The Mechaneer

Chapter 22: With A Bang

Chloe whispered, "No."

Everywhere around her, Devil Rays fell, Fed mecha exploded, cannon roared, buildings burned. The Divine Auric Drake ripped an arm from the Devil Ray he'd been wrestling with and tossed the crippled mecha away.

All because of her.

Chloe screamed, "No!"

She stretched her hand out as the Black Rook had at the tournament. If she, too, was noble-born, the same power should flow through her. For a moment, she felt sure the air shuddered with psions gathering as telekinetic force, and she fixed hand and mind on the Reformer coming about over the complex.

For an instant, she felt, or imagined, a surge of power.

Then Rudy snatched her hand back.

She whirled on him. "I can –"

"Get yourself killed?" He pulled her forward so suddenly, she hardly realized what was happening before his face hovered a centimeter from hers. "Not on my watch."

"I can save them!"

"Otto can damn well save himself – but it's gonna get ugly before he does. Especially if you start throwing around the mojo and bring an Animus Hunter down on our heads." He gave her the courtesy of answering – not of letting go. "You gonna cooperate? Or do I have to knock you out to knock some sense into you?"

"Your company, though –"

"Is that a no, Clo?"

She said nothing.

"Everything's gonna be okay," he said. "Promise. But we have to go."

She stared deep into his electric blue eyes.

She nodded.

"Get on, then." Rudy released her and vaulted onto his cycle. Its engine roared to life.

Gingerly, Chloe climbed up behind him. She felt its reactive gel slither up her meld with her flight suit, but she still wrapped her arms around him. The trip out had been nerve-wracking enough without pursuit.

"Good girl," Rudy said. "Now keep your mask up and hold on. No matter what."

Even through the nanomachine fabric covering her face, the wind hit with uncomfortable force.

Rudy had told her to hold on. No matter what.

He'd also told her everything would be okay.

She didn't see any indication he'd been right on the latter count, but she didn't have the guts to see if he'd been wrong on the former.

Nothing could have prepared her for Rudy on the run. They shot into the tunnel, jumping almost instantly to close to three hundred kilometers an hour – and climbing. Spacecraft accelerated far faster, of course. They did it with inertial dampeners to shield their occupants from the gees, though, and the next spacecraft Chloe figured she could fall off of would be the first.

They kept accelerating.

Chloe wondered how fast the cycle could go.

She wondered how fast it could safely go – and by how much Rudy planned to exceed that speed.

She wondered if, all altruism aside, she wouldn't have been better off staying and trying her hand at the fighting arts she should have inherited from the mechaneer-aristocracy.

"How we doing back there?" Rudy called. His voice in her suit's speakers sounded tiny compared to the air roaring past in the tunnel. Somehow, he managed to sound nonchalant anyway.

"I've been better."

He laughed. "Nervous?"

"What do you think?"

"It's not as bad as it seems. We won't be in any danger unless somebody comes after us."

"Any chance they won't?"

"Probably not," Rudy admitted. He sounded almost cheerful. Hyped up on adrenaline, she figured. "They'll never catch us at this speed, though."

Chloe swallowed her sigh.

The tunnel began to shake a few minutes later. At first, Chloe thought it was Rudy shifting into a new gear.

Then she heard him curse.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Don't ask."

Chloe risked a glance over her shoulder. The tunnel bowed deep into the water, so she couldn't see far. She could hear, though. Something rumbled behind them.

She asked, "Is it pursuit?"

"No."

"You know what it is?"

"Yeah."

As the sound grew louder, Chloe figured it out, too.

"Sweet Principle," she hissed. "The fission bombs!"

"Hoped you wouldn't figure it out, Clo," Rudy said. "It's… it's gonna be tough getting out of here before the shockwave hits."

"Will it matter if we do? Won't the whole highway sink?"

"Nah. If we get out of the tunnel, we'll be good. Every section of highway is buoyant on its own. The Wellachan founders weren't that stupid."

If they got out of the tunnel. They'd spent more than ten minutes in it on the way to the arcology.

She had a feeling Rudy was going a lot faster this time.

She couldn't imagine it would be fast enough.

She didn't dare watch, so she buried her face in Rudy's back and held on tight. If she had to die, she could think of worse ways than holding him tight until the instant she was vaporized. She doubted she'd ever even feel it.

Mom, Dad, she thought, if I don't make it, I'm sorry I couldn't save you.

Maybe the Feds would let them go when they learned she was dead.

If they learned. A fission bomb wouldn't leave anything to identify, would it?

The rumbling behind grew louder. The gee forces of Rudy's acceleration tore at her arms.

The sound rose to a crescendo. Crumpling metal and roaring wind and killing heat and force and radiation boiling up behind them.

It was not, she decided, a good way to go.

Merciful Principle, she prayed, if this is the end of the pattern of my days, look after Mom and Dad. Pattern them a way out if I cannot give them one. And, if You could keep Rudy safe, somehow –

Rudy's whoop of triumph startled her from her prayers.

She looked up.

The bike shot from the tunnel like a shell from a capital ship's main gun. It roared into the open highway outside, shot so high she could see over the half-pipe wall for an instant, slammed back to the metal highway.

An explosion followed them.

The tunnel shaped the blast even as it was consumed by it. Chloe saw metal she'd ridden across seconds ago crumple like tissue paper. Most of the blast vomited from the opening she and Rudy had just escaped, a dragon's-breath eruption of deafening sound and searing heat and crushing force. It ripped the shattered tunnel from the highway and hurled a huge chunk of metal and glass into the air.

The highway bent with the explosion, lifting from the water. It hung suspended just long enough for Chloe's stomach to start to adjust to hanging upside down, then, inevitably, crashed back to water. Battered, mangled, listing, leaking –

Afloat.

Rudy wrenched the bike to a stop. A kilometer of screeching breaks later, it bumped into the next bend in the highway. Water from the hole in the highway pooled near the smoking tires, hissing where it touched them.

"We made it," Chloe gasped when her brain wrapped around the concept. She leaned back and held up her hands, gazing wonderingly at her intact body.

"Told you," Rudy said. He laughed nervously, almost hysterically. She wondered how long relief and adrenaline would keep him going, and how hard he would crash when they wore off. "Told you I'm a good driver, right?"

"You're a great driver," she said. "The best driver ever. And you're right about speed restrictions."

"Always," Rudy said. His mask slid back. He craned his neck to look at her, a tired grin on his face. It faded as his eyes trained on something behind her back.

Chloe twisted in her seat.

A hundred kilometers behind them, a mushroom cloud unfurled in the Wellachan skies, a tombstone for the Algreil arcology and anyone on it. Any of the employees who hadn't escaped. Any of the Fed mechaneers who landed to search. Maybe all of them, Marcel Avalon and his men, the Devil Rays and Rudy's brother, all dead –

Over Chloe.

"Principle, Rudy," she whispered. "What are we going to do?"

For once, he didn't have an answer.