Cassandra Kresnov 5: Operation Shield (43 page)

One of the two men approaching Ruben lunged as he came around the L-bend. Ruben countered with both arms, blocking and driving an elbow, smashing that man aside. The other came at him hard, Sinta missed it as the first bounced off barstools and landed at her feet, where she proceeded to kick the shit out of him.

Turned on the two behind, saw their guns out, seeking targets without hitting their own guy. She dropped low, pressed hard against the bar, fumbling for her pistol, was suddenly hit from behind by a huge weight as Ruben's opponent fell over her, struggling to bounce back up, but finding that hard with his face split open and ribs broken. But he gave her more cover to scramble around the L-bend, as Ruben's fire sent the other two diving low.

Back to the bar, Sinta found herself staring at the booth opposite, the dancing girls cowering and screaming as the big window behind them blew out…an exit! She scrambled up for it, but Ruben grabbed her collar and slammed her back, whack! as she hit her head on the bar. Ruben dragged her instead for the entry door, doubled low for cover, dazed and seeing stars and trying to turn in case the men behind rounded the L-curve behind…and where the hell was her contact?

The roar of an engine, tires squealing, then a car smashed through the front door, taking much of the wall with it, and the man covering behind the doorframe.

“Go!” Ruben yelled at her, shoving her past, shooting behind as one of their two pursuers tried the L-curve…Sinta ran, skidding under collapsed door frame and ceiling, scrambling low as she kept the carside for cover…the car was empty, Ruben must have uplinked it, crazy trick in mid-firefight.

Random street traffic was stopped on the road, some reversing as traffic central tried to get civilians out of the danger zone, light pedestrian traffic rapidly taking cover. A cruiser hovered low, coming closer, turning side-on, window down…and Sinta ducked back hard and rolled as bullets punched through the car body.

A flash, and the shooting stopped…Sinta popped up in time to see the cruiser going sideways, all aflame, hit a building side, flip, fall, and pancake into the road with horrid force.

“Ayako!” Ruben exclaimed with pleasure, leaping out beside Sinta, as another cruiser appeared, higher and behind the one just killed. “Bitchin’ girl!” As a groundcar roared up, high performance, lights blazing and doors up. “This one's ours, go go!”

Firing behind as Sinta ran from cover, flinching against the expected blaze of agony as bullets would surely find her. Reached the car and dove in with such force she nearly broke her arm, scrambling into the driver's seat. Ruben
followed, gunfire now crackling overhead from the newly arrived cruiser, into the bar doorway, keeping heads down behind.

He hit the seat and saw she was preparing to drive. “Hey! Move out!”

“No way, buddy.” She put the doors down and skidded off in a 270-degree howl of power, reverse-steered out of the slide, darting neatly between two immobilised cars up a crossroad. “This, I can do.”

Ruben stared, then shrugged. “Cool. Take the L35, please. Let's go south.”

Sinta put them squarely in the middle of the road, wheels dividing the centerline, making it easier for traffic central to avoid them, saw cars ahead sliding across to avoid. “Dammit, they're going to track us on central, central's got us pinged as off-grid.” Slid around a corner with suicidal confidence, trusting central to keep obstacles aside. “That your friend up there?”

“Ayako Kazuma, old buddy.” And paused, receiving something on uplink that Sinta couldn't hear. And laughed hysterically, gripping door handle and dash as Sinta's driving slammed him around. “You just watch your cute ass, you hear?” And to Sinta, “Doesn't care she might go to jail, just wants to shoot stuff, as usual.”

“You got a plan?” Sinta asked, taking another corner even faster as her rhythm kicked in. “We'll have air support on us any second, and even you can't get net superiority against these guys.”

“Get the chip your friend gave you to FSA HQ.”

“That's thirty Ks, we'll never make it.”

“Help's coming, no choice but to try.” Wincing at something unseen. “They've got us fucking net bracketed, I can barely make connection. I'd send the fucking chip data to someone else, but they'd just trace it and nail them…can't even
see
HQ, they're completely cut off.”

“Hard job without your net tricks, huh?” Sinta said edgily, howling around a wide bend, holding the difference between over and understeer with little flicks of wheel and accelerator, just missing several vehicles.

“Holy crap, where'd you learn to drive?”

“Racing sims, loved ’em since I was little. Ruben, they're not just going to let us get there, if that chip has what the guy said it did, it blows them out of the water…”

“Lemme guess, ramp up GI production again? Restart the war?”

