Blaze (The High-Born Epic) (66 page)

             
“I’ve already taken one down,” Harold answered.

             
“Really?” Michelle asked.  “What was it like?”

             
“Tough, but not impossible,” Harold replied.  “And it didn’t have all the weaponry that one did.  So, it will be tougher next time.”

             
“That must’ve been one of the prototypes,” Colonel Stevens said.

             
“What of all that equipment bothers you the most, Colonel?” Gabby asked.

             
Colonel Stevens tapped his chin in thought, “The new air-superiority fighters trouble me the most.  The Dragons were tough enough in older technology.  However, I have faith in the White Eagle design.  It should be a match for anything as long as it is properly utilized.  However, better intel on these new fighters is called for.  They could be problematic.”

             
“So what’s the plan?” Harold asked.

             
Colonel Stevens leaned back in his chair and took a deep breath, “Right now, we need to focus on devising strategies that will allow us to integrate your abilities with ours.  This video may have stifled morale, but you four will be key in winning the coming conflict.  The things that all of you can do are incredible, but they are still finite.  Along with our forces, we can give the lab rats more than they can deal with.”

             
“We have got to get back to Foxx Hole, Colonel,” Harold said.  “There are children there who will die very soon if we don’t do something.”

             
“Harold, there are all kinds of logistical difficulties in attempting to evacuate that many people.  In addition, their location is a huge problem for us to get to undetected.”

             
“Y’all came for me,” Harold replied.  “Are their lives any less important than mine?”

             
Colonel Stevens dropped his eyes, “Of course not, Harold.  But that was different.  We had the element of surprise on our side then.  And the lab rats had limited their weaponry to kinetic energy projectiles since you can absorb thermal weaponry.  Had that weaponry been there, we would have been in for a tremendous fight.  Now, the lab rats are ready for us, and would possibly anticipate such a move.”

             
“Harold and I can get them then,” Gabby answered.  “We did it without y’all’s help before, we can do it again.  Give me an aircraft with stealth capabilities and they’ll never see me coming.”

             
“Yes,” Colonel Stevens nodded.  “Just like they didn’t see you coming in Atlanta?”

             
Gabby looked away, “I’ve thought about that.  The only reason they found me is because I fired first, and they had a good idea of where I was, and gave them a good starting point for their attack.”             

             
“That’s probably true, Gabby.  But you four are very important to the entire war effort.  It will be difficult to get Command to risk you on such missions,” Colonel Stevens said.  “But let me talk to the captain about it.  Perhaps we can come up with something.”

             
“What about us?” Ralph asked as he gestured to Michelle.  “Our families are still missing as well.”

             
Colonel Stevens took a deep breath and nodded, “I don’t know what to say, other than that I know this has to be tremendously difficult for all of you.  I will see what I can do.”

             
“Thank you,” Michelle answered.

             
Just as Colonel Stevens stood, there was a knock at the door.

             
“Come in,” Colonel Stevens said.

             
“Sir,” the young man entered with an excited smile.  “You need to come to Command right now,” then he pointed at Harold, Gabby, Ralph, and Michelle.  “The captain said for them come too.”

             
“What is it, son?” Colonel Stevens asked.

             
“Sir, you’ve got to see this for yourself,” he replied and moved back toward the Command Center.

             
Colonel Stevens looked at them, and motioned with his head for them to follow him as he walked out of the room.  As they walked into the Command Center, they could see the captain smiling at Colonel Stevens as he motioned for all of them to come and stand by him.  The crew around the captain was fidgety as they looked back and forth at one another with excited grins as they split time between watching their monitors and Colonel Stevens and the Elementals.

             
“I had my ensigns organize the intelligence reports,” the captain smiled, and pointed toward Harold, Gabby, Ralph, and Michelle.  “I think all of you are going to like them.”

             
“Okay,” Colonel Stevens said, clearly confused.  “Let’s see them.”

             
The captain nodded his head toward the ensign on his right, and the large screen on the wall flickered to life.  The shaky image of a jungle came into view, as if someone were walking and filming at the same time.

             
“Some of our NATO allies have a spy inside of occupied Nigeria, Africa.  This spy made some very interesting footage a few days ago,” the captain then pointed at the screen.

             
A hand reached out from the camera and pulled back some leaves and then the image settled on someone standing in the middle of the jungle.  There was some distance from the person doing the filming, and the camera seemed to bring the person closer.  It was black girl who looked to be a teenager.  She began twisting and twirling her hands and Gabby snagged Harold’s hand as Michelle put her own hand up to her mouth.  Ralph stepped closer to the image.

             
Droplets of water were coming from the trees around her converging into silvery runnels that rapidly formed into a floating ball of water that she released into the sky.  It exploded and rain began falling everywhere.  The girl turned and smiled, oblivious to the camera that was watching her.  She began moving her hands as Harold had when he was learning, and more streams of floating water appeared around her.  It froze into something that vaguely resembled a sword.  She drew it back and threw it, and with some quick camera work, the person filming it showed that the piece of ice was sticking into the side of a tree.

             
The screen flickered and the scene changed.  The five of them shot the captain an angry glance.

             
But he only smiled in return and said, “Don’t worry, it gets better.  This footage comes from the Caucasus’s in occupied southwestern Russia.”

