1 Life 2 Die 4 (10 page)

A moment later, Veronica hit the brakes and
flung the car sharp right onto the wider River walk that hugged the
river bank, stretching ahead of us for a couple of kilometres. When
I glanced back again, I saw the missile hit the ground and explode
just after bikie-girl had driven past it. I was very impressed that
she somehow managed to stay on the bike. Still, the shockwave must
have stunned her pretty badly, ‘cause instead of turning to follow
us, she kept speeding straight at the low rock wall at the edge of
the River. The last I saw of her, she was doing a pretty good
impression of an emu soaring out over the Brisbane River (if you
didn’t know, an emu is a large, flightless Australian bird which
would probably look almost as awkward as bike-girl did if you
hurled it through the air at ninety km/h!)

I would have loved to have seen her landing,
but sadly I was forced to turn back when the g-forces from our
phenomenal acceleration threatened to snap my neck. When my head
was once again supported by the seat’s headrest, I actually felt
myself smiling at the incredible sensation of raw speed as we raced
along the River walk with panicked pedestrians diving frantically
out of our way. I noticed that the ones diving left into the River
didn’t seem to have their swimmers on; but for some reason that
didn’t seem to worry them too much.

After a couple of hundred metres or so it
occurred to me that the path ahead of us was still noticeably clear
of enemies.

“They’ve lost us,” Veronica said as if she’d
read my mind. “The woman on the bike mustn’t have had time to
report our movements.”

“Huh?” I asked insightfully.

Despite our blistering speed, as we followed
the gently curving path round to the right past the lagoon area,
she threw me a quick glance.

“That’s how they manage to get these bozos to
appear right where we’re headed all the time – the previous guys
send an update on our movements back to the future so the team
there knows where to send the next assassins.”

“So we’re safe now?” I asked hopefully.

A wry grin touched those sensational lips of
hers. “Not for long – they know where we were, so they’ll just send
assassins to various points around there until they locate us. I’m
afraid it won’t take them long. But it’ll certainly cost them.”

I frowned.

“Why do you keep talking about it ‘costing’
them?”

“Energy-wise, it’s an expensive exercise
sending something back through Time. Sahissi might have access to
enormous quantities of energy from power stations right across the
globe, but eventually he’ll run out. The question is will our
meagre supply, courtesy of the tiny Australian energy grid, outlast
his.”

“How could we possibly outlast him if he’s
got so much more than us?” I asked doubtfully.

“It’s not just about who’s got more,” she
explained. “It’s also about how they use it. For instance, Sahissi
used up almost half of his entire supply just opening the Time
Channel through to here. Yet we were able to locate it and
piggy-back things through using only a tiny fraction of the energy
he burnt up.

“And think about the types of things both
sides have sent back. Pound for pound it takes heaps more energy to
transport a living thing, so we’ve relied more on sending equipment
than personnel. Meanwhile, Sahissi has been sending anything and
everything he damn well pleases. Although he can certainly afford
that luxury for some time, his wastefulness and over-confidence
will be costing him big-time. He probably thought he’d wipe you out
with his very first assassin, ‘cause at that point, he hadn’t
realised I was in the game. But by now, I reckon he’ll be starting
to sweat about how little energy he has left.” A dry smile touched
her lips. “Of course, given the type of arrogant bastard he is,
instead of being more careful, he’ll just try hitting us even
harder before he completely runs out.”

While she’d been speaking, Veronica had
slowed and veered the car smoothly to the right, off the River walk
and onto a path leading diagonally away from it. Now, up ahead I
could see the bright blooms of the Grand Arbour again. Before I
knew it, we were turning back into the living tunnel of bright
purple flowers and accelerating away to the east.

Despite Veronica’s insistence that they would
find us again soon, I felt myself beginning to relax as I glanced
around at our decidedly non-hostile surroundings.

“Perhaps he’s already run out,” I ventured.
“Maybe we’ve won!”

“’Fraid not,” she replied
matter-of-factly.

I felt myself bristle at her pessimism.

