Veteran (32 page)

‘And it’s no reason to talk to you,’ he replied. ‘Unless you wanna work it off. darlin’,’ he said, grinning. I felt like hitting him. Morag didn’t; she felt like kicking him. I was worried that she was getting too violent. However, Buck managed to lean out of the way of the kick. Morag looked pissed off and Buck just grinned at her.

‘Maybe you want to watch the mouth—’ I managed to say before Rannu kicked Buck so hard it picked him up off the bike and knocked him to the ground. I cringed as the paintwork got another scratch.

‘Fuck!’ Gibby shouted. He sounded genuinely distressed.

‘Thanks,’ Morag said to Rannu. Buck clambered back to his feet looking livid.

‘You boys play nice now!’ Mrs Tillwater shouted from where she was standing with the rest of the Commancheros, presumably swapping recipes or something. Buck picked the bike up again, grimacing as he looked at the paintwork.

‘We’re finished here,’ Buck said. ‘You ain’t getting shit from us.’

‘You owe us,’ Mudge said.

‘How you figure that?’ Buck asked.

‘You fucking left us there to die.’

‘We didn’t like it none,’ Gibby said. ‘But we didn’t really have much of a choice.’

‘And so fucking what? That was then, this is now. I’m over it,’ Buck added.

‘You fucking over it if I come back and bugger you to death with an exhaust pipe?’ Mudge asked. Suddenly we were all looking at him. ‘What?’ he asked. ‘It’s a threat.’ Buck revved the engine again.

‘Like I said, we’ve all gotta go sometime,’ the cyberbilly said.

‘Yeah, but an exhaust pipe?’ Gibby said, looking a little disturbed. Buck gunned the engine.

‘This,’ he said, patting the bike, ‘this is what it’s all about.’

‘Look, I like bikes as much as the next guy, and that’s a sweet ride,’ I said, momentarily distracted. ‘But there’s more important things at stake here.’

‘No. There’s nothing more important. I know this and that’s why I’m free,’ Buck said.

‘Yeah, I’ve seen your freedom,’ Mudge said. ‘You guys are free to die of cancer, free to die of respiratory problems, free to have deformed kids and slowly rot away.’

‘Live free and die of cancer - John Wayne taught us that,’ Buck said.

‘Who?’ I asked.

‘I ought to have you horse-whipped,’ Buck snarled.

‘Can we talk or not?’ I demanded. Buck’s live free and die young crap was almost as irritating as Balor’s warrior crap. I wondered why people, men usually, couldn’t make it through life without developing some kind of crackpot code of ethics.

‘Maybe we should, man,’ Gibby said. ‘We’re fucked anyway. These guys might be jerks but Rolleston’s a real fucker.’

‘Rolleston never done marked up my bike,’ Buck said.

‘If you guys help us there’s a chance, a slim one, but a chance that things could change sufficiently that Rolleston might not be a problem any more,’ Pagan said.

‘You wanna talk to me?’ Buck said. I nodded. ‘Go get your bike. We’ll talk up there.’ He pointed up at the most distant high-rise.

20

Trenton

Why was nothing ever simple? Why did everyone have to turn simple things into competitions? Didn’t anyone want a quiet life? I’d taken one of the pills and then a stim to pep me up a bit.

‘Well, that went well,’ Pagan said. ‘Did you have to try and kick him?’ he asked Morag. ‘I thought he was about to open up.’ I’d brought the bike back over to where we were standing. Buck, Gibby and some of their friends were standing round Buck’s bike.

‘Which conversation were you listening to?’ Morag asked. ‘Besides, everyone else gets to be a macho arsehole.’

‘Not everyone, just Mudge,’ I said as I ran a diagnostic on the bike. It was a good bike as far as it went, but it wasn’t set up for racing like Buck’s would be. I wished I had my Triumph with me. I was a pretty good racer and could hold my own in scheme races back in Dundee, as long as I picked who I raced carefully, but if Buck rode like he flew then I was outclassed both in ware and skills. Still, could be fun, I thought, looking at the course.

‘Rannu kicked him,’ Mudge pointed out in his own defence.

‘Yeah that helped,’ I said.

‘He was being disrespectful,’ Rannu said. Morag smiled at him and gave him a hug. Just concentrate on the bike, I told myself.

‘If we went around attacking everyone who was disrespectful we’d never get anything done and you’d have to kill Mudge,’ I told Rannu.

