by Unknown
"Keep an eye on it," was Tupamaro's terse command when Pandur communicated his observation.
He took it literally, not wanting to rely on the vague contours of a radar image. He put the wamo into a new loop and crossed the unsafe inshore zones of the bay with the greatest concentration. In doing so, he escaped by a whisker getting entangled in a saltmarsh extending out from a small island. Then he turned onto a northwest bearing and approached the craft. He was aware he would make an odd impression on the vessel's crew. The narrow silhouette of the wamo, reminiscent of a sharply pointed triangle, would be difficult to make out against the lights of the arcology, but the flitting headlight must look weird. However, Pandur didn't dare switch it off and skim across the water blind.
The vessel came into sight. Pandur was unable to classify it because he had never seen a boat anything like it. It was smaller than the Broken Heart and the King Creole, perhaps twenty-five meters long, was driven by a conventional propeller and looked trim and flat like a large motor yacht. And yet the superstructure seemed strange, as if at bow and stern modular shelters or cabins had been added later for additional passengers. It might have been a passenger ship, but the dark-grey coat of paint made a less than inviting impression. What was more, windows were absent. Instead...
Before steering the wamo onto a reverse course, so pointing the beam of his headlight out to sea, Pandur realized what there was in place of the windows.
"Unidentified object is armored and has firing slits all round," he shouted into the helmet's mike in alarm.
It took Tupamaro a mere two seconds to digest the news. " Everybody back on board," her voice yelled into the headsets. "Wamos to abort mission."
At the same moment the propeller began to churn up the water and the boat gathered speed noticeably. Then, from behind the firing slits of the other vessel, machine guns commenced to rattle. It was an idle question whether they had listened in on the radio contact between Pandur and the Broken Heart or had other reasons for letting the mask fall. There could be no doubt, though, that the new speed was because of the Broken Heart and the ammo being so generously sprayed around was meant for Pandur and his wamo.
Pandur had never especially valued generosity of this kind. He gave full throttle, jacking up the wamo's turbines to their limit. Simultaneously he leant the bike into a tight curve to expose the smallest possible target to the looming peril.
Although his opponents had the element of surprise on their side and Pandur had approached to within fifty meters of the strange craft, the bullets missed him and slapped into the water. And, with every passing second, his chances of escaping the unexpected hail of shots increased.
He rode a slalom, zig-zagging away. Shots were still being fired, now with long-range rifles it seemed, but it would have required a lucky hit to lift the wamo rider out of his saddle or cause the bike to burst into flame.
Water motorbikes were faster than anything that moved on or in the water. The tub with the trigger-happy enemy on board might have a few thousand kilowatts in its belly, but it could not compete in the matter of speed with a wamo. Whether it was equal to a hovercraft remained to be seen. The opposition was apparently counting on catching the pirates unawares, while they were still in their starting blocks. It could still turn out that the pursuer's false start would eventually lead to disqualification.
With a tight left curve, Pandur placed himself in front of the bow of the vessel, which was plowing through the water at full power. Now, only the gunmen positioned forrard and on the bridge were able to rake him with shots. And for them the wamo was a mere dot skating across the water behind a ribbon of light. Pandur appreciated this aspect as a pleasant side effect. More important was the fact that at this high speed he stayed in the navigation channel, where no obstacles could suddenly rear up, got to the catapult shaft of the Broken Heart as quickly as possible and clamped down his machine.
During his flight Pandur had passed the new situation on to Tupamaro. He missed an encouraging word from Tupamaro or Druse, but presumably both had enough on their hands. Only occasional curses or barked remonstrances for clumsy behavior reached his ears. They came from the pirates who were making a headlong exit from the King Creole and abseiling onto the hovercraft. Pandur had switched to broad-band reception and was receiving whatever frequencies he could get, though he didn't achieve his aim of gaining some intelligence from the opposition's radio traffic. Apparently the attackers were using a frequency not accessible to Pandur's helmet set.
