Finally, we reached a road, and I could accelerate once again.
“Why so fast?” he was asking, when our rear window disintegrated into small shards. “Heck!”
As fast as the car allowed, I steered back toward the forest. Our new pursuers obviously had been lying for ambush here and worked by the motto, “Shoot first, ask later.”
“We should have checked out first,” I noted.
Another shot tore one rear tire apart. “That’s it. We must get out. Without the tire, we’re too slow in the forest.” I found a preliminary cover behind some trees. “Go!”
We let ourselves drop out of the car. Several projectiles struck the trees around us, then also the car body.
“Now you can use your gun,” I advised Gomez, and then I scurried into the trees and camouflaged myself. He had to take care of himself.
These scumbags had rifles. Obviously, they didn’t plan to get us alive and unhurt. Well then.
I let my claws grow.
Chapter Forty
They were two, and they wore—other than the two guys before—camo suits and protective vests. They moved cautiously and silently. They already had proven that they could handle their rifles well with their distance shots, which had stopped us and turned us in to them.
Allegedly.
Okay, Gomez’ situation wasn’t enviable. He only had one pistol. Once he moved and gave his position away, the two would perform a happy target-shooting. If he hit well, he might injure one opponent first.
He had to hope for me, for that I wouldn’t simply leave him behind. But I wasn’t interested in letting them get him alive, and in my opinion, he hadn’t deserved to die. Moreover, I didn’t simply desert people. If at all, I was the deserted one.
Our hunters weren’t in a hurry, but we were. After we’d been spotted, it couldn’t take long before reinforcements would arrive. The more people hunting us, the more difficult it would become keeping Gomez alive—and not giving my abilities away.
One of them came straight toward my hideout. I waited until he was right under me, then I pulled my claws out of the tree trunk and let myself drop. While the impact was still throwing him down, I knocked him out. Before his partner could react, I had already dashed up the next tree like a squirrel.
Just in time, as it went nasty now.
His partner didn’t pause contemplating what could have got his partner or how. Instead he emptied an entire magazine in the direction of the unconscious man, only high enough to not hit him.
Underneath me bark sprayed away, leaves were torn, smaller branches cut off.
Click—click, he swapped his magazine. This gave me time to jump to the next tree, swing around it, jump another tree onward, let myself drop to the ground behind him, and rise.
He had heard the sound of my impact, started to turn around—before he could see me, he was out, too.
“All-clear, Gomez!” I called so that he wouldn’t accidentally shoot at me, then I let my claws disappear, took the guns away from my victims and arranged them in recovery position, so that they wouldn’t suffocate.
“We’ll take the car they brought for us?” he asked. He ignored the two shooters, but took one of their rifles. He didn’t even ask how I had been able to take them out.
“For a short leg. I assume they will look for it.”
“Yes, sure, we only have to gain distance.”
“Exactly.”
Chapter Forty-One
“I have to thank you. You’ve saved my ass. And I have to apologize because I’ve acquired this Dragon shit.” With these words, he handed me a glass of beer. “Cheers.”
“Cheers. You’re welcome. But you’ll lead me to your client.”
“I thought that’s the third trap?”
“Naturally. We won’t step into it. I myself will determine the date and time of our meeting. But I’ll clarify that I won’t tolerate such games.”
“No?”
“I know I’ve spared those people out there. They’ve just done their job. But the guy who’s placed this trap won’t get away as cheaply.”
“Is that necessary? We’re alive, we’ve got away astonishingly well. To search contact again now will put us in danger.”
“You don’t think the masterminds will give up? They’ll hunt for us everywhere. I say it again—I’d better determine the date and time of our next encounter myself.”
“I don’t need such a meeting. What for?”
“I need to know who I’ve taken up with.” In addition to the Cartel, the Dragon cultists, and the police. “Perhaps we can reach an agreement.”
“You’re crazy.”
“That’s what I’ve thought for a while myself. But I’m entirely clear. Running away won’t solve the problems, I’ve painfully learned that.”
“Mm. Well, that’s your business. Don’t count on me.”
“Once I know the target, you can disappear.”
He fought with himself, ignoring his barely begun glass of beer. What was it? The conflict between his self-image as tough guy, who wouldn’t easily desert a young woman, and his self preservation instinct that advised him to withdraw? What would the people say if the word spread that Velvet had faced the mastermind, and Gomez had chickened out?
In these rough times, only tough guys counted. Anyone showing a weakness once would effectively oust himself. For me, this was another reason not to ignore this trap.
Gomez had reached a decision—I saw it in the way he sat straight up. “I owe you. I’ve lured you into the trap, you’ve saved my ass. So I’m in.”
“You don’t have to. I’d prefer to go in alone.”
