Bound by Honor

by Terry Mixon

  He missed, as expected, but saw three men in dark clothes scrambling for cover. They’d just come from the warehouse, so they wouldn’t be able to pursue on foot. They also weren’t the entirety of the hit squad, he was sure. Not with teams covering him and the spaceport combined.

  That would be at least a dozen attackers. Probably more. They’d be either securing their own rides or, more likely, getting to the vehicles they already had on standby. Brad was sure they had some vehicles waiting, but he had no access to them.

  His com sounded as they roared around the corner on two wheels, losing the immediate pursuit. He didn’t recognize the number but assumed it had to be their local support.

  “Madrid.”

  “Goodness, but you do love to put on a show,” a woman said. “I take it Tanaka didn’t make it.”

  Tanaka must be the man who’d been masquerading as Saburo. “I’m afraid not. We’re in a food truck making a run to the…south, it looks like. We ditched three shooters at the back of the warehouse and we’re angling for the spaceport.”

  “Bad call,” the woman said. “Security is coming from that direction, I’d wager. That’s where the rapid response teams are staged. You need to go east at least half the dome before you cut over.

  “That’ll also give you a chance at evading the bad guys. They’re swarming out of the import/export building, so I can’t be sure what direction they’ll end up going. Any space between you and them is a good thing, though.”

  “Go east,” Brad ordered the driver before returning his attention to the com. “We don’t have them in sight at the moment, so it’s possible we’ll lose them. Can you meet us?”

  “We’re loading into vehicles right now. You have my number now. Call me if they find you before we do.”

  He put his com away when she disconnected and leaned out the window far enough to see if anyone was behind them. The road looked clear.

  “Is everyone okay?” he asked.

  “Only one hit, sir,” a trooper said. “A pot fell on Ricky, but his head is too hard for it to have hurt much.”

  “You’re an ass,” the targeted trooper said when his comrades laughed. “I’m fine, sir.”

  Well, better a little horsing around than someone dead on the floor.

  “Be ready,” Brad said, chuckling. “If the bad guys find us, they’ll come in hard and fast.”

  Just as soon as he said that, two security cars with lights on and sirens howling raced past from ahead of them. They didn’t even slow at the sight of the food truck, as far as Brad could tell.

  That was a good sign. The big vehicle wasn’t what they associated with gunmen, so they didn’t see it as a threat. He had little hope those cars would run into the Cadre and stop them, though. The pirates were very skilled at getting in and out of places they shouldn’t have been without raising any eyebrows.

  His pessimism was rewarded a few minutes later when a low-slung vehicle with an open top skidded around the corner behind them, swerving to follow the food truck closely. The man in the rear of the car rose, shouldering a rocket launcher of some kind.

  Brad put a burst of submachine gun fire into him and then emptied his magazine into the driver. At this closer range, his shots were devastatingly effective, and the vehicle instantly lost speed and veered into a parked car.

  The crash was spectacular, and the only thing that made it past the pileup was the rocket launcher bouncing down the pavement of the corridor.

  “That’s torn it,” he said. “We’ll have company shortly. Driver, look for a good place to turn off this corridor.”

  He called their backup and told her where they were, ending with the fact that the pirates knew where they were.

  “We’ll hit the larger set of attackers before they get close to you,” the woman assured him. “I think the group originally at the spaceport is in front of you, though. You’ll need to dodge them. Turn left on the next major cross corridor. That’ll get you somewhere they won’t be looking for you. If they do, there’s a handy escape route.”

  “Copy that. Madrid out.” He gestured for one of the troopers to cover the window in his place, stepped up to the driver’s cab, and dropped into the passenger seat.

  “Turn left up here,” Brad ordered the driver. “It’s supposed to lead someplace they won’t expect us to run to.”

  The man did as ordered, and Brad almost immediately saw why the pirates wouldn’t expect him to run there. The corridor ended in a parking area just ahead of them that serviced the largest surface of polished ice Brad had ever seen.

  Their guide had directed them to the rink, and he couldn’t see any way his people could run. He was about to order the driver to turn around when a trooper in the back called out that they had company.

  They were trapped.

  Brad scanned the parking lot ahead of them with dismay. This was a freaking tourist destination and it was packed with innocent people. If they confronted the Cadre there, it would end in a bloodbath. What the hell had that woman been thinking?

  He frantically looked at their options and finally saw a way to get clear. At the end of the parking lot was a pier. At the end of that was a dock filled with iceriggers, most with jaunty, brightly colored sails that couldn’t possibly be for anything other than show inside the dome. If they could get one of those, they could get out onto the ice and away from these people.

  “Go right up to the pier,” he ordered the driver. “Everyone be ready to hustle. Weapons back in your bags. The less we stand out and the faster we move, the less likely we are to cause a panic.”

  Brad slid his weapon back into Saburo’s bag and clenched the door’s armrest as people dodged out of the way of the speeding food truck, shouting and shaking their fists. As soon as they reached the pier, Brad jumped out and looked back the way they’d come.

  An open-topped vehicle like the one he’d shot up was just pulling into the parking lot. The two men in it were standing up and watching him, grins spread across their faces.

