by Jake Elwood
He took out the spyder and pulled it away from the spool. His first instinct was throw the tiny robot, but it didn't have enough mass to fly as far as he needed it to fly. He wrapped a loop of wire around his fist instead, the spyder cold against the heel of his hand, then stood. Another shot flashed past him on his right, and he stepped right, knowing the pilot would compensate by shooting farther left. Sure enough, the next shot missed him on the left. Jerry threw the spool up and forward, then stepped left as the next shot burned a hole in his jacket and raised blisters along his ribs.
When the wire pulled tight it would be more than fine enough to cut his fingers off. He spent a bad moment standing frozen, unable to think of something he could wrap the wire around. Then the spool glittered as it came flashing down on the far side of the walkway. The bus was passing underneath, and Jerry, all out of time, jerked his hand to the left. The wires crossed, and the spool whipped around in tight circles as the wire wrapped itself around the wire just above Jerry's hand.
The spyder was against his right hand, the wire looped around his fingers. He wound the tiny wire around his left forearm, hoping the sleeve of his coat was tougher than it looked. He managed two loops before the bus raced past the walkway and the wire pulled tight.
Jerry flew back, yanked by his left arm, his right hand pulled along by the loops around his fingers. He swung up and forward, working his right hand free, and twisted his body so he could see back. He was expecting the wire to snap at any instant, but it held, for the moment at least.
He reached the top of his swing and started back down, his body turning, the bikes coming into view. They were nearly on him, and he saw a woman on the nearest bike, her mouth open in astonishment as he swung toward her. His body was still turning, but he got a leg up and managed to plant a foot on the bike's front fender as it whipped past.
The impact was far worse than he expected. Pain lashed through his leg from the sole of his foot to his hip, and he felt the muscles of his lower back lock up. He spun wildly, completely out of control, and somewhere in there the wire either broke or came untangled. He fell.
Panic filled his mind, but he fought it, telling himself he had the rest of his life to find the emergency button on the antigrav harness. If a vehicle was going to hit him before he hit the ground, well, there was nothing he could do about it. Best to forget it. The sight of hard pavement rushing toward him wasn't helping, so he squeezed his eyes shut, all of his attention on his fingers. He found the harness controls just over his navel and felt for the button, aware that it was all taking much too long. He hit the button, the harness yanked at him, and then he slammed into the street.
Pain preoccupied him for a time. He lay face-down, his ears ringing, feeling as if the hard syncrete beneath him was swooping and diving. The pain from his arm was gone, lost in a welter of fresh damage. He wanted nothing so much as to lie there feeling sorry for himself, but in his imagination the hoverbikes came circling back and had plenty of time to take aim at his helpless prone body.
He rolled over. Stifling a groan as he did so proved too much for him. He let the sound out, a long, rattling, ragged sound of pure suffering that made him feel slightly better. He felt as if his bones had nearly been jarred free of his flesh. Everything hurt.
Flopping onto his back started the pavement dipping and diving again. He lay still, waiting for it to subside, waiting for the agony to recede. His spine was intact, or he'd never have made it onto his back. Both eyes worked, too. Taking comfort from these facts, Jerry made himself lift his head.
The hoverbike that he'd kicked was down. There was a long jagged line of cracks and splinters in the windows underneath the pedestrian overpass, and bits of the bike littered the street. He could just make out the body of the biker, a still form up against the base of a wall with pedestrians starting to gather.
"Are you okay, Mister?" A man's face loomed above Jerry, the forehead wrinkled in concern.
Jerry stretched a hand toward him. "Help me up."
"I don't know if that's a good –"
Jerry kicked him, a weak blow to the shin that made the man squawk. "Help me up, damn it."
"Fine." The man caught his wrist and heaved. It took a while, but Jerry managed to roll forward onto his knees and finally lurched to his feet. Then he clung to the man's arm while the city spun around him.
"You don't look so good. You should lie back down."
