Rising Sun (13 page)

Then, in a heartbeat, he’s pulling alongside my left. Vienne pumps bullets into the cabin, but the Razor is unfazed. He pulls up close, so that we’re nose to nose, window to window.

He looks over at me and salutes.

“Here is your beautiful death, Regulator!” he roars, and yanks hard on the steering wheel.

His truck slams into mine, pushing me out of the road, across the sorghum fields, and into the electric fence. Vienne jumps from the bed onto the flamethrower stand, reaching for the grips.

The Razor swings behind me and flashes his brights to blind Vienne. His bumper collides with mine, slamming my rear end into the fence again.

Booth trucks rip across the chain link, juice arcing like caged lighting.

“Vienne!” I call through the window.

“Shut up and drive!”

“Don’t,” Aziz rasps, “kill him. He’s my brother.”

“Remind
him
of that!” I fight the wheel, trying to break contact with the fence. It wrenches out of my hands as we hit a deep rut. The truck bounces, slamming my helmet against the roof. But the collision shakes us loose from the chain link.

“So much for shock absorbers!” I hoot, and steer hard to the left, fishtailing again. In the rearview, I watch Vienne kneel—firing position. Her laser sight bounces across the black truck’s windshield like a red jitterbug on an oil slick.

“Hold it steady for just three seconds!” she says. “That’s all I need!”

I torque the wheel, and the truck careens through the sorghum field, ripping up stalks.. “Mimi, do you have a map of this area in your data banks?”

“Affirmative.”

I switch off my headlights. “Use the GPS telemetry functions in my suit to guide me.”

“We have not tested this particular function.”

“Like my old chief always said, there’s a first time for everything.”

Razor’s truck speeds alongside us, but I steer hard to the right.

“What are you doing?” Vienne yells.

“Saving our butts!”

“I think my butt was safer,” she shouts, “when I had a clear line of sight!”

We cut out of the sorghum field again and onto the road.

“Veer left,” Mimi says.

Without thinking, I follow her instructions. We hold course for a kilometer, then—

“Veer sharp right,” Mimi says. “Sharper.”

I steer off the road, blasting through a fallow field. My course is straight.

For now.

“The target is approaching,” Mimi says.

“The Razor’s on your six! But shoot fast,” I yell, “we’re losing speed!”

Behind us . . . a growling engine.

High beams.

A grill like an evil grin, bearing down on us.

It’s now or never.

Vienne aims carefully and quickly—and fires three-round bursts into the front wheels.

The right tire explodes.

The truck screws its front end into the field, diving in the dirt like a chigoe burrowing a hole.

It rolls three times.

Before it stops.

Its remaining headlight shines on, casting light and shadow on the dead sorghum stalks like skeletons in a boneyard.

“I was wrong,” Vienne says through the window. “I only needed two seconds.”

She slides in and checks on Aziz, putting pressure on his wound and saying something I can’t hear.

“Whew,” I say, exhausted, and look back toward the road. “We did it.”

“Cowboy,” Mimi says, “you make too many assumptions.”

“What are you talking about?” I say, and hit my headlights.

In the road less than twenty meters away stands the Razor. On his shoulder is a rocket launcher loaded with an RPG.

“Incoming!” I yell, and stomp the brakes.

The truck fishtails, exposing my flank, just as the grenade launches with a characteristic and terrifying
whoosh
.

The RPG hits the rear of my truck and explodes, blowing half the tail end off. The tailgate drops behind like a broken wing. I fight to keep the tires on the road, but the truck spins out, doing a one-eighty.

The engine dies, and the passenger side is left exposed.

I hit the ignition button. Pump the gas.

Vienne kicks her door open. She steps over Aziz and balances on the frame, holding her armalite with the same casual ease of a sniper aiming at targets in a shooting range.

“May my aim be true,” she says. “May my finger find the trigger. May my heart be strong enough to pull it.”

I see the shape of her body silhouetted in the headlights. The light forms a halo around her head.

An angel of death.

Vienne fires as the Razor loads a second grenade into his launcher.

The bullet shatters the night.

Then shatters the Razor’s shoulder.

He screams and falls to his knees, clutching the wound. “You
shot
me!”

Vienne holds up the clip marked with an X. “Explosive rounds.”

Which can shred worn-out armor like his. Even nanobots need rejuvenation once in a while.

