She placed a pointer on one of the vehicles parked up nearby. Covered in flaking green paint which had rubbed off in places, it was triangular in shape like a broad spearhead, hovering over the ground a mere ten yards away.
A hoverbike! It wasn’t exactly the same as Tara’s Wasp: this one was bigger and broader, but you couldn’t mistake it for anything else.
Using the commotion, I went for it, shoving the blinded staggering Rogues out of my way. I punched the driver off the bike — a groaning, eye-rubbing thug with a shaven head — and unloaded the girl into the back, jumping in the driver’s seat. Luckily, the bike wasn’t blocked by a DNA key or something similar. Tara had already shown me how to drive them. The several days I’d spent in the wastelands as her assistant had now paid off.
The worn-out console in front of me was how you steered this thing. You sped it up by pushing it away from you. If you pulled it toward yourself, the hover would slow down. Moving it to the right and left was pretty self-explanatory.
So let’s try...
The green hoverbike swung round and darted forward, wedging into the flow of the Rogues’ traffic and very nearly ramming a truck. Ignoring the surrounding vehicles, I sped up and tried to thread my way through, attempting to lose myself amid them.
It hadn’t quite worked out that way. They started chasing after me almost straight away. I heard the rattling of automatic gunfire; the bike shuddered, doused with direct hits which struck sparks from the back fender. I swerved into a sharp turn, taking cover behind the bulk of eighteen-wheelers and double deckers, shamelessly cutting them off and constantly changing direction. It did help: the Rogues didn’t seem too eager to open fire in heavy traffic.
I suddenly realized that there must have been lots of women and children with the Convoy, so the Rogues were probably reluctant to hurt them. That was fine with me; the only thing that bothered me was the unpredictable bike which refused to obey a ham driver like myself. I’d grazed the nearest vehicles twice already, and the fact that I’d managed to keep my balance in steep turns was nothing short of a miracle.
“Did you say miracle?”
Well, that too, yes. But mainly it was Miko, of course, who tirelessly calculated the right paths and told me when to brake or speed up. Without my cogitor’s assistance we’d have most likely crashed at the first overoptimistic swerve.
A set of sharp claws sank into my shoulder. “Go right! Quick!”
The weregirl had come round and was guiding me now. Ahead to our right, I could indeed make out the green woods covering the steep slopes of volcanic hills. There were only a few rows of vehicles left between us and the traffic’s edge.
The firing resumed behind our backs, the bike shuddering with more direct hits. The slugs whooshed through the air too close for comfort, their zinging sending shivers down my spine. Someone must have had us in his sights. I had a gut feeling that I might receive the next spurt of his gun right in the back of my head, so I kept swerving, banking and dodging for dear life.
“Give! Gun!”
I unhesitantly shoved the Crusher back to the girl. I couldn’t even turn round, completely consumed by keeping the wretched thing under control — but the situation seemed to have changed. Something terrible was going on in our wake, the sounds of gunfire replaced by the screeching of brakes, the clashing of smashed cars, screaming and the yelling of sirens. My new friend seemed to know how to use a gun, that’s for sure; I could discern hints of satisfaction in her low growling.
Finally, we made it to the roadside. An uneven bank of fresh soil ran along the monstrous tracks left by the Rogues’ mobile fortresses, separating them from the wood’s edge.
I pulled at the controls to lift us above the obstacles, just like Tara used to do so expertly. The result wasn’t as smooth and elegant as hers: the bike’s belly grated the top of the bank, but in the end, we did escape to the safety of the wood’s lush canopy.
The bike barged on through the undergrowth. When the first black tree trunks began flashing past, I was forced to slow down for fear of killing us both.
“Quick!” the werefox demanded straight away. “Behind you!”
Her speech was getting considerably better. Indeed, I could hear more noise coming from behind as the Rogues must have resumed their chase. Still, I couldn’t ride any faster. Lacking the necessary experience, I could very easily smash the bike against a tree.
I had another way of getting the chase off our tail — but I’d been saving it as a last resort.
The blood. The sharp touch of Fang as it slashed through my forearm.
A fiery spark dropped off its blade. As I accelerated, I cast a quick look back, watching the phantom wolf waiting in the midst of the flattened undergrowth. I just hoped that the Fiend wouldn’t chase after us, choosing me or the weregirl as his victims, but would focus his attention on our pursuers instead.
The girl hissed. Her claws began digging in me again. Still, the fiery phantom stood still, apparently choosing not to chase after us. We were leaving quite rapidly while the Rogues were approaching him. I could clearly hear the barking of garms, the rattling of vehicles and the crunching of the breaking underbrush. And once those sounds were drowned out by desperate gunfire, I knew my idea had worked. If Gnarl wasn’t with them, the Fiend would rip them all to shreds.
After only a few minutes, the bike began to hiccup and lose power. All those direct hits which had peppered its backside must have taken their toll. I stopped it on a hilly slope and rolled off it, gasping for breath. This little pleasure ride had been too nerve-racking for comfort.
