Galactic Menace Page 13

  Some small amount of distance is gained on the pursuing driftvault. They're content to only partially avoid the interspersed columns and compensate for their lack of maneuverability by simply demolishing the edges and corners they can't avoid.

  Whatever little distance from their pursuer Nemo's aerial stunts buy them are more or less nullified by the time they scoot out into a broader avenue Flask predicts to be Seventeenth.

  Three unwelcome sounds stack against Flask's ears from the rear compartment. A shotgun blast impacts on plastolieum. A startled Two-Bit shrieks. Streams of rippling paper disappear from distance.

  “Moons,” someone curses and Flask glances behind to spot Two-Bit, hunched over a ruptured strongbox, attempting to stem the squall of unstowed currency.

  “We keep this up,” Quicksilver comments, “we'll be broke, incarcerated and dead.”

  “Have you tried,” Nemo suggests in a manner he must assume to be helpful, “just killing the one with the shotgun?”

  Even through the whirlwind of escaping cash, Flask has a pretty decent view of the driftvault still hounding their trail. The gun-port is perfectly insulated, its single possible angle of attack the tiny opening through which the gunner slots his weapon. “I mean, he's–” Flask begins to object.

  “I did that. Twice.” Quicksilver grunts noncommittally. “Seems they pack them in there like sardines.”

  “This sure woulda been habbier,” Two-Bit muses, flipping a bleeding strongbox onto its face, “if you'd fangled actually rooning that driftvault, eh, Flask?”

  “That weren't my fault and you blooming know it, Switch,” Flask counters, face flushing with either anger or embarrassment, even he isn't certain which. “Boy promised me he uncoupled the main input relay and that should–”

  He suddenly stops, struck with an improbable notion. These driftvaults were tough old birds. Assuming his otherwise trustworthy Nyvo associate did, in fact, sabotage the driftvault, there was an infinitesimal chance the sabotage may not have taken, may not have impeded the vehicle enough to keep it grounded. There was an even more infinitesimal chance they might be able to finish the job themselves right now.

  Nemo takes his eyes off the path before them. “Shoulda?”

  “Shoot the grille,” Flask blurts suddenly, shaken from his reverie.

  Two-Bit's face crinkles. “The grille? Like, the cheesegrater?”

  “The grille, like. On the fooking front.” Flask takes a breath to steady himself and to adjust the clutch on his wounded arm. “Boy says he uncoupled that relay and that's where you'd find it. It probably ain't gonna–”

  He's interrupted by the sharp retort of an AccCo 665 Lawman and the pleasant sight of the pistol making actual purchase by shattering the driftvault's slender grille. An interior explosion follows, forceful enough to buckle the driftvault's hood into a lumpy mess and potent enough to spew red flames from between every adjacent plate. Where once the driftvault's engine was housed, now black smoke pours out. The driftvault veers drunkenly left before nosediving directly into a boarded-up storefront with a shattering of glass and a twisting of thermosteel.

  Nemo putters the driftmotor to an audibly relieved stop. Penelope's four passengers share a stunned silence, interrupted only by the compounded city noises and the chattering of the comm.

  “Told ya,” Flask sneers at Two-Bit who, collecting all the errant bills scattered across the rear compartment, deigns to reply.

  “Remind me never to steal anything on a civilized planet again,” Quicksilver remarks, simultaneously popping open both chambers to reload her revolvers.

  Ever the blind optimist, Nemo only shrugs. “Coulda been worse.”

  “And that weren't even the real heat, like,” Flask attests, inspecting the mess of crusty, dried blood that was his upper arm. “Private contract from ICC, like I said. Those blokes just had a reputation to maintain.” He smears a sanguine hand on the bench seat's scratchy wool cover. “Those blokes ain't even cops.”

  “They sure are,” Two-Bit informs dryly, his eyes fixated out the forward viewport.

  For the second time that morning, Flask is flooded with that familiar fear that freezes his felonious blood, the anathema to all Underglow's street-level hoodlums. Bearing down on them through Penelope's gunky viewport come a loose quadron of bulky, angular driftcars, complete with blazing lights, whooping sirens and the dreadful initials “GDLE” stamped authoritatively across their hoods and doors.

