"What the hell was that?!" Lex said, jumping to his feet.
"It think it was an explosion in the high atmosphere!" Michella guessed. Her slidepad was already in her hands, feverishly bringing up her quick-dial list.
"You'd expect an explosion that big to make some sort of loud s-"
The laws of physics, with their flawless comedic timing, managed to cut Lex off with a thundering blast of sound as the shock wave lagged behind the light of the explosion. It was a resounding thump that rattled the walls, followed by a rolling, modulating series of echos, like the planet had been punched in the gut and was struggling to get its breath. Lex turned to Michella, but she had the slidepad held up, snapping a picture. A moment later, a call finished connecting.
"Jon! We're in the ground floor fitness center at the Pavilion, are you nearby?" she said.
"Uh, sort of. I'm down by the garage," came the voice of her clearly shaken assistant over the connection.
"Good. Bring the rental car around."
"What just happened, Miss Modane?"
"We are going to find out. Get here quick," she said, closing the connection and heading for the door. "Come on, Trev."
"Whoa, hey, hold on a second," Lex said, trying to get his brain back up to speed, "What are you planning to do?"
"That explosion, do you have any idea what might cause that?"
"No, I don't. I'm not an expert in explosions. Where are we going?"
"I'll have to do an image search on that picture. The news database might have a near match," she muttered under her breath, working at her device for a few moments before addressing Lex. "We're going to go find out what happened. How far away would you suppose that was?"
"Uh, I don't know. It looks like it was over the college quarter, but it is pretty hard to tell. It was awfully far up. Slow down, what do you mean we are going to find out? You aren't thinking of driving toward that explosion, are you?"
"Me? No. I'm thinking I'll pull up as much research about it as I can in the next few minutes, then get in front of the camera and talk about it while you drive toward it."
"That's a bad idea. You don't drive toward explosions. You drive away from explosions and wait for someone to tell you about them."
"Trevor, the press don't have the luxury of waiting until someone tells them what is happening. We are the ones who need to do the telling," she said, shouldering her way with purpose through the increasingly chaotic crowd filling the lobby. Somehow, Jon was just pulling the rented hovercar up to the main doors.
"There is a whole convention of press people here! It doesn't need to be you that does the telling!"
"No, but it is going to be."
"But you aren't breaking news, you're investigative-"
"It always pays to have the big scoop. I was on financial reporting when I broke my first one, remember?" she said, pushing the door open. "Jon, do we have that law enforcement scanner with us?"
"Yes, Miss-"
"Good, get it out and turn it on. And have we got the video rig in the trunk?"
"Yes, Miss-"
"Do you know how to handle it?"
"I'm a journalism intern. I've spent time behind a camera."
"Good. Pull it out, set it up, and get in the back seat. Trev, get behind the wheel," Michella said, beginning to dig through her purse again.
"Whoa, whoa. What exactly are you expecting me to do?"
Michella held up her hand and shushed. Jon had managed to power up the scanner, and the first coherent message was coming through.
"... indicate that the weapon discharged near the equatorial low orbit monitoring station was a medium-yield antimatter weapon. A pair of ships have been sighted de-cloaking and entering the atmosphere. Trajectory indicates the destination is Weston University... "
"I need you to get this rental to Weston University, and I need you to get it there before any other news crews," she said, continuing her search though her purse.
Lex looked at the rental, an NVS Duchess. It wasn't a speedster, but it was a sturdy piece of machinery, the kind of workhorse that tended to be selected as police cruisers and taxi cabs. These days the sheer speed of hovercars and the general importance of aerodynamics meant that you couldn't really make them boxy, but the designers had done their very best to do so, regardless. He looked to the skyways. What should have been a hopeless snarl of panicked drivers was still flowing smoothly thanks to the mandatory automated driving. Notably, all traffic was headed away from the explosion, likely as a result of an emergency traffic reroute. A news van, bedecked with transmitters, sensors, and cameras, blasted out of a nearby garage and out over the city, skipping the skyway entirely in favor of a straight shot to the action. He felt his competitive side growl. Finally he looked back to Michella. She had found what she was looking for; a stick of chewing gum, which she was holding out for him. He could actually hear his willpower snap.
