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  On the forward camera, a wide road was up ahead. There were no other vehicles visible on the road. The nearer camera showed the rising, hilly terrain and a woodland up ahead.

  He said, “Have the front camera follow the road another mile in front.” Immediately that camera sped up along the road. The nearer cam wound through the trees in their next patch of woodland. Where the scene was dark, it compensated the exposure. Here were no signs of any humans ever having been there. The place was eerily pristine.

  No threats appeared on the forward view either. “Bring the front camera back to keep a mile ahead of us. As it comes this way, take it lower and slow.”

  Adjusting now to watching views heading toward him and away, Garrison concentrated hard. His field combat skills weren’t too rusty, but monitoring in simultaneous, conflicting views could easily be an error-trap. He wanted to review the documents concerning the nature of the meeting they were headed to, but he didn’t dare risk taking his eyes off the route now.

  He decided to have the AI do it for him. “Read me the location for the meeting we’re headed to. And the participants.”

  He leaned the podbike through a clump of trees and sped up as he came out the other side.

  The AI told him, “The meeting is in a bunker beneath the site of an ancient feudal fortification.” A schematic appeared on his visor. “The other participants are three separate parties. They are listed as, ‘Party of two. Plus security. Individuals identities, strictly need-to-know only.’ Then ‘Party of five. Plus staff and security. Individuals identities, strictly need-to-know only.’ And the other, ‘Party of one. Plus security, staff and logistics. Individuals identities, strictly need-to-know only.’ Document ends.”

  “Any clues where the parties are coming from?”

  The AI told him the names of three places he had never heard of and knew nothing about. “Are they all parts of the Great China Federation?”

  “Yes.”

  The forward camera showed no threats and had resumed its original height and direction. Garrison leaned the pod over and accelerated the pod to join the paved road as it snaked up the hillside. As they ascended, layers of mist refreshed Garrison between blasts of warm, thinning air.

  A camera showed his passenger reclining in the couch, undisturbed by the swaying of the pod. Garrison couldn’t be sure, but it looked as though the inside of the pod balanced independently to keep itself stable. “Comfortable in there?” He asked through the communicator. The passenger only lifted his eyes and raised one eyebrow. It was impossible to imagine him as the same kid who cowered inside the gray transport.

  Gray fuzzy drones swarmed at him. Seemingly out of nowhere, they were all around his head and his arms. The hand extensions were no use while he held the bars.

  The AI told him, “I have a mesh. It may be possible to snare the micro-drones and collect them all together.”

  Garrison nodded. “Do it.”

  A sheer material puffed out from both of the exo’s shoulders. The wind just blew it straight back and it stuck to the exo frame. The AI said, “I have plenty more, but it isn’t going to work while we’re moving.”

  “I’ll stop. Are you ready?”

  “Yes.”

  Garrison hit the brakes hard. The vehicle jerked. It took only fractions of a second for the bots to adjust and resume their positions. “What the fuck are you doing up there?” The passenger was in Garrison’s headset as the suit puffed its mesh at the drones again.

  Powerfully sticky in some way, the mesh snagged all of the drones that it touched. Garrison caught the last two buzzing bots in his hand. Their outside was fuzzy like a thin fabric. They shimmered and wriggled.

  The AI popped open a round lid on the dash. “There is an electro-magnetically sealed container.” Garrison unhooked the meshes with their struggling drones attached and dropped them inside. “The container is designed to keep documents and devices secure. It should contain the drones effectively.” He ignored the passenger in his ears demanding to know what was going on. He held his hand over the hole as he shoved his two captures in after them.

  Then he set the communication channel to announce, “Just keeping you safe. All good now.”

  When they reached the site for the meeting the two outriding drones returned to their places on the pod. Two long, black, polished armored vehicles with black windows and heavy double guns mounted on the rear were parked in a ‘V’ formation. Men in black combat gear with peaked caps and dark glasses stood in a line in front of them. They held their white-gloved hands clasped in front of them.

