Point Apocalypse (35 page)

"Listen, old man," I
stepped forward. "The safety capsules up here can save our asses. Yours, mine and everyone's. Everyone on the Continent."

"What the fuck is that? Who are you to
raise your voice here like that?" the man's hand moved to draw but Fritz grabbed his wrist, shoved discreetly a couple of coins into his other hand and stepped closer, whispering in his ear.

When Stepanych moved away,
he wrinkled his nose and scratched his head. His lips moved in silence. His face reflected the strain of mental work.

"You there," he
rotated his index finger at his temple, "you'd better think before you open your mouth."

"We only need to get to the capsules
," Fritz said. "Then we'll pop into the workshop and we'll be on our way. The work shift will still be at the river. They'll never even know we've been here."

Stepanych glanced at the lookouts on
top of the cockpit and fingered his long gray mustache.

"All right, damn you.
Go," he stepped back to the railing to let us pass and added at our backs, "I'm afraid I've got to report to the captain anyways."

"Be my guest," Fritz waved him off and walked towa
rd the cabin deck. Without turning, he said, "Georgie, you've been on the lower decks, you take the customer to the safety capsules."

"And you?" Georgie asked.

"I'll get some tools from the workshop."

We split
up. As Georgie and I descended into a stifling darkness, he tried to draw me on my plans and suss out what I needed makeshift jetpacks for. But I didn't have time to explain. Together we opened the hatches that led to the capsules. I showed him the sequence in which we had to pry the levers open in order to release the capsules in their shafts and send them sliding down the rails toward the deck.

I had to hurry. Blank
must have been approaching New Pang and he knew that he had trouble back at the camp, in the gasometers. He might have dispatched a reserve squad already for all I knew. It was a race against time.

When t
he safety locks clicked and the rockets' nozzles clunked onto the fireproof tiles inside, Fritz returned. He threw me a screwdriver, hurled another to Georgie, put the toolbox down, and we got working. We unscrewed the bolts that kept the tiles in place, then took them off their mounts and set them aside. I inspected the jets' nozzles and panels and nodded to Fritz. The capsules couldn't have been in a better state of repair - I'd even noticed traces of original lubricant on the panels. Why would it be otherwise? No one had any use for them here. The hermetic shafts with their hatches and heatproof tiles worked as natural sarcophagi offering the best conservation imaginable.

It took
us another ten minutes to remove the jets and extract the drums that contained the brake chutes. Afterward, sweating like pigs, we took everything to the workshop and I used all my welding skills to shape a jetpack frame.

While Fritz and Georgie busied themselves making
mountings for the thrusters and cutting stabilizers out of pieces of tin, I made leather hand and ankle straps and, once the contraption was assembled, attached them to the frame.

We fumbled around with
it for about forty minutes, no more. The jetpack turned out to be awkward and heavy - nothing like the original Defense Ministry kit - but I didn't care. I was more than pleased with the result: the thrusters hung on the frame on either side of me and between them sat two brake shute drums. I could have added a safety deflector to make sure the blast didn't burn my feet but I didn't want to lose more time than absolutely necessary. At any moment, Blank's reserve squad could have arrived at the City of Forecomers.

So we decided to go back.
I still had to assemble the fuses and wire them in to the gunpowder tubes. I couldn't use the original fuses: to be able to get to them, you had to eject the capsules from the shafts and open them. You couldn't do that without a crane.

We set off on our
way back. Georgie sat next to Fritz while I took the back seat and started fiddling with the wires. I leaned the jetpack against the backs of the front seats so that the tubular handles of the stabilizer controls faced me. I used some insulating tape to attach two button switches and fed the wires through the tubes.

There'd been no portable batteries at the tanker but
Fritz had unearthed a flashlight with a hand generator. I could use it to power the fuses. In the workshop, I'd borrowed a pair of safety goggles which were now hanging around my neck.

"Fritz? What was it you told Stepanych
to make him let us through?" Georgie's voice cut through the hum of the engine. "I'd rather fuck a clone than do something like that. I'd never let us go in."

I looked u
p. Fritz tilted his head at Georgie and gave him a sly grin. But Georgie rose in his seat, leaning against the dashboard.

"The thing is, he-" Fritz started but Georgie didn't let him finish.

"Over there!" he stood up, then slumped down again as the Willys hit a stone. "Look!"

By then, we'd almost reached the rocky plateau.
There, far in front of us, two combat buggies were racing toward the City of Forecomers raising clouds of dust from the road.

Fritz hit the anchors
. I grabbed at the jeep's side just in time, my chest very nearly ramming the jetpack's frame.

"Looks like one has turned round to meet us," Georgie croaked. "What do we do now?"

I lifted the jetpack, stood up on my seat and put my arms through the straps.

"You haven't tested it!" Fritz raised his red eyebrows staring up at me.

"Never mind," I said fastening the ankle straps. "If it's stable, that's all that matters. It sure can fly me from here to the ruins."

I finished and
wiggled my shoulders adjusting it, then put on the goggles.

"
But what about the wiring? The fuses?" Fritz said seeing two disconnected wires hanging off my shoulder.

"Splice them," I lay my hands on the
stabilizers' handles that traced the shape of my arms.

"Can't you see we're to
ast!" Georgie exclaimed. "We need to get the fuck out of here."

"
Wait," I moved one hand onto a handle and turned my head watching the right stabilizer change the gradient. "They'll have better things to do with their time in a moment."

Fritz
adjusted a twisted strap and slapped my shoulder, "All ready."

