Star Rebellion (36 page)

“Uh, Yamamodo Toshiro?” I asked as he held out an arm to help me up.

“You can call me Toshiro. Our second name is your first. It is a common formality in these countries.”

I nodded my head. “Toshiro, will the harness be able to hold both of us? ‘Cause I’ve already fallen once today, and don’t really want to do the same again.” I had been eyeing the mechanism hesitantly for the past few moments.

“No, you and I will be fine.” This guy didn’t really elaborate much, now did he?

I let Toshiro help me up and he attached a couple of belts to my old harness. I had already detached the previous rope that the demon had cut and it was sitting in a rumpled pile in the bottom of the bowl.

Toshiro fiddled with his own harness and we started moving upward. The mechanism was slow, but still faster than the manual way, so it was a win-lose situation. It was going faster, but I was now bored as hell and uncomfortably close to a man I had never met before. Pleasant, isn’t it?

Eventually, like two years later, we finally made it back up to the helicopter. Toshiro severed the rope from the ‘copter and let it fall down into the bowl with the other rope. Well that was a waste of materials. The Japanese man then went into the co-pilot’s seat and I stayed in the back with Icestar, closing the door to finally get away from the wind. It was starting to get chilly at this altitude.

Icestar was still unconscious, though that didn’t surprise me. He had used a hell of a lot of power, and that never was a good thing, no matter what you were doing. The usually pristine spikes in his hair were almost completely flattened. I was pretty sure they had been perfect even when he had stepped out of the window to climb the rope. I guess he also had a rough time all of the way up here.

After a few moments of Huang flying the helicopter so it would be above the apartment buildings, his voice came over the helicopter's headset. “Where do you want the oil?”

I looked out of the nearest window to me. It was hard to see our exact position because of the night, but I trusted Huang’s judgment. “Try and get it over any entrances to the building that a demon could get access too. It is literally just to lure them in mass quantity.” I settled back and started nudging Icestar. We kind of needed him to start the initial explosion of the building. If a grenade was used, the blast radius wouldn't be as controlled and that could be bad. Or amusing.

“Hmm-mph, whaa?” he finally grumbled as I kept nudging him.

“Waaaaake up!” I poked him really hard in the stomach.

“Whaaa, I am awake.” Icestar sat up and tried to glare at me, but I think he was too tired for it to work effectively.

“Huang is dumping the oil, and I need you to do the exploding thing you do. All I have are matches, and I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t stay lit after falling a few hundred feet.

“We aren’t a few hundred feet above the building,” Icestar said, “though no, they wouldn’t stay lit.” Icestar still sounded exhausted, and I was rather amazed I had been able to wake him. Most of the time, after using specials we were out for days. Icestar, however, was older than my normal teammates and I knew he practice his special frequently. Either way, I was feeling a bit bad about waking him up like that. I mean, he had just saved my life after all. I think my line of work lets me almost die way too often, and I hate being the ‘damsel in distress’ and having to be saved like that.

We slid the door to the helicopter open only a tad, though the wind buffeted the inside of the helicopter with gusts of air. Ice and I watched as the watered down oil fell and splashed over the building, quickly leaking down the rest of the stories. It was kind of creepy, especially when I thought about how Ice and I had been on one of those floors just a few hours previously. I mean, we could even see some of the demons reaching outwards, drenching their bodies in the mixture. That just looked weird.

I had looked away from the building to study Ice’s reaction. He was watching it, still obviously a bit tired, but he had a dim glow of… relief, I believe, around his facial expression. I wondered what that was about…. Maybe he thought that he was avenging Sunstar. I know I couldn’t stand her, but Sunstar and Ice had been close, and I could respect that.

A loud clang made me jump, and I looked down as the rigging that had held the container of our oil mixture banged off of the buildings. I had forgotten that they would release it so that with the explosion, there would be no oil residue for the flames to catch onto up here. The helicopter was supposed to be far away by the time that the explosion actually went off, but it was a safety measure.

It also was a good thing that this was a severely abandoned section of Beijing. I hope not too many druggies got killed afterwards here. Sarcasm mostly implied.

“We’re ready for you to set it off,” Huang said over the headset.

Icestar nodded his head beside me before hesitantly raising his hands up. A glowing white light appeared between his palms, then it turned darker before he tossed it out of the door. The ball managed to land directly in the center of the roof. He had good aim.

Icestar pressed the button on his headset to talk. “It will explode once the color returns to white.” Before he had finished speaking, the helicopter was already moving away. A massive stream of demons were already surrounding the building, and from what I could tell, fights were breaking out everywhere around it, especially with the demons closest to the oil mixture. I kind of wish I could have been closer down to the ground to be able to see it all happen and play out, but that wouldn’t be a pleasant place to be hanging out in a few minutes.

Icestar and I sat on the same bench seat as the helicopter returned to the military base. We were sitting shoulder to shoulder, even though the seat could probably hold five grown men.

