Chapter 72 - Fractured Horizon
The ultra-high-frequency pulse was inaudible to human ears, but its resonance shattered every piece of optical sensor glass within thirty feet.
The sniper scopes mounted on the operative’s rifle crackled and burst into white smoke. The targeting lasers pinning Alexander and Elena flickered out simultaneously as the gunship’s forward infrared pods short-circuited. For two heartbeats, the machine’s automated systems were blind.
"Now!" Alexander roared.
Elena was already moving. With the lethal precision she had honed during her exile in the remote northern hills, she lunged forward, sliding across the slick ice beneath the operative's guard. She drove the ceramic push-dagger concealed in her sleeve straight into the joint of the operative's knee.
The man grunted, his leg buckling under the sudden rupture of tendon. In the same fluid motion, Elena caught Leo in her arms, spinning her body to shield the child with her own back as the operative fell.
Alexander closed the distance like a predator unleashed. He caught the operative by the tactical collar before the man could draw his sidearm, driving his elbow into the soldier's throat with crushing force. The operative went limp, crashing into the guardrail.
"Get to the transport!" Alexander yelled over the roar of the gunships, hoisting both Elena and Leo toward the low concrete retaining wall on the mountain side of the road.
Above them, the lead gunship recovered from the sonic spike. The heavy rotary cannon mounted under its chin began to spin up with an ominous, whining whine.
*BRRRRRRR-TTTT!*
A stream of 20mm armor-piercing rounds ripped the mountain highway into pulverized asphalt and molten stone. The snow exploded into steam. Alexander shoved Elena and Leo behind an outcropping of solid granite just as the SUV they had arrived in took the brunt of the burst, erupting into a towering fireball that illuminated the storm clouds in crimson and orange.
"Richard!" Elena shouted, looking back through the smoke.
Richard Vance was crawling on his elbows, dragging his bloodied legs across the icy tarmac toward the cliff’s edge. The second gunship was swinging around, angling its side-mounted rocket pods directly at the road to sweep the area clean.
Alexander didn't hesitate. Whatever sins his brother had committed, the answers to the Sovereign Core died with him. Alexander sprinted through the raining shrapnel, grabbing Richard by the harness of his tactical vest and hauling him backward just as a pair of high-explosive rockets slammed into the guardrail where Richard had been lying.
The entire section of the cliff road disintegrated.
Thousands of tons of rock, guardrail, and burning metal tore away, plunging two thousand feet down into the black waters of Lake Geneva with a sound like rolling thunder. Alexander tumbled into the snow ditch against the cliff face, dragging his brother with him.
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Richard coughed up blood, his eyes wide with unvarnished terror as he looked up at the man he had tried to destroy. "They... they were never my contractors, Alex," Richard rasped, his voice trembling. "They were... the Founders. Our father wasn't running Vance Global. He was running an errand for them..."
"Shut up and move," Alexander growled, hoisting Richard to his feet. "Elena! The old funicular tunnel behind the timberline—run!"