  “This is the Gallwegian Department of Law Enforcement,” booms a particularly unfriendly voice from the quadron's vanguard. “You will power down your engines and drop your weapons from the vehicle. Failing to comply in this way may result in your forfeiting any and all rights to an attorney, a speedy trial or due process. Do you understand?”

  All four of the driftchiller's occupants share another moment of stunned, exasperated or infuriated silence.

  As one motion, Nemo guns the engine and pulls punishingly back on the yoke. Penelope launches upward at as rakish an angle she can conceivably manage without pouring strongboxes out her open rear doors. She rockets up almost a full echelon, bringing her parallel with the crosshatched grate that separates Underglow from the Arrival Tier. At this height, she coasts cleanly over the oncoming police quadron by nearly a hundred feet.

  The prowlers follow awkwardly behind, evidently embarrassed to have been outmaneuvered by a cheap imitation of a driftvault. They skid, screech and sloppily pull themselves around to give chase, their sirens all the more distorted by their sudden changes in direction.

  “Wasn't this also somebody's job?” Two-Bit caterwauls from the rear compartment. “Am I the only one on this whole blooming caper,” he emphasizes his point with a handheld graviton, “who actually did their blooming job?”

  “Abraham!” Nemo shrieks in the general direction of the comm. “I've got some awfully vivid memories of me asking you to keep us abreast of this shit!”

  Some reply comes buzzing and hissing through the speakers but, under the peal of the sirens, Flask, nor seemingly anyone else, can actually make it out. Leaning forward, grasping the dial in two bloody fingers, Flask spikes the radio's volume.

  “–weld it up, boyo!” comes Abraham's incensed voice. “I can't hardly keep abreast of yer blooming position, can I, what with ye zipping all around like ye undoubtedly are!”

  “We're on Seventeenth, heading south past–” Flask rattles off.

  “Seventeenth?” Nemo mutters, seemingly to himself.

  “Never mind where ye are now!” Abraham complains. “Minute I get ye triangulated, ye'll be somewhere bloomin' else!”

  Two-Bit leans forward onto the bench seat to ensure his voice can be heard over the comm. “Can you not scramble 'em?”

  “I can scramble a car or two, aye, but that ain't like to be yer salvation here.” A weighty pause before Abraham portentously adds, “I don't think ye boys realize just how popular ye've become.”

  On cue, the humming sound of an approaching driftmotor warns Flask of the additional pair of prowl cars, dropping down through the grated framework to flank Penelope on either side, seconds before the loudspeaker does. Nearly deafened by the sudden blaring of repeated arrest orders, Flask is practically relieved when Nemo tips the driftchiller into a heart-stopping dive. His next righthand bank is so jarring, the Captain nearly falls out of the driver's seat and through the empty doorjamb. Behind them, those irritating half dozen squad cars struggle to keep pace with his erratic driving.

  “Tell ye what,” Abraham poses moments later, as they scream down some claustrophobic alleyway Flask doesn't recognize, “I got the code for the ol' Jolly Roger memorized. Maybe,” he theorizes with growing certainty, “I could run up the colors on a counter-frequency to the scanner's own.”

  “Uh, sure,” Nemo endorses. “Do that, maybe.”

  “Be awful public, though,” Abraham considers. “Think ye could stall for a few minutes while I make the requisite calculations?”

  “I'd be del
ighted. Give us a holler when you're ready?”

  “Aye aye, Cap'n.”

  Flask remains dubious. “The colors?”

  “The colors.” Nemo nods absently, his attention, for once, focused on his surroundings. “Virus he cooked up a few years back. Shorts out their screens in favor of this, uh, coat-of-arms thingie, of sorts.”

  “Skull-and-crossbones,” Two-Bit adds, crossing both forearms under his neck and pulling a face.

  “It's a pirate thing,” Nemo dismisses offhand.

  A pair of gentle impacts, seemingly harmless when compared to the supercharged shotgun of their previous pursuer, nudges Penelope lightly in the aft. “Well, they've started shooting,” Moira reports, sarcasm heavy in her voice. “Anyone object to a little return fire?”

  “Knock yourself out,” Nemo shouts approvingly back toward her. “Got some time to kill,” he adds quietly, more to himself, as he scans each passing cross-street.