  There was no sign of the castle above ground, only the dark earth and stone marking where it had been and the perimeter of its foundations. A sporty yellow all-terrain electric vehicle bounced up from the far side of the hill. Two black all terrain vans loped up behind it as it swerved and skidded in a spray of dust.

  As it did the pod opened. In a beautiful white shirt and black leather pants, the passenger emerged and strode in pirate boots to the yellow car. He shook hands firmly with the two occupants as they climbed out. They were a stylish, well-dressed Asian couple. Men in tight-fitting suits descended from the black vans and encircled the three as they talked and walked to a metal plate in the ground.

  Two of the black-suited men lifted the plate from one side and Garrison’s passenger gestured for the other two guests to enter before him. The three began to walk down a staircase into the ground as the noise of heavy rotor engines approached and grew louder.

  A heavy, military chopper with three tilt rotors rose from behind the crest of the hill. The three shielded their eyes with their hands to their foreheads to watch. Their hair and clothes were blown hard. Garrison rocked on the high saddle. The guards’ clothes and hair were blown, and many of the looser cheeks. All of the guards who stood with their hands clasped kept their positions. Only two of them scowled.

  Clouds of dust churned, spun and flew as the chopper set slowly down. Everybody remained still for what seemed a long time. Garrison made it eighteen minutes. Then an Asian man in pale blue denims, black loafers and a loose black sweater bounded out from a door in the side of the chopper. The Asian man and woman ran to him and acted very pleased to see him. Garrison’s passenger waited where he was on the steps until the group joined him.

  Then they all four walked down the steps into the ground together and the guards shut the cover over the entrance.

  Batwings

  WHILE THEY ALL WAITED, the groups of guards made a point of ignoring each other. They checked and cleaned fearsome firearms, lethal blades and other weaponry. Each time the one of the men in suits took out a more powerful rifle, a guard in fatigues would wave a rocket launcher.

  Nobody left the chopper and its blades never came to a complete stop. Garrison wished he could take a chance and slip into the pod but the risks were way too great and the situation was too unpredictable. Instead he had the exo read out and show him the weapon and defense systems for the podbike and the exo itself.

  After an hour and some minutes, he was feeling hungry. “Is there any food available?” he asked the AI.

  “There is, but only what’s inside the pod.”

  He wasn’t going to take that. Pangs of hunger were a drag, but he wasn’t going to trade them for having to hear his passenger bitch about him stealing the snacks. Instead he occupied himself with reviewing the return routes and all the potential contingencies. He wanted to take a closer look at one of his captured drones, too, but not out here. Not in the open. And not with the teeth-baring factions of bodyguards who were itching for anything, anything at all they could start a fight over.

  Because he ignored them, they mostly all ignored him. He felt he was keeping up the image. Representing the persona of his EHVI. He avoided speculating about the passenger. The temptation to ask the AI about them overcame him, though. “What can you tell me about the person we’re guarding and transporting?”

  “In the sight and potential earshot of so many unknown
agents,” the AI said, Nothing at all.”

  “Oh. Well, thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  He remembered the oneline on his phone. As he reached for the phone in his pocket, the metal cover in the ground opened up. First the man and woman emerged, then the Asian in jeans. Five men in dark suits followed them with Garrison’s passenger in the middle of the group.

  As the bodyguards shut the cover back up, all of the meeting delegates clustered toward Dean, or whoever he was. They all wanted to exchange nods and serious bows, to shake his hand, touch his arm. He was definitely the center of attention. And, Garrison guessed, the center of power.

  First the dark-suited men climbed into the long, shiny, armed cars. Three in one, two in the other. Their guards took a moment to scowl over their shades at all of the retinue from the yellow ATV before they slid into the many doors of the limo-tanks and the huge cars rose on high, cantilevered suspension before they bounced away down the far side of the hill. Next the couple climbed back into their yellow ATV and drove away, and their minders followed after them.

