Cyber Sparks Read online

  “You can still make it, Allegra. They won’t risk leaving their craft in these conditions. All you need to do is reach the shuttle cab, and I will make sure you escape custody.”

  “How? There are five craft after us, and they’re all quicker than a suck-bait shuttle cab.” The sirens now blazed directly overhead, the heat from the vessels’ thrusters scorching my shoulders. I lunged forward to escape a serious burn, almost missed the safety cord as it flung out of my grip.

  “Don’t lose your head, Allegra, or your headset. Plug the omnipod into the cab’s navigation port and you will escape arrest, I promise. Now keep moving. The alternative is a no-win situation for you. Omni will never set you free once they have you.”

  “Satto, you’re going to die real soon. If anything happens to Lenore, I’m—”

  Two powerful arms wrapped around my neck, choking me to my feet. I managed to clutch the cord with one hand while writhing against this brutal headlock. Black greaves on the massive forearms dug into my windpipe under the omnipod, and I couldn’t breathe. Backward head butts, elbows to the ribs, a wrap-around-the-leg takedown—none of my self-defense maneuvers worked on the Omni screwhead dragging me away. I let go the cord and grabbed his crotch with both hands, squeezed it like a stress ball after an especially chauvinistic photo shoot. The son of a bitch relaxed his hold, enough to let me breathe, but didn’t fully relent, not even when I pinched the tip of his salami and twisted.

  What the hell are you? Plasticene?

  Shouts from above made me look up. The Omni agent was attached by cable to a winch on his sleek gray craft overhead. Two more men wearing similar black body armor motioned for him to change his hold on me so they could lift us off the roof. I struggled harder than ever but his grip was too strong.

  A crunching noise at our feet seemed to make him stumble. He let go. Immediately a gust swiped me over the edge but I managed to cling to the cord with crooked fingertips, then pull myself in during a lull in the wind. Jesus. The man’s leg had buckled back at the knee. He screamed in agony as his colleagues jerked him up off the roof and the wind swung him into a mad spin.

  To my astonishment, Lenore inched along the cord on my side of the roof, a few feet behind where the agent had crumpled. Had she broken his leg? How? Had she slid across, unleashed some kind of martial arts kick on the guy? I knew she’d taken self-defense classes in the past, but come on—girl weighed 110 dripping wet. The guy she’d just kneecapped had to have clocked in at over 190.

  Another two agents landed behind her in tandem, attached to a second cable from aloft. This time they wielded stun-bats—short, segmented nightsticks that, when whipped out to their full length, emitted an em burst that overloaded the victim’s brain, causing instant blackout. The last thing you want to hit you when you’re teetering in a gale.

  “Run for it!” I shouted to her, but she caught me in no time and was soon the one geeing me on.

  We weren’t quicker than the agents, though. Lenore turned to face them, shielding me, our hands clasped where none could see. A defiant ember sparked a raging firestorm inside me. If this was to be our last moment of freedom, we’d sell it dearly and with a complete guarantee for customer dissatisfaction.

  The agents resembled black hood ornaments with their vee-shaped helmets and visors and their medieval-styled Kevlar armor and greaves. Stun-bats at the ready, they directed us to lie face-down on the roof. Another few feet and we’d have no choice. Lenore’s shoulders slumped, her head bowed. But her grip on my hand tightened.

  We both whipped our heads to the left at the same time. Someone slid across the roof at breakneck speed, a pocket knife unsheathed in his outstretched hand.

  Boris!

  Spitting expletives, the market man leaped to his feet at the last moment, and the momentum threw him shoulder-first into both agents. All three men swung out together over the abyss, the agents’ legs kicking wildly at nothing. Lenore put her hand to her mouth as Boris began sawing at one of the harness straps with his blade. No, the crazy fool.

  “We need to grab him when he swings back,” I said.

  “Yes, it’ll need both of us.”

  Crooked elbows around the cord held us on the very edge, where Lenore and I each held a hand out for Boris. The agents were too busy trying to shake him loose to worry about us. Luckily he was clamped between them, and their stun-bats were ineffectual at such close range. They reached the apex of their swing when the first agent jerked free and plummeted. Limbs flailing. To the grim metropolis below.

