The men drew nearer. They wore the clothes of Raetian civilians and had numerous tattoos on their arms and faces. Likely they were a local gang. Were they working for the Machinists, or was this just an ill-timed robbery? No, they moved with the precise, economical movement of professionals, not the swagger of street thugs. They made the scooter gang that March had fought earlier look like amateurs. This was a professional assassination, carried out by people who had experience of violence.
But who had sent them?
There was no time to worry about it.
March started shooting.
His first bullet caught the nearest man in the forehead, and the gunman fell limp to the asphalt. March shot another gunman, and then the survivors started shooting. The bullets whined and clanged off the car as March ducked, and he grabbed at the door handle with his left hand and shoved. The door swung open, and March fell out the side of the car and landed on his left knee, the shock shooting through his leg.
But he snapped up his pistol and shot through the ruined window, and another gunman went down. The other two fell back towards the damaged van, firing at March. Their bullets clanged into the door, which thankfully was thick enough to absorb the bullets.
March seized the door with his left hand and pushed. The hinge was no match for the cybernetic strength of his left arm, and he ripped the car door free, holding it before him like an ancient warrior’s shield. His left shoulder and back tensed with the effort, but the car door couldn’t have weighed more than eighty or ninety pounds, and he lifted weights heavier than that on a regular basis.
He charged forward, using the door as a shield, and the bullets from the remaining two gunmen smacked into it. His left arm coiled, and March flung the shield like a discus. It caught the gunman on the left in the chest and threw him to the ground. The gunman on the right tried to line up a shot, but March was quicker. His next two bullets caught the gunman in the head, and the man fell dead to the street.
His aim shifted to the man he had hit with the door, but the gunman was motionless, blood puddling beneath his head. It looked as if his skull had struck the street with enough force to knock him out or kill him.
March looked around, his mind racing. There were no pedestrians on the street, but he knew they had fled at the sound of gunfire. He didn’t hear any sirens. Gunplay was not that uncommon in the slum streets outside of Northgate City’s arcologies, yet March had just left five dead men on the ground. He had killed them in self-defense, but he doubted the police would see it that way.
They had to go.
March ran back to the car, reloading his pistol as he did. One look at the car confirmed that it wasn’t going anywhere. There was quite a lot of blood on Eighty’s temple, and Cassandra peered over the top of the back seat, her eyes wide and frightened, her pistol clutched in both hands.
“We’ve got to move,” said March. “Get your stuff and let’s go.” Cassandra nodded, and March saw that she had already packed up the portable Eclipse, her tablet, and Eighty’s laptop into her backpack. “Eighty, can you move?” The pawnbroker’s eyes looked a little glassy, and March feared that he had suffered a concussion, if not worse injuries.
“Yes,” said Eighty, his voice thick as he released his seatbelt. “Don’t know how much good I’m going to be. Took a knock to the head. Everything’s a bit syrupy.”
“Let’s go,” said March, pulling Eighty to his feet. “We’ll steal our friends’ van.” That would also give them the chance to go over it for any useful information. “Come on.” Cassandra heaved herself out of the van, wobbling a little in her heeled boots, the laptop bag thumping against her hip.
Eighty took a step and almost fell over.
“Jesus, he’s got a concussion,” said Cassandra. “Or worse. We’ve got to get him to a doctor.”
“Yeah,” said March, helping the older man along. “Come on, Eighty, let’s…”
Tires squealed in the distance.
March shot a look over his shoulder. Six blocks down the street, he saw two vans ignore a red light and skid around the corner, their tires squealing. The vans were identical to the one that had rammed Eighty’s car, and through the windshields, March glimpsed one of the men in the passenger seats lifting a pistol.
“Move!” said March. “Run!”
Cassandra sprinted for the van. March felt a flicker of surprise that she could keep her balance in those heeled boots, and then his full attention went to Eighty. He grabbed Eighty with his left arm, lifted the older man from his feet, and ran for the van. Eighty just had time to yelp in surprise, and March put him in the back of the vehicle as quickly as he could manage.
