by Logan Jacobs
“Who?” PoLarr closed her eyes. “Oh, no, she’s hot. But she wasn’t even knighted until after the Battle of Winterfell. That barely counts.”
“She was always a knight in her heart.”
“Wait, wait.” Thomas held up his hands. “Did George R.R. Martin finally finish that damn series?”
I couldn’t bear to break his heart, so I was relieved when the door to the truck’s cabin swung open. Aurora stood there, eyes gleaming with power. She must have snacked on the drivers. “Marc, get your luscious rear up here and get this hunk of junk in gear,” she said. “We’re rarin’ to go.”
I quickly found out that the armored car steered like a cow and accelerated like a particularly stubborn cow. Then again, the most driving I’d done in the last few months had been driving a gigantic alien war rig across a cannibal-infested wasteland. I didn’t think I’d lost my touch, but I hadn’t had a chance to handle anything made by the Big Three since I’d left the Big Third Rock from the Sun. Maybe I’d just gotten a little spoiled by alien technology.
“Mind if we hear some tunes?” I glanced at my co-pilots.
“Rock-and-roll, baby,” Tempest said as she squeezed onto Nova’s lap. The two redheads had decided to take riding shotgun literally, and they held their rifles at the ready.
I pushed the “Play” button on the stereo, just to see what kind of musical taste the armored car drivers had. Freddie Mercury invited us to come join him in Rhye’s seven seas. Maybe they’d just left the tape in the car for more than two weeks. “Is Rhye his home planet, Aurora?”
“No, but it’s a great place to get a tan. Lots of nude beaches.”
“Wait, are you talking about Freddie Mercury?” Thomas asked from the back. “I knew he just went home.”
“Nuh-uh. Died stranded on this planet, poor baby. But he was trying. Why do you think his best friend was an astrophysicist?”
“Just drive the car, man,” PoLarr said from the back. “This is honestly bumming me out. Why don’t we talk about the complexities of rescuing stranded intergalactic hitchhikers later and focus on the situation at hand?”
“Aurora, raincheck on the dish sesh,” I said. “So when we get into Nakatomi Plaza, I can get us over to the express elevator that goes straight up to the thirty-fifth floor.”
“Marc, are you sure you know how to navigate this building?” Thomas asked. “Memorizing a movie is one thing, but having a working knowledge of how a building actually functions is another.”
“I know Hollywood is full of movie magic and bullshit, but almost everything was filmed in the actual tower. I might have exaggerated a little about having the layout memorized, but trust me...the more times we’ve all seen Die Hard, the better chance we have of surviving.” I grinned and gunned the motor through a yellow light. Memorize the movie, save the girl and the planet, live to fight another day.
The Hollywood Hills loomed on the right, craggy mountains and twisted trees drawing the souvenir stands and taco trucks that whipped by us as we barrelled down Sunset Boulevard. As the road veered to the left, the storefronts thinned out and were replaced by huge mansions in every terrestrial style imaginable. We were rolling through Beverly Hills. The cement ponds flashed by like unneeded mini oases in the middle of the richest city in the world.
Five minutes later, we were coming up on Rodeo Drive. If I’d been an Earth celebrity, I’d have taken Artemis shopping there, watched while she modeled expensive designer outfits. It was a fantasy to file away for another time, because we were coming up to a five-way intersection, and four of those five ways were blocked by familiar black SUVs. “Hang on and get ready to shoot, I’m about to drive like a granny from Pasadena.” I yanked the steering wheel to the left and barrelled across the grass median. We zipped through oncoming traffic and into a little patch of green that the iPhone informed me was Will Rogers Memorial Park. It advised me to take an alternate route.
Sunlight hit the dashboard, and I felt the wind whip against my face suddenly as the back doors flew open. The rearview mirror showed a fleet of SUVs on my tail. Rifle barrels stuck out from the windows like spines from a hedgehog.
Well, shit.
I swung right onto Beverly Drive. Tires screeched and shots rang out as the SUVs adjusted their trajectory. We’d gained a little road, but only a little. I gunned it and trusted my teammates to handle the heavy fire.
