The craft flew into a barrage of invisible death. Though undoubtedly armored, the hull of the incoming flyer proved no thicker than paper against the ultraviolet lances that Bobbi and Violet poured into it. Still distant enough to appear as a faint dark gray shadow against the black bowl of night, the machine spewed sparks and flames and fell out of the sky like a crow that landed too close to an electrical line.
As if to retort, a guttural buzzing rose behind them. Bobbi threw herself to the ground as the side of the truck she leaned against sang a chorus of perforation while a hail of bullets chewed through its metal skin.
At the edge of its maximum range.
No sooner had she spoken than a storm landed on her. The shuddering hum of something falling out of the sky reached her ears, followed by a great crashing wave of fear. She looked to the far side of the bridge, and there it was – the flyer, twin-boomed and insectile, a graceful gray blank in the lights of the bridge, almost on top of them, its chin turret spinning. Bobbi barely had a chance to gasp “Oh, shit!” and roll away before the thunderous buzzing of its cannon filled the air once more. A wave of heat, sound, and bone-shaking force slammed into her, blasting everything into static.
For a moment, the world seemed to burn away, white light flaring and dying. Bobbi opened her eyes. The truck still stood over her, but smoke and the guttering light of flames licked the shadows in which she lay. Bobbi leaned out, and saw with horror that the car they had been driving was now a blasted, flaming wreck. Pieces lay burning on the deck, and her ears rang so loudly it took a full few seconds before Violet’s voice managed to penetrate the din and reach her senses.
The small woman swayed as she tried to keep her feet.
Violet drew her arms from around Bobbi’s shoulders.
Bobbi took a moment to look at Violet; the priestess was dirty and barefoot, but otherwise no worse for wear. The flash gun looked like a toy in her hands.
Without a further word, Bobbi jogged down the deck between the parked cars. The rows of sculpted metal beasts sat abandoned, doors hanging open, sound systems playing in a ghostly chorus as the two women did their best to charge past. Bobbi thought of Violet’s bare feet as she avoided bottles and other hastily abandoned articles, but remembered the other woman was much tougher than she looked. Some frightened passengers cringed inside their cars, chattering fearfully into earbud phones or onboard call systems. A woman and two wide-eyed children stared out from the windows of their minivan as they passed. She pushed harder, wanting even more now to get past the crowd and further down the bridge before another attack occurred.
As if to mock her, the soft, hissing roar of the oncoming police VTOLs grew. The air burned in Bobbi’s lungs, bright and hot, but still she pressed forward. It had not been the first time she had run from death in the last four years; the collection of personnel and resources had led to many mundane but dangerous adventures, and too many of them seemed to end in Bobbi and her people having to run from some inimical party. It was the nature of life underground, she had always supposed, but now they were supposed to be hunting. The Yathi should not have found her. They were not supposed to be able to, not with the precautions she had established. Not with Cagliostro backing her up. They were not—
Bobbi’s train of thought derailed and exploded into flames as the sound of another rotary cannon tore through the night. Behind them, the structure of the bridge shuddered and wailed horribly as bullets caromed off carbon strands and splintered the blacktop behind them. Bobbi cursed and vaulted over an open car door to shield herself, and only then did she look back.
Violet had stopped, ducking up against an abandoned sedan much as Bobbi had. She aimed her gun upward, in the general direction of the sky behind them; the weapon strobed with violet light. Nothing. Violet fired again. Bobbi switched the visor’s mode to infrared, revealing hair-thin flickers in the darkness, augers of heat that raked the hull of another drone. The wounded craft tilted and spun, still in the air but sinking, as it tried to peel away from the bridge and make for the water below.
Violet called back. She was already on the move toward Bobbi, the gun cradled in her arms.
Bobbi stared at Violet as she approached. Through the visor, she looked like a faintly pixelated fury, her dark hair a banner in the night.
They ran for all they were worth, but this was no short trip to make. Miles long, the glittering funnel could never be crossed so easily – but it only took a minute to find the head of the stopped traffic. Bobbi leapt into the open passenger door of a blisteringly sleek Ferrari Maxia, whose purple skin glowed in the lights of the bridge as if it were conjured purely for the purposes of carrying them forward at that moment. She stabbed at its onboard computer with her implants and had it running in seconds, just as Violet slid into the driver’s seat and took the wheel.
Bobbi shuddered. The car roared – the Maxia used a powerful combustion engine and synthetic racing fuel – and converted itself into a bolt of kinetic force hurtling across the bridge toward the waiting Bainbridge lights.
the lights of the escaping traffic ahead, bringing them faster and faster toward the middle, where Bainbridge Island and Shaper awaited. Assuming they could get there in time.
Bobbi paused. Shaper was one of her crew, a former Special Operations officer for Applied Combat Solutions, one of the absolute biggest of the private military companies that had prosecuted the European War for its clients. He was intelligent, wily, and exceedingly experienced in high-risk situations. He was also a fucking loon, though in the figurative sense–or so he kept trying to tell Bobbi. She hesitated at his words, but only for a moment. The man knew what he was doing, and they were tough.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Violet said. “He’s going to have us jump off the bridge?”
