They jumped on Mandy’s bike. Its small electric engine was as silent as ever as they quickly headed for the Greenpoint enclave. Since they were in danger in the outer-zone the pervs had started to use the Greenpoint Avenue crossing and then turn along Russel to the nearby park. The enclave kids were always a little harder to entice, especially when they had friends around, but these predators knew ways to get them into their pods.
As they pulled up at Greenpoint, the guards at the enclave’s south gate were happy to admit the pair. They were confident that Sarah and Mandy were there for a good reason.
Inside the enclave they took Bedford to Nassau to reach Monsignor McGolrick Park. Turning right on Monitor street they pulled into the park. Though it was technically against the rules, they rode through the park and parked the bike among the trees, just out of view of Nassau. Mandy waited there while Sarah sat on the curb waiting for what they hoped would be the inevitable predator.
The wait wasn’t long. Less than thirty minutes later a flashy new pod came slowly along the road. The driver pulled up beside Sarah. He flashed her a friendly smile. “Hi there,” he began. “You look bored. Where are your friends?”
Sarah shrugged. “They had to go home, now I got nothing to do,” she answered, trying, as much as possible, to sound like an unhappy little girl.
“That’s too bad,” the man came back, “Maybe I can help?”
“How?” was all Sarah asked.
“Well, I know a great arcade, but you need a pod to get there, and a few credits as well. If you want to come, I can pay your way.”
“Why?” Sarah repeated. It seemed like the kind of question that an enclave girl would ask.
“Well,” he began, “you look like a good kid, and good kids deserve a break sometimes; and it’s no fun if I go alone. Wouldn’t you like to come with me? I promise that it will be fun.”
“I gotta be home by dark,” Sarah answered.
“That’s okay,” the man said. “We can call your folks from the arcade. I’m sure if I promise to drive you home they’ll let you stay out. It is summer vacation after all.” He flashed another smile.
Sarah stood up. She had an eager look on her face. “I guess that would be okay.”
The driver popped the passenger door and Sarah ran to that side of the pod. No sooner had she reached the door when she saw his stinger. It was military grade. He was a cop or one of the Guardsmen. It was a trap. She ducked back just as he fired.
Sarah whistled for Mandy who jumped from her concealment. The driver had not yet closed his window, so Mandy swung Sarah’s nunchaku as she reached the pod. She struck the driver with enough force to knock him cold.
Sarah was about to take advantage of the driver’s unconscious state to take the pod, when Mandy stopped her. “It has to be rigged,” she told Sarah. “It likely has a kill switch in the ignition and an auto-lock on the doors. You step in but you don’t get out until someone lets you out.”
As she was speaking the second phase of the trap was sprung. It seems that Sarah and Mandy were not the only ones hiding in the trees. From either end of the Park two skimmers arose. They landed in the street sealing off both ends of the block. Both hunters went into battle mode as the mercenaries poured out into the road. Each skimmer was carrying five mercenaries plus the pilot.
Mandy tossed the nunchaku to Sarah and drew the two halves of her fighting staff. As she attached the ends of the two parts she called to Sarah, “Remember Sassy, normally these are the good guys – no killing if at all possible!”
Sarah had already made a quick count. The odds weren’t too bad for the two of them. They had often taken on ten-to-two odds, though these were trained men and women, not gangers. With practiced precision they charged the line at the west end of the street. The troops were armed with the heavy grade military stingers. Sarah and Mandy ran a carefully orchestrated evasion pattern towards them.
They were both well practiced at reading body language as if it were speech. Each time that it was apparent that a mercenary was about to fire, they dodged. They dodged one volley, a second and a third. Each time the stinger bolts whizzed past them. A few shots hit the mercenaries advancing from behind.
“That’s three less,” Sarah thought just as she came within striking distance of the troops of the western line. She leapt into the air and performed a beautiful flip as she passed over the head of the nearest attacker, landing behind him, facing his back.
