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He glanced behind them and winced as another police van joined the chase, slipping into the upper lane to prevent a break in that direction.
"They're going to be tracking us on the satellites," he mentioned. "Not that it looks to matter."
"I've got the transponder turned off," she commented. "But you're correct about them being able to track us visually. Not that it matters at the moment. But hang on."
The traffic ahead was slowed by an air car in the center middle lane that seemed incapable of making up its mind. The driver was either old or drunk because the car was weaving a pavane up and down, crossing through the dead zones and nearly entering the lanes above and below, as well as from side to side.
Rachel appeared not to notice, diving into the lower dead zone and accelerating towards the car fast enough to rattle the cars above and below in her wash. Just as it seemed she would hit the wandering vehicle it drifted upwards and she slid through the slot into the relatively open area ahead of it. As they blasted past, Joh
Unfortunately, Rachel's maneuver placed the car in the intersection, going the wrong way. Her sudden appearance in the cross-lanes caused cars to veer in all three dimensions and windshields in at least a half dozen cars turned blue as the auto-pilots went into spastic fault-mode.
Mullins looked back and shook his head in wonderment at the snarled mess behind them. Half the cars that had been around them were down or bouncing from side to side, the police vans had either grounded or slammed into the surrounding buildings trying to avoid various obstacles and the intersection was filled with cars on apparently random ballistic tracks.
"You just made yourself very unpopular in this town," he commented.
"Stuff happens," Rachel said, pulling all the way up into the control lanes and then down to avoid a slow section of traffic. "I was getting tired of Prague anyway."
"Oh," he said as she banked through the next intersection, slammed on the brakes and turned into a mostly abandoned multistory garage. "So this isn't the first car chase you've been in, is it?"
"No," she replied, raising the car up a story through an open hole and then spi
"And now we go?" he asked. "We're out of sight; we should . . . leave. Right?"
"Wrong," she said, looking at her watch. Outside the sound of sirens got louder and louder. There seemed to be quite a few of them.
"They'll have picked up the signature of the engine," he pointed out. "They'll be looking all over for it."
"You think?" she asked. She looked at her watch again and then nodded. "Time." In the distance there was a dull boom. A moment later the sirens began to fade. She leaned forward and fiddled with an almost u
"Your cousin?" Mullins asked dryly.
"He's a very good mechanic," she replied, pulling out from between the trucks and dropping back down through the hole. Turning right she pulled around a stairwell and parked beside a stripped air car. Joh
"Give me a hand," she said, leaning down and pulling a lever.
Joh
"I've really got to meet this cousin of yours," he said. The sports car body, like the clunker body, was made of lightweight plastic and dropped onto the "rattle-trap" chassis perfectly. In under thirty seconds a slightly the worse for wear sports car rocketed out of the top of the garage and into the sky.
"My, that was refreshing," Mullins said. "Okay, Rachel, give. Your average stripper doesn't have a military grade, shielded turbine in her car. In fact, on Prague, she doesn't even have a car."
Rachel sighed and shook her head. "I do a few things more for the resistance than I told you. I'm not an agent for them, but I do mule work and also some of what you would call 'tradecraft'; your lecture about putting a mark on a box wasn't the first time I'd heard of that. And I really do have a cousin who does conversions on vehicles; I'm the person who gets them to the resistance. And he does other work, including some sabotage. He's surveilling us and had placed a bomb on a chemical plant. When he saw us blocked in he set it off. Then the police had more important things to do than chase down a hooker who maybe had met one of the suspects they are looking for. And, of course, I'm very good friends with one of the local resistance leaders."
"Very good friends?" he asked.
"Is that all you can ask about?" she asked in exasperation. "If you're going to worry about each of my friends you're going to spend all your time on that subject alone. I've got a lot of friends, okay?"
"Okay," Mullins said with a shrug. "As long as we can get you off planet before your friends can't keep you alive."
"I've reluctantly come to the same conclusion," she said.
"Who is this vehicle registered to?" Mullins asked as a police van swept through an intersection; it's car-comp would have automatically sca
"The local StateSec commander's daughter," Rachel said with a faint smile. "As long as we don't have to go through another block, we're fine."
She pulled into another multistory car-park and placed the car in an out-of-the-way corner.
"They were going to be tracing us as soon as they reviewed the data from the satellite," she continued, getting out of the car. "So we need to get down in the underground again."
CHAPTER 7
If It's Stupid and It Works, It's Not Stupid
Joh
The travel from the abandoned car had been short, which in general was not a good idea. They had exited the car-park in the basement, gone through a few tu
"This was the VIP quarters for visiting Legislaturalists," Rachel said. "It's since been taken over by StateSec for pretty much the same use."
"You mean, we're in a StateSec building?" Gonzalvez snapped. "Are you insane, woman?"
"No," she said. "I have an apartment here."
Mullins tensed for a moment then decided to let her live. "Why?"
"Why do you think, Joh
"And if he decides to just drop by?" the admiral asked. "We're to hide in the closet, yes?"
"He won't be dropping by," Rachel replied. "He's off-planet at the moment. And everyone knows why he has the apartment, but not for whom, and he's the deputy commander for Prague. So they're not going to be questioning his mistress. Not if they want to stay off of Hades. And if you have a better idea where to hide you, I'm open to suggestions."
There wasn't time for any as the doors opened on the corridor. Rachel stuck her head out then gestured right. A short distance led them to a door that opened at her passkey.