Who were the strangers? The pirates knew all about the types of vessel used by the River Police, the Navy, Customs and the Border Protection Force, and had all the relevant data in their computers. There could be no doubt that the modified yacht belonged to a private owner and was manned by guardsmen. The Shipowners' Guild maintained their own navy and additional security troops, but only deployed the vessels when they wanted to save on insurance premiums. Otherwise they appealed to the state's duty to provide for the safety of their ships. Were there conglomerates with maritime interests? Straight off the top of his head Pandur could only come up with Proteus, which was pursuing vaguely defined ambitions in the coastal waters, but ambitions whose aims were clear enough. To protect their arcologies. To screen off their arcologies. Why not with a preventive strategy as well? The vessel could not have come from Bremerhaven so quickly. It was unlikely that boats were even stationed there. So it must have been underway on more or less clearly defined orders to afford protection.
How sensitive is the King Creole's cargo?
The King Creole lay ahead. The Broken Heart was just pulling away from the freighter. The magnetic anchors had already been hauled in, the hull gate was open just a crack. From the corner of his eye, Pandur registered Druse's wamo approaching from the other side of the hovercraft and about as far as him from the Broken Heart. The two wamos were reducing speed to start docking maneuvers. Behind Pandur the megacon's yacht was surging up but still lay outside firing range. It would be tight, but during Pandur's first mission as a wamo rider it had been much tighter and he had still made it.
Suddenly the hovercraft's turbines began to roar and in the next instant the Broken Heart shot forward at full power. The bow wave almost capsized Druse's fast approaching wamo.
"Sorry, Walez," Tupamaro's voice sounded through the headphones. "Don't take it personal. Same goes for you, Druse. I'll miss your cock. We'll all meet up again in Hell."
"Ya can't do that!" Druse screamed into his mike so loudly that the treble tones comingled and made Pandur fear for his eardrums.
Tupamaro didn't deign to answer.
"Drekhead! Fuckin' dreakhead of a woman!" Druse was beside himself with rage.
For a moment Pandur felt only emptiness. He didn't want to believe it. He didn't utter a word. But he acted. Although the Broken Heart continued to pick up speed, he tore along next to the hovercraft level with the catapult shaft.
Why? We would have made it!
He refused to beg. At this speed it wasn't possible to clamp down the wamo. And after a few sea miles, the water would be too rough for a wamo. He would have no option but to turn back. If the megacon's guardsmen didn't call up air support, he might succeed in getting ashore unharmed.
A glance at the fuel gauge told him that he was deluding himself. Wamos were designed for short-range, high-speed missions and guzzled up fuel. He had ridden such a mission. And he was still giving full throttle. But not for long.
On board the Broken Heart he saw figures. What had once been chummers. Troubled faces looked over to him. He recognized Kuki, a technician, a somewhat slow-minded but always friendly woman. Delmario, a former Mafia hitman who had escaped from Big Willi, the prison island in the Elb, during a prisoners' revolt. Flink, one of the two dwarfs on board.
A curt command came from the bridge. Tupamaro. Pandur had caught it. It was logical but he could scarcely believe it. The order was repeated. Then one of the pirates - it was Caruso, if Pandur wasn't mistaken, a one-time mega
con merc - raised his Ares Crusader and did what was demanded. He pulled the trigger and sent a burst of fire in Pandur's direction, but deliberately aimed low. The ammo slapped into the water.
Pandur had understood. And he accepted it. Not for a second did revenge occur to him, even though the ammunition in his Vindicator had not yet been used up.
He laid his wamo into a long right-hand curve and rode deeper into the bay without once looking round. The sound of the Broken Heart's jets grew quieter and finally disappeared in the distance.
Why? Wamos are expensive. Half the proceeds of the haul will go on buying and equipping two new wamos!
Then came memories of other defeats.
Another woman who's double-crossed me...
He fought back the thought because other women occurred to him. Rose. She had died for him. He had no problem with women.
But some women must have had problems with him and had solved these problems in questionable ways.
