Hammerjack Read online

  Cray began to gasp and choke.

  In between, Heretic spoke to him.

  “Hang on,” the voice warned.

  There was a horrifying click as the canopy bolts disengaged, opening up a seam that allowed the hurricane winds on the other side of the glass to sweep into the cabin. Decompression followed, creating a momentary vacuum as temperate air was sucked out and replaced by a torrent of thin oxygen and freezing rain, bombarding Cray and Avalon like a spray of crystalline bullets. That invisible hand caught the free agent, tearing her away from Cray and riveting her against the back of her seat, immobilizing her for the moment. Cray, meanwhile, blocked out the agony in his shoulder and threw an arm up to protect his eyes. His vision now a swirling blizzard of images and particles, the fierce cold invading his body like a hostile entity, he still needed to see what happened.

  Peering over his arm, Cray confronted the onslaught. There was nothing to prevent him from plunging straight into it.

  The physics of the slipstream took over.

  Catching the airflow generated by the vehicle’s forward momentum, the pulser’s canopy peeled away from the cockpit like an umbrella in a gale. An angry screech of metal against metal followed as the canopy tore against the hinges that held it in place, subjecting the small craft to stresses the designers never intended. The pulser then began to buffet wildly, groaning under the shear created by its distorted aerodynamics—and opening up a thin crack that spread down the entire length of the fuselage, stopping just short of the dorsal receptor dish.

  Had the airframe monitors been working, they would have reported that the entire structure was coming apart.

  But somehow, the canopy remained attached. In the open position, it acted precisely like an airbrake—bleeding the pulser’s speed off so quickly that the two Inru hovercraft shot right past. Reduced to a slow drift, the pulser held itself together, dangling tenuously on a single strand of light.

  Alone, but only for a moment.

  Coming about, the two hovercraft reappeared out of the liquid blackness and closed the distance toward their target. But they did not find the crippled pulser as expected, motionless and awaiting their return. Though tantamount to suicide, the small craft was on the move again—traversing the jump grid, making speed to get away.

  And accelerating.

  The hovercraft closed in.

  The wind picked up, biting into Cray’s face and hands like frozen fire. The pulser shuddered beneath him as it drew more power from the trajectory beam, its damaged airframe protesting under the increased load. Cray could tell they were on the move again and that the situation was critical. As beaten and battered as he was, it could not even compare to the condition of the pulser.

  A cacophony of alarms blared all around him, muted by gusts blowing into the open cockpit. He regained his sight and stared into the space beyond, the imposing superstructure of Shinto America’s headquarters directly in front of his flight path. Heretic had turned the pulser off its previous course, pointing it north on a heading that would take them along the edge of the Zone. Checking his flank, Cray saw that the two hovercraft were gone.

  Avalon . . .

  It was only the briefest flicker, reanimating his awareness of the blade in his shoulder. Then it became premonition, as her cadaverous hand snaked its way around his neck.

  She squeezed. Any more pressure would have crushed his larynx. As it was, she merely cut off the oxygen to his brain.

  Cray tried to wriggle out of her grip. She was too strong. He tried to peel her fingers away. She would not allow it. He wanted to see her face, but that too was a mistake. He knew that this time she meant to kill him. Not quickly, not painlessly—but to inflict revenge, no matter what her orders from the Inru were.

  “Ava—”

  “You don’t mess with me, Alden,” the free agent said. Blood caked her teeth, her lips spitting it out at him. “Didn’t I warn you?”

  His vision began to gray out.

  “—lon . . . av . . . don’t.”

  The pulser shook. More than damage, it was deliberate. Heretic at work on the controls, testing the air foils.

  Cray tasted euphoria, his synapses beginning to shut down. The weak pulse of his carotid persisted, but grew weaker.

  He drew one last breath.

  Her grip constricted.

  Then Avalon’s restraints broke loose.

