Chapter 88: A Change Of Hands
*/Nikki’s First Person POV/*
I watched them come down out of the sky like a gift sent by the heavens themselves for a second. I was gone the next, sliding back off the lip and down the fire stair before that marksman’s eye finished twitching, because I’d felt her reticle settle on me the way you feel sun through a window, and I do not stand still for a scope, not even for the pleasure of being looked at.
"See that, booger?" I breathed, while Tikki shifted in the pocket against my neck, his little head coming up over to look with me. "See what they brought us? That’s a fucking NH90 TTH... that’s basically a very armed flying bus."
"Mea."
"I know. I know. It’d be rude not to accept such a gift... besides, it’d save us the trouble of going into the city and looking for one."
Those idiots hadn’t just brought a helicopter.
They had brought a whole armed helicopter, a proper one, medium tactical, twin rotors, and as she flared in over the pad and the morning light ran down her flank I could see the pylons under her stubby wings, and my mouth actually watered.
Rockets on the right. A fat pod of them, HE I figured, nineteen if I know my pods.
Missiles on the left. Four long ones, the good kind, the kind that reach out past a horizon and delete a thing before it knows it’s a target.
And guns in the doors, one either side, one in the tail, the heavy ones, the fifty-cal, the kind that don’t so much kill infected as explode them.
"They flew a gunship," I whispered, and I could hear the grin in my own voice, feel it pull at the tape on my cheek. "They flew me a gunship, Tikki. Onto a helipad. In the middle of nowhere. And they’re gonna park it and walk away from it."
"Mea."
"No, I’m not salivating... okay maybe a little."
I got closer, using TK to steal my weight and the Grapple Gun to zip me to my prize, watching the pad through Awareness now more than my eyes, the big machine settling on its gear, the rotors winding down toward a lazy idle, the doors sliding, bodies pouring out.
I counted them.
Eighteen off the bird and moving, low and fast and tight, a good unit, no wasted motion, funneling toward the reactor building in two files with the five soft-looking ones bracketed safe in the middle.
Two were staying up on the pad, one at each set of controls, keeping her hot and ready for a fast exfil.
Just the two.
They’d taken everyone else inside, which meant they were either short-handed or scared or both, and either way it meant the biggest, meanest thing on this whole site was sitting on that pad practically begging me to have my way with her.
I literally ran the count again out of pure joy.
[Two pilots. Thirty meters. A bird to salivate over, and one naughty little token~]
I had the ground toward the pad, unhurried, using the dead cars and the low walls and the corner of a maintenance shed, staying inside the sound of those idling rotors the whole way, because a rotor at idle is a beautiful thing to hide a footstep in.
While ahead of me, faint, the last of them vanished into the reactor building.
I let Awareness run ahead of me, thirty meters wide, sweeping, and it found the two of them up in their seats plain as day, warm and still and busy, one running some checklist, one just watching the tree line the wrong way, watching away from the one thing on this site that could actually hurt him.
I got to the edge of the pad.
Close enough now before settling into the shadow of the pad with the rotors thumping overhead, and I reached out with my mind and found the first one’s head flight helmet and all, and I closed my grip and turned.
There was no sound. There never is. Just a small wet click that the rotors ate, and a warm still thing going suddenly warmer and stiller in its seat.
The second one felt the jerks of it a half-second later, some animal part of him registering that the man beside him had stopped being a man.
And just as his head started to come around, his mouth opening, and I grabbed his head too before the turn finished, gently, almost politely, and turned it the other way before-
-Crack-!
Two men who probably had families and names and a briefing this morning, gone in under two seconds, without ever knowing what even happened.
But then again, it was the most painless death I could’ve offered.
[Sorry, fellas...] I thought, and I mostly meant it, and then I was up and crossing the open pad at a jog with Tikki riding steady on my shoulder.
I hauled the first pilot out and laid him down easy, then the second, before swinging up into the warm, shaking belly of the machine and standing in it, breathing it in, all that oiled steel and hot electronics and pure lethal potential.
"Alright," I said out loud to the aircraft before hopping off. "Let’s make you mine."
And with the simple touch, I sent it to the Inventory.
"System, apply the Integration Token to it."
-Ding!
{
Integration Successful.
Asset: NH90 TTH Tactical Transport Helicopter
[Designation on file: "Ghostbird"]
Full system interface established. Autonomous flight enabled.
Weapons interface: Missile systems ONLINE.
Fixed guns require manual operation.
}
And the very next second I had it back on the pad, butterflies in my stomach damn near breakdancing.
Every screen in the cockpit came alive at once, all of them, a soft cascade of light down both instrument panels, the whole machine seeming to sit up before me, awake, listening, mine.
[This is gonna save so much time!]
After all, now I won’t have to spend hours clumsily flying a helicopter over a massive city, trying to kite the Infected here.
The System can handle it, while I deal with the plant itself, and those dudes inside.
"Oh, that’s good," I breathed. "That’s so good... Tikki, we have an autonomous helicopter... this is insane!"
"Mea!"
"We have a whole System-Powered helicopter with missiles!"
I put my hand on the frame of the door, and looked east, toward the city of Halden, where more than a million infected wandered the streets, waiting, purposeless, hungry.
Somebody needed to give them somewhere to be.
And I was that somebody.
"System, first task..." I said, not even noticing the wide grin creeping up my face. " Take her up... Fly to Halden, nice and low, and make as much noise as you possibly can. I want you to be the most interesting thing that city has heard since day one... Wake every single one of them up, and bring them here... Take your time. I want a parade."
-Ding!
{
Understood. Departing for Halden.
Estimated horde consolidation: several hours.
}
"Shoo now," I grinned wider.
The rotors spun up above me, from idle to a hard rising thunder, while mine and Tikki’s hair danced wildly in the torrent of wind.
Slowly, the Ghostbird lifted off the pad on her own, no hand at her controls, and rose into the grey morning, dipped her nose east, and slid away over the tree line toward the city, dragging her thunder behind her.
While I stood on the empty pad and watched her go with two dead pilots at my feet and a cat on my shoulder and a plant full of probably good people under the floors beneath my feet, all of them, right now, hearing the sound of their only way home flying away without them.
"Come on, booger..." I said, and turned toward the reactor building, and cracked my neck. "We’ve got work to do, and a schedule to keep. Let’s go say hi~."