I nodded to him and
stood with my feet wide apart, then crouched and leaned forward. The jetpack pressed on the small of my back. I rearranged it and took the handles again.

"
Now duck."

I
grasped the hand generator's handle and pressed the button. Loud crackling and hissing noises came from behind my back. With a swoosh, tongues of fire issued from the two nozzles lifting my feet off the seat. For a second, I hovered about a meter above the jeep in a cloud of sand and dust raised by the jet. Then it jerked me up so hard that the acceleration knocked the stuffing out of me. The straps pulled hard against my chest. The air roared in my ears.

I slightly spread my arms changing the
stabilizers' angle and looked down. I was sliding along the valley gradually descending. Fritz and Georgie in the jeep had stayed far behind. I glimpsed a combat vehicle below making a sharp U-turn: it must have noticed me.

The next moment
fiery projectiles criss-crossed the sky, launched from the pulse gun on the vehicle's roof. They didn't seem to have any guided ones: in a cyber's hands, one would be enough to hit any target.

Changing the
stabilizers' angle again, I rose higher to overtake the second vehicle of the reserve squad. It was racing toward the gasometers that loomed into view far ahead. If only I had enough fuel! If I burned the two remaining stages, the jetpack would become a useless pile of junk. Then I could forget saving Mira and my daughter.

The thrusters
had been designed to lift a much bigger weight than mine, but unlike combat jetpacks, they weren't made for repeat ascents that battlefield situations demanded. It meant that the fuel in the stages would burn out completely in about two minutes creating enough thrust to accelerate to nearly two hundred miles an hour. That would allow me to glide for a while using the stabilizers and then...

The gasometers
approached rapidly when the engines died. I estimated the distance and started to drift down. I had to find a place to land. The chutes would kill the speed but as I had little control over them, they wouldn't prevent a hard landing.

I used the
stabilizers to slow down my descent a bit hoping to make it to the gasometers. And I could already see below the yellow and brown spots of a cam net stretched over the roof of one of the buildings.

S
hots were ringing out below. Both riggers and loggers fired away at me with their carbines mistaking me for one of Varlamov's troopers. This was the last thing I needed, to get a bullet in the guts from one of their snipers and go tumbling down from a height of two hundred meters. Not my idea of fun.

When I
arrived at the gasometer with the portal machine, I dived down and reached behind my back to activate the chute. I pulled a brace releasing the drum and, grabbing at the stabilizers' handles, drew them close to turn the stabilizers parallel to the ground.

The chute billowed open jerking me up. My legs shot forward like those of a marionette. I let go of
the handles and pulled the chute's webbing as I tried to increase the surface area of the chute hoping to slow down my descent. I barely missed the roof and flew chest first into a stone wall.

I got the shit knocked out of me
. Dozens of fireflies exploded in my brain. Circles flashing before my eyes, I grabbed at the edge of the cam net and hung gritting my teeth.

"Don't shoot!" I heard Lars' strong voice. "It's one of ours!
Get him down before he falls!"

I glanced over my shoulder. I hung about thirty meters
up. To my right, I noticed the end of a crane hoist protruding above the wall at slightly more than an arm's distance. Fragments of a disintegrated wire rope were still stuck in the crane's block. The heavy jetpack prevented me from climbing up, but I could always try and reach the crane's arm.

Below, people
fussed about shouting at me to hold on; someone urged for a tarpaulin to be stretched under the wall.

Yeah right. By the time
they found one, the cybers would have been here and then the settlers would have had more important things to do with their time, leaving me hanging until I dropped, exhausted, from the height of a twelve-story building. Then they could scrape me off the concrete if they wanted.

I took two deep breaths and pushed away from the wall
to gain some momentum. As I swung back, I reached out for the crane's arm and scratched its surface breaking my nails but at least catching hold of its edge. Now I hung sprawling in the air like some kind of crucified martyr.

My shoulders shook with
the strain. My neck muscles were cramping.

"
Get to the crane!" I heard. "Climb down the rope to the ladder!"

It was Lars shouting but I couldn't even turn my head for fear of letting go of the
wall's edge.

Not breathing, I
released the net. My right hand slid off the edge while my left one grabbed the wire rope. But instead of the jolt I expected, I started falling with it. The block overhead rattled with the unwinding rope. The people watching me on the stone platform below grew closer with every second.

A man on the ladder jumped off just in time
to avoid my legs kicking his head. At the last moment, the block jammed. The rope jerked and stopped. My fingers slackened; not expecting this turn of events, I kicked the ladder as I tumbled head over heels flailing my arms in the air. Then I was hanging head first wondering why I'd stopped.

"Get him
off!" Lars ordered. "Quickly!"

Grunting from the
pain in my chest, I doubled up grabbing at the ladder's sides and finally realized what had happened. The ladder's lower rungs were caught on the funnels of two engines and that had prevented it from falling. But I couldn't get down on my own.

Strong hands grabbed my back. A deep voice told me to hold still. I let go of the ladder and entrusted myself to my helpers.

The next moment, I was standing down on the platform.

"Prepare to fight," I told
Lars when he stepped toward me without going into details.

I unstrapped myself, put the jetpack down and squatted next to it studying the
stabilizers and the nozzles.

"
What's all this?" Lars asked. "Where're Georgie and Fritz?"

"Back at the base," I
stood up and lifted the jetpack by its frame. "You have two combat vehicles bearing down on you. Things will get pretty hot here in a minute."