"Get rid of them," someone said, and Tezozуmoc realized there were two slumped figures also in the basket with him. The foot lifted from his neck and the whole gondola shivered as the girl above him leapt lightly onto the platform. "We can't spare the weight…"
Gunshots rang out. The prince felt the gondola shake and he twitched violently, thinking the balloon had been hit. A furious hiss answered his movement and he lay still, fearing another blow to the head or stomach.
"Ware!" Someone shouted. The entire gondola shook again and Tezozуmoc felt his stomach drop away. A sustained ripping sound roared not too far away and something hot smashed through the base of the basket, stinging the prince's face.
Eyes screwed tight shut, Tezozуmoc curled into a ball, knees against his forehead.
A whoomp! sound – right on top of him – startled the prince into a fit of crying and harsh metallic smoke stung his nostrils. Distantly, there was a violent crashing sound followed by screams.
"Mi'lord?" Someone touched his shoulder. Tezozуmoc opened his eyes. The fuzzy image of his shorter bodyguard – what was his name? – slowly came into view, ringed by a shimmering halo of white light. "Are you able to speak?"
"Do…" The prince struggled with swollen lips. His throat was terribly dry and tasted awful. He peered desperately at the man. "Do you have anything to drink? Champagne? Beer? Even water will do!"
Running flat out, his entire attention focused solely on the speeding back of the Russian woman, Colmuir burst out onto the lift platform too late to realize that there was no railing, no gondola and only a yawning shaft twenty meters wide before him.
"Ayyyy!" He tried to slide to a stop, but a messy pool of water and rust betrayed the noskid on his boots. The Eagle Knight realized – in an instant of unremitting clarity – there was no possible way to stop and flung himself forward, combat knife discarded, fingers grasping for the woman's feet as she soared heavenward.
By nothing less than a miracle his right hand seized hold of her ankle, slipping a little on her strangely stiff skin, before they both plunged into the shaft. The aeropack whined in protest, trying to counter the unexpected weight. Another lighted lift platform flashed past and Lorne's coat billowed up in the rushing wind.
The woman twisted, kicking at his head as they fell, and the Eagle Knight wrenched his shoulder trying to get his other hand around her ankle.
"Chudak!" Eyes flashing in the lights blurring past, hair now unbound in a flying cloud around her head, she sharply clenched her left fist twice. The skinsuit gelled to her lithe frame flared with a ripple of violet lightning and Colmuir screamed, nerves savaged, and his grip flew loose.
The aeropack squealed and the woman flashed away and up into the darkness overhead. The master sergeant plunged, tumbling wildly, nearly unconscious from shock. He tried to scream, but his throat had contorted – like every other muscle in his body – into an agonizing cramp.
"Status!" Van Belane hissed into the comm thread pasted beside her plush lips. "Where is the prince?"
"Gone," came the furious answer. "We had him in the backup vehicle, but the other Eagle cut the mooring ropes and they escaped."
"My father's beard…Like a cockroach, that one!" The Russian craned her neck upwards and thumbed the aeropack on full boost. Far above she could make out the half-moon shape of a lift rising up the shaft. Strings of colored lights lining the ancient atmosphere vent cast a rippling gleam on the balloon. "I see them – scatter to the tertiary rendezvous. I will take care of this business myself."
Arching her back, Van Belane reached behind her, slim fingers searching through the combat pack clinging to her spine under a huge mane of black hair. Fingertips found the casing for a Norsk-make Mistletoe HL-SAM and slid the rocket from its holder. Strands of hair tangled, and – cursing again – she ripped the wig away.
She closed in swiftly with the balloon as the gondola bumped past another platform. Van Belane swung wide, trying to see past the lift, and realized she'd run out of time. The mouth of the shaft was only a hundred meters away, shining darkness speckled with stars and thin clouds gleaming with the lights of the city ringing the wide bowl of the Lagoon.
Sighing, feeling a melancholy tide rising in her heart, the Russian woman pointed the rocket, waited for the aiming tone, thumbed the activation switch, and cast the rod-shaped weapon free. The aeropack whined again, forced into a tight maneuver and she curled up her legs, zipping into the mouth of a side airway. Behind her, the missile spiraled away in free-fall, then the engine ignited with a flash, the tracking mechanism locked onto the gondola and the rocket blazed up the shaft.
A concussive whoomp! followed and a wave of superheated air rushed past. In the mouth of the airway, hands braced against the sides, Van Belane turned her head as flaming debris plunged past. Two bodies wrapped in flame careened by and then the burning balloon itself wallowed into the depths.
Popping a stick of cinnamon-flavored chicle into her mouth, Van Belane turned and loped off down the airway, letting her skinsuit turn opaque and flicking nightsight lenses down over sullen, ice-blue eyes. "Damned Shtlantskee carrion…lapdogs of the Empire…"
Smoke billowed in the shaft, but the constant pressure of air from below began to clear away the fumes. In the airway shaft opposite where the Russian commando had disappeared, Sergeant Dawd raised his head from the floor of the tube, gray-green eyes filled with a grim light. He waited another hundred heartbeats, saw that the last of the smoke was gone and no slinky, black-haired shape had reappeared in the other tunnel, and lifted himself to his knees.
"Safe, mi'lord. For the moment at least."
Tezozуmoc sighed and the Skawt helped him sit up. A twist of the wrist released a combat knife to cut the tiemeups holding the prince's arms behind his back.
"I'm terribly sorry," the prince said in an unconvincingly contrite voice, "but…what is your name again?"
"Dawd, mi'lord." The Skawtsman avoided meeting his master's eyes, concentrating on sawing through the plastic composite. The serrated back edge of the knife made it tricky work. "Eagle Knight in your service, ex-Fleet Marine Sergeant."
"A Tequihuah…Well done, master Dawd." Tezozуmoc drew out the words, trying to affect a fashionable languor. The prince tried to focus on the Eagle Knight – to fix an image of the short, dark-haired Skawtsman in his mind – and was struck by an impression of the man looking more a scholar than a soldier. Even near-shaven, Dawd's black hair was unkempt and wild, and his smooth round face suggested a puckish humor.
"Now wait a moment… Aren't there supposed to be two of you accompanying me at all times?"
"Yes, mi'lord." Dawd's tone became rather more clipped than before, though he was a man who prided himself on a clear, cultured voice. The sergeant could feel the youth – more than a boy, he thought rather morosely, and less than a man – trembling under his hands. "Master Sergeant Colmuir is also in your service."
"And where is he?" If anything, the prince sounded aggrieved.
"I believe, mi'lord" – the sergeant's jaw clenched – "that Cuauhhuehueh Colmuir has…has plunged to his death while attempting to apprehend the terrorists who attempted to kidnap you."
"Kidnap?" Tezozуmoc drew back a little in surprise. "The ahuienime – those joygirls…they were terrorists?"
"Yes," Dawd managed to get out. "They were. Mi'lord. A Danish or Russian kommando, I would venture. Very…dangerous."
"Kidnapped. I was kidnapped." The prince's face slowly lit with delight, perfectly even teeth white in the darkness of the tunnel. "By the Holy Ever-Virgin Mother of God, I was kidnapped!"