“Now!” Hardy shouted.
Michael kicked his door open.
“Follow m-” Hardy said.
But Michael was already moving. His arm came up fast from below waist level and drove a fist into Hardy’s throat that dropped the man as if he’d been shot. Michael did not waste a second; he plunged into the smoke that was fast filling the prisoner compartment and threw himself at the exit.
The door offered no resistance. Michael tumbled out and hit the road hard. He scrambled to his feet and waved an arm at the door. “Helfort’s coming!” he screamed. “Helfort’s right behind me.”
It was not hard to work out why the Hammers fell for it. Michael was supposed to be the second orange suit out, not the first, and so they waited. Their indecision gave Michael the chance he needed, and he took it. He sprinted to the front of the blazing wreck of the mobibot. Flames scorched his face, smoke eddying and twisting around him as he ran for his life.
Then the Hammers woke up, sending a blizzard of rifle fire in Michael’s direction, the air flayed by hypersonic rounds whiplashing past before whanging off into the mobibot’s armored skin. But only for a few seconds, and then Michael was around the front of the flaming carcass. He plunged through air thick with acrid fumes that ripped at his throat and lungs. On he ran, keeping the wrecked mobibot between him and the Hammers, praying that his ambushers had been too confident to position anyone to cut him off.
Michael burst clear of the smoke into a scene of complete chaos. The road was choked with bots of every shape and size forced into emergency stops by the city’s traffic management system, the spaces between them fast filling with confused and uncertain passengers, most slow to realize that they too were in mortal danger, with barely a handful taking cover as rifle fire filled the air. On Michael ran, barging the standing aside and hurdling the rest.
Just as Michael allowed himself to think he had escaped the Hammer trap, two men, one white-blond and the other with his head shaved so close that the sun glistened off his scalp, stepped from behind a cargobot, assault rifles pointing right at him, rock-steady. “Stop, Helfort!” Baldy screamed. “Stop and drop, right now!”
Michael ignored them, but only until the pair sent a burst of fire shrieking past his head. Sick with defeat, he skidded to a halt. “Okay, okay,” he said.
The two men were on him in an instant. Michael screamed as they yanked his arms behind him, brutally indifferent to his pain. Cuffing him, they dragged him to his feet and hustled him away down Shanghai Boulevard.
“Zero, Six. We have him,” Michael heard Blondie say.
“Roger that, Zero,” the man said a few seconds later. “Egress Bravo, understood. Six, out.”
On they went. Michael knew that his chances of survival were fading fast. He had one chance, and he took it. Without warning, he exploded, a single violent movement that drove a shoulder into Baldy even as he rammed his left leg into Blondie’s knee, He took both Hammers by surprise, and the three of them fell to the road in a twisted, tangled mess, with Michael kicking out in all directions in an attempt to slow things down.
“You little fucker,” Blondie snarled, struggling to get his rifle free.
The fight did not last long. Baldy finished it with a crushing blow from his rifle butt to the side of Michael’s head, a blow that drove him to the edge of unconsciousness, the pain blinding in its intensity. But he clawed his way back to the light; to survive, he had to take whatever chances came his way, however slim, however transient.
Cursing, Baldy and Blondie hauled Michael to his feet, and they were on the move again, his body dragged along limp between the two men and into a narrow lane. A few meters down, a small cargobot waited for them.
“Thank Kraa for that,” Baldy muttered. “I’ve had enough of this.”
The words snuffed out the last tiny flicker of hope left burning in Michael. It was over; the Hammers had him.
“Me, too,” Blondie grunted.
Just short of the ramp, they stopped. “You hold him here,” Blondie said, “while I get the ramp down.”
“Roger that,” Baldy said, dropping Michael to the ground. “You move one millimeter and I’ll blow your leg off. Got it?”
“Yeah, yeah … asshole.”
Baldy laughed. “Nice try, Helfort. I’ll tell you this,” he went on as the ramp started on its way down, “I think I’ll enjoy-”
A soft, wet slap cut the man off. Baldy stood swaying, his mouth open, a look of surprise on his face. He stayed upright for a few seconds, and then with a soft grunt he crumpled to the ground alongside Michael.
First one and then another and another and another person rushed past, their black jumpsuited figures hung with equipment.
“About time, guys,” Michael said.
Saturday, May 25, 2402, UD
Kovak Military Hospital
“I think I owe you an apology, Lieutenant,” Colonel K’zekaa said, her head bobbing in embarrassment. “You were quite right about those goddamned Hammers, and I was wrong.”
“Thank you, sir,” Michael said, his smoke-damaged voice a hoarse croak, “and I’m sorry I was so rude.”
K’zekaa waved the apology aside. “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “I did talk to the Jamudans, though, and they told me they’d take the threat seriously.”
“What happens now?”
“Your lawyer hasn’t seen you yet?”
“No. You’re my first visitor. I told the hospital to tell everyone that I was too tired to talk to them. You must be very persuasive is all I can say.”
“Oh, I am. Anyway, to answer your question, nothing happens until a court-appointed doctor says you are fit enough to appear.”
“Shit!” Michael said.
“I thought you’d be happy about that. You know what might be waiting for you?”
“I do. My lawyer has been telling me the same thing.”
“So why the rush?”
“Two reasons. First, I don’t need to worry about the death penalty. The Feds will never execute me. It won’t happen. Ever.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” K’zekaa said with a frown.
“What will be, will be. I can’t worry about it. Fact is I cannot go on like this much longer. I didn’t want to be here, I never planned to be here, and I wouldn’t be if Admiral Ja-if I hadn’t been kidnapped. But now that I am, it’s tearing me apart. I want closure, and sooner rather than later.” Michael paused, taking a deep breath to settle himself down. “I know it won’t make any sense to you,” he went on, “but you haven’t been through what I have.”
“No. But I do know this: I’ve read your file, and I cannot judge you.”
The silence that followed was broken when a nurse stuck his head in Michael’s room. “Hey!” he said. “What are you doing here? No visitors, so please leave-now.”
Saturday, November 9, 2402, UD
Kovak planetary defense base
The door of the holding cell banged open to reveal the substantial figure of Sergeant Habash. “It’s time, sir,” he said.
“And not soon enough,” Michael grumbled. “I’ve had enough of Jamuda, I can tell you.”
“So you keep telling me.” Habash chuckled. “We’re sorry to see you leave.”
“So tell those Fed motherfuckers I’m not coming.”
Habash looked right into Michael’s eyes. “I wish I could. None of this is right.”
“No, Sergeant Habash, it’s not. Come on; let’s go.”
Flanked by two more guards, Michael followed the man out of his cell and down a series of corridors until they reached the prisoner outprocessing center, a bleak room filled with a large contingent of grim-faced fleet police in Fed shipsuits. One of them stepped forward, a dour-looking woman sporting a warrant officer’s badges.