“We would be more vulnerable to capture, should we abandon this craft,” he replied. “We would also be less able to get safely away with Miss Jessamyn.”
“I’ve been thinking about that.” Pavel shook his head. “And I think we have to let her make that appearance in the House of Parliament. Look at the kind of support that’s come out of the woodwork just since last night.” He gestured to the traffic on all sides. “She gets to have her say. After that, I don’t know that a fast getaway vehicle is going to be something she needs.”
Pavel kept his fears regarding her potential need for emergency medical treatment unspoken. He couldn’t think about that now. Jess was doing this for Mars. And for her sake, he would not stand in her way.
“Hoverbikes it is, then, sir,” said Zussman.
~ ~ ~
DDO Schloss was now in constant contact with Traffic Control. At least five roads leading to parliament were snarled in a standstill. She’d had word that people had begun massing along the Danube on one side of the House of Parliament and along the grassy area in front of the main entrance. Fortunately, that was someone else’s problem.
“What do you have for me, Traffic Control?” she asked, as she had done every two minutes for the past hour if they hadn’t already updated her.
“Local police are having trouble with irate motorists at several locations. We’re getting pictures to you as fast as we can, ma’am.”
“I want you to listen in to the local chatter at the locations with the worst incidents. If you hear anything about inciters or that girl who claims to come from Mars, I want to be notified at once.”
“There’s talk about that girl everywhere we turn, ma’am. Hold on—”
“Yes?” The DDO clasped her hands together, holding her breath.
“We’ve got a possible location for you, ma’am. Two kilometers southwest of parliament. I have officers on the scene reporting that people in the streets are assisting a girl on a hover bike.”
“What color is her hair?”
“Red.”
“Send the coordinates to RSF immediately.” Turning to an assistant, she said, “Get an airborne RSF ship to those coordinates at once!”
43
A FLAME’S CHANCE
Jessamyn had been given a second chance by the Terrans making their way to the capital, and she didn’t intend to squander it. She consulted Zussman’s nav map of the city. She was still a couple kilometers from the House of Parliament. From nearly every side, she heard honking, sirens, and even shouting on voice amplifiers. Pulling her bike down a small side lane, she gunned it.
If she could get close enough to parliament to drop the bike down into one of the service entrance tunnels Zussman had told her about, she’d be invisible. Invisible would be excellent right now. She repeated the numerical code to herself: 7-2-2-0-1-2-5-3-0. Zuss said the codes changed twice weekly, but she was twenty-four hours away from the next code change.
A noise sounded overhead. Loud. Familiar. The thrust engines of something airborne. Jessamyn glanced up and saw the distinctive red pattern of an RSF vehicle. It might not be after her. It might be on its way to disperse traffic. Or bring the Chancellor coffee. But fifteen seconds of wishful thinking did nothing to shake the vehicle that appeared to be in pursuit of her.
From above, a flash of red light lit the ground and the walls of the buildings on either side. Then a voice, clear and amplified, called out.
“Citizen biker, you are instructed to pull your vehicle to one side.”
“A flame’s chance on the polar cap I’m doing that,” she muttered, gunning her engines and swinging out of her alley to cross a lane of traffic. The bike shimmied and protested, and Jess wondered if maybe a little auto-balance would have come in handy, but she made it across four lanes of traffic without incident.
She also made it without shaking the airborne RSF.
The problem was that while she had traffic and lanes and buildings to contend with, the ship above her had only the occasional tall building to thwart its movement. And it had an eagle’s eye view of her.
Cover, thought Jess. She needed better cover. She was still a good kilometer away from those underground service tunnels. And then, as she looked up from her nav map, she felt a flutter of hope. The map indicated a forested area ahead, and Jess could just see a corner of the woods beyond the multi-story buildings on either side of her. She shot forward and barreled through an intersection, heedless of side traffic, allowing her instincts to take over, weaving the bike in and out of the vehicles as though she were making her way through a field of space debris.
