“I think we need Plan D,” I say, and I’m about to get to my feet when I hear the unmistakable sound of armalite fire.
“Durango! Status!” Aziz is on his feet, staggering but in one piece.
I jump up. “A-OK, Chief.”
“New plan,” he says, checking. “Our target is now the red truck. You take it out, and I’ll handle the Razor.”
“You’re sure?” I ask.
“Roger that,” he says, and does a quick system check. “This has been coming for a long time.”
I nod, because what do you say at a time like this? I start to run, but he grabs my shoulder.
“And Durango? Try not to blow up the red one. We’re running out of war trucks.”
We split up. There’s no time for stealth, and with the confusion, there’s no need for it. As I run, I glance at the Razor’s truck and see his bodyguards open up on Aziz. Bullets bounce off the chief’s armor as he leaps onto the hood of the truck and grabs his brother by the ankles. With a quick yank, the Razor slams into the roof, the metal buckling with his weight, but he comes up swinging.
Not with a fist, but with the straight razor.
Aziz raises a forearm to block the blade, but the Razor parries. Grabs Aziz in a headlock and yanks off his helmet. He rears back and, using it like a club, slams Aziz in the head, catapulting him from the hood.
With a roar that is more harii than Regulator, the chief dives into the darkness after his brother.
“Aziz!” I stop, turn, and start to run to his defense.
“No heroics!” Vienne yells, grabbing my belt. “It’s his fight! Finish your objective!”
I shuck off her hand, intent on a rescue.
“Cowboy,” Mimi says. “She is correct in her assertion.”
Now they’re ganging up on me. Just like old times. “Fine!” I yell. “But this better work!”
We hit the red truck simultaneously. Vienne vaults into the truck bed before the wobblie manning it can even spin around. A knee to the face, an elbow smash to the throat, and he’s done for.
In the commotion I do a hook slide over the hood, yank open the driver’s door, and haul the driver out by the ear. I finish him with a rabbit punch to make sure he’ll cause no more trouble.
I aim my armalite at the wobblie who’s riding shotgun. “My armalite against your pissant blaster? You lose!”
Seeing the situation clearly, the wobblie tosses the blaster at the floorboard and throws up his hands. “Mercy!”
Vienne yanks open his door and drags him out. “Forget the surrender, get out of the truck!”
That’s my Vienne. I jump into the driver’s seat and reach for the ignition button as the former passenger makes a run for it.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Vienne yells.
“Driving!”
“I do the driving!” she yells.
“You do the shooting!”
“I’m better at both!”
“Not at the same time!”
“Regulators!” we hear Aziz cry out.
Less than ten meters from us, our chief is lying on his back, his nose bleeding, mouth busted.
The Razor stands over him, a revolver in his hand, shoving the clip in, taking aim.
“That is not the Razor,” Mimi says.
“Krill?” Holy wa cào, how many lives can one human have?
“Drop it!” Vienne screams. “Or I’ll drop you!”
Krill turns, laughing, the gun still pointed at the chief. “What you going to do, dalit? Shoot me? Your chief couldn’t kill me!” He yanks aside his shirt. “My armor’s as good as yours.”
“And your head’s just as thick!” Vienne yells.
With movement so lighting fast that I barely see her hand, Vienne flicks her wrist, and I see the glint of metal reflecting the light from the fire.
A second later, a combat knife appears in the center of Krill’s forehead. He topples like a dead tree.
“But not thick enough,” I say.
Vienne runs for Aziz, calling back to me. “Pick us up!”
I punch the accelerator, slamming his truck into the Razor’s and scattering the đibui converging on us. Then throw the passenger door open. “Get in!”
Vienne pushes Aziz onto the seat, his hand pressed against his temple, blood dripping between his fingers. Not enough blood for a gunshot.
Vienne slams the door and jumps into the truck bed. “Drive!”
I hit the pedal. The tires slip in the sludgy track, then catch, rocketing us forward on the mud-slick road.
“What heading?” I shout through the broken rear window.