  A second later, the cable tore free and the other agent fell…taking Boris with him.

  “Oh my God!” I caught Lenore as she spun away from the horrific sight. No warning. No way back. He was gone.

  The shock roused me to a hard, unyielding fact. If we stayed out here any longer, we’d be next. Poor Boris had risked himself for us without knowing who we were or why the authorities wanted us. Maybe he just didn’t like seeing women being manhandled like that. Whatever had prompted his rash attack, he’d at least given us this chance.

  I pulled Lenore after me and we made the nearest shuttle cab in a few dozen arm’s length pulls against the wind. The other cruisers circled overhead, belching orders to us over loudspeakers, but we couldn’t discern the words. Inside the shuttle cab smelled of turpentine. After racing to the pilot seats, we strapped ourselves in without a word to each other. The day’s insanity had grown so thick around us we’d become tacit organs in the same survival vessel, trusting the whims of one another’s instincts to see us through.

  And we had a third.

  “I’m glad you made it, Allegra. Now, using the spare two-way switch-plug coiled on the side of the dash, attach your omnipod to the port marked External Navigation.”

  I obeyed Satto’s command without question.

  “Good, now start the thrusters and take off, but don’t go near the cruisers. Buy me some time.”

  “What?” I slammed my fist on the dash. “You said you’d get us out of here.”

  “The navi-computer is not responding. It may be rebooting. Keep us in the air but away from the cruisers—two of them together can flank us and snare the cab in a magno-field. Be unpredictable.”

  “All right, you dirty son of a bitch. You asked for it.” I turned to Lenore. “Not you, babe. Our genius pilot just got caught with his gear hanging out. I’m taking us up.”

  She cast me a horrified glance and immediately strapped herself in even tighter, then reached over and refastened my seatbelt before I could do the honors.

  “Thanks, hon. Sorry in advance for this.”

  I fed my bare foot into the magnetic alti-stirrup and kicked forward. The grav thrusters ignited against the Pei-McMillan field, creating a grinding, crackling sound as pressure built in the secondary chambers. This wasn’t exactly a textbook takeoff—the reaction was supposed to be used to break from Earth’s gravity at high altitude—but a regular rise would make it far too easy for the police cruisers to sneak in close and flank us.

  I pulled the lever to open the secondary chamber, and the cab shot up with a violent anti-grav punch. The built-up pressure hurled us into a four-g climb for several seconds. When my stomach finally caught up with me, we were in freefall—the thrusters had cut out. The massive commuter wheel loomed like a fossilized starfish on a bed of intricate bones far below.

  Lenore shut her eyes as our craft fell, powerless, toward the flashing lights ringing the wheel hub—police cruisers lying in wait. Again and again I pumped the thrust lever but it didn’t respond. Our negative-g spin dug the harness straps into my shoulders and hips.

  Where the hell are you, Satto?

  At roughly a thousand feet, the thrusters ignited. I clasped the manual wheel and steadied my foot in the alti-stirrup, leveling us gradually over the northern edge of the market circle. In the rearview monitor flashe
d countless lights from pursuing police fliers. A goddamn armada was racing to bring us in.

  “Satto! A little help.”

  Lenore reached across and squeezed my shoulder. “You did it. You got us away.”

  “Not yet. It’s swarming back there—you’ll hear ’em any second now.”

  Not only were their cruisers far quicker than our heap, they were spreading out across town in a concerted flanking maneuver, just like Satto had said. I could turn neither left nor right or they’d have me. Straight on and they’d catch up. Skyward? Well, I daren’t risk another engine cut-out. Which left only one route—

  “Lenore, care for one more browse before closing?”

  “Uh-oh. Why?”

  “Because we’re going in.” Adrenaline got the best of me, and I flashed her a wicked grin. “Shop till we drop, huh?”

  Her eyes bugged. “You’re nuts!”