Her red hair streamed behind her as she pulled toward the tall wooded hill just ahead. Half a kilometer; more sirens; more repeated demands that she dismount; and then, gloriously, cover! She wove her bike along a walking path, startling early morning dog-walkers, and earning what she suspected were curses from more than one.
Then, quieting her engine, she pulled off the path and into the sparse brush to one side. Trees towered overhead, offering her protection. For the moment, anyway.
“Now what, Jaarda?” she asked aloud.
~ ~ ~
Hieronymus Bunche, known to his feed community as “Lighting Boy,” grinned broadly. Ever since he’d revealed to the world that Pavel Brezhnaya-Bouchard was living on the Moon, Hieronymus had been looking for a way to make things right between himself and Pavel. Within hours of his big reveal, Hieronymus had realized he’d put Pavel’s life—and possibly other lives—in grave danger. He’d apologized, of course, sending a private message as Lightning Boy.
But what good was an apology? The damage had been done. Hieronymus had heard the chatter about the skirmish in space. His fears were confirmed the morning RSF officers showed up to question him and his family. They’d been let off easy. Or maybe RSF just wanted to see what else Lightning Boy would inadvertently reveal to their benefit.
Hieronymus had no way of knowing if Pavel had ever received the comm with the apology. The Chancellor’s estranged nephew wasn’t on the Moon anymore, obviously. Nor was the red-haired girl from Mars. No, she was on her way to take up the Chancellor’s challenge to present her case before parliament.
Which had given Hieronymus hope that he could do something more than just apologize for his past sins. After speaking with “Ares Spawn,” the Marsian girl’s brother, Hieronymus had suggested that the flood of fake vehicles into Budapest should be augmented with a flood of real vehicles. He, with the help of gamer buddies, had put the word out, hoping for a trickle of additional traffic—hoping to make it easier for the girl from Mars to make her way past any waiting officials who might not want the red-haired media sensation to make it to parliament.
And the response? It had been beyond anything Hieronymus hoped for. The world was enamored of the girl from Mars, or maybe enamored of the red planet. It didn’t matter either way to Hieronymus; all he cared about was doing something to offset his earlier error in revealing and endangering Pavel and the girl.
Hieronymus hadn’t slept at all this night, monitoring the progress of first dozens, and then hundreds, and now thousands of Jessamyn-supporters into Budapest. And then he’d asked one of his hacker-genius friends (he had several) to get him access to a blocked frequency utilized by the Budapest police.
This meant that when word hit the police channel that the RSF was bringing all forces to bear on Gellert Hill, just over the river from the House of Parliament, Hieronymus was ready to aid and abet the Marsians.
“Gellert Hill … Gellert Hill,” muttered Hieronymus. “Ha!”
He found it, and even better, found a likely place to send Budapest’s finest in red armor. Breaking into the Budapesti police frequency and imitating the sort of speech he’d been listening to all night, Hieronymus rattled off a tip.
“Biker spotted. Suspect has gone into Gellert Hill Cave.”
He muted his comm and listened, smiling, as unit after unit made for Gellert Hill Cave. Briefly, it occurred to him Je
ssamyn Jaarda might truly have gone into the cave to hide, but he didn’t think it was her style. She hadn’t even bothered to hide her red hair as she rode like a demon through the streets of Budapest. Something told Hieronymus she wouldn’t hide in a cave.
He hoped he was right.
~ ~ ~
Jessamyn felt beads of sweat tickling their way down her neck and back. She’d had no time to remove the thick jacket from Louis LeClerc. Perhaps she could spare a moment, though. It was either that or melt into a pile of goo.
Bringing her bike to a halt, she undid the closures running down the front and pulled the jacket off. It seemed very wasteful to just dump it where no one would ever find or use it. It wasn’t the Marsian way.
But she wasn’t on Mars anymore.
She set the jacket carefully on the ground, still feeling wasteful, and prepared to pull forward. A chill breeze made its way through the sleek black shirt she wore. Tall boots kept her feet and half her legs cozy. As she was shedding her gloves, she heard the approach of a hovercraft. And another. And another. Dozens. All converging on the wooded hill.
