by Steve Rzasa
“Tire tracks.” Aldo marked them on his holo display. “Off southeast… think we can trace them. Marcy, scan everything you can.”
Rome got out of the car. The smell of hot materials drifted across the lot. Why would they leave the Condor sitting here? Its hatches were wide open. “Doesn’t make sense.”
Another set of engines whirred overhead. Rome glanced up. Finally, Gabriela.
His implant chirped. Simultaneously, Aldo said, “Um, what’s he want?”
It was Director Cho. His tiny visage was grim, his tie loose. “All FTZ and contracted units, be on the lookout for Pursuit One Twelve. We have reason to believe they are affiliated with the criminals who escaped FTZ custody. They should be considered armed and dangerous. All units are authorized to pursue and apprehend.”
Rome stared, uncomprehending.
“Please, don’t move.” Gabriela’s voice echoed from the sky, angelic and forbidding all at once. “I have to take you in.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Nope.
Rome floored the Halcyon out of the parking lot. Aldo was shoved back into the seat. “What are you doing? Did you hear them? We’re suspects!”
[This course of action is not recommended,] Marcy said.
“Both of you, shut up!” The car skidded across the lanes of traffic, cutting through at least a dozen vehicles’ paths. Their automated systems veered away from Rome’s rampage with inches to spare. A flurry of warnings splattered on the dashboard.
“Slow down! Slow down!” Aldo gripped the sides of his seat.
“Quit freaking out and get into the nav systems,” Rome said. “Disable everything.”
“Everything?”
“Tags, trackers, our signals in and out—anything that can be used to lock down the car.”
“But Marcy… she won’t let…”
It was too great a risk for Rome to say any more—what he’d said already could be too much. But to his credit, Aldo stopped yammering. His face went pale. “You got me?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I do.” Aldo doused his holographic display and unhooked his restraints. He contorted himself in his seat so that his back was on the floor and his head under the dash.
[Sir, we are operating at unsafe velocities.] Marcy’s tone was sterner than Rome had ever heard it. She brought to mind his mother when he was caught guessing her PIN for the family accounts. [Please re-engage your restraints.]
“Sorry, Marcy.” Aldo’s voice was muffled. “This is gonna suck.”
[Refrain from accessing hardwired systems. They should only be altered by a certified Free Travel Zone technician or other—] Marcy’s voice hiccupped.
Aldo pulled on wires, removed and reinserted circuits, and disconnected feeds. Rome couldn’t see everything he did—he was preoccupied with not getting them killed as they hurtled down the Ninety—but Marcy’s voice was swamped with static and interruptions.
[Accessing safety broad… band. Contact… authorities and override… override…]
The wheel twitched under Rome’s grip. The Halcyon’s speed dropped by 15 miles per hour. “Aldo, cut her off.”
“What the shit do you think I’ve been doing down here! Yoga?”
Rome struggled against the steering controls, but the car kept lurching toward the side of the road. The nav display showed Gabriela’s Condor high above and very, very close behind. Warning messages accompanied by red lights streamed across his dash until they suddenly vanished.
“Got rid of that,” Aldo muttered. “Hang on.”
“Hurry up.” The shoulder of the road was one lane away. Rome jerked the controls left, buying them a few feet and a few seconds, but Marcy’s programming made her inexorable. She would do the safe thing—the thing that saved the greatest number of lives and avoided the most damage. She would turn him and Aldo over for arrest to the same people who—up until a few minutes ago—they were contracted with to chase illegal drivers.
Thad’s Panther gained in the rear view, breaking away from the herd of Famtracs and freighters that slowed down several miles back. A pair of dull, tan cars joined him—escorts from FTZ West Security. By the way they maneuvered, Rome could tell they were Drivers. Comps wouldn’t go that fast—even Security models—and their drift toward either side of their lanes confirmed it.
Additional cars pulled to the sides of the road around them, even going so far as to leave the center lane and cut across Rome’s path toward the edge of the pavement. He recognized the pattern. It was only used in extreme cases… for dangerous fugitives.
