by Bloom, A. D.
“There is an emergency medical treatment facility one point six five miles ahead, on the right. Continue to drive straight,” the sedan directed as Casper began another series of slaloming maneuvers that qualified as anything but straight.
As Casper swerved to the left, Alvin flopped across the spacious leather back seat, and his head landed in Catherine's lap. Looking down at the supposedly unconscious Alvin, Catherine swore she heard him inhaling deeply. She shoved him off of her lap and he flopped again, this time against the door, where his head made very solid contact with the fine marqueting set into the wood panel. “Ow!” he complained loudly.
This surprised and pleased Casper who, despite driving a felony, was still more concerned that he'd quite possibly killed someone. Catherine wasn't surprised or pleased. When Alvin's head had been in her lap, he'd been conscious, and she now knew what she'd suspected. When he'd inhaled so deeply he was consciously smelling her.
Alvin smiled at her and said, “Are you wearing Georgia body wash, by O'Queefe?” Catherine had a sense of humor, too, but she liked physical comedy better. She withdrew a 90,000 volt stun-pen from her purse, and zapped Alvin into an indubitable unconsciousness.
“Traffic enforcement kiosk, two blocks ahead,” the Lenz reminded Casper. This time he slowed down to match the flow of traffic.
“Turn right,” Catherine commanded, “We're not going to the hospital.”
“But shouldn't we...” Casper didn't finish his sentence because when he glanced in the rear-view mirror at Catherine, he saw she had exchanged the stun-pen for a gun. It wasn't a very large gun, and it wasn't pointed at anyone, and it was even pink, but it was still quite persuasive. Casper looked at Bonnie.
“You heard the lady,” she said, and repeated Catherine's command, “Turn right, Ms. Aziz.” Casper's nads tingled and he groaned because he knew that he'd been had and that this day wasn't going to go anywhere near the way he'd planned it.
“Fuck! Yeah... Okay,” Casper acquiesced.
“Fuck, yeah!” the sedan agreed.
Five blocks later, the Lenz was forced to a complete stop.
“It's a roadblock or a checkpoint.” Casper was guessing when he said it, but when he leaned his head out the driver's window and looked far ahead, past the twin lanes of stopped traffic and over the crest of the Daisy Street hill, he knew it wasn't simple traffic congestion because he saw the tops of two armored personnel carriers. They had deep, sky-blue, white-starred G.S.A. flags extended from their antennas and snapping in a crisp Baccha Bay City wind. There were turrets on top, too, and Casper shuddered at the thought of being hit by whatever kind of round they fired. “Yeah, it's a G.S.A. Security checkpoint,” he confirmed, closing the window.
When he said the words, 'G.S.A. Security' a perceptible chill filled the stolen luxury sedan, and Casper knew his carjacker passengers weren't simple criminals or con-artists. They were insurgents. They were actually more scared of G.S.A. Security than he was. That only lasted a second because he immediately realized that G.S.A. Security would never believe he had been conned or coerced into driving them away from Sherman Square. He remembered the exploding hotel and winced.
“Keep it cool, Ms. Aziz,” Bonnie said, noting the suddenly growing alarm in his face. “See if you can turn us around, nice and casual, before we get too close.”
The line of stopped cars was almost a full block long, and for the moment, the crest of the hill kept the Lenz sedan hidden from the blue-helmeted G.S.A. Security troops that were undoubtedly checking ID, searching vehicles, and looking for the three insurgents Casper had in his stolen car.
“Yeah, okay.” Casper asked, “Who the fuck are you people?” He looked in the rear view mirror to back up close to the car that had already pulled in behind them, and Casper could see the pink plastic gun in Catherine's hand. The muzzle looked extra short when she pointed it directly at him.
“We're just some people who want a chauffeured tour of the city, in a nice luxury car,” Catherine answered with a pleasant, perfectly white-toothed smile, adding, “You're such a very nice car thief to drive us around like this.”
Casper looked forward, spun the wheel, and rolled the Z-class ahead and to the left. Then he spun the wheel far to the right, and looked to the rear again to back the car up, but the idiot behind him had instinctively rolled forward and closed the small gap between the cars that Casper had just created and needed to continue his turning maneuver. Now, the sedan was wedged tight and angled conspicuously with its left front corner over the double yellow line. The corner of the Lenz wasn't far enough into the opposite lane to require much avoidance from cars moving in the opposite direction, but they honked at the incursion into their lane out of resentment and spite for the 300,000 Amero luxury car.
