Out of the Black (Odyssey One, Book 4) (14 page)

“Who the hell was that?” Tate asked.

“I don’t know. Some nutcase named Weston with a sci-fi rifle. He wants bullets.”

“Did you tell him we’re a tank platoon?” Tate asked, confused. “Wait. Weston? Eric Weston?”

“Yeah. A jarhead. Why?”

“Jesus, sir, that’s the captain of the
Odyssey
. Don’t you watch the news?”

“You mean the ship that just scattered its pieces all over the city we’re in?” Garibaldi asked sarcastically. “I know the name, but what are the odds . . .”

The screen he was looking at came back with the confirmation of the man’s ID, making him break off in consternation as he read the file.

“Well, shit.”

“What is it?”

Garibaldi sighed, reached up, and unsealed the hatch again without speaking. He pulled himself up and looked around until he spotted the man in armor again.

“Munitions truck is five blocks east,” he said. “I’ll tell them you’re coming.”

“Excellent. Thank you, Lieutenant.”

“Don’t mention it,” Garibaldi said sourly. “Ever.”

He dropped back into the tank and resealed the hatch.

This time I’m leaving it that way
.

Lyssa scowled when Weston finally turned up again. “So?”

“Five blocks east. Come on.”

The city was eerily quiet as they walked, a silence that was punctuated by distant rumbling that could have been anything from thunder to artillery fire. She rather suspected that it was the latter more than the former, unfortunately.

It wasn’t that the city was empty. She spotted figures peeking out from the windows as they moved down the street. New Yorkers weren’t the easiest people in the world to freak out, but it seemed that a bona fide alien invasion was going to do
the job. She’d been walking the streets of the city for most of her life, almost five years as a cop, and she’d never seen the likes of what she was seeing now.

Not even after a major hurricane had flooded the streets and forced New Yorkers to flee to higher ground did the city look and feel remotely like it did just then.

“People are scared,” she said softly.

“Good.” Weston grunted. “They need to be scared. These things are nightmares walking. Don’t ever think otherwise. Just one of them could tear this entire planet out from underneath us.”

She looked at him like he was more than a little crazy. “Come on.”

“They’re replicators, Lyssa. One breeds ten, ten breed a hundred, and in a month they’ll eat their way down to the mantle of the planet and the Earth will start to break up as the tidal gravity of the moon starts tearing it apart. Make no mistake, Lyssa. We have to destroy them to the last, or they’ll destroy us. To the last.”

She just stared for a long moment as they walked, uncertain whether he was serious or not. The helmet he wore made it hard to read the man, just as his armor made body language almost indecipherable.

Finally she spoke. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“As genocide.”

NATIONAL GUARD HQ, USS
INTREPID
SEA, AIR, & SPACE MUSEUM

“WE HAVE FIGHTING in every borough, sir.”

Potts nodded. “I can see the map. Get air support over to Queens. The armored units are being outmaneuvered.”

“All we have available are a couple squadrons of AH-98s, sir.”

Potts nodded. “I know they’re outdated, but they won’t be taking on the Block’s best. These things are nothing compared to the Block Mantis fighters. Send them in.”

“Yes sir.”

The AH-98s were about as old school as any active-duty airframe got. No counter-mass support. No advanced AI flight controls. They were now used exclusively as trainers in the general military, but the New York Air National Guard still fielded a few squadrons.

Potts was old enough to remember just what they were capable of, however, so he wasn’t too badly concerned. That said, he did wish that he had a few squadrons that weren’t obsolete by a few decades under his belt.

Every damn unit worth a damn is stationed in a ring of fire around the Block. Okinawa, Germany, Iraq. We’ve got nothing but obsolete gear here
.

We’ll just have to do the job despite all that
.

The munitions truck was expecting them, as promised, and Weston was glad to see that they had a decent supply of depleted uranium rounds in a few calibers.

“Show me the twenty millimeter rounds,” Eric said, nodding to the crate he could see on the back of the large truck.

“Yes sir.”

Eric loaded a single round of twenty millimeter by hundred and four millimeter depleted uranium into the Priminae weapon. It wasn’t a gun by the strictest definitions, and certainly wasn’t a rifle or anything that like. It was a gravetic accelerator cannon, and as such didn’t actually need any specific type of ammunition. Anything you could fit into the receiver would fly just fine out the business end.

The gun took the twenty millimeter round, levitating it smoothly into the ready position. He checked the clearance quickly. Eric figured he could go larger, up to eighty millimeters in a pinch, but lugging around munitions that size would be a pain in his ass and he felt the need for mobility.

Besides, this city is about to buried in bullets I can pick up whenever I need them
.

Eric grabbed a canvas bag from the truck, flipped it open quickly, proceeding to shovel rounds into the bag from the crate. When he was done he flipped the bag over his shoulder and nodded to the men. “Thanks for the reload. Does anyone have a full uplink?”

“No sir. Lost them just before the first impacts.”

Eric sighed, but he wasn’t surprised. When the
Liberty
went up, the pulse was probably big enough to take out even
hardened orbital birds. Thankfully, the atmosphere would have kept it from frying most ground-based systems, but that didn’t help him much at the moment.

“We’re having decent luck with the Net, though, sir.”

“Oh?” Eric cocked his head, but then nodded quickly.

It sort of made sense, now that he thought about it. The global network had originally been designed as a military communications system, so one of its biggest features was the fact that it was designed from the ground up to route signals around broken links. It was also mostly running on fiber now, so the backbone of the civilian network was actually better defended than most military systems.