  The buckle released itself with a loud snap, and, just like that, she was free. With the open canopy above her, she grasped the danger before it was obvious—but by then it was too late. Heretic turned the x-axis foils over as far as they would go, flinging the pulser into another roll. Ground and sky exchanged places as the pulser inverted, and Avalon found herself in free space, at the mercy of gravity. Her long coat inflated like a parachute when she plunged, her hands flailing about in search of anything that could stop her.

  Cray felt an inferno in his lungs as oxygen rushed back like a flash flood. A shock of sickness shot through his body when his brain tried to orient itself.

  Then flashes of movement in slow motion, his sight exploding with color.

  Avalon’s coat, black and tenebrous. Cascading with the wind, flapping like the wing of a bat. It dangled away from him, toward stars that were not stars at all—but city lights scattered around the streets of Manhattan.

  Cray then felt the punch of his own weight, hitting hard when he snapped against the cradle of his restraints. It was only then he was aware the pulser had flipped itself over—and that Avalon was tumbling out of the cockpit. She brushed up against him as she fell, fingers grasping at him to no avail, before slipping into free fall and toward death.

  But that would have been human. Avalon was anything but.

  Training conquered reflex, and the free agent cartwheeled over so she fell feetfirst. It gave her the additional fraction of a second she needed to hook another stealthblade, which she jammed into the skin of the pulser at the edge of the cockpit. Using it as a handhold, Avalon halted her fall—then lifted her head back up toward Cray, who was suspended and helpless in his seat.

  She began to climb.

  One hand into the cockpit. She pulled herself up, her body supple and responsive despite the extent of her injuries.

  Cray tried to get his legs down to kick at her, but with his shoulder pinned it was useless. He swiped at her with his free arm, but found only air.

  Another hand back inside. Avalon heaved her head and shoulders into the cockpit, coming after him with the relentless drive of a machine. She was close now, her breath sublimating into a misty frost.

  She reached for him.

  Cray swung himself over as far as he could to avoid that fatal touch, stars perforating his vision from the conspiracy of flesh and steel in his shoulder. When they cleared, Cray looked down and saw the two Inru hovercraft fly in below Avalon’s dangling feet. One broke away from the other, moving in so close that he could see its pilot staring back at him through the glass dome canopy.

  Avalon lunged at him again. This time, her talons wrapped around the fabric of his jacket and started pulling him down.

  Cray clenched his teeth. His shoulder was on fire, fast consuming the rest of his body. Without thinking, not caring about the consequences, he reached up and grabbed the protruding blade. He started working it up and down, a medieval chorus of screams taking possession of him. An eternity passed before the blade finally broke loose from the bulkhead, but Cray did not stop. He summoned every fiber of strength he had into a single, violent yank—redefining anguish as he knew it.

  The blade popped out. Unsheathed from his skin, the thing glinted wickedly in his hand.

  A swift alchemy of pain and rage took hold of him. Cray directed all of it at Avalon. Thrashing the stealthblade around in a vicious arc, he intended to bury it in the side of the free agent’s head. Avalon reacted—quickly enough to dodge the kill shot, too slowly to evade the edge as it sliced across her left cheek.

  Stunned, her grip on him loos
ened.

  And Cray lashed out again.

  This time, he targeted the arm that held him. It was a frenzied, clumsy attack—jabs and lunges, nothing with any kind of force behind it. The blade only nicked the heavy fabric of Avalon’s coat, perforating her sleeve with tears and gouges, taunting him with each failure. Cray screeched at her to fall, implored her to die, each stab driving him faster and faster until he was in danger of using himself up.

  Then another cry, the timbre unfamiliar.

  Avalon.

  The stealthblade had at last found its mark between the bones of her wrist. The howl that erupted out of her was bestial—the sound of a predator cheated of its prey, the heat of its frustration compounded by the reality of its own demise. Her hand went limp, letting go of the only tether she had, and Cray watched her fall away from him into a pool of icy blackness.

  But not into eternity.

