Man Behind the Wheel (The Next Half Century Book 1)

by Steve Rzasa

  Aldo grabbed Rome’s right arm. “You shot him!”

  “Get off!”

  The Halcyon skittered madly, back end swerving. Rome lashed out with his elbow, the impact shooting pain clear up to his shoulder. Aldo cried out. Rome let the empty gun fall to the floor and seized control again. He spun the car around, changing gears. It growled madly. A new, unsteady whine echoed from the power core.

  The rearmost chase Famtrac for the house transport was 40 feet ahead. Automated, no passengers.

  Rome accelerated again. Just as he neared its bumper, he manually toggled the front collision bags. They exploded outward, shoving the back end of the Famtrac. Rome pressed on, using the Halcyon like an old-school bulldozer. The Famtrac went into an oddly graceful, yet ponderous turn, then tumbled off the side of the road. It bounced along the embankment, following the incline to a stand of trees.

  Smoke drifted up in Rome’s rear view. Good thing it was unoccupied.

  “Okay, look, relax.” Aldo’s voice shook. His hands had a worse tremor. “We can get off the Ninety up ahead. There’s a turn-off.”

  “Show me it.”

  Aldo widened the hologram. Yeah, it was a standard ramp—and something in Rome’s mind clicked.

  “Gabriela’s closing,” Aldo said.

  “I know.”

  The Condor came in low to the road, soaring only 60 feet above the pavement. Rome threaded a path around the house transport. The Condor matched it, banking sharply. Engine exhaust made the warning holos on the transport waver, but Gabriela didn’t alter her course or put more distance between herself and the roof of the prefabricated home.

  “Wow, she’s good,” Aldo muttered.

  Rome never had any doubt.

  The exit ramp was only a minute away. He pushed the Halcyon to top speed. If he could time it right, they could get Gabriela off their backs and gain some time to think.

  If he screwed up… well… they’d be dead.

  “FYI, Rome, exit ramp speed is 45.” Aldo didn’t bother with his displays. He held on tight to the sides of his seat. “If we’re gonna make it…”

  The Halcyon shot right by the exit.

  “So, yeah. You missed it.”

  “Nope. Hang on.” Rome cranked the controls.

  The Halcyon left the highway.

  Tires reconfigured to match the rocks and grass clods. Rome fought to keep the car straight as the terrain tugged at the wheels. They barreled down the embankment. Pine branches scraped at Aldo’s window. Aldo yelled his head off.

  They bounced hard up a ditch and across two lanes of a small connector road. A tow truck braked hard, skidding sidelong. Rome caught a glimpse of the warning message flashing across the windshield as two bearded men in vests and caps stared.

  Rome drove up the opposite embankment, the wheels spinning dirt, grass, and pine needles.

  “No, no, no! Don’t get back on the road!” Aldo hollered.

  “Ready the EMP!” Rome snapped.

  “It’s been fully charged for the last five minutes!”

  All Rome wanted to hear.

  Gabriela’s Condor roared by, its wings twisting as it angled into a turn. She overshot them. Rome knew she lined up for a repeat of the EMP burst.

  If she had the chance to fire.

  The embankment was a steep incline the last 30 feet before it met the Ninety. The Condor dipped lower. The Halcyon’s proximity warning blared.

  “She’s got us!” Aldo shouted.

  “Sorry, Gabriela.” Rome triggered his EMP.

  The shot was perfect. It caught the Condor across the left leading wing, spreading electrical discharges across the entire fuselage. Turbofans stuttered and died. Nav lights winked out.

  The Condor went into a slow, flat spin.

  The Halcyon leapt the last 20 feet. For a moment, Rome didn’t feel the comforting presence of the road beneath his wheels. The power core took on a high keen.

  When it slammed back down, everything in the Halcyon shook. Even Rome’s teeth rattled. They bounced around, but the seats and the restraint held them fast, absorbing as much of the impact energy as possible.

  Aldo craned his neck. “Is she down? Can you see the Condor? Did she make it?”

