Unstable Prototypes (34 page)

While they didn't currently have to worry
about law enforcement, the skyway was not a flawless option either.
The problem was that every single other vehicle on the road was
moving roughly
away
from Weston University, and thanks to
the fact that the Rackton Civic Navigation Authority was at the
wheel, traffic was able to pack itself far more densely than a
bunch of puny human minds could manage. Lex was trying to move
against the flow of traffic that was moving in an orderly, steady
pace, with barely inches separating one car from the next in some
cases. The one thing he had going for him was the fact that cars
had radically different shapes and radically different speeds, and
thus tended to leave openings as they jostled into optimal
position. The task was figuring out where and when such an opening
would occur and whether or not he would fit. So far, Lex was fairly
successful, as long as you used a fairly generous definition of the
word 'fit.'

He'd swapped paint with half a dozen cars by
the time the traffic started to thin out. Now that the last of the
traffic that had been on the road at the time of the explosion was
behind them, it should be clear sailing for a while. The only
vehicles left to worry about were the ones that were too slow to
keep up with the emergency evacuation speed, mostly massive service
vehicles with a few buses and clunkers tossed in. Lex glanced back
to steal a glimpse of Michella doing her thing.

"... reports indicate that two vessels may be
responsible for the blast. The police dispatches mentioned the
possibility of cloaking technology being employed. Now that we are
clear of traffic, we will try to get a shot of the University
Heights section of Outer Rackton, the area nearest to the blast.
Get a shot out there, medium optical zoom. As you can see, the
infrastructure seems fairly untouched, but there appears to be some
smoke. The detonation was very high in the atmosphere, so the
damage should be minimal, but as you can see from the broken
windows, the raw force of the blast must have been considerable. No
word yet on what, if anything, was struck directly by this attack,
but we will report as soon as the information becomes available,"
Michella remarked. Her eyes flitted aside, "We will return shortly.
Please stand by for additional information."

She motioned for Jon to kill the feed.

"Keep the video and audio rolling. We'll toss
the footage to the editors to add to the aggregator version," she
commented. "Lex, it looks like we've got company."

"Yeah, I see 'em," Lex said.

Four police cruisers were merging into the
skyway from below. Unlike the steady, dependable Duchess, the cars
painted with the blue and white police markings were downright
fierce. The hood of the car bristled with cooling fins, and an
ominous glow flickered within the thrusters jutting out the rear.
They were more in line with the sort of machines Lex had gone toe
to toe with in his racing days. Trying to outmaneuver them in a
rental car was going to be tricky.

"Leave it to Rackton to go top-of-the-line
with their cop cars," Lex grumbled.

"Are we... Are we really going to try to
outrun the police?" Jon asked.

"No, Jon. We aren't going to try to outrun
the police. We are going to
succeed
in outrunning the
police. Right baby?" Michella said, a devilish grin coming to her
face as she tightened up her restraints and held on tight.

"We better. Tesseran traffic laws are
harsh
," Lex said.

"This, uh... This car is rented under
my
name," Jon said.

"Well, Jon, you're not getting your deposit
back."

The former racer revved the much abused
engine of the rented Duchess to its limits. Below them, the city of
Rackton had thinned out from a veritable art gallery of
architecture to a sprawling green expanse of gated suburbs. It was
a less than ideal environment for losing a superior pursuit
vehicle, but if you could choose where to have your chase, you
probably wouldn't be getting chased to begin with. As the police
began to organize themselves into an intercept formation, the audio
system of the Duchess began blaring an all-too-familiar
multilingual warning. Lex clicked the volume off and took a deep
breath.

"I hope this is worth it, honey," he
said.

The first of the cruisers pulled in tight to
try to force him into a pocket blocked out by the others. Lex
dropped low and dodged underneath him, tilting the ship downward
and dialing back the power. The machine dropped like a rock,
passing through the lower edge of the flickering red skyway border
and for all outward appearance seeming to be suffering a power
failure. Inside the car a dozen warnings and indicators started
going wild, warning him of everything from his careless departure
from permitted airspace to the fairly likely collision with the
ground that would result. Outside, the sirens and public address
systems of the police were quickly coming back into range as the
cruisers doubled back.

"Oh God," Jon said. His voice had the very
distinctive tone one uses when there is a danger of something other
than words leaving one's mouth.

