Rising Sun (12 page)

I turn to Vienne, who is signaling Aziz to descend. “Thought you lost your combat knife?”

“That one is yours,” she says, smirking when I reach for my boot. “Pinch taught me a trick or two.”

With the
đibui
pushed back to the door, Aziz glides down the rope behind us. Vienne covers him, taking out three wobblies before they can fire a round.

“What now?” I say, firing on the exit doors to keep the rest from swarming us.

“Plan C,” Aziz says. “We’re going to hijack one of the Razor’s war trucks.”

“You mean the ones with wicked nasty flamethrowers?” I ask as I retrieve my combat knife. “What’s the strategy?”

“Chuck these outside,” Aziz says, plucking two Willie Pete grenades from his belt and dropping his visor. “And run like Shiva himself is on your heels.”

“Willie Pete” is military slang for white phosphorus, which is made from an allotrope of phosphorus. Once thrown, it will produce a thick, noxious smoke cloud that burns like acid on the skin and can last for up five minutes. More than enough time for us to charge through and catch the wobblies by surprise. There’s only one hitch: the natural reaction of enemy combatants is to shoot into the cloud because they expect a frontal assault. Against the
đibui
’s firepower, we normally would do just that. But they have three flamethrowers, and symbiarmor doesn’t like heat. In hot enough temperatures, it will melt.

“Your suit can withstand up to three hundred degrees centigrade,” Mimi says.

“Can Vienne’s?” I ask.

“Negative.”

Which is why, instead of blasting through the smoke when we all toss the Willie Petes through the door, we crash through a nearby window and haul our butts to cover.

With the
đibui
falling back and filling the fume cloud with gunfire, we skirt the perimeter, eyes locked on the three war trucks, and take cover behind a pile of discarded guanite ore. We squat run for a hundred meters or so, but soon my side is aching and my lungs are killing me.

“You are out of shape,” Mimi says.

I quell the urge to cough. “Says you.”

“Negative. My source is the nanobots embedded in your hypothalamus.”

“Tell the nanobots they can kiss my nanobutt.”

“Impossible,” she says. “Nanobots have no lips, and according to data collected from females you’ve encountered, your butt is virtually nonexistent.”

Aziz whistles and points to the war truck closest to us. It’s painted red. The second is painted white, and the Razor’s truck, bigger and more armored than the other two, is black.

The red truck is undermanned, with only a driver and a wobblie controlling the flamethrower. The pilot light is lit, ready to go, and the stink of gasoline is strong in the air.

“That’s our mark,” Aziz whispers. “Durango, you take the flamethrower, and I take the driver out.”

“What about me?” Vienne asks.

“Do what you do best, Sidewinder,” he whispers, and winks. “Rain hellfire on their asses.”

She pulls an ammo clip from her belt. It’s marked with a red X. “I have just the thing.”

On his mark, we hone in on our targets. Charging toward a mass of fifty
đibui
, she fires repeated bursts at her targets.
Blam!
The wobblies are blown off their feet as she nears the second war truck. The flamethrower swings around to meet her, and as I’m sprinting toward my own target, I see a jet of fire shoot toward her.

“Vienne!” I yell, which is the wrong thing to do.

My target swings his own flamethrower around and lines me up in his sights. I see the pilot light dance. In seconds, I’ll be a crispy critter.

“Mimi, you’re sure about this suit?”

“Affirmative.”

“One hundred percent sure?”

“Ninety-nine point percent sure,” she says. “Statistics always account for a margin of error.”

“Good enough for me!” I shout out loud as the jet from the flamethrower baths my body in liquefied petrol. Heat coursing across my flesh, fire swaddling me like a blanket, I take two long strides and
leap
—

Onto the war truck.

Grab the flamethrower and shove it aside.

Raise my fist, still burning like a torch.

And punch a stunned and terrified wobblie in the chest.

He flies off the truck bed and lands in the muck. Screaming. Rolling, the wet mud sucking the fire from his raggedy clothes.

“Mimi!” I yell. “I’m on fire! Do something!”

“Endeavoring,” she says.

“Endeavor faster!” I yell as a bullet pings off my helmet.

The driver. He’s out of the cab, raising a needle cannon, taking aim at my fiery head. I duck, using the truck to shield myself. The needles hit the vehicle’s steel body
thwick-thwick-thwick
as I slap my arms and legs, trying to kill the flames.