  Before Flask can ask Nemo what he's looking for, Penelope is tearing a furious left. Strongboxes slam against the opposite wall of the rear compartment and Flask splays against the passenger-side door, nearly tipping headfirst out the window.

  They rumble through the industrial cracks between Underglow's starscrapers. Plumes of yellow steam billow upward from exposed vents. The following howl of the prowlers' sirens distort and echo hauntingly in the cavernous space.

  Through the ditrogen-scorched rearview imager, Flask watches Quicksilver's summoned saffron bolts poke, prod and pester the middle squad car of the three jockeying for position behind them. She's visibly pleased to find them considerably softer than the dearly departed driftvault.

  Electing the viewport as their weakest point, Quicksilver proceeds to batter a clean hole through the center of driver's side with a trio of canisters, each shot perfectly aimed to weaken the point of the previous one's impact. The fourth laser bolt, sailing unimpeded through the hole its three predecessors created, finds a home in the heart of the prowler's driver. The purple-skinned humanoid is astounded enough by this feat of markswomanship to audibly scream.

  The sudden, unexpected murder of this driftcar's driver predicts dire consequences for the squad cars on either side, especially while flying at such speed through such cramped space. With several more sparks, screams and skidding, three of the pursuing police are explosively dealt with.

  Nemo clears the cagey crevice and they've suddenly surfaced on Saqiroy Street, a stone's throw from the old stomping ground. Their adversaries, like worms from the woodwork, continue to manifest as stout squad cars, brandishing blaring police strips and standard issue pistols through open windows.

  One prowler is bold enough to position itself flush with Penelope's lefthand side. Its passenger side officer, a brawny Braaca, is bold enough to threaten Nemo with her outstretched handgun.

  In response, Nemo simply scowls, does exactly nothing to avoid the pair of searing red laser bolts that harmlessly burn holes into the ceiling and shucks Penelope hard enough to port to remind the police craft of her weight. Thermosteel scrapes thermosteel and still more sparks fly. The squad car is averted off, mere seconds before wrapping its bumper around the stem of a traffic light, launching both inside forward fast enough to shatter the viewport.

  As they pass, Nemo blows a raspberry through the doorless gap.

  Flask whites his knuckles against the passenger handle and attempts to calculate. With Moira claiming three and Nemo one, only two of the original half a dozen squad cars ought to remain. This, of course, said nothing for those additional two cars, slanted together some distance ahead, to create an impromptu barricade against further progress up Saqiroy Street.

  Nemo takes no notice, too busy, for whatever reason, scanning the shops and storefronts to either side of the high speed chase. Both Flask and Two-Bit do take notice, however, and choose to voice this at precisely the same moment and with precisely the same tone.

  “Nemo...” they utter in unison, an expression, Flask estimates, that Two-Bit now employs nearly as much as he and Stubb had a decade earlier.

  When prompted, Nemo cranks the parking brake practically erect. Penelope bucks into an almost instantaneous, hissing halt and nearly tosses the unbuckled Two-Bit over the bench seat and onto their laps. This done, Nemo peeks his head and shoulders out the driver's side expanse a second too late. The blurred form of their pursuers races past their suddenly still quarry, unable to react fast enough to properly apply their own brakes. The four squad cars, two screeching to stop, two skidding to escape, collide in a moment of telling incompetence for the Gallwegian Department of Law Enforcement. Flask must squint and look away from the fanfare of flame and twisted metal, it's so bright.

  “Oh, I think they closed it,” Nemo bemoans, scanning up and down the strip, his face half-cast by the explosion's rippling orange light. “Did they close down Tentacles By Graxgor?” he poses accusing toward a speechless Flask. When he makes no reply save for a bewildered shrug, Nemo pouts his lip, disengages the parking brake and motors Penelope obliviously forward. The starscrapers on either side still smoke and smolder from the crash barely a minute old. “That blows.”

  They skedaddle along unmolested for nearly fifteen whole seconds before more of Worldshine's Finest grace the car chase with their presence. Another full quadron, hauling driftmotor up Twenty-Third, moves to intercept them with pistols afire, strips awhirl and sirens engaged.

  The combined commotion of loudspeaker, siren and pistol fire nearly drowns out the sound of Abraham's voice wheezing through the dashboard's inset speakers.

