“He wouldn’t want you to give up the world for him,” said Zarathustra. “As you say, you’re his brother—his own flesh and blood.”
Carl curled his lip into a humourless smile as he turned to go. “Only the flesh, Dr Zarathustra,” he said. “Not the blood. Not any more.”
Maverick Son
by Neil McIntosh
Convoy.
A column of heavy armoured freighters winding though the filter around dawn, smokestack pipes breathing heat into the ice-pack sky hanging over the city.
Joe Gold watched the trucks roll, shimmering reflections in the metal-flake of the G-Mek. The last one passed through the singing electrawire cocoon strung round the Policed Zone, into the slumbering violence of NoGo.
The Blue Star Op juiced up the V8 until she was spinning sweet and slow, and snuck the interceptor into line on the the convoy’s tail. Maybe it didn’t look like much of a job, but right then that was the least of Joe’s worries.
The tail-gunners on the trucks were scanning the G-Mek with heavy chain-guns. The crews were greenhorns; first trip outside the PZ, itching for an easy shoot to loose off at. The gunners were nervous, and, just this once, so was he.
He kept the interceptor on idle, shadowing the convoy through the wrecks edging the borders of the old city. As NoGo slipped away the world opened out into a rolling, shifting sea of sand; the future stretching out to greet the USA. Soon they were passing through thin bones of dust-towns; rusting gas-pumps stuck out in nowhere, tombstones for the oil-age.
Babysitting a convoy over sandside was kindergarten work. Joe had scored off a hundred runs whilst he was still cutting his milk teeth with Blue Star, but there was sweat greasing his palms under the wheel as he shifted up through the gears. Too many good Ops had taken the last ride in too short a time. Too many accidents; too much bad luck. Someone had a knife in the belly of Blue Star and was twisting it, hard.
He dipped in on the truckers’ frequency; the convoy crews were starting to relax now the brooding threat of the city was behind them. Joe left them to unwind; this might just be another nursemaid ride, but the size of the advance sweetening his contract said otherwise.
Ninety minutes into the run the communication panel on the dash flipped to red. Something big coming through, transmission source masked. Joe checked the spookscreens and took a good look round; nothing but fool’s gold spread out around them; just him and the trucks on the screens. He tabbed the message intercept and set the G-Mek pilot on trail. The windshield clouded to a dull silver and Ed da Souza’s image materialized.
“I hoped you’d shoot for this one Joe. Getting worried we’d lost you too.”
“I’ve been playing hard to get. There’s a nasty disease running round Blue Star that I’m not anxious to catch.”
Blue Star’s senior partner shifted on the screen. “Yeah. Heavy weather, Joe. I’ve had to keep out of the limelight too. I was counting on you collecting the job from centre office.”
“We all got to eat sometime. Where are we headed?”
Da Souza smoothed back greying hair from his forehead. “The convoy’s running for Denver. You’ll break off before then.”
“Where for?”
“See if you remember this guy.”
Da Souza faded. The new holopro was of a lean, tight-muscled face. A street face, survivor of life in the fast lane. Mid-thirties, clean-shaven, short-cropped hair. Could be Joe Gold five years on. If he stayed lucky.
“Sure. Luther Vandenberg. Veteran. Three years streettime. After that, field agent Sandside. Good man.”
Da Souza’s face was re-imposed on the screen. “Not any more, Joe. Vandenberg’s tripped the edge; gone Maverick. Word is he’s lost his mind. Detail coming back’s incomplete, but we know he’s built himself a secure compound out west near a place called Greenton, with a small army of followers riding some ju-ju religious kick. Just what’s inside no one knows, but smart money says a busy little narcotics plant just for openers.”
Joe’s grip tightened on the wheel even though the G-Mek was rock-steady on auto. Plenty of rumours had been running about a rotten apple in the Blue Star barrel. All the ops who’d got close had ended up the wrong side of the mortuary door. Now it was his turn to try and chew out the maggots.
“How do I earn my keep?”
Da Souza paused. Light glinted off the bluestone set in some lovingly unrepaired dental work. “Vandenberg’s gone too far down the road, Joe.” The coral star sparkled in a brief, bleak smile. “You’ll have to inflict some damage. Terminal damage.”
