Chapter 8- Pursuit
"Teen Titans, power down your weapons and surrender. This is your last warning."
Robin hit the console of his cockpit in frustration. He did not have time to deal with these people now.
The comm crackled and Beast Boy's voice came over it. "Uh, Robin," he said, "what are we gonna do? Shoot 'em down?"
"No!" Robin almost shouted. "These people are just doing their jobs- we aren't going to kill them just because they're inconvenient to us at the moment. I'm going to try and talk to them." He adjusted the signal on his communicator so it was broadcasting on a frequency that the planes should be able to detect. "This is Robin of the Teen Titans, he said. "If you try to shoot us down, you'll be making a very big mistake. This is a matter of national security- I repeat, national security! Do you copy?"
The only reply was static.
"Do you think they will listen?" Starfire asked.
"We'll just have to wait and –" Robin was cut off by Cyborg's sudden shout.
"Incoming!"
The team leader quickly glanced down at his own viewscreen, and Cyborg's information was confirmed- a pair of missiles had been launched from one of the jets and were now twisting their way towards the T-ship.
"I don't think they liked what you had to say," Raven observed.
"Evasive maneuvers!" Robin shouted, and the T-ship dropped into a steep dive, Cyborg attempting to remove it from the oncoming missiles' path. Unfortunately, this proved utterly ineffective as the missiles simply changed course to stay locked on to their target.
"Tell me you have a plan!" Beast Boy's voice was a deafening shout over the comm.
"Titans- separate." The T-ship was not, in fact, a single vehicle, but rather five smaller ships that could each be controlled by an individual member of the team. With five targets rather than one, the missiles' programming would become confused, and they would either begin to fly aimlessly or lock onto a single target, where they could be destroyed by one of the other ship-pods.
Unfortunately for the team, both missiles locked on to Beast Boy's pod.
"Hey, guys! A little help here!" The green shapeshifter's shouts became increasingly incoherent as he spun his pod through a variety of improbably maneuvers in order to avoid the two projectiles.
"I'm on it, BB." Cyborg handled his pod with the skill of one who knew the machine like an old friend as he came up behind the missiles and fired the beam cannons. First one and then the second missile were caught in the blasts and disintegrated. "Boo-yah."
"Cy," Beast Boy said, "You are the best friend ever."
"Hey, if you got blown up, who'd I have left to beat at video games?"
Beast Boy lapsed into a sullen silence as the T-ship reconfigured itself.
"We've still got those planes on our tail," Raven observed. "And they probably have more missiles where those came from." True enough, both Air Force jets were quickly coming up behind the T-ship, weapons at the ready.
"Leave them to me," Starfire declared.
"Uh, Star?" Robin asked, "are you sure you can-"
"I can handle them, Robin," the Tamaranean princess said, her voice intense and utterly devoid of the lighthearted, often silly tone she commonly used. It was when her voice went like this- like it had on the day that they met- that Robin was forcibly reminded that Starfire was not human, that she was a child of a race of warriors. There would be no changing her mind now.
"Good luck," the Titans' leader whispered as Starfire undid her seatbelt and opened her pod's canopy. She floated up into the air, eyes blazing with green fire, and hurtled towards the jets.
The two pilots never knew what hit them. Starfire tore through their planes like a hot iron through ice, and a small rain of wings, guiding fins, and jet engines was sent falling earthward. The core bodies of the fighters, no longer possessing the technology to stay in the air, were sent plummeting towards the ground short moments later.
Starfire hovered in the air where the planes had been for a moment, glancing down at the falling pilots, and then back at the T-ship. Seeming to make up her mind, she hurtled down like an orange and green rocket, quickly coming level with the cockpits. With superhuman strength she tore them open, and, a pilot under each arm, glided gently to the ground. The young alien deposited her cargo and then shot back up towards the T-ship without a word.
"Starfire," Cyborg breathed as she alighted back in her seat, "that was amazing!"
"It was," Robin said. "I guess I always knew you had that kind of power, but seeing it in action…" he shook his head as his voice trailed off.
"Thank you, Robin," Starfire replied stiffly, but when she spoke again her voice had returned to its usual bouncy tone. "Can we not do that again, please?"
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Lieutenant General Smithson saluted as his commanding officer strode into the hangar, flanked by armored bodyguards. "General Immortus, sir!" he said. "We await your inspection."
