“If those robots come anywhere near a population center, these idiots aren’t going to be able to defend it for more than a few minutes. We’ve got to get this solved, and fast,” Silo said. “I’ll get to the storehouse and get the goods, you get us some transportation.”
“Gladly,” Garotte said.
With that, they dashed off to their tasks.
#
Lex paced back and forth in the office of the local starport hangar. It was well before the official opening time, barely creeping up on dawn, and finding someone willing to help him had been almost impossible. The office was clearly not even intended to service customers, containing little more than a receptionist’s desk with a few large screens affixed to each wall. Fortunately, Michella was quite experienced in getting things done when she had right to expect them to be done. She knew all of the right phrases and questions to get underlings worried about the consequences of making this particular person play by the rules. Words like publicity and terms like consumer advocate had a strange way of making supervisors appear.
“I’m not saying that I feel you should be open twenty-four hours a day,” Michella said, speaking in low and reasonable tones to an older woman who had been summoned to deal with her. “I’m just saying that refusing to allow a customer to access a very expensive vehicle that is his personal property in an emergency is a questionable business practice.”
“Now you listen to me, Ms. Modane. The terms of use are quite clear. After-hours checkout must be scheduled at least a day in advance. The only reason we even have an employee on duty is due to a military lockdown pending the arrival of—”
“I see. That’s interesting.” She pulled out her pad and pen. “Perhaps you’d like to expand upon the reasoning behind catering to the needs of a military representative at a commercial starport. There is a fully equipped military starport only a few minutes away, while there are no other commercial starports in this hemisphere…”
Lex stepped away and let the women butt heads. He found a bench outside and sat. With a bit of gentle prodding, he was able to convince Squee to stay on his lap rather than his shoulders. He scratched her head idly while plotting out in his head the course he would take to Big Sigma. Once he was satisfied, he turned his gaze to the doorway of the starport office. Michella was utterly composed, quietly discussing matters. Both the clerk and the supervisor were becoming incrementally more agitated. Even without being able to hear their voices, he could spot the precise moment when the supervisor said something that, if quoted in any respectable news source, would spell the end of her career. It was really something to watch.
“You know something, Squee? I can’t count the number of times Michella’s led me into one of her verbal snares. I’ve never actually gotten to see it happen without being the target. From the outside it is sort of entertaining.”
His slidepad chirped once, then autoanswered and transferred to the hands-free he’d neglected to remove from his ear. It was Garotte, with the sound of wind rushing just audibly across the connection. There was gunfire in the background.
“Lex, we’re on our way. Where shall I meet you?” he asked.
“We’re still trying to convince the clerk to let us check out the ship.”
“Egad, my boy. We’ve had time to be arrested and tortured, as well as break out of containment, steal back our equipment, steal a hovertruck and a hauler, and steal the Declaration. You haven’t even gotten a ship out of its berth?”
“Well, you had it easy. All you had to fight was the army. We’ve got bureaucrats to deal with.”
“Fair enough. I’m afraid I won’t be able to do a discreet drop-off, so… well… prepare to be in the middle of an incident.”
“What?”
“Just get your ship running. You can still do that remotely, can’t you?”
“Well yeah, but…”
“No buts, my boy. In a few moments the people at the starport are going to be far too busy to notice the two of you sneaking into the hangar and liberating your ship. Be prepared to fly evasively. I understand there is a military lockdown in place. You’ve got about sixty seconds to get airborne. If you want proof, look to the southern horizon.”
Garotte closed the connection. Lex looked south. A swarm of tiny specks were visible on the horizon. There was no sense wasting time trying to figure out what it was. He already knew.
“Look, Squee,” he said, pointing to the rapidly approaching cluster of military ships. “A high-speed chase. Once again, surprisingly entertaining from the outside.”
He navigated the menus of his slidepad, accessed the automated ship control, and started the power-up sequence in stealth mode, then pushed his way inside the office.
“Now, now when I said that civilian emergencies don’t matter, I didn’t mean that Movi Transit Group doesn’t care about them,” the supervisor sputtered, backpedaling desperately.
“Mitch, listen, we need to go,” Lex said.
“I’m in the middle of something, Trev.”
He touched her shoulder and pointed. “Not yet you aren’t, but you will be in a minute.”
Michella looked, squinting at the approaching shapes. “They do work fast, don’t they?” she whispered. She turned to the supervisor. “Thank you for your statement. I’m sure my viewers will be very interested in your stance. Good-bye.”
“But you…” the woman began, but an alert tone drew her attention to the automated screens on the wall. “We’ve got multiple violations of starport airspace. Low-altitude vessels with military transponders.”
Lex and Michella hurried out the door, followed swiftly by the starport employees. The door locked behind them. Alarm tones began to blare from every loudspeaker. Each screen displayed warnings of overlapping flight paths, collision danger, and violations of hundreds of regulations. Automated sensors responsible for checking and double checking that ships were obeying the rules and avoiding even the possibility of a crash were practically overloading. Security personnel—showing better training than their military counterparts it seemed—were snapping to attention, hopping into intercept craft, and preparing to do what was possible to ward off any damage.
