The crèche security went down screaming; even so the plan never would have worked if the crèches had been like a normal school. However these children had literally been raised to be in military units, and knew that procedures were in place for good reasons. The older kids, ranging from fourteen to seventeen, ran interface for the caretakers, spreading out among the younger kids to keep the evacuation tight and quick. Rei was surprised to see one group of teens break off and head down the eastern corridor. “I have a group going the wrong way!” He reported over his comm.

  Noriko stopped for a second and listened. “No they’re the senior class. It’s their job to get the infants out in case of an emergency. They’ll meet us at the front doors.”

  Rei heard the sound of sonic pistols echo down the hall, and he wondered how many of the teens would die saving the infants. Then he realized, as he saw one of the kids running with a pistol in his hand, that the teens were executing the administrators who got between them and their goal.

  They ran through the halls, Rei scooping up a three year old who had tripped and dropped her red bag. She screamed and tried to struggle out of his arms as he ran past the bag.

  “Kid we got no time for toys!” Another child, around seven holding a blue bag grabbed up the red one and handed it the girl.

  “It’s not toys, sir.” The child said. “They’re escape bags. They have clothes, food and a few cans of water in them. We are required to take them with us during Evac.”

  Rei appreciated how smooth the evacuation was going, but not so sure how he felt about a bunch of kids having a better evacuation protocol than the Deeps. At the same time part of him was pissed, he realized now that none of these kids had grabbed toys. He wasn’t sure they had toys.

  As they came out he saw a bunch of teens with infants strapped to their bellies and huge awkward looking backpacks strapped to their backs. “This way!” shouted Rei, waving the teens towards the transport tunnel that would lead them to Diana.

  “Rei! We’ve got black ops and infantry units coming up the road!” Noriko called over the radio, from near the back of the line. Rei cursed, as he considered the tunnel in front of him. He considered falling back, but the tunnels were to complex to just tell one of the teenagers how to get to the breaching hole and the Diana. “Contact the gestalt and tell them to get their pale asses on it. We’ve got to get these kids out of here! I’ll lead them, everyone else with a gun, get to the back of the line, and lay down some covering fire.”

  Rei was privately proud of himself for remembering the phrase Saki kept using during her training sessions with the bigger guns.

  “Takada! Things are hot! The Gestalt had a read on the black ops guys and had everyone ready to bug out, but there are more soldiers here than we had reason to anticipate. It looks like they’ve re-enforced the garrison!” Noriko shouted to him with her mind. He felt her as she threw herself over a straggling seven year old as a blast went over their heads"

  “I hear you Noriko. We just got word from Talia and are spinning the gestalt up now.”

  “Is your backup in place?” Noriko asked

  “Yes.”

  Takada looked at the group of Siren, the Deep albinos all had the paper white skin and silver white hair common to their race, and only Alexander had the mutation that made his eyes pink instead of ice blue. Takada’s hair was still a soft blond. His last dye job hadn’t washed out yet.

  “They’ve re-enforced the garrison, Rei and Noriko’s teams are taking fire, and black ops doesn’t care if they hit the kids.”

  “Alright everyone lets save their hides.” Said Alexander

  Takada glanced at Saki, who sat on the ground polishing her rifle. She gave him the barest of nods before Takada slid into the gestalt.

  His breath was taken away at how much power was available by combining their minds. We could reach all the way to the tower! To all the Sirens in Australasia! He felt another mind brush his, lost in the gestalt. The others don’t have the training to retain their minds in this? It’s not that different from psy-linking for the team. He mentally walked to the front of the gestalt where all the power was funneled through Alexander’s will. He watched as soldiers dropped, screaming and grabbing their heads, as the ice cold Siren battered at them with raw psionic force.

  That’s the difference in our training, he is a hammer. I am a scalpel. Takeda thought to himself before projecting his thoughts to the Gestalt as a whole. Alexander. With all this power, why don’t we inform the Sirens at the tower and throughout the city of what’s going on? They will inform the Kitsune, and InSec and the military will have to deal with a whole branch of their top people, and a quarter the Cities population, revolting all at once. It should help keep the heat off of us and tell everyone the truth.

  No. Takada winced as Alexander’s words burned through the Gestalt. The more people we involve the more chance we will be betrayed.

