“Don’t shoot!” Li screamed at someone I couldn’t see. “You’ll blow out the—”
I cringed, ducking my head down as a burst of gunfire sounded in the small space. With my ears still ringing, muffled panicked voices yelling over each other, another three-shot burst went off so close that I felt the heat against my shoulder. Glass popped, and air began to whistle into the back of the transport.
An alarm went off as something in the engine sputtered, and the whine of the graviton emitters lowered in pitch. Butterflies fluttered in my stomach as the whole ship spun on its axis, throwing me back against the wall behind me. As the spin turned violent someone crashed back into the transport’s rear doors. The centrifugal force pushed me harder against the wall as metal pinged. Then the cabin filled with the roar of wind and street noise, a scream fading through it as someone flew out the open back.
The ship bobbed, righting itself, started to spin again, then steadied. Something crashed against the wall next to me, and warm fluid splashed my left shoulder and neck.
“Stop shooting, you idiot!” Two more single shots went off. “We’re going to…”
“The gate still has power, I can get us through!” the pilot called. “They have power at the remote side, we can get back on the skyway!”
I turned, trying to get oriented through the hole in the hood. I spotted the doorway that led into the cockpit, and through it, the windshield that looked out onto the city. A sky gate floated there, with vehicles queued up to go through.
“Hold on!” the pilot shouted.
He skipped up over the grid of vehicles waiting for the gate, then dropped back down on the other side, accelerating even as the ship began to spin out of control again.
“Hold on!”
The gate began to flicker just as we crashed into it and the chaos around me froze.
For a long moment, time seemed to stop. I’m not sure how long it went on. Long enough for me to realize something had gone wrong with the jump. Then, all at once, cold air bloomed through the cabin as time and space returned. Weight returned to my body and my stomach dipped as the airship continued its spin.
I turned toward the source of the wind, and through the hole in my hood I saw that the transport had been clipped neatly in half. The skygate we’d just passed through had gone down before we made it all the way through, and several officers who had been sucked out tumbled end over end through the air.
Voices shouted over one another, the panicked jumble barely rising above the shrieking wind. Through the open back of the transport, Hangfei spun.
“We’re going down!” the pilot screamed. The seat lurched underneath me as he opened up what emitters were still active.
I pushed myself back into my seat, and leaned forward with my hands over my head, waiting for impact.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Wind whistled, huffing across an open space to momentarily drown out the rumble of distant machinery and vehicles. Nearby, someone groaned. Shuang, I thought.
I opened my eyes, and saw a red light flashing through the opening in my hood. I rolled over onto my hands and knees, and managed to find the nearest guard, who looked to be either out cold or dead. I used his field knife to cut my zip tie, and then the strap on my hood so I could pull it off.
I found myself staring down a slope at the opposite side of the transport where Vamp sat, still shackled.
“Vamp?” I called. He stirred, and I went to him. I cut his hands free, and got his hood off.
“Shit, you’re bleeding,” he said, squinting into the light.
I looked around, wincing as I turned my head. Nix and Shuang looked rattled, and bruised but otherwise okay. The rear of the transport had been neatly chopped off. The back end had crashed, I figured, across town at the other side of the gate. Four of the six guards had gone with it. I tried to spot the other two.
One lay facedown near the back, blood pooled around his head. I couldn’t tell if he was dead, or just knocked out. The guard named Li stood, leaning against one of the seats. He thumped his fist against the wall beneath the hatch that lead to the cab.
“Pilot, what’s your status?” he called.
The little window slid open, and a voice called back.
“I’m okay.”
The guard unclipped his own radio from his belt, and was about to speak into it when I lunged on impulse and looped one arm over his throat. I squeezed, and he dropped the radio as he reached back to try to knock me off.
“Goddamn it,” he grunted.
I managed to twist around, and jam his Adam’s apple into the crook of my elbow as I pulled him off balance. We fell down onto the floor toward the cockpit door, and I struggled to pull us closer to Nix, who sat slumped in his seat with the shock pin still sticking up from his chest.
Li was too big, I couldn’t drag him. I let him go and scrambled toward Nix. Li flipped over and grabbed my ankle, but I managed to get one hand around the pin. I jerked it free, and saw the pink light swell in his eyes as I went facedown onto the deck.
When I rolled over I saw Li had unclipped his stun gun and brought it around to fire. I jammed the shock pin down in the middle of his thigh and he went rigid, his scream cut off as the muscles in his body seized. The stun gun clattered to the floor.
“Nix, don’t let the pilot call out!” I yelled.
Without hesitation, Nix slipped through the cockpit door and I heard a crash.
“Don’t kill him!” I called.
“What the hell happened?” Vamp asked, going to Shuang. He pulled her hood off and her eyelids fluttered open.
“Gate went down while we were still going through,” I said.
“You okay?” Vamp asked Shuang as he cut through her ties. She nodded, throwing her arms around him and hugging him as Nix came back into the rear of the cabin.
With the security field down, the 3i had begun to pick up a lot of chatter over the wire. The most recent power cut had resulted in even more sightings, which were becoming harder and harder to explain away. Over the rush of the wind, I could hear people shouting in the streets, and the blaring of car horns. Sirens had begun to swell in the distance.
Alexei, I called. Pick up. When he didn’t respond, I tried again.
Alexei, answer me.
His icon went gray.
“Goddamn it…” I turned to the others. “These guys are going to snap out of it soon. Security will be sending another car, too. Let’s be gone when that happens.”
“Gone where?” Shuang asked.
I climbed to the edge of the severed vehicle with shaky legs and jumped down onto the pavement outside, the others right behind me. Smoke was still drifting lazily off the outer skin of the ship, and through the fog I saw many staring faces crowded on a transport platform. Rows of phones were pointed down at us, recording everything. It wouldn’t be long before security got tipped to where we were.
When we were all out, everyone stood on the narrow tarmac to catch their breath for a moment. I looked down the runway, between the bordering chain-link fences, and saw a long scar dug in the blacktop where we’d come down. The people on the platform stared at the wreckage that had been strewn out behind us. Glass and metal littered the strip, along with a pair of seats that lay on their sides. Past that, a body lay crumpled in a pool of blood.
Vamp glanced at me as if to ask what our next move was. Everyone was taking our pictures now, and two men in transport security uniforms had begun marching in our direction. We had to get away from the platform.
“Go,” I said. “Come on, let’s go.”
I sprinted to the fence bordering the tarmac and climbed over it, dropping down on the other side. The others followed as the security men began shouting at us, and we made a break for the street. I bolted across four lanes of stop-and-go traffic, horns blaring as I went, then stumbled down a side street on the opposite side. When we were a few twists and turns in, I stopped in an alley and the others piled up behind me.