“Thirty-six and 103rd!” I called. Vamp straddled the bike a few spots down, and signaled back.
I opened the emitters, and my stomach dropped as I rocketed up through the stream of wind and ash howling over the top of the lot. Black grit and soot chaff stung my arms, raining against the side of the bike until I cleared the worst of it and was out into the open air where twilight had fallen. The city blazed with light past the wall in the distance.
Off to my right, I saw Vamp and Nix appear in a plume of gray ash. Behind them, the force field glowed faint blue in front of the great wall of the ship’s north face.
I didn’t know how long it would take for security at the wall to detect us, but I guessed not long. I brought the bike around and locked on to the gate hub’s location with the GPS.
Please let this work….
I leaned forward and held on tight as I gave the bike everything she had. Below me, the sea of ruins and rubble became a blur of gray and black.
Less than a minute later, something flashed up ahead. I shielded my face with one forearm, squinting into the light as one of the floodlights found me. A red warning message appeared on the windscreen’s heads-up display.
Stop your approach and wait for security to escort you back to the wall.
There wasn’t time to worry about what Vamp and Nix were doing. The message flashed as I cut the wheel and the bike spun around 180 degrees in the air. The wave of dust and ash kicked up in the wake blotted out the worst of the blinding light, but the engine sputtered and when I tried to breathe in I choked on it.
I opened up the emitters, and the nose of the bike lurched upward. Hard flecks of rim sediment rained over me as I rocketed up out of the cloud and into the clear night air above. The bike threatened to go over, but I locked my feet in the metal stirrups and held fast as I tried to aim the nose back down.
The floodlight swept back in my direction and found me again as I cranked the throttle, but when I tried to turn, the bike hesitated. Rim dust had clogged up the cooling vents, causing one side to drag. As I dove, I went into a spin.
The skyline streaked by in front of me, and I caught a flash of Vamp and Nix’s bike as a warning shot boomed through the night air. I began to slip off the edge of the seat, and struggled to right myself while more warning messages flashed on the windshield’s holoscreen: Stop the bike or you will be fired on.
I wrestled the spin into a wide spiral. I’d intended to head back down on the other side of the cloud before they could find me again, but I was still way too high and totally exposed.
Don’t shoot, I broadcast. I had no idea if they were listening or not. Don’t shoot. We escaped from—
You are wanted by Hangfei security. Stop your approach to the wall and await a military escort.
I can’t, I—
This is your last warning.
I pushed back my heel on the right pedal, killing the emitter that had lost its partner. The bike steadied about ninety feet in the air and below I could see the big, lazy swirl of dust beginning to lean in the night breeze. A shower of grit streaked diagonally through the beam of the floodlight as it zeroed back in on me.
A bright light began to flash from somewhere ahead, and something whipped by on my left like a stream of giant, angry hornets. A beat later I heard the low, rhythmic thumping of automatic gunfire.
Last chance. Stop the bike—
I cut the channel and pegged the forward throttle. As I picked up speed and the wind began to roar in my ears, the turret opened up again. Tracer rounds spat through the darkness below as they struggled to adjust the angle.
There was a break in the shooting and I killed all the emitters at once. The inertia carried me forward, and then my stomach fluttered as the bike began to fall like a thrown stone. I began a free fall down toward the wall where a turret spat out an arc of shell casings. Rounds whistled over my head as I dipped below the line of fire.
Almost there…
Red emergency lights lit up all along the wall, and a klaxon began to sound, echoing off into the night as the wall of buildings ahead rushed forward to meet me.
Another turret opened up as I turned the emitters back on, stopping the bike fast enough to make my tail-bone bang onto the seat cushion. More rounds whined past and now I could actually see the guards stationed along the wall below, one pointing up in my direction as two more fought to reposition the turret. One soldier pulled out a handgun and aimed it toward me as I closed in.
I heard the pops as the row of red lights flashed past beneath me, the klaxon so loud now that it hurt my ears. A bullet punched through the windscreen, leaving a single hole in the middle of a web of cracks. Two more rounds hit the bike’s underbelly as I cleared the wall and then plunged in between two buildings on the other side.
The street below was filled with a cheering, waving mass of people. As I rocketed past a building face, I saw rows of parade-goers lined up on the fire escape there, shouting as I passed. Masked faces turned upward to follow me as I came in way too fast, and the crowd surged as people scrambled to get out of the way. Up ahead, a set of blue lights flashed and a siren chirped, changing in pitch as I streaked past.
In the rearview display I could make out a sliver of the rim wall between the towering buildings. Red lights still flashed there, but I couldn’t see the other bike. The klaxon was still going, but they’d stopped firing.
I sailed over the sea of bodies, whipping out of the side street and into an explosion of colored neon lights, flashing signs, and dancing, singing, screaming people.
The main strip was alive, all four lanes filled with a parade of multistoried floats, marching soldiers, dancers, stilt walkers, and fire-breathers, all moving through a polyethylene blizzard of confetti. Above the procession, enormous balloons depicting the different forms of jiangshi lumbered between the buildings, staring down at the crowd with their huge iridescent eyes.
I banged a left, and my turn went wide as I veered toward the parade line. I banked, just clearing the side of a massive balloon being towed down the street below by a large utility vehicle. Trailing streamers that made up the jiangshi’s seaweed hair slapped against the bike’s windscreen as I tried to peel away, thumping along the balloon’s outer skin. The bike bucked underneath me as I pushed through, cracks from the bullet hole splitting along the length of the windshield until it finally snapped. Half of it broke loose and hit me in the shoulder as it spun off into the air behind me. I bumped the balloon again, then pushed off it with one foot and dove down over the heads of the cheering crowd.
Up ahead, the parade trailed off like a giant, electric caterpillar, the floats and balloons crawling forward down the length of the strip. Floodlights crisscrossed through the sky above while bottle rockets and bags of red dye jumped up out of the blanket of parade-goers like bubbles popping over the top of a soda glass. Designs of sparkling light paint covered the surfaces of the behemoths as they lumbered, venting waves of streamers and confetti in their wakes.
The thumping beat of music swelled as I closed in, so loud that it managed to drown out a crowd that covered every inch of sidewalk below as far as the eye could see. Masks of monsters grinned up from the blanket of bodies, while fists pumped in time with the music. As I passed, costumed dancers writhed and stomped on the tiers of a gaudy float temple, shaking the grave markers above them. Another siren whooped briefly before the techno beat snuffed it out. Blue and red flashing lights were piling up down the street behind us, angry strobes against the frantic light show.