  Betrayed? We’re abandoning earth, what is there to betray?

  We must think of our people first. Once we are safe then we will look at bringing in a few other people

  Takada heard some of the other minds arguing in the gestalt, before Alexander quieted them with a harsh burst of psi-strength. I know what I am doing. I know what is best for us.

  It took all his strength to resist Alexander’s mental command to be silent and obey. He made one tiny gesture with his real hand.

  Saki saw Takada’s hand twitch, per the plan that had been psionically buried almost too deep for her to remember, and stood, raising her rifle to her shoulder. She lined the sites up on the back of Alexander’s pale head. “Goodbye Asshole.” She muttered to the psionically deafened albino an instant before she pulled the trigger. His head exploded in a rain of blood and brain. She touched her comm.

  “Natalia, this is Saki reporting in. Alexander has been eliminated. Takada is taking charge of the Sirens Gestalt.”

  Takada felt no guilt for ordering Alexander’s death, Noriko had reported to both him and Natalia the amount of tampering he had done to the minds of the people living in the Deep. He had been a good man and a good leader, unfortunately he had also been a megalomaniacal bastard, he didn’t want to share power, not with Kay, not with Takada, and certainly not with the hundreds of other Kitsune and Sirens that were living in the Tower.

  With a ruthlessness born of years of training in psionic combat he grabbed the gestalt before it could disperse and reached out to InSec Central and beyond, he felt hundreds, thousands of Sirens minds, some of them blinking in surprise as they recognized his mental signature.

  For those of you who know me, and thought I had died… I am alive! For those of you who don’t know me, I am a former InSec agent who, when my team discovered a dark truth about the society we served, our superiors tried to kill us. They managed to kill most of my team, and they also killed Cassidy, the woman I loved, who had been sent to breed on Osaka. Takada let them feel his pain, sending them the images he had pulled, out of Shido’s mind, of his mate laying dead on a gurney her arms covered in needle marks.

  How many of our mates and children have ‘died of a fatal miscarriage? He felt the sirens begin to growl as they thought of the many women who had died of that very cause over the years. Today I and a group of people who have survived this betrayal make a stand! Tell the Kitsune how we have been betrayed, only by working together will we survive to build a new future where our families will be safe! Today we make our own fate!

  Takada heard the mental battle cry of the Sirens, which was shortly followed by the enraged hissing of the Kitsune, as a not so tiny war broke out at the tower.

  He dropped the gestalt. He grimaced at the bits of Alexander’s head on his shirt, and he ignored the Deep Dwellers screams of surprise and terror at finding their leader dead, as he hit his comm. “Natalia, the Garrison at the crèches is down. I also made a command decision. The gestalt was powerful enough to reach the Central. Now everyone knows the truth.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  “Shido, report.”

  Natalia’s voice brought Shido’s pacing back and forth to a stop. “Shido here. We’re all in place, and Marcus has the breaching charges set. We’re just waiting for the go ahead.”

  “We’ve got the kids moving out here and have blown the walls to the Diana. You are authorized to go.”

  “Roger that.” He replied. He wanted to ask why they’d suddenly jumped ahead of schedule, but decided he’d find out later if everything went off the way they were supposed to. He’d been around the block a time or two, and had seen plenty of operations stall, or surge forward, without having any way to have predicted it beforehand. “Everyone up! Lock and load. It seems you’re not getting as long of a rest as I had hoped.”

  He sincerely regretted that lack of rest. His team had been forced to leave literally days earlier then everyone else, carrying food and equipment along the tube tunnels running along the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. While he was certain that the bulk of the tube ways were actually suspended well above the darkest depths, the constant damp that managed to seep into the tube-ways and the pressing weight of all that water around them had guaranteed no one had slept well on the three nights they’d been forced to break for a rest in the tunnels.

  They’d reached shore a day before and, after another rest, had double timed it to their destination to make sure they’d get there in time. Thanks to a maintenance team they nearly stumbled into along the way they had very nearly been late. His demolitions guy had reported the explosives ready to go less than ten minutes before Natalia had contacted him.

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  He sighed, knowing nothing could be done about it, and instead turned his attention to helping one of his team members pull back on their equipment harness. He had to do it one handed, which is why he’d left his gear on in spite of hoping for rest.