  The passenger exchanged a last firm handshake and a few words before he walked back to the pod. He stood and waved as the Asian bounded back into the chopper. Its engines roared and it immediately began to rise. From behind the hill, Garrison felt the cracking thud of explosions almost before he heard them.

  “Get inside!”

  The passenger turned to show Garrison an arched brow and a slow beat of his eyelids.

  “Get inside!” Garrison repeated. “You want me to guard you, you do what I tell you.”

  The passenger walked around the pod to the open door with theatrical slowness. Smoke rose in three thick palls from behind the hill. The ground shook with more explosions. The chopper was leaning to veer away.

  Garrison was reversing away fast down the slope. He was ready to turn but not before he knew what would come to chase him. In a rising whine, two machines drifted above the hill and fired rockets through the heavy chopper. With stretched out wings beating slow like enormous bats, the craft were size of heavy battle choppers. Stutters of explosions ripped the three rotor plane with the Asian aboard. Blooms of fire expended its hull and flung its twisted parts and those of its occupants.

  That was enough. He turned in a sweep and shot the pod away with maximum thrust. “Put up a drone overhead, facing back.”

  From what he could see, the three rotor chopper was nothing but charred and twisted wreckage. Four rockets came out of the attacker’s craft. Shusshes and trails of puffy white came from the pod’s tiny automatic counter-strikes. The four explosions were near enough to singe the hairs on the back of Garrison’s neck. He felt it and he smelled the arid burning hair.

  The passenger was complaining. Garrison muted his channel. Four more missiles were approaching with counter-measures already launched.

  “We’ll run out of missiles before they do. Fire four magnetic explosives. Aim for the joint of the wings with the bodies.”

  “The fighters are not metal.”

  “Then detonate the grenades remotely, as close to the wing joints as possible.”

  Garrison swerved as the winding hill road swung over the edge of a ravine. He knew the pod should be stable for short bursts of free-air flight, but this didn’t seem like the time to probe its limits.

  Two explosions, then two more. The first of the flying bats span around as its wing tore upward. The bot crumpled and plunged spinning to the ground. The other just shook, ascended and poised to dive on him. He swerved off the road out over the drop and turned hard to point straight upward. He fired four rocket grenades as he steered straight at the flapping ship. It turned, but two rockets ripped through one flapping wing. The beast heeled over and tumbled. Flames spewed from it as it fell.

  Garrison turned the pod back down and onto the road. Two rockets came at him. He fired at them before he’d even worked out were they came from. Another flapping bat-like machine, much bigger, hovered in his path.

  “We can’t beat this.” He told the AI, turning the pod-bike hard. The passenger was hailing him.

  As Garrison made off around the hill for cover he thought, I’m not going to be able to hide from that thing, or to outrun it.

  He saw that his passenger had put on the data crown that he brought aboard. A written message said,

  The exo is faster than the pod.

  You don’t need to worry about this body.

  I’m leaving it here.

  You can, too.

  G.

  ‘G’? He synched all of the exo’s and the pod’s weapons systems. While they linked he sent a message back.

  My mission is guarding that body.

  If I can’t bring it back safe, you won’t see me again.

  In the screen, the passenger adjusted the crown before he looked up at the camera and shrugged.

  Garrison set the weapons targeting and made arrangements with the exo. At the end he asked it, “Will it work?”

  “There isn’t enough data to know.”

  “Well then at least after we’re done, we’ll have more.”

  The passenger messaged, “Hold for two-point eight minutes.”

  He messaged back, “I told you. I’m in charge here. Strap in.”

  He turned the bike another hundred and eighty degrees and twisted the bar for full throttle. Around the side of the hill, the fighter blocked the sky. Headed right for him, the huge wings tilted and swept back. The big bike barrelled at the center of the beast and all of Garrison’s weapons fired at once. As the wide fuselage exploded there was no time to turn.