Icestar was starting to be similar to Fire and Dark when it came to how much I trusted him. We had been through a lot of things together in the past few days; all of us had. Things were starting to get crazy here, and I had a feeling that this wouldn’t be the end of it.

Faintly, I heard the explosion, then a roar as the flames took over the building. I looked back out the window, and even though by now it was night, a dim red glow lit up the skyline, making it easy to see the skyscrapers.

Chapter 21: We’re Running Out of Time

FIRESTAR

              I stretched my arms up over my head and did some twists of my abdomen. “Give me two minutes out there by myself,” I started to say between stretches. “I will do a scout, and if possible, get to the car.” Erik handed me the keys, and I was a bit surprised.

              “It would make it easier if you could just drive from there to here, instead of trying to sneak us back over.”

              I nodded my head, looking at both of them. “If I’m not back in two minutes… well Darkstar, you know what to do.”

              I looked at my friend meaningfully. He barely nodded, showing that he knew not to tell Erik anything. I am sure Darkstar had been thinking that long before me, but hey, it felt good act like I had created the plan first.

              Someone had to have snitched on us. I wasn’t completely buying the story about the advisers; how would they have known we were at that restaurant? I’m not saying it wasn’t possible, but there were some gaps in the story line. Erik, however, was a very possible person to have snitched on us, and I wasn’t going to let that possibility kill us. Darkstar would be on his guard here, and I would be on mine out there. An ambush could come at any moment, and I wouldn’t doubt Erik being in the lead. How he had handled the butcher’s knife had added to my doubt about him, which slightly saddened me. I liked the Russian man. I didn’t want him as an enemy.

              I slowly stepped to the front of the alley, keeping my footsteps practically silent. They would have probably heard the door slam, but that wasn’t reason enough to let them know that I was moving closer.

              I peered around the corner and saw where their terrorists' cars were. They had black SUVs that looked like a state-of-the-art car. I bet it was the best on the market right now. Sticking out the windows of all seven cars were the muzzles of machine guns. They would have been heavy and cumbersome to transport inside, and not worth the effort it would have taken. They could still shoot me with those guns though.

              I searched around the parking lot. It seemed as if none of the cars had been damaged, and I saw the one we had arrived in. The car was parked near the front of the building, only ten feet away from where the majority of the terrorists' cars were now. Well isn’t that just freaking awesome.

              The terrorists wasn’t really looking over toward me though. They seemed mostly fixated on the door going into the building, not really caring about their surroundings. I couldn’t see into the SUVs though, which meant that there might be people inside of them keeping watch on their surroundings. I wouldn’t be completely obvious about this; I wasn’t a dumbass.

              I looked at my surroundings in the alleyway. Erik was looking at me expectantly, but Darkstar was watching the Russian discreetly.

              I eyed the wall next to me curiously. After a few moments of thought, I decided I could do it. I looked back at the other two guys for a moment before digging my fingers into the side of the brick wall, looking for a handhold. Mind you, I wasn’t actually digging into the wall for whichever weirdo takes that literally. Just pressing really hard and not trying to fall. It would take time, but I would be able to scale the side of the building.

              My fingers started to hurt halfway up though. It had been a long time since I had done anything like this. Back at Star Rebellion, we were trained in a variety of things, scaling a building included. You never knew what situation you would come across. The calluses on my fingers had grown softer, making it so that this actually became difficult when I used to love doing it for fun.

              I would have to remember to start practicing again after all the crazy demon stuff was done and over with.

              I pulled myself over the side of the building, swinging down onto the rock covered roof. The rocks clanked together as I set my feet down, and I ducked under the lip of the roof, just in case.

              From what I could see, no one else was up here. Smoke still poured from the chimney pipes and I’m sure that I could smell burning food whiffing over from it. There weren’t many places to hide on the roof though, and I would have seen anyone if they had been there.

              What the hell was up with a terrorists that wasn’t even able to put up proper snipers?

              I slowly made my way over the rocks, wincing every time that my step made them hit each other. I eventually gave up on the silent route and just walked crouched down to the other side of the building, directly above the black SUVs. The sword on my back made this uncomfortable, and I hoped the hilt wasn’t sticking over the edge of the shallow wall.

              I stayed in my hidden position for a few moments, trying to see if I could hear anything that they were saying, or even just figure out if they were talking. I hadn’t heard the cars leave, so they had to still be there, but other than that, I wasn’t sure of anything else. You know I would be really happy if I could find out how many men they had, what type of weapons, what their purpose here was. Yea, the last one was kind of important. Maybe they just had some really crappy service here once upon a time.

              Eventually, I slowly lifted myself higher off the ground until I could just barely peer over the side of the roof. All of the cars were still in the exact same place they had been earlier, but the men were gone now. Or, the men I could see at least. Without knowing where they were, I wasn’t in a good position to try and do anything else. For all I knew, they were just at the very front of the building where I couldn’t see anything.

              My head snapped to the side as I heard a muffled shout. Obviously, I couldn’t see the alley where Darkstar and Erik were, but I believe they were getting captured.

