Drifter (22 page)

The security team spread out, weapons up, helmets swiveling back and forth.

Lando checked his blast rifle and swallowed to lubricate a dry throat. The tunnel was dark and ominous. Anything could be waiting to ambush them.

The woman and two of the men took the point, followed by Lando and Wendy, followed by the fourth member of the security team.

They walked for a good twenty minutes or so, long enough to be well beyond the perimeter of the hotel's free-fire zone, and under the ruins.

The tunnels varied. Those closest to the hotel were relatively new and graffiti-free. The rest dated back to the glory days. Some had been used for maintenance, others had provided access to long-dead shopping centers, and at least one was part of a now-ruined subway system.

They followed that one for quite a while, walking along the still shiny power rail, and squeezing by a frozen trans car. Lando's helmet beam danced across the interior as he edged along the side of the vehicle, boots seeking purchase on the tiny ledge, but there was nothing to see. Only dust-covered seats and ads for products that were no longer available.

Then they were clear, and climbing a long inoperative escalator, its metal stairs almost invisible under the accumulated dust and debris.

Once, as they passed a side passage near the head of the escalator, Lando saw boot prints in the dust. Boot prints that were crisp and well-defined around the edges. The team leader saw them too, and motioned for everyone to remain silent, gliding down the hall with her autoblaster ready to fire.

But time passed and nothing happened. Gradually, bit by bit, Wendy allowed herself to relax. Then, about five minutes later, they arrived at their destination.

The security team came to a halt, signaled for Lando and Wendy to do likewise, and took a quick look around. Satisfied with what they'd found, or hadn't found, two of the team stood guard while the others worked on a large pile of trash.

Some of the debris was heavy, and would've been difficult to move on Terra, but was fairly easy on Mars.

Lando caught nothing more than glimpses at first, sections of curved metal, and glints of colored duraplast. Then a cover was pulled away, and as the cloud of dust settled slowly towards the floor, a scooter was revealed.

It was a two-seater, complete with dual antigrav units, and more power than was necessary on a planet like Mars. With very little gravity to overcome, and hardly any atmosphere to slow it down, the scooter would go like a bat out of hell.

Lando saw that a rotary missile launcher had been built into the vehicle's front fairing. He bumped helmets with the team leader and pointed towards the launcher.

"Does that thing work?"

The team leader laughed. "Who the hell knows? You'd better hope so."

One of the men did something to the scooter's controls and it lifted itself off the ground. The small instrument panel glowed green and the vehicle swayed slightly as the man got aboard.

A new source of static rattled in Wendy's ears. She imagined riding the scooter and felt something hard and cold in the pit of her stomach. They'd be like targets in a video game as they threaded their way through the broken streets.

One of the men touched Wendy's arm and motioned her forward. The woman moved up the corridor, with the scooter right behind, and left the rest of them to bring up the rear.

The strange assemblage had traveled only a short distance when the woman signaled for them to stop.

Lando saw a large bank of old-fashioned elevators and wondered what the woman was up to. He watched as she produced a small tool, unscrewed a metal plate, and did something to the wires inside. An UP sign appeared, nearly invisible through layers of dust, and a pair of doors slid open.

Amazing! Lucky Lou had restored power to at least one of the elevators. Just one of hundreds or maybe even thousands of contingency plans the old man had put in place during his extra long lifetime.

The scooter took up a lot of room, but all six of them managed to crowd aboard nonetheless, and waited while the ancient elevator carried them slowly upwards.

The letter
G
lit up and one of the doors slid open.

One of the men put his shoulder against the second door and forced it open.

Now they were in some sort of lobby, a one-time bank lobby from the look of the old-fashioned teller machines and the huge chrome-plated vault that stood open along one wall.

Lando noticed the bullet-riddled wall, the section of counter that had been melted by blaster fire, and the dust-covered mounds. Vacuum-preserved bodies, still clad in their punctured armor, awaited a burial that would never come.

A bank robbery? No, the dust wasn't thick enough for that. The bank had been deserted for hundreds of years. This was something more recent, a dispute over money, or a blood feud of some kind.

Dust sprayed sideways as the scooter's antigrav units counteracted what little gravity Mars had to offer, and a set of swivel-mounted thrusters propelled the vehicle forward. The driver stopped just short of the door and got off. The woman pressed her helmet against Lando's.

"This is where we part company. I attached a mapper to the console, and no matter which way you go, it will always show the shortest route to the spaceport."

The woman smiled cynically. "Of course that assumes that the mutes haven't barricaded any more streets during the last twenty-four hours."

Lando forced a smile. "Does the local Chamber of Commerce know about you?"

The woman shrugged and was large enough to make the armor shrug with her. "It's my job. Good luck."

Lando nodded and swung a leg over the scooter's seat. He felt the vehicle bob slightly as Wendy did the same. Something bumped into the back of his helmet and he heard Wendy's voice. "What now?"

Lando rearranged the sling on his blast rifle so that the barrel of the weapon was pointed to the right. "We go like hell and hope for the best. Sling your blast rifle so that the barrel points left. We'll cover both flanks that way."

"I don't know if I can shoot someone again."

Lando knew better than to insist. "Okay… but you could fire for effect. Just to keep their heads down."

Wendy said, "Okay," but knew it was a cop-out. Random death is death just the same.

Lando took one last look around. The security team had vanished back into the tunnels whence they'd come. He tilted his helmet back to make contact with Wendy's. "Hang on… here we go!"

Lando twisted the throttle. The scooter's thrusters fired and pushed him out into the light of day.

Tawson tripped over a dirt-covered pipe and swore under his breath.

