Out of the Black (26 page)

"Vega, take your men and keep the cops out of the way." she said to the leader of the undercover Grunts. She stepped casually into the empty air of the elevator shaft, then hovering, she turned back to face the hard-eyed leader of the heavy weapons team. "Signal me when you've released our allies from the security ward."

The woman with the assault gun nodded, lips stretching slightly. "The gloves are off?"

"Don't kill its precious key, but you can shoot anything else that moves as many times as you'd like."

The woman didn't nod, but her grin and the sparkle in her cold eyes told Shiva that she understood.

The elevator doors closed and Shiva began her quick descent through the dim shaft.

***

The car with the metal patch tape on the roof was in the garage. A few pieces were gone. Ping examined the power plant beneath the hood but he couldn't see the difference. Alex had assured him that Dek had "done the deed" back at the library, meaning he'd disabled the 'jack system that provided satellite tracking for the car. He was going to arrest that guy later... tampering with the anti-theft system of a police vehicle was a serious offense. You get knocked out for a couple of days and the rule of law goes on holiday.

"How we doing?" He asked, closing the hood.

Rae dropped another box in the back. "Alex is bringing up the rear now. You have to hit the bathroom- now's a good time. I'm not stopping later."

"And what makes you think you're driving my fine police wheels?"

Rae made a few quick jerks on a pantomime steering wheel and hooked a thumb at herself, "Amped. Remember? We might need to do some fancy driving, right?"

Ping pointed his finger at her, "Delusional." he corrected.

Alex came through the door with a large, padded instrument pack.

"Magic or science?" Ping asked, glancing at Alex's load.

"You mean there's a difference?" He gave the rhetorical pause before continuing, "Some stuff I brought from home... spare tablets, some security equipment, most completely legal."

"Most?"

"Arrest me later."

"Deal. So no phoenix feathers or eye of newt?"

"You really need to get your perceptions roughly aligned with the universe, Detective Bannon."

"Uh-huh. Ping, remember? Generally you call the cops you go on the run with by their first names... We ready?" No one's head shook.

"Lets go then... Shotgun!" Rae opened the passenger door, but stopped before getting in. Alex seemed lost in thought. "You are coming, right baby?"

He was staring a little to the right of Ping's ear. Ping turned to follow Alex's gaze, but he was only rewarded with the sight of a rather boring tool cabinet.

Alex's lips moved only slightly, "Rae, take this," he held out his pack, "In the back. Hurry." his voice was wistful, like one lost in reverie, perhaps contemplating the merits of a favorite childhood pet.

Rae was expecting a joke. There was amusement in her face; then realization froze her smile, sent chills down her spine. "What is it?" She asked. She didn't really want to know.

"Remember the library?" he droned, still obviously distracted by something neither Ping nor Rae could see. "This is going to be much worse."

"What are you... get his bag Rae!" Ping interrupted himself as realization dawned, "Close the hatch!"

Rae went for the bag, Ping turned, leapt over the front corner of the car, and ran for the driver's door. Relieved of the bag, Alex stumbled toward the back seat like a very distracted blind man. The hatch slammed and Rae ran back around the rear corner of the car. She stopped to help buckle Alex into the back, then dropped into the passenger seat.

"Don't move yet, Ping." Alex said with the attitude of one talking while holding his breath. He held one finger up for patience. "But get ready to move."

Ping ran his finger over the raised ignition pad on the steering yoke and twisted it into the enabled position. He heard the lock-accept tone that meant the car was ready to go. He used the controls on the wheel to shift into reverse, then waited with his foot hovering over the accelerator. sement inare these people?"

"Some aren't this time." Alex said, voice flat.

Both Ping and Rae turned their heads toward the back seat, but Alex didn't elaborate.

"Aren't people?" Rae asked. Ping shrugged.

A muffled explosion and the sound of a collapsing door came to them through the door to the house. A waterfall of shattering glass sounded behind the door. There was the sound of clomping boots and silenced gunfire. Maybe the neighbors wouldn't hear, but the sound of shots were clear to them in the garage.