But it’s Aziz who answers. “South,” he says in a ragged voice. Along the river. Toward Edda.”
“Edda?” I say, remembering that it’s nothing more than a ghost town, abandoned by the CorpCom government years ago. “What’s in Edda?
Aziz looks at me and says, in a barely audible whisper, “Valhalla.”
I hit the accelerator and pop the clutch, and the engine clatters into overdrive. The tachometer rises to seven thousand RPM before I shift again. High beams lighting the picked-over sorghum fields on either side of the track, we careen along the road, fishtailing like a derailed TransPort train. I manhandle the wheel, trying to keep her from spinning out, and squeeze with my gut to keep the bile from rising in my stomach.
Through the rearview, I catch a glimpse of Vienne. Steady on her feet. Unfazed by the g-forces the rear wheel drive is creating. Calm. Assured. Waiting for a target to emerge from the darkness behind us. If he wasn’t careful, a soldier could fall in love with a susie like that.
“Hostiles!” Vienne yells. “Six o’clock!”
“How many?”
“Three!” she yells. “One riding shotgun! One with the flamethrower! Razor at the wheel!”
I cut across the road, taking evasive, and lay on the accelerator as the rear window explodes.
It’s the Razor.
On my flank. Running without lights.
Kuso.
Another shot, and Plexi shards spray toward my face. Instinct turns my head a fraction of a second before the sharp plastic pings off my helmet.
“That was not instinct,” Mimi says. “That was me.”
“Thanks! My face doesn’t need more scars!”
High beams flash across my mirror, and I hear the grunting roar of the Razor’s black truck gaining on me. It’s got a bigger engine and armor plating on the hood and doors, which means I’m outmatched.
But not outgunned. Not with the best Regulator on the planet covering my back.
“Hold it steady!” Vienne yells. “I can’t get a shot!”
“I’m trying! This thing is like wrestling a Big Daddy bare-handed!”
“Try harder!”
“You can’t do everything, Vienne!”
“Yes I can!”
Aziz moans, blood from his head wound seeping out.
With a blast of lights and an air horn, the black truck swings right and comes roaring up beside us. The Razor slams his front fender into my bumper, trying to spin me out. I tap the brakes and turn left away from the spin, cut the wheel, and let the natural g-force spin me in a one-eighty so we’re dead in the road, but Vienne has a clear shot at the hooded wobblie on the flamethrower.
All the blighter has to do is hit the trigger, and we’re a plate of dunny pie.
What’re you waiting for? I have a chance to think just before Vienne fires three rounds. The first hits the wobblie. The second hits the barrel of the flamethrower, and the third puts a hole in one of the Razor’s four rear tires. Let’s see the black truck keep up with me now.
“Go!” Vienne yells, and slaps the roof of the truck.
When I hit the gas again, we shoot past the stopped black truck, throwing a wave of thick, stinky ooze across the windows. The Razor curses and guns his own engine, but in the side mirror, I see his rear tires spin helplessly.
“Got your ass!” I yell, and pump a fist in triumph.
> “Do not celebrate too soon,” Mimi warns me.
And sure enough, just as I thought we’d gotten free, the black truck’s headlights find us, and with a surge that I didn’t think possible, it gobbles up the ground between us, hanging on my rear like it’s stuck to the bumper.
Then, in a heartbeat, he’s pulling alongside my left. Vienne pumps bullets into the cabin, but the Razor is unfazed. He pulls up close, so that we’re nose to nose, window to window.
He looks over at me and salutes.
“Here is your beautiful death, Regulator!” he roars, and yanks hard on the steering wheel.
His truck slams into mine, pushing me out of the road, across the sorghum fields, and into the electric fence. Vienne jumps from the bed onto the flamethrower stand, reaching for the grips.
The Razor swings behind me and flashes his brights to blind Vienne. His bumper collides with mine, slamming my rear end into the fence again.
Booth trucks rip across the chain link, juice arcing like caged lighting.
“Vienne!” I call through the window.
“Shut up and drive!”