“What makes you so sure?” I asked
shortly.

She threw me a quick grin.

“Have you forgotten already?
You told
me
.”

While I struggled to digest her words, we
flew out of the end of the Arbour and she cut left, heading for the
Goodwill pedestrian bridge which arced back over the River.
I
told her!

“What do you mean, I told you?” I
demanded.

“Try to keep up, Darling - you told me pretty
much everything you know about today,” she reminded me
matter-of-factly.

Turning red again at being called ‘Darling’,
I blinked. I had almost forgotten. Or perhaps it was just that my
mind had refused to accept it at the time. Either way, as we
accelerated up the gentle rise of the bridge, I struggled to get my
head around the ludicrous idea. She actually believed she knew
exactly what was going to happen because I had told her about it in
the future!

“So if you know it all, why the hell don’t
you just avoid these mongrels?”

I frowned as a dark shadow seemed to pass
across her face before a determined grimace settled on those
exquisite features of hers.

“Because nothing’s set in stone,” she told me
flatly, her voice thick with emotion. “If I change anything, you
might not survive today after all. And I simply couldn’t bear
that.”

Once again, I was lost for words. Could it
really be true? She was deliberately acting out this bizarre drama
as closely as possible to a script which I had taught her … all
because she thought it ended with me still breathing!

Before I could even begin to think it through
properly, I saw her eyes widen and whipped my head round to stare
ahead. About forty metres in front of us, a three metre high wall
that completely blocked the bridge had just materialised out of
thin air! A wall built out of boulders the size of
refrigerators!

“We’ve gotta turn back!” I told her
frantically.

“We can’t,” she replied evenly as her left
hand flew to a keypad at the centre of the steering wheel.

Confused, I twisted round to peer back along
the bridge … and the bottom fell out of my stomach when I saw three
more motorbikes and two jeep-like vehicles appear from nowhere and
accelerate up the bridge after us! Veronica had been right –
Sahissi was trying to hit us hard, determined to finish the job
before his energy gave out!

From what Veronica had told me, it had really
‘cost him’ this time. Unfortunately, it was about to cost us a
whole lot more!

I spun back to find the massive wall looming
just thirty metres ahead of us.

“Can’t you blast through it?” I asked,
desperately hoping our car had some kind of serious fire-power
capability that Veronica hadn’t yet deployed.

“No point … even if I could, those pursuit
vehicles will blow us to bits any second now. And anyway, there’s
another one of those tanks waiting just on the other side.”

As if to confirm the first part of her gloomy
prediction, I heard what sounded like about four of those thuggish
missiles racing at us from behind.

She was right. We didn’t stand a chance.

I suddenly wondered whether she’d lied about
me surviving today. Perhaps my ‘future self’ had actually told her
this was where and when we both got blown to pieces! And as I
wrestled with the idea that if this was true then I wouldn’t have
been alive to tell her in the first place, my eyes settled on the
display above her steering wheel keypad. Curiously, the three
glowing blue letters said ‘6mv’. While I puzzled over what this
might mean, I twisted round and was less than overjoyed to discover
I’d underestimated - there were actually six huge red missiles
rocketing towards our rear bumper!

I made the mistake of thinking about how I
should spend my last half-second on Earth … and nearly used it all
up in the process. After that, I didn’t even have time to lean over
and kiss the delectable lips that were pursed in concentration
beside me.

Feeling seriously disappointed, I braced
myself for the shattering impact of the first missile...

Instead, a roar filled my ears and a powerful
force shoved me down as if a giant hand was pushing me hard into my
seat. I was completely disorientated for a second. Then I glanced
out the window and realised I was feeling the g-force caused by our
mini-car suddenly blasting upwards into the air! We were already
high enough to see the tank Veronica had predicted, waiting in
ambush about twenty metres back from the far side of the wall. And
sadly, my relief at getting out of the way of the missiles died
abruptly - judging by the way our vertical motion was already
slowing, we’d soon be falling back toward the bridge and we were
going to land almost directly in front of that tank! Whatever kind
of rocket propulsion system this thing had, apparently it wasn’t
powerful enough to keep us in the air for any decent length of
time.