It was the night shift in a starport that didn’t get more than a handful of landings on a busy day, so it took every man and woman on the ground to prepare the emergency response. Security doors and gates all around the port were popping open as employees rushed from their duty stations to their emergency tasks. There were just as many sensors and alarms dedicated to alerting security that, for instance, two people had caught a door before it closed and slipped inside a restricted area. But even if there had been the manpower to respond to such a call, the threat of a dozen vehicles on a collision course would have taken precedent.
Michella hurried to keep up with Lex, Squee trotting along between them. “Does he have one of the robots?”
“He’s got something he wants to drop off,” Lex said.
By now they’d slipped into the service corridors. The locked doors were all behind them, as normally someone would have had to make it past two sets of security guards and avoid tripping eight alarms to get this far. As a matter of fact, the handful of workers who noticed them didn’t even try to stop them. Their mental autopilot simply decided if these two people were in the corridor and seemed to know where they were going, then clearly they were supposed to be here. The fact they seemed to have brought a pet along with them was discarded as a piece that didn’t fit and should thus be discarded.
Lex pushed open the door to the landing field. A few hundred meters away, on one of only six occupied landing pads, was the SOB. Its engines were humming along quietly, the remote start having prepped it for takeoff. By now the distant roar of military hovercars and trucks was considerably less distant, and the sounds of ordnance and countermeasures popped like fireworks across the landscape. They quickened to a run.
Both Michella and Lex were breathing heavily and pouring sweat in the muggy air when they reached th
e SOB. Large, complicated landing clamps with thick cables secured the ship to the landing pad, a safeguard against people coming and going as they pleased. Lex stood on the ground near the edge of the ship, popped the cockpit with a command, and laced his fingers to give Michella a boost.
“Mitch, in the back there, open up the hatch marked Emergency Exit and give me the doodad inside,” he said.
“Looking,” she said. He could hear her shoving boxes and bags aside.
“Faster is better,” Lex said, eyeing the approaching pursuit.
They were near enough that he could see the details of the vehicles involved. Each of them had the chunky, utilitarian look favored by the armed forces. They weren’t built for speed, they were built for power and durability. Camouflage patterns covered the angular panels of the bodywork, though the unfinished nature of the planet meant that the pattern had to be a bit bizarre. It had a base of murky white, like the mud of the primordial swamp. Green jungle stripes were layered on top of that, producing a camo pattern that managed to avoid blending in with anything. In an era when most military vehicles and many soldiers wore adaptive camo, it seemed almost baffling that the Movi military would have gone such a route.
The two vehicles leading the chase were clearly piloted by Garotte and Silo. They maneuvered almost randomly, keeping those in pursuit constantly readjusting. It wasn’t as artful as what Lex would have achieved, but it did the job. More impressive was the choice of vehicles. Rather than a speedy scout vehicle, which might have made for an easier getaway, the two fugitives had gone the opposite direction. One vehicle was a sky crane—little more than three massive hover modules, a few thrusters, and a complicated winch system. It wasn’t the most nimble vehicle to begin with, but the fact that it was hauling the disabled Declaration made it a considerably slower and easier target. The second vehicle, which Lex assumed was selected by Silo, evened the odds nicely. It was a tank, sharply angled and thickly armored sides sporting some superficial damage. It was flying with the turret swiveled backward. Even traveling at maximum speed and darting about randomly, it fired with surgical accuracy, grazing and scorching pursuit vessels but deliberately sparing them from destruction.
“Heads up!” Michella said, tossing down a device that looked like a drill gun with a c-shaped electrode attached to the tip. “Is that a decoupler?”
“Yes it is.” He caught it and touched the electrode to the nearest landing clamp. A pull of the trigger produced a pattern of clicks and flashes, cycling through a short list of universal removal codes and zapping them through the casing. After two seconds the clamp popped free.
“Aren’t those illegal?” she asked.
“Yes, but fortunately the recent flurry of other illegal activities should push this particular infraction to the bottom of the stack.”
His slidepad chirped and blared Garotte’s voice with a mixture of automated warnings and explosions serving as the background. “Tell me you are in the air, Lex.”
“Not yet. Busting out of an airport takes time.”
“Yes, well. Need I once again remind you that I’ve just escaped a military holding facility?”
Lex finished freeing the ship and climbed into the cockpit, Squee scrambling in after him. “I’m taking off now.”
“Splendid. I may have slightly overestimated my ability to outmaneuver the armed forces in a hauler. Silo and I would prefer not to injure or kill any of these soldiers, so it is possible your aid may be required in this endeavor,” he said.
“I’m on it,” he said, strapping himself into the pilot’s seat and flaring the engines. “Mitch, gum.”
Michella helpfully obliged. Lex snagged the offered stick and punched the throttle, bursting into the air. The acceleration pushed them into their seats, and a grin crept across his face. This was what flying was supposed to be. A proper ship, a running start, and real opponents.