Joe cut the communication channel and pulled the interceptor back to main pilot. The convoy was rolling steady around sixty, riding the pitted ashphalt remains of the old interstate. The G-Mek’s chassis was soaking up some punishment and didn’t want any more; Joe throttled back on the urge to roll up front and scout around. Let the screens do the work for a while.
He checked gridscan for Greenton and pulled the Blue Star datanet to see what help he might find out west. Just one name. McRae; Dave McRae. Mechanic; good spannerman. An Op for Hammond’s till a Maniax spike took an eye out. Since then just a little freelancing between tuning rigs. Last known contact point a workshop in Greenton. Joe remembered McRae as a man he could trust. He’d have to hope his memory was still good.
Three hours in, the G-Mek was running low on gas. Joe buzzed the Convoy and got the all-clear to refuel.
He moved the interceptor up between the double row of trucks, towards the tanker niched dead centre of the convoy.
Intruder check on the screens; nothing but dustbowl for miles. Joe switched his concentration to lining the G-Mek steady between two lines of rolling steel whilst the filler hose snaked down from the tanker gantry towards the interceptor load gate.
The spearhead locked home and gas started to flow. A three metre swerve either side and Joe was roasted meat paste.
The litres piled up on the fuel-gauge LCD; thirty seconds and the tank would be full. Joe could feel the cratered highway twitching the steering; his hands gripped the wheel in a vice-lock. He couldn’t afford to sweat now.
The screens were still blank ten seconds later when the laser cut across the G-Mek’s windshield. Joe whipped his head round in time to see the beam slice clean through a gantry dispenser. Neat liquid death started gushing out over hot moving metal. Joe stabbed the comm-chan.
“Raiders! Cut the frigging fuel!”
Gasoline was splashing up round the windshield as the tanker driver’s lazy drawl came back.
“You still got a few litres to go. Just—”
Joe cut the lines and hit the brakes hard. The hose thudded back against the hull of the tanker as the interceptor dropped away. Another laser-slash; somehow nothing ignited, but now the crews woke up to the news they were under attack; the air was a blur of yelling truckers. As Joe wrestled with the brake-skid he took a reflex check on the intruder-screens. The mothers were still reading clear.
He kept hammering the brakes till he’d put daylight between the G-Mek and the trucks. By now he was dropping down past thirty and the air was fogged with dust and burning rubber. As the cloud settled a Renegade shot past, clearing his wing by millimetres. Joe cursed the programs mechanic who’d ditched him in the middle of a dogfight instrument-blind. He thumped down on the gas pedal and swerved the G-Mek round onto the tail of the Renegade, praying he wasn’t pulling himself square into another raider’s gunsights.
Someone up there was in a forgiving mood; the tanker still hadn’t flamed, but she’d slewed away off the highway and the crew was abandoning her, fast. The gun-turrets on the other trucks were blazing off at the weaving Renegade target. The guys throwing the hardware were lousy shots; the Renegade was being left clean whilst great chunks of highway were getting chewed up and spat back over the interceptor, shot-blasting the hood and windshield. Joe bounced the G-Mek through craters springing up around him as he tried to close down the gap between him and the camouflage-decked rig ahead. He buzzed the crew o
n the lead truck.
“Get your guys to lay off. Leave this one to me and give my ass some covering fire.”
He was close enough now to see the loaded mine-layer mounts on the back of the Renegade. The pilot would have figured he wasn’t going to outrun the V8 breathing down his tailpipes, but Joe beat him to the chain mine tab with a machine-gun burst which took away most of the rear end. The renegade collapsed on its back axle and spun around in a shower of white-metal fireworks.
Joe slammed the interceptor into a skid, sliding her round behind the wreck so she was nosing back down the highway. As the smoke cleared Joe saw two more mottled green renegades closing in on the convoy. Panicked truckers were breaking formation to get clear of the holed tanker, gasoline still flooding from the wound in its side like water from a butt. One of the pursuing renegades loosed off a shot and the tanker and the gas-slicked highway went up.
