Out of the Black (Odyssey One, Book 4) (5 page)

“Don’t we have anything heavier?” she demanded.

“I think we have a light fifty in the truck.”

Lyssa snorted, tossing her M-4C aside. “Why the hell didn’t you break it out in the first place?”

“It’s a damn sniper rifle, Lyssa! Those things are right on top of us!”

She wrenched open the back of the SWAT truck, scrambling inside as she looked around. Like many of her peers, Lyssa Myriano was a veteran of the Block War. She’d spent a sizeable chunk of her life in the Marines and handling big guns was second nature.

The fifty was an older FN model Hecate IV, a semiautomatic anti-matériel rifle. No one had been able to explain what the NYPD was supposed to use it for. She had never seen the use of the damn thing before. It fired bullets that went
through
buildings, fer Christ’s sake, but just then Lyssa was happy as hell just to pull the big gun off the rack.

“Grab me a box of ammo, John,” she growled, lugging the big gun outside. “And I need a spotter!”

“A what?” John asked, bewildered as he grabbed a box of fifty-caliber ammo.

“Got you covered.”

They both turned, surprised by a SWAT officer grabbing a scope from the van and following them. Lyssa just nodded to him as she unfolded the bipod and dropped the rifle on the hood of the truck, ignoring the creepy sizzling sound the enemy weapons made as they tore through the city.

“Can you handle that thing?” the SWAT man asked her, nodding to the big rifle.

“In my sleep. Can you handle that thing?” she countered, nodding to the short spotter’s scope with a smirk on her lips.

“Watch me,” he responded dryly, dropping the scope on its tripod and resting it on the roof of the truck before resting his eye against the scope. “Target, twelve o’clock. Range, one hundred fifty meters.”

“Got it. See anything that looks vital?”

“On that? Your guess is as good as mine.”

Lyssa sighed. “Understood. Taking the shot. Red nodule, joint of the forward leg at the . . . shoulder? Whatever.”

“Roger that.”

She let out her breath, dropping the crosshairs onto the center mass, looking for a spot that wouldn’t slam off on one of the distended legs. She got her sight picture and squeezed the trigger down, trying not to flinch in anticipation of the recoil. The rifle roared, slamming into her shoulder and
hammering her back about six inches, scratching the holy hell out of the black paint of the truck.

“Hit,” the SWAT man called. “High and to the right. Adjust your windage and zero the rifle down two notches.”

“Any reaction?” Lyssa asked as she twisted a knob on the scope, eyes flicking to a flag in the distance.

“It looks pissed.”

She looked over the scope, and found that it did, indeed, look pissed. The alien was twisting and turning in place, tearing up the ground like a madman. She slowly grinned. “That’s not pissed, soldier. That’s pain.”

“Roger that. Hit him again?”

“Damn right.” She put her eyes to the scope, adjusting her aim. “Taking the shot.”

“Roger.”

The rifle roared and kicked again, slamming back into her shoulder.

“Hit.”

She re-acquired her sight picture as quickly as she could, dropping the crosshairs on the target again. “Taking the shot.”

“Roger.”

The rifle roared a third time, and she winced this time as she felt a bruise forming on her shoulder. The rifle wasn’t gentle on a big man, and her hundred and thirty pounds was feeling every pound of the weapon’s recoil.

“Hit! Dropped!”

She looked over the scope and saw that the report was right. The alien had gone down after the third round. “Is that a kill?”

“I think so,” the SWAT officer confirmed. “It’s not moving. I think you got it.”

“Good. Next,” she growled, shifting her weapon over. “Lead walker, heading this way.”

“Confirmed,” he told her, looking through the scope. “Range . . . one hundred meters.”

“Roger.” She didn’t bother changing her scope settings.

At a hundred meters, a target that big was basically point blank range for the Hecate. She dropped the crosshairs on the target, judging the shot by eye for a moment when she spotted a heat shimmer appear on the target’s mandible.

“Hit the dirt!” she called, dropping behind the truck as a familiar crackle of burning energy filled the air.

Men and women dove for the ground, hugging behind cover at her order, but not all of them were fast enough. A beam swept the street, burning two cops to a cinder before connecting with the SWAT APC a few feet away from where she’d ducked behind the truck. The armor of the APC stood up to the beam for a whole three seconds before an eruption tore through the vehicle and blew it over onto its side.

Lyssa grimaced and turned away.

There had been men and women sheltering behind the APC, now crushed underneath it.

“Holy shit,” John whispered.

“We need heavy fire support,” Lyssa swallowed. “Contact the Guard. Tell them we can’t hold this ground.”

John stared at her, clearly shocked into incomprehension, but the SWAT man nodded and tapped his earpiece.

Lyssa risked a glance over the hood of the truck, eyes on the things now beginning to move out of the park and into the street. She reached down and pulled the Hecate back up into place. “John . . . you may want to leave.”

“What?”

“John,” she told her superior, licking her lips, “when I open up on this bastard, the others are going to triangulate and rain all hell down on this position. You might not want to be here when that happens.”

“What about you?” he demanded.

“Someone has to hold the ground until the Guard gets here,” she said tersely. “Now get the hell out of here and try and help with the evacuation!”

She shoved him away, then turned back to the rifle and pulled the partial mag. She slapped a full one in its place, then dropped a round in the pipe manually. She was going to want every round she could drop on target if she was right about this. The SWAT man settled in beside her and she shook her head. “No point in a spotter this time, buddy. You may as well get the hell out of here.”