Ping and Rae turned again to stare into Alex's blank expression, but finding no clues there, slowly turned to face each other. Rae adjusted her grip on the fletcher.

"Swell." Ping said. Rae gave a short laugh, shaking her head.

"Don't worry bout the door- I'll need you to gun it... ready, Ping? And..." Alex wiggled his raised finger slightly.

Ping's foot hovered, Alex's finger wiggled, Rae's eyes moved between them, then Alex dropped his finger, "NOW!"

Ping jammed the accelerator to the floor. All four of the car's solid polymer tires squeaked as the individual electric motors driving them compensated for the loss of traction. Each squeal shimmered in and out as the traction computers walked the line between maximum torque and the available friction between tire and pavement.

The car rocketed backward, shuddering slightly as it blew through the garage door. The door gave no significant resistance to the car's juggernaut force, causing only a small hiccup in the car's reverse acceleration and a short, if spectacular, crash. Ping wondered in passing what kind of cheap door the builder had used.

Almost immediately after clearing the door- its debris still hanging in the air around the car- there were two more impacts in quick succession. The car bounced as something substantial went under the left rear tire. An assault gun bounced end over end on the driveway as the car cleared the garage.

Ping had been unconscious when they arrived here, so the driveway and palatial yard were unfamiliar. He did his best to negotiate the dark driveway's curves as the car sped backwards. To make matters worse, the driveway wound between thick trees, allowing him only a view of the next corner with no idea what lay beyond. As if this were not enough excitement, long ragged bursts of automatic gunfire erupted from several broken windows along the front of the house, tearing through the trees, filling the air with splinters, but strangely sparing the car.

Not wanting to look a gift rifle in the muzzle, Ping accepted the luck and left his foot firmly on the floor as the car wildly accelerated though the winding, wood-lined track. They clipped a guidepost, then a small tree, but Ping wasn't slowing down. He feared foliage far less than firearms.

As the garage door disintegrated into splinters and dust around the car, Rae held on for dear life and clenched her teeth to keep from screaming. She let out only the smallest bleat as they mowed over two armed men directly outside the destroyed door.

Beside her, Ping was twisted to look through the rear window. His arm was over the seat, elbow bent, looking like any sixteen-year-old kid during the parallel parking portion of his first driving test. Her right hand whitened ring the handle above her window. Her left hand whitened around the short barrel of the Fletcher. She and the car jerked from side to side under Ping's reverse navigation. Her stomach gave a spasm as gunfire erupted followed quickly by their glancing impact with a small tree. The car continued backwards. The air filled with wood chips and the whistle-crack of high velocity shells.

Grudgingly, she released the handle above the window, and grabbed the pistol grip of the fletcher. She relied on her seat belt and the force her legs were applying to the floor to hold her in place. The way Ping was driving, there was no way she was going to stick hand or weapon out the window, but she wanted to be ready when the opportunity presented itself. Until then, she tried to make herself as small a target as possible, slouching down in her seat, pressing her right elbow against the door to steady herself, and keep the fletcher pointed away from Ping.

Here she was again, just waiting for the chance to kill someone. Determination drove away doubt, desperation kept guilt at bay. Could she really just suspend morality like this? Fair-weather moralist, rainy-day sociopath.

Bright headlights flared in the night behind them, forcing Ping's eyes into slits, leaving two round purple shadows floating through his vision. "Hold on!" He shouted as he cranked the wheel hard to the left. With another squeal, the car rocketed from the driveway and into the foliage.

Alex existed in the wider world of the Loom, receiving only a small percentage of his sensory inputs from his physical body, which was now being tossed and jostled limp in the back seat of the car leaving the driveway for the forest. His seatbelt kept him from serious injury through the tambourine-stable drive- he'd have to thank Rae later for buckling him in. Heaven knew he wouldn't have remembered to do it himself. A sudden flash of heat surrounded him in the abstract realm of the Underworld as he thought about Rae. It was almost time for her, for them. He hoped they both lived long enough.

Bullets approached the car from the three killers braced in and around the car blocking the driveway. The bullets left the muzzles of the rifles in rapid succession, only a few meters apart, stretching out across the distance, reaching for Alex and the others. They tore through the air, spinning for stability, leaving trails of turbulence and radiant sound. Some of the shells were slowed and deflected by intervening trees; Alex deflected the rest.