“Run! Quick!”
The weregirl appeared next to me again, her animal eyes focused on me like two green lanterns. She’d already healed herself again, her wounds and burns virtually gone. Here in the woods, she could easily escape any pursuit. Which was more than I could say about myself.
“Me! Climb! Quick!” she growled, once again transforming into a giant lithe beast which resembled both a cat and a fox at the same time.
I hadn’t even noticed how I’d ended on her back. I’d barely had time to grab at her disheveled blonde mane trying to stay put when she darted into the woods in long leaps and bounded through the undergrowth.
Chapter 5
THE WEREFOX WASN’T exactly what you’d call a comfortable transportation mode. Her thick, rough and prickly coat rippled with taut sheets of muscle beneath, constantly slipping out of my grip. The needle-like spikes that ran the entire length of her spine didn’t allow me to sit properly. Every time she took a long leap, I half-expected to lose my balance and fall down into the green underbrush that flashed below.
She was very fast. She dashed through the forest, took an insanely long leap over a large rocky ravine, then hopped expertly over the rocks peeking from the turbulent waters of a rapid stream which ran amid gray boulders. I could see what she was doing, trying to cover up her tracks in anticipation of another chase. Was it an animal instinct or human foresight?
The adrenaline rush of both the fight and our desperate escape began to release me. We’d done it. We were free, which was excellent news — but we still had to think about what was going to happen next. I had no doubt the Rogues would try to hunt us down. They had their garms to sniff us out, and doubtlessly they also had well-equipped hunter teams.
They also had Gnarl.
“Miko? What do you think they’re gonna do now?”
“Initiating a preliminary assessment... Number one. They’re going to monitor the area remotely using unmanned aerial vehicles fitted with search equipment. Number two. They’re going to mount an organized chase by dedicated hunters’ groups equipped with specially trained sniffer morphs. Number three. They’re going to use the ground monitoring instrumentation on board Avenger. Number four. Their Technomancers will employ their unidentified abilities.”
Basically, what she’d just said agreed with my own expectations. The Rogues had two wild cards in their deck: Avenger and Iceberg a.k.a. Gnarl. S
o far, he’d failed to curb our escape; it was quite feasible that he’d been absent from the Convoy at the time. Which granted us a certain leeway, allowing us to put as much distance between them and us as we possibly could before Gnarl mounted his own search. Because we could only guess what kinds of tools he might employ on this occasion.
“Miko? So how can we escape them?”
“I suggest you continue moving at the maximum speed possible. We need to get as far from the potential chase as we can without leaving too many traces.”
“Yeah but where the hell are we, anyway? Show me the map!”
Finally the data that my provident cogitor had downloaded from Stellar’s Archives and Fort Angelo’s vox network had started to bear fruit. A new window opened up before me: a scalable map. Pre-empting my instinctive desire, Miko had made it in 3D, adding depth to the green-and-brown terrain with its heights and lows, the hills, the woods and the mountains.
Very well. Let’s take a look.
Apparently, we weren’t that far from Fort Angelo after all. The mountain range that harbored the settlement was a mere twenty miles away. The Convoy seemed to be moving in parallel to the old highway, heading for the foothills, of all places. I’d love to have known what had made the Rogues abandon their camp by the besieged fort.
As for us, we were heading south in a ragged zigzagging line, rapidly approaching the scattering of dots which marked abandoned human settlements. Further ahead, in a large wooded area crisscrossed by the dashed lines of ancient highways, I could see the uneven isolated spots of A-zones which gradually came together, merging into one huge crimson spot which covered the whole south part of the map.
I zoomed in on it. The map had no shortage of A-zones both big and small, but this one was by far the largest, probably hundreds of miles across. Its center was deep purple, almost black, but closer to the edges, the color paled to a light pink. According to Stellar’s system of color codes, it meant that the degree of danger grew toward the A-zone’s center — and that the actual center itself was lethal to anyone. To give you some idea, the very first A-zone I’d escaped from was marked bright red on the map. I dreaded to think what kind of place it might be if its warning level exceeded “lethal” several times over?
“Miko? What the hell is this?”
“This is an ancient continental A-zone, code name Purple Fault Line. Warning level: Supernatural. Judging by its size and the sheer scale of the effects it’s spreading, it must have formed as the result of a major outbreak of substance from over the Edge. Tags: ‘hostile environment’, ‘restructuration of reality’, ‘the exhalation of Daat’, ‘Transmutation Storm’. Has a record of the absolute weapon being employed against it. Why are you asking? It’s almost three hundred miles away!”
Indeed, at the moment we were nowhere near it. “At the moment” being the operative word. If we continued moving south — especially if we were forced to run south with the Rogues’ hunters in close pursuit — sooner or later we were going to walk right into the Purple Fault Line. There was just no way we could possibly skirt it.