Jerry didn't answer, just grimaced at the man. Getting up had hurt far too much. Lying back down was out of the question.
Flashing lights strobed across the buildings around him as emergency vehicles converged. It was past time to make himself scarce. "Thanks," Jerry muttered, and let go of the man. His first couple of steps almost cost him his balance, but he recovered and went staggering off down the street.
"Wait, you shouldn't wander off. There are ambulances coming." The man hurried along at Jerry's elbow, making a gesture that encompassed Jerry from head to foot. "Believe me, buddy, you want an ambulance."
"I appreciate your help. Now get lost." He turned his back to the pest and headed for the corner, stumbling along as quickly as he could. All his major bones seemed to be intact, though he was pretty sure he's broken a few metacarpals. He could take his time recuperating if he could just make it to a cross street before the cops arrived.
The back of his left hand was wet with blood, and he examined his arm. The wire, as thin as a sharp knife blade, had nearly severed the bottom third of his coat sleeve. There was a gash in the sleeve of his shirt and a bone-deep cut in the side of his wrist. He couldn't pick out the sting of it through the fog of pain coming from all his other injuries.
The first emergency vehicle swept past behind him, the breeze of its passage ruffling his hair. He didn't look. There would be cameras mounted on the vehicle. He didn't want to give away any more information than he could help.
He was almost at the corner when a couple of police hovercars swooped in, the sirens giving a low wail as they neared street level. Jerry saw them reflected in the glass before him as he reached the sidewalk. He hadn't the slightest doubt that the pest would be pointing him out to the cops as soon as they left their vehicles.
Gritting his teeth against the pain, he shuffled around the corner. A taxi would be good right about now. The cops would track it down, but he could get well away from the scene of the crash and muddy the trail. The streets were nearly deserted, though, with no sign of a cab or a call box. There wasn't even another bus. A couple of private hovercars went past, one story up. Jerry hunched his shoulders, slouched to make his face harder to see, and limped toward the next corner.
Tires rumbled on syncrete behind him. He turned his face away, then reconsidered. If it was cops, he was done anyway. If it was a taxi, he didn't want to miss it. He turned.
Cops. Damn it. He did his best to look bored, swung his gaze back to the sidewalk in front of him, and kept walking.
"You there."
He ignored the amplified voice, kept walking.
A spotlight lit up the sidewalk around him. "Yes, you. The one trailing blood all over the sidewalk."
Jerry stopped, put up a hand to shade his eyes, and looked at the police car.
"Stay where you're at. Medics are on their way. In the meantime, I need you to put your hands on your head."
Jerry complied, cursing to himself. About the only chance he had of talking his way out of this was to claim he was disoriented from the accident. Faking a bit of dizziness wasn't difficult at all, and as soon as he started to wobble the dizziness acquired its own momentum.
The cop didn't quite catch him before he hit the sidewalk.
Chapter 4
Fourteen hours later, Jerry lay on his back in a hospital bed with a pair of small robots parked on the floor near his feet. The medical bot was there to adjust his medications and monitor his vital signs, particularly his liver. He was pumped full of enough pain medication to keep a large house party going into the wee hours.
Whenever the pain meds made him feel giddy, a glance at the other bot sobered him right up. The police bot couldn't detain him. Instead it would roll along behind him if he tried to leave, with a blaring siren and flashing lights. Jerry was under arrest, and the bot wasn't going to let him forget it any time soon.
Police interrogations were never fun, though the haze of drugs had made this one less gruelling than most. The local cops had finally left in disgust half an hour before. Jerry hadn't told them yet about the explosives on the opera house roof. He figured he'd send an anonymous message just as soon as they let him go.
Right after he sent a warning to Cassie. The people who'd chased him through the heart of the city likely knew his name and address by now. That they would go after Cassie or Lark to get to him was unlikely, he thought, but possible. The cops weren't letting him send messages, and every second that he spent incommunicado chafed at him. He was just about ready to clamber out of the bed and head for the nearest public terminal, the siren on the police bot be damned. Only the fear of making things worse kept him on his back.