“Don’t,” Aziz rasps, “kill him. He’s my brother.”
“Remind him of that!” I fight the wheel, trying to break contact with the fence. It wrenches out of my hands as we hit a deep rut. The truck bounces, slamming my helmet against the roof. But the collision shakes us loose from the chain link.
“So much for shock absorbers!” I hoot, and steer hard to the left, fishtailing again. In the rearview, I watch Vienne kneel—firing position. Her laser sight bounces across the black truck’s windshield like a red jitterbug on an oil slick.
“Hold it steady for just three seconds!” she says. “That’s all I need!”
I torque the wheel, and the truck careens through the sorghum field, ripping up stalks.. “Mimi, do you have a map of this area in your data banks?”
“Affirmative.”
I switch off my headlights. “Use the GPS telemetry functions in my suit to guide me.”
“We have not tested this particular function.”
“Like my old chief always said, there’s a first time for everything.”
Razor’s truck speeds alongside us, but I steer hard to the right.
“What are you doing?” Vienne yells.
“Saving our butts!”
“I think my butt was safer,” she shouts, “when I had a clear line of sight!”
We cut out of the sorghum field again and onto the road.
“Veer left,” Mimi says.
Without thinking, I follow her instructions. We hold course for a kilometer, then—
“Veer sharp right,” Mimi says. “Sharper.”
I steer off the road, blasting through a fallow field. My course is straight.
For now.
“The target is approaching,” Mimi says.
“The Razor’s on your six! But shoot fast,” I yell, “we’re losing speed!”
Behind us . . . a growling engine.
High beams.
A grill like an evil grin, bearing down on us.
It’s now or never.
Vienne aims carefully and quickly—and fires three-round bursts into the front wheels.
The right tire explodes.
The truck screws its front end into the field, diving in the dirt like a chigoe burrowing a hole.
It rolls three times.
Before it stops.
Its remaining headlight shines on, casting light and shadow on the dead sorghum stalks like skeletons in a boneyard.
“I was wrong,” Vienne says through the window. “I only needed two seconds.”
She slides in and checks on Aziz, putting pressure on his wound and saying something I can’t hear.
“Whew,” I say, exhausted, and look back toward the road. “We did it.”
“Cowboy,” Mimi says, “you make too many assumptions.”
“What are you talking about?” I say, and hit my headlights.
In the road less than twenty meters away stands the Razor. On his shoulder is a rocket launcher loaded with an RPG.
“Incoming!” I yell, and stomp the brakes.
The truck fishtails, exposing my flank, just as the grenade launches with a characteristic and terrifying whoosh.
The RPG hits the rear of my truck and explodes, blowing half the tail end off. The tailgate drops behind like a broken wing. I fight to keep the tires on the road, but the truck spins out, doing a one-eighty.
The engine dies, and the passenger side is left exposed.
I hit the ignition button. Pump the gas.
Vienne kicks her door open. She steps over Aziz and balances on the frame, holding her armalite with the same casual ease of a sniper aiming at targets in a shooting range.
“May my aim be true,” she says. “May my finger find the trigger. May my heart be strong enough to pull it.”
I see the shape of her body silhouetted in the headlights. The light forms a halo around her head.
An angel of death.
Vienne fires as the Razor loads a second grenade into his launcher.
The bullet shatters the night.
Then shatters the Razor’s shoulder.
He screams and falls to his knees, clutching the wound. “You shot me!”
Vienne holds up the clip marked with an X. “Explosive rounds.”
Which can shred worn-out armor like his. Even nanobots need rejuvenation once in a while.
“Don’t kill him,” Aziz rasps. “Valhalla.”
“No talk about, Valhalla, huh?” I check Aziz’s wound. The blood is clotting. He won’t bleed to death. “You’re not going to the afterlife on my watch. Just hang on.”
I exit the cab and run to the other truck, where Vienne has knocked the Razor to the ground. She stands over him, finger on the trigger.
“Go ahead,” the Razor says. “Kill me. With Charlotte gone, I don’t care.”