"Just a little longer," Lex said, watching
the ground approach through the windshield.

By the time the police were above him, Lex
was already too close to the ground and moving too fast for them to
attempt a rescue. There was nothing to do but spread out above him
and slow down, trailing behind lest they get caught in what looked
to be an inevitable fireball. Lex scanned over the pedestrian park
ahead.

"You think I can fit under that footbridge?"
he asked.

"What?!" Jon squeaked.

"Yeah, me too," Lex said, cranking the
power.

The free fall began to level off as the
engines labored to get back up to speed. The police realized that
they were dealing with a ruse rather than an equipment failure and
fell into pursuit again. With a sudden, jarring bounce, the
Duchess's repulsors touched ground, parting the grass of a picnic
area and launching a trash can aside. Fortunately the recent blast
in the sky had sent any park-goers running for shelter. Even more
fortunately, none of those park-goers had selected the low, wide
pedestrian bridge ahead as their shelter of choice. Considering the
fact that there were no surface roads, the bridge seemed to exist
exclusively as a place from which to take pictures. It was also
pointlessly long, forming what was practically a short tunnel. Lex
was only too glad to give it a secondary role as a high speed
obstacle.

"Think skinny thoughts everybody!" he
said.

A piece of the rental car's bodywork
screeched against a decorative safety rail as he barely managed to
wedge the sluggish piece of machinery beneath the bridge. Three of
the cops pulled aside and tried to position themselves to intercept
him on the other side. One remained on his tail just a few moments
longer, evidently confident that his hulking powerhouse would be
able to follow the mid-sized sedan. When the officer lost his
nerve, he nearly lost control of his cruiser as well, obliterating
an ornate lamppost in his frenzy to avoid totaling himself on the
bridge.

As their friend with poor judgment struggled
to get back into the chase, the other police hadn't quite managed
to get themselves organized before Lex came rocketing out from
beneath the far side of the bridge. He stayed low to the ground,
weaving between well manicured trees and clipping the top of hedges
trimmed into exotic shapes. Not only did the obstacles keep the
cops from getting too close, they prevented them from deploying
anything from their no doubt comprehensive arsenal of intercept
devices. Energy nets, grapples, tractor beams, engine killers,
fancy harpoons with attached retro rockets, and a hundred other
gadgets had been dreamed up to take care of the occasional rogue
hovercar, but they all required a clear shot and a lot of room. Lex
was determined to deny them of both. The more he maneuvered, the
better a feel he got for the specific quirks of his vehicle. Sharp
turns became surgical, his path threading an insane route through
anything that might keep the cruisers at bay. Ahead, University
Heights was looming, and with the fraction of his brain not
dedicated to daredevil stunts, Lex didn't like what he saw. The
first problem he was going to hit was that there was an awfully
long stretch of nothing but landscaped meadow between himself and
the college buildings. The presence of the meadow probably had more
to do with maintaining a picturesque ambiance for pricy
institutions that made their home in the Heights than anything
intelligent or useful, but that didn't matter. No trees or quaint
gazebos meant the cops would be right on top of him until he got
into the Heights themselves. It was at that point that the second
issue would become his primary concern.

After his hijinks during his last visit to
Tessera, Lex had attracted a considerably larger police presence.
The fact that only four cruisers were after him had seemed like a
fortunate oversight on the part of the traffic department. Now that
he could see the Heights, he understood his relatively unmolested
status. Even in the short time that had passed since the blast,
Rackton had managed to dispatch a veritable army of police to the
area, and on the horizon, the
actual
army looked to be well
on their way. If he'd had a few more moments to think things over,
he might have abandoned the idea of finding a way to get into the
hornet's nest ahead. Luckily, his emergence onto the obstacle-free
home stretch commandeered the remainder of his brain for use in
piloting the craft, making all of that pesky "critical thinking"
impossible.

As a matter of fact, the only person in the
car who seemed to be giving any thought at all to the situation was
Jon, and presently he was too terrified to enunciate. He simply
held the camera in a death grip, pointing it vaguely wherever
Michella's finger was pointing. She was giving instructions, too,
but the pounding of his heart in his ears was drowning them out. It
was madness. At no point since she'd gotten into the car had
Michella shown any indication that she felt her life was in danger.
She'd simply held tight, kept her eyes on the destination, and worn
an unnervingly exhilarated smile on her face. Now and then Lex
would turn to see how close a trailing police cruiser had gotten,
and when he did, his face had the same smile. It was like watching
two addicts get their fix. Finally, after a particularly aggressive
maneuver shook a chunk of the trunk lid loose, Jon found his
tongue.