That, and a pervading weakness in the aftermath of surgery.
The door to his room slid open, and he put on his most vague, confused expression. Two people came in, a man and a woman about as different as two people could be, but with the same world-weary eyes that Jerry had seen on cops all over the galaxy.
"Good morning, Mr. O'Malley. I'm Colonel Kress." Kress was a pale white woman, slender, hardly bigger than Lark, with wispy blonde hair and translucent skin that showed the delicate structure of her bones. "This is Inspector Al Fazil."
Al Fazil had to be three times the mass of Kress, a tall, thick-bodied man with brown skin and a head of thick, luxurious hair. By the looks of his jaw he'd shaved recently and would need to shave again by lunchtime.
They both wore business suits, but even there, Jerry saw distinct differences. Kress dressed like a Zemoth businessperson, in a dark jacket and trousers with pale pinstripes. She could have mingled with the crowds in the galactic core and looked only slightly out of date. Al Fazil had a jacket with tiny lapels and white buttons, a design that had gone out of style around the time Jerry was born.
"You had quite a busy night," Al Fazil said, his voice a deep rumble. He had a distinct, clipped accent, and Jerry struggled to place it. "Why don't you tell us about it?"
Skyland, that's it. He's a Skylander. That explains the clothes. The people in the orbiting city saw themselves as an elite surrounded by barbarians, and kept themselves isolated. They didn't always know when the rest of the galaxy had left them behind. What's he doing planetside? Skyland cops have no jurisdiction here.
"It's all a blur," Jerry said, putting a quaver in his voice. "I was walking along and this hoverbike crashed into a wall in front of me. I guess some of the shrapnel hit me." He rubbed a hand across his face. "It was awful."
"Save your crap for the local cops," Al Fazil said without a scrap of sympathy. "What is your connection to the Plateau Society?"
"Never heard of them," Jerry said honestly. He dropped the disoriented victim routine, since it was obviously not working.
Kress gave him a hard look. "What were you doing with a spyder on the roof of the opera house?"
Jerry gave her his best clueless look.
She took a PAD out of her pocket, tapped an icon, and turned the screen around so he could see it. The footage was grainy, something from a ground-level security camera, but Jerry was clearly recognizable, fleeing across the roof of the shopping complex with blast shots peppering the chimneys around him. He winced at the memory.
The next clip was from a nav camera on a vehicle. It showed Jerry on the roof of the bus, tossing the spool of wire over the pedestrian overpass. Then a hoverbike rushed past and the vehicle turned onto a side street, ending the clip.
"Why don't you start at the beginning," Al Fazil said, "and tell us everything."
Jerry sighed, then took a deep breath and started to speak. He gave the two of them a carefully-edited version of the previous night's events, making no mention of Lark. He explained that circumventing security systems was a necessary and legitimate part of his legal business as a bounty hunter, and claimed he'd sent a spyder onto the roof as an exercise, a matter of satisfying his professional curiosity. That earned him some skeptical glances.
After that he stuck to the truth. He told them about the mystery shapes, likely explosives, and the camera mounted above to keep an eye on them. He described the flying robot, the sniper, the goons on hoverbikes. He left nothing out.
When he finished there was a long moment of silence. Kress gave a derisive snort, and Al Fazil said, "You expect us to believe this ridiculous tale?"
Jerry shrugged. "I don't much care what happens inside your head." It didn't help, but he'd been grilled by enough cops to know that nothing he said was going to help. He made himself as comfortable as he could and waited for the cross-examination to begin.
It was every bit as bad as he expected. They asked him the same questions over and over, waiting for him to change his story or make a mistake. Jerry answered, reaching deep inside himself for patience. When he heard the same question for the third time he closed his eyes and ignored them.
"Mr. O'Malley? Mr. O'Malley. Jerry!" A hard finger tapped the sole of his foot, and Jerry opened one eye. Al Fazil glowered down at him. "What were you doing with a spyder on the roof of the opera house?"