“Don’t kill him,” Aziz rasps. “Valhalla.”

“No talk about, Valhalla, huh?” I check Aziz’s wound. The blood is clotting. He won’t bleed to death. “You’re not going to the afterlife on my watch. Just hang on.”

I exit the cab and run to the other truck, where Vienne has knocked the Razor to the ground. She stands over him, finger on the trigger.

“Go ahead,” the Razor says. “Kill me. With Charlotte gone, I don’t care.”

“Well, I do,” she says. “You hurt my chief.”

“Vienne,” I say. “Not today. Aziz wants him alive.”

“Today, he is the enemy.”

“He’s one of us,” I say, moving slowly, afraid that she might kill him before I can talk her out of it. “A Regulator, trying to make his way in a world that doesn’t want our kind anymore.”

“What are we supposed to do with him, then?” she says. “If we leave him, he’ll die anyway.”

“Load him in the back,” I say. “We’ll sort things out when we reach Edda.”

“Roger that,” she says, and coldcocks him with the butt of her rifle. “But you get to carry his sorry carcass.”

Fair enough. I grab the Razor, throwing him into a rescue carry, and dump him onto what remains of the truck bed. I tie his good arm to the flamethrower so that he won’t fall out—or get any ideas if he wakes up.

I get behind the wheel and start the engine. “Mimi, can you give me directions to Edda?”

“Affirmative.”

Vienne grabs the wheel. “Do you know where we’re going?”

“Across the river and toward the east,” I say. “Which is where Aziz wanted us to go—Edda. He keeps calling it Valhalla.”

“Then you navigate, and I’ll take the wheel,” she says, and turns off the ignition. “I’d like to reach Valhalla without being dead.”

Chapter 10

Edda
ANNOS MARTIS
238. 2. 4. 05:09

Today, Edda is a farming village in the middle of nowhere, fifty kilometers east of New Eden in a wide-open plain. The people who live here survive on subsistence farming and selling handmade goods to the
đibui
in the Warren. Villages like it are a dime a dozen across Mars, but Edda is special because of its past. Until the CorpComs took over, it was a hub for mining distribution, with hundreds of storage buildings, but with the rising oceans and the end of the guanite trade, most of buildings have fallen into disuse and have been stripped for scrap metal. There is, though, a cluster of buildings still standing in center of the old distribution center. It’s here where Vienne hits the brakes and the abused red war truck comes to a halt.

As soon as it stops rolling, I jump out and kiss the pavement. “Dry land. Thanks be to the Bishop, I survived!”

“Methinks the lady doth protest too much,” Mimi says.

“Meaning?” I ask as I hop to my feet and take a stretch. It’s been a long, exhausting, but informative ride.

“Meaning,” she replies, “that you are developing a penchant for melodrama. Would you like me to calculate a behavioral trajectory that would eliminate it?”

“Keep your paws off my melodrama!”

Vienne slams the door as she gets out. “Did anyone ever tell you that you’re funny?”

“Many times.”

“They lied.” She covers her brow to block out the dawn’s light shining in her eyes. “You said it would be here, but it’s not.”

I lean on the hood of the truck next to her. “Sure it is.”

I put two fingers in my mouth and whistle reveille. A few seconds later, a rolling door opens, and Pinch walks out from a storage building thirty meters away.

“Took you long enough, Chief. Chief?” Pinch says, and her eyes meet ours, searching for the man she expected to find. “Where is he?”

Vienne and I step aside, revealing Aziz sitting on the front seat. His head is bandaged, and he’s conscious, which is more than I expected. The chief is one tough hombre.

“No!” Pinch shouts and runs toward the truck. “Aziz!”

“He’s fine. They both are,” I say, trying to catch her. “We patched them up.”

“Both?” She rushes past us and almost jumps into the seat with Aziz. She grabs his right hand, pressing it against her heart, while caressing his cheek with the back of her fingers. They both talk, but I can’t hear what they’re saying. Don’t want to.

“Well,” I say. “Never saw that one coming.”

“Because you’re as dense as Krill’s skull,” Vienne says. “But I have to admit I didn’t see this one coming, either. How did you know?”

“Pinch never seemed like the kind to desert her crew,” I say, walking toward a storage building with a fresh gasoline stain on the pavement. “And Sarge seemed like the kind of fossiker not to notice that or care. All he wanted was the money and maybe Pinch for a bonus, but Pinch told Aziz she’d meet him in Valhalla. I put two and two together.”

