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

“You’re late, Myriano.”

“Oh, shut the fuck up, Paul. You try getting those bastards to chase you all the way across the damned park!”

Lyssa got her breathing under control as she accepted a police issue assault rifle and checked the mag.

“They’re not fast,” John told her from where he was standing over her.

“With firepower like that, they can afford to take their damned time,” she griped. “Almost fried me three times across the park, and I’m not even sure they were aiming at me. Where the fuck is the National Guard?”

“Whole city is in gridlock,” John told her with a shrug. “They have to check every car before they run their tanks over them.”

“Run their . . . are you
shitting
me?” Lyssa asked, wide-eyed.

“Would take a
lot
longer to move all the cars, trust me.”

Lyssa scowled, but couldn’t say much against that. With the streets gridlocked as far as she could see, the big lumbering insect things certainly had the mobility advantage. Nothing quite like being able to walk
over
cars, or stomp them into the ground, she supposed. The Guard would have a harder time with their tanks, especially since she was well aware that they still used some antiquated chassis to supplement their forces.

Of course, I’m here with a friggin’ M-4C in my hand, so who am I to talk about someone else using outdated gear?

Less than a handful of NYPD officers, all SWAT certified, were issued MilSpec weapons. Modern military battlefield gear was
far
too destructive to deploy in a city under normal circumstances and, honestly, MilSpec urban warfare gear hadn’t changed a ton over a hundred years. It got more sophisticated in terms of optics, communications, and computational capacities, but a bullet was a bullet, and most police
forces still used calibers comparable to what their great grandparents packed.

It was just cost effective.

“Here it comes! Hold your fire until we’ve got them in the kill box!” John called, resting his rifle on the armored surface of the SWAT APC.

Lyssa scrambled to her feet, taking up position beside him as she too looked through the optics of her M-4C rifle. The enemy wasn’t exactly trying to sneak up on them—the insects were actually shoving trees out of their way as they approached—so drawing a good sight picture was far from difficult. She just hoped that they were packing enough firepower to do the job.

“Steady! Aim!” John called as the first of the alien beasties stepped out onto Central Park West. “FIRE!”

The air was rent with the staccato bursts of automatic fire, fifteen cops opening up with everything they had.

NATIONAL GUARD COMMAND POST,
INTREPID
SEA, AIR, & SPACE MUSEUM

“WE’VE GOT REPORTS of fighting all through the city, sir. Most of it involving civilians or police at this point.”

“Why are my squads not in position yet, Lieutenant?” Potts growled.

“The city is gridlocked, sir. Opening a path through that mess is taking time.”

The general growled, but it was more of a frustrated sound than anything else. He knew how hard it was to move military vehicles through a city at the best of times, and what was going on in New York was far from those. The aliens had slammed into the city in their initial penetration, taking some buildings down and generally causing no end of panic, and now he had millions of empty, or hopefully empty, cars out there blocking every street and alley in the whole damned city.

His men were cutting through it. They had orders to do so without regard for the property, but it was taking time. Even with cowcatchers mounted on the tank chassis, there was a definite limit to how fast you could clear a road.

“More pressing, sir,” Lieutenant Sky told him, “we’re already detecting troubling signs on our seismic systems.”

“You know the orders on those. Flood the subway system with men, flush them out,” Potts ordered. “Do it delicately if you can, but do it.”

“Yes sir. I have men moving through the tunnels faster than above ground. Anything down there is a top priority.”

Potts grunted, but at least that was some encouraging news. He wished he could move more of his units through the tunnels but, aside from the fact that they were still evacuating people through them, there was just no way his armored units would make it cleanly through the stations they’d need to emerge from.

The enemy were diggers, however, according to intel from the
Odyssey,
and now he was seeing that playing out on his tactical map. They had a bit of bad luck there this time, however, since there wasn’t a square inch of the entire
planet
that wasn’t covered by seismic scanners, and Potts knew for a fact that the DOD had access to every single one of them.

Hell, even China tied their seismic data into the worldwide network. Predicting quakes that could shake down your city was a bit more important than political bullshit, and for the first time he was pleased as all fuck that the eggheads had butted their heads into his security bailiwick. Sharing data with the enemy made it difficult to maintain OPSEC, true, but now the only enemy on his scopes was decidedly unlike the Block and their allies.

Potts heard another air defense barrage open fire, and he looked up reflexively. The ground to air missiles had been designed to eliminate ballistic missiles launched from China and were launched from a Leviathan Class submersible sitting somewhere off the coast. He tracked the missiles with his eyes, looking ahead of their course, and spotted the target.

Eight incoming tracks, that he could see, heading for the city. Either New York or Jersey, he supposed.

The tracks of the defensive missiles intersected with their targets as he watched, flashes of light erupting in the sky. When it was over, only three enemy tracks continued on their course.

Definitely heading for New York
.

“Tell the SAM division that I buy the drinks if they splash all three of those fuckers before they get in under our defense.”

“Yes sir!”

This job is getting uglier and uglier. If the bastards wanted a fight, I sure wish they would have picked a different battlefield
.

CENTRAL PARK WEST

“THEY’RE JUST WALKING through everything we’ve got!”

Lyssa grimaced, but couldn’t say anything to contradict her superior. Their guns were pretty much just annoying the enemy beasts, or whatever they were, and that was being optimistic about the whole deal.