by Toby Minton
“Reloading!” Mos yelled. He jumped into the car, letting the doors shut behind him, already swapping out a magazine from his backpack.
Ace stepped past him, weapon trained on the doors, and then she started walking backward. “Next car. Go!”
Mos slammed his magazine in place and hustled Michael on. As soon as Michael pulled the release on the next door, the door behind them buckled under a massive blow. Another blow sent the door flying over Ace’s head, barely missing her, and the Hunter charged into the car.
Ace opened fire as soon as the Hunter came into view, putting it back on the defensive with staggered bursts. “Keep moving!” she shouted back.
Mos shoved Michael through the open door, sending a lance of pain through his ribs, and didn’t stop shoving until they’d crossed to the car after that.
“Stop,” Michael said, his ears ringing in the sudden silence as the door hissed shut between them and the gunfire. “That next car has people in it. We can’t lead that thing in there.”
Mos grimaced and pressed his com. “Command—Tail One. We’re out of running room, honey. We need that support now!”
“Mos!” Ace’s voice carried through the door.
“Take this,” he grunted, pulling out the earpiece and shoving it at Michael. Then he was back through the door, firing as soon as he crossed the threshold.
Michael could just make out a buzzing voice from the tiny com as he fumbled it to his ear. He got it in place in time to hear a woman’s calm voice saying, “—a negative, Tail One. Your air moved to intercept unfriendlies. I’m trying to raise Impact, but—”
“Impact to Tail One,” a man’s staticky voice broke in over the com, sounding like he was in the middle of a tornado. “I’m inbound hot. Light up your target—”
Michael missed the rest, if there was a rest, as Mos and Ace stumbled through the door, firing back as they came. As soon as the door shut, Ace fired a burst into the release panel, sending up sparks and causing a groaning rattle inside the mechanism.
“Dammit!” She barked. “Last mag. About half left.”
“I’m full,” Mos growled, slapping in a fresh magazine. “But that’s all I got.” Then he looked at Michael. “Cavalry coming, boy?”
“Uh, Impact is on the way?” Michael said, pulling the earpiece out to hand back and hoping he had heard right.
Ace fixed him with a look you’d give a child. “Impact? Are you sure she said Impact?”
“Yes, I think so. He said to light our target.”
Something slammed into the sealed door, the metal bending inward.
Ace and Mos shared a look, then she pointed Michael toward one of the side doors farther in the car. “Get that open. Move!”
Michael ran to it, kicked the latch and heaved the heavy door open, his ribs throbbing with the effort, letting in a blast of the rushing air from outside. Across from him, Ace did the same while Mos pulled something from his backpack and crouched to activate a small flashing strobe on the floor between the doors.
Another blow rattled the pass-through door, then another.
Ace grabbed Michael’s shirt and pushed him back against the door to the passenger car. “Stay behind us. We make our stand here.”
Mos and Ace took up firing positions in front of Michael, only a meter and a half, at best, from the strobe between the open side doors.
“Don’t we need to be farther away from whatever’s targeting that?” Michael said, staring at the strobe.
Mos looked over his shoulder at Michael and gave a dark laugh, “Believe me, boy, you’d rather die quick in the blast than get ripped up by the Hunter.”
“I’ll start,” Ace ordered. “Don’t fire until I go dry.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Mos replied. “Been an honor, Ace.”
“Secure that crap, Mos,” Ace grunted. “Don’t scare the kid.”
“Just sayin—”
The door buckled inward under a final blow, but instead of tumbling into the car, it hovered in the air just inside. Then the door turned sideways and started moving toward them as the Hunter strode in holding the door as a shield.
“Son of a—” Ace opened fire, one quick controlled burst after another. But now that it had mobile cover, the Hunter didn’t break stride.
“Mos, the feet!” Ace yelled.
Mos opened up before she finished speaking, firing burst after burst. But the Hunter kept coming. When it was three meters from the strobe, Ace’s gun clicked empty. At one meter, Mos ran dry.