“It’s the only way to do it,” Bobbi called over the Ferrari’s monstrous roar. CivPro’s on their way and we need to get the fuck out of here before they’re all over us.”
“The shit we do for the human race,” Violet muttered, and gripped the wheel all the more tightly.
Searchlights swept the bridge behind them as the halfway marker approached. A holographic ring of bright violet light marked the point, often affectionately referred to as the Point of No Return by Seattle motorists – once you’d made the drive this far, most people weren’t going to turn around for anything more than, say, explosions and machine gunfire. Lucky for them, the fleeing traffic had managed to seize up around the point rather than gum up the street far before it. Violet brought the Ferrari to a howling stop before the back end of a sea of taillights and the constant cacophony of horns.
“Hope nobody’s hurt up there.” Bobbi undid her seat belt and flung open the door on her side.
Bobbi grunted, and hauled herself out onto the blacktop. She looked back at the bridge, where CivPro VTOLs streaked toward their position on flyby. From on high, the searchlights of the police flyers shone down like low-flying stars.
The slightest smile carried in Violet’s voice.
Bobbi ran to the edge and clambered up the guardrail. Though a vast funnel web composed the bridge’s superstructure, the roadway was a free-floating slab. Beneath them, a narrow walkway ran the length of the road, and beneath it, the carbon webwork glittered against the blackness of the water.
The screaming of the VTOLs overhead drowned out Violet’s words, hissing thunder echoing down through the funnel. Their world exploded into a tremendous whiteness as a spotlight swept over them, and past; Bobbi pulled Violet down by the railing, hoping against hope the police had not seen them, but in another instant, the light poured down over them again.
said Violet, following Bobbi down the catwalk, her bare feet slapping against the steel decking. Overhead, the roaring of additional engines marked the arrival of more police VTOLs.
The truth was, of course, that nearly every organization of worth across the planet had been riddled through with Yathi agents; over the last four years, Yathi infiltration had become almost overt, as an unprecedented wave of scandals and deaths swept many government institutions and corporations. With each death, the Yathi or their pawns stepped in to fill the breaches. We freaked them right the fuck out. They’re trying to ensure that they can run us all down. They’ve found a way to track us, after all.
Bobbi definitely agreed; the possibility that the Yathi had tracked her chilled her to the bone. Have we lost the game already?
The women stole across the catwalk as fast as their feet would carry them, keeping an eye out for the police gunships. Though they couldn’t see the CivPro craft, the halo of light shining off the edge of the decking continued. Maybe the cops couldn’t see them, or maybe there had been enough property damage. Maybe CivPro decided to make sure the civilians were okay – every human life in Seattle meant money to Civil Protection, after all, and their preservation kept the bottom line solid. They made their way past the Point’s holographic cordon, all the while checking the Bay with their visors’ thermal imagers for signs of Shaper.
Bobbi said.
Violet crouched down against the railing, a multicolored shape against the blue-black of the metal and the bay.
Bobbi looked. A yacht trawled silently toward the bridge from the glittering mass of Bainbridge.
THIS IS CIVIL PROTECTION, boomed a voice from further back down the bridge. PLEASE RETURN TO YOUR VEHICLES AND REMAIN INSIDE. UNITS ARE ARRIVING TO CONTROL THE SITUATION. YOU ARE ALL SAFE.
Through the rainbow lens of the visor’s thermal imager, something moved in the water below the bridge’s funnel, something glowing like the cherry end of a cigarette. Thermal beacon. Bobbi watched the point of white light slowly grow as it rose to the surface.
she muttered over the link.
The yacht turned course and hauled hard right underneath the bridge not far ahead of the two of them. It plowed through the black water, lights off, streaming white foam in its wake – and in moments, the flashing spots of the police VTOLS fell upon it as well. I wonder what the fuck that’s about, Bobbi had time to think as the boat sped on, well past the far side of the bridge, before two things happened: first, Shaper’s voice came over the link, saying simply, ‘close your eyes,’ which she did on instinct. Secondly, a great roar rent the air, and the combat visor filled with a blast of light as the thermal imager registered the yacht’s detonation in a great white flash.
Though the visor’s ear cups did much to mute the thunder, Bobbi would have been blinded were it not for Shaper’s notice. As it was, the afterimage of the shapeless plume of flame still lingered on her retinas as she opened her eyes and looked down at the burning mass of wood and plastic on the far side of the bridge, a modern Viking funeral. More importantly, however, it was a distraction. All the spots of the VTOLs fell upon the blazing hull and their pilots bellowed commands at terrified commuters, leaving Bobbi and Violet alone and quite unnoticed in the dark.
Gathering Ashes (The Wonderland Cycle Book 3) Page 3