  He could see. The Condor’s nose bent up the last second before it hit the ground. She skidded along, throwing up sprays of dirt in an open swath between a small cluster of buildings and the highway. The wings crumpled. Foam sprayed from external ports as the plane attempted to soften the landing. Finally, it halted, chin up, a wounded bird broken on the ground.

  Broken, but not destroyed.

  Rome didn’t look away from the rear view until he saw a tiny figure emerge from the hatch. Only then did he breathe again.

  The Halcyon raced on the highway until the three lanes merged to one. Rome kept his eyes on the road, in front and behind. So far, no more pursuit. So far, they were free.

  “Traffic our way’s bottled up behind that house transport five miles back,” Aldo said. “Nothing else to report.”

  Rome nodded.

  “So…” Aldo shut down all his displays. He stared at the road in front of them. “We’re fugitives. What now?”

  Rome took a second to stare, too—at the green and white of the mountains, the mirrored blue surface of the lake. He loved this route. Loved this drive.

  Not anymore.

  “We run,” Rome said. “And we disappear.”

  Chapter Nine

  Aldo held up his hands. “Nope. No. Again, no.”

  “Don’t be a baby. It’s a razor, not a machete.”

  It was two hours since they’d escaped capture. The weather cleared out as soon as they crossed the mountains, and on this eastern side the sun beat down on Rome. Heat rose from the Halcyon’s hood. The landscape around them was burnt brown for miles, shades of sienna and ochre.

  Aldo found them a dry gully to stop in. It provided enough shelter from prying eyes for the time being. Local Net info said this was a prime area for off-roading.

  Sunnyside.

  Rome would have found the name funnier if it hadn’t been so bleak. Sunny, all right—way too much of it. There was a hint of green on the horizon, in the town proper to their east. There were also dozens of abandoned homes that littered the landscape.

  Rome had a small battery-powered razor in one hand. Part of his toiletry kit for when they traveled. He preferred to be clean-shaven, but if they were going to get out of this mess, he’d have to forgo that comfort. Aldo, on the other hand… “It’s got to go.”

  “No way!” Aldo clutched at his chin as if Rome were a vampire and his beard was the cross to ward him off. “Not shaving a single hair. This is me.”

  Rome grabbed him by the collar. “That’s why you have to shave it off! Everything about us has to go—implant data, tags, names, faces. They’re going to look for every sign of Rome Jasko and Aldo Burns they can pick up. We can’t let them find anything.”

  Aldo stared at him, blinking.

  Rome let him go. He raked his hands through his hair, his fingers came away sweaty. Must be the heat, combined with the strain. He shouldn’t have snapped at Aldo like that. “First thing’s first. Re-color.”

  “We’re stuck maroon,” Aldo said. “Unless you want to hook Marcy back up.”

  “No. Can’t you get in and alter the programming?”

  “It’s gonna take a while.”

  Rome squinted at the sun. The sky was a bold blue, without a hint of cloud—or a speck that could be a drone, either. “Make it work. Even if it’s green.”

  Aldo shook his head. “This is crazy. They think we helped those guys out.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Don’t you have—I mean, isn’t there someone you can talk to?”

  Rome’s mouth twisted. “Too big a risk to contact Freddie right now. Or anyone else. Staying off the signals is our best bet, at least until the initial pursuit winds down.”
r />   “What are we gonna do?”

  Rome twisted the crucifix on the ends of his fingers. “We discuss our options.”

  “Options. We ran out of those.” Aldo ticked off points. “Ninety FTZ West has a warrant out for our arrest. Every contract driver on the Ninety—and probably those on any of the other major FTZs we happen to hit—is going to be after the bounty. Never mind the cred that comes with nabbing someone with your record.”

  “I’m flattered.”

  “Whatever. Also, Thad Mancos—who personally hates your guts—is without a doubt sniffing down every crumb left on every road between the Cascades and the Rockies right now. You think we won’t spark off a bounty race among the rest of his Del Norte buddies? Oh, and let’s not forget we’ve got a car that we’ve got to wire back together because you made me break it!”

  “It isn’t broken. It’s modified.”