She swung her nunchaku. It took two blows to knock him out. By then two others turned towards her. Again she vaulted; forward this time. Twisting as she landed, catching her would-be attackers off guard. With two strokes of her nunchaku the nearest one fell in a heap.
For her part, Mandy had dispatched the two attackers at the far end of the line. Together they dodged the stinger bolts of the remaining man as they ran for the skimmer. They didn’t know if either of them could fly it, but it was a way of escape. They knew that the locals would take care of Mandy’s bike until she could retrieve it.
Sarah made the door first. As she entered she glanced to her left just in time to see Mandy hit in the leg by one of the stingers. Not hitting her square on, the stinger shot didn’t knock her out, but Mandy’s leg went dead, and she fell a few feet short of the craft. Sarah turned to help her, but Mandy waved her off. “It’s you they’re after,” she called. “I’ll be alright.”
Sarah knew that her friend was wrong, but after six years together she was conditioned to listen to Mandy’s instructions. Turning back into the skimmer she ran into the pilot who was moving to intercept her. He never knew what hit him as he went flying out the door. The last two attackers still standing had pounced on Mandy and were restraining her wrists and ankles. Sarah had no choice but to flee. She took the pilot’s seat and found that the controls were much like the standard travelpod, but with the addition of flight controls.
She hit the switch that closed the hatch and turned the vehicle about by ninety degrees. Knowing that the other craft would surely give pursuit she located the tactical controls. She found a button labelled PCW. She wasn’t sure, but that looked like a weapon, so she hit it. The back end of the other skimmer exploded. She turned again and headed for the southern boundary.
By the time she had gone half a kilometer Sarah had figured out how to take off. She climbed to a height of a hundred meters and turned toward the old JFK Airport, confident that any searchers would start looking for her in that direction.
She landed the craft in the woods at the edge of Highland Park, sure that the trees would conceal the skimmer as they had for the mercenaries in McGolrick Park. It would be a much longer trip back to the library, but that reduced the chance that they might look for her at home. She was sure that by now they had tracked the skimmer’s tracer signal, and more troops would be arriving soon.
Sarah ducked below the main console and, with difficulty, pulled one of the panels free. Having studied electrical engineering in the library, she knew exactly where to find the main power circuit. She searched through the mess of cables until she found the one she wanted. Using her teeth to strip the end of the wire she jammed the bare cable into the central communications unit. Then, jumping up onto the vinyl pilot’s seat and pulling her feet off the floor, she hit the power actuator.
The charge that normally activated the craft’s engine was directed through the ship’s transmitters. If they were tracking the craft’s transponder, GPS or emergency beacon before, they weren’t anymore. Sarah had fried the entire communications array, including the back-ups. She fried every circuit in the panel!
Before leaving she would have helped herself to a couple of extra military-grade weapons if she could have, but they were securely locked into the rack. So, having acquired a new military-grade stinger from the pod driver back at Greenpoint, she set her own stinger to overload and left it on the weapons rack. Sarah didn’t want any gangers figuring out how to break the locks open. Then she lit out of there at a run.
She was four blocks away
when she heard the explosion. She stopped for a moment to make sure that the sound hadn’t brought out any undesirables before continuing on her way.
Being in top shape Sarah could run at near top speed for almost four kilometers without stopping. That brought her to the outer boundary of the Bedford–Stuyvesant enclave before she finally stopped for an extended breath. When she resumed her course, Sarah moved more cautiously, unsure of what tactics the mercenary force would use. It proved a wise move as she approached the gate inside which she had left her own bike and extra weapons.
Wisely, Sarah had chosen to make a stealth approach to the entrance. If there was anyone watching that gate she had a better chance of seeing them before they saw her. What she found was even more distressing.
She approached the enclave, carefully circumnavigating a large pile of debris that had been left by recent renovations made to the homes along the south east wall of the enclave. She and Mandy had warned the enclave administrators that it was dangerous to leave the mound there, but they didn’t listen. For once she was glad they didn’t.