"I am an adrenaline junky, and you are an enabler," he said, snatching the gum and pulling her in for a kiss. After dragging it out for as long as he dared, he stuffed the gum in his shirt pocket and made his way to the front of the car. "Pop the hood."
"We don't have time for you to ogle the machinery, Trev."
"Listen, you know press stuff, I know driving stuff. Just pop the hood."
"I'm on it," Jon said, sliding into the driver's seat and tapping the appropriate button.
The hood of the car lifted up, revealing the power system and electronics of the Duchess. Lex swept his eyes over the guts of the hovercar, spotted what he was looking for, and reached down. He grabbed hold of a control node the size of his fist and yanked it free, taking the time to cram a few wires back into the socket that the node left vacant. He then slammed the hood, took the driver's seat, and tossed the node into the back seat, where Michella was doing a bit of frantic primping while Jon took a seat beside her and started assembling the modular camera.
"What is this?" she asked.
"Strictly enforced automated navigation, remember? That means all rentals have an override. If you want to stay in control, you've got to yank it. Found that out the hard way. I yanked the transponder wire, too. Better that way," he explained, adjusting the seat and manipulating a few settings in the vehicle's computer. Finally he retrieved the gum, unwrapped it, and shoved it in his mouth. "Okay, baby, here we go. Hope you got the insurance on this sucker."
Lex guided the hovercar into the air and toward the nearest skyway on-ramp.
"Are you sure that the skyway is the best-" Jon began to ask.
"Yes, Jon," Lex said flatly.
"But don't you want to go straight there, like-"
"No, Jon."
"But-"
"Trev knows what he's doing. Just keep the camera running and point it where I tell you. Trev, try to keep it steady," Michella instructed.
"No promises," he said, maxing out the acceleration.
Satisfied that she was presentable, Michella selected a name from her contact list and tapped it, putting the pad to her ear and stowing her glasses while she waited for it to connect. A particularly sudden bit of maneuvering convinced her to wrap her free hand around a grip above the door.
"Yeah, Lou? Michella. You're going to be getting a feed from that spare camera rig you sent along with us. I need you to patch it through to the live feed. … You'll find out in a minute. … Thanks Lou," she said, closing the connection and nodding at Jon while she applied a lapel mic. When she got the thumbs up, she turned on her well practiced tone of competent concern. "This is Michella Modane for GolanaNet News reporting live from Tessera, where an unexplained explosion..."
Much as Lex would have liked to pay attention to Michella's report, navigation was quickly becoming an issue. Common sense would dictate that, if you were in a vehicle capable of flight, the best way to get someplace you weren't supposed to go would be to fly straight there, as their current rival news crew had opted to do. Lex, who was a bit more skilled in vehicular misbehavior than he should have been
, had quickly learned that this was absolutely not the case. Anything above a certain altitude that wasn't in a designated route was instantly flagged for interception, so staying within the proper roads was essential. This was doubly important when an apparent invasion was happening, as the cloaked vehicles would certainly indicate. The last thing you would want would be to have the police or military think you were one of the intruding parties. Thus, Lex was scooting the rented Duchess as quickly as possible through the skyway leading roughly toward Weston University. Brief glimpses between traffic quickly illustrated that they had made the right decision, as a trio of marked police cars corralled and grounded the news van.
While they didn't currently have to worry about law enforcement, the skyway was not a flawless option either. The problem was that every single other vehicle on the road was moving roughly away from Weston University, and thanks to the fact that the Rackton Civic Navigation Authority was at the wheel, traffic was able to pack itself far more densely than a bunch of puny human minds could manage. Lex was trying to move against the flow of traffic that was moving in an orderly, steady pace, with barely inches separating one car from the next in some cases. The one thing he had going for him was the fact that cars had radically different shapes and radically different speeds, and thus tended to leave openings as they jostled into optimal position. The task was figuring out where and when such an opening would occur and whether or not he would fit. So far, Lex was fairly successful, as long as you used a fairly generous definition of the word 'fit.'