‘Hey, I’m not you. I would’ve kicked his arse in New York,’ Mudge said, apparently seriously.

‘See!’ Morag said. I was as ready as I was going to get. The starting point looked like a ramp leading up onto the roofs of the terraced flats. There was a ramp on either side of the street. Buck had the right side of the street; I was expected to take the left.

‘What’s the betting he’s given himself the easier side of the street?’ I asked nobody in particular. Straddling the bike, engine idling, I walked it over to the starting line accompanied by fast-paced, heavy western guitar riffs and pounding drums. Buck didn’t even bother looking at me.

‘Try not to fuck up,’ Mudge said encouragingly.

‘What’s the signal to start the race?’ Morag asked while Buck roared up his ramp and onto the roof of the terraced flats, as one of the cyberbillys fired a flare into the air. I gunned the low rider up the ramp, accelerating so fast I was only just able to keep the front wheel down on the deck. The bike jumped slightly as I hit the top of the ramp onto the flat roof about three storeys above the ground. I then had to swerve violently to avoid a huge hole in the roof. I’m sure that would’ve been hilarious for the crowd.

I was heading for a low wall at speed. I noticed there was a small metal ramp up against it over to my right, I veered hard, only just managing to straighten up as I hit it. I was airborne again, the bike bouncing on its shocks when I landed. I could see Buck ahead of me and off to the left. Basically the roof of the terraced flats was a straight sprint. All I had to do was avoid debris and holes and use the ramps over the low dividing walls. Then Buck disappeared.

I changed up a gear as the bike accelerated, spending more time in the air off the ramps and bouncing further when I hit the ground. Plugged into the bike I saw its performance in numbers on my internal visual display and could feel it in my head. I tried to get the feeling of merging with it like I did with my Triumph, but this wasn’t my bike and it wasn’t as elegantly engineered as the Triumph.

I hit the next wall and screamed as there was no roof on the other side of it. I hit a down-sloping ramp fighting for control of the low rider. The ramp took me into the interior of the flats. I hit the bottom of the ramp, swerving to avoid an interior wall and then riding through the next in an explosion of plaster, again only just staying on the bike. Ahead of me I could make out the course, a series of chicanes defined by interior walls and holes in the floor. I swerved from one side to another, getting down as low as I could in the cramped space. I didn’t like the give the floor had beneath my bike. Then I remembered I was dying anyway and sped up. Leaning down low over one of the holes in the floor, I could see it went down further than two storeys and into the sewers below. I swerved the other way, the top of my head just clipping the interior wall. I barely felt it. Part of the floor gave way behind my bike, and I felt it slow, but the wheel caught and I was away. I realised I was smiling as I hit the up ramp. I soared into the air as I came out of the flats back onto the roof. Buck was closer now.

I throttled down as we approached an intersection in the road. I hit the ramp at speed and was in the air over some of the crowd, who cheered as both of us went by overhead. Buck landed first, I landed soon after. There were vehicles keeping pace with us; I noticed that our muscle car was one of them.

On the new roof the dividing walls had narrow passages knocked through them, the holes had been patched and there was little rubble. I pushed the bike faster, coaxing it as I saw red lines appear in my vision. This was going to be the last chance to really get my speed up. The terrain became a blur around me. I had enough presence of mind to make sure the way was clear; the rest of it was focused on the ramp ahead. I was sure I was grinning now, the nausea a distant memory, the first sores on my scalp as meaningless as pissing blood this morning.

I hit the ramp. I felt like I was in the air forever: everything slowed down as the tower block loomed larger and larger in my field of vision. The jarring bump, the bounce, the fight for control - don’t lose speed. I was in the high-rise building for seconds, if that. The path that had been cut and cleared through the building was just a blur as I hit the next ramp and was in the air again.

Then the next tower block and the next, each time throttle down, keep speed as high as possible. Each time going a little higher, each time bouncing as I landed, trying to control the bike and not hit the ceiling. Sometimes I was aware of Buck’s bike to the left of me in the same building or as we flew through the air - he seemed a little closer each time I saw him.

This was what my boosted reflexes were made for; you couldn’t do this without augmentation. This was why we were different from the herd. Maybe Buck was right: this was what mattered. Land, control, throttle down, speed up, not even thinking about how high off the ground we were as we leapt from high-rise building to high-rise building.