Commando crawling along the ground behind the pile she peered towards the entrance. The usual guards weren’t at their posts. She crawled up the pile of rubble. It wasn’t very high, but it allowed her to see over the wall. There she saw the two guards lying prone on the ground while two mercenaries were examining her bike. That escape was taken from her for now. She backtracked a hundred meters or so, then turned south, crossing into the worst hit area of the original devastation.
Everywhere there were mounds of debris, toppled apartment buildings and office towers. Travelling through these urban badlands would conceal her from the scanners of any of the forces who might still be looking, but it was also one of the most dangerous areas to travel through after dark with almost no weapons.
All she had with her was her nunchaku, her new stinger and her ninja skills. For Sassy the Hunter that might be enough.
Moving quickly and cautiously Sarah made her way through the ruins. There were still a few really hot spots in this area, so Sarah kept an eye on her dosimeter. As she emerged from the badlands a kilometer or so from the library, it still reported that she was within the acceptable range. “Still,” she thought, “I should take a dose of Anti-Rad when I get back.”
It was well beyond her normal patrol time when Sarah returned to the library. As she promised herself, she took a dose of the anti-radiation drug that the League still distributed to the enclaves, who shared it with the hunters and any outer-zone families when they could.
Covered in dust and dirt from the badlands, she stripped down, threw her clothes in the sanitizer, and hit the showers. There, she spent a great deal of time longer than she normally would. It was not just to be sure that she had no further radioactive dust on her body, she wasted a lot of time because her mind kept flashing back to Mandy. She couldn’t get the image out of her head of her friend being dragged off by the mercenaries.
Sarah was sick inside. Her closest friend, her fellow hunter, and partner of six years was probably dead already. Straight from the shower and dripping wet she went to Mandy’s room and collapsed on her bed, her body wracked with deep sobs.
It was noon before Sarah woke to the touch of the cool air from the ventilator on her bare skin. For a single moment she had the urge to start crying all over again, but something stopped her. She wasn’t angry, she was so beyond anger, even beyond rage. Perhaps what Mandy had feared had finally happened, and Sarah had become hardened to the zone. She wasn’t sure. What she was sure of was that certain people were going pay.
One thing Sarah was fairly certain of was that the number of predators would start to climb again. Even when they realized that Mandy wasn’t the one who was hunting them before, some would surely believe that she was an important part of the team and that now it was safe to return to the zone.
Sarah went downstairs to the research computers and began looking up the formulae and fabrication methods for explosives. No more taking their pods and leaving them stranded on the border. Now, if they dared to venture into her territory, there would be even more debris on the streets of Brooklyn,
In the Greenpoint enclave the last two mercenaries secured Mandy and then called for assistance. In all, the mercenaries had brought four skimmers to the borough. One came to collect them, the other immediately began to track the stolen skimmer. As they passed over the Bedford–Stuyvesant enclave their scanners all went black. There was no GPS telemetry, no tracking info, nothing. They hovered for a moment and then decided to land their craft just inside the gate nearest to the other skimmer’s last known coordinates.
As their craft had no official markings, indeed no markings of any sort, so the guards at the gate immediately moved to intercept them as they exited the craft. The first person out of the craft greeted the guards warmly. She was the diversion. The next pair to emerge stunned them with their stingers.
A quick survey of the area found a powered bike. In its saddle bags they found assorted weapons. Ensuring that the guards were secured, most of the mercenary team set out to search for the missing skimmer. They carefully went in the general direction along the stolen craft’s last known heading.
The mercenary team had only gone about two kilometers when the sun, which was already waning when the operation began, was all but gone. Out of the corners of their eyes the mercenaries began to notice movement in the shadows.