Jessamyn grimaced and urged her bike deeper into the undergrowth. She could ditch the bike, wrap up her hair and try to run the rest of the way. The idea had remarkably low appeal. What pilot would choose to go on foot when she had a transport?
She was sticking to her bike. She just needed cover.
~ ~ ~
Zussman and Pavel pushed forward in heavy traffic using the hoverbikes they’d rented. As Ethan had surmised, the hoverchair had no problem keeping up with the stop-start nature of the morning’s traffic.
By keeping the chair, Ethan maintained his ready access to comm channels the three were monitoring. Pavel had suggested any incoming messages should be relayed via earpiece now that the three would be less free to speak aloud concerning sensitive information. Ethan had been able to re-route all messages this way, while still maintaining their ability to converse with one another over the earpieces.
The trio were close to Jessamyn and the House of Parliament, when a new message came through.
“Ethan?” said a voice, male, young. “This is Lightning Boy. Listen, I wanted to let you know a couple of us hacked into the Budapesti metropolitan police frequency and convinced local forces that Jessamyn Jaarda is hiding in the cave on Gellert Hill. It should give her a chance to get away.”
“How’d you know where she was?” demanded Pavel, eyes flicking nervously at the commuters surrounding him.
“Oh, that was easy. RSF chased her into the woods and they sent out an all call to find her,” replied Lightning Boy.
“Thanks, man,” said Pavel. Then he turned to Ethan. “Please tell me she’s not actually hiding in the cave.”
Ethan shook his head. “She is fleeing the location. I believe we may have a chance to intersect her path.”
“Follow me,” said Mr. Zussman. “I know what route she’ll take.”
~ ~ ~
Jess edged along one side of the wooded park, having somewhat secured her hair by twisting it and then tucking it snugly in her collar. Her bike purred quietly beneath her. There was still a river between her and parliament. She needed a bridge; she wasn’t at all sure a bike could hover over water. There was nothing about that in the Academy’s training protocols. She needed a bridge or a tunnel.
There were numerous spans over and under the Danube, and she pulled out of the wooded area heading for one of Zussman’s service entrances directly south of where a bridge commenced.
7-2-2-0-1-2-5-3-0.
She chanted the entrance code, praying it hadn’t been altered.
Behind her, RSF vehicles continued to converge on Gellert Hill.
“Almost there, Celeste,” she whispered, patting the hoverbike for luck, and then she joined a line of traffic heading for the bridge looking for the service passageway.
There it was.
Just like Zussman said, the entrance was unmanned. Jess slowed her bike, pulled forward, and keyed in the code: 7-2-2-0-1-2-5-3-0.
Nothing happened.
Jess stared at the gate in frustration. It didn’t look like ramming it was going to get her anywhere. She tried the code once more.
This time something happened. A series of flashing lights burst out including one that she was pretty sure was designed to capture her picture.
“Shizer, shizer, shizer,” she swore. Then, turning her bike around, she took the crowded bridge instead.
She wove through two lanes of traffic into an opening ahead. Her hoverbike shot in front of a large transport, narrowly avoiding collision. Veering through the bridge traffic, she saw the House of Parliament. The building loomed: crenellations, buttresses, immense glass windows, and over all of it, a huge dome.
She shot between several vehicles, skidding to cut past another hoverbiker. Once again, she heard the sirens of pursuit, but she didn’t have time to look over her shoulder and see if they were chasing her or someone else.
She chuckled. Well, of course they were after her. Who else was there?
Her hoverbike whined as she pushed it harder. Drivers and pilots in front of her were now looking over their shoulders at the approaching RSF crafts and, when they saw Jess, they cheered her and inched to one side to give her passage. Someone gave her a military salute, and Jess glanced backward to return it. At this, her hair tore free of her collar.
She saw the wide grassy swathes ahead of her and sped toward them, red hair flying.
~ ~ ~
“My sister has turned back from the tunnel entrance,” Ethan reported to Zussman and Pavel.
“Very good, sir,” said Zussman. “We take a different route.”