He'd swapped paint with half a dozen cars by the time the traffic started to thin out. Now that the last of the traffic that had been on the road at the time of the explosion was behind them, it should be clear sailing for a while. The only vehicles left to worry about were the ones that were too slow to keep up with the emergency evacuation speed, mostly massive service vehicles with a few buses and clunkers tossed in. Lex glanced back to steal a glimpse of Michella doing her thing.
"... reports indicate that two vessels may be responsible for the blast. The police dispatches mentioned the possibility of cloaking technology being employed. Now that we are clear of traffic, we will try to get a shot of the University Heights section of Outer Rackton, the area nearest to the blast. Get a shot out there, medium optical zoom. As you can see, the infrastructure seems fairly untouched, but there appears to be some smoke. The detonation was very high in the atmosphere, so the damage should be minimal, but as you can see from the broken windows, the raw force of the blast must have been considerable. No word yet on what, if anything, was struck directly by this attack, but we will report as soon as the information becomes available," Michella remarked. Her eyes flitted aside, "We will return shortly. Please stand by for additional information."
She motioned for Jon to kill the feed.
"Keep the video and audio rolling. We'll toss the footage to the editors to add to the aggregator version," she commented. "Lex, it looks like we've got company."
"Yeah, I see 'em," Lex said.
Four police cruisers were merging into the skyway from below. Unlike the steady, dependable Duchess, the cars painted with the blue and white police markings were downright fierce. The hood of the car bristled with cooling fins, and an ominous glow flickered within the thrusters jutting out the rear. They were more in line with the sort of machines Lex had gone toe to toe with in his racing days. Trying to outmaneuver them in a rental car was going to be tricky.
"Leave it to Rackton to go top-of-the-line with their cop cars," Lex grumbled.
"Are we... Are we really going to try to outrun the police?" Jon asked.
"No, Jon. We aren't going to try to outrun the police. We are going to succeed in outrunning the police. Right baby?" Michella said, a devilish grin coming to her face as she tightened up her restraints and held on tight.
"We better. Tesseran traffic laws are harsh," Lex said.
"This, uh... This car is rented under my name," Jon said.
"Well, Jon, you're not getting your deposit back."
The former racer revved the much abused engine of the rented Duchess to its limits. Below them, the city of Rackton had thinned out from a veritable art gallery of architecture to a sprawling green expanse of gated suburbs. It was a less than ideal environment for losing a superior pursuit vehicle, but if you could choose where to have your chase, you probably wouldn't be getting chased to begin with. As the police began to organize themselves into an intercept formation, the audio system of the Duchess began blaring an all-too-familiar multilingual warning. Lex clicked the volume off and took a deep breath.
"I hope this is worth it, honey," he said.
The first of the cruisers pulled in tight to try to force him into a pocket blocked out by the others. Lex dropped low and dodged underneath him, tilting the ship downward and dialing back the power. The machine dropped like a rock, passing through the lower edge of the flickering red skyway border and for all outward appearance seeming to be suffering a power failure. Inside the car a dozen warnings and indicators started going wild, warning him of everything from his careless departure from permitted airspace to the fairly likely collision with the ground that would result. Outside, the sirens and public address systems of the police were quickly coming back into range as the cruisers doubled back.
"Oh God," Jon said. His voice had the very distinctive tone one uses when there is a danger of something other than words leaving one's mouth.
"Just a little longer," Lex said, watching the ground approach through the windshield.
By the time the police were above him, Lex was already too close to the ground and moving too fast for them to attempt a rescue. There was nothing to do but spread out above him and slow down, trailing behind lest they get caught in what looked to be an inevitable fireball. Lex scanned over the pedestrian park ahead.
"You think I can fit under that footbridge?" he asked.
"What?!" Jon squeaked.