“How'd you know?” Hard braking, crazy right turn past a bus, leaping a low median, twitch to miss overpass pylons accelerating back past 170 kph.

“Holy fu…” as Ruben held on for dear life. “Nice. Just a guess.” And received something on uplinks and grinned. “Ayako, quote, says you drive like a motherfucker. Compliment from her. If we get on the L35 we've got a chance; it goes nearly straight there, at those speeds it's only a few minutes and there's always a fair bit of traffic, they'll not risk shooting up the freeway.”

“Huh,” said Sinta, unimpressed. “You reckon?” The upramp was ahead, on the far side of a commercial district, more big towers. Sinta indicated right so central knew she was diverting to the ring road, slowed approaching cars and gave her a free shot up the road past green parks and a blur of low rise commercial at 200 plus.

“Ayako, still there?” Ruben twisted around in his seat to try to see her, up and behind somewhere, keeping an eye on them. “Watch those towers, huh? Good cover spot.”

Sinta saw the road drop to an underpass ahead, gunned it hard through the tunnel that followed, then up the exit ramp to the surface, squeezing past a truck with centimeters to spare, and here ahead with towers on either side was the L35 elevated expressway. Leaped all four wheels in the air as the road levelled off, bounced, then swung wide left without slowing, timing that arc neatly across wildly avoiding oncoming traffic and directly onto the onramp.

Ari laughed. “Ayako says she wants you on her team the next sim challenge night…” And his eyes widened as ahead, coming just into view as they rose up the ramp, hung an A-12 combat flyer, full missile racks deployed, hiding behind the overpass. “Ayako, watch front!”

It fired, and behind them, something blew up. Sinta howled onto the expressway, fishtailing as they straightened out and accelerated. Ruben was fully turned around in his seat, staring out the rear window. Sinta did not have time to look, but her rearvision display glimpsed something flaming, falling from the air like a comet. Then out of view.

Ruben turned back around, pale and silent. Wiping his eyes. Sinta accelerated in the right lane past 300 kph and kept going, a wide open lane ahead as central moved all traffic left, only the gentlest bend to negotiate. Nav said they still had twenty Ks to go.

“If you want to surrender,” said Ruben, voice tight and strained, “we can do that. That thing'll be onto us any minute.”

“No chance.” And she was astonished at herself. She was terrified, and she was
far too young to die. But the fury astonished her even more. This was her city, and her world, and her Federation, and no, damned if she'd stop. Fuck them all.

“We gotta send that chip data somewhere they won't expect and can't trace,” Ruben muttered. “I can't get through to anyone properly, just audio. We gotta keep moving; if we stop they'll bracket us completely and shut down all local net receptors. If we keep moving we've got a shot.”

“Moving, I can do.” Eyes flicking fast from the road to the rear display, searching for the black machine that had killed Ruben's friend. “I can't see it, where is it?”

“It's coming wide, figuring the next attack. They won't want to blow holes in an expressway, makes them look bad.” Ruben could see so much more on the net than she could, with her uplinks Sinta had to stop everything and concentrate, freaks like Ruben did it simultaneously.

“Shouldn't we get off the expressway and get some cover?” They were awfully exposed up here, towers and smaller buildings whipping by, exits and glowing signs with them. “I can still go plenty fast with cover.”

“It's not fast enough.” Ruben had his shades down, concentrating hard. “They've got some…freaking huge net controller locking us out. It's shutting down whole sections of network reception that we're in, the only thing it struggles with is rapid transition from one region to the next. We need at least 300 kph.”

They were nudging 350; Tanushan groundcars routinely did 180 up here, perfectly safe under central control, but at 350 even huge, gentle corners seemed to come up awfully fast, and the steering translated even the faintest little nudge into a life-threatening event. She'd done sims like this where she'd made mistakes and crashed. It was quite an experience to know that a similar mistake here would end her life for real.

“Dammit,” Ruben muttered at something he saw on uplinks, “not now!” Pause, Sinta concentrating as hard as she'd ever concentrated in her life around a wide left, jaw clenching at every little slide of tires. “It's coming around on us. Give me the chip.”

“Left inside pocket,” said Sinta, not daring to use a hand. Ruben reached, removed it, pulled a small reader from a pocket and placed it in.

“Ten seconds,” he said. “I've got a connection, ten seconds and we can take the next offramp. Get ready to dodge.”

“I can't fucking dodge at this speed, we'll die.”