One of the doors had been hanging by a corner for a second, and it was only a few moments before it fell off the back of the truck and landed right in front of an SUV with a wrenching metallic thud. The SUV caught the crumpled door right on the lip and barrelled grille over exhaust pipe. It landed on its roof with a satisfying crunch.
PoLarr and Olivia kept firing on the oncoming Skalle from behind the remaining door. Thomas moved to the side, and the plasma torch flared painfully in the rearview mirror as he started working on the hinges. A few seconds of work, and the door fell directly into the windshield of another Skalle car. It veered off the road and left splotches of cheerful fuschia in its wake.
“I’m going to shield you, sugars. Careful shootin’.” Aurora’s dark matter force field tinted the smog in the rearview mirror an imperial violet.
I could see a thin halo around the edges of Aurora’s shield where unadulterated light crept in. It was just wide enough to allow the barrel of a gun.
The wind had been whipping at the edges of the stacked bills and making riffling sounds that were starting to grate on my eardrums a little. The increased air pressure from the shield sucked a few loose bills out. They spun in the turbulence from our wake. It gave me an idea.
“Hey guys,” I said, “we’re coming up on a right turn down Rodeo. When I say ‘go,’ let’s see if we can give them the old razzle dazzle with dollars.”
Watching a speeding SUV smack into a fluttering cloud of money was hilarious, but what was even better was that we actually lost another car in our doom parade. I swerved hard right onto Santa Monica Boulevard and saw the SUV careen through the intersection out of the corner of my eye.
Three down, one to go.
Cars started to pull to the side to let us past as though we were an ambulance. It might have been the effect of the shots that announced our presence, or it might have been the hundred-dollar bills that spewed from the truck as we passed, but either way the fabled Los Angeles traffic parted like the Red Sea for us.
We still hadn’t lost the last Skalle Furia SUV, and we were coming up on the final leg of our journey. Nakatomi Plaza loomed over the brassy skyline on our left. On our right, the urban sprawl gave way to rolling green hills and sand traps. A golf course was the perfect place to lose the Skalle, so I swerved hard to the right and crashed through a barrier of saplings onto the perfectly manicured greens of the golf course.
The armored truck’s rugged tires bit chunks into the turf and sprayed up sod in the background.
“Fooooooore!” I screamed at the tartan-pantsed golfers diving out of my way.
“Marc, this is not the Crucible, and you do not get Carnage Points for hitting people,” Nova chided me.
“Maybe I just wanted to punish them for crimes against fashion,” I suggested. “You gotta look all sleek and minimalist on the course like Tiger now. Get with the times, rich old white guys!”
“This car has shit shocks,” Tempest complained. “I can barely aim with all this bouncing around.”
“I’m doing the best I can!” I swerved to avoid another hill.
“Getting a little carsick back here,” Olivia called.
“If you lose your lunch, try to aim it toward their windshield,” Thomas advised.
“You’re joking, right?” Olivia asked. “I can’t tell if you’re joking or not.”
“Keep wondering, and it’ll take your mind off being carsick,” Thomas explained.
“I’m not sick, but I think my teeth are about to rattle out of my gums,” PoLarr remarked. “Unfortunately, I’m fresh out of guns that use teeth for ammo.”
> “It doesn’t matter where I am,” Aurora moaned, “floor, walls, ceiling, I can still feel every single bounce.”
“I know you probably don’t feel well right now,” I said, “but you made that sound distractingly sexy.”
“If it’s the voice you’re digging, you can enjoy my pipes without taking your eyes off the road,” Aurora said.
“You can enjoy my pipe,” I murmured as I checked in the rearview mirror. Nothing but muddy tracks, and for a second I thought it hadn’t worked. My heart sank. We were going to have to retrace our steps and lose precious time. Then the line of trees lost another chunk as the Skalle SUV burst through the barrier, hot on our tail. Bullets sprayed dozens of new holes in the turf and chewed up the trunks of scrawny, malnourished trees that were already begging to be put out of their misery.