The sound was picked up by his mike, transmitted over his suit radio, and received by all those around him.

The shuttle pilots grinned and looked at each other through darkened visors. They worked for Orlow. The Mega-Metals exec might pull some heavy G's back on Terra but he didn't know diddly out here. An open mike was real stupid. Fortunately the gaffe wouldn't make any difference. The targets weren't close enough to hear.

Tawson shifted the unfamiliar weight of the blast rifle from one shoulder to the other. Sol help him if anything went wrong. He'd never fired a weapon in his entire life.

It was a mistake to be here. Tawson knew that. But circumstances had left him with very little choice. He was committed now, so deeply committed that success was a must, even if that meant his personal involvement.

Damn Orlow anyway. This was her fault for allowing the fugitives to escape. To hell with asking them questions. Shoot on sight. That was the way to handle it.

Tawson shifted his weight from one foot to the other and used his binoculars to look around. The view from the top of his makeshift command post was excellent. Not the highest point around, but high enough to spot anything that approached the spaceport and nail it if need be.

Not that it would be necessary to dirty his hands. No, the somewhat repulsive group who referred to themselves as the Air Heads would see to that.

Tawson, and the five pilots who'd agreed to come with him, were nothing more than backups. A last line of defense in case Lando and the Wendeen bitch managed to slip past the oxy vamps.

Yes, money could work absolute miracles, raising entire armies when necessary and solving all manner of problems.

That's why Tawson was so fond of it.

Tawson felt a trickle of sweat run down his temple and wished that he could wipe it away. He turned his heater down instead. The sun was high in the sky and beating down through the thin Martian atmosphere.

The executive took a sip of water and looked out over the ruins. Wisps of dust, thin as smoke, rose like spirits from their graves.

When Tawson spoke he was unaware that the pilots could hear every word he said. "Hurry up, damn it. Hurry up and come."

Lando turned the handlebars to the right, realized that he'd turned them too far, and overcorrected in the other direction. The scooter bobbed, tilted dangerously, and straightened out. There was a pile of rubble in the middle of the street and he guided the scooter around it.

The smuggler glanced down at the mapper and saw that there was a turn coming up. He triggered the reverse thrusters in a series of short bursts, felt the scooter start to slow, and accelerated into the turn.

Lando felt better now, connected to the machine, and somewhat more confident of his ability to control it.

He saw a short stretch of open street up ahead. He twisted the throttle and felt the little vehicle leap forward.

Deeber fingered his talisman and prayed. "Eeny, meeny, miny, mo, let the holy Oh-Two flow."

Deeber hoped that the prayer would bring today's quarry in his direction. The first one to see and attack the norms would get half their oxygen. That, plus his share of the tribe's fee, would make this a profitable day. He squinted into the unaccustomed light.

"Night, night, that's the way, hunt at night not the day. Thus it is, thus it was, thus it shall always be, amen."

Deeber turned and his reflection turned with him. It was distorted by flaws in the ancient chrome but was better than nothing. He preened for a moment.

Though deformed from birth, Deeber's body was closer to norm than most, and he was proud of it. Unrestrained by gravity, and lacking in sufficient calcium, bones grew in strange ways. Deeber had a reasonably normal skull, narrow shoulders, a long twisted spine, and short stumpy legs.

His armor had been custom-made to fit his deformed body. His mother had assembled it from bits and pieces that she'd salvaged herself or purchased from the metal scavs. Deeber had decorated the pressure suit with more than a thousand pieces of plastic. They made the sunlight hop, skip, and jump as he moved.

He jerked around as a series of tones sounded inside his helmet. The oxy vamps used their children as scouts. This was Skizy, or maybe Pullo, slipping him the jump. His prayer had been answered.

Deeber's short stumpy legs carried him out the door of the one-time cafe and into the street. Two norms came straight at him. Wait a minute! They weren't supposed to have a scooter. What the…?

Okay, ignore the scooter and concentrate. Raise the kill tube, aim carefully, take a deep breath, and fire. "Missile, missile, white and red, find the norm and kill him dead."

Lando swerved as the weirdly shaped alien thing aimed some sort of tube at him.

The tiny, heat-seeking missile identified two different heat sources, and true to its programming, chose the stronger of the two. It soared towards the sun.

The mute cursed. This sort of thing didn't happen at night. Deeber tried to turn, tried to run, but his short little legs weren't fast enough.

Leaving his right hand on the handlebars, Lando used his left to pull the blast rifle's trigger. A shaft of blue light shot out at right angles to the scooter and burned a black groove along the front of the buildings on that side. It cut through Deeber's homemade armor like a knife through warm butter. The oxy vamp exploded inside his suit.

A horrible series of screams filled Wendy's helmet. They were part sorrow and part anger as the rest of the oxy vamps rushed to avenge Deeber's death.

Unthinking, Wendy let go of the passenger bar and put both her hands to her helmeted ears, at the very moment Lando swerved sharply. Toppling sideways, she grabbed desperately for the bar, and just barely managed to seize it and right herself.

The screaming filled Lando's helmet. He wanted to turn his radio off but resisted the impulse to do so. No radio meant no Wendy.

Five pressure-suited somethings scurried, limped, and crawled out into the street. Each of them was armed and leveled some sort of weapon in his direction. The smuggler flipped a protective cover up, pressed the red button, and watched the missiles surge away. They had no guidance systems whatsoever and exploded on impact.

The oxy vamps became pillars of flame. Lando drove between them and out the other side.

A heat-seeking missile came from somewhere behind him, zeroed in on some red-hot oxy vamp armor, and blew up. Fragments of metal and plastic were thrown fifty feet into the air where they cartwheeled and fell slowly towards the ground.