Unstable Prototypes (35 page)

Jon squinted out the driver's side window and
saw sky flanked by the tops of boxy-looking buildings. He glanced
out the passenger side window and saw the ruddy ground of an
alleyway rushing along at a nauseating speed. Lex had shifted the
Duchess and slotted it perfectly between two of the tightly packed
dorms. The wind was screaming in their ears, even through the
closed windows. Jon shut his eyes tight, realizing that if he
stared out the downward-pointing window any longer he would vomit
all over his boss, which even in his terrified state seemed like a
bad idea. He didn't open them again until the funneled sound of
rushing wind dropped away and the car righted itself.

Michella heaved a few exhilarated breaths. "I
swear to God, Trev, if these straps weren't holding me down I'd
climb right up there and..." She glanced at the still blinking red
light on the camera. "... We'll discuss it later."

"We better," Lex said, easing the ship around
a handful of the 'trees of shame' before emerging into the section
of Rackton so carefully patrolled by the police. His eyes
widened.

"Jon..." Michella said steadily, "I want you
to keep that camera rolling, no matter what. I want this recorded.
This is... important."

Had Lex and the others been approaching
University Heights from a higher altitude – or in any sane way, for
that matter – what they were seeing wouldn't have come as a shock.
As it was, the state of the university complex was absolutely
devastating. The detonation had been little more than a loud sound
and a bright light back at the Pavilion, but that was a long way
away. The colleges had been directly below the site of the
explosion, and its impact was far less superficial. Here and there,
buildings were smoking and damaged. There were half-collapsed
structures scattered across the campus. From the looks of it, some
of the damage had been caused by chunks of debris raining down from
above; fragments of whatever it was that had been destroyed by the
blast. Most of the destruction was due to countless vehicle
collisions. The sidewalks were nearly clear of people. Those who
remained out in the open had collapsed, their skin raw, as though
they had been doused by scalding water. The few able-bodied people
were helping the injured to shelter.

"What the hell happened here?" Jon
uttered.

"I guess that flash was a lot worse here.
Like... Instant sunburn or something," Lex said.

"What about all of the vehicles? And why
aren't there emergency crews in here?" Jon stammered.

"Maybe the police scanner has something,"
Michella said.

She snatched up the device, which had
remained active but muted once the camera went on. With a few taps
at the display, she began flicking through the text logs of the
transmissions they'd missed.

"Here's something. It was just a minute or
two ago," she said, tapping a log and switching on the speakers for
replay.

What played was a short exchange between a
dispatcher and an officer.

"We've got a Duchess sedan that appears to be
under manual control making its way to the cordon. Request
permission to continue pursuit, in the event he breaches the
no-entry zone."

"Negative. We are in communication with the
terrorist leader. They have informed us that they are in possession
of a second warhead of equal power. They say they will activate it
unless we maintain a minimum radius of five hundred meters,
centered on the Weston University Center for Material Sciences. If
the first one could take out the primary defense and automation
node for the sector in one hit, I don't want to risk setting one
off on the surface, especially not in the Heights."

"What if he makes it through the cordon?"

"Make sure that doesn't happen."

She stopped the replay.

"Trev, I think you'd better get out of
sight!" she said urgently.

"Way ahead of you," Lex said, quickly
directing the car to a courtyard between two tall academic
halls.

The hovercar had not yet come to a stop when
Jon popped the door, tore off the restraints, and tumbled
desperately onto the ground. The camera was still clutched to his
chest as he lay on his back. Michella climbed out a moment later,
her eyes poring over the text of a flood of dispatches on the
scanner.

"Oh God. I never want to leave the ground
again," Jon wheezed.

"I've had cleaner escapes," Lex admitted,
climbing out and inspecting damage to the hovercar. "This thing
handled pretty good for a rental, though."

"Jon, come on, on your feet. Switch the feed
live."

"You're not... we're still going to..." Jon
sputtered.

