Night's Pawn (11 page)

"What?" asked Cara in an equally subdued voice.

Chase looked at her. "An accident."

"Yeah, an accident."

"What if it wasn't?"

She looked at him oddly. "What do you mean?"

"Where's the cat?"

She grabbed at her lap where the cat had been, but found only her jacket. "He's gone!" She looked about quickly, but saw no sign of the little black and white animal in the compartment with them. "It couldn't have gotten out…"

"Farraday said that the spirit could make things happen."

"You don't think .

He nodded. "I hope that was somebody following us," Chase said. "Just in case, we'd better watch what we say until we're out of the city."

Cara nodded, and then stiffened. Chase turned and followed her gaze. Curled up quietly on one of the folding jumpseats was the little black and white cat. It watched them silently through half-closed lids that barely contained the green within.

They sat in silence until the limo crossed the bridge into Queens County. Halfway across the East River the shadow that was the cat melted into the black leather of the seat.

The limo rode on toward MacArthur and a flight to Texas.

PART 2

DENVER, VIA DART SLOT

The historic Treaty of Denver, signed in 2018 by the former United States, Canada, and Mexico and the magic-backed Native American Nations (NAN), forever changed the balance of power on the North American continent. NAN, a coalition of American Indian tribes, used mystical terrorism to achieve their demand that the United States government return the lands of western North America to Indian control. The Treaty of Denver outlined a ten-year population adjustment plan that would relocate all non-Indians off lands belonging to NAN. Provisions included the establishment of reservations for non-tribal peoples and corporations, the establishment of Seattle as an extraterritorial extension of the United States, and the division of Denver between the various signatories to the treaty.

> > > Keywords for additional data:

2030—Act of Union—United Canadian and American States Form from the Ashes

2033—Aztlan Reborn—The Mexican Government Falls

2034—On the Brink—Texas Wars with Aztlan

2037—California Free State—Isolation Breeds Secession

2037—The Land of Promise—The Elves Form Tir Tairngire, Separating from NAN—

Excerpt from
Scholastic Hypermedia Release 7
:
Your North America

8

Chase bowed his head for a moment, shielding his eyes from the wave of dirt swept up by the helicopter. The craft descended carefully, a ton of high-performance jet engine dangling precariously beneath it. Below them stood two men on the flat-back bed of a half-rusted Gaz-Willys Nomad truck. As the engine dropped to their level, they grabbed it and tossed two hanging guide ropes to two more men standing on the ground nearby. Those two pulled the ropes taut and stopped the slight twisting of the engine. As the expensive cargo stabilized, the pilot lowered the helicopter slightly and worked with the two men on the truck bed to guide the engine safely into its homemade cradle. The truck sagged slightly as the cargo settled into the wood-and-metal braces.

At a signal from one of the truckers, the pilot released the lifting rope. Under his command, the Hughes Stallion copter pitched forward and banked right, accelerating across the nearby open desert. Chase knew if he watched for long enough the craft would be many kilometers away before he finally lost sight of the harsh light reflecting off its metal skin. Here, just northeast of the Texas-Aztlan border, the land was bare, open, dry, and breathtakingly beautiful for all those same reasons.

"Looks like a nice one," Chase's lunch companion said, dusting the grit-dirt from her blue and black Texas Rattlers cap. "Pratt and Whitney, probably their F604 series." She smiled broadly, watching as the four men secured the engine to the back of the truck. "The fragger's probably thirty years old, but I'll betcha when the boys get finished with it the scragger'll push like she was built yesterday."

"What's it for?" asked Chase.

"Vectored thrust turbofan. Odds are she'll end up as the pusher for
Ms. Mable
." The woman swatted more dirt off her no-longer fashionable three-part pony tail. "Terry and the boys were running her last week when she caught a SAM right on the shield casement. Normally, the fragger would have barely scratched her hide, but the casement let go, the debris shield went, and the turbofan got chewed up."

Becka Trinity squinted at the engine as the flatbed truck pulled clear of the unloading site and disappeared around a cluster of prefab buildings. They'd have been dull and gray and identical in their monotony had it not been for the desert and scrub camouflage netting that covered most of them. To Chase, Becka seemed pretty much the same as the buildings. Superficially, there was little to distinguish her from dozens, no hundreds, of other Amerindian women he'd seen. The same long jet-black hair, the same round face and small eyes that threatened to be swallowed completely in the folds of her weathered skin when she smiled. She'd have looked the same, except that he knew her. She dressed and talked like a veteran of one of the corporate or national Desert Wars teams, and she loved the overpowering roar of a jet engine at full thrust.

She was what they called a "birdie," a fan-groupie who thrilled to the sounds and smells of the powerful, low-altitude military surplus vehicles nicknamed "thunderbirds." Mostly purchased on the shadow market from cash-hungry private armies or nations, the T-birds were modified for speed, light combat, and most of all, smuggling. For many, many years Becka Trinity had been a frequent sight around the camp at Dart Slot, where she watched, and sometimes helped, dozens of small and large T-bird teams prepare for runs into the Aztlan countryside.

Chase watched her and couldn't help but grin. "I take it the
Ms. Mable
made it back?"

Trinity snorted. "Lord, yes. Terry Finch ain't lost one yet."

He nodded and listened to the roar of an engine being tested at low power somewhere behind him where the LAVs were stored and serviced. He could see that she heard it, too, and from her look knew exactly from which T-bird it came. The thought reminded him of what he'd wanted to ask her in the first place.

"Any word on
Rapier's Touch?"

She smiled and looked at Chase with amusement from under the brim of her cap. "I didn't think you wanted to slop some soy in the sun with ol' Becka just for old times. Damn sure took you long enough, though."

He chuckled and held his hands up in surrender. "You got me,
mea culpa
. As always, I was just using you."