I bounced the armored car over hillocks and trails as the Skalles’ bullets flew past us or pinged off the armor of our vehicle. We’d get stuck in a sand trap or a rough area, that was the problem; the SUV had a definite advantage on rough terrain, but the armored car wasn’t really made to go over anything but concrete. The Skalle were catching up quickly, perfect for my plan, but I didn’t know if the armored car had enough power to keep up the kind of speed I needed.
A patch of blue shimmered into view behind the windshield, and I realized that we were coming up to a water hazard. It didn’t matter if the car wasn’t fast enough, I wasn’t about to drown in three feet of water with my head on a pillow of lost golf balls.
“Hold on tight!” I yelled. I yanked the wheel right and let Tempest and Nova rain fire and fury down on the Skalle.
An SUV could have made it through the water hazard just fine, but the Skalle driving was playing follow-the-leader a little too closely and tried to Tokyo Drift. It wasn’t exactly a graceful maneuver in an armored car, but at least we were stable enough to make the turn without any other consequences than a little lost torque. The SUV skidded to avoid the water hazard and rocked up onto two wheels. It hovered in the air for a long moment in a perfect balance that could never last.
I held my breath.
The SUV toppled onto its side. Its wheels spun fruitlessly, sent a spray of grass and mud a few feet into the air, and gave way. I looped back and did another drive-by to make sure that my associates helped the Skalle got plenty of lead in their diet before heading back toward the trees and the looming presence of Nakatomi Tower. Then I ran us right into a sand trap. The armored car whirred like an anxious robot and dug itself into the clean white sand, but it was the end of the line for our trusty truck.
I flung the door of the truck open. “Rest now, gallant steed.” I gave it a farewell pat on the hood. “All right, ladies and lads. Let’s leg it.”
A round of bullets flew past my ear with a whine like a swarm of ballistic mosquitos and ripped brown holes in the brilliant green turf.
I dove behind the armored car with my squad and surveyed the area. I couldn’t see the remaining Skalle Furia who’d followed us across the golf course, but I did know where the bullets were coming from. Getting across the green and back on track was going to be a real pain in the ass without the protection of the armored car.
One of the doors of the armored car hung open and straight out. It provided us with more protection from the bullets. I could hear the deadly ping and pang of bullets against the armored car’s exterior, but the door still didn’t show any dents.
“Think we can hunker down here until they run out of bullets?” Tempest asked. “I get the impression these guys have a healthy store of ammo.”
“Not with a ticking clock,” I replied. “We gotta find some way to get past them.”
Nova gave the door of the armored truck a critical look. “I think I might have a solution.” She strolled over to the back of the truck as bullets flew around her head.
“What the hell?” Thomas barked out. “Aren’t any of you going to stop her or cover her or something?”
PoLarr snorted. “Stop Nova?” she asked wryly. “I’d like to see you try.”
“Be careful, sugar!” Aurora called. “Those bullets could really mess up your hair.”
Nova squatted down and grasped the bottom edge of the door, then pulled. Metal screeched in protest as Nova tore the door off its hinges. She moved her feet backwards slowly as the door gave way, the metal curling up as her incredible strength forced the material to surrender.
“Holy shit,” Thomas murmured.
“Nova’s kind of a one-woman self-cover,” I explained. “You said you got her file. Didn’t it mention that she’s nigh-invulnerable and crazy strong?”
“The file may have understated the situation a little,” Thomas admitted.
I grinned and enjoyed the sight of the sexy redhead as she ripped a car apart like the Incredible She-Hulk. I was no longer surprised by Nova’s incredible feats of strength, but they were still a hell of a lot of fun to watch.
Nova turned to us with the makeshift shield in her hands. She stood it on end and compared the height against herself, then flipped it over and checked the width. The huge metal door moved in her hands as easily and quickly as though she were twirling a cardboard sign advertising two-for-one pizza Friday in a parking lot somewhere on Earth. I always felt bad for the minimum wage workers who had to do that kind of stuff when I drove past them, especially if they got stuck in some kind of mascot outfit. Nova was a hell of a lot sexier than anybody I ever saw twirling a sign like that. I definitely would have bought whatever she was advertising.