  “Well, that's either the colors or some other twenty-eight digit number I got memorized, so,” comes the Grimalti's vote of confidence. “Guess we'll be momentarily findin' out, won't we?”

  “Guess so,” Flask confirms weakly.

  “Think ye can disappear on a count of three?” Abraham presumably addresses to Nemo.

  “You know they closed down Tentacles By Graxgor?” Nemo relates moodily, his lip set firmly in its previous pout. “Shit's all boarded-up. With a sign and everything.”

  Flask opens his mouth to attempt steering his cousin back on course. A frightening roar of feedback from the comm, a burst Flask belatedly realizes to be some Ortoki protest, beats him to the punch.

  “You loved that place!” Nemo continues to argue, police driftcars swirling about behind them now as they blaze onto Twenty-Third Avenue.

  “Three,” Abraham counts, seemingly as heedlessly as Nemo.

  Odisseus' reply, chopped and mangled by distance and static, isn't quite intelligible to the bemused Flask, ten years out of practice with his Ortoki. He does discern the words “time” and “place”.

  “Two,” Abraham continues, surprisingly calm, considering how ignored he is.

  Nemo's voice reads with a little honest offense. “I cannot believe you aren't on my side about this.”

  “One.”

  The driftmotor changes octaves as Nemo upturns Penelope at nearly a ninety degree angle. The viewport points unerringly toward the demarkation grate. The rear compartment is usurped by a chaos of tossed strongboxes and crewmen.

  Through the inverted rearview imager, Flask is afforded the briefest of glimpses at their four followers. Confused cops squint at the confused consoles of their squad cars, all hopefully displaying nothing but Abraham's beamed-in pirate sigil.

  Seconds later, Penelope clears the demarkation grate by such a narrow margin as to actually scrape her roof against the grate's thermosteel. That elicts a second's startled scream from everyone aboard, Nemo included.

  No sooner have they surfaced in the Arrival Tier than Nemo's swung Penelope completely around and bolted back down Twenty-Third, in the complete opposite direction they were headed a moment ago and three hundred feet below. Their daring, vertical roundabout seemingly successful, Flask is unsure whether to collect his wits or his breath first.

  Their gambit doesn't prove truly successful, though, until no pursuant police materialize through th
e grate to give further chase. For good measure, Nemo weaves the driftchiller through a few approximate side streets and alleyways, shaking the last possibility of any tail, before ducking Penelope back down into Underglow.

  Quicksilver's the first to break the silence. “That cannot have worked.”

  Two-Bit, pivoting about to spy through all available windows and vantage points, frowns condoningly. “It sure vizzes like it has.”

  “My arm hurts,” Flask finds himself carping quietly.

  “My estie suggests, however,” Two-Bit continues, ignoring him, “we oughta have twenty-four strongboxes and I'm only vizzing twenty-three. Conject we lost one somewhere back there.”

  “Not to mention our cover,” Quicksilver remarks grumpily.

  “Hm?” Nemo grunts, mind clearly zottibles away.

  “The colors? The skull-and-crossbones?” Quicksilver mocks Two-Bit's previous gesture with crossed wrists under her chin. “You think plastering that calling card you and Abraham are so blooming proud of all over a botched bank heist on Gallow won't have its repercussions?” She sheathes both pistols in one motion. “Ten-to-one, Xo'll drop the pin right back on us.”

  “It ain't botched.” Nemo flaps a hand in the general direction of the rear compartment. “That's 5.6 million in hard cash back there, is it not?”

  Two-Bit deepens his frown. “More like 5.3 million, at this point,” he corrects quietly and, when his stipulation is met with nothing but scowls from both Flask and Quicksilver, makes a swift addendum, “which, may I jabb, is still more than enough jangle to lavender us in the Offchart for blooming months, you know. Xo's dropped pins notwithstanding.”

  “My arm hurts.”

  “Can we not at least agree,” Quicksilver sighs, “that, come tomorrow, Gallow oughta be the last place we should be?”

  “Agreed,” Two-Bit's quick to confirm.

  Nemo shrugs noncommittally. “Sure.”

  His hand stays clenched to his clotted wound. His eyes absorb Arrival Tier's fractured facades as they flick past the destroyed window. Flask, author of this courtesy caper gone quite embarrassingly south, couldn't possibly agree more.