  Clumsily he moved his wounded arm, wincing slightly at the pain. He’d managed to cobble enough together in the last week to where he would be able to pilot the trans-atmospheric transport they were going to have to steal, but it was useless for much else. Even then, his arm was sealed in a semi-articulated cast devised by Kay and Marigold over several days of experimentation. His arm looked more like a strange cybernetic implant than a naturally occurring limb.

  Unfortunately, nothing could be done about that either.

  He looked over his team, mostly burly Human and Kitsune men with one Siren rounding them out. He turned to the albino. “Are we clear?”

  The psychic closed his eyes and Shido imagined he could feel the smaller man reach out to probe beyond the cement wall of the maintenance tunnel his team occupied. “No one with in a hundred meters of our breach point.” The psychic reported after a minute of searching.

  “That’ll have to do. Mark, blow it.”

  Ten meters down the tunnel, just beyond a dog leg in the otherwise straight shaft, a small shaped charge blew open a hole just wide enough for his people to go through. Before the dust or echoes had cleared, Shido had started running down the tunnel with his team right behind him.

  They came out into the bottom of an elevator shaft of the bio-science archives building, Shido having unrepentantly stolen Rei’s exit strategy from rescuing Natalia for his own purposes. He let one of his people lift and half throw him since it was the largest of the Kitsune. Shido drew his sonic pistol and covered that man as he pulled himself up, into the shaft, and began to force open the elevator door.

  They moved quickly, fortunately finding the building empty, and quickly reached the small, first story storage facility where they kept the Ark containers. All eight of his team paused to stare. “Okay, that’s more than a dozen.” One commented, Shido having to nod.

  There were over three dozen containers, of various sizes, and some were newer then others. Shido walked up to one of the smallest and keyed the computer screen nestled into its shell. Finding a status query window he tapped in a search for a random animal. “Well, its got horses.” He commented. He remembered Kay saying something about horses being useful, which is the only reason he’d thought of it.

  “Try dog.” One of his team muttered.

  “No, wait…” The Siren on his team slid over, and with a questioning look keyed in a long series of letters.

  Shido, looking over his shoulder, muttered “Platypus? Come on, that’s not a real animal? I mean, I’ve seen pictures but… oh.” The search, which had been running as he’d spoken, came up positive for both genetic materiel and database information.

  The Siren and Kitsune looked at each other, the psychic nodding in agreement with Shido’s thought before he could speak it. “Yeah, if they bothered putting that in there, I’m fairly sure it’s complete.”

  “But why make new pods, and why so much smaller than the others?” One of the Humans asked, still eyeing the room filled with calmly humming and blinking devices.

  “I don’t know that I care.” Shido stated frankly. “This one’s easier to carry, so we’re taking it. Look, it’s even got handles!”

  “Well ain’t that swell!” The big Kitsune, who’d helped him into the elevator shaft, commented dryly, as he and the other three biggest guys grabbed the conveniently placed grips. The albino disconnected its power and monitoring cable from the wall as they lifted it.

  That was when everything went to hell.

  Alarm klaxons caused several of the Kitsune who had retuned their ears after the entry explosion to wince and curse. Lights flicked to life as a computerized voice began to report a breach of security in the Ark Project storage facility. “Okay people, looks like we wore out our welcome. The pod in front, the rest of us will cover you guys.”

  “And you.” The Siren said, shoving Shido out the door immediately after the pod. “Without you we have no exit. Get that cute tush moving.”

  Shido, at a loss for words at a comment, which he normally welcomed, coming from the Male siren, only nodded and followed the pod and the men carrying it, drawing his sonic pistol with his one good arm.

  The Pod, Shido, and the people covering their backs, ran through the halls, and for a few short moments Shido began to think they’d manage to make it out without any contact with security. Unfortunately, just as the pod was being lowered down into the tunnel, the two men watching door opened fire down the hall. “We’ve got company!” One called out.

  Shido moved to join them at the door, but was shouldered out of the way by his pale skinned minder, who stepped half out of the elevator to open fire with his own sonic pistol. Shido yelled at him to take better cover, but the eardrum tearing sound of sonic weaponry drowned out his commands and moment’s later three lethal blasts struck the Siren center of mass. He crumpled to the floor, dead before he realized what had hit him.