  The pilot of the Inru hovercraft moved in close to the pulser to assess the situation but maintained enough of a distance from the flight grid to avoid a collision between the two craft. The path, however, was not easy. Heavy winds ran the gamut between the towers up ahead, creating random bouts of turbulence that forced the pilot to constantly correct his course. With his attention split between his controls and what was unfolding above him, all he knew was that the pulser had changed course and inverted itself.

  What fell out of the sky came as a complete surprise.

  Her shadow fell across the canopy before impact, setting off the proximity alarms in the cockpit. By then she had crashed through the glass, shards raining down on the pilot like a grenade going off in his face. Avalon thumped down into the seat next to him, either unconscious or dead, the force of her impact knocking the hovercraft into a spin. The pilot, already disoriented, grabbed the yoke and tried to compensate—but he was blind for the precious few seconds he had to rescue his ship. By the time he managed to level it out he had already dropped over a hundred meters.

  Well below the glide path.

  More alarms went off, filling the cabin with flashing red lights and squawking bells. The pilot ignored them. His eyes fixed on the tower out in front of him, his hands rigid on the controls. He was so close he could see people running around inside those windows, desperately trying to get out of his way as he entered the terminal phase of his flight.

  The pilot closed his eyes, joining Avalon in oblivion.

  The world turned on when the pulser flipped back over, though Cray was just vaguely aware of it. Transfixed by the destruction he had unleashed, he followed the course of the hovercraft as it spiraled away from him and soared straight into the mammoth face of the Shinto tower.

  It happened just as Cray overflew the tower. The hovercraft carved its way through a window of solid carbon glass like a bullet, disappearing into the building and leaving behind a trail of exploding debris. Then all at once the pulser cleared the roof, and the vision was behind him. Avalon was gone, and the rest of Manhattan laid itself out for him like a welcome dream.

  The adrenaline crash was like kicking a bad drug. His entire body seemed to collapse, until his memory started filling in the gaps and he realized he was still in big trouble. Careful not to move his wounded shoulder, he reached up with his right hand and pulled the pulser’s canopy back down. The extensive damage to the hinges made a seal impossible, but it was better than getting a face full of rain.

  Cray punched a manual diagnostic into the pulser’s navigation system. It refused his commands, until Heretic caught up with his request and unlocked the interface. The news it showed him was not good. The transmission relay was only operating at 60 percent, barely enough to keep the ship aloft. Coupled with the structural damage, it was a wonder he was still in the air.

  “God damn it, Heretic,” Cray muttered.

  “That’s the thanks I get for saving your ass,” the hammerjack replied, the voice muffled by stray wind and Cray’s jacket.

  Cray pulled out his MFI, astounded that it was still there. In a fit of anger, he had to restrain himself from tossing the device over the side. “That’s what you call it? I thought you were trying to kill me!”

  “What are you complaining for? I got rid of her, didn’t I?”

  “You’re going over the side, pal.”

  “Better think about that, sport,” Heretic warned him. “Right now, I’m the only thing holding this bucket together. Unless you can automate flight stress controls all by yourself.”

  “Fuck you, Heretic.”

  “Business before pleasure,” the hammerjack said. “How are you doing up there? Looks like Batgirl stuck you pretty bad.”

  “I’ll survive.”

  “Good. I need you frosty for what’s coming up.”

  Cray couldn’t take it anymore. “What is it now?”

  “Your other buddy.” Heretic punched up a tactical construct of the second Inru hovercraft, displaying its current location on the MFI screen. “Right now, he’s hanging back at Shinto checking out the damage, but it ain’t gonna be long before he’s back on your six. We need to get the hell out of here.”

  “Dammit,” Cray swore under his breath. “Can’t these guys take a hint?”

  “Not on your life, Alden—which is about to end unless we get some juice going in that pulser.”

  “That’s impossible. She hasn’t got anything left.”

  “Then you better find some,” Heretic said, the display showing the hovercraft on the move. “Because we’re gonna have company in about fifteen seconds.”