“Because I can’t keep up with you? No, don’t say it. I don’t know which special forces have trained you, but you’re better by levels. Nevertheless, I can handle my tool.” He patted his holster. “I can help you. You simply tell me where you need me most, okay?”
This was a more honest offer than I had expected.
“Okay, Gomez.” I held out my right, and he took it. “Deal.”
Part Five
Players
Chapter Forty-Two
“Good evening.”
My involuntary host registered my presence in his office with amazing calmness—although I had snuck past all his modern security installations.
“Good evening,” he returned and closed the door behind him. “What’s granting me the pleasure of your visit?”
“I’d like to clarify a misunderstanding regarding my person.”
“Ah, yes? I wasn’t aware of any misunderstanding.” He pointed at a low table with two chairs. “Would you like to have a seat? May I offer you anything?”
“Thank you.” From out of a low chair, some options for violent behavior became impossible, so I welcomed his offer and sat down. “For the time being, I’d just like to talk.”
“As you like.” He sat down as well, leaned back relaxingly and waited. I liked his calm demeanor—did he not feel threatened because he was waiting for his bodyguards, or because he considered me harmless? In both cases, he was wrong, although I hadn’t come to kill him.
I wanted something from him, so it was my turn.
“It must have been one of my actions that caused you to place a trap for me.”
“Go on.” He didn’t admit anything, but from his face and his stance I could see him putting me in place. Now, he appeared tense.
“Well, if you wanted to talk to me, now you can.”
“Why should I?”
“You’ve made an enormous effort to catch or even kill me. But to me, you don’t look like someone acting out of cheap feelings of revenge. If you’d like me to forbear doing certain things, you can simply tell me.”
“And then you’d forbear doing certain things?”
“Yes.”
“Why should I believe that?”
“I have two motivations. One is the sports challenge. I like difficult tasks, and I master them. I am good.”
“I can see that f
rom the fact that you’re here. And the other motivation?”
“I need a little money for a living.”
“A-ha. So I shall pay you for leaving me alone?”
“No. I don’t want money from you. I only accept success fees. I don’t mind where those come from. But you’ll save a lot of money if you don’t need to place a trap for me. See the advantage? You can live in peace, save your money, and I don’t have to worry that someone could get hurt.”
“That you could get hurt. Why should I care?”
Oh, a hidden threat? “No, that your people could get hurt. So far, nobody’s been seriously injured.”
He considered that for a while.
“You don’t carry a weapon.”
“I don’t need one.”
“You’re very convinced of yourself.”
“I can afford that.” So far, he had carefully avoided saying anything that could be taken as a commitment. Only this chitchat wouldn’t get us anywhere. However, he didn’t show any signs of agreement. “I could as well afford to simply disappear, but I have different plans.”
“So.”
“You’re a great talk partner. Perhaps I should simply take my chances.”
“Which means…”
“That you run the risk of losing another crystalline message packet.”
He flinched, hardly noticeably. What an admirable self-control! “What are you talking about?”
“Of my booty. And of the reading device that’s been in the same safe.”
“That’s what you figured out?”
“Yes. And then I’ve nevertheless taken the pebbles.”
“Only the pebbles.”
“Exactly. The reading device wasn’t ordered.”
“Weren’t you curious?”
You bet. “Not back then. I thought, great, there someone’s found a way to smuggle messages past the Cartel. And another faction wants to play along—the more joining, the better.”
“You don’t like the Cartel.”
“They’ve placed a killer on my heels. No, I don’t like them. I love to nag them.”
“Why do you tell me, if you can’t know whether I belong to them?”
Who tells you that I can’t know? “First—if the Cartel knew about this option, it wouldn’t be so easy for me to cause them trouble. Or second—if they knew you know the method and don’t belong to them, you’d already be dead.”
He gazed at me musingly. “But you’re not dead.”
What could I say? I shrugged and waited. He seemed to thaw now.
“Why should I trust you? You could be here to sound me out.”
“Which you counter quite skillfully so far. You don’t have to trust me, as I don’t trust you either. Still, we could reach an agreement.”
“How would that work?”
“I’m not dependent on accepting every job. Would it help if I’d leave my hands off precious gems in private ownership? In exchange, you do without putting someone on my heels. The story’s over.”
“It isn’t. You’ve delivered your booty.”
“Oh—do you want the pebbles back?”
“Yes.”
“I can’t guarantee that they’ve remained unread.”
“They could be used as evidence.”
“Oh—sure. Good, that’s doable.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why?”
“They’re probably in Japanese hands now. And they’ve only recently introduced something new, a safe with Dragon technology. A protective field, or something.”
“In Japan, then.”
“Possibly. Not your stomping ground.”
No, Japan didn’t appeal to me. On the other hand, I had decided not to run away any longer. “The land of the rising sun is like a second home to me,” I replied in fluent Japanese.
“Amazing. But that doesn’t matter, you won’t get in anyway. Even if they still have it in their consulate general here in San Francisco.”