Casper felt his face getting hot with anger and fear, and there was nothing he could do until the car in front of them pulled forward. This, he thought, was just the sort of conspicuous you do not want to be when chauffeuring three insurgent terrorists in a stolen car.
He heard Bonnie's, “Uh oh, hell-o,” and saw her instantly deploy her baseball cap's SunShield veil with a finger tap. He didn't have to ask why.
Casper saw the drone's tiny, blue and red, strobing lights right away. Hovering some thirty-five feet in the air, three cars ahead, was a four-foot diameter, dirty, white plastic doughnut with stacked, counter-rotating fans, cameras, and the words Baccha Parking Enforcement painted in white on a deep navy stripe. He wondered if maybe the real Ms. Aziz had gotten out of her outpatient liposuction appointment earlier than expected and reported her racing green, Z-class, luxury sedan as stolen. Casper told himself the drone was probably just scanning for cars with unpaid parking tickets. He hoped that Ms. Aziz was paid up.
In the back seat, Catherine was fiddling with the pistol, and Casper considered making a run for it while she had the gun pointed at the roof, doing whatever she was doing.
“Stay cool,” he heard Bonnie say. “We're just out for a little spin in the lap of luxury.” Snickering told them that Alvin was awake again and that he thought that phrase was topically amusing. Catherine glared at him.
“Lap of luxury,” Alvin repeated, looking to Catherine. “C'mon... you are a pretty classy lady.” Catherine chuckled once, but Alvin pushed too far when he added, “and you smell terrific.” She'd been fiddling with the stun-pen and the gun, somehow fitting something else into the barrel, but now she stopped what she was doing and jammed the stun-pen into Alvin's side again. He made a face like a braying mule and slumped against the door.
Catherine had something that looked like a gunmetal hot-dog sticking out of the barrel of her pink, plastic pistol, and she pushed the business end of the stun-pen into a port in the side of the hot-dog. Casper could hear micro-capacitors in the hot-dog charging off the stun-pen's juice with a high pitched whine.
The drone wasn't moving on. It held station, twelve o'clock high. He stared at the drone, and it stared back at him with Baccha Bay City's database and facial recognition system. “CASPER GREY,” said the voice coming from the drone's loudspeakers. The sedan had surprisingly good soundproofing. “CASPER GREY.” He looked at Bonnie with his mouth open. Amazingly enough, she looked amused. “Is that your name?” she asked, “Casper?”
“CASPER GREY,” the loudspeakers repeated a third time. He waved, smiling like a good citizen. Then the drone's voice said, “THIS IS A LAW ENFORCEMENT ACTION. EXIT THE STOLEN VEHICLE WITH YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR.” The voice coming out of the drone's loudspeakers was human. Casper pictured the man who belonged to the voice, and saw him sitting in a dim room with a box of doughnuts and a belly, wearing a dirty, obsolete, head-mounted, 3D display unit, eating blindly while he flew over the city.
Catherine interrupted Casper's vision, “Get ready to get us out of here, Casper.”
Casper noted that he'd liked it a Mc Fuckity helluva-lot-better when nobody knew his name.
Catherine quickly tied a scarf around her head and put on oversized sung
lasses. As she opened the window and allowed the voice from the drone's speakers inside the car, it became very loud, indeed. “THIS IS A LAW ENFORCEMENT ACTION. CASPER GREY, STEP OUT OF THE STOLEN VEHICLE WITH YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR. THIS IS A LAW ENFORCEMENT ACTION.”
“Three frickin' terrorists in the car and they gotta pick on me,” Casper said. Bonnie wanted to laugh, but she didn't.
When Catherine leaned her entire torso out the window, and lined-up the red and blue, strobe-lit doughnut drone in the sights of her pistol, the pilot didn't expect it. He gave her over three seconds to aim and fire, and that was more than enough for Catherine.
