Chapter 10

Kim hauled Shego and Li under the slowly closing blast door and dragged them outside to find the others waiting for them. Some of the soldiers were standing guard, but many were lying down with blue lips and shuddering. Kim knew that it was not from the cold, because Li and Shego were acting the same way; it was one of the initial symptoms of sarin gas poisoning.

"Not you too," Liu Chan groaned as Kim brought Li and Shego to her. "How are you feeling? Nauseated? Muscle spasms?"

"Wanna throw up," Shego responded weakly, leaning on Kim for support. Li could not even muster the strength to reply between his injuries and the gas, and clung to Kim with what little strength he had left. Liu quickly injected the two of them with the antidote and tried to make them lie down, but Li would have none of it. He staggered away from the medic cursing in the kind of Chinese Kim thought only existed in Firefly and limped off towards the engineer Kim had sat across from in the plane.

"Blue 4, they're going to take off." Li pointed at the silo doors, which were slowly opening right in front of them.

"Really? I didn't notice," the engineer snapped back. "Of course they're FUCKING GOING TO TAKE OFF!"

"What do we do about it?" Kim asked. "Should I go back to the control room and try to enter in the abort code?

"Given the level of competency we've seen so far, that probably wouldn't work even if you did know how to operate the console." Li cradled his head in his hands. "And I don't think it'd be a good idea to fight out way back through gunmen and sarin to find out."

There was only one other option. Li reached for his radio and squeezed the transmit button.

"Operator, can we call in an air strike?" If the radio man could call in the Migs, it would be possible to catch the missiles while they were still in the silos, effectively neutralizing them. True, the resulting explosion from a fully fueled ICBM would probably take out the Internal Security teams as well, but that was better than a nuclear exchange.

There as no response except for white noise.

"Sir," the engineer shook his arm. "Communications are still being jammed, and they wouldn't get here in time anyways."

"What, so we're fucked then?" Li yelled desperately. "Come on, there's got to be some way to disable them!"

Wade could do it. Her dad could probably do it. Unfortunately, neither of them were here and could not be contacted at any rate.

"Well," the engineer replied, "We can use our access codes to disable the warheads, which would be really useful if we could get to them."

"Why can't we get to them?" Kim pulled out her stick of laser lipstick and took the cap off. "I have a laser and Shego has her plasma. Do you guys have a blowtorch or something?"

"Well," the engineer commented thoughtfully, "I did bring along a lot of explosives..."

The plan was as simple as it was hastily constructed. Climb onto the nose of an intercontinental ballistic missile and forcibly open it up to access the warhead inside. Shimmy down through the hole and deactivate the nuke, then dismantle the heat shield so that it would burn up either going up or on reentry. Save the world, be back in civilization in time for tea.

What complicated matters was the fact that there were people shooting at her from within the silo. Kim caught a glimpse of several men pouring out from a door located halfway down the silo and managed to step back from the edge half a moment before a hail of bullets issued forth from their rifles. They would have to go before any work could be done.

Kim ran to the other side of the silo and jumped in, managing to land on a catwalk and catch one of the gunmen by surprise. A quick blow to the back of the head knocked him out, and left Kim in possession of his rifle. It was an old SKS carbine, with a full length rifle stock instead of a pistol grip, which made it better for use as a club than a modern assault rifle.

Another guard appeared in front of her, and Kim proceeded quickly close the distance between them, knock the rifle out of his hands, and send him reeling back with a stroke from the SKS. The next guard was prepared for her and opened fire, but her suit's shield absorbed the bullets. Ten rounds later, he was out of ammunition and out of luck as Kim knocked him into the silo wall.

That took care of the trouble, so Kim pulled out her grappling hook gun and used it to pull herself onto the top of the ICBM. She drew out her laser lipstick again and cut a wide circle in the top of the missile, kicked the newly created entrance in, and entered the missile.

The warhead was a cone shape object covered by a gray ceramic heat shield. Kim ran her hand around the side of the warhead until she found a slight indentation and activated one of the suit's utility functions, which formed a crowbar like energy field around her arm. She inserted the head of the crowbar into the indentation and pried open the cover of the access panel, revealing a numeric keypad.

"144537," Kim breathed, as she entered in the disarming code. The warhead would be rendered harmless after that, which only left the heat shield. The laser lipstick found a use again as she made several vertical cuts along the warhead's length, then pried it open like a flower, assuring that the payload would burn up on re-entry.

"So not environmentally friendly," Kim chided herself, relieved that the hard part was over. "Going to have to do a lot of recycling to make up for this."

As Kim and pulled herself out of the missile, she felt a powerful jolt as the rockets started warming up. It made her lose her grip and knocked her over the side; Kim tried to catch onto something with her grappling hook, but messed up the shot and sent it flying up into the air. Kim fell headfirst towards the bottom of the silo and scrambled to activate the suit's jet pack before the grappling hook finally caught on something and abruptly arrested her fall.

"Kimmie-cub, you're lucky you have enemies like me," Shego hollered over the noise of the rocket engines as she held onto the grappling hook's rope. "Let's get you the fuck out of here, eh?"

Despite his physical injuries and the lungful of sarin gas Li had taken, he was still cognizant enough to lead the mission. So far, Green and Blue teams reported in, having disabled their respective warheads with a mixture of high explosives, blow torches, and a preposterous amount of testosterone. That only left the two silos assigned to Kim and Shego, and when the missiles came to life he almost feared that they had not done it in time.

"We've disabled the warheads. What now?" Kim had to yell to make herself heard over the rumbling of the missiles. "How are we being extracted?"

"Well, I'd be lying if I said there was any sort of an escape plan," Li answered calmly. "We're kind of screwed when it comes to leaving."

"You're joking." Shego started in disbelief. "That's it, we die? Fuck that, what ever happened to running for your life? Hell, why don't we just storm the base again?"

"Most of the men are too ill to move," Li objected. There was no emotion in his voice, just the kind of weary resignation that came from a man who had considered all the possibilities and found every one of them equally hopeless. "And the blast doors take too long to open, let alone cut through."

"I..." Kim swallowed. There was nothing more that she could do to help them, and it was killing her. The pain seized her by the throat as she choked out her last words to him. "I'm sorry... I'm so sorry... but my suit can fly, and I can carry one person."

"Congratulations; it was an honor working with the two of you," Li smiled sadly, giving Kim a feeble salute. "You should probably leave before the launch."