Ghost Squadron: A Jericho Johnson Story Read online

  Chapter 2

  Piper rolled her neck once after the smooth face-piece of her helmet clamped down. In a few seconds her visual displays activated and she could see perfectly while she glanced at the rest of her troops as they armored up.

  The christening of the Ghost Squadron had taken place almost two years ago after Beck had insisted on Piper taking more responsibilities besides following her around like a lost snow cat and bugging her for missions.

  Originally, the Ghost Squadron was just a normal five man team with Piper at the helm as commander. But after two years the fame set by some of the most successful missions ever to be carried out had marshaled the white armored team to one of the highest ranks in the Rebel militia.

  Sometimes Piper found it hard to believe that she now commanded the Rebels who had taught her not that long ago. There was even a special training program set in place and taught by Arc just for men and women trying to get in the elite task force.

  Since Piper had been the one controlling the outfit, her Viking ways had carried over into the future with her. The only reason, she felt, that a soldier needed to be replaced was if that soldier died and since Ghost Squadron was, as aforementioned, an elite force, that didn't happen very often.

  One, in fact, was the number of troops Piper had lost under her command.

  And that had been recently.

  “How do you like the suit, newbie?” Gustav, the Ghost's sniper, asked the replacement.

  “It's fine,” Kavi, the new girl, said while she flexed her hands around.

  Kavi was around eighteen and, as Arc had told Piper, one of the best the Ghost program had to offer at the moment to replace Wells, the scout that had been killed by the Bears on their last mission. Kavi's hair was cut short, reaching just below her chin and was a light purple.

  “Didn't get to pick my hair color, Commander,” Kavi had said during her interview when Piper had asked her about it. “My parents must have figured I was going to design clothes for a living.”

  Piper had laughed at that before welcoming the girl aboard the Ghost Squadron and issuing her a white hooded long coat and directing her to the Ghost barracks. Most of the people she'd met the last few years sporting a strange hair color had all told her the same thing-- that they hadn't had a choice in the matter.

  “You'd think whoever came up with that crazy idea could at least have thought of a way to change it again later in life,” Piper had told Arc once Kavi had left with her duffel over her shoulder, heading for the small set of barracks assigned for Ghosts only.

  “It's possible,” Arc admitted with a shrug. “But a more severely inconvenient or bothersome process you'll never find. Most people just leave it because of that but also because, since Flagstaff has never been at the forefront of fashion, finding a doctor with the knowledge to do it here is nigh impossible.”

  Kavi tapped away at the screen on her left wrist and her helmet began closing, covering her bright hair. “There, now,” Gustav told her. “Now you're not target practice.”

  “Leave off, Gustav,” Baron, the largest man of the Ghosts, told the sniper as he checked his assault rifle. No one really knew how old Baron was but he looked to be somewhere between thirty-five and forty with tan skin and a shiny bald head.

  Three of the five under Piper's command had been men until

  Kavi had replaced Wells. Now Baron and Gustav were outnumbered-- something the other female Ghosts weren't allowing them to forget.

  “About time we evened out the testosterone in this squad,” Helena muttered to Rone while she clasped her white hooded cloak over her armor. Helena was the oldest of the Ghosts but just as capable. Rone had been the youngest until Kavi and Piper was willing to bet that the black-haired girl was ready to pass the torch to someone younger since being the youngest of any group always led to witticisms at every turn.

  “Fall in,” Piper said and all murmurs and jests stopped as the men and women in white armor lined up. “For those of you who haven't met her, this is Kavi, our new scout.”

  Then she pointed to each of her troops and rattled off their part of the Ghost Squadron for Kavi. “Gustav is our range, Baron is our muscle, Helena is acting medical officer, Rone is explosives and you're our new scout.”

  “And Commander Piper is all of those rolled into one,” Helena said with a smile.

  “Helheim, yes,” Piper said, returning the smile. “Now who wants to go Bear hunting?”

  This was what she always asked the Ghosts and the simple question had escalated into an inside joke that was always met with everyone in the squad raising their hands like children wanting candy.

  “I do, I do!”

  “Ooh, pick me!”

  Then they would all laugh and head for the elevator. Kavi didn't share in the laughter and frowned the whole way to the elevator that was about to take them topside.

  “A warrior should always be able to laugh in the face of death, Kavi,” Piper said after she hit the top level button and the doors closed. “If you survive the day then you'll know next time.”

  “Hey, no fair,” Gustav said. “Baron wouldn't let me mess with the new girl.”

  “You're not my commander,” Baron said in his deep voice,

  “And you're a lot uglier than she is.”

  Everyone in the rumbling elevator got a charge out of that and laughter reverberated around the cramped space. Even Kavi smiled a bit.

  “We’ll break into two-man teams,” Piper said to her troops. “Each team will get an S-20. Gustav and Rone, Baron and Helena, and you’re with me, Kavi.”

  “Just don’t get in her way or you might lose an arm,” Gustav whispered to Kavi, winking at her.

