The second drone had managed to spin away and was now lining up on their right side. Tiny puffs of gunfire erupted from the craft, and an instant later Xander and Tiffany heard the high-pitched zing of bullets streaking by. Two of the bullets hit the side of the hoverbike just behind Tiffany’s legs. She lifted them up and wrapped her legs around Xander’s waist in a movement that was a little too late. Luckily, nothing vital was struck, even as the bike was twisted toward the right from the impacts.
Maintaining this new course, Xander gunned the hoverbike and sped away. He switched the toggle control to that of the second Talon missile which was now in a long looping circle high overhead. He placed the targeting circle on the remaining enemy drone and brought the missile screaming down from almost directly above the Maverick. Even without the explosive charge, the tremendous collision would have destroyed the drone, which didn’t even see the missile dropping on it from the heavens.
“Good job!” Tiffany yelled from the rear seat. “I hope there aren’t any more of those bastards out here.”
“Even if there aren’t, it’s a sure bet they reported our leaving.”
“So what? I’m sure they didn’t expect to kill everyone at the Center. They had to assume some people would survive.”
“You’re right.” Xander looked out at the sides of the narrow desert canyon they now traveled, heading east. The mountain would soon taper out and they would be in the vast, flat desert heading out towards Lake Meade. He looked at the power gauge.
“We’re going to have to find an alternative mode of transportation pretty soon,” he called back over his shoulder. “This thing is just about out of juice.”
“Any ideas?”
“Yeah, one. I hope we can make it.”
Six minutes later, the hoverbike hopped over a short, barbed-wire topped fence and closed on a cluster of small hangars isolated at the northeast edge of Nellis Air Force Base. Xander slowed the vehicle as it swept in over an expanse of white concrete leading up to the largest of the four buildings.
As he set the bike on the surface and shut down the motors, a young airman in blue and black camo fatigues and armed with an HK M27 infantry rifle appeared at a small door set to the left of the hangar door. He had the weapon leveled at them.
“Stop where you are!” he commanded. “I will shoot.”
Xander raised his arms. Tiffany followed with the same gesture a second later. “Relax, Airman, I’m with the RDC.”
“This isn’t RDC property. You shouldn’t be here.”
“We escaped from the Center, and I assume by now you know what’s going on.”
The young man motioned with the barrel of his rifle to his right, toward the main part of Nellis AFB located five miles away. “Oh yeah, I know what’s going on.”
Xander and Tiffany looked to their left as well, where they saw a wide curtain of black smoke rising up in a line.
“They took out the whole flight line in a matter of seconds. Came out of a couple of semi tractor-trailers out on North Las Vegas Boulevard, tiny things with bombs that hopped the fence and slammed into the helos and planes — mainly the helos. Some of the jets got away, but what can they do against little basketball-size things?”
“What are you doing here?” Xander asked.
“This is my emergency duty station. I’m supposed to have backup, but no one else came.”
“Lower your weapon, son,” Xander said. It was the first time he’d ever addressed someone as “son.” It just sounded right for the moment.
“You’re on a drone of some kind. How do I know you’re not one of them?”
“Think about it. All the attacking drones are unmanned, with their pilots hiding away somewhere else. We’re here, in the open. C’mon, we’re all on the same side here.”
Slowly the scared airman lowered his weapon. Xander and Tiffany slipped off the hoverbike and approached the hangar. “I’m Xander Moore, senior pilot for the Rapid Defense Center.”
“Sam Nash, Airman First Class.” He looked at the disheveled Tiffany Collins.
She reached out her hand to the airman. “Tiffany Collins, Fox News.”
“Oh my God, I recognize you!”
Even in her current physical state, Tiffany melted the young man with her smile.
Xander poked his head inside the hangar. “This is General McKinney’s private hangar, isn’t it?”
“I believe so.”
The three of them moved inside. The only thing in the hangar was a tall, oblong object covered by a large green tarp. Xander walked up to the tarp and pulled. With some effort, the heavy canvas began to slide off.
“What the hell is that?” Tiffany asked.
“That’s the latest in hovercopter technology — the Jarvis XV-9. I’ve been helping the general with some of the fine tuning. It’s a prototype.”
What they were looking at was an odd helicopter-like vehicle standing about twelve feet high. It sported six huge ringed propellers running along a line of three on each side, with a huge, clear plastic dome underneath. A sleek fiberglass fuselage ran back from the passenger dome and helped support the aft rotors. All the props were horizontally oriented and there was no tail rotor, as was typical of standard helicopters.
“That’s one big-ass drone!” Tiffany exclaimed. “It really flies?”
“That it does, and at nearly two-hundred fifty miles per hour.”
Xander noticed a long, orange power cable running from under the fiberglass body to a boxy power source against the wall. “Mr. Nash, could you open the hangar doors while I unhook the power cable?”
“I can’t let you take it. You said it belongs to the general.”
“I’m just going to borrow it. Besides, it will be safer with me. If it stays here it could be destroyed in the next wave of drone attacks.”
“I don’t know, man…”
Tiffany stepped up to the airman. “It will be all right. You can come with us. The general will be glad that you saved his prized toy from destruction.”
Sam gave a sheepish grin and then moved to the hangar doors. He pulled on the chains and the door began to rise. The hangar was facing due west and the setting desert sun flooded the chamber, temporarily blinding the three occupants. Xander unhooked the power cord and let it spin back into its holding compartment within the hovercopter.
Airman Sam Nash stood to the side of the large opening, silhouetted by the brilliant sunset. “Can you tell me what’s going on, Mr. Moore? I thought you guys were supposed to prevent things like this from hap—”
In an instant, the young man was perforated at mid-torso by a powerful blast of gunfire. He fell to the concrete floor, the top half of his body barely attached to the rest.
“Get in!” Xander yelled to Tiffany as he pulled open the left side door to the passenger dome. The reporter was only a few feet away, and she was inside the compartment in two seconds flat.
Xander flicked the switches that activated the rotors. Being electric, they didn’t require any warm-up; they spun to power a second later. Without bothering to buckle in, he pressed the controls forward and the strange-looking craft began to move forward, scraping across the concrete floor on metal skids.
Squinting into the afternoon sun, Xander saw five small black dots in the glare. There were tiny sparks coming out of them, and an instant later bullets ricocheted off the thick plastic bubble. A small spider web series of cracks appeared just below Xander’s pilot seat.