  “See how they like this.” One eye on the rearview monitor, I hung a sharp left and banked the cab low, dipping just under the nearest giant spoke. It flung the chasing cruisers completely out of formation, picked apart their flanking net with ease. Next, I shot under the subsequent spoke, almost scraped the pulsing credit sign atop the casino roof, then corkscrewed up and over the following spoke. Glimpses of the stunned commuters inside only spurred me on—they’d probably never seen this kind of flying so low over D.C.

  Our pursuers kept pace but also their distance. More joined the hunt, hovering at the mid-points along the various spokes, thinking to cage me in around the hub. I snorted. The labyrinthine streets provided me with too many escape routes. They’d need a hundred cruisers to pen me in here.

  I swung low over the heads of cyclists around DuPont Circle and, careful not to skim the em dome protecting the White House, sped up Pennsylvania Avenue. The grav-lev stabilizers—three parallel, circular magnetic fields that ran all the way around D.C. center to support the weight of the great wheel spokes—spelled instant doom for any craft, so I had to climb over them.

  But the skyways around me seemed awfully quiet, not a single cab or cruiser in sight. Lenore joined me in scanning the streets and the sky above. Nothing. Not even a ’razzi bot skulking in the building scaffolds. Yet, when I began my climb, shock pinned us simultaneously back in our seats.

  A ceiling of flashing lights descended on us. More craft than we could count.

  We were trapped.

  Chapter Five

  Satto Vasir

  On the one hand, we were free to land on the deserted stretch of road—Lenore and I could alight and make a run for it, we were both supremely fit and might gain some distance. On the other hand, where could we go? Despite the permanent bivouac of protestors’ tents lining the grassland parallel to the road, Pennsylvania Avenue wasn’t exactly an ideal place for hiding from police custody. The cruisers could monitor our every move from above.

  My efforts to suppress the ups and downs of the past few days brought on a sudden, aching weariness. It was all too much. Years of pampered living had sapped my natural Ireton indomitability like the low gravity that, before the advent of artificial grav, had reduced the bone mass of space travelers by frightening degrees. I wasn’t that girl anymore, insuperable offspring of hardy colonists. I was a freaking fashion model. My limits were the margins of digital mag brochures.

  I took my headset off, set it down on top of the dash.

  “You gave it your best, Allie. Come on, this has to stop. We’ve gone far enough.” Lenore unbuckled our straps with trembling hands, muttering to herself.

  “Yep.” Heat from the cruisers’ thrusters overhead oiled the myriad flashing lights with a wavery haze. “We gave it a shot. No regrets.”

  “Just…Boris—I can’t believe he did that. I mean he didn’t even know us. Maybe he didn’t intend to, you know—”

  “I’m sure he didn’t think he’d fall. It’s just…one of those things.”

  She seared me with a scowl that burned right to my heart. “One of what things? Nothing that’s happened today has made any fucking sense.” First time I’d ever heard her use that word in anger. “I know I’m pretty easygoing, but for the love of Selene, what the hell is this all about?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Be sorry later.” She thumped my arm twice. Hard. “Rinko and Phyllis are dead, we’ve got the whole city wailing down on our heads, and all you can say is you’re—” A flurry of slaps assaulted me, forcing me to hide my face behind my arms.

  “Jesus, Lenore! Stop it. That fucking hurts.”

  The slaps hardened to pummeling punches. I didn’t know which was worse—being whaled on by my best friend or knowing that I deserved each and every hit. I should have reported Satto and his ravings to the authorities as soon as he’d violated my privacy that second time. Today’s events—well, I was at least an accomplice to the whole horrific spin-off.

  But enough was enough.

  Christ. She wouldn’t stop, so I saw red and let my guard down long enough to throw a stinging right at her jaw. The impact tore through my wrist. At first I thought I’d sprained it again. And for the second time that day, I’d laid out the love of my life. This time, though, for only a matter of seconds. She stirred, gave me a serious stink eye, then turned away, nursing her chin.

  Prison would be a step up from this.

  I lowered the cab against the pavement and began formulating what I could say to the cops to excuse what I’d just done. It would require plenty of low-g tiptoeing around the enigma I knew only as Satto Vasir.