His car slowed down every passing second, against everything he willed.
“We got company?”
“Yeah.” Rome wrested the controls around a freighter as it made for the right lane. He accelerated, cutting up on its right side. The freighter swerved, attempting to steady its path. It drove back to the left and then braked, putting it directly in line with Thad’s formation.
“Okay, okay. Marcy, you could make this easier and shut down, you know.”
[Not authorized. Illegal… action not condoned. Not condoned.] Her tone was more strident. [External command is attempting override.]
Not what Rome wanted to hear. “Aldo…”
“Relax. They won’t get in from our signal receptor.”
“You’re sure?”
Something small and black landed on Rome’s lap. It trailed two severed wires.
“Nice work.”
“Going to be a colossal inconvenience to fix if we ever want to talk to someone farther away than the windshield. But hey, you’re welcome.”
A light exploded across Rome’s rear view. The freighter suddenly drifted to the left, sparks covering it in a web. Thad missed his target. Rome grinned. “Never was that much of a marksman.”
[Compensation confirmed,] Marcy said.
The Halcyon skidded, shooting to the shoulder at such a great rate of speed, Rome knew he couldn’t prevent an impact. He struggled with the controls until his arms shook.
“Got it!” Aldo wagged a red and gray striped wire from under the dash.
The Halcyon veered, diving across to the left lane. The freighter ahead dodged right, accelerating out of their path. They were close enough Rome made out the chips of paint missing from the advertisement on its rear fenders.
[Control… broke quarantine.] Marcy’s voice was faint. [Unable to… update contact broken.]
Thunk.
Aldo twisted upright into his seat. He cradled a small, squashed object about the size of an apple in his hands. It was black with copper-colored lines that traced random patterns on a knobby surface. Green lights flickered around two axes, their frequency increasing as they turned gold, then orange, and finally dark red.
Aldo stared down at the lump. His knuckles were scraped red. “It’s… Marcy.”
The ache in Rome’s chest surprised him. What was the problem? It was the autonomous computer programmed to safely navigate the car. Ten years ago, it didn’t even exist.
Aldo reached under his seat. He pulled out a rag from some compartment that rattled with tools. He covered the object, and wrapped it snugly.
The lights faded completely.
Aldo tucked Marcy into the tool compartment. He exhaled, his eyes rimmed red. “Okay. So, she’s disconnected.”
“Okay. I need you to reconfigure the systems she used to run. Navigation. Telemetry. Countermeasures.”
“Got it.” Aldo activated his holos and dove into the work, face rigid and near unblinking. “Charge the EMP?”
Rome eyed the Condor closing in on them. “Yeah, probably going to need it.”
They worked in silence for a few minutes—Rome driving, Aldo reconfiguring. It wasn’t until the nav system chirped its familiar proximity alert that Rome stopped trying to think of this as a leisurely drive. Well, that and the rumble of the engine pushed to its max.
“Company.” Aldo snorted. “Guess.”
“Thad?”
“Bingo.”
Traffic thi
nned ahead until only a handful of cars were left on the road.
Aldo frowned. “Where’d everyone go?”
“They cleared them out.” Rome tightened his grip. He flicked his gaze from side to side. There were no exits. “Give me the locations of the nearest off-ramps.”
“Okay. This is good, right? No obstacles for us.”
“None for them, either.” Rome pointed skyward.
Aldo’s eyes widened. “Oh.”
“Yeah. That.”
The sky flashed. Light burst ahead and to their right, rippling out. Sparks skittered along the pavement.
Rome steered clear with tires squealing. He kept from overcorrecting and put the Halcyon into a higher gear. The speedometer ticked upward.
“EMP blast!”
“I noticed. What’s our charge time?”
“Uh… ten minutes.”
Way too long. “Make it faster. Reroute power from the core as long as it doesn’t siphon off my speed.”
“There’s an old saying in there about not being a miracle worker, Rome.”
Gabriela’s Condor zipped ahead. Its wings angled sharply as it banked into a turn.
Coming around for a second pass?