“Not a good idea, Incarnator. You can’t even begin to imagine how dangerous the place really is. Surviving it is out of the question. I would advise you not to even entertain going anywhere near it. You shouldn’t forget that the archived maps haven’t been updated for decades. Both the A-zones’ outlines and the distances to them must have changed dramatically.”
The sun strobed through the green canopies overhead, reaching its zenith. The turbulent stream had widened, turning into a fast mountain river raging over rapids. The werefox unhesitantly jumped into the icy cold water. The swift current dragged us past the giant round boulders lining the river banks; I shivered with the cold as the water seeped through the holes in my tattered jumpsuit. Still, the Allys was a surprisingly good swimmer.
Clutching at her wet mane for dear life, I turned round and saw immediately the scattering of black dots high in the blue sky above, so small and distant that it was only thanks to my Binocular Vision that I’d managed to notice them at all. Miko had been right: we were followed by a flock of drones which had scattered in every possible direction of our potential escape.
That was quick. We’d only been gone for an hour.
I maxed out Binocular Vision and peered at the dots until my eyes began to sting. Most of them looked very similar to the drone which had detected Tara and myself on our way to the Monolith. But one was different, though. It was a large triangular-shaped gray thing which looked more like a small airmobile with its dainty smooth outlines, its paintwork almost blending in with the color of the sky around it. It soared much higher than all the others — a bit like an eagle scanning the earth below for its prey. If the Rogues’ drones looked like jury-rigged concoctions thrown together with whatever junk they’d managed to have scavenged in the city ruins, this one was definitely the product of state-ot-the-art Utopian technologies.
My interface ID’d it without a moment’s hesitation.
Pilgrim
An autonomous reconnaissance UAV
Genuine
Orion
An integrated set of universal surveillance and reconnaissance equipment, including multi-bandwidth search systems for small-sized mobile objects.
Quantum Beam
A dedicated communications channel for instant transfer of data and reception of HQ orders.
Autonomous Robotics
Autonomy radius: 5,000+ miles
Stays active in hostile environments
Controlled by a dedicated Gamma-class cogitor.
Alpha Plus
Makes part of the Alpha kit of the Star Fleet and Planetary Security Forces.
So! This was a far cry from the Rogues’ DIY quadcopters! The thing was a fully functional military reconnaissance machine, a genuine Utopian original! No idea how the Possessed had managed to lay their hands on it. Most likely, it had made up part of the equipment on board Avenger, just like the assault bot earlier on.
“Grey, we have problems. Pilgrim’s scanning subsystems can detect all moving targets within one hundred miles. They must have already spotted us, I’m afraid. We need to employ some countermeasures ASAP.”
She sounded uncharacteristically alarmed. After a brief pause, she added,
“We need to avoid moving over open spaces and try to shield ourselves from their radars and infrared sensors. That’s not so easy. We have two options available. We can use the old system of catacombs and move underground, or we can activate Crab Genome.”
Crab Genome? I reopened the tab with the information about Flector the Bottom Crab’s final gift. Miko must have meant the only genetic modification available to me:
Impermeability: your body becomes impermeable to all types of radiation
“Miko? How’s that gonna help us?”
“I told you that it’s great camouflage, didn't I? It deflects all kinds of radiation, external as well as internal. This is a bit like the blind-spot technology, only for organic beings, rendering you invisible in most search bandwidths, including infrared and electromagnetic ones. Plus, other Incarnators won’t be able to detect your Source. The only drawback is that the very presence of Impermeability suggests a certain degree of Azuric modification to your body.”
I had no time to ponder over it. All around me, the raging torrent of the little river seethed ever higher, so that even my werefox was struggling. The current dragged us along, faster with every passing moment, past some ruins and the collapsed arch of an ancient bridge.
I opened Transformation. It was a shame to waste my second genome slot on such an admittedly weird modification — but it was either that or end up in Gnarl’s hands all over again.
Bye, neurosphere. The already-familiar spasm ran over my body, piercing it with an unbearably pleasurable agony of a new modification being installed.
That was it. Now I was impermeable to most kinds of radiation: a powerful passive modification which was unfortunately of an entirely protectiv
e kind. Also, as far as I understood, the genome’s shielding effects didn’t mean complete impermeability: they actually did nothing to protect me from any detrimental effects of a particular radiation.
A cluster of black cliffs flashed past; we were heading uncontrollably for a large rocky rapid which ended in a precipitous waterfall. The river roared, blinding me with cascades of spray.
The werefox wasn’t even trying to get closer to the shore, expertly threading her way amid the sharp teeth of the rocks all around us. I clung to her for dear life, trying to lace my arms around her broad neck.
My breathing seized in free fall as we rocketed down amid the torrents of raging water. I hit the water’s surface hard, sank deep down, then resurfaced, gasping for a life-saving breath of air. Sniffing and spitting, we swam toward the shore.
Here, the raging torrent had calmed down, forming wide shallows along the thin strip of a pebble shoal. Black cliffs towered behind it, interspersed with the green of forest canopies.
The Enchanter (Project Stellar Book 2): LitRPG Series Page 6