“I think we can all fit behind it if we keep low,” she finally said.
“And it comes with a custom-made gun hole,” Tempest exclaimed as she stuck the barrel of her rifle through the half-moon cut-out in the door and crouched in a sniper’s squat.
We advanced through the perfectly manicured green under the protection of Nova’s bulletproof shield. It curved out around us like a protective metal hug. Bullets bounced off the door and sang over our heads as we sprinted up the hill.
Nova angled the door upwards, making it almost like a roof. I couldn’t see anything but brassy blue sky above the gray paint of the door, but I trusted Nova to lead us over safe terrain. Even a golf course could have its unexpected hazards. Granted, they were mostly hazards for your score, but I was still watching for gopher holes. Not every golf course has a Carl Spackler to protect it.
“Skalle at ten o’clock,” Nova said. “Top of that hill.”
Tempest squeezed off a blast. “Got one.”
The bullets didn’t stop, but there were a lot fewer now. It sounded like when most of the popcorn kernels in the microwave popcorn bag have been popped, but the microwave is still going, and they haven’t slowed down enough so that you can take it out and start eating. Before I’d become Earth’s Champion in the Crucible of Courage, that had been a real source of tension for me, especially if I was down to my last bag of kettle corn.
Tempest squeezed off another round, and the bullets finally stopped. “Fucker was hiding right behind one of those little cart thingies,” she said.
I waited to see if any more bullets would come out of somewhere hidden, but everything seemed quiet, so I stood up warily. “Golf carts,” I said. “You ride from hole to hole on them.”
“I didn’t know you needed a little cart to go from hole to hole,” Aurora drawled. “You sure seem to get there just fine with all of our holes, sugar.”
Thomas made a sound that was somewhere between a cough and a choke. “You don’t need those little carts anyway,” he said, once he’d recovered. “I’ve always thought golf was too much walking for a good game and just enough game to spoil a good walk.”
Team Havak bounded across the grassy plain like gazelles. Our regen mods made it easy to keep up the pace without exhausting, and we ate up turf in no time, but Thomas and Olivia quickly began to fall behind.
“You gotta keep up, guys,” I said as I turned my neck back to look at them. “If we pass a golf cart, we’re nabbing it f
or you.”
“You all are Champions,” Olivia huffed. “The best of the best in the universe. We aren’t going to keep up.”
“We have to be running a half a mile a minute,” Thomas huffed. “How are you not breathing hard?”
“We are cybernetically enhanced, sugar,” Aurora purred. “Doesn’t just help with running either.”
“If we don’t get a move on, these assholes are going to catch us,” PoLarr sighed. “What do we do? Can we get one of those golf carts?”
“I think we can do a little better than a golf cart.” Nova smirked and then strode back to where Olivia and Thomas were straggling.
The orange-skinned beauty scooped the blue beauty up with one arm, and Olivia’s luscious lips formed into an ‘O’ of surprise, but she didn’t protest at all. She looked like a sexy librarian swept up into a passionate embrace as she crossed her ankles and adjusted to her new seat on Nova’s bicep. Then Nova flexed like Gaston and held her other arm out to Thomas.
“I promise you, I can bear your weight and more easily,” Nova reassured Thomas. “There is no point to you wasting your energy trying to keep up with us, and we will need you ready for when we storm the tower and rescue the princess.”
“Well, as long as it’s in the name of efficiency,” Thomas grumbled. He put his arm around her back to brace himself. “Excuse the liberty.”
“You’re fine,” Nova assured him, and then scooped him up to position him against her shoulder. “You should have a perfect vantage point. Keep a lookout for any hostiles.”
“This is no time to get starstruck,” I reminded myself as we moved down Avenue of the Stars.
“Marc,” Polarr began, “don’t make a pun that bad ever again.”
“It had to be done!” I protested. “You may get the chance to use that line once, maybe twice in your life.”
As we hustled, Nakatomi Plaza loomed larger and larger, dominating the skyline. I’d never been to Los Angeles before now, and the feeling of having stepped into a movie was intoxicating.