  Shido, before he could move forward, was grabbed by Marcus, his demolitions expert and the largest human he’d ever met, and was pushed to the hole. “Move it! We still need you to fly us out of here!” he yelled. Shido growled, but nodded and dropped down through the hole.

  Moments later Marcus joined him, one of the two men who had held the door half hanging off of his shoulder with a bloody leg. “Let’s move!”

  “What about Sam?” One of the other members of the team called out.

  “He’s not coming. Now go!”

  Shido hesitated, still hearing the sound of gun fire from within the shaft, but a significant look from Marcus caused him to nod. “Move out! Pod first. Marcus, be ready with the tunnel charges.”

  “Got them right here, Shido.”

  Again, Shido had stolen from someone else’s playbook, this time it being Saki. Once they were around the corner he nodded to Marcus who hit the glowing red button on his radio detonator and the tunnel filled with dust and the sound of a series of explosions which collapsed the tunnel and likely parts of the building above it, behind them.

  It took them four minutes of hard running, Shido taking turns carrying the pod from time to time to let one man or another rest, before they reached the turn they needed. He called them to a halt two meters before the turn.

  Inching forward, Shido slid a small mirror from his pocket and held it carefully around the corner, just enough so he could see. What he saw made him curse.

  “What’s wrong?” Marcus asked.

  “The camera’s on this tunnel. They sure as hell aren’t fake.” He recognized the model, since they were common in InSec facilities. They’d respond to heat, movement, or the commands of a monitoring operator at some distant security office, and he had no doubt they’d be watching them. Especially after what they’d just stolen.

  “How far is the tarmac from where we are now?” Marcus asked softly, as if expecting to draw the camera’s attention with noise. To be fair, Shido wasn’t sure that wasn’t a valid concern.

  “It’s about twenty meters to the access hatch. The good news is they’ll have planes ready and fueled on the tarmac, but we’ll hit the door, and be fighting snipers all the way to the planes.”

  “No… that’s not what I meant Shido.” The demolitions man held up a pair of shaped charges, pulled from his equipment harness. “I meant, how far until we’re under the tarmac it’s self?”

  Shido looked at the two charges, and smiled. “About thirty meters. I hope we don’t manage to put those under a plane’s wheels.”

  “Think positive, man.” Marcus chuckled. “Even if we do, it’ll go up, not down.”

  “Sure. What’s a little burning rocket fuel between friends? Is everyone ready?” Shido watched his people nod. “Then let’s go!”

  They burst into a run, the rest having been good for the men forced to lug the Ark, and Shido tried to ignore the cameras swinging towards them. He felt as though they were looking directly into his eyes.

  Then they were past. Ten meters, twenty down the tunnel. Shido counted out thirty paces and slid to a stop. “Here! Now!” He ordered. “Get the pod further forward!” He and Marcus jumped out of the way as they continued running by, dropping to the ground ten feet away and covering the black box with their bodies. “Is that far enough?” Shido asked.

  “Will have to be, move!” he and Shido jumped down the hall, landing next to the box, and with a beep Marcus hit the button, and unleashed hell.

  Coughing and gasping for breath Shido lurched to his feet as soon as the sound of falling rubble slowed. “Get up! Get going! Move it!” He yelled, following his own advice and jumping up, half through the hole, before grabbing a length of rebar to pull him self the rest of the way out. His sonic pistol was in his hand, and firing at the small clump of security surrounding the TAT-C’s he wanted before the next man was out of the hole.

  It seemed like an eternity, but only took seconds, for them to heft the case of genetic materials onto the tarmac, and half that time to begin running for one of the open cargo plane’s doors. For the second time since everything had begun Shido allowed him self to feel optimism for their chances.

  One of the men carrying the pod suddenly went down in a burst of blood, his head taken off by a sniper’s bullet, killing the man. Before Shido could even think to respond, Marcus had taken the man’s place, lifting the scraping corner of the pod back off the ground and letting them get back to a full run.