Sure, enough. She stopped as if on the proverbial dime, hovering a couple hundred feet over the road where it crested a hill.
“Okay, maybe I should,” Aldo said.
A signal pinged on the dash. Rome recognized the origin.
Gabriela.
“Tell me you unhooked the comms from the other onboard systems.”
“Ah, one sec.” Click. Aldo straightened, a pair of wire cutters in his hand.
How many tools did he have stashed under the seat? Rome had never thought to investigate.
“Done and done. Speak freely without fear of us getting hijacked.”
Rome acknowledged the signal.
“Rome… Aldo… it’s Gabriela.” Her face appeared semi-transparent on the windshield. Her eyes were bright with tears and her jaw was tight as if she held something back behind her teeth. “Just do what they ask. Pull over and park. Step out of the car and put down your weapons. I got a read on your system before—well, I assume you cut Marcy out. That’s a felony, don’t you realize? Please. I’ve targeted you with the EMP. I don’t want to use it again.”
Aldo focused on his displays. As far as Rome could tell, he never even looked up at her face.
“Sorry, Gabriela. We can’t. You know we didn’t break those people out. I’m not letting them lock me up.” Rome killed the signal.
A bright light exploded from the underside of the Condor.
“Incoming!”
The EMP burst reached them in a second. Even reacting as fast as he did, Rome couldn’t avoid the entire hit. Sparks rolled across the windshield, up, and over the Halcyon until the entire right side of the car was covered in electric vines.
“Cascading failures,” Aldo said. “I’m doing what I can with the backups. But if the power core goes into flux…”
Rome kept them centered with the Condor. They shot past underneath, dunked in darkness by its wings. “Don’t worry. That was just a graze. Didn’t affect the engine. Not yet.”
The Halcyon sped below an underpass, which momentarily kept Gabriela at bay. It did nothing against Thad and his escorts, all three of whom slowly closed the distance.
“Someone’s trying to get into our nav!” Aldo yelped.
“I thought you severed all the connections.”
“I didn’t sever all of them. That’d be stupid.”
“Not when the people trying to arrest us can use them to stop our car!”
A large shape loomed at the bottom of the slope between the hill they’d crested and the next tree line. It was way too big to be a freighter.
“Definitely Enrique, Thad’s stooge.” Aldo grimaced. “Can’t believe how sloppy a tech he is. You see that signature? Might as well have put a VR ad into our brains that told us everything he had planned, up to and including the pathway he’s taking.”
“That’s great. How about you concentrate on shutting him out.”
“Already doing that.” Aldo’s fingers maneuvered commands in his holo display.
“Not there. Cut another wire.”
“Hey, I wasn’t just doing that because cutting things apart is fun—which it is. If I sever any more connections we’re not going to be able to communicate with the nav map, let alone any other cars, and… oh, hey.”
The sensors finally identified the vehicle ahead. It was a house transporter—a massive vehicle comprised of three, interconnected sections with six wheels each. Every section was big enough to straddle two of the three lanes. A pair of chase Famtracs, each one painted white with neon orange caution stripes, drove in the leftmost lane.
“Enrique’s trying to override our power core settings,” Aldo said. “Sloppy, but smart. If he can dip the power levels enough, they can close in for an EMP shot.”
“Noted.” Rome braked.
“Wait. What are you doing?”
“Prodding Thad.” Rome watched the rear view. “Come on.”
“Uh, this is a bad idea.”
“Only if it fails.”
The three cars shifted formation. One of the escorts raced ahead, leaving Thad back in the center lane with the other FTZ Security vehicle as a wingman.
“Told you. I know Thad,” Rome smiled. “Always ready to have someone else do the dirty work if he can take credit. Siphon off the EMP charge to the grapples.”
“Okaaaay.” Aldo didn’t argue, at least. Progress.
The house transporter grew ever larger ahead. Rome ignored it, for now. His eyes were fixed on the FTZ ride.
It was a 2053 Halcyon, an older model with subtle differences in the wheel covers and front fenders. It had the same general chassis. Same pros and cons as Rome’s model.