The Guardsman in the group knew exactly what that meant. Quietly, he shared the information with his teammates. The squad leader gave them instructions to open fire at the next sign of movement they saw. It probably wouldn’t scare them off, but it would force the hand of whoever thought to get the best of them. The Guardsman guessed that the unknowns hadn’t made their move yet because all the members of their raiding party hadn’t joined them, or they didn’t feel that they had the advantage yet. Either way it gave the mercenaries a tactical advantage for the moment.
It wasn’t long before one of the mercenaries opened fire on someone behind a pile of garbage. The charge from his stinger, set to kill, ignited the rubbish and badly singed three Shivs that were shadowing them from behind the garbage. That, in turn, sparked two more groups of Shivs to emerge from their concealment. They had no idea what they were in for. It was all over in a few short minutes. When it was finished all the Shivs lay dead amid the rubble and burning trash.
It also signalled an end to the search on the ground. The group leader ordered his people back to the skimmer and they rejoined their fellows. Abandoning, for now, the missing skimmer, the remaining skimmers took off for Manhattan.
Awaiting them on the Island were four of the predators who had fallen victim to Sarah’s interventions. Their purpose for meeting the mercenaries was to be sure that their “elite teams” had captured the right hunter. As soon as the skimmer set down at the agreed upon location the four men rushed inside. Their enthusiasm was immediately dashed.
“That’s not her.” Judge Morrat announced as soon as he saw Mandy. “You failed in your mission.” The four immediately turned and left.
“So what do we do with her?” the group leader demanded.
The judge briefly turned back, “She’s a hunter. That’s still a crime, process her.”
“Well, do you want the mission recordings? Her partner might be the one you’re looking for.”
Again the Judge paused. “Send them to my residence; we’ll review them, not that it will do much good. You will still have to catch her.”
“At least now we might know who we’re looking for.”
As they exited the hanger one of his companions turned to the judge, “Isn’t it dangerous leaving her with them? What if she talks?”
“She can’t prove a word, can she?” Moratt replied matter-of-factly. “Many of us are well known for our philanthropic work. If she tries to accuse us of any wrongdoing, we simply counter by saying that we were in Brooklyn to do research on its true status when we were attacked by this thiev
ing hunter. She isn’t the one who actually attacked us, so she never actually witnessed anything that we may have done in the zone. If she tries to present hearsay evidence given to her by her confederate, we strongly point out that this one’s confederate is also a hunter and a thief.
“Besides, what would we do with her? Could you kill her? What would you do with the body? Stuff it into your protein recycler? Do really think that you are capable of hacking her up and turning her into dinner? Your wife Cecile would really love that one.”
“I was thinking we would use the usual method. Give her to our friends. It was they who set this whole mission up for us to start with,” his friend replied. It appeared to him to be the obvious solution.
The judge looked at him as if he were a moron. “When have we ever sent him anyone over fifteen? She is way too old for his tastes. He likes his meat young.” His companion nodded as if to say “that’s true” and they went to their separate pods without further discussion.
Over the next few days all was quiet. The increase in traffic from the Island that Sarah expected didn’t seem to materialize. It took a full week.
In the meantime, Sarah returned to Bedford-Stuyvesant to retrieve her bike and weapons. The guards, once they woke up, had kept her things safe for her. After the attack on them that night, the guards were even more motivated to help the hunters.
At the end of the week, reports started to filter back to Sarah about upscale pods appearing in Brooklyn again. She was set to go.
Until now Sarah had not had occasion to use her archery skills. Mandy was the archer. That day as she left the library she grabbed Mandy’s bow and a quiver full of very special arrows. Ever since Mandy was taken, Sarah had been honing her shooting skills with the unbalanced arrows she had created. She was ready to take on these “Island scumbags”.
She set out as dusk was just descending. Sarah had no worries about accuracy in the dark. Master Nakamura had taught her to shoot shuriken blindfolded with great accuracy. She found the bow a lot easier.
Chronicles of the Stellar Corps: Sassy Page 6