“By which you mean, ‘highly visible route,’” said Pavel.
“Indeed, Master Pavel,” said the butler. “If you will both follow me.”
Unlike Jessamyn, Zussman had extensive experience taking hover-enabled crafts over water, and he led the group down to the river’s edge and then crossed the wide Danube making a beeline for the government headquarters.
Pavel saw Jessamyn first. “Jess!” he cried. He knew full well she was too far ahead to hear him. “It’s her, to the left side of the building.”
Zussman altered his course and the other two followed. People were milling about, abandoning vehicles on the grass, strolling toward the entrance of the ancient edifice. The whole thing felt unreal to Pavel: seeing Budapest after so many months, tearing across the lawns at breakneck speed, chasing the girl whose red hair streaked out behind her like a living flame.
~ ~ ~
Jessamyn leaned to make the turn around the corner of the building. Overhead, RSF ship engines screamed.
“We will fire, intruder,” called an artificially amplified voice. “Repeat, dismount at once or we will engage you with firepower.”
In front of all these eyewitnesses? Be my guest, thought Jessamyn. The magnificent edifice loomed just ahead and people were drawing aside to allow her to pass. When she saw the first shot of laser fire, she thought it was the sun, climbing over the building. But the angle was wrong. Then she felt the searing heat as lasers singed the grass to her left.
The shots were close, but not close enough. Jess veered and shifted her path as onlookers shrank back from the laser fire, but she continued pressing forward, always forward to the entrance of the House of Parliament.
Whatever happened next, she wanted her friends to hear it firsthand. With a sudden jerk of her head, she activated her earpiece.
And then she charged up to the front of the building, shouting, for the few who could hear, “For the love of Mars!”
~ ~ ~
Lucca stood beside her office window, arms crossed, gazing at the mayhem below.
“The girl’s really coming,” she said to herself, her voice a bare whisper. The Chancellor smoothed her suit, straightened her hair, and strode to a wall wafer.
“Status update?” she demanded.
The DDO, appearing in tiny holographic form, d
idn’t even turn to face the Chancellor. “We’re on her tail, Madam Chancellor, but the crowds are making a clean aerial shot impossible.”
Lucca clenched her fists. She still had sharpshooters in reserve, mixed among the throngs on the lawn. But it might do her more harm than good to employ them now, considering her contingency plans.
She hesitated. But there was no helping it. It was time for “Plan B.”
“Allow the girl to enter,” ordered the Chancellor.
“Unharmed?”
“Yes.”
Let the Martian enjoy this minor victory. Lucca had plans within plans.
The DDO shouted a series of commands, and Lucca ended the comm. She turned from the wafer so that she could watch the drama as it unfolded on the field below. She saw the mass of citizens draw back like twin tides from the hovercraft fire. And then, just below her window, on the north side of the building, she saw something she did not expect to see.
“Good heavens,” she whispered. “Mr. Zussman.”
There was no mistaking him, even on a hoverbike. He was forced to slow for the same crowd that had drawn back to admit the girl. Was he hoping to protect the girl? Lucca bared her teeth in a hideous grin.
Let him try.
Lucca engaged her private channel with the plainclothes sharpshooters dispersed upon the lawn.
“To the north, there is a threebody on a hoverbike. You may recognize him as my former butler.”
“Affirmative, Madam Chancellor. I have him in my sights.”
Lucca was about to give orders to take Zussman down when she noticed he was not travelling alone. He was with Pavel. She spat out an expletive.
“Kill the boy.”
“Madam Chancellor? Which—”
Then she thought of something better and altered her orders accordingly.
~ ~ ~
Facing the entrance to the House of Parliament, Jessamyn crashed through a hastily erected barrier and on through a set of glass doors. Her bike sailed through as if this were the sort of thing it did every day. She was in.
From somewhere, she heard a single gunshot and looked down expecting to see her blood flowing. But everything seemed to be fine. Outside, she could hear announcements through the shattered doors.
Mars Rising (Saving Mars Series 6) Page 16