“You want the stuff back, so I’ll get them for you. If they’re still in Frisco, you’ll have them next week. Then we’ll continue our talk.” I didn’t wait for his reply. With few steps, I was at the window and opened it. “Don’t search for me.”
Chapter Forty-Three
If the pebbles had ended in the Japanese consulate general, what did that tell me about my mission’s principal? The easiest answer was—Japanese intelligence service. It was conclusive that the Japanese would want to know what was going on in the States after the Cartel takeover, regardless whether they encountered the Cartel itself or another player.
This other player had been well informed, about the Cartel as well as about the Japanese. Too well for the member of a crime organization that would compete with the Cartel—if such an organization was at all imaginable. The current rulers weren’t interested in a strong opposition.
Together with the message that I had read from the crystal structure, it was clear that it had to belong to a different foreign intelligence service. That was another reason for the strong reaction to my raid—even without my intervention, they had a hard time holding their ground.
Now, I stood invisibly in front of the consulate and studied their surveillance installations. All the very best and with enough human security staff to ward off anything but a Dragon assault or armor suits long enough for destroying any critical papers inside first.
With a protective field, the situation was different again anyway. I could feel the undirected guidance quarks diffuse into the open even from outside. Their sender obviously had to be strong enough to wrap the entire building into a protective field, if you could only expand the graviton field wide enough. I calculated the individual parameters and concluded that a better adjustment of the guidance streams alone might save half of the energy consumption. Likewise, it would then be no problem to expand the protective field significantly and still keep it stable—you only had to have understood the Meier effect basics first. This wasn’t the case here. To them, it had sufficed to make it work somehow.
Okay, Jo—Velvet—let’s have a closer look.
This time, I chose the easy way. Instead of making an effort to cautiously and time-consumptively cross the free area and deceive the motion detectors and laser light barriers, I simply took the main entrance—invisibly and together with the guard exchange.
The twelve armed men nicely walked ahead to the cellar. Where they turned to the weapons room, I could simply continue straight. Behind the next corner of the hallway, I stopped in front of a not-to-be-missed red line.
Stop. Danger of life! a paper sheet on the wall read in Japanese. The reason was clear—anyone innocently running into the grav field had to expect severe injuries. A cleanly adjusted field would simply let a human bounce off, but this was more of a grav mill than a deflecting field. And the way the field was fluctuating, not even the hallway outside of the red line was entirely safe. I had better keep some more distance.
How long would the walls withstand the wear-down bombardment? This invention couldn’t have been installed for long. The concrete paint on the walls already showed first signs.
For about half an hour, I watched the show, until I had analyzed the individual guidance signal senders’ patterns and located their positions.
The rest was a question of focusing—step by step, I advanced into the danger zone, while the precise signals of my own emitters, stolen from Frostdragon, instructed the gravitons along my way to ignore the installation’s more distant, fuzzy suggestions and to not form a dangerously disrupting gravitational vortex.
It worked, but just barely. The energy that I had to invest to operate my guidance signal emitters had to come from somewhere. So my body had to produce this energy, and I was a poor substitute for a micro fusion reactor. Which meant—when I was through and around the next corner, I was all wiped out and hardly able to maintain my camouflage.
I needed a hideout and a few minutes rest. However, of all times now, a Japanese man was deter
minedly coming toward me in the narrow cellar hallway.
Chapter Forty-Four
Just before he reached me, he turned to a side door—the men’s bathroom.
Thus, my hideout was settled—I chose the opposite door. Here were no cameras, so here I could drop my camouflage and rest. While my body regenerated and transformed nutrients into bioelectricity, I could contemplate what I just had achieved.
Probably—no, very surely, there existed nobody on Earth who had understood the Meier effect as well as I had. While my first ideas had allowed the older students to buy the improved prototype of an envelope field projector for micro fusion reactors, I had learned further theoretical basics in the course of my studies, which had helped me to assess my own work. I had focused far too much on the subject matter to recognize how deeply I had integrated the knowledge and my idea, and which possibilities resulted thereof.
Here, someone had found a new application—but how far away from what I could have achieved years ago, if I only had consciously dealt with it!
Now this understanding allowed me, of course only in connection with my stolen nano-technological enhancements, to dance through deadly grav fields as if through revolving doors. Yes, even the creation and application of bioelectricity in my body was new, hadn’t been included in the original code of the nano essence, charge 11-217. I had simply invented it.
Four Japanese were locked behind the protective field together with me. One of them supervised the installation, which consisted of a standard micro fusion reactor, an ordinary tablet computer and three projector pillars—the central one for gravitons, the two outer ones for the guidance signal emitters. I had to revise my assessment—this installation was inefficient, but it could be quickly and easily installed by laymen. A better adjustment could only be achieved with a fixed installation.
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