“Well, I do,” she says. “You hurt my chief.”
“Vienne,” I say. “Not today. Aziz wants him alive.”
“Today, he is the enemy.”
“He’s one of us,” I say, moving slowly, afraid that she might kill him before I can talk her out of it. “A Regulator, trying to make his way in a world that doesn’t want our kind anymore.”
“What are we supposed to do with him, then?” she says. “If we leave him, he’ll die anyway.”
“Load him in the back,” I say. “We’ll sort things out when we reach Edda.”
“Roger that,” she says, and coldcocks him with the butt of her rifle. “But you get to carry his sorry carcass.”
Fair enough. I grab the Razor, throwing him into a rescue carry, and dump him onto what remains of the truck bed. I tie his good arm to the flamethrower so that he won’t fall out—or get any ideas if he wakes up.
I get behind the wheel and start the engine. “Mimi, can you give me directions to Edda?”
“Affirmative.”
Vienne grabs the wheel. “Do you know where we’re going?”
“Across the river and toward the east,” I say. “Which is where Aziz wanted us to go—Edda. He keeps calling it Valhalla.”
“Then you navigate, and I’ll take the wheel,” she says, and turns off the ignition. “I’d like to reach Valhalla without being dead.”
Chapter 10
Edda
ANNOS MARTIS 238. 2. 4. 05:09
Today, Edda is a farming village in the middle of nowhere, fifty kilometers east of New Eden in a wide-open plain. The people who live here survive on subsistence farming and selling handmade goods to the đibui in the Warren. Villages like it are a dime a dozen across Mars, but Edda is special because of its past. Until the CorpComs took over, it was a hub for mining distribution, with hundreds of storage buildings, but with the rising oceans and the end of the guanite trade, most of buildings have fallen into disuse and have been stripped for scrap metal. There is, though, a cluster of buildings still standing in center of the old d
istribution center. It’s here where Vienne hits the brakes and the abused red war truck comes to a halt.
As soon as it stops rolling, I jump out and kiss the pavement. “Dry land. Thanks be to the Bishop, I survived!”
“Methinks the lady doth protest too much,” Mimi says.
“Meaning?” I ask as I hop to my feet and take a stretch. It’s been a long, exhausting, but informative ride.
“Meaning,” she replies, “that you are developing a penchant for melodrama. Would you like me to calculate a behavioral trajectory that would eliminate it?”
“Keep your paws off my melodrama!”
Vienne slams the door as she gets out. “Did anyone ever tell you that you’re funny?”
“Many times.”
“They lied.” She covers her brow to block out the dawn’s light shining in her eyes. “You said it would be here, but it’s not.”
I lean on the hood of the truck next to her. “Sure it is.”
I put two fingers in my mouth and whistle reveille. A few seconds later, a rolling door opens, and Pinch walks out from a storage building thirty meters away.
“Took you long enough, Chief. Chief?” Pinch says, and her eyes meet ours, searching for the man she expected to find. “Where is he?”
Vienne and I step aside, revealing Aziz sitting on the front seat. His head is bandaged, and he’s conscious, which is more than I expected. The chief is one tough hombre.
“No!” Pinch shouts and runs toward the truck. “Aziz!”
“He’s fine. They both are,” I say, trying to catch her. “We patched them up.”
“Both?” She rushes past us and almost jumps into the seat with Aziz. She grabs his right hand, pressing it against her heart, while caressing his cheek with the back of her fingers. They both talk, but I can’t hear what they’re saying. Don’t want to.
“Well,” I say. “Never saw that one coming.”
“Because you’re as dense as Krill’s skull,” Vienne says. “But I have to admit I didn’t see this one coming, either. How did you know?”
“Pinch never seemed like the kind to desert her crew,” I say, walking toward a storage building with a fresh gasoline stain on the pavement. “And Sarge seemed like the kind of fossiker not to notice that or care. All he wanted was the money and maybe Pinch for a bonus, but Pinch told Aziz she’d meet him in Valhalla. I put two and two together.”
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