             
They looked at a vastly different mountainous scene this time.  A camera zoomed in on a young white boy.  He looked to be a teenager, and except for a pair of shorts made from some sort of animal skin, he wore nothing.  He was huge and covered with rolling muscles.  There was a glint of sunlight that sparkled on him, and Ralph smiled.  The boy on the screen squatted and raised his hands.  Dark-colored glittering rocks rose from the ground in front of him.  Michelle stepped closer to the screen as she lowered her hand.

             
The boy got a running start and made an amazing leap that the person filming had trouble following.  When the camera found him again, he was in the center of a small crater from which emanated large cracks.

             
The screen flickered as the scene changed again.

             
“Eastern Andes Mountains, occupied Peru,” the captain said.

             
This time as the camera focused, there was a teenage girl on the screen.  She had dark skin and dark hair, and she too was in the middle of a jungle.  She was wearing only a simple skirt made of grass and a top made of grass as well.  Suddenly, her eyes turned orange and flames covered her.  She began spinning her arms and hands around and a jet of fire billowed out from her.  As it died out, she stood for a moment, seeming to concentrate, and a barely audible boom could be heard as fire shot out in all directions.  The flames reformed into her about 100 yards from where she had been standing.  She appeared to stumble and fall.

             
When she stood up, her back was to the camera, but her top was falling in ashes around her, and her skirt was burning.  She flashed again, and disappeared.

             
“That’s going to take some practice to fix, darlin’,” Harold said with a light-hearted laugh.  They could not see anything but the forest from a high position for a few moments.  It seemed that the person filming was hidden in a tree some distance away.  The camera adjusted to the right, and the girl was stepping out from behind a tree with a new grass top and bottom.               

             
Harold just smiled.

             
The screen flickered and the captain said, “But this is by far the most interesting footage we have.  It’s an amalgamation of a hacked communications feed of a lab rat battle group, and cloaked UAV reconnaissance, all courtesy of Pacific Fleet and the USS Abraham Lincoln.  It’s a little jumpy, but you’ll get the idea.  It happened on the eastern coast of Japan several miles south of Tokyo.  Originally, they were speaking Japanese, but we have translated and the computer has dubbed their voices into English.”

             
At first there was nothing but dark smoke billowing across the screen.  The reports of rail gun fire and the roar of jet engines blasted through the speakers.  The smoke began swirling, and in just a few moments it was a spinning tornado.  It spun into several hover tanks and began blowing them back as they fired furiously at something just out of the camera’s view.  Something else began joining with the smoking tornado, and they could see tentacles of water spinning into it.  The water began freezing into large chunks of craggy ice.

             
Harold felt Gabby squeeze his hand as she leaned forward.

             
Suddenly, the camera angle changed, and it was looking at the tornado from the right side of it.  On the left side of the screen was an ocean, and a twisting cylinder of water was rocketing out of the water into the tornado that was continuing to grow.  The water seemed to hide something that the tanks and gunships were pulverizing.  They could see white flashes coming from within the spiral of angry water as the rail spikes struck something.

             
The jets of water were still being sucked into the tornado and the pieces of hail were getting larger.  Gunships streaked around on both sides, firing furiously.  The gunship nearest them suddenly lurched out of control and spun into a tank.  Then, the pieces of hail began falling on hover tanks all over the battlefield, and multiple explosions appeared on the monitor.  The tornado itself sped off into the city, tearing apart a building as tanks cluttered around it.

             
Suddenly, two green squares appeared on the screen and zoomed in to show two people from the side.  They were dressed similar to the samurai from Scott’s comic book, and one of them sprinted forward.  A large gust of wind whipped across the water and began approaching him, kicking up the beach sand as it neared him.  The gust lifted him slightly above the ground and increased the distance of his steps to an impossible length as it multiplied the speed of his sprint.  Rail spikes ricocheted from him as his amazing bounds carried him toward several tanks.

             
“Looks like I’m not the only guy who carries a katana into battle against tanks and wins, huh, Colonel Stevens?” Harold asked with a big smile.

             
“He extended his air-shield around his sword,” Gabby said.

             
He swung his sword and a tank was cut in two pieces as it exploded.  He lifted his hand and another tank flew into the air only to crash down on another.  He stepped and pushed with his hand and the final tank tumbled into a building that collapsed on it.

             
Several gunships whose cloaks had failed zoomed around behind them as the other samurai dove into the water.  From over the water, they began firing.

             
“That’s a mistake,” Michelle said.

             
It was as if the ocean itself grew a pair of massive arms that reached for the gunships.  As the waters parted, growing into the sky, they caught a fleeting glimpse of the other warrior’s arms.  The ocean’s arms mirrored the samurai’s actions.  The fingers of the gigantic hands washed over the gunships, and then the enormous arms flash froze, trapping the gunships in blocks of jagged ice that plummeted toward the water.  When they hit the ocean, the massive splash created a rippling wave that raced out in all directions.  As it traveled, the wave suddenly and unnaturally dipped down and seemed to scoop up the samurai who rose to the top of it and then stood in the break of wave, riding it all the way to shore.

             
The camera angle changed again, and this time, they could see the lead samurai walking toward the ground-level camera filming him.  All around him were the remnants of destroyed tanks.  He seemed to be looking directly at them and his eyes were pulsing with white light.  He held his sword down by his side and the air around it shimmered strangely as he walked with authority straight towards the camera.  Behind him they saw the second samurai seemingly fall out of the sky.  Long, dark hair hung from under her helmet and down her shoulders.  Her eyes were full of a bluish glow as she sprinted to his side.