  The passenger was jabbering into his com, so Brad knew the rest of the pirates would be there soon enough. Time to move along.

  “Down the pier,” he ordered when the pirates seemed disinclined to get any closer. “They probably haven’t realized we have a way out yet. Let’s try to be gone before they figure out how wrong they are.”

  As a group, they set out down the crowded pier. It was packed with families. If the pirates had followed him, he’d have been inclined to surrender without firing a shot just to spare the kids around him.

  Thankfully, he didn’t have to make that decision just yet.

  He and his men drew some odd looks as they abandoned the food truck and headed down the pier, but no one tried to stop them. The closest sections of the pier seemed to be filled with overpriced food stands and booths with games of chance that were probably heavily rigged in favor of the operators.

  The iceriggers were farther out over the ice, situated on smaller arms that came out from the main pier. Many of them looked like private vehicles, but there were some for rent. A bargain at any price, he was sure.

  His com sounded, so Brad answered after seeing it was the contact. “Did you really have to send us directly into all these people?”

  “We took out the main group already,” she objected. “No way they’d attack in public like that.”

  “You don’t know how much the Cadre hates me. We’re out on the pier and we’re about to get an icerigger from someone. Possibly at gunpoint.”

  “No need,” she said. “Look for a rental place near the end of the pier called Roscoe’s and you’ll see a big guy with a shaved head. That’s the man himself. He’ll get you into one with a driver, since I’d imagine you’re a little lacking in ice skating skills.”

  “You could say that,” Brad admitted. “Then what? We ride around until what’s left of the Cadre hit squad comes after us?”

  “You’ll only have to deal with the folks that originally came from the spaceport. They
can’t have too many heavy weapons. The driver will get you to another exit from the rink that’s close to the spaceport. At that point, you’re in the hands of your people. Good luck.”

  The woman disconnected and Brad put the com away. He strode forward until he saw the icerigger rental she’d told him about. A large man matching her description was standing there. He waved cheerily at Brad.

  “Some more vehicles just pulled up,” one of the troopers said. “They’re coming onto the pier.”

  “And we’re leaving,” Brad said. “Come on.”

  Now the race was on to see if they could lose the Cadre out on the ice and get to the spaceport before the pirates cut off their only means of escape.

  The big man motioned for Brad and his people to climb into the nearest icerigger. “I’m Roscoe. Better if I don’t hear any names from you, I think.”

  In seconds, they were all in the icerigger, and Roscoe had tossed two lines off and brought the controls to life. He adroitly applied power and sent the vehicle out onto the ice at a speed high enough to get some distance from the pier but slow enough not to capture anyone else’s attention.

  The sound of the large metal blades cutting into the ice was like the one time Brad remembered going ice skating, only a million times more intense. The temperature out over the ice plummeted and he dearly wished he had a thick jacket and gloves like Roscoe.

  The remains of the Cadre hit team arrived at the icerigger rental a minute later, but Brad’s fleeing craft was out of weapons range by then. Their armed presence had caused a panic and people were screaming and running. Some fell out onto the ice, but no one seemed seriously injured.

  “Put on some speed,” Brad told Roscoe. “They’re getting into your other icerigger.”

  That convinced the man to speed the craft up smoothly until it was racing over the smooth surface. The cold was even more biting with the increased speed.

  Behind them, the pirates had decided they knew enough to give chase without coopting a bystander to drive for them. That was a blessing. Brad wouldn’t have to worry about killing some poor bastard when the fight came.

  “I was told you knew of a different way to get to the spaceport,” Brad said. “Is that true?”

  The man nodded. “Sure. They have to have a way to pump the water to the cargo shuttles at the port. It comes from a heated zone way down under the rink. I can get you to the tunnel serving those pipes.”

  “Can you beat the pirates there?”

  “You mean the buggers chasing us? Certainly, supposing they don’t just flip the rigger and kill themselves first.”

  Brad had to admit the pirates weren’t performing all that well.

  “The sail is for show, right? How does this thing move?”

  “It uses the same kind of gravity control they use in flyers back on Earth. Rather than lifting us, they propel us forward with speed. The ice doesn’t have much friction, so it doesn’t take much.”

  Brad checked his wrist-comp. Saburo wouldn’t get there in time to provide any covering fire. They were going to have to keep the pirates occupied for a bit before they made a run for the spaceport tunnel.

  “Is it just me or are they speeding up?” one of the troopers asked.

  The enemy icerigger was getting closer, Brad had to admit. He took a moment to scan the area around them and was pleased to see that only a couple of other iceriggers were anywhere close. If this came to a fight, he wouldn’t be risking a lot of people.

  “How maneuverable is this thing?” Brad asked the driver.

  “See those straps? They’re there to keep people from being thrown off the rigger during risky maneuvers. And inexperienced fellows have been known to flip a rigger when they did something particularly perilous. Why?”

  Brad grinned. “Have you ever heard of a game called chicken?”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Roscoe stared at Brad in alarm. “Of course I know what chicken is. Have you lost your mind? We can get away from them!”