He glanced at her. “You going to rock that thing?”

She didn’t look back at him as she settled her eyes down over the scope. Instead, she just hummed “I love rock and roll” as she got her sight picture settled.

“Time for you to leave, bud,” she said, her nerves fading away.

“Alex.”

“What’s that?”

“The name is Alex,” he told her, picking up his gear. “I would take that from you and make the stand myself, but honestly I figure I’ll get my chance today.”

“Call me Lyssa, Alex. Semper fi,” she said simply. “You’ve got about twenty seconds. Start running.”

“Marines. Figures,” Alex chuckled, picking up a go bag from the truck. “Alright, I’m out. You empty that mag and make for the buildings. I’ll cover you.”

“Roger that,” she said. “Get out of here.”

He went.

She gave him the full twenty count, even though they’d wasted a few seconds talking, then settled in on the closest of the alien beasties and winked at it through the scope.

“My, aren’t you a strapping big bastard?” she whispered, finger curling around the trigger. “Meet Hecate, Goddess of the Crossroads.”

The big rifle roared and she rode the kick back without lifting her eyes this time, firing the next round as soon as the scope settled roughly on target. The Hecate IV incorporated the latest methods of recoil compensation available, but it still kicked like the south end of a northbound mule. Lyssa ignored it though, putting a third round into her target a little under two seconds after the first, and then moving on to another invader. She figured that she’d be lucky to be sore in the morning.

She put three more in the next target and moved on, not even looking to see if her first two had gone down. She didn’t have time to be making confirmations, and number three got his fair share of her attention in the next couple seconds.

Good thing they’re so damned big. Hardly have to aim
.

Of course, as she thought that, she realized that it was also because they were a
lot
closer than she’d thought. She had two rounds left in the gun, having fired nine of her ten plus one, and she was trying to decide who got the honors when a now familiar crackle of sizzling energy lifted the hair on the back of her spine.

Lyssa threw herself aside, abandoning the Hecate as a beam swept the SWAT truck and literally cut what was left of the unarmored vehicle in half. She hit the ground rolling and made it back to her feet as scraps of the black vehicle began to rain down around her.

Run girl, run!

She didn’t know if they’d finally just spotted her, or if maybe they were using motion tracking systems, but as she started pumping her legs the air filled with that ugly sizzling sound. All around her she could hear loud cracks, almost like gunshots. Lyssa didn’t turn around to see what it was. She stayed on target as she bolted for the closest alley, where she could see gunfire erupting from multiple sources.

Running toward gunfire was not a natural response, even for a cop or a Marine, but she just tucked in as low as she could go and kept running. A beam scorched the asphalt in front of her, sweeping toward her from the side, and she had to throw herself clear. Lyssa hit the ground hard, but alive, and rolled behind a chunk of cement that had either been thrown up by the enemy weapons or by the big chunk of spaceship resting only a few dozen meters away. She didn’t know which, but she curled behind it for cover and started praying as she heard that sizzling sound again.

The cement was popping and cracking under the heat of the blast, and all she could think of really, was whether it was radioactive or not, oddly enough. She had just about made up her mind to make a break for it, forlorn hope that it was, when an explosion tore through the air above her and she looked up in both shock and awe.

She wasn’t the only one. She heard the weapon blast falter. The eerie thudding of the alien beasties’ heavy shod feet stopped as they too looked up.

About halfway up the curve of the
Odyssey
’s habitat cylinder, almost a hundred feet off the roadway, a hole had been blown clear out of the hull. As the smoke slowly blew clear, Lyssa spotted a figure stepping out into the open. She watched
as he paused, seemed to look down at her and then out at the park beyond, and vanished for a moment.

Lyssa didn’t know what to think, but before she could do much of that anyway the figure reappeared, this time with a large object resting on his shoulder.

“Oh shit,” she muttered just before the figure triggered the MLARS—Multiple Launch Advanced Rocket System—sending twenty MilSpec Hi-Ex rockets into the park.

Eric flipped the MLARS forward as it launched, not bothering to see what he’d hit. The weapon was fire and forget. Either he’d nailed his targets or he hadn’t. There wasn’t much more he could do. He dropped the disposable launcher, letting it tumble clear of the impromptu door he’d blown in his ship’s hull with a breaching charge, and picked up the Priminae GWIZ as he keyed into the local military channels.

“Strykers, Strykers, have fire mission request. Central Park West. Will laze targets,” he called. “I say again, fire mission. Central Park West. Will laze.”

“Who is this? There are no assets reporting from CPW. Identify yourself.”

“Captain Eric Stanton Weston. Commanding, North American Confederacy Starship
Odyssey
,” he said, before taking a deep breath. “Make that formerly commanding.”

There was a long pause on the network before the voice came back. “Confirm Ident. Handshake sent.”

Eric responded to the security check with the countersign as he finished preparing his kit, knowing that it would only take a few seconds.

“Identity confirmed . . . Captain Weston, you have a fire mission?”

“Roger that. Request air support at my location. Will laze targets.”

“Wilco. Air support inbound.”

“Hoo-rah,” Eric said, keying several pocket drones online and tossing them out of the ship. The tiny flyers buzzed off, flitting through the air above Central Park West as they each painted the targets he’d assigned them. “Targets lazed. Light them up.”