He used the cover of the flamescreen, figuring the renegades would hold off till they could see what they were running into. Joe didn’t feel like waiting; he swerved back onto the highway and wound up the torque. The G-Mek came out of the fireball on full song, head on for the renegades waiting on the other side. One car reversed out of the way in a furious wheel spin. The other pilot stood his ground, but his nerve and his trigger finger gave out too soon; the laser burst streaked harmlessly away on the G-Mek’s offside. Joe held hard on the gas; the speedo hit ninety as the renegade filled the Armaplas windshield. A split-second before collision Joe slid a shell from the Hammerblow straight into the guts of the machine filling his sights, and the renegade flew apart in a cloudburst of splintered steel.
The other car was running, scrambling across the shifting dunes into the wilderness. Joe would have let him go, but the convoy gunners had other ideas now that they had a real, running target to practice on. Four chainguns swung in on the renegade, vengeful lead streaming down. Joe watched the rig try to weave clear, wheelsliding helplessly in the sand. He eased the interceptor back on to the highway and pulled away up the line of trucks. He didn’t look back when the explosion came.
A hundred kilometres further down the highway the routes diverged. The truckers turned off east; with luck they’d be safe behind Denver wire by nightfall. Joe steered the G-Mek westwards, and chased the desert into the dusk.
What was left of Greenton came up with the sun next day, a new chicken-wire shanty town grown up between the bones of the old. Now only the tumbleweeds graced the porches of empty houses worn paper thin by glasspowder storms. Joe drove in past shells of cars and trucks, the occasional glint of twisted chromium steel buried in the dunes rolled up along the dust-track road. The railroad had once run through Greenton; bringing in stores and running out commuters to the forgotten cities of the midwest. Sections of bent and broken track still littered the roadside, but the travellers were long gone.
Up ahead the crop of makeshift homes carved out of glass-fibre and scrap iron thickened up. Further still, beyond the town, black bricks and wire; a heavy shadow towering out of the sands.
Vandenberg’s fortress.
Hardbitten lives were being fought out behind the bottle-glass fences of Greenton. Doors opened a crack as the G-Mek crawled down narrow pathways; the barrel of a shotgun tracked Joe through a gap in the boarded windows of a derelict rail car, but no one showed. Paranoia talked louder than curiosity here.
It didn’t take long to find McRae’s place; an old gas and service station on the outskirts. The forecourt entrance had been barricaded off, the pumps ripped away like rotting teeth and dumped by the roadside. Joe pulled the interceptor into the shade of the station and got out, nursing the GenTech .625 insurance policy in his pocket. Nothing was stirring, but a light showed through a crack in the heavy corrugated doors masking off the workshop. There wasn’t any doorbell for polite callers to ring.
“McRae?” the softness of his own voice surprised him. The only answer coming back was a slug which kissed the ground a spit away from his right leg.
Joe slipped the catch on the automatic and edged slowly back inside the car. He fired up the V8 and set the throttles on twenty percent. The rumble from the pipes echoed around the crumbling shacks; now anyone who wanted him would know where he was.
He left the motor spinning and raised the offside gull-wing wide enough to slip down out of the car and round the back of the gas-station. Joe eased himself up over the wire fence and dropped down softly into the yard. A door at the back of the workshop was unlocked; Joe opened it slowly and stepped inside.
It took a while to adjust to the waxy, yellow light thrown out by the single oil-lamp strung under the roof struts. Gradually he made out the shape of a car; some kind of renegade rig jacked up over the inspection well, guts spread out over half the workshop. A couple of bikes, ugly matt-black hogs, decorated the far wall. And, in the front of the shop, a figure holding what looked like an old Mauser pistol, wedged half out of the crack in the sheet-metal doors, looking out into the street where the G-Mek was still purring
“Over here, buddy.”
The figure by the door turned fast, gunmetal clattering on sheet-iron.
“Drop it,” Joe suggested. He brought the GenTech hardware up good and level so they’d know they were speaking the same language. The Mauser hit the floor with a satisfying ring.
“Now move in where we can see each other properly.”