  “Modified?” Aldo shook his head so vigorously Rome pictured it splitting clean off his neck. “No. Nope. Broken is an error message from the nav system or a faulty sensor that lets you bounce off the fender of a Famtrac in front of you. We deliberately crippled our car to the point of making it the automotive version of a coma patient.”

  “Upside, Aldo, is that she’s a Halcyon.” Rome patted the hood. If he left his hand on its surface he figured he’d burn it. “Unless someone manages a very up close and personal scan of her power core—which is decidedly not stock, thanks to our investment—she’ll look like all the rest. Once you get the re-color done and the registration numbers changed…”

  “Yeah, I get it. I can rig something. But it’d be simpler if we plugged Marcy back in.”

  “Right. Marcy.” Rome’s stomach tightened. “That’s the other thing we have to deal with, before anything else.”

  “What about her? She needs the AI equivalent of CPR,” Aldo muttered.

  “She’s tagged.”

  “Duh. So are we.” Aldo waved his wrist. The implant was black as stone, and deader looking than one. “Thanks to yours truly, we’re blocked out of the Net for a while. But it won’t take the FTZ techs too much longer before they figure out how to access our tags. You owe me lunch for that.”

  “Relax, we’ll eat.”

  “Okay.” Aldo deflated somewhat. He tugged at his beard. “Marcy’s tag could be a problem. Theoretically, a tech with enough skill could reactivate it remotely.”

  “How much skill?”

  “A whole lot more than me.”

  “But it is possible.”

  “Maybe. Okay, yeah, there’s a decent chance. But I can alter the connections. If I can bypass her failsafes that prevent physical tampering—”

  “Aldo.” Rome drummed his fingers on the hood. “We need to leave her.”

  Aldo frowned. “Leave her… alone? Stashed away in the tool compartment?”

  “No. Here.” Rome scuffed dirt. “Right here. Buried.”

  “What, in the middle of nowhere? Rome, this isn’t a busted implant module or a comp panel.” Aldo reached into the car, and brought out the neatly wrapped package. “This is an automated command and navigation computer with base level AI that cost a fair bounty with a whole bunch of zeroes! What if some kid rolls up and grabs her for parts? What if we can’t find her when we come back?”

  Rome put his hand on Aldo’s shoulder. Aldo’s eyes were wide and getting red around the edges. His hair was mussed, his beard scraggly where he’d tugged at it. “We’re not coming back.”

  Aldo stood, unmoving.

  “You’re scared, and frustrated. I get it. But that’s not going to help us get out of this. I need you at your best. Promise me that.”

  Aldo looked down at the bundle in his hands. “It’s—she’s our partner, Rome.”

  “She’s a danger now. She could lead FTZ straight to us. They think we’re in league with the crew of thieves, and they just killed two Security men back at West headquarters. In FTZ’s eyes, we’re accessories to manslaughter at best.”

  “I know. I know. But…” Aldo swallowed. “Okay. Let me take a shot at unhooking her tag. Please?”

  Rome considered the package Aldo held, and his partner. It was part of their team—she was part of their team. She’d kept them safe for thousands of miles and hours. She was just as much their companion as Gabriela. The same Gabriela who’d immediately turned on them when her bosses issued the warrant. But, unlike Gabriela, Marcy could be reprogrammed. Maybe.

  Rome blew out a breath.

  “Come on, Rome. It’s worth a try.” Aldo’s grin was half-hearted. “We all make a better crew that way.”

  It would make it a lot easier to hide them, using Marcy to recode the Halcyon.

  Rome reached for the crucifix again. “All right. You make sure the tag’s inaccessible remotely, and plug her back in—but limit her access. Only the re-color and the false registration number. Don’t let her near anything that can reach the Net.”

  “You got it. Don’t forget about the guns.” Aldo eased into the car, favoring his uninjured leg.

  Rome heard the bundle unwrap. Aldo started murmuring to himself.

  Himself, or Marcy?

  Rome checked his implant’s time stamp. Tuesday afternoon. The concert was Friday. He grimaced. Odds were, Kelsey had already seen the news.

  He hoped Vivian hadn’t.