“Die!” the driver screams, and raises his weapon again—just a second before Aziz slams into him, driving him to the ground and putting out his lights with a right cross to the chin.

“Holy shite, Durango!” Aziz says, his eyes wide as hubcaps. “What have you done?”

“Mimi! I’m on fire!”

“Fire is under control,” she says. “The combustible fuel is burning off, and your armor is dissipating the heat at an acceptable rate.”

“Then why are my feet so hot?” I ask. “Why do I still smell petrol?”

Aziz answers the question for me. By pointing at the tank connected to the flamethrower.

A tank that’s glowing red and expanding at a terrifying rate.

“It’s going to blow!” I scream, and jump from the war truck.

An instant later, the petrol tank explodes, sending a shock wave that throws us both ten meters in the air, propelling us like rag dolls tossed by a petulant child. We land hard in the sludge, and by the time we stop rolling, there’s a second explosion—the vehicle’s fuel tank—that blows the truck to smithereens.

I raise my head from the muck, taking in the carnage. The dark night is lit by the flaming vehicle, and I can clearly see the two other trucks, with the Razor still standing on the roof of his vehicle, shouting orders over his PA. The
đibui
are running helter-skelter, firing into the air, shooting anything that move, including one another.

“I think we need Plan D,” I say, and I’m about to get to my feet when I hear the unmistakable sound of armalite fire.

“Durango! Status!” Aziz is on his feet, staggering but in one piece.

I jump up. “A-OK, Chief.”

“New plan,” he says, checking. “Our target is now the red truck. You take it out, and I’ll handle the Razor.”

“You’re sure?” I ask.

“Roger that,” he says, and does a quick system check. “This has been coming for a long time.”

I nod, because what do you say at a time like this? I start to run, but he grabs my shoulder.

“And Durango? Try not to blow up the red one. We’re running out of war trucks.”

We split up. There’s no time for stealth, and with the confusion, there’s no need for it. As I run, I glance at the Razor’s truck and see his bodyguards open up on Aziz. Bullets bounce off the chief’s armor as he leaps onto the hood of the truck and grabs his brother by the ankles. With a quick yank, the Razor slams into the roof, the metal buckling with his weight, but he comes up swinging.

Not with a fist, but with the straight razor.

Aziz raises a forearm to block the blade, but the Razor parries. Grabs Aziz in a headlock and yanks off his helmet. He rears back and, using it like a club, slams Aziz in the head, catapulting him from the hood.

With a roar that is more
harii
than Regulator, the chief dives into the darkness after his brother.

“Aziz!” I stop, turn, and start to run to his defense.

“No heroics!” Vienne yells, grabbing my belt. “It’s his fight! Finish your objective!”

I shuck off her hand, intent on a rescue.

“Cowboy,” Mimi says. “She is correct in her assertion.”

Now they’re ganging up on me. Just like old times. “Fine!” I yell. “But this better work!”

We hit the red truck simultaneously. Vienne vaults into the truck bed before the wobblie manning it can even spin around. A knee to the face, an elbow smash to the throat, and he’s done for.

In the commotion I do a hook slide over the hood, yank open the driver’s door, and haul the driver out by the ear. I finish him with a rabbit punch to make sure he’ll cause no more trouble.

I aim my armalite at the wobblie who’s riding shotgun. “My armalite against your pissant blaster? You lose!”

Seeing the situation clearly, the wobblie tosses the blaster at the floorboard and throws up his hands. “Mercy!”

Vienne yanks open his door and drags him out. “Forget the surrender, get out of the truck!”

That’s my Vienne. I jump into the driver’s seat and reach for the ignition button as the former passenger makes a run for it.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Vienne yells.

“Driving!”

“I do the driving!” she yells.

“You do the shooting!”

“I’m better at both!”

“Not at the same time!”

“Regulators!” we hear Aziz cry out.

Less than ten meters from us, our chief is lying on his back, his nose bleeding, mouth busted.

The Razor stands over him, a revolver in his hand, shoving the clip in, taking aim.

“That is not the Razor,” Mimi says.

“Krill?” Holy
wa cào
, how many lives can one human have?

“Drop it!” Vienne screams. “Or I’ll drop you!”