A girl wearing a beat-up biker jacket stepped slowly into the pool of light spread under the lamp. She was wearing cable grease for mascara, but something in the fine-chiselled beauty hiding underneath still tugged at a memory. The girl eyed Joe up and down before spitting carefully into a tray of filthy sump oil.
“So what d’ya want? Me or the auto? I’d forget it, Mister. There’s no mileage left in either of us.”
The coffee cooked up on the kerosene stove was warm, just. Joe cradled his hands around the cup and took stock of the place. Tasha McRae’s living quarters didn’t amount to much beyond a battery-lit Toshiba Televisor, a couple of chairs and a bed in one corner. The precious agency Stealth Audio transceiver was now just a resting place for a thick coat of dust and a heap of piston rings. If ever a line was sent out telling her to expect him, then it never reached home. Tasha split her attention between Joe and the flickering quiz show on the Vid. The transmission was getting blitzed by interference.
“Bastards.” Tasha swilled the black coffee round in her cup.
“They’ve started jamming the morning ’casts now.”
“Who? Vandenberg’s people?”
“Uh-huh. Spreading the word of the Church of the New Cross. Everone’s getting the the new religion.” She cursed as the picture snapped out completely. “Rammed down their throats, that is.”
Joe noticed the small portfolio holo set into the wall. “Was it them that killed Dave?”
Just a flicker of something like pain appeared in Tasha’s face. “Yeah. I suppose so. It doesn’t really matter when you’re dead.”
“So why do you stay on?”
Tasha poured more coffee from the pot on the smoking oil-stove. “Because I live here, Mister. Understand that?”
Joe nodded; it made as much sense as anything else. “What’s the chances of getting clear inside that fortress with body, soul and G-Mek in one piece?”
She laughed, short and humourless. “Start at zero and float downwards. Take that rig a mile up the road and you might as well be flying a dayglo signboard telling the Apostles you’re on your way.”
Joe thought back to the ambush on the convoy. “Yeah. Maybe I already met the reception committee.” He glanced round the shop. “How about the metal you got loaded up here?”
“What do you think this is? Car hire? Anyway, none of this stock’s gonna be fit to roll for another week.”
“Can’t wait that long.”
Tasha stretched out and kicked off her boots. “In that case,” she gave Joe a smile that was almost sweet, “you’re gonna have to hitch a ride with the Tithemen.”
Tasha settled back and closed her eyes. “Stick around till nightfall and you’ll find out.”
Just after sundown they came, carried in on the storm that whipped up the desert waves whispering round the edges of the settlement. Through the bars welded across the meshwired window Joe watched the snake-eye lightbeams probing the shacks on the far side of the shanty-town, a banshee wail from the motors riding the winds as the black-metal horsemen closed in. Six bikes, six riders. The Tithemen.
Tasha pulled back from the window, keeping a scared face turned away. “They’re the Apostles’ outriders; Vandenberg’s men. Nighttimes they leave the fortress and tour the two-bit hobotowns shivering round its skirtails. They’ve come to collect.”
“Collect what?”
“Anything. Dollars, food, fresh water. Fuel if anyone has it. In return they let us stay on, while it suits them.”
The cluster of lamps was breaking up, Tithemen spreading out across Green ton.
“Here too?”
Tasha nodded: “Uh-huh.” her voice was dry, shaky. “This is last stop on the route. They’ll take a hundred or so. Aim to bleed you just a drop at a time.”
“Tax-men, huh? You always pay up?”
Tasha shot him a look that said get your head examined; somewhere in the darkness, metal splintered wood and glass. “What do you think?”
“Well, maybe not tonight—” He put a hand over Tasha’s mouth to shut her up. “Tonight you’re going to be a little troublesome.”
Soon the sound of a single engine; a cycle prowling up towards the gas-station. Thirty metres downstreet, sand blasting the back of his neck, Joe crouched in the shallow gulley and watched the Titheman dismount. Light flashed on polished steel; silver badges studding a black-leather angel, spike-ball flail hanging down casually by the rider’s side. Joe counted the chainsaw roar of five other engines in the night. The Tithemen were pulling out; number six was left to finish the evening calls.
Route 666 Anthology Page 16