"I promise you'll get a raise for this," she
said, helping her assistant to his feet.

"After this? I better get a medal," he
groaned.

Michella handed the scanner to Jon, who
stuffed it in the camera bag. She then straightened her hair,
adjusted her blouse, and nodded. The feed light blinked on.

"Michella Modane reporting from within
University Heights, Rackton, Tessera. This iconic place of learning
is now nothing so much as a war zone. Now that we are among the
buildings and people of the area, it is clear that the damage is
far worse than it originally appeared. We now know that the target
of the attack was an orbital defense and automation node, and its
destruction has presumably left the area, and perhaps even the
hemisphere, without orbital defense. The loss of the node seems to
have caused a short interruption in traffic control, which coupled
with the chaos of the blast has resulted in dozens of mild to major
collisions. The individuals responsible for this vicious attack
have yet to be identified. We--"

"Do you hear that?" Lex asked.

Michella turned, her expression and demeanor
continuing to be nothing less than perfectly professional, but with
a flash to her eyes that suggested the instant the camera was off
there would be hell to pay. A moment later the look left her eyes,
replaced instead with genuine concern.

"Jon, camera on autonomous and follow me.
We're going to need extra hands."

The assistant-turned-camera man tapped a few
controls and removed a control fob from the camera. It drifted out
of his hands, hover modules guiding it up to float roughly over his
shoulder. It only took a moment, but by the time he looked up, he
had to rush to catch up to the others. As he turned the corner, he
slowly became aware of the sound that must have motivated Michella
and Lex to move so quickly. It was a rough electronic sound, a
whining growl that was subtly getting deeper and throatier.

"What is that?" Jon asked.

"That's a blocked plasma manifold getting
ready to blow its cork," Lex said.

"A big one," Michella agreed.

"How do you know that?"

"I was a racer," Lex replied.

"And I was an honorary member of his pit
crew. They don't let you onto the track without running you through
a few basic maintenance courses. Basically to teach you what sounds
to run away from," Michella explained.

"And this is one of them?"

"Oh yeah," Lex said.

"... Then why are we running
toward
it?"

"Because we're in the middle of the city, not
a racetrack. If something suddenly flings a load of hot plasma
around, there will be some pretty unpleasant consequences for the
people nearby. And it is an easy fix,
if
you get to it
quick," Lex explained.

They finished rounding the building. Ahead
was a massive tanker. It had driven itself partway into the
storefront of a campus bookstore, and judging from the amount of
damage to the vehicle and surrounding street, it had been far above
the Heights when the blast happened. As the top speed and maximum
altitude of hovercars increased, safety technology had grown to
match. This was naturally focused on the driver, who as a result
was unconscious but alive, rather than a smear across his own
windshield. There was a tremendous amount of effort poured into
making sure that the more volatile bits of machinery failed in a
way that wouldn't make them go boom. High speed collisions tend to
have a frustrating level of ingenuity when it comes to defeating
safety precautions, though.

"Uh... this thing is full of liquid
hydrogen," Jon said.

"Thanks Jon. That's very motivating," Lex
said.

The former racer rushed to the buckled side
access panel of the tanker and managed to wrench it free,
unleashing the worrying sound in full.

"I'll adjust the throttle," Michella said,
climbing to the passenger side door and attempting to open it. It
was hopelessly jammed, but the crash had dislodged the window, so
she climbed inside.

"Okay Jon, come here."

"Uh..."

"Switch the auto-cam to activity tracking
mode," Michella called from inside.

He pulled out the fob and placed the camera
into the appropriate mode. It scanned the area, then moved to a
position to capture what all three of them were doing.

"How's that throttle, Mitch?" Lex asked.

"Stuck. It keeps going up when I turn it
down."

"... Alright, keep it as low as you can. Jon,
we're going to do what's called 'hot-bleeding a valve.' Generally a
bad idea, and I never actually did it before, but I saw someone do
it once."

"Did it turn out okay?"