What sort of problem did Tupamaro have with me? That I didn't want to go to bed with her? She had plenty of others to choose from. She's lost two wamos and her best wamo riders. Why? What does she get out of it?
Suddenly, the thing that had been in the back of his mind all the time, but which his brain hadn't processed, struck him like a hammer. Something monstrous he had heard without grasping its full implications.
Tupamaro called me Walez!
But there was no pirate by the name of Thor Walez. He was called Pandur. No one on board the Broken Heart had known his true identity, not even the captain. And Pandur was quite certain that he hadn't given himself away by anything he had said, that he carried nothing with him that could provide a clue except for his cyberdeck. But cyberdecks aren't very talkative and in this crazy world there were plenty of people running around with decks so they could go walkabout in the matrix.
How come she knows my real name? How long has she known it? Who paid her to get rid of me? Pandur had no chance to pursue this train of thought.
A panic-filled voice shrieked in his headset.
"Help me, chummer! My ass is on the line if ya don't get me outa here!"
He had completely forgotten about Druse, hadn't even missed him when he'd been tagging along with the Broken Heart out to sea. Actually, the redhead should have been next to him. Where the hell was he? Had the megacon guardsmen hit him?
"What's up, chummer?"
"What's down, ya mean!" Druse replied. "My wamo's going down. Help me - before the drekheads blast my brains out!"
Pandur swore. If he went to Druse's aid, he'd blow the minute chance he had of just about reaching shore on his last reserves of fuel. Despite that, he wrenched round the wamo's handlebars immediately and headed back towards the middle of the bay.
Ahead, a single light gleamed. Druse's wamo. It wasn't moving an inch, just bobbing up and down in the water. A few hundred meters to the right, the position lights of the megacon yacht could be made out. They were only slowly moving seawards, as if the captain were undecided about how to proceed from there. Obviously they had aborted the chase of the Broken Heart because the hovercraft was too fast for them. Druse had either not been spotted as a potential target, or the megacon guardsmen were not concerned about earning a bounty for a kill.
As Pandur was mulling this over, a decision was made on board the yacht. Maybe Druse had only succeeded in drawing attention to himself with his call for help. The yacht turned about and made for the lone light. Pandur was racing up ninety degree further south. He had the greater distance to cover, but also the faster craft.
There was not a shadow of doubt what would happen to Druse if Pandur didn't reach him in time. If there were police or soldiers on the yacht, Druse had a fifty-fifty chance of coming out alive. Although they, too, usually gave pirates short shrift, there was the occasional commander who took shipwreck victims on board if only to indulge his sadistic tendencies and torture them a while before handing them over to justice. In contrast, megacon guardsmen acted in accordance with the laws of their paymasters, which, under the Passau Treaties of 2011, took precedence over Federal law in conflicting cases. Proteus, or whoever had sent the guardsmen, paid its people performance bonuses and bounty money. Consequently, they would try to dispatch Druse, and naturally Pandur as well, in front of running trid cameras, at the same time doing their best to spare the wamos. Recovering the machines would fetch extra prize money. On top of that, if the pirates died spectacularly, the trid films could be sold to one of the 47 trid stations. Even the stations that outwardly railed against bloodthirsty reality shows were happy to show such images to achieve better viewing figures. If need be, they would be worked into news bulletins.
There are good reasons all right for dropping out of this crappy society and doing your own thing. Compared with the megacon execs and the media sharks, even the most bloodthirsty pirate is a likeable and, if anything, harmless individual.
Pandur raced towards his chummer at full speed, then braked with both the front jets and the runners, and reached Druse's wamo before the megacon guardsmen were within range. But there were only seconds to spare. Sending a high bow wave ahead of it, the yacht pressed on towards the scene of the breakdown. The first guns barked. For the moment the bullets were slapping into the water at quite some distance, but the enemy's chances were improving with every second that passed.
"How did it happen?" asked Pandur, keeping his wamo at minimum speed to prevent the same thing happening to him. It was really a superfluous question because the answer was obvious.
