Singularity: Part 15
Red Lightning grinned, “I’ll be ready. We can’t lose. We’ve got two of you.”
Grandpa laughed. “Glad you think so. I’m feeling behind the times, myself.”
It felt good to see a whisper of the friendship I knew they had. They might have had a conversation, but that’s when the Cabal soldiers all jumped in our direction—not directly at us but close enough that they’d figure it out soon enough.
And that meant that the time to start was before they figured it out. Grandpa had come to the same conclusion.
They landed to our left, jumping up to see if they could glimpse people on the balconies there. That’s when Grandpa said, “Go.”
Grandpa had pulled a long-barreled weapon from where it had clipped onto his rocket pack. Then he’d clipped it onto his arm. A glance told me that it was a plasma rifle, much like the one that I’d noticed Captain Commando carrying. While I hadn’t remembered that as being one of Grandpa’s classic weapons, I hadn’t known Captain Commando used one either.
Either way, bolts of plasma streaked toward the Cabal soldiers, some from Grandpa, and some from wherever Captain Commando stood. The white hot shots knocked the soldiers over, burning them.
It wasn’t just Grandpa firing either. Red Lightning and I started the moment Grandpa did. Along with the plasma bolts, red-tinged lightning arced across the room, creating thunderous booming noises. Cabal soldiers held their hands over their ears. Others flailed around on the floor as lightning flowed through them.
I fired with the two of them, adding laser bolts to the mix. Cabal soldiers fell over, many screaming as much in surprise as in pain. Even though I didn’t want to take joy in causing pain even to the Cabal, I couldn’t help but be relieved that we were taking them down with the only form of damage that their regeneration didn’t have a head start on repairing.
That meant I had a head start in continuing to live because my grandparents had that much better of a chance of not dying at the Cabal’s hands.
Of course, it wasn’t that simple.
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The True, showing all of Tara’s inconvenient tendency to understand what was going on despite minimal detail, started firing on our position nearly from the first shot.
That meant a hail of automatic fire, along with shouted redirection of the Cabal’s most deadly soldiers toward us.
Of course, it wasn’t that simple for them either.
We didn’t need to stay rooted on the balcony. Grandpa, Red Lightning, and I could all fly. We shot into the air, continuing to fire from the side as we flew. The True’s bullets couldn’t do much to either version of the Rocket suit. As for Red Lightning, his costume used one of Grandpa’s fabric designs. I didn’t recognize the material, but when placed over Red Lightning’s already tough skin, it handled mere bullets well enough.
Giles flinched once when a bullet hit him in the cheek, but it didn’t go through his skin.
Not only did we make it harder, but we weren’t the only ones. C and Prentkos jumped out from wherever they’d been when the True started firing. Landing next to the True, they moved as twin blurs—red and purple.
The True’s infinitely adaptable intellects might allow them to make optimal choices for their situation, but for it to work best, they needed time, and they didn’t have much.
They thought quickly, but they didn’t move fast enough.
As the True began to fall, the group must have realized they could not win against two tough, physically powerful speedsters and instead chose a plan that might allow part of the group to survive.
Instead of remaining together, they tried to spread out and aim at Night Wolf and the Mentalist. How they realized that those two were the only ones vulnerable to bullets, I couldn’t guess, but they did.
It didn’t help.
Spreading out meant nothing to either C or Prentkos, and they knocked them down like so many dominoes. Plus, the Mentalist and Night Wolf weren’t what you’d call easy targets, even if bullets could kill them.
The Mentalist used the same trick I’d seen Daniel use again and again—prescience to predict where bullets would be and telekinesis to knock them out of the air. When he had a breath between bullets, he’d swat the True with telekinesis, cutting them down one after another.
Night Wolf, in turn, had all of Haley’s agility, dodging bullets I couldn’t have sensed. Plus, he wasn’t slow either. While he wasn’t a blur, he ran more quickly than the True, jumping and pouncing on them to leave them unconscious and full of poison.
Plus, Captain Commando didn’t limit himself to shooting the Cabal. When he shot the True, though, the results were… messier, reminding me of our guerrilla war on Hideaway.
What were Power Burst, Jody, Colette, Magnus, Ray, and the others doing? Retreating to stand around the throne—which may have been the entire point. Let the “expendables” die, and then we’d have to face the real threat?
I felt energy gathering. Magnus had to be planning to empower his people—that or to blast us with the power of an ancient, alien weapon. I didn’t like either option.