"He blew his hand off."

"Tell me you'll be the one doing that
part."

"Yeah. I just need you to keep an eye on
this
little tube thing, squeeze
that
little tube
thing, and tell me when the first tube thing turns blue. These are
technical terms, you understand."

Jon swallowed and took the appropriate
position.

"What do I do again?"

"Squeeze that, tell me when that's blue."

"Okay... blue."

"Three quarters of a turn," Lex muttered to
himself. "Juice the throttle just a tiny bit, Mitch."

"Doing it,"

"Oh, Jeez. Very blue now!" Jon said, the
sound suddenly becoming extremely loud and the tube getting
uncomfortably warm.

"Wait for valve... two, three..." He squinted
his eyes and turned away, "Loosen the valve."

For a moment there was nothing, then a sharp,
high-pitched hiss.

"That's a run away noise, Jon," Lex said
hurriedly, scrambling to get away from the exposed engine, "Mitch,
stay put! Blown valve stem!"

The two men sprinted away from the engine.
Lex slid to a stop a few yards away. Jon took a more conservative
estimate, disappearing behind the edge of the bookstore. A moment
or two later a bright blue lance of plasma burst from the engine,
searing away a sizable portion of the sidewalk and peppering the
storefront with fragments of molten stone. One of the stone bits
flecked across Lex's arm, lighting a sleeve on fire and searing the
skin. By the time he was able to beat the flame out, the plasma jet
had died down, and with it the growling throb that had attracted
them.

"You alright, Trev?" Michella called out.

"I'll live," he said, looking over the nasty
but more or less superficial burn on his arm. "That's not exactly
what was supposed to happen, but crisis averted. And I still have
my fingers."

"Good," Michella said, "Now let's go. There's
a sign there for the Materials Sciences building. We're close."

Lex followed without complaint. He'd known
Michella long enough to know not to bother even trying to slow her
down. Jon was right beside him.

"No objections this time, Jon?" Lex said.

"Hold on," he said, fiddling with the control
fob for the camera as he kept pace. "I killed the live feed for
now, Miss Modane, and I'm switching audio to your lapel mic."

"You're still recording, right?" she
asked.

"Yeah."

"Okay, good work. Keep up. Just a bit
further."

Jon nodded, then continued. "Oh, I've got
objections, but the two of you together are like a hurricane. All
the worst stuff happens all around you. If I want to survive this,
I'm gonna have to stay in the eye of the storm," he said with
exasperation.

"Good thinking," Lex said.

The former pilot's breathing was getting
heavy, and his heart was pounding, and it wasn't just because he
had to hustle with his highly driven girlfriend. The results didn't
go unnoticed by Jon.

"You look like you might be having some
objections yourself," he said.

"Yeah... Yeah things are starting to sink in
a little bit."

"Now? Not when you were risking our lives
with the police or defusing an engine."

"We're starting to leave my comfort zone
now."

"... You have got a seriously screwed up
comfort zone."

"I've come to realize this," Lex said with a
nod.

The trio emerged into a grassy courtyard
between a few low buildings. At the center was a structure with the
bizarre aesthetic that inevitably results when an architect is
asked to build something that suits the needs of both a campus and
an industrial facility. A handsome masonry facade was coupled with
the vents and smokestacks of a chemical processing plant, with a
few halfhearted attempts to disguise them, or at least pretty them
up. There is something oddly poetic about a smokestack wrapped in
ivy. As curious as the Materials Sciences Center looked, there was
something that demanded far more attention; the pair of ships that
had taken up residence in the courtyard. Both were examples of
purloined experimental ships. One was a match for the vessel that
Garotte and Silo had so recently destroyed on Manticore. The other
was a much more vicious machine, a gunship with a pincushion of
weapons and two large missile bays slung below it like a seaplane's
pontoons. One missile chamber was conspicuously empty. The other
was conspicuously full. All in all, it was just about the most
conspicuous ship Lex had ever seen.