Inside the car, they'd been expecting to hear gunshots and ricochets off the drone's bulletproof plastic skin. Instead, there was a muffled and hollow noise, and they could actually see a projectile flying up at the drone. It was only moving at roughly four hundred feet-per-second, and it looked like a blurry, silver corn-dog or a brushed stainless popsicle.
Bonnie recognized it. Catherine had launched a capacitor loaded projectile out of the pistol like a second world war, rifle-launched grenade.
Catherine knew not to aim at the plastic body of the hovering drone. Her projectile's twin prongs struck the thin metal grille protecting the drone's counter-rotating fan blades, and discharged its 90,000 volts. It had the same effect on the doughnut drone as it had on Alvin. The drone's electrical systems overloaded, and as the fan blades lost power, it ceased to hover, falling slowly at first, then much faster, straight down, smashing the hood of a plastic sports car into jagged shards.
Catherine was back in the sedan before the drone even made impact, screaming, “Go, go, go! Fucking GO!” Casper was ready, and he depressed the accelerator with the wheel spun to the left. He intended to push the tiny two-seater electric P.O.S. in front of them out of the way with the Lenz's powerful engine, but the Lenz had other ideas and only moved an inch before jerking to a halt.
“A collision risk has been detected,” the British accented voice explained, “and automatic safety systems have been engaged.”
“Fucking hell!” Casper screamed.
“Disable automatic safety systems,” Bonnie commanded the car, adding a calmer, “Please.”
“Are you sure?” the onboard computer asked. “Lenz Corporation assumes no responsibility or liability for any damage or injury that may occur while driving with automatic safety systems disabled.”
“Fuck, yeah! I'm sure,” Bonnie screamed.
The onboard computer complied with a coolly accented, “Fuck, yeah. Automatic safety systems disabled.”
Casper slammed the accelerator pedal down, and the sedan closed the six inches between them and the electric P.O.S. that blocked their path. There was a thin, scraping noise and plastic ground against plastic as the Z-class's front right corner caught the lightweight two-seater roughly a foot right of center. The driver ahead of them kept his foot on the brake, and the electric P.O.S. twisted in-place. The Lenz had impressive torque, and after two seconds of pushing, the sedan broke free into a tight U-turn that brought it across both lanes of oncoming traffic.
Bonnie stared through the window at the front end of a fast approaching, three-wheeled, electric commuter economy model that had automatic safety systems, but not very good ones. The econo-trike's two front wheels commenced an anti-lock braking sequence that managed to lock-up, and it skidded like a fish-tailing teardrop. When only one of its two locked front wheels unlocked, it twisted and flopped on its side. The Lenz was in the outside lane of oncoming traffic, completing the U-turn as the three-wheeled plastic teardrop slid by on its flank with bits of its plastic body panels snapping off.
Catherine watched as an approaching electric minivan in the outside lane that threatened to ram her door engaged a superior automatic braking system to that of the car traveling close behind it. It was saved from a collision with the Z-class Lenz only to be rear-ended by a vintage car made of actual metal. The new minivan absorbed the energy of impact and its frame crumpled, the plastic body cracking up and down its length like an eggshell.
Casper would have enjoyed the show, but he was too busy completing his U-turn and accelerating to anywhere enforcement drones weren't calling out his name and exhorting him to exit the vehicle with hands up.
The chaos and the wrecked cars blocking lanes behind them bought a few moments without threat of ground pursuit, but Casper knew a flock of those goddamn doughnut drones would very shortly be hovering over the car, calling him by name and making evasion near impossible. He sped around a corner, and after three blocks, Casper looked around frantically for cameras. None. Drones? Nope. When he saw the entrance to a ramp leading down, without asking anybody, Casper wheeled the sedan hard right into what turned out to be an apartment building's underground parking lot.
Casper parked right under the security camera. He could see an antenna, so he knew it was wireless and Carlos's network jammer would nix its signal. They were safe for a couple of minutes, but he hadn't thought beyond that.
Darkness. Silence.
Casper considered exactly how long it would take the Baccha Bay City police to figure out that the stolen Z-class he drove had only gone a few blocks before laying low somewhere. He was pretty sure that he'd been lucky enough to have not crossed any cameras near the ramp down to the parking garage. That meant they'd have to check quite a few camera feeds to figure out he hadn't left the immediate area. That was a computer's job and they were fast, but a human had to tell the computers to do it. That meant if they were going to find him that way then they'd have to want him badly enough to bother trying.