The hot, spinning shells sieved through the bands of force he'd wrapped in expanding patterns about the car; their paths becoming eccentric arcs, vectors changing as the skeins of Alex's weaving altered the relevant physics of the space through which they flew. They thudded into the ground, curved off through the trees, flew up into the air- every direction but toward the car.

Unbelievably, Alex's hasty weave was holding. Unbelievable because he had never Cast this type of weave before. Sure, he knew how to do it now, but he hadn't a few moments ago. Weaving the Cast had been much more like inspiration than the usual hard-fought solution that usually took him hours, weeks, or months. Something was different now, either in the Loom or in him.

When the Savant with the attackers had attempted to apply Sleep to the inhabitants of Roy's house, somehow it had awoken Alex to the Underworld, drawing him to the Loom with no pattern stretching. Ivo would be proud. Would be- if these monsters hadn't killed him.

He stretched out his Vision, encompassing Roy'slarge wooded front yard. In addition to the maybe fifteen commandos in the house and the three by the car, there were two snipers in gray microvans a block away from Roy's gate. Thorough little killers, Alex thought. Then he noticed the things moving impossibly fast through the trees to intercept them. Better warn Ping.

Ping cranked the wheel to the left and jammed the brakes with his right foot as his left deactivated the Traction Control system. The wheels locked as the car tore across the leaf-covered clearing, bumping across the irregular terrain, nose sliding around. He jammed the accelerator as the car slid into a semblance of 'forward'. The last part of the hundred-eighty degree spin was facilitated by his TC-suppressed all wheel throttle up. Geysers of dirt exploded from all wheels, adding force to the spin of the car. Finally, he released the TC suppressor and the wheels slowed to the breaking point of their traction on the loose earth.

The car accelerated forward, dodging the first tree on the other side of the twenty-meter clearing. In the rearview mirror, Ping could make out Alex's ten thousand meter stare. Next to him, Rae stared at Ping- obviously impressed. He smiled, arching an eyebrow at her while swerving around some rock landscaping.

"I coulda' done that." she mumbled.

The resonant hum of the car's four motors stuttered. The car began to slow.

The Savant with the attackers was somewhere back by the house. Alex couldn't feel exactly from where, but the Savant was trying to reach out and touch them. But working with the Loom becomes more difficult the farther away you get from your target, and fortunately they were driving directly away.

The Savant was pretty good. Though he- definitely a man, tall, dark suit, standing by a wall- couldn't pull off any extravagant Casts at this distance. Still, he managed to set up a weak damping-field around the car's motors. The electromagnetic fields were weakening somewhat and the motors were losing efficiency.

Alex had the advantage of distance because the target of his counter-Cast was the car around him. He unwound the patterns of force even as the distant Savant struggled to maintain them. This was a battle he could win.

Numbness lanced out from the unwinding fibers of the other Savant's Cast. Alex struggled against the sharp, icy energy that he had mistakenly engaged. He'd misconstrued the intent of the Cast. It was a Trojan horse... too weak to kill the car, but subtle enough to hide the real danger. When Alex had carelessly immersed himself in the hostile weave, he'd become vulnerable.

He tried to extract himself, but it was like trying to bathe without water, removing each speck of dirt individually. Hundreds of dark, ethereal spiders swarmed over him, stealing away the speed and power of the Loom. His consciousness seemed to narrow, the light faded from around him.

Touché, he thought in the final shimmer of light.

The motor sputtered again, but then the powerful drone evened. They were approaching the fence along the front of the property. Ping held the accelerator down. "Hold on!" His eyes flashed to the rear view where Alex lolled in his harness, apparently unconscious.

Something that had way too many teeth landed on the hood of the car, slamming its headinto the windshield. Spider web cracks radiated away from the impact point and one or two of the thing's teeth flew away from the face-glass collision. Ping let out a shout that he'd like to think sounded like "yow!" but memory informed him it sounded more like an introverted librarian screaming her guts out in a horror movie.