"Well, good," Rachel said as she rounded a corner. "Hopefully our luck will hold out."
"Or, maybe not," John said as he looked at the line of cars.
"This was not here an hour ago," Rachel snarled at the roadblock.
"It's cool," Mullins replied softly. "My ID should pass just fine. Just play it like any normal roadblock."
"What about the admiral?" she asked.
"Retina scanners sometimes act up," Charles answered. "All the other data will match just fine. And the local police retina scan for the admiral is wrong."
"You didn't tell me you diddled the ID database," Rachel hissed.
"You didn't ask," Gonzalvez replied with another grin. "Anyway, the retina scan should come back garbled and everything else will pass. They'll let us through."
"Okay, but I don't like it."
"And don't try to run," John added. "This POS will never be able to out-fly the police vans. For that matter, we'll be zoomed in on from every direction and they'll be tracking us a half a dozen ways. Just play it cool."
"I am," she replied as the first van passed, scanning her registration. It swung around behind her and took a position above and behind. "I was," she continued.
"That's not good," John said. "They don't scan ID internally, so they had to have reacted to the registration. Who's this registered to?
"Me," Rachel said, adjusting her rearview mirror and checking her lipstick.
"I think they're on to you, Rachel."
"I think they are too," she sighed, touching up her hair. "Damn it, Johnny, I did not need this crap."
"Okay, on my mark we kill everyone in sight," Charles said with a snort. "Or at least try."
"Hopefully it won't come to that," Rachel replied quietly. "And unless it does, don't do anything stupid."
Mullins looked around at the block. There were four cars in front of them, three like themselves hovering at about five meters and the first one grounded and being checked by the local constables. There were two police vans there, and the one behind them. As he watched, two of the constables at the block walked back to their own vans, one going to the rear.
"I think we're screwed," Mullins replied. There was an alleyway on his side, but the vans were going to have IR sensors so unless they could get underground and lose the cops on foot, they weren't getting away. "When I say 'now,' put the car in drive and jump out on my side; hopefully some of them at least will chase the car."
"I don't think that's an option either," Rachel said as one of the two vehicle cops extracted what looked like a rocket launcher and fired at her car.
"JESUS!" Mullins yelled, pulling open his door as the rocket slammed into the side of the vehicle.
But instead of an explosion, there was a simple "pop" and the car shuddered in mid-air.
"EMP round!" Rachel yelled. "Get back in the car!"
"It's dead!" Mullins said but the sudden shudder as it lifted upward belied him. Then he was thrown backwards in his seat. "Whoooaaa!"
Mullins had been in enough simulators to have a fair clue about how many Gs he was pulling and the little "rattletrap" car was accelerating far too quickly for its appearance.
"Friends in low places?" he grunted.
"My cousin's a mechanic," she hissed in reply, banking around the side of a building at the sight of blue lights in the distance. The car narrowly missed the side of the far tower, actually tapping on one of the empty flagpoles jutting out from it. "He installed an engine from an old Prague Defense Force mobile gun. It's designed to drive a mini-tank."
"How did it survive the EMP round?" Mullins asked. "We should have been sitting on the ground!"
"It's a military engine," she said, in a tone reserved for a not very bright four-year-old. "Ever heard of shielding?"
He glanced behind them and winced as another police van joined the chase, slipping into the upper lane to prevent a break in that direction.
"They're going to be tracking us on the satellites," he mentioned. "Not that it looks to matter."
"I've got the transponder turned off," she commented. "But you're correct about them being able to track us visually. Not that it matters at the moment. But hang on."
The traffic ahead was slowed by an air car in the center middle lane that seemed incapable of making up its mind. The driver was either old or drunk because the car was weaving a pavane up and down, crossing through the dead zones and nearly entering the lanes above and below, as well as from side to side.
Rachel appeared not to notice, diving into the lower dead zone and accelerating towards the car fast enough to rattle the cars above and below in her wash. Just as it seemed she would hit the wandering vehicle it drifted upwards and she slid through the slot into the relatively open area ahead of it. As they blasted past, Johnny caught one brief flash of a white patch of hair and a pair of hands that clutched the steering-yoke at least six inches over the driver's head.
Unfortunately, Rachel's maneuver placed the car in the intersection, going the wrong way. Her sudden appearance in the cross-lanes caused cars to veer in all three dimensions and windshields in at least a half dozen cars turned blue as the auto-pilots went into spastic fault-mode.
Mullins looked back and shook his head in wonderment at the snarled mess behind them. Half the cars that had been around them were down or bouncing from side to side, the police vans had either grounded or slammed into the surrounding buildings trying to avoid various obstacles and the intersection was filled with cars on apparently random ballistic tracks.
"You just made yourself very unpopular in this town," he commented.
"Stuff happens," Rachel said, pulling all the way up into the control lanes and then down to avoid a slow section of traffic. "I was getting tired of Prague anyway."
"Oh," he said as she banked through the next intersection, slammed on the brakes and turned into a mostly abandoned multistory garage. "So this isn't the first car chase you've been in, is it?"
"No," she replied, raising the car up a story through an open hole and then spinning it to tuck neatly between a pair of rusted hover-trucks. There was nothing else on the level, but while the position gave a good view of the garage, it was nearly impossible to see the car where it sat. She quickly shut down the counter grav and then looked though the back window.
"And now we go?" he asked. "We're out of sight; we should... leave. Right?"
"Wrong," she said, looking at her watch. Outside the sound of sirens got louder and louder. There seemed to be quite a few of them.
"They'll have picked up the signature of the engine," he pointed out. "They'll be looking all over for it."
"You think?" she asked. She looked at her watch again and then nodded. "Time." In the distance there was a dull boom. A moment later the sirens began to fade. She leaned forward and fiddled with an almost unnoticeable knob under the dashboard then turned the car back on. It no longer throbbed or rattled.
"Your cousin?" Mullins asked dryly.
"He's a very good mechanic," she replied, pulling out from between the trucks and dropping back down through the hole. Turning right she pulled around a stairwell and parked beside a stripped air car. Johnny didn't recognize the model—presumably it was a preinvasion Prague design—but it was pretty and clearly made for speed.
"Give me a hand," she said, leaning down and pulling a lever.
Johnny shook his head as the body of the car lurched slightly then he joined her in lifting it up and away from the chassis.
"I've really got to meet this cousin of yours," he said. The sports car body, like the clunker body, was made of lightweight plastic and dropped onto the "rattle-trap" chassis perfectly. In under thirty seconds a slightly the worse for wear sports car rocketed out of the top of the garage and into the sky.