  Another sniper’s round took out his wounded man, who had been lagging behind the rest, before they reached the safety of the armored aircraft. Shido wasted no time, dropping his pistol on the plane’s floor as he surged into the cockpit.

  Marcus followed him, clumsily sliding into the co-pilot’s chair next to him. “Can I help?”

  “Flip that row of switches there.” Shido commanded, pointing at a collection of toggles on his console. “Everyone better get strapped in!” He called back.”

  “We’ve got a security vehicle driving right for us!” One of his men yelled in response.

  Shido cursed. “From which direction?”

  “Behind us!”

  Shido grinned maliciously, and hit the button that sealed the rear compartment. He heard his men yelp, and at least one thump as someone jumped into the sealing door from outside. “Strap

  “What about the security?”

  Shido grinned at Marcus. “Beginning primary rocket test.” He replied, keying in the command even as he spoke.

  A roar, and a bright plume of flame, lit the tarmac and seconds later an out of control, burning ground car rolled past the plane. “Test successful. Beginning taxi.” Shido chuckled, releasing the breaks and pushing up the in-atmosphere jets throttle.

  They rolled quickly towards the runways, but more security vehicles were moving into their path. “Shit, they’re going to block the runways.” Marcus yelled, snarling.

  “Yeah… but not the taxi way.” Shido replied. “Everyone strapped in?”

  He didn’t bother waiting for affirmatives, instead slamming the jet throttles forward, into their stops. The plane surged forward, pushing him and Marcus into their seats. Seconds later he felt the plane begin pulling, air flowing over its wings. Gently he pulled back on the yoke. He felt the nose lift up, just as he saw a security car whip off a runway and begin barreling towards them at a brake neck pace. The nose quickly blocked his view.

  “We’re not going to make it!”

  “We’re going to make it!” Shido corrected his co-pilot before he closed his eyes, not convinced he was right. A few seconds later, with no impact, he opened them again. They were up, and flying.

  “Oh yeah… We’re off!” Shido crowed, hearing the cheers of what remained of his team behind him. “Hold on boys, I’ll key the rockets in about thirty…”

  Alarms began going off, and Shido began looking over the RADAR screens and alerts, desperately trying to find out why. “Oh no… No!”

  “What?”

  “They’ve got an Air to Air missile tracking us! They must have had them warm before we even got there!” The RADAR screen lit up with first one, then two small contacts rushing towards them at horrible speeds.

  Shido didn’t waste time telling people to hold on tight. He didn’t have time. Instead he grunted as he swung the aircraft over into a tight roll, diving towards the Earth in an attempt to loose the two missiles bent on their destruction. He kicked the plane into another sharp climb after only three seconds of power dive, wrestling with the bulky cargo craft. “Come on baby… You can do it…” He whispered, ignoring the alarms around him warning that he was exceeding the airframes designed tolerances.

  The missiles ripped by below them, Shido and Marcus both watching their rocket plumes roar past. Shido cursed and jerked the plane sideways as they exploded.

  Marcus was laughing. “They missed!”

  “Not by enough!” Shido growled, feeling small shards of shrapnel bounce off the skin of the aircraft’s hull. Anti-aircraft weapons rarely relied on direct hits, instead working more like a shotgun, detonating when they got close to a target and deploying a cloud of shrapnel to actually kill it.

  Shido watched the alarms and warning lights, praying nothing would be damaged. No lights came on, so he sighed, and began to bank to begin another climb.

  The controls were sluggish. “Marcus, go back and look out the cargo door’s window. Tell me what you see.” He ordered calmly, still pulling the ship up slowly into a climb.

  Marcus scurried out of his seat and carefully climbed down into the cargo hold of the plane, cursing the incline as he gripped cargo straps along the ceiling. A few seconds later Shido heard him call out. “It looks like something clipped the rear wing things back here. They’re looking a little chewed up!”

  Shido cursed. “Get strapped in, I’m going to fire the rockets soon.”

  “Is that safe, with those messed up?”

  “Strap in.” Was Shido’s reply. No more questions came from the back.

  Praying silently Shido slowly reached out for the rocket motor’s main ignition switch. He pushed it. The thrust pushed him back into his seat, locking the control yoke in place and the ship on its course.

  He only hoped it would hold the course in spite of the damage, and not rip itself to shreds.