  Cray leaned over to his side of the window, straining for a backward glance. The blip on his screen took on very real dimensions as the hovercraft jumped over the Shinto tower, clearing the top and heading straight up toward the flight grid.

  Suicidally fast.

  Great. Another goddamned fanatic.

  “What kind of evasive options do we have?”

  “You gotta be kidding,” the hammerjack groaned. “We’re on a straight-line trajectory beam, my man. That doesn’t leave us with a lot of choices.”

  “Then I better get creative,” Cray said, locating the box for the manual flight controls. “I need to fly this thing myself. Can you unlock the stick for me?”

  “No problemo.”

  The box popped open, pushing out the stick and throttle on a hydraulic. Cray put the MFI back in his pocket and cautiously took the controls into his hands, testing out the pulser’s maneuvering capability. It lurched to port sluggishly, then back over to level flight. The ship protested loudly under the miniscule load.

  “No way this is gonna work,” Heretic said.

  “You worry about the stress inhibitors, I’ll worry about the flying,” Cray snapped. “What’s the word on weapons with that hovercraft?”

  Two bright flares of pulse fire immediately exploded just above the ship. Cray was certain he had been hit—but instead of buckling, the pulser merely reacted to the shock of a near miss, rocking up and down as it skipped along the edges of the blast wave. The hovercraft then roared past, visible only for a second before it dipped out of sight. Its pilot had applied maximum power to the strafing run, expecting a kill—but was forced to come around again to take another shot.

  “Answers that question,” Cray said grimly.

  “Negative impact,” the hammerjack reported. “Photon wash from the grid must have drawn his fire off target. He’ll have to tighten up his beam for the next run.”

  “Can we take that kind of hit?”

  “Unlikely. Even if we were in good shape, he could probably take us out with a single shot.”

  “Swell.” Cray checked on the trajectory flow again. The weapons fire weakened it even further, down to minimum tolerance levels. The Inru didn’t even need to score a direct hit. Just grazing the flight grid would be enough to knock the pulser out of the sky.

  But it gave him an idea.

  “What’s the status on our receptor dishes?” Cray asked.

  Heretic ran a quick diagnostic. “We sustaine
d some damage fore and aft, mostly from overload,” the hammerjack told him. “The dorsal support pylon is cracked, but not severely. Ventral is still fully functional.”

  “So I can divert power from the trajectory beam through the dorsal if I want.”

  “Sure,” Heretic laughed. “If you don’t mind falling off the beam. You won’t have enough power to maintain flight if you pull a stunt like that.”

  “That’s precisely what I want,” Cray said. “How much time do we have before that bastard gets back here?”

  “Twenty seconds.”

  “Distance to the traverse grid below?”

  “One hundred and fifty-seven meters.”

  Could be worse, Cray thought, doing the calculations in his head. As long as I can keep the y-axis foils fully deployed . . .

  “It just might work,” he finished out loud.

  For the first time, the hammerjack sounded nervous. “What the hell are you talking about, Alden?”

  “The only chance I’ve got,” he replied, rubbing his hands together and putting them back on the controls. “Heretic, I need you to feed the tactical data on that hovercraft into the tracking system for the dorsal receptor dish. Correlate all dish movements relative to the position of the hovercraft—and make damned sure you don’t lose him. We’re only going to get one chance.”

  Heretic made the adjustments.

  “Complete,” he announced.

  Cray set his eyes dead ahead, watching the Inru hovercraft as it emerged from the canyons of the city and made a course straight for him. The tiny pinpoint of light grew larger as it approached, taking on malevolent form as it closed to killer range.

  Just like a game of chicken.

  “Time to intercept,” Cray said.

  “Ten seconds.”

  The hovercraft showed no signs of backing down.

  “Wait until he fires,” Cray said. “Then all power to the dorsal.”

  “Five seconds,” Heretic informed him, then after a brief pause added, “Been nice knowing you, boss.”

  Cray smiled, but his hands shook.

  Then up ahead, incandescence as the Inru let go of his fire.