The Hunter threw the perforated door into the rushing wind outside and rose up as high as the car would allow, its joints moving in unnatural spins and angles. Its head pivoted, scanning the strobe and each of them in turn. Then it brought one foot down on the strobe, shaking the car as it smashed the marker.
“Come on with it!” Mos shouted, standing and spreading his arms wide, his empty weapon dangling from one hand.
“Mos, back!” Ace yelled.
The Hunter looked at Mos, tilted its head to the side, and then reached for him. Before its blood-streaked metal hand made contact, something flashed through the open side door and slammed into the Hunter, sending the huge metal creature hurtling through the other door to disappear into the darkening landscape racing past.
“Yeaheheah!” Mos jumped to the side door and stuck his head out into the wind. “How bout now, shitcan?”
Michael barely noticed Mos celebrating or Ace slumping to the floor of the car with relief. He couldn’t pull his gaze from the thing that had sent the four-meter metal nightmare flying. It was a man, barely older than Michael, crouched over the shattered strobe with one hand and knee on the floor where he’d caught his balance after the collision. He stood up, brushing powdered glass from his knee and sleeve. He was a little taller than Michael, lean and pale, with a smooth bald head and fitted dark clothing with strange padded bands spaced every ten centimeters or so across his legs and torso.
“You couldn’t have cut that any closer, Impact.” Ace said, leaning her head back against the wall and blowing out a long breath.
Impact looked at her, his face darkening. “That’s the fastest I’ve ever run,” he said, his tone cutting and his eyes hard. “If I hadn’t already been in route to where the girl left the train, I wouldn’t have made it in time.”
“Easy, tiger,” Ace laughed tiredly. “I just meant—”
“Nikki,” Michael breathed. “You found her. Where is she now?”
Impact turned his hard look on Michael, and a strange feeling tingled through him. Michael felt like he’d seen those eyes before.
“I diverted to you before I got to them,” Impact said. “She was charged when she left the train, wasn’t she?”
Michael swallowed and shook his head once, his concern for Nikki overriding his instinctive alarm that this stranger seemed to know something about their link.
Impact looked out into the darkening sky. “Then she probably didn’t survive.”
“Hey!” Mos barked and cuffed Impact on the shoulder at the same time Ace said, “Easy. That’s his sister.”
Impact turned to look at Michael again, but if his expression and tone softened, it wasn’t by much. “The lander that dropped off the Hunter veered off toward the town you were passing when your sister left the train. Padre moved to intercept on the skimmer, and Gideon and Elias’s team headed that way in the transport, but neither of them would have beat Savior’s men to her. That’s why I was on the way.”
Impact’s expression darkened further, his tone with it. “If she survived the fall, it’s a safe bet she’s in Savior’s hands now.”
Separation Anxiety
Chapter 7
Nikki
Nikki dreamed she and Michael were flying. They were soaring over low trees, rolling hills, and black and white cows grazing on slopes that looked so steep she kept expecting the cows to tumble into the streams winding along the valley floors. She rode the gentle wind currents, rising over the hills without effort, dri
fting lower in the valleys without fear. Michael soared beside her, trying to match her move for move, but he was struggling where she was gliding with ease. She was the embodiment of grace and freedom. Free from everything except pain.
Nikki wanted to go faster, to power over the hills toward the sun and dive into the valleys, to feel the wind roaring around her as she cut through it, to send the cows lumbering away from her menacing shadow as she streaked past. But she couldn’t. Every time she tried, her left leg surged with pain, a pulse of agony she could feel all the way down in the bone. Then the shockwaves from the pulse would shiver up through her thigh and hip and into her belly, where they gathered and fed the sickening throb in her middle.
Michael caught up and drifted beside her, sneaking looks at her when he thought she couldn’t see him. He knew she was hurting, and as usual, he was worrying about her. He wanted her to know he was right there if she needed him, ready to lend her strength.