Krill turns, laughing, the gun still pointed at the chief. “What you going to do,
dalit
? Shoot me? Your chief couldn’t kill me!” He yanks aside his shirt. “My armor’s as good as yours.”

“And your head’s just as thick!” Vienne yells.

With movement so lighting fast that I barely see her hand, Vienne flicks her wrist, and I see the glint of metal reflecting the light from the fire.

A second later, a combat knife appears in the center of Krill’s forehead. He topples like a dead tree.

“But not thick enough,” I say.

Vienne runs for Aziz, calling back to me. “Pick us up!”

I punch the accelerator, slamming his truck into the Razor’s and scattering the
đibui
converging on us. Then throw the passenger door open. “Get in!”

Vienne pushes Aziz onto the seat, his hand pressed against his temple, blood dripping between his fingers. Not enough blood for a gunshot.

Vienne slams the door and jumps into the truck bed. “Drive!”

I hit the pedal. The tires slip in the sludgy track, then catch, rocketing us forward on the mud-slick road.

“What heading?” I shout through the broken rear window.

But it’s Aziz who answers. “South,” he says in a ragged voice. Along the river. Toward Edda.”

“Edda?” I say, remembering that it’s nothing more than a ghost town, abandoned by the CorpCom government years ago. “What’s in Edda?

Aziz looks at me and says, in a barely audible whisper, “Valhalla.”

I hit the accelerator and pop the clutch, and the engine clatters into overdrive. The tachometer rises to seven thousand RPM before I shift again. High beams lighting the picked-over sorghum fields on either side of the track, we careen along the road, fishtailing like a derailed TransPort train. I manhandle the wheel, trying to keep her from spinning out, and squeeze with my gut to keep the bile from rising in my stomach.

Through the rearview, I catch a glimpse of Vienne. Steady on her feet. Unfazed by the g-forces the rear wheel drive is creating. Calm. Assured. Waiting for a target to emerge from the darkness behind us. If he wasn’t careful, a soldier could fall in love with a susie like that.

“Hostiles!” Vienne yells. “Six o’clock!”

“How many?”

“Three!” she yells. “One riding shotgun! One with the flamethrower! Razor at the wheel!”

I cut across the road, taking evasive, and lay on the accelerator as the rear window explodes.

It’s the Razor.

On my flank. Running without lights.

Kuso.

Another shot, and Plexi shards spray toward my face. Instinct turns my head a fraction of a second before the sharp plastic pings off my helmet.

“That was not instinct,” Mimi says. “That was me.”

“Thanks! My face doesn’t need more scars!”

High beams flash across my mirror, and I hear the grunting roar of the Razor’s black truck gaining on me. It’s got a bigger engine and armor plating on the hood and doors, which means I’m outmatched.

But not outgunned. Not with the best Regulator on the planet covering my back.

“Hold it steady!” Vienne yells. “I can’t get a shot!”

“I’m trying! This thing is like wrestling a Big Daddy bare-handed!”

“Try harder!”

“You can’t do everything, Vienne!”

“Yes I can!”

Aziz moans, blood from his head wound seeping out.

With a blast of lights and an air horn, the black truck swings right and comes roaring up beside us. The Razor slams his front fender into my bumper, trying to spin me out. I tap the brakes and turn left away from the spin, cut the wheel, and let the natural g-force spin me in a one-eighty so we’re dead in the road, but Vienne has a clear shot at the hooded wobblie on the flamethrower.

All the blighter has to do is hit the trigger, and we’re a plate of dunny pie.

What’re you waiting for?
I have a chance to think just before Vienne fires three rounds. The first hits the wobblie. The second hits the barrel of the flamethrower, and the third puts a hole in one of the Razor’s four rear tires. Let’s see the black truck keep up with me now.

“Go!” Vienne yells, and slaps the roof of the truck.

When I hit the gas again, we shoot past the stopped black truck, throwing a wave of thick, stinky ooze across the windows. The Razor curses and guns his own engine, but in the side mirror, I see his rear tires spin helplessly.

“Got your ass!” I yell, and pump a fist in triumph.

“Do not celebrate too soon,” Mimi warns me.

And sure enough, just as I thought we’d gotten free, the black truck’s headlights find us, and with a surge that I didn’t think possible, it gobbles up the ground between us, hanging on my rear like it’s stuck to the bumper.