“Well, then find the next exit. Five seconds.” Slower cars ahead were blocking the left lane approach to the exit, Sinta hit the left indicator and watched as central slowed them dramatically, clearing a way.

“Coming up!” She began to shift left, easing onto the brakes with increasing weight, if she hit the ramp at 350 they'd leave the road and bury themselves in the fifth floor of a neighbouring building.

“Got it!” he said triumphantly. “Missile lock, hang…!” Something blew them sideways. Then upside down, the world slowly turning, then a screech of metal, sparks, and a freeway barrier racing at them faster than fear.

Danya looked across from his perch watching the rising dawn by the hotel window, as Kiril woke up, looking puzzled. He put a hand to his head, then waved it in front of his eyes.

“Kiri?” Danya asked. “What's wrong?”

“I think my uplinks are working,” said Kiril. “I can see things, it's weird.”

Danya went quickly over to Kiril's bed and sat. “What can you see, Kiri?” It wasn't the first time Kiril had had strange flashes on his uplinks. Maybe this was just another one.

“I don't know.” He sat up, blinking. “Funny things. Shapes.”

“Does it hurt?” Danya asked with concern. “Does it give you a headache?”

“No. It's just weird. I feel a bit dizzy.”

Danya's heart was thumping. He didn't like this at all. He could defend Kiril from ordinary dangers, but he had no idea what to do about the uplinks except to take the doctors’ advice that they'd done everything possible to freeze their further propagation, and report anything further to them. But he couldn't contact the FSA's doctors now, not with all the stuff going on he'd been watching on his AR glasses.

Svetlana raised her head from the other bed's pillows, where she'd been sleeping in her clothes, bleary-eyed and hair messed up. “Danya? What else happened?” She'd been awake periodically, as Danya told her about the coup.

“Um, they released a bunch of stuff about the coup to the media, and the media treat it all like it's true. Sandy always said the media were full of shit.”

“Did Sandy call?” Hopefully.

“No, she can't call us Svet, she doesn't want anyone to track us here. Kiril's uplinks are acting up again.”

“Oh, Kiri, not again.” Svetlana was less than impressed. “You want those things to be turned on so badly you think they're working all the time.”

“I can see writing,” said Kiril, putting a hand over his eyes. “It's like someone wrote me a message.”

“Really?” Danya didn't know what to think. Svetlana was right, plenty of times he'd thought they were working when they weren't. “What does the message say?”

“And why would someone write you a message?” Svetlana asked tiredly, head back on the pillows. “They're uplinks, why not just talk to you?”

“Because Dr Kishore says my eyes are more connected than my ears,” said Kiril, putting a hand over his eyes to block visible light. “It says…wait a minute…”

“It says wait a minute?” Svetlana grinned.

“Leave him alone, Svet,” said Danya. “Go on, Kiri.”

“Hello, Kiril.” Danya looked at him blankly. “That's what it says,” Kiril explained. “Hello, Kiril, this is Ari Ruben.”

Danya stared at him. “Ari! Go on!”

“I'm so sorry to do this to you, and Sandy's going to kill me.” Kiril was a very good reader, even by Tanushan standards. His teachers had been very impressed. “But I had to send this info…information to someone, and you're the only person I can reach…reach? Yes, reach, whose uplinks won't be traced, except for Ragi, and I don't know where he is.”

Kiril looked up at Ari. “Who's Ragi?”

“I don't know,” said Danya. “Sandy never mentioned him. What else does he say?”

“There's a file with this message that the memory por…portion? Portion of your uplinks will store. It's very important that you don't get caught. Try to get this information to Director Ibrahim of the FSA. He's the only one you can trust, except for Sandy and Sandy's friends, but they can't contact you without putting you in danger. Be safe, and listen to Danya, he'll know what to do.”

Kiril gazed up at Danya expectantly. So did Svetlana, now bolt-upright on her bed, wide-eyed. He'd know what to do? He didn't. How the hell would
anyone
know what to do in a situation like this? Let alone a thirteen-year-old boy who'd only been here a few months?

He got up and went to the windows. The sunrise was beautiful, across the enormous cityscape, guidance lights blinking on the towers, warning to the slowly increasing air traffic, busy on this day like any other day, political crisis or not. Panic was not an option. He'd been in dangerous situations before. He just had to think his way through the process like he had then. And then…well, the first thing was to realise that you didn't need to know everything. Kids usually couldn't. But kids could be very good at seeing what was immediately in front of them. Deal with that, let the rest sort itself out.