Страница 71 из 142
CHAPTER 6
Cliche: Another Word for Inevitable
Charles waited until the rebel was gone, then smiled.
"Good news, the Manty team didn't get captured. The people who were picked up were all locals; they don't know what happened to the Manties."
"How do you know that?" Rachel asked.
"Between the Admiral and me, we managed to hack into the police databanks," Charles said with an impish grin.
"What?" Rachel shouted. "Are you crazy?!"
"Shh, keep your voice down," the admiral replied, gesturing at a dataport. "We were clean. We were already inside their physical security and their electronic security was laughable."
"Why take the risk?" she asked. "What if they tracked you internally?'
"Not much chance of that," Charles said, buffing his nails on his tunic. "I, am a genius."
"Well, genius, we're going to need to change locations," she snapped. "You have five minutes to make it look as if you were never here."
"Women," Charles said with a shake of his head. "Never satisfied."
"Men," Rachel replied. "Never paranoid enough."
Mullins smiled through the window as Rachel grounded a beat up air car in front of him.
"Hi, lady, can I get a ride to the Metropolitan Museum?"
She looked at him for a moment then shook her head. "We don't have a Metropolitan Museum; it got destroyed in the Peep War and never rebuilt. What did you do to your face?" He was much heavier looking with fat cheeks and dark hair in place of his natural aquiline blond look.
Mullins slid into the seat and worked his jaw. "Charles blackmailed our supply guy into giving him the latest and greatest ID kit. And it seemed like a good idea to change identities again."
Rachel had been unwilling to let them stay in the basement another minute and, realistically, they had already been in one place too long. She had led them back out through the sewers and tu
"I've got another hide you can move to," Rachel said, pulling the car up and into traffic. Prague was no longer a rich world but the traffic was still fairly heavy, stacked up at least six levels. The ground level was relegated to hover-trucks with the next three levels dedicated to general traffic and the top two to "platoon" groups: cars moving under computer control over long distances. East–west streets were on interleaving sections with north and south so that only the ground level had to stop at intersections. This also created "dead zones" between lanes that the more aggressive drivers used for passing. "But it requires going up on the surface and with all the patrol activity . . ."
"How bad is it, lassie?" Charles asked as a patrol van passed overhead fast enough to rock the shuddering car. The van had been in the dead zone and at the intersection it quickly cut downward into a parallel lane then back up to pass the slower traffic.
"Lots of roadblocks, lots of random stops," she said. "StateSec is even more intrusive on the conquered planets than they are on Haven. I think we got you hidden just in time. It took them about a day to get organized and now they're all over the place. Oh, by the way, there's an all points bulletin out for Tommy Two-Time. A person of your general build was seen going into his shop but all the surveillance equipment was disabled or destroyed. You . . . wouldn't happen to know anything about that?"
"Tommy, he sleeps with the fishes," Mullins said. "God, I always wanted to use that line!"
"You are so weird," she snorted. "I think this is just about the time to have a car chase. It's always about this time in the movies. What do you think, Mister Super-Spy?"
"I've always managed to avoid them," Joh
"Well, good," Rachel said as she rounded a corner. "Hopefully our luck will hold out."
"Or, maybe not," John said as he looked at the line of cars.
"This was not here an hour ago," Rachel snarled at the roadblock.
"It's cool," Mullins replied softly. "My ID should pass just fine. Just play it like any normal roadblock."
"What about the admiral?" she asked.
"Retina sca
"You didn't tell me you diddled the ID database," Rachel hissed.
"You didn't ask," Gonzalvez replied with another grin. "Anyway, the retina scan should come back garbled and everything else will pass. They'll let us through."
"Okay, but I don't like it."
"And don't try to run," John added. "This POS will never be able to out-fly the police vans. For that matter, we'll be zoomed in on from every direction and they'll be tracking us a half a dozen ways. Just play it cool."
"I am," she replied as the first van passed, sca
"That's not good," John said. "They don't scan ID internally, so they had to have reacted to the registration. Who's this registered to?
"Me," Rachel said, adjusting her rearview mirror and checking her lipstick.
"I think they're on to you, Rachel."
"I think they are too," she sighed, touching up her hair. "Damn it, Joh
"Okay, on my mark we kill everyone in sight," Charles said with a snort. "Or at least try."
"Hopefully it won't come to that," Rachel replied quietly. "And unless it does, don't do anything stupid."
Mullins looked around at the block. There were four cars in front of them, three like themselves hovering at about five meters and the first one grounded and being checked by the local constables. There were two police vans there, and the one behind them. As he watched, two of the constables at the block walked back to their own vans, one going to the rear.
"I think we're screwed," Mullins replied. There was an alleyway on his side, but the vans were going to have IR sensors so unless they could get underground and lose the cops on foot, they weren't getting away. "When I say 'now,' put the car in drive and jump out on my side; hopefully some of them at least will chase the car."
"I don't think that's an option either," Rachel said as one of the two vehicle cops extracted what looked like a rocket launcher and fired at her car.
"JESUS!" Mullins yelled, pulling open his door as the rocket slammed into the side of the vehicle.
But instead of an explosion, there was a simple "pop" and the car shuddered in mid-air.
"EMP round!" Rachel yelled. "Get back in the car!"
"It's dead!" Mullins said but the sudden shudder as it lifted upward belied him. Then he was thrown backwards in his seat. "Whoooaaa!"
Mullins had been in enough simulators to have a fair clue about how many Gs he was pulling and the little "rattletrap" car was accelerating far too quickly for its appearance.
"Friends in low places?" he grunted.
"My cousin's a mechanic," she hissed in reply, banking around the side of a building at the sight of blue lights in the distance. The car narrowly missed the side of the far tower, actually tapping on one of the empty flagpoles jutting out from it. "He installed an engine from an old Prague Defense Force mobile gun. It's designed to drive a mini-tank."
"How did it survive the EMP round?" Mullins asked. "We should have been sitting on the ground!"
"It's a military engine," she said, in a tone reserved for a not very bright four-year-old. "Ever heard of shielding?"