Still in silent running, he dialed up the engine and sliced across the landing pads, weaving between mooring rigs and courtesy carts. The black ship reflected little of the morning light. The moons were setting, but the sun hadn’t yet risen. As long as he stayed low, the swarm of ships would be far too busy chasing Garotte and dodging Silo to take notice of the blip on their radar. Just as he was approaching the fence at the far end of the starport, the entirety of the pursuit roared through the sky above him. He deftly tugged the controls and pulled up. The downward force was intense, but with a quick pivot it came to an end and he was tucked neatly between two of the trailing hovercars.
The sudden maneuvering jostled Lex’s slidepad from his pocket and sent it clattering to the floor of the SOB. Squee, sensing the opportunity to get her paws on the only thing she liked better than her own slidepad—Lex’s slidepad—dove to the floor to snatch it up. She then dove into Michella’s lap and flipped onto her back to clutch it with her paws and nose away at the screen. Michella hugged the little creature to her chest.
“Can you get that away from her?” Lex requested. He made two quick maneuvers that spooked the nearby hovercars enough to abandon the chase. “She has a habit of getting into trouble with those things.”
“Oh, we can’t have her getting into trouble, can we?” She ignored the request, too busy reveling in the exhilaration, hoping Lex didn’t notice her reveling in the exhilaration, and wishing she had her camera.
Lex pulled the call from Garotte to the ship’s communication system. “What’s your status?”
“I’ve taken a hit or two, and the poor Declaration’s seen better days,” Garotte said.
In the hovercars ahead, hatches were opening, turrets were swiveling, and the SOB was becoming a target. Lex furrowed his brow. His ship had beefier shields than it really needed, since its redesign was at the hands of a man who felt a vehicle wasn’t finished until it could win a game of chicken against a locomotive, but all the same he wasn’t keen on an actual gunfight. He pivoted to the side, cranked up his shields, and used his overpowered engines to throw aside the smallest of the craft. It was artless, sure, but this was the rare situation where his speedster of a ship had a size advantage. He simply had to throw his weight around, just this once.
He pushed his way to the front of the pack, swerving around tanks and troop carriers and nudging aside scouts. The troops didn’t know what to make of the newcomer. Lex called upon long-neglected racing techniques to control the pack. It was remarkable how much one could influence nearby vehicles with little more than a few subtly telegraphed maneuvers. A hinted shift to the right sent those who would be in his path sliding aside, forcing their neighbors to do the same. A few more waggles and dips destroyed what little remained of the military’s cohesiveness. They were forced to fall back to reorganize. Lex pulled up even with Silo and Garotte.
“If you’ve got something to bring this farce to a close, I suggest you deploy,” Garotte said. “It would seem that heavy lifters aren’t intended for marathon sprints. The temperature readings are… worrying.”
“I’ve got to wait until we get out over open field,” he said, dodging a few of the more carefully aimed shots. Scattered building developments and sparsely populated outposts were still dotting the ground below them. Anything particularly inventive would likely send a ship careening into a building that he couldn’t be certain was empty. “Where are you headed?”
“There’s a network of valleys up ahead. I’ll send you the coordinates,” Garotte said.
“Okay. I’ll try to get this group more interested in me. Then I’ll meet you there.” Lex performed the necessary incantations to access the more secret-agent flavored functions of his ship.
“Are you sure you’ll be able to do that? We did break out of their holding facility and steal a great deal of their property.”
“Getting large groups of people very angry at me is one of my primary skills,” Lex said. “Stop shooting at them and focus on getting away.”
The trailing vehicles were scoring hits with greater and greater frequency. Lex kept his maneuver
ing to a minimum, letting his shields absorb the shots and coaxing the military into a tightly packed firing formation just behind him. Gradually he decreased his speed, letting them bunch up and offering an even more enticing target. The very instant ships began to break off from the pack to pursue the escaping mercenaries, he popped the cooling fins on the SOB. They were a blossom of metallic sheets that dumped heat from his engines so he could push them extra hard, and also served as phase one to a two-phase countermeasure that had proved to be remarkably useful in the past. He then flicked a few more controls and activated what he’d come to call The Backfire. It was an engineered engine malfunction that blasted those behind the ship with an electromagnetic pulse not so different from the one that had spared them the wrath of the robots mere hours ago. The intensity was a bit weaker, and it was directionally focused to the rear of the ship, but both of those made little difference to the 60 percent of the ships that had been perfectly positioned by his manipulative maneuvering. Struck full force by the blast, the pilots and soldiers watched helplessly as their ships flared out. Computer systems glitched and shut down, engines misfired and sputtered, and mechanical safety measures activated to protect the passengers from harm. In seconds a tight pack of pursuers was reduced to a skipping, mud-drenched, terrestrial traffic jam.
At the sight of the bulk of their force dropped in a single attack, the remainder were demoralized and enraged in roughly equal proportion. Those who lost their taste for the chase turned back to the military base to regroup. The rest opened fire upon the SOB with reckless abandon. He withdrew the cooling fins and eased the throttle up just a bit, weaving away from the route taken by the now forgotten Silo and Garotte. His ship had more than enough power to leave them in the dust, but he knew he needed to keep them close enough to believe they had a chance to shoot him down, or they might resume the pursuit of the others.
A beeping indicator drew Lex’s attention, followed by a voice warning “Missile lock confirmed.”
Artificial Evolution Page 23