“With the aid of my mathematical calculations,” Mimi adds. “Not bad,” Vienne says, “for a turtle.”

“Oh, I’m not done yet.” I lift the rolling door to reveal a velocicopter parked on a huge shipping pallet.

In the copilot’s seat, knitting a jumper, her face fresh scrubbed, is a surprisingly calm Charlotte du Save. Sitting next to her is the pilot, his hands bound and a gag over his mouth. When he sees us, he starts hollering through the gag.

“Shut it,” Charlotte says, and pokes him with a knitting needle.

“She’s very calm, considering,” Vienne says.

“That’s because I made a deal with her.” Pinch appears behind us, supporting a very weary but alert Aziz. He really is one tough
hurensohn
. “If she came peacefully, I’d make sure she got to see her husband.”

“Husband?” Vienne and I say in unison.

“That is right,” the Razor says, appearing at the rolling door, using the steel frame to support himself. There’s blood pooling on his bandaged shoulder, but it doesn’t seem to faze him. He’s every bit as tough as Aziz. It must run in the family.

“You’re here!” Charlotte yells, and jumps out of the cockpit. She runs across the tarmac, letting out a sound that’s part giddy laugh and part scream, and throws her arms around his neck.

The Razor grunts but doesn’t stop her. He wraps his good arm around her waist and closes his eyes. “You are safe. We will go home now.”

Charlotte leans back, wiping the tears from her eyes. “You’re wounded!” she says. “Did they do this to you? I will stab their eyes out!”

“No.” The Razor looks at his brother, then at me, then at Vienne, who places a hand on her armalite. “Like most of my wounds,” he says, “this one was self-inflicted. So if you must stab anyone, you must stab me.”

Charlotte buries her face in his neck, and the Razor grunts, feeling the pain but not willing to let her stop. After a few seconds, he moves her to his side and takes her hand in his.

He looks at me and nods. “Thank you for sparing me and tending my wound,” he says, “But I am afraid that your name will be mud for helping me.”

“My name is Jacob Stringfellow,” I say. “You can’t get any muddier than that.”

“Perhaps I may now take the war truck back to the Warren?” he says, looking at me and Vienne. “Since it was mine to begin with.”

“It’s not my decision to make,” I say, and look to the chief for an answer.

Aziz makes the sign of the Regulator and bows. “May Lakshmi bless your days together.”

The Razor bows in return. “May she grant the same wish to you,” he says, and they turn to go. Charlotte throws an arm around his waist and drapes his arm around her neck, acting as his crutch. For the first time, he sags a bit, and he lets her carry some of his weight.

Charlotte helps her husband into the passenger side, then runs around and jumps into the front seat. The engine starts on the first try, and she puts it in reverse, waving to us and beaming. It strikes me how young she is. How young we all are, really.

That’s what I want,
I think—an idea that surprises me, it’s so unexpected. I look back at Vienne, who for some reason has locked eyes on me, and a shiver runs down my spine. We hold the gaze for a couple of seconds; then, with a cough, I break it.

“Just out of curiosity,” I ask Aziz to get rid of the awkward moment, “what’s your brother’s real name?”

“Our parentals named him Festus,” he says.

“Yeah,” I say. “Probably a good idea to stick with Razor.” I look back at the velocicopter. “So where does that leave us? What about the pilot and his copter?”

“We are going to be using the pilot’s services one more time before we let him go,” Aziz says, his voice getting softer. “We’ve got some unfinished business with Medici.”

“Fair enough,” I say. The Orthocrat deserves whatever they decide to dish out. “In the hubbub, I forgot to ask—where’s Sarge?”

“Sarge couldn’t make it,” Pinch says with a smirk. “He got off the copter twenty kilometers from here. The first step was a doozy.” She points to the hydraulic lifter still attached to the flat the copter is resting on. “Can one of you give it a push into the open?”

I start toward it, but Vienne puts up her hand.

“I’ll handle this,” she says. “You and heavy machinery don’t mix.”

“Hey!” I protest.

“Based on the available data,” Mimi says. “I would have to agree with her theory.”

“So now you’re ganging up on me?”

“I prefer to regard it as providing support,” she says.