  “And we probably will,” Brad said levelly, “but they’re not showing any signs of losing control. Someone over there has figured things out, but if we make them do something like dodging, what happens to them?”

  “They’ll probably overcorrect,” the man said immediately. “Everyone without experience does the first few times. That’s why it’s critical to have someone seasoned at your elbow when learning the ice.”

  The man seemed to consider that for a few seconds. “That’ll be ugly. The steering blade will tip them over for sure, and that’ll be fatal at this speed. But why not just try to beat them to the tunnel?”

  Brad hugged himself in the cold. “Because they have antivehicle weapons and we don’t. Imagine what happens if they get close enough to hit us with a rocket.”

  “If we turn around, they’ll sure as hell be in range!”

  “They almost certainly don’t have experience with vehicular fighting. We’ll close the range before they understand how fast that’ll happen. Those kinds of weapons have to go a certain distance before they arm.

  “If we come around and charge them, we cut that distance fast. Even if they fire it at us, it won’t go off. If we keep running, they’ll get a comfortable range and start shooting explosive munitions at us. If we run out of space and try to get off the ice, they’ll blow us to pieces.”

  Roscoe cursed. “Tell your people to hang on. A close hit might make me lose control.”

  The man sent their icerigger into a wide turn as Brad warned his people and then held on himself, watching the pirates behind them. The enemy vessel corrected course to keep coming directly at the fleeing vessel, but they didn’t seem to grasp that this was a significant course change yet.

  While this was different from a space battle, Brad could see the maneuver playing out in his head. The range was closing slowly now, though a bit faster than before, but that would change quickly.

  “You’ll need to vary your speed in an unpredictable manner,” Brad told Roscoe. “And don’t stay on a constant course that they can predict.”

  “I better get combat pay for this,” the man grumbled. “Security is going to grill me, I’ll end up losing one or both iceriggers, and I could die!”

  “We can fix everything except you dying, so I suggest you focus on that part.”

  Brad turned to his troopers. “Get your weapons out, men. Wait for my order and then open fire when I say. It’ll be at the closest pass, so it’ll happen fast.”

  He checked his weapon and satchel. He’d emptied the magazine he’d fired earlier, but there were five more in the satchel.

  Brad swapped out the spent magazine for a full one and waited. Roscoe was jigging course and varying their speed, but there was only so much he could do. A miss was still likely to be a close one.

  Worse, since his enemies were unskilled at this kind of thing, bad luck could convert what would’ve been a near miss into a hit. Or a miss forward of the icerigger might wreck the ice and cause them to flip.

  If he’d been in the pirates’ shoes, that’s what he’d have done: tried to put a crater in front of the target vessel. Hopefully, these people weren’t that smart.

  Of course, they might not even have a rocket launcher. Sometimes, the Everlit smiled on them.

  “I see a rocket launcher on the bow,” one of the troopers called out.

  So much for positive thinking.

  Brad saw the man setting up for his shot, lying down on the deck to get the most stable shot. It looked as if he might have some skill in firing the weapon, curse the luck.

  “Punch the speed as high as you can,” Brad ordered their driver. “Hang on, everyone!”

  The icerigger bucked a little as it jumped forward, gaining maybe ten percent more speed moments before the rocket launcher fired.

  The bright missile raced across toward them, falling behind the icerigger after that last burst of speed. It passed maybe twenty meters back and hit the ice off to their left rear. It didn’t explode, thou
gh. The rocket simply bounced off the ice at a flat angle and went clattering across the surface.

  “Looks like it was set for impact detonation, sir,” one of the men said. “There wasn’t enough of a hit to trigger it. Someone is going to have a fun time defusing that.”

  Their icerigger was now arcing in toward the enemy. The next shot was going to be easier for the rocketeer.

  “Roscoe, when I give you the word, I want you to go as hard to the right as you safely can, then straighten out when you’re going right at them. Men, half on each side. Be ready to fire when they dodge off our course.”

  “What do I do if they don’t?” the man demanded.

  “Brace for impact. I wouldn’t worry about it too much. If they don’t break first, we won’t have time to do more than twitch, anyway.”

  He focused his attention on the enemy gunner and positioned himself on the driver’s left. When he thought the man was about ready to fire, Brad tapped Roscoe on the shoulder. “Now!”

  The second rocket flared toward them just after Roscoe turned them. The projectile had a small arc this time and hit the ice where they would’ve been if they’d maintained course and speed.

  The rocket detonated, blowing ice in every direction in a hail of deadly fragments. Brad ducked his head but otherwise used his body to shield Roscoe. A couple of pieces of ice slammed into him hard, making him grunt, but they didn’t penetrate his armored skinsuit.

  Now their icerigger was on a direct course for the enemy and the range spooled down at an insane rate. The rocketeer might get one more shot off, but it wouldn’t have the travel time to arm.

  “Fire on my command,” Brad said, aiming at the rapidly approaching icerigger. “Three… two…”

  The rocket launcher fired, sending the munition right at them. For a moment, Brad thought the rocket would hit the icerigger’s hull, but it cleared the front by the narrowest of margins, flashing to Brad’s left close enough to singe him with burning propellant.