  Garrison took the bike at full speed through the blazing hole in the middle of the hull. He squeezed his eyes shut, put down his head, and he bore the heat. Thick smoke filled his lungs. The bike was pointed upward and accelerating. He tried to steer it down and slow it but he was coughing and losing concentration. It felt like he, the exo and the pod-bike were in free fall as the coughing turned to retching and the thickening gray mist around the periphery closed his vision off completely.

  Ledge

  SLOWLY, UNWILLINGLY WAKING, HE was in darkness. He ached all over. The couch in the pod was cramped. First it was hard to move. By the time he worked out where he was, the pounding in his head had risen. It was now to a point where he could not pretend it was anything other than pain. His fingers found a ridge of unfamiliar bumps on the back of his head.

  In the dark, he couldn’t find any controls. He called out. “Where the fuck are we?”

  Before he got an answer, memory started to peel back. He remembered dropping out of the air. The pod was the right way up now, so that was good. Oh, but it was self-righting inside the vehicle. But if it were too far off being upright, he wouldn’t have got in through the door. But how did he get in?

  “Can you put the lights on at least?” He said, hoping that the AI would hear him. Still nothing happened. There had to be a mechanical latch on the door. A way to open it from the inside in an emergency. His head hurt more when he lifted it to wriggle out of the couch.

  Standing was cramped. He fumbled in the dark to find the door handle. It flipped easily enough. The pod door faced straight down a steep slope. Climbing out he slipped a few feet down the damp grass. The exo lay sprawled on the grass farther down. Garrison’s knees and elbows were sore.

  Awkwardly he stood and stretched as he looked around. The pod was streaked with black marks and dark stains. The sides were scraped with gouges. It leaned on the sloped ground. The air was cold, and he felt the moisture prickle. A blanket of mist obscured the valley below. Crouching, he made his way down to the exo. It lay, powered down, near the edge of a steeper slope. He tried to lift it, but it was too heavy. If he slipped and he easily could, he and the suit could tumble over the edge.

  There was a hand panel to activate the frame, but it was on the front of the frame and he couldn’t reach it. The only way to power it up would be to slip his hand into the right glove. That was far away. He st
retched, but it wasn’t going to work. Then he wondered of he could communicate with the suit from the control seat on the pod.

  Climbing back up o the pod was heavy going on the damp slope. When he scrambled up to mount the saddle, the whole pod lurched. He got a hand to the control bar just as the pod-bike toppled. He twisted the grip and the machine came to life. As the pod slewed backward down the hill, he got the engines delivering downward thrust and managed to stop the fall. There was a flatter patch of ground a little way behind and Garrison reversed onto it and set the machine down where it was stable.

  It took him a moment to find the headset for the pod, he had only used the one in the exo. It was in a box under the bars. He pulled it on and connected it. Immediately he heard the sarcastic tone of his passenger. “So, you’ve woke up at last. Nice little snooze was it?”

  “Where’s Dean?”

  “I have no idea, my dear. I left him with you. I thought it was you who wanted to save him. Have you lost him after all?”

  Thanks, asshole. Through his teeth he said, “I’ll get back to you, okay?”

  The click was followed by static.

  Over the headset, he called the exo. No response. He called again. No response. Could it be out of juice?

  He raised the pod bike off the ground to start a search for Dean. The first grim thought was at the edge where the exo lay. He moved the bike out from the hillside. The drop was steep. Almost sheer. A long way down below was a thick wood of spiky conifers. Maybe if the boy had gone over the edge, they could have broken his fall. It wasn’t likely, but it was a chance.

  “Hey!” He was about to descend to the wood and search when the boy’s voice came from above. Garrison was steering toward the sound as the boy came running. Emotion took Garrison by surprise, welling up inside him. He put the bike back down and climbed off.

  The kid was actually smiling as he said, “I went looking for help. I didn’t know if you were going to wake up or when.”

  “Are you okay, Dean?”