  “We’re linked through the holonet, idiot,” Rone told the sniper. “We can all hear you, you know.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  Again, the Ghost Squadron got another good laugh in before the elevator made it topside. Most accesses to the frozen surface were designed to be in a form of shelter so that whoever felt big enough to venture forth from the Rebel base could have a few minutes to get their bearings before wading into the snow.

  Piper stepped out of the elevator into what used to be the basement of a glamorous hotel. Rusted water heaters lined the walls of the large basement and wheeled baskets were cluttering up half of the room.

  Five green blips appeared on the nav-map in the bottom right of her visuals, indicating her squad. Since she didn’t see three red blips anywhere the S-20s were most likely cloaked. Bigger mechs weren’t able to completely vanish from sight but they could fool a targeting system.

  “Fan out.”

  Gustav headed up the stairs on the left side of the basement with Rone on his heels. “Here’s an idea—” Gustav said to his teammate. “How about we don’t level a skyscraper this time?”

  “Shut up,” Rone said. “That wasn’t my fault and you know it.”

  Piper took the opposite set of stairs with the rest of the Ghosts behind her. In a few short minutes they had made it to what was left of the hotel lobby, fierce gusts of wind blowing through the shattered windows and kicking up snow all around them. Then everyone pulled their assault rifles and checked their rounds.

  Except Piper.

  “Kavi, with me,” she said, demagnetizing the enormous red broadsword from her back.

  Kavi couldn’t help but stare, watching her commander stab the point of the red blade deep into the concrete floor with ease so she could pull on her white hooded cloak. Ghost Squadron had some of the best “gadgets”, as Arc called them, that the Rebels had to offer and the cloaks had to be one of Piper’s favorites.

  The thick, wool-like material did nothing but blend the Ghosts all the better into the whiteness of the ever-present snow but they also kept the squad off of enemy nav-maps. Devices to throw off targeting and locating had been around for centuries, Beck had told her when she had presented her with the first white cloak. “But really for mechs and airstrikes—these are the first portable ones built
to go on a light-weight soldier.”

  Piper pulled the broadsword out of the floor and headed for the street with Kavi close behind, their armored feet tromping softly on the once no doubt beautiful floor.

  The wind was worse out in the open while Piper and the new girl went a few blocks. Then Piper held up a hand to stop, crouching on the sidewalk close to the side of the building beside her. Heavy footsteps were just around the corner.

  “Found mine first,” Piper said in a sing-song voice, something she’d heard someone long ago do.

  Jericho. It was Jericho who had said some things that way.

  She didn’t want to forget. She couldn’t.

  Not yet.

  Piper shook her head slightly to clear her mind before her attack. “We have visual,” Helena’s voice buzzed in.

  “Ah, c’mon…” Rone groaned. “Why am I always paired with the loser sniper?”

  “Got ours,” Gustav said dejectedly.

  “Attack on my mark,” Piper ordered, tightening her grip on the hilt of her giant sword.

  “How do you want to do this?” Kavi asked, shifting the assault rifle uneasily in her armored hands.

  “Ever go up against an S-20?” “No, Commander,” the girl admitted. “Stay back, then,” Piper told her. “Watch and learn.”

  “Commander—”

  “That’s an order, Kavi.” Then the S-20 rounded the corner not thirty feet away.

  “Ghosts attack,” Piper ordered, already sprinting toward her target, her broadsword whistling through the snowy air and connecting with the mammoth left leg of the mech, the red blade slicing through the armored ankle like butter as the white warrior kept up her momentum, spinning once to gain more power before severing off the other leg.

  This all happened in almost two fractured seconds and before the mech had time to respectfully fall onto its left side, Piper was in the air, tucked into a ball and spinning before landing on the dome of the S-20. Since it was in midfall, she landed on the leveling right side of the dome.

  The unfortunate pilot never even saw who drove the large red blade straight through the eight inch dome and into the side of his throat.

  Piper rode the S-20 to the ground, pulling her broadsword quickly before flipping off the mech just as it hit the street, kicking up snow.

  Kavi had watched the six second attack with her mouth hanging open. She closed it quickly when her commander materialized from the blustering snow, her red sword in her right hand, the tip almost touching the ground as she walked toward her, the white cloak billowing on her left from the wind.

  “They’re pretty easy once you get the hang of it,” Piper said. “Next time I’ll let you have a go.”

  “That was… quick,” Kavi said, standing.

  “Think so?” “Target neutralized,” they heard Baron’s voice say.

  “A well placed sticky grenade,” Helena said. “You,

  Commander?”

  “Red Falcon,” Piper informed her before chuckling and asking, “What did you think I was going to use, one of your barbaric rifles?”

  “Another one bites the flakes,” Rone buzzed in only suddenly a red blip appeared on their nav-map.

  “You sure about that?” Kavi asked.

  “Wait for it…” Rone said. Then there was an earth-shaking explosion causing Piper and Kavi to touch the building beside them for support.

  Then the blip vanished.

  Laughing, Rone said, “Toldja’.”

  “Good job, Ghost Squadron,” Piper said, heading back down the sidewalk with the befuddled Kavi behind her. “Let’s pack up.

  I have a date to finish, anyway.”