  Hey, fellas, how about I write you a ticket. An invoice for that flying lesson just now.

  Hey, fellas, sorry about that. If we’d known you wanted doughnuts that badly, we’d have pulled the sky market over.

  Wow, guys, you’ve got me confused with somebody else. Apparently she gives a shit.

  Hey, fellas, I heard the chief of detectives announced a short drop in crime rate this year. Wait—or was it your shorts that dropped for the chief, for the usual rate? I get confused by all these dicks.

  Four cruisers floated to ground ahead of us and cops began filing out, stun-bats at the ready. Our cab rattled as though the hull thrusters were stuttering out of power. I checked the gauges. To my astonishment, the thrusters weren’t flickering out, they were powering up. Big time. The navi-computer blazed to life, and a crazy spinning vector blinked in the middle of the monitor.

  “Quick, Lenore, get ready. We’re not done yet.” I remembered my omnipod was still linked to the computer, its visor facing forward atop the dash. “It’s Satto. He’s still got eyes.”

  “What? Surely you’ve had enough by now. Let’s end this.”

  I sucked down a hot breath, avoiding eye contact with her. “It’s your choice, Lenore. Either come with me and see this through or turn yourself in. Decide now. No hard feelings.”

  She pulled at her hair and gave a loud hiss of frustration, eyes shut tight. “Ugh, I hate you—” she uncoiled herself back into the seat, “—for making me need you like this.”

  “Sorry.”

  Just about the most infuriating thing I could have said. Her narrowed eyes and pout provoked a sheepish half-smile from me. I was almost glad to get back inside my omnipod when, before we’d tightened our harnesses, the cab bulleted up and began a reverse loop-the-loop. Just past the apex, it suddenly flipped in the opposite direction. My breakfast and Lenore’s brunch decorated the dash as the cab leveled out inches over the roofs of countless police cruisers. Whatever maneuver he’d pulled off, Satto had somehow escaped the impassable net.

  He flew us at high speed back toward the center of D.C. Not smart. But Lenore sprang forward, pointing at the rearview monitor.

  “What in God’s name?” Her porcelain face bunched, turned ashen.

  I watched lines of police craft being hurled, spun backwar
d like gravel in the grip of a cyclone. I knew instantly what it was, but I couldn’t say it. At least not yet. I think there are forces beyond the human brain’s comprehension of reality, on scales too big to process, that we can only reflect on after they’ve happened. Lenore and I sat there, gawping, as the great magnetic stabilizers, powerful enough to support the giant commuter wheel indefinitely in midair, sucked hundreds of officers and vehicles to their deaths. A sudden reversal of the poles, together with a tilting of the magno field—this was no accident.

  Or was it?

  “Satto?”

  No reply.

  “Allie? What’s going on? I need to know.”

  The urge to throw up hit me anew, while only the feeling of soaring far above the city, of gliding—that elusive sensation I’d yearned for ever since leaving my home world—saved me from breaking down completely. “Here, take my hand.”

  Lenore didn’t hesitate. She must have seen how ill I looked.

  Over the next half hour, while we escaped Earth’s atmosphere, I gave her a blow-by-blow account of my unnatural liaison with the terrorist known as Satto Vasir. Whether he was listening or not, I didn’t give a flying phonebook. One thing was for certain—he’d dragged Lenore and me into a dicey situation. We were fugitives, without even knowing the reason why. If the authorities were tracking us, Satto had better have an ingenious hiding place lined up.

  “So you’ve no idea at all who he is?” Lenore tousled her hair as we passed a medium-sized commercial shuttle beginning its descent into Earth’s atmosphere. “He could just be one guy working on his own, some wacko hacker with a serious weed up his ass.”

  “Could be, but I don’t think so. I know I’ve heard his voice before—it’s familiar but different somehow, like it’s filtered through one of those old text-to-speech programs.”

  “The ones that sounded like Dr. Who’s Daleks?”

  “Uh-huh, but more down-to-earth. He’s not been abusive at all. Quite polite, actually. And something’s telling me he’s on our side.”