I peered down at the tank, recalling the one
we had scuffled with in the Piazza. I imagined the gunner licking
his lips as he watched us nearing the top of our flight-path and
realised his gun was already pointing at the exact spot where we
we’d soon be touching down. At the press of a button, one of its
powerful explosive shells would rip through our car, turning it
into a wasted wreck!

I felt my stomach rise into my mouth as we
reached the top of our flight-path and began falling. Then I heard
the sound I’d been dreading: an enormous ‘BOOM’ that blasted up
through the air around us. I didn’t need to look back to work out
that the six beefy missiles had just turned the massive rock wall
into a million deadly projectiles that were now hurtling out
through the air in all directions. Naturally, I was thankful it was
the wall that had been blown to bits, rather than our car. But
considering we were flying through the air not far from where the
pile of huge rocks had been, I knew we were in for one hell of a
battering from the shrapnel, even before we landed and got blown to
bits by the tank!

Then I saw it. I’d been so fixated on the
tank, I hadn’t noticed that just ahead of us was the beginning of a
steel roof which ran along the middle of the bridge. A tentative
smile grew on my face as our car flew forwards and landed on top of
it, bouncing a little before racing away to the sound of deadly
chunks of the obliterated boulder wall smashing into the metal
sheeting beneath our wheels. I imagined the gunner in the tank
below swearing as he struggling to bring his gun up and over, and
to guess exactly where our car was on the roof above him.

“Nice trick,” I complimented Veronica,
thankful that our rocket-powered escape seemed to have worked.

“Liquid fuel rocket boosters,” she told me in
her usual understated manner.

The next moment, I jumped as the roof just
ahead of us exploded leaving a jagged, gaping hole. Luckily for us,
the tank’s gunner had misjudged our speed. But as our wheels raced
either side of the void and we sped on, we both knew he’d caught a
glimpse of our car and that it would give him a pretty clear idea
of where to fire next time.

Of course, Veronica wasn’t about to make it
easy for him. I felt our car slow dramatically as she applied the
brakes. A moment later the roof ahead of us exploded at the exact
spot we would have been.

Once again, we gave the tank a sneak-peek at
our motion as we drove over the hole. This time, as soon as we
passed it Veronica slammed her foot down hard on the accelerator.
The machine leapt forward and a half-second later the roof blew
apart just behind us while we thanked our lucky stars the trick had
worked again. Better still, with the hole behind us this time, the
tank’s occupants wouldn’t get a glimpse of our speed as we hurtled
onwards, making it harder to judge the next shot.

“Don’t panic,” Veronica said calmly.

I turned questioningly towards her, but when
she just continued to stare fiercely ahead through the windscreen,
I followed her eyes ... and realised what she meant. Ahead of us,
the roof we were travelling along ended abruptly. Thirty metres
further on, I could see where another section of roof continued on
across the bridge, but for some reason the designers had apparently
thought it would be a really neat idea to leave a thirty-metre gap
(perhaps in support of the local umbrella industry, I thought
wryly). I knew that when we dropped back to the road, we’d be
sitting ducks for that tank, along with any of the jeeps and bikes
that had made it past the wreckage of the boulder wall.

When I looked back at Veronica, she’d already
finished using the steering wheel keypad again. This time the
display read ‘40mh’ and all of a sudden I clicked what it meant:
‘40 metres horizontally’. And ‘6mv’ must have meant ‘6 metres
vertically’. The rocket booster control system must be programmed
so you just have to input a horizontal or vertical distance. From
there, it apparently knew enough about projectile motion to work
out exactly how much thrust was needed. I remembered learning about
projectile motion in Science and just had time to think about how
much better our class might have done on the test if Mr Edgerton
had had access to a car like this to demonstrate some of the
concepts … then Veronica hit a red button at the side of the
display and I was smashed into the seat again as the car leapt into
the sky.