which was now close enough that he didn’t need any enhancements from his hood to see it clearly. He deactivated his enhanced vision and gasped.
“It’s not Horus,” Jeff said.
“We’re trapped!” Carlee said. “It’s got force fields all around us.”
“Just get close to some of the generators,” Stefani said. “We’ll press our way out of it. Not like it doesn’t know who we are already.”
“It’s that white Apostle . . .” Jeff repeated to himself. He stared up at the approaching white Apostle that acted as if their onslaught was nothing but a cool breeze. It cut through the air, its wings stretching for over a hundred feet. It let the small attacks be brushed off by its shields, while it destabilized and detonated the larger attacks before they reached it by using small red lasers that were reminiscent of Horus’s wings.
“There are multiple layers . . .” Carlee said. “We’re going to have to ditch the transport.”
“It was too big anyways,” Stefani said.
Hatred consumed him as he watched the white Apostle approach them. It was a shade from a nightmare, constantly haunting him no matter what happened. It had been there at Fifth Springs, it had chased them into the battle of Dallas, and it had saved Horus’s life. He wanted to scream at it, to rage about how the Apostle should just let him be. It had done so much to ruin his life that he refused to let if have Carlee and Stefani as well.
“Where is the rendezvous?” Stefani asked. She stopped firing her gun, and the question hung in the air while the fortress continued to unleash its full arsenal on the white Apostle. A glimmer of peace unexpectedly floated across his mind.
“We go together,” Carlee said. “Or not at all.”
Jeff closed his eyes and imagined a reality where he had never removed his flight suit and had instead worn it for security. It was a reality that made so much sense; sacrificing comfort for the protection provided by a flight suit was so sensible that he began to wonder why he would have ever done anything differently. He felt the suit come into existence around him.
“Lead the way,” Stefani said as a set of flying armor appeared around her. Carlee’s popped into existence a second later. Force-field walls surrounded them in all directions, and the spikes powering the shields had connected together to trap them inside of a dome with the Apostle.
The shields to the fortress deactivated, leaving it completely exposed to any counterattacks that might come its way. It hurt his heart to abandon their flagship; Carlee had sacrificed part of her mind to bring it into existence, and it was to be the vessel that facilitated their cause to change the world.
They shot out from the side of the fortress and skimmed across the ground, Carlee at the front, with Jeff and Stefani by her side. They kicked up dirt and weeds as they raced away from the fortress. Some of the weapon systems were overheated or recharging, easing the stem of projectiles that they were hoping would slow the Apostle down.
“Gas,” Carlee said over the coms line. “It’s gassing us.”
Cartridges landed all around them, streaming green gas into the air, blocking Jeff’s vision. He coughed as it seeped into his suit and grated into his lungs. A moment later, the air in his suit was pure once more.
“Pressed in some filters,” Carlee said. “We’re approaching one of the shield generators. I’m going to press in charges beneath it. Don’t pass until I give the clear.”
“I just lost contact with the transport,” Stefani said. “I think it hacked us.”
“Surprised it didn’t do it sooner,” Carlee mumbled.
Jeff pulled up abruptly and landed on the ground not far from the force-field wall. The sudden change in motion made his stomach turn, but that wasn’t the worst news. Behind the wall of force fields, another set of force fields had been put in place. He watched as more spikes landed behind those, creating another dome around them.
“It planned this,” Stefani said. “It set up turrets around to shoot these things just to trap us.”
“We’re not trapped yet,” Carlee said. “Step back.”
Jeff stepped back as the ground beneath the three nearest points in the force-field wall erupted. Carlee’s explosions incinerated the generators, collapsing a section of the dome that was trapping them.
The ground rumbled, and Jeff knew he had come face to face with the Apostle again. Its humanoid form stood in front of them, thirty feet tall, its armor shiny and reflective. It looked as pristine as if it had never been touched. All of their efforts hadn’t even scratched it.
Explosions blasted beneath the Apostle, throwing Jeff and the other vagrants backward through the air. Jeff used his suit to catch himself in midair. The dust hadn’t even cleared before Jeff could see the Apostle hovering above the crater beneath it, unmoved by the blast.
“I’m going to hit again,” Carlee said. “Charge.”
An energy cannon appeared next to the Apostle. It was immobile, but it was big enough to rival the ones on the fortress. It fired, and the blast hit the Apostle at point-blank range, knocking it out of the way as they shot forward toward the next layer of force fields.
“You take care of the next wall,” Carlee said. “Jeff and I will try to keep it busy.”
“Right,” Stefani responded. She rocketed forward over the ground, streaking toward the next impassable barrier.
Jeff rotated in the air, imagining a reality where the ground behind them was filled with massive mines—perhaps from a reality where the Apostles had used the weapons to guard themselves from one another. He could feel his mind starting to develop the connection when something snagged his foot and yanked him forward.
A glowing yellow band of energy was laced around his foot, and it was retracting, pulling him toward the Apostle that emerged from the cloud of smoke and dust. He strained against it, but the cord of energy cracked his armor and pulled him toward his death.