"Listen, I think we should-" he began.

"We're coming up on the residence halls in a
few seconds, I want you to try to get a shot between them,"
Michella said excitedly.

"You don't really think we're going to be
able to use any of this footage, do you?!"

"We'll pull some stills... And crop out the
police and the car's interior, I suppose."

"Mister Alexander, don't you think we've
gotten ourselves in enough trouble!?"

"Only if we get caught, Jon," said Lex.

"But won't they-"

"Not really the time to be distracting me
with questions, Jon."

"I... But... You're both completely
insane!"

"It tends to help in situations like this,"
Lex said.

The pilot guided the vehicle in a frustrating
route between the police cruisers. Without any real cover, he was
forced to use his pursuers themselves as cover, slipping behind one
of them just as another attempted to force him to the ground. The
high speed pursuit quickly began to resemble a greased pig chase,
with the used and abused Duchess proving itself to be surprisingly
nimble with Lex at the controls. It was his hope that one of the
cops would eventually deploy something out of desperation, and that
said thing would instead trip up one of the other boys in blue.
Alas, Rackton had been smart enough to hire competent police
officers to go along with their high-end cars. Luckily the empty
meadow had begun to shift to trendy coffee shops, university
libraries and study halls, and eventually, the overly ornate and
hip residence hall buildings themselves. As was the case with most
degree-granting institutions, the on-campus housing ran the gamut
from luxurious to prison-like, depending on the financial means of
the student. On the expensive end were a handful of buildings that
looked to be only slightly less fancy than the Pavilion, each
covered in ivy, columns, and Greek letters. The financial aid
buildings were big ugly boxes, squeezed together in tight little
rows, and tucked carefully away among some tall, full trees so no
one would notice them.

Behind him, Lex watched the pursuing police
begin to drop away. They were approaching the campus proper, where
what appeared to be the entire remainder of the police department
had established a tight cordon tracing a circle around what was
presumably the landing site of the intruders. A small contingent of
the police who had gathered ahead were drawing themselves together
into a three dimensional road block. Considering the trouble they'd
managed to give each other with only four cruisers involved, the
first responders who had trailed him thus far must have decided to
back off and give their brethren a clear shot. From the looks of
it, they weren't going to take their time about it.

"Everybody strapped in?" Lex asked, watching
the police ahead of him adopting the positions one assumes when
aiming a vehicle-mounted weapon.

"Yes," Michella said.

"To within an
inch
of my
life!"
Jon replied.

"Good. This is going to be the rough
part."

"What was that last five minu- HURK!"

His comment was cut short by a sudden upward
dodge that heaved the camera rig into his gut. It would seem that
the Rackton police department had decided to hedge their bets,
providing their officers with a wide assortment of countermeasures
that worked at various ranges. It was all Lex could do to dodge the
first salvo of nets and harpoons, and no amount of fancy footwork
was going to keep the tractor beams from locking on. Already he
could feel the shudder of beams that weren't quite on target. His
eyes scanned the surrounding scenery for anything that could
provide adequate cover. The ring of police drew a rigid line
through the residence area. Not far behind the rear-most of the
cars was a grid of rapid-deploy pylons marking off the Do Not Cross
line. All he had to do was get to the other side of that grid and
the cops probably wouldn't follow. Sure, the
reason
they
wouldn't be following was probably a very good one, and likely
hinged upon not getting blown to bits by enemy gunships that may or
may not have taken control of the campus, but hey, one problem at a
time. Finally he spotted the low cost student housing. The cluster
of cops and the Do Not Cross line both passed right over it. Just
as a second flurry of high-tech gadgetry was hurled his way, he
twisted the car sideways and pushed it for all it was worth. The
new orientation threw off the aim of the police, causing most of
the better targeted shots to go wide. A harpoon with a flaring
rocket managed to drive itself into one of the rear fenders, but
the beating the car had taken caused the whole panel to tear free
without so much as slowing Lex down. A few energy nets crackled by
his windows, and at least three pieces of equipment Lex couldn't
identify whisked by soon after. Then, with a deafening rush of
wind, things went dim.