The Dark Edge Chronicles - Hardwire

Final Showdown

"Sorry to disturb you, sir, but I have an urgent communique from a Commander Kensey, Third Cadre, Destroyer Division in Calgary."

"CALGARY?" Kendrick almost screamed, sitting bolt upright in his chair. "Put him through, damn it. PUT HIM THROUGH!"

With a sudden wash of colors, the image of Kensey's square features filled the small holo display hovering over the top of Kendrick's desk. The chunky Regional Director could feel his eyes bulge as he watched three cadre members cut down behind the crouching Kensey even before the muscular Destroyer commander could speak, the image on top of the desk skipping around wildly as if something was interfering with its transmission at the source.

"KENSEY! What the hell are you doing in Calgary? You're four hours EARLY, DAMNIT!"  he roared. "And why aren't you communicating with Destroyer Command?"

"All psi-links out of Calgary have been severed!" Kensey snarled, his voice fuzzy with static and feedback, before ducking as something exploded nearby, showering him with fragments of pavement and brick.

"I am requesting immediate reinforcements, Director Kendrick! We are under heavy attack by Avalon forces. I repeat, we are under heavy attack by Avalon forces! Requesting immediate reinforcement ... requesting ..." In a flicker of discharge, the channel went dead, leaving a stunned Kendrick staring into the suddenly empty space in amazement.

"Holy shit," he breathed weakly, not wanting to believe what he just saw. Blinking rapidly to moisten suddenly dry eyes, he looked up at an equally stunned Sasha. "Get me Sorrenson on the line," he husked and Sasha jumped, startled by the sound of his voice.

"Now, Sasha ... NOW!"

Kensey threw Ravage's burnt out holo-communicator to the side with a growl and looked around the side of the battered mailbox he was hunkered down behind, the only available cover within desperation's distance. What he saw did not please the muscular commander one bit!

The street leading past the small apartment block where they had the Avalonians pinned, was now filled with the battered, burnt and shattered bodies of his handpicked cadre. It offered him little comfort that Mindfire's Waif had joined the dead on the road, his wiry body almost burnt beyond recognition after he tried to phase through the left side wall in an attempt to waylay the Avalonians inside.

Somehow the renegades had anticipated the maneuver and had cut him down, even though he had been invisible. How they had managed to detect him while he was phased, was beyond the thickset Destroyer commander. That, and how they had managed to not only block all outgoing and incoming psi traffic, but disrupt a supposedly secure holocom line.

"We are not trained for actual combat!" he muttered under his breath, grimacing at the hot pain his broken forearm made every time he shifted.

At least the all-out counter assault had paused in its ferocity. Shockwaves, plasma bolts and those new weapons, the strange blue torpedoes, which happened to be incredibly effective in punching through the most hardened shields, only appeared now when a cadre survivor or one of Mindfire's survivors shifted enough to come into line-of-sight from the battered apartment block.

Line-of-sight meant softwires. 'And that means it isn't hardwires, at least, that we're facing ...' Just then his eyes caught movement across the street, where an alley ran beside the right hand side of the building. Letting his thought fade, Kensey focused on what was taking place there.

It was Jarker, one of his cadre, dragging the battered body of one of his companions behind the burnt-out hulk of a car. From where he was crouched, Kensey could see that they were easily hidden from all lines of sight from the building. Then his guts tightened into a knot as he watched a blue torpedo suddenly punch through the car and mow Jarker down in a shower of fragments.