"Yeah, me too," Lex said, cranking the power.
The free fall began to level off as the engines labored to get back up to speed. The police realized that they were dealing with a ruse rather than an equipment failure and fell into pursuit again. With a sudden, jarring bounce, the Duchess's repulsors touched ground, parting the grass of a picnic area and launching a trash can aside. Fortunately the recent blast in the sky had sent any park-goers running for shelter. Even more fortunately, none of those park-goers had selected the low, wide pedestrian bridge ahead as their shelter of choice. Considering the fact that there were no surface roads, the bridge seemed to exist exclusively as a place from which to take pictures. It was also pointlessly long, forming what was practically a short tunnel. Lex was only too glad to give it a secondary role as a high speed obstacle.
"Think skinny thoughts everybody!" he said.
A piece of the rental car's bodywork screeched against a decorative safety rail as he barely managed to wedge the sluggish piece of machinery beneath the bridge. Three of the cops pulled aside and tried to position themselves to intercept him on the other side. One remained on his tail just a few moments longer, evidently confident that his hulking powerhouse would be able to follow the mid-sized sedan. When the officer lost his nerve, he nearly lost control of his cruiser as well, obliterating an ornate lamppost in his frenzy to avoid totaling himself on the bridge.
As their friend with poor judgment struggled to get back into the chase, the other police hadn't quite managed to get themselves organized before Lex came rocketing out from beneath the far side of the bridge. He stayed low to the ground, weaving between well manicured trees and clipping the top of hedges trimmed into exotic shapes. Not only did the obstacles keep the cops from getting too close, they prevented them from deploying anything from their no doubt comprehensive arsenal of intercept devices. Energy nets, grapples, tractor beams, engine killers, fancy harpoons with attached retro rockets, and a hundred other gadgets had been dreamed up to take care of the occasional rogue hovercar, but they all requir
ed a clear shot and a lot of room. Lex was determined to deny them of both. The more he maneuvered, the better a feel he got for the specific quirks of his vehicle. Sharp turns became surgical, his path threading an insane route through anything that might keep the cruisers at bay. Ahead, University Heights was looming, and with the fraction of his brain not dedicated to daredevil stunts, Lex didn't like what he saw. The first problem he was going to hit was that there was an awfully long stretch of nothing but landscaped meadow between himself and the college buildings. The presence of the meadow probably had more to do with maintaining a picturesque ambiance for pricy institutions that made their home in the Heights than anything intelligent or useful, but that didn't matter. No trees or quaint gazebos meant the cops would be right on top of him until he got into the Heights themselves. It was at that point that the second issue would become his primary concern.
After his hijinks during his last visit to Tessera, Lex had attracted a considerably larger police presence. The fact that only four cruisers were after him had seemed like a fortunate oversight on the part of the traffic department. Now that he could see the Heights, he understood his relatively unmolested status. Even in the short time that had passed since the blast, Rackton had managed to dispatch a veritable army of police to the area, and on the horizon, the actual army looked to be well on their way. If he'd had a few more moments to think things over, he might have abandoned the idea of finding a way to get into the hornet's nest ahead. Luckily, his emergence onto the obstacle-free home stretch commandeered the remainder of his brain for use in piloting the craft, making all of that pesky "critical thinking" impossible.
As a matter of fact, the only person in the car who seemed to be giving any thought at all to the situation was Jon, and presently he was too terrified to enunciate. He simply held the camera in a death grip, pointing it vaguely wherever Michella's finger was pointing. She was giving instructions, too, but the pounding of his heart in his ears was drowning them out. It was madness. At no point since she'd gotten into the car had Michella shown any indication that she felt her life was in danger. She'd simply held tight, kept her eyes on the destination, and worn an unnervingly exhilarated smile on her face. Now and then Lex would turn to see how close a trailing police cruiser had gotten, and when he did, his face had the same smile. It was like watching two addicts get their fix. Finally, after a particularly aggressive maneuver shook a chunk of the trunk lid loose, Jon found his tongue.
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