BAE Chapter 32

The Batplane screams across the sky.

Behind Barbara, Kate struggles with her straps.

“Can’t get used to this suit,” she grumbles. She shouldn’t complain about Alfred’s tailoring; it’s way better than whatever she was using before.

“Still with the wig,” Barbara mutters. The point of the wig is make it less easy for someone to connect Kate to the Batwoman, but what’s the point when it’s so obviously a wig? The long, flowing, artificially red hair doesn’t just look fake, it’s a liability. Barbara’s hair is too, but not nearly as bad. She and Kate will talk about that another time, but it’s just to easy to picture Croc getting a lucky grab on that hair and ending Kate’s career very abruptly.

“Ms. Gordon,” Alfred says in Barbara’s earpiece. “I see that you’ve enabled the weapons.”

Kagami Plaza looms ahead, glowing against the skyline. Barbara throttles up and the targeting reticle appears on the cockpit.

“Oh jeez,” Kate says nervously.

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Inside Kagami Plaza, hostages in business clothes sit along a wall. Their hands and ankles are secured with zip ties and tape covers their mouths. They are all blindfolded, which is not a bad thing. Two hostages have already been shot, and their bodies lie in plain view.

Two thieves watch the hostages as the others huddle nearby, discussing their next move. The job has gone bad. Their only chance is to strongarm the authorities into making concessions to avoid more killing, then try to get the charges dropped after the heat is off. Shooting that second hostage might’ve been a blunder.

They wear ski masks and the leader sees one man’s eyes widen. They all turn to look at the sleek, black aircraft hovering outside the window.

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Commissioner Gordon’s car squeals to a halt at the cordon outside Kagami Plaza. He and Bullock emerge to find everyone looking up, not at the floor where the spotlights are focused on the hostage situation, but on the crescent-shaped plane hovering eerily in front of the building.

“Oh man,” Bullock says, twisting his hat in his hands. The commissioner is sweating.

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“It’s the bat,” the leader says.

“I thought he was gone.”

“I heard there’s a girl.”

“A girl?”

“Hey, shut up!” one of them shouts at the hostages.

“He’s just sitting there. What’s he doing?”

“I don’t care what he’s doing.” The leader yanks the machine gun away from the nearest thief and brings it up, jerking the charging handle.

Twin miniguns on the wings of the black plane open up with a hail of gunfire so loud that all sound inside the building is turned to harsh ringing. Glass, plaster, and papers fill the air as the Batplane fills the office with hot lead.

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On a nearby rooftop, a GCPD sniper looks up from her scope with wide eyes.

“Jesus Christ!” Her radio explodes with chatter from the cops on the ground, who are being showered with glass and scalding hot shell casings.

The sniper comes to her senses. The windows are gone; she has a clear shot if there’s anyone left alive in there. She leans in to look through her scope again, miraculously finding that everyone is still alive. The thieves are stumbling for cover and picking themselves up in shock, but there’s no sign that anyone was hit.

The plane’s cockpit is opening.

“No way,” the sniper murmurs.

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“Let’s go.” Barbara pops her straps and leaps out, darting along the wing of the plane with Kate right behind her. GCPD spotlights snap on, lighting them up as they leap the gap between the plane and the building.

Kate throws herself directly at the nearest thief while Barbara cartwheels over a shot from a revolver, throwing smoke bombs. A thief swings a shotgun around just to have it yanked from his hands by Barbara and his nose smashed by the stock. Kate flattens a man with a punch, then uses a flash bomb to dazzle a guy fumbling to reload a grease gun. Barbara throws a thief over her shoulder and whirls on another but winces at the pain in her chest. The delay costs her: the man in front of her aims his pistol at her face.

A black rope wraps around his wrist and Kate yanks, making him miss his shot. She pulls, forcing him to stumble toward her so that she can kick him in the groin and shove him through the glass wall of a cubicle.

Sounds of impact and cries of pain come from the smoke. When it clears, the thieves are strewn across the floor, mostly ****. One groans and Kate absently kicks him in the face to shut him up.

Kate and Barbara turn to face the leader, who has a hostage on her feet and a gun to her head. The hostage squirms and whimpers.

“How about you two give me a ride out of here?” the leader suggests.

Kate’s Batarang knocks the pistol from his hand and a tenth of a second later, Barbara’s Batarang spikes through his palm, pinning his hand to the wall. He screams as the hostage falls, but the scream’s cut off as Barbara launches herself into the air, slamming into his chest with her knee and smashing him through the wall in a cloud of broken plaster and drywall. He falls to the floor of a server room, but he’s wearing Kevlar that protected him. He picks himself up with a groan, tearing the batarang out of his hand and holding it like a knife.

“You fight like a girl,” he growls.

She pulls her grapple and shoots him in the chest, hooking his body armor. He shouts in alarm as she reels him in and spins into a roundhouse that throws him into the nearest wall of servers, which explode in a crackle of blue electricity. The leader jerks and yells, then falls senseless to the floor. Smoke rises from his clothes.

Barbara cuffs him and returns to find Kate doing the same with the others. As they secure the last of the thieves, the elevator dings, and the SWAT team arrives. They enter the devastated office in time to see two caped figures flit out the window, then have to shield their faces as wind rushes and a deafening roar of engines washes over them.

The Batplane blazes away into the sky.

Barbara grimaces and sets the autopilot. As she fumbles with the emergency kit, she glances back at Kate. “That was a two-person job,” she says tightly. “Don’t go by yourself unless I tell you to.”

“OK, Mom.”

Barbara rolls her eyes and tilts her head back, pulling down the neck of her costume to give herself another injection of the steroid. She blinks rapidly and shakes her head. That’s enough publicity for one night, and she needs to rest. She also has two open cases to work on: the Phantasm situation and the Seed formula.

Should she have Kate help with those cases back at the cave?

Or send Kate out on patrol?