"Excellent," the immortal rasped. Stalking past Smithson, he looked up towards the hangar's high ceiling- and the giant, sheet-draped forms that stood along the walls. "Your work is coming along nicely, Smithson. When will these be ready for combat?"
"The prototype is fully combat capable now, sir," Smithson said with pride. "We've tested it against the Brain's old drone tanks, and the results have been immensely pleasing. We'll have the others online in a matter of days."
"And the weapon I provided you with?" Immortus asked. "Has it performed according to my promise?"
"Yes, sir. We affixed it onto the prototype, and- well, to be honest I've never seen anything quite like it!"
Immortus gazed up at one of the shrouded forms, his eyes far away. "Of course you haven't. The world hasn't, not for almost two thousand years. The ancients were most ingenious, and although we have now surpassed them in many ways, other arts were lost forever." He smiled tightly. "Or perhaps lost to all except for those few who survived the dark ages."
"Are you certain these will be protected when you activated Professor Chang's device, sir?" Smithson asked anxiously. "I'd hate to lose any of these babies before we have the chance to try them out."
"Nothing is certain in war," Immortus rasped. "However, I am as close to certain as is possible that these weapons will survive."
Smithson stepped closer to the general and whispered into his ear so that the bodyguards and technicians couldn't hear. "And what about the thief, sir? He knows what we're planning, and he certainly isn't loyal to you or your cause."
Immortus slowly turned to face his second-in-command, and the gaze of those cold, ancient eyes was enough to make even a hardened mercenary like Smithson quail. "Red X is an opportunist at heart," the old man said. "His fundamental goal is self-preservation. He will not betray me now. He knows that if he did, he would not survive. Does that comfort you?"
"Yes, sir," Smithson said with a salute. "I defer to your wisdom, as always."
"Excellent." General Immortus motioned for his guards and they fell in step behind him as he prepared to leave the hangar. "This age is ending, Smithson. Soon a new age- an age of war- will begin. And in that age, Red X and his kind must adapt or die- but men such as ourselves will always find a home."
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The T-ship had been flying for hours, but to Robin it had begun to feel like he'd been in the air for an eternity. Whenever he turned his comm on, he found himself treated to Raven's murmuring of "Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos," as she meditated, Cyborg's snoring, and Beast Boy's constant complaining about the lack of a bathroom, but whenever he switched the thing off, he felt incredibly, totally alone. He wasn't sure which was worse.
The tracer signal still led straight east, and for the last several hours the Titans had been flying over Africa- and before that, the Atlantic. They had long since left US airspace behind (after a few more close run-ins with the Air Force, which they evaded only through luck and Cyborg's skilled piloting) and were in no immediate danger. Robin felt that he should take his teammates' cue and relax, but his mind refused to oblige. He was flying towards an entire army, led, equipped, and trained by one of the most dangerous madmen the world had ever produced, and he was on edge. Whatever happened out here, it would be one of the most significant battles of his career.
The land came to a sudden end and the T-ship was over water again- this time the Red Sea. That body of water passed far more quickly than had the Atlantic, and now Robin found himself looking out over the blasted deserts of Arabia. He checked his scanner, and saw that the signal was much stronger now. They were close to Immortus' stronghold. Leave it to an immortal obsessed with war to pick the middle east for his base of operations.
"Wake up, team," Robin said into his comm. "We're almost there."
"We're with you, Robin," came Raven's calm voice.
"Especially if we can find a bathroom down there!" was Beast Boy's somewhat less eloquent response.
"Beast Boy," Robin said," if Immortus has as many men down there as we think, he'll have to have hundreds of bathrooms. You should be set."
The T-ship passed over a ridge of jagged mountains, and there, as the sun rose before them, they saw the fortress. It looked like a medieval castle scaled up to massive size and outfitted with the most lethal modern weaponry. Tanks were parked along the edges, and in front was a wide, clear plain for drills.
"That's definitely a Brotherhood base," Beast Boy said in an uncharacteristically serious tone. "The Brain always loved going for big and dramatic."
"And now Immortus has picked up where he left of," Robin said. "Cyborg, take us down."
"On it, Robin." The T-ship began to lower itself slowly towards the mountains, to land in a place that was hidden from the fortress's scanners.
But they had already been detected. An energy cannon mounted on one of the fortress's turrets swung around and fired a blast of concentrated power at the T-ship. There was no time to avoid it, and the ship's shields were not strong enough to repel a blast that powerful. One of the jet engines was sheared away, and the T-ship fell from the sky.