That’s when Nikki knew she wasn’t dreaming. She knew because whatever this was, it wasn’t scary enough to be one of her dreams. She didn’t dream of happy things like flying, or cows. Not even the pain plaguing this dream made it dark enough to be one of hers. She knew she wasn’t dreaming because in her dreams the sun was never shining. In her dreams, shadowy figures were closing in on her. They were bigger and stronger than she was, there was nowhere to run, and Michael wasn’t there to charge her up. In her dreams, she was always alone.
If her imagination was being nice enough to her to give her cows and flying instead of the usual fare, her reality must really be sucking right now.
Time to wake up, she ordered her flying body, but her only answer was another pulse of pain.
She tried again, but again she stayed firmly stuck in sunny cow land.
Fine, she thought. We do this the hard way.
As she approached the next hill, Nikki angled down toward the rocks jutting from the ground at its base.
Michael raced after her, calling for her to pull up, but Nikki strained for more speed. The pain from her leg and stomach pulsed stronger, bringing a heavy wave of nausea, but Nikki tried to ignore that as well. She focused on the rocks and going even faster.
Michael was screaming behind her, and the nausea was swelling out of control, bile pushing up Nikki’s throat and into her sinuses, gagging her. But she couldn’t stop now. Not even if she wanted to.
Nikki streaked toward the rocks, eyes wide open, and slammed into them head first—
Nikki’s eyes snapped open. She was staring up at a purpling evening sky, no bright sun in sight. She was on her back, and—she whipped her head to the side and retched, bringing up everything she’d eaten, ever, as far as she could tell, and causing a blinding pain in her stomach and across her right side where that thing had hit her.
She dropped her head back, groaning a curse, and wiped her hand across her mouth. Lifting her arm caused a different kind of pain from her side—great, a variety of suck here—but she almost forgot the pain when she saw the dark blood on her hand. She tilted her head, as slowly as she could, back toward where she’d just hurled and saw the same dark blood, so dark it was almost black.
Probably not good, Nik, she thought, lifting her head up enough to look around. She was maybe fifty meters from the mag-rail, which she could make out as a dark ridge above the shadowy scrub woods beyond the fence in front of her, or what was left of the fence in front of her. Something had leveled a two-meter wide section of the wood privacy fence. Judging by the trail of splintered wood and grooves in the rocky dirt leading to her, she guessed she’d been that something. At least it hadn’t been concrete block like the low wall she was almost touching on her right. About a meter to her left, another row of privacy fence ran parallel to the block wall, putting her in some narrow strip of nearly bare yard, maybe. She was lying on what was left of a shed, or maybe outhouse by the smell of it. She’d flattened it almost as thoroughly as the fence.
When Nikki looked down at herself, what she saw brought the nausea back, full force, but she swallowed hard and made herself catalog her injuries. Her right side between her armpit and hip, where most of the pain was coming from, had three deep gashes where that metal bug’s hand had connected. They were deeper than she wanted to see, so she scanned to her legs. Her right leg was fine, but her left leg felt like somebody had taken a crowbar to it for a good half hour, and—another hard swallow—there was a bulge in the middle of her calf. Below the bulge, her leg bent away in a direction it shouldn’t bend.
She eased her head back, and winced. Apparently that hurt too.
“I am going to rip bug bot’s arm off—” she groaned and took a shuddering breath. “—and beat him to death with it.” She closed her eyes for a few halting breaths, trying to marshal her strength. “Just as soon as my idiot brother stops farting around and—”
A chill started somewhere inside and tingled through her. But it wasn’t the tingle she was used to feeling. No strength came from this one, just cold fear.
She couldn’t feel him. No pain, no worry, no ever-present frustration with her—nothing. Michael was gone.
With that realization, Nikki’s bravado melted away, and she was eleven years old again, lying in the dark…alone.
Michael
“Whoa,” Mos said, placing a large hand on Michael’s chest and holding him back. “What, you think you’re gonna just jump from a speeding mag-train?”
Michael didn’t answer, just stared past the bigger man at the dark hills rushing past through the open door of the cargo car.