The hole in the side of the tower block coming towards me was too low. I was too high. I’d taken off too fast. I slammed myself down on the bike, cursing the high handlebars on low riders. I felt my duster scrape against the top of the hole. I was going too fast but if I braked now I’d wipe out. I’d seen people do it in the schemes in Fintry, just jump straight into a wall at one hundred-plus miles an hour. The wheels bounced and finally found traction as I sped between the supports of the building.

I was in the air again. Buck was behind me somehow. It happened so slowly I had the time to take in the view of the ruins of Trenton below me and appreciate just how high forty storeys up was. It was the roof of the last tower block I was heading for. I overshot, landing in the middle of the roof, moving at speed towards the edge, way too fast to stop. I didn’t think, I just ditched the bike. My bike was moving away from me in a shower of sparks as I slid along, the rough concrete roof going though my duster, then my clothes, then my skin, yet again. I heard protesting tyres skidding behind me as I followed my bike off the edge of the tower block.

The bike flew in a long graceful arc out over the city. It seemed to take a long time to fall. I was watching it fall away from me. I slid off the roof, just managing to grab a piece of the rusted metal frame that ran through the crumbling concrete. I stopped suddenly. Had I grabbed it with my left I would’ve gone over but I’d grabbed it with my right and locked the metal fingers of my prosthetic arm around the metal. The metal tore itself out of the concrete in a shower of dust and I dropped, but it held. As did my arm, but only just. It was still healing from when Rannu had torn it off and I felt the gel around the new join give, as did the join itself slightly, and blood was running down my neck and chest.

More concrete dust showered down on me as Buck skidded to a halt on the roof’s edge in time to see the end of my bike’s swan dive. I think I spoilt his enjoyment at seeing my bike smash through the roof of an old bus station by screaming a lot. He lit up a joint and dragged deeply.

‘A little help, please,’ I gasped. Buck looked down at me.

‘Oh yeah.’ He pushed the kickstand down with a cowboy boot, got off the bike and knelt down on the edge of the roof. He leant down and placed the lit joint in my mouth.

‘Thanks,’ I said around the joint.

‘Let’s talk,’ he said, grinning.

One of the Commancheros had been a medic on Lalande. I think I needed to get my own medic to follow me around.

‘Can you do anything without fucking yourself up?’ Mudge asked. I had to admit that Mudge’s sense of humour was beginning to get on my nerves. We were sat back in the concrete square. The right side of my body had been cleaned, the bits of clothing, roof and rad-proofed material picked out of the wound. The gel and the pak on my shoulder join had been reset and much of me was covered in new skin and medgel.

‘Hey, I won,’ I pointed out.

‘Almost beat me to the ground as well,’ Buck said, smiling. ‘Joe, give us a moment,’ he said to the medic once the guy had finished. The cyberbilly nodded at me and headed off. We were sitting round a jet-black muscle car with tinted windows. Air intakes stuck through the hood and the suspension was heavy duty and raised. The car belonged to Gibby judging by the way he fussed over it. Buck and Gibby were with us. Mrs Tillwater had gone back to rejoin Crawling Town after we’d assured her that we were going to play nicely. I sat on the bonnet despite Gibby’s complaints. Mudge sat on some rubble nearby with Rannu and Pagan. Morag seemed both worried that I’d hurt myself again and pissed off that I’d destroyed the bike. Buck was still sitting on his bike and Gibby had sat down on the ground with his back to one of the car’s polished wheels.

‘So let’s hear it,’ Mudge said.

‘What do you want to know?’ Gibby asked.

‘Where’s MacDonald?’ Mudge asked.

Buck looked at him as if he was an idiot. ‘How the hell are we supposed to know that?’ he asked.

‘Okay, let’s not get ahead of ourselves,’ I said. I wanted to hear this from the start or maybe I just wanted to put off a decision I would have to make about Gregor. ‘Why were you ferrying Rolleston and the Grey Lady around?’ I asked.

‘They’d received intelligence that when the Ninjas went in they would try and infect at least one of the people they attacked,’ Gibby told us.

‘What did they infect them with?’ I asked.

‘You tell me,’ Buck said. ‘You saw as much as we did, more. Looked like they infected people with themselves.’ He was right.

‘Did Rolleston know why?’ Mudge asked.

Gibby shrugged. ‘There were a number of theories: some kind of disease-based warfare, to take them over, breeding ... Who knows? There’s a reason we call Them aliens. I’m not sure we’re going to help you fellas.’