Then he ran around the front of the van and threw himself into the driver’s seat as Cassandra scrambled in next to him. The van’s fender had been crumpled, and its headlights smashed in the impact, but the engine was still running, and there were no warning lights on the dashboard.
“Stay down!” said March, and he spun the steering wheel and stomped on the accelerator. The tires screamed against the asphalt, and then Cassandra yelped as the van shot forward. March heard a groan as Eighty slid across the floor, and he cursed, wishing there had been time to secure him.
The other two vans roared after them. March took a quick look in the side mirror and saw a man holding a long black rifle lean out the window of one of the pursuing vans. March didn’t recognize the type of weapon, but it was a kinetic firearm, not a plasma weapon. Yet based on the length of the magazine jutting from the rifle, likely it was a full-automatic weapon, and if the gunman held down the trigger, he would spray their stolen van with bullets.
March twisted out his window, raised his pistol, and started shooting.
A moving vehicle made a terrible firing platform and driving with one hand while shooting with the other was not a great way to achieve accuracy. Yet his shots were accurate enough that the man with the rifle ducked into the van for cover, and March’s next few shots punched holes in the windshield. March couldn’t tell if he had hit anyone, but the van swerved, the tires squealing as the driver tried to evade the gunfire, and almost crashed into the second van.
“Jack!” said Cassandra.
March turned his head just in time to see that he had drifted too far to the right. He cursed and grabbed the wheel with both hands, but it was too late. The van hit the curb, bounced over it, and struck a sidewalk vending machine with a jarring crash. The vending machine exploded in a spray of twisted metal and bottles of brightly colored bottles of sports drinks and protein bars. For an instant, March was afraid the impact would tip the van over, but he wrenched the wheel to the left and punched the accelerator, and the van bounced over the curb and back onto the street.
“Dear God,” croaked Cassandra.
“The navigation unit,” said March, jabbing a finger at the dashboard.
“You want me to set a destination?” said Cassandra.
“No, rip it out and throw it out the window,” said March. In the rearview mirror, he saw the gunman raise his weapon again, and March swerved to the left as the enemy fired. There was a ping as a bullet struck the side of the van. “They probably have the navigation units synced and can track us through them.”
“Oh,” said Cassandra. She grabbed the unit, grimaced, and wrenched it free, a trail of wires hanging from its back. She reached to roll down the window, realized it had been shattered in the crash, and tossed the navigation device free. It struck the street and bounced away. “Now what?”
March pushed the accelerator towards the floor, thinking hard as the engine whined. He dodged around a truck and swung into the right lane to the blare of horns, missing an oncoming car by maybe a meter. That would slow down their pursuers for a few moments, but not for long. March wasn’t sure how many men each of those vans carried, but this van had enough seating for twelve.
Which meant the minute he stopped, he might have to confront twenty-four armed men. There was no way March could win in a fight like that. He had ta
ken the first five off-guard and overwhelmed them, but the survivors would be far more cautious. Could they go to the police for help? That seemed too risky. For one thing, March would probably be arrested for shooting those five men. Getting cleared of murder charges on self-defense would take weeks or months and impair the mission. For another, in the slums outside the city’s arcologies, police response time was low, well into the half-hour range. By the time the police arrived, the fight would have been decided one way or another.
March had to get Cassandra and Eighty away from the gunmen, and he had to find a way to block pursuit.
His eyes flicked over the dashboard and lingered for a moment on the charge readout for the van’s capacitors. They still had eighty-six percent charge. That was how Adelaide had lost her ability to have children. Simon Lorre’s bomb had driven shards of her car’s capacitator into her abdomen, killing her unborn child and causing irreversible local cellular poisoning. The alloy used in high-volume capacitors was an efficient superconductor, but it was highly toxic and in the right circumstances both flammable and explosive.