"Snooping." Jerry closed his eye.
"Why?"
"Curiosity."
Al Fazil tapped Jerry's foot until Jerry opened his eyes again. "You have some very strange hobbies, Mr. O'Malley."
Jerry shrugged. "And you're a lousy interrogator. We all have our shortcomings."
Kress turned her face away from Al Fazil, not quite hiding a smile.
"What," said Al Fazil, "is your connection to the Plateau Society?"
"What's the Plateau Society?"
"We're asking the questions here," the inspector told him sternly.
"Not anymore, you're not." Jerry was fed up and feeling petulant. "I've given you my full cooperation and you've responded with browbeating and petty harassment. Well, I'm done cooperating. I'll answer your questions when you answer a few of mine. For instance, what assurance do I have that you even have any authority here? You're a Skylander. That ridiculous suit is a dead giveaway. Since when does the government of Skyland have any jurisdiction down here?"
Al Fazil frowned like an Old Testament prophet. Kress spoke up, though. "The federal government is cooperating with Skyland Security and Intelligence regarding a certain matter of mutual interest. Mr. Al Fazil, as a courtesy from the Prime Minister's office, has been granted the same authority that I have. And let me assure you, I have the authority to interrogate you around the clock and toss you into a dark cell when I'm done, without so much as the need to press charges."
The words were harsh, but her voice and expression were almost conciliatory. Jerry nodded his thanks and said, "What's the Plateau Society?"
They stared at him, stony and silent.
"Oh, come on. I can look it up as soon as I get my PAD back, right? Why don't you just tell me now, so I know what you're talking about?"
The two investigators exchanged glances. Then Kress said, "The Plateau Society is a Zemoth organization dedicated to driving Skyland out of Zemoth."
Jerry blinked. "Skyland is already out of Zemoth. They're in orbit, aren't they?"
She nodded, looking a trifle exasperated. "The Society believes that Skyland basically manipulates the government of Zemoth from on high. They want all Skylanders banned from setting foot on the planet. That's officially what they want. What they really want is to blast Skyland out of the sky."
"That's ridiculous," Jerry said.
"No arguments here," Kress replied. "They believe it, though. Bunch of bloody fanatics. They pretend to be a political movement, but they have a militant wing as well. We know they'd love to take a shot at President Hig
hstar during his visit. Those explosives you saw, if you're telling the truth, make me think they want to move against his daughter Kaia. She's supposed to view the Orb of the Stars later today."
Al Fazil shot her a dirty look.
"What?" she said. "It's not exactly a secret." She turned back to Jerry. "The visit's been cancelled already. Be sure to tell that to your bosses, if you really are a Plateau Society agent."
Al Fazil said, "Colonel …"
"He's not one of them," she told Al Fazil patiently. "He killed one of them, remember?"
Jerry said, "Killed?"
Kress nodded. "The woman on the crashed hoverbike. She died a couple of hours ago."
"Oh." He felt hollow all of a sudden. She'd been trying to kill him, and not too worried about bystanders in her line of fire, but still …
"You did the planet a favor," Kress said, and Al Fazil nodded. Her voice softened. "I know what it feels like. I know it doesn't help right now. But you did the right thing."
Jerry stared at her for a moment, then nodded. "Thanks."
"I assume you haven't told us everything," she said. "I don't know what you were doing with that spyder, but you're not with the Society, so I don't really care."
Al Fazil folded his arms, looking unsatisfied. She ignored him.
"I think they were planning some sort of attack on the president's daughter," she continued. "You stumbled into the middle of it, and they panicked." She shook her head. "Wild chases and gunfire in the streets. They're usually much more cautious. It's safe to say that Hearne wasn't on site."
Jerry filed the name away to research later.
"You spooked them, they chased you, a bike crashed and you took a tumble. Now they'll abandon that plan, and they'll probably forget about you."
"I hope so," Jerry said.