Shooting a drone pretty much assured that.
They might already be on their way, Catherine worried, since the drone with a crush on Casper had a good few seconds to eyeball her face before she fried it. It was no secret that G.S.A. Security monitored local enforcement's coms frequencies and human profile recognition systems. Catherine hoped that with the scarf, glasses, and topo-diffusion makeup that she wore, the recognition systems hadn't been able to put a name to her face.
She hadn't seen the feather-carrying Angry Angel in the front seat before, but she had a pretty good idea who the imp feigning unconsciousness next to her was. If G.S.A. Security had any idea that the Buddha was in this car, then they wouldn't hesitate to send a much meaner drone – one with guns.
Bonnie also worried that she'd been eyeballed, and it made her chew a spot on the inside of her cheek. She decided to put some cards on the table.
“This is one shit railroad.” Bonnie looked over the seat at Catherine's redheaded pallor as she spoke. “I can't go back.” Bonnie was playing the hunch she was pretty sure about – the exploding man from Sherman Square was the underground railroad's conductor, the one person who knew where to take them to begin the next leg of their journey.
Catherine glared at Bonnie's indiscretion, and wondered if this was all a ploy to get her to expose her own White Sunday network. “I don't know what you're talking about,” she said.
“He's dead,” Bonnie stated flatly.
Catherine stared blankly at Bonnie before asking, “Who's dead?”
“The conductor,” Bonnie said. “The underground railroad conductor. That was him exploding all over Sherman Square. It had to be him because it sure as hell isn't you, and it isn't him,” Bonnie said, gesturing to Alvin with a head nod. “If it was either of you, we wouldn't be driving around out here just trying to stay alive. We'd be on our way and maybe even out of the city by now.”
Catherine sighed, and then laughed and joined in the indiscretion, “Back in Sherman Square, I thought... I hoped you were the conductor. Now it's quite obvious that you aren't, and I know he isn't.” Catherine nodded at Alvin. She added, “I can't go back, either.”
Bonnie said, “I've heard that Hope has to do with things that are not at hand.” It was the sort of thing a new Angels recruit would say, but she felt silly saying it.
Catherine's thin, red lips pursed like she'd tasted something u
npleasant. Bonnie thought she'd blown it, but then with a strained and patronizing smile, Catherine said, “Let's stick to Faith in things unseen.”
Fucking Goddies, Casper thought, I never know what the fuck they're on about.
“I'll need a safe FragNet connection,” Catherine said. “Then we'll see what we can do.”
FragNet? She's a gamer? No fucking way, Casper thought.
Catherine continued, “After that, we'll have to wait somewhere safe. We'll need a couple of hours, maybe.”
“We need a new car, too,” Bonnie said. She knew a car thief. She turned her head, looked at him, and smiled. C'mon, stoner, help us out. Casper smiled back. He'd already picked out a cool-ass car that he was itching to steal.
-14-
The Colonel in charge of the Ziggurat's primary operations center projected into in the Director's dim office. He was there to report good news.
“Before they shot it down, it captured some video. The feed from the Baccha Bay City parking enforcement drone was pretty bad, but we enhanced it.” The Colonel gestured to a still, eight-foot-square, two-dimensional image that hung in mid-air in front of them. He said, “The SunShade veil she's wearing blocks a lot, but in this image we compiled from multi-spectral sources, you can see her pretty clearly.” He pointed to a woman, seated in the passenger seat of a Z-class Lenz sedan. The cap, the SunShade, and the dark sunglasses she wore hid it surprisingly well, but at the left edge of the glasses there was a distinct, dark line leading away from her eye and into her hairline. It was the thin black strap that held an eye patch in place.
Delvaux recognized his Operator immediately, but said nothing.
The Colonel continued, “One of my lieutenants noted the same, unidentified woman, here.” The Colonel gestured with his own data-wand, and a second frame appeared, hanging in mid-air, next to the first, as he continued, “She appears in this image, captured from a Sherman Square tourist's mobile device, immediately following an unidentified man's... uh... explosive demise, and immediately preceding a bombing at the Winguard Hotel.”