Maybe it was time to create those circumstances.
March pushed harder on the accelerator, and the van screamed forward.
“Red light!” said Cassandra, pointing at the intersection ahead. “Red light!”
“I know!” said March. The van screamed through the intersection, missing an oncoming truck by centimeters. It happened so fast that Cassandra didn’t even have time to scream. March looked to the left. They had driven through this block on their way to Arcology Twelve, and the alleys between the businesses were wider than usual here. If he could just find one large enough for what he had in mind…
There!
March slammed the brake and spun the wheel. The van’s tires screamed, and the vehicle spun across the lanes of oncoming traffic and skidded sideways into an alley. Sparks flew from the front and back fenders as they scraped against the walls, and the van wrenched to a halt, smoke rising from both the tires and the engine compartment.
And the van had neatly blocked the alley.
“Get Eighty on his feet and get moving,” said March, grabbing the hood release lever. He thought he had maybe a minute until the other two vans caught up. “We need to go.”
Cassandra did not hesitate but scrambled into the back seat and helped Eighty to his feet. March slid across the front seat, pushed out the passenger door, and landed in the alley. The hood was unlocked, and he wrenched it open, revealing the engine and the capacitator. Of course, an electric motor required to drive a van of this size wasn’t all that large, so most of the space was taken up by the engine’s capacitator – six watermelon-sized cells linked by a coil of superconducting wire. The black casings of the capacitator were festooned with warnings about biohazards, qualified service personnel, and dire threats that attempting to service the capacitator in a planetary ecosystem carried a fifty thousand credit fine.
March started punching the capacitator with his cybernetic fist as Cassandra helped Eighty from the van.
“Are you punching the engine?” said Eighty. He sounded bewildered, his voice a little slurred. “That’s not going to work.”
On the third punch, the capacitator’s shell cracked, and March wrenched it open to reveal the cells inside. He pulled loose a coil of wire, wrapped it around the superconducting ring, pulled another cable, and hot-wired the van’s engine to start.
As he did, two things happened.
The pursuing vans screeched to a halt in the street, their doors sliding open to disgorge well-armed gunmen.
And an ominous crackling started to come from the capacitator.
March jerked back as a wisp of white smoke rose from the van’s engine. If he breathed that, the fumes would strip the lining from his lungs. The crackling segued into a piercing, ominous whine, and the smoke rising from the engine thickened.
“That’s going to cause a severe electrical fire!” said Cassandra, her eyes wide, one arm slung around Eighty’s shoulders.
“I hope so,” said March, stepping back from the van. “Run!”
He took another step back, and one of the gunmen caught his eye. The man was middle-aged and wore a starship crewer’s coverall beneath a long coat and a weapon harness, an automatic rifle in his hands that had the look of a printed plastic weapon. He was a bit weathered looking, and March recognized him at once.
It seemed that Marco Skinner had escaped from the disaster at Burnchain Station. Skinner was a Machinist agent who reported to Mr. Odin himself, which meant that this hit was a Machinist job.
March could worry about it later.
“Time to go,” he said, running towards Cassandra and Eighty. “Sorry about this.”
He seized Eighty with his cybernetic arm, scooped the smaller man up, and slung him over his shoulders. Eighty yet out a started yelp but was too confused and woozy to do anything else. March and Cassandra ran forward as the gunmen opened fire, their bullets punching into the van and tearing through the windows. March ducked, as did Cassandra, his back groaning with the strain of squatting with Eighty across his shoulders.
Then the sabotaged capacitator blew up.
The blast shattered the front of the damaged van and set the interior aflame. Thick black smoke rose from the engine compartment and the passenger seats, most of it coming from the capacitator. As March had hoped, the smoke blocked the aim of the gunmen, and none of their shots came anywhere near hitting their targets.