"Damn, I wish."

"Yeah, well, what's the beat? Any word?"

She shrugged and looked off toward the Texas-Aztlan border hidden in the distance. "They shoulda been in yesterday, but I'll bet ya already knows that. Fender told me they were planning to ride the North Branch Channel route up from Muzquiz, or whatever the hell the Azzies are call in' it these days."

"Regular route?"

She shrugged again and looked back at him. "Depends. It ain't an easy route, but it gets ya around some of the nastier sensor nets and listening posts. El problemo is that word is humming that the Azzies are hunting another of their fraggin' revolutionary martyrs north of the Rio Grande, and are doing it in force since that's territory
occupado
and we all know the Texans are looking for any damn excuse to take it back."

Chase pulled off his own baseball cap which was emblazoned with the ancient white-on-blue insignia of the New York Yankees. He let the sun beat down on him unopposed for a moment, then thought better of it. There was a real reason Trinity looked the way she did. "So, it's probably hotter than… what? A lizard basking on an exhaust manifold?"

Trinity laughed again and shook her head. "Naw, just hotter than hell, I expect." She looked away slightly, but kept her eyes on him. "Speakin' a hotter than hell, you didn't come down here to check out the old sights."

"Nope. Goin' on a little trip."

Her eyebrows went up. "You ain't gettin' involved in that Azzie civil war, are you?"

"Me? Of course, Señor Politico, that's me."

"Huh. I seem to remember hearing something from Gordani about you and some Germans—"

Chase quickly brought up his hand and motioned her to silence. He was sure they were alone, but glanced around for good measure. There was no sign of Cara. "You're right, but that's history." His tone got colder. "Dead and buried, you might say."

She winced slightly and looked down. "Yeah, Gordo told me 'bout that. They were nasty fraggers for what they did. Deserved everything you gave them."

"I know, but I don't want to talk about it, and I don't want to hear you or anybody else talking about it."

"It'd only be me and Gordo, I don't think anybody else's been around—"

"Then it'd be you and Gordo. The point is more that I don't want Cara to hear anybody talking about it."

Trinity looked up at him again. "The little girl you came in with?" she asked.

Chase nodded and continued. "Der Nachtmachen is my history," he said. "She's got her own history with some other jokers of a similar persuasion. I don't want her even thinking about any kind of connection between me and people like them. She's got enough justified paranoia without adding more to the confusion."

"I hear you. Nothin' said from now on."

They stood in silence for a few minutes until Trinity was distracted by the growing roar of another set of engines somewhere else in the camp. Chase clasped her once on the shoulder, then moved deeper into the camp, his own clothes blending easily with the ground and the camouflage netting. Except for his hat.

Chase had unintentionally made a lot of noise as he climbed the shallow wooden steps to the plastic house that he and Cara had on loan during their stay at Dart Base. Something had been sleeping in the shade under those steps and it expressed its displeasure at his arrival with a deep growl and the beginnings of some pungent odor. Chase decided not to find out what kind of Awakened monstrosity it was, and all but leaped off the steps and through the door into the building. He slammed the door with a curse, then made a quick check to make sure he hadn't damaged its fragile hinges. He was reaching for a beer in the cooler nearest the door when he spotted Cara, apparently oblivious to his entry.

She was in the main room, really the only room in the small house. Sitting on the floor, back to him, she was rocking slowly back and forth. She was wearing a pair of khaki shorts she'd picked up in Dallas-Fort Worth and a deep-green tank top drenched in sweat. Chase could hear the barest sounds of some words she seemed to be muttering. He didn't understand them.

He left the beer in the cooler, and walked slowly toward her. Her left arm twitched, and her head moved back and forth as though she were watching something on the floorboards in front of her. But Chase saw nothing when he got closer. Nothing, except a small black box no larger than an old paperback book. A thin, twisted double cable of optical wire spiraled up from the side of the case and traveled up near her left ear. Chase didn't need to see the end of the cable to know that it fit neatly into the chrome datajack she had there.

A small wafer of gray was set into the case just above the sparse, flat-panel LCD screen that showed the box's controls. The chip was bare of the usual labels, except for a ragged piece of clear tape on which the word "buzz" had been written with a white marker.

Chase circled around carefully to where he could see her face. Her eyes were open, but unfocused, nearly glazed, and jumping like the end of a loose, high-voltage wire. He could see the quick flashes of a dozen emotions rush across her face: fear, ecstasy, anger, confusion, fear again, and onward. Through it, she held a thin smile, despite the apparent effort of the muscles in her face to change it. Muscles in her neck danced, and a tear swelled in one eye. Her lips were parched. Her own senses overridden, she saw only what the chip showed her, heard, smelled, and tasted only what it was programmed to relate, felt only what it allowed. Her own senses were drowned out by the electronic flood from the deck in front of her.

The simsense deck she was attached to was a Fuchi model, one of the best available. But that was ironic, considering who she was. More clear tape held the bottom half of the case in place; the deck had been altered. Someone had modified its circuits to make it unsafe. Chase figured they'd probably removed the filters and peak inhibitors that were supposed to maintain the signals on simsense recordings within legal limits. With those circuits pulled, there was nothing to protect the user from the raw power of uninhibited sensory input. Days ago, in his Manhattan apartment, she'd claimed not to know what BTL chips were called, but Cara Villiers apparently knew exactly how to use one.

He sat and watched her for some time, listening to the creaks and groans of the cheap house as the unbearably hot midday became simply a hot afternoon. Chase was afraid to turn the simdeck off or to unplug her, not knowing enough about how BTLs really worked. He'd known other users, and had even tried the legal, signal-dampened simchips commercially available, but he knew nothing of the effects of a true Better Than Life. Instead, he sat and watched her for any signs of physical danger.