“If she wasn’t charged, then neither are you,” Impact said from behind him. “You won’t survive anymore than she—”
“She’s alive!” Michael shouted, rounding on Impact. The taller man didn’t flinch or fall back, but his expression finally softened in the face of Michael’s obvious pain.
“I apologize,” Impact said, raising his hands and dropping his eyes. “But if she’s alive, she’s hurt, and you won’t help her by killing yourself.”
“What just—” Mos shifted a look between Impact and Michael, then let out a bark of a laugh. “Ace, did cue ball just apologize to somebody?”
Impact turned to Mos with a cold look and cutting retort, but Michael wasn’t paying attention. His eyes were drawn to the other open car door, the one Impact had come in a minute ago.
“What about you?” Michael asked, breaking in on their exchange.
“What about me?” Mos said, but Michael’s eyes were fixed on Impact, who was already shaking his head. “You ran onto this train that’s traveling some odd hundred kilometers per hour. Can’t you run back off and take me with you.”
“I wouldn’t survive anymore than you would,” Impact said.
“But I just saw you knock that thing—”
“I have to build a charge, much like you,” Impact said with another shake of his head. “Gideon calls it a kinetic envelope. Once I start accelerating, the envelope forms around me to turn friction into kinetic energy so I can accelerate more. The faster I go, the stronger the envelope builds. The stronger the envelope, the more impact damage it can absorb when I hit something. Without room to build it up though, I’m as vulnerable as they are.” He nodded toward Mos and Ace.
“Nice, kid,” Mos grunted.
“OK,” Michael said, grasping the concept and feeling his excitement build. Physics had always fascinated him, when he could get his hands on something to read about it. “So we give you room to build up speed. We open every cargo car door between here and the back of the train and clear a path. And you and I can get out of here and get to Nikki.”
Impact crossed his arms and looked at the length the car. “Might be enough room, but you don’t understand. I can’t carry you.”
Michael started to argue but Impact went on, his tone sounding almost embarrassed. “Even if I could get up to speed carrying your weight, which I don’t think I can, I can’t extend the envelope to cover you. If I hit anything while carrying you
or go faster than your body can handle—”
“I’m willing to take the chance,” Michael said.
“Well, I’m not,” Ace said, pushing herself to her feet and swinging her pack off her shoulder. She stowed her empty weapon and dropped the pack on the floor as she walked to them, the look in her eyes hardening with each step. “I’m in charge of this group, and our orders are to bring you back in one piece.”
“You’re not in charge of me,” Michael said, but without the heat he wanted in his voice. His anger was rapidly slipping away now that the fight was over. Try as he might to hang on to it, he just couldn’t.
“It’s Michael, right?” Ace asked.
He nodded.
“Michael, we’re here to help you and your sister.”
“Nikki,” he said, hating the acceptance he could already feel stealing over him. How could he give up on her so easily?
“Nikki,” Ace repeated, nodding. “Our best people are on the way to Nikki right now. They’ll do everything in their power to help her. But we can’t get you there without risking Savior getting his hands on you. Once our people secure Nikki, they’ll meet us at the rendezvous site. If you stay with us, you’ll be there to meet her. If you run off and try to find her, it could be that much longer before we get you two back together.”
Michael knew she was right. He’d already accepted that he couldn’t run to Nikki. Not this time. He was making the logical choice, something Nikki absolutely loathed doing. And for once he hated himself for it.
“Don’t worry, kid,” Mos said, putting a hand on Michael’s shoulder. “Gideon’s picking up Nikki. If you and your sis are anything like cue ball here, Gideon can fix her. I’ve seen him do it with Impact. Damnedest thing I ever saw.”
“He’s right,” Impact said, looking at Michael with an intensity that for him might pass for excitement. “He can heal her if she can build up enough energy.”
The hope that had started to build in Michael at Mos’s words fizzled away. “She needs me for that,” he said. “Neither of us can build up a charge without the other.”