"I was on course to dock and got caught side on by the Broken Heart's wash," Druse confirmed his suspicions. "I thought I'd come back up with the wave but the jets were already under water."
"Catch!" called Pandur. He had flipped open the equipment compartment, taken out the boarding pistol and fired a cable over to Druse. At the same time, with his other hand, he steered his wamo past Druse's machine, almost touching it.
The anchor splashed into the water behind Druse's wamo. The anchor sank, but the cable lay across the machine. If he'd had more juice and no pursuers breathing down his neck, Pandur would have risked towing the bike itself. But there was no chance now. With his free hand he tied his end of the cable to the handlebars.
Druse took hold of the cable, lifted it over the plexiglass shield so that it didn't get tangled up with the bike and then dived into the water.
Pandur looked back over his shoulder. Druse's helmet surfaced.
"Hold tight!"
Pandur accelerated. The cable tautened. Druse had grasped it with both hands and was treading water. Pandur's wamo reared up. For a moment Pandur thought it would be checked by the unaccustomed strain and flop below the waterline like Druse's bike. But then it drove itself forward and dragged Druse behind it like a waterskier who had just ditched.
The yacht was now only a hundred meters away. The guys behind the protective paneling were blasting away with all they had. The bullets were slapping into the water to the left and right of the wamos.
Unnervingly slowly Pandur's wamo picked up speed. The yacht was still coming on. At any moment Pandur expected an MG burst to tear his hack to shreds or take his head off his shoulders. Several bullets smashed into the plexiglass shield, shattering it, but Pandur remained unscathed. In hindsight it seemed like a miracle to him. He couldn't see if Druse had been hit, although he was still holding the cable.
"Are you okay?" Pandur asked over the radio.
"My body's only got the holes it always had. But otherwise I feel fucked every which way."
"I can't promise you an orgasm, but I'll do my best."
Pandur thrust the wamo into a tight curve. Druse was dragged through a wide arc, cursing and moaning, rubbed like a wet piece of laundry over the ridges of a washboard. But the maneuver brought the two men to the stern of the yacht and took them out of the line of fire of most of the guns.
Then the yacht fell behind. The gunfire lessened to the occasional single shot. Pandur rod
e one more curve and then set course for Bremerhaven.
"How're you holding out?" he enquired. He didn't dare reduce speed yet.
"Gonna shoot one off any minute," he replied through clenched teeth.
"That's the spirit. Enjoy it while you can. We're gonna run out of gas real soon. Then swimming's on the agenda. After all this idle hanging around the exercise'll do you good."
Pandur had glanced at the fuel gauge. The indicator had long since moved through the red zone and was now standing still. The wamo was using up the very last few drops.
Silently Pandur counted the seconds. He had reached seven when the turbine began to stutter. Twice it sprang back into life. Then it fell silent. The wamo sank down. The runners were unable to hold up the machine. Pandur found himself sitting in water up to his waist. The headlight went out.
Druse let go of the cable and swam up. Ahead of them the lights of the arcology glowed in the distance. Behind them and much nearer were the position lights of the yacht. For a moment it had looked as if the chase had been aborted. The broadside of the yacht had been visible. But now the vessel was turning. On the right was the red light of the port side on the left the green of starboard. The yacht showed them its bow. The fingers of light from the searchlights were pointing forward. The vessel started to make headway and came on fast.
Pandur dropped into the water alongside Druse. With hasty crawl strokes the two men moved away from the wamo. They both knew it wouldn't help them much. But they wanted to try at least.
"If it hadn't been for me, you would've made it," Druse panted.
"Shut up."
"Thanks, chummer... I owe ya... a favor... Remind me about it if we... ever meet up again... Maybe... maybe I can... have ya round... for tea."
"Forget it... Say hello to Lucifer for me... if you get down there first... And keep... keep a seat warm for me."
The yacht had reached the wamo. The beam of one of the searchlights picked out the two men, went on and then returned. Druse and Pandur dived and swam underwater. The beam moved with them, then stopped. When the men surfaced, their heads were bathed in light as bright as day.