The pursuer got within 100 feet. A hatch below the fender pulsed with light.
“Grapples?”
“Good to go.”
“Hang on.” Rome spun the car 180 degrees and deployed them.
The projectiles slammed into the front of the pursuing car. One even impacted halfway up the hood toward the windshield.
“Reel him in, top speed.”
“That’ll put a major drain on the power core—”
“Do it!”
Both cars snapped together like the ends of a rubber band, albeit the Security vehicle moved three times as fast. When it was less than ten feet away, Rome cranked the controls.
The Halcyon whipped into a turn, wheels skidding and smoking in a maneuver that Marcy would have instantly overridden and corrected, citing highway safety protocols. With her brain removed, the Halcyon was significantly dumbed down and let Rome do whatever he wanted.
Just like the old days.
The two cars spun about each other, equal weights on the end of an invisible line, until Rome hit “release.” They shot backward toward the house transporter.
Rome threw the Halcyon into reverse. The Security car did likewise, hurtling back down the Ninety the way it came. The driver managed to correct, but not before he smashed into the front left corner of the other Security Halcyon. Inflatable barriers exploded between them, cushioning the collision.
Thad managed to swerve around them, wheels bouncing along the median, and back onto the highway.
Aldo whistled. He enlarged the holo scan of the two cars, now immobile at the side of the road. “Well, that worked. So, good idea.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Umm…” Aldo glanced over his shoulder. “That house transporter’s not gonna move out of the way, you know. Too big.”
“I know.”
“Also, we’re still backwards.”
Rome drove as fast as he dared, hurtling wrong end first down the left lane of the highway. Their straightaway ended a couple miles up, where the road started a series of turns into the mountains. Thad’s car gained.
“He hits us with that EMP, it’
s gonna hurt a whole lot more than just sliding off the road,” Aldo said.
“No kidding. Where’s Gabriela?”
“Coming up, above Thad.” Aldo swiped through a menu. “EMP’s charged, whatever you want to do with it. I’ll target Thad.”
“No. Lock on Gabriela.”
“You’re kidding. We can’t shoot down an aircraft, Rome!”
“There should be plenty of power behind it.”
Thad’s car was less than a quarter mile out.
“Yeah, I get that, but I meant there was the problem of… oh, I don’t know… the launcher can’t pivot more than 10 degrees from the surface of the road!”
“Aldo, shut up and lock the target.”
Whatever Aldo muttered was lost beneath the alert chimes from the dash.
Yes… the house transporter was way too close—near enough Rome saw the warning holograms dance along the rear bumper.
Yes… Thad locked his EMP on the Halcyon. As close as he was, he wouldn’t miss. And if Rome fired his EMP now, he’d lose the chance to knock the Condor out of the sky before it could turn their car into a rolling brick.
Rome reached for the window release.
“Hey.” Aldo frowned. “Hey, what’re you…”
The panel slipped back and down into the hatch panel. Wind blasted into the car, swirling around Rome with a rush of cool freshness. It was a welcome relief from the car’s mingled air—food, plastic, and human body stench.
He kept his right hand tight on the steering control. With his left, he drew the Hunsaker from the center console and aimed it out the open window. He thumbed the targeting module.
“Rome!”
He ignored Aldo’s protest. The proximity chime rang, its tone almost lost beneath the rumble of the engine and the howl of the wind. Thad’s car was so close he saw two silhouettes through the windshield above the glowing discharge port for the EMP.
Rome didn’t want to kill Thad. He didn’t want to be caught, either.
He fired, emptying the magazine.
The tracker projectiles sparked off the bullet resistant hood of the Panther, arcing downward, toward the pavement—
Until the last three blew the front right tire apart.
Polymers shredded in a puff of high-pressure gasses and slate gray fragments. Red flashes lit up the exterior lines and internal spaces of the Panther. It skidded into the center lane, straightened out for a few seconds, and then angled back to the left. The Panther launched down an incline just as the road curved south, going airborne over a 30-foot stretch. It slammed onto the grass. Bits of the body cleaved off as it scraped among rocks.