He looked at the doors lining the alleyway as they passed, reading the signs. One opened into a clothing shop, the second into a store that sold opiates, the third specialized in stimulants, the fourth and the fifth were brothels of various kinds, and…
There!
The door was adorned with the smiling anthropomorphized sandwich logo of a company that specialized in fast food delivery. March had seen their logo scattered throughout Northgate City. A punch from his cybernetic fist smashed open the lock, and March kicked open the door and stormed inside. He passed through a small kitchen, ignoring the shouts of the chefs, ran through the dining area, and onto the sidewalk outside the shop.
And as he hoped, several delivery cars idled at the curb.
March hurried to the nearest one, put Eighty in the back seat, and ran to the driver’s side door.
“Are we stealing a car?” said Cassandra, scrambling for the passenger’s side door.
“We are stealing a car,” said March, dropping behind the wheel.
A man ran out of the sandwich shop, waving his arms, and March pushed the accelerator to the floor. The car hadn’t been maintained well, and the engine made an unhappy whining noise, but the tires squealed against the asphalt, and March put the car into traffic and sped away.
###
Two hours later they were back in Eighty’s building.
One of the rooms in the upper floor had been set up as an infirmary, with a pair of beds, a store of medical supplies, and an expert diagnostic system. Likely sometimes Eighty and Winter and the other Silent Order operatives had injuries that they didn’t want the authorities to know about. March configured a vial of emergency medical nanobots to treat concussion damage, injected them into Eighty’s neck, and busied himself by hooking up the leads to the expert system while he waited.
“Damn, that always stings,” said Eighty, blinking up at the ceiling. “I’m a Stryker. A fighter pilot. Why do I keep getting concussions?”
“Hazard of the pawnbroking business,” said March.
Eighty laughed at that, and the door slid open, and Winter stepped into the room. She wore the sleek black business suit of a lawyer, a gleaming black purse in her hand.
She froze for just an instant when she saw Eighty lying in bed. The icy mask of the cool lawyer shattered, and March saw real fear in her eyes. Then she collected herself and hurried over, taking Eighty’s free hand.
“Hey, babe,” said Eighty. “Took our guests around town to see the sights, and we sure had a wild time.
”
“He’ll be fine,” said March, squinting at the displays on the expert system. “He has a moderate concussion and a laceration on his left temple. Nanobots will clean up the concussion damage, and the laceration should heal on its own once it’s closed up.”
“Thank God,” said Winter. “Where’s Dr. Yarrow? Is she…”
“She’s fine,” said March. “Just a little shook up. She just wanted to lie down for a while.”
“What happened?” said Winter. “That car was unregistered, so it shouldn’t lead back to us. But it shouldn’t have been able to be tracked.”
“I think someone spotted us looking around the Slovell Center and decided to deal with it,” said March. “I recognized the man in charge. He’s a Machinist agent, and I’ve gone up against him before. Used the alias Marco Skinner the last time, but he’s probably operating under a different name here.”
Winter frowned. “Was this a hit or a kidnapping?”
“Not sure,” said March, “but I think it was both. I bet unreported traffic accidents are pretty common in the slum neighborhoods?” Winter nodded. “Probably the plan was to crash our car, grab us, and take us in the vans someplace for a quiet interrogation.”
“Even in the slums, that’s risky to do in daylight,” said Winter. “Not that many security cameras are out here, but there are always witnesses, and you can’t silence them all.”
“Yeah,” said March. “Which makes me think we stumbled onto something serious. Slovell and the Machinists want to keep whatever they’re doing quiet. Whatever is behind that vault door, it’s serious.” He shook his head. “We need to get behind that door, and soon. That quantum entanglement effect is almost certainly connected with the radiation deaths.”
“And it’s sitting in Arcology Twelve, which holds a million people,” said Winter. She saw the danger, all right.
March had a sudden vision of the University campus again, except this time all those milling, distracted students had been reduced to the crumbling, twisted corpses he had seen aboard Outer Vanguard Station.
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