              I peered back over the side of the building I was on and saw the terrorists men I had seen early walking back around the corner of the restaurant. One held a gun into Darkstar’s side where the leader had managed to get him earlier while the other guy practically dragged a bruised and beaten Erik. Apparently the Russian had put up a fight. Maybe I should rethink my previous analysis that he was behind the attack. Maybe.

              My head was still just barely above the edge of the roof, but it didn’t look like anyone had noticed me yet. I watched as the first guy shoved Erik into the back of one of the cars. I got a good look at how they had the machine guns positioned, which kind of surprised me. I thought that Earth technology still dated back to the early 2000s, but they had a slim-cased area for the ammo, then the nozzle of the gun with an inside rotator. Now that is just classy. I wish the Rebellion would get those it; it would’ve made Soulstar and his team work a lot less when we had made the equipment run earlier.

              My mind was frantically searching for a way to rescue Dark and Erik immediately- I even considered using my vision power even though I was still weak from when I used it in the restaurant- but moments before they shoved Darkstar into the car with Erik, I saw my comrade look up at me. I know he saw me too, and Dark barely shook his head.

              I wasn’t to do anything. Not yet at least.

              I slightly nodded mine in return, and Darkstar let himself be forced into the car.

              I didn’t realize it, but I had already slid out throwing knives from a pocket in my cargo shorts. I didn’t bother putting them away yet, and as I watched the cars pull out from the parking lot, my grip tightened on them.

              Whatever it took, I would destroy the Russian terrorists.

DARKSTAR

              My side ached where the man had shoved the point of his gun into the cut. Something I had learned about this faction of the terrorists was that they were the newly trained. They didn’t believe in mercy and thought everything must be done by force.

              Basically, they were complete idiots that would probably be dead within a year.

              Another thing I learned is that they had no clue about secrecy, or were arrogant enough to think that Erik and I wouldn’t make it out of here.

              We were in the back by ourselves. The terrorists men had tied my hands behind my back and it was uncomfortable sitting this way, but it wasn’t like there was much I could do. All of my knives were in the multitude of pockets in my cargo pants, none of which I could reach without being overly obvious about it.

              The guy driving looked over his shoulder and out the back window. I also glanced backwards and saw that a few more cars were now following us, though we had been the last ones out of the parking lot. They must have been the cars that were holding up the emergency vehicles.

              “So. You speekah Englizsh, no?” the man in the passenger seat said to me.

              I nodded my head, not bothering to dignify him with a verbal response.

              “How iz my Englizsh?” he asked with a smirk.

              “Crap.”

              The guy’s smirk disappeared in a moment and he spat on me. “You are thiz crahp,” he said back to me before turning around to glare moodily out of the window.

              Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Erik weakly smiling. I know Firestar was paranoid about the man, and he had reason to be, but I couldn’t help but feel some respect for him. He had tried to keep the Russian terrorists men off of me after all.

              The driver said something in Russian, and right now, I really wish I had Foreststar’s aptitude for languages. I felt like it might be helpful to know what they were saying.

              “Are you sure that they are the two?” I jumped in surprise and looked over at Erik. He had leaned closer to me so that they couldn’t hear him.

              For a moment, I looked back at the Russian man in surprise until he spoke again, briefly after the man in the passenger seat had replied to the driver. “We didn’t see anyone else. Who else could it be? They are the Stars.”

              I nodded my head. Good, I could still find out what they were saying. They knew that Fire and I had something to do with star… though I couldn’t be sure if they knew only our names, or if they were aware of Star Rebellion.

              “Fine, but the one who looks Russian wasn’t that good. Not good enough to be the thing on the other side of the restaurant.” Erik didn’t look happy about that translation.

              “Maybe he was tired.”

              “Maybe.” From the tone of voice the driver had said that in, I didn’t think he was content with believing that Erik was Firestar. I would have to change that.

              “Firestar,” I said in a whisper that was loud enough for the men up front to hear.

              Erik looked confused for a moment, and the men seemed to freeze up front in their seats.

              “Firestar!” I said louder, looking meaningfully at Erik.

              “You have a plan?” he muttered back, obviously taking the hint and keeping his voice loud enough to be heard.

              “Yes, we need to-” I was saved from having to actually figure out a plan when the guy in the passenger seat slammed his hand on the seat between us.

              “No talking!” he shouted.

              Erik and I pretended to fall back to our respective sides of the car in shock… or well, I pretended to. I think Erik really was afraid of the sudden movement.

              I saw the passenger seat man share a concerned look with the driver. Something in his sentence involved the word Firestar, and I believe he now thought that he had the real Firestar in the car.

              Boy would he be upset when he found out otherwise.

              I settled myself as comfortably as I could in my seat and watched the landscape as we drove through the city. It wasn’t that impressive anymore; I get used to what my surroundings look like pretty quickly, and from what I could tell, the demons most certainly had not made it this far north yet. I wondered precisely what Mister Moscow had been getting worked up about.