  ~

  The basics. They needed food. And Aldo was right. The guns had to be tossed.

  Rome volunteered to ride to town while Aldo took care of Marcy. It wasn’t far. Just a couple of miles.

  The Halcyon had room in its storage trunk for a single, foldable bicycle made of a lightweight carbon fiber nanotube structure. It had 700c rims, so the whole thing only took up three feet on either side. Rome had it unpacked and locked together in minutes. He loaded up a backpack with their guns.

  It was a long time since he had a quiet ride, just to relax. It gave him time to think about everything… about nothing.

  Wind whipped by, tossing up dust devils. Rome shielded his eyes. His implant flashed a message about dust levels in the valley. Drought warnings, too. What else was new?

  He stopped alongside a collapsed, dry riverbank. It took a couple minutes to dig a trench, then another to put their guns in—the submachine gun he’d used against the thieves, plus his and Aldo’s Hunsaker pistols. All three were tagged with benign tracers, which—under normal circumstances—did nothing but confirm the legality of ownership. Since Rome and Aldo were fugitives, however, he knew the tracer was active. As soon as they passed the nearest law enforcement drone or station, the tracer would alert authorities to the presence of illegally owned weapons.

  Rome would rather take his chances with nothing but a pair of spazzers.

  He removed his badge from his belt. Sunlight gleamed off it as bright as chrome on one of those old classic rides—the combustion models from a century ago that collectors outfitted with power cores. It wasn’t tied to his implant. The badge was just a decoration, albeit one that displayed basic identification about the holder. It couldn’t be interrogated like an implant.

  Easy enough to remove the data board from the badge and keep the dead reminder in his pocket. For all his grumbling about removing Marcy from the Halcyon, Rome wasn’t ready to part with the memento. He’d given up too much else.

  Rome mounted his bike and headed down the road. He passed an older couple riding nearby. They waved, and smiled. Rome nodded back.

  Closer to town, there were more occupied homes. The change from sparse brown weeds to green fields was startling. Most were protected under domes, each held together with octagonal frames. Moisture beaded on the inside.

  Rome pedaled past the crumbling remains of a sidewalk. It improved the nearer he got to the dense neighborhoods. Houses became more clustered, scattered trees appeared—though they were gnarled, stunted versions of the mountain conifers. Cars drove by. A family of five passed, the father pushing a toddler in a stroller while the mother guided twins who could walk. An older woman l
ed a simple, automaton carrier that lugged bags of groceries, following her like some stupid, chrome ogre.

  Downtown, there were a few shopping choices. Rome ignored the automarts. They all had sensors in their entrances that marked the tag in a customer’s implant. This town still had a couple of regular stores—the ones where he could use the banknotes in his pocket. Okay, so Aldo was right. It was a good thing they’d stopped for a withdrawal before their accounts were frozen, no matter the risk.

  Rome gathered a bag of the basics—freeze dried meals, protein bars, and desiccated fruit. He grabbed a small case of water and made a face. It was more than twice the cost in Seattle. It doubled the price of everything else he’d just picked up.

  The clerk was a young man with swirling tattoos on peach skin. His hair was shaved down to bristles dyed neon green. Rome concealed his befuddlement. Why bother, then?

  The kid gestured at the white arc that curved like a duck’s neck over the counter. “Tag.”

  “Here.” Rome piled a few banknotes.

  “Oh. Uh…” The kid frowned. He held the paper under the scanner. It beeped, accompanied by a green light. “Okay, I guess that works. I need to know what bank these came from. And your ID.”

  “Not how it works. The banknotes are legal tender without ID.”

  “Well, yeah, but the store policy—”

  “Just give me the change, kid, and I won’t make a scene,” Rome smiled. It wasn’t meant to reassure the clerk.

  The kid’s face paled under his tattoos. “No, no. That’s not a problem. They’re good. You’re good.”

  Rome waited, resisting the urge to drum his fingers on the counter as the kid printed off change slips of similar shape and size to the banknotes. The transaction numbers were identical. They could be traced, yeah, but weren’t linked to any person.