He blinked and got a readout of velocity. The numbers in the upper left quadrant were still advancing, the final digit a dancing flicker. APPROACHING ADHESION LIMIT flashed red in the middle of his vision.
That was the least of his worries. Feedback from the grappling lines would kick in the Norton’s governor circuits before the machine could tear itself from the wall by sheer speed. As long as he could stay fast enough to outrun the machines behind him
What did they have? He closed his eyes, letting the Norton accelerate on its own, the cable guiding its faster-than-a-fall, as he tried to remember what vehicles he’d seen in the Mass encampment. Mostly attack trikes, big armored cruisers; he could outdistance those easily – they were built for combat, not racing. Big lumbering transports, personnel carriers – no problem.
And scouts. Shit – he’d almost forgotten those little whippets, Guzzis stripped down and hot-rodded. Those would be leading the pack, cutting away the distance between them and the outgunned Norton.
If they’d had them ready to go… if they’d rigged one up with a snareline or some kind of weapon… Their military value was in sheer speed, zipping into enemy terrain for a quick peek, then out again; not even any armor on them, just light and fast.
He’d have to find out what was back there, upwall from him. If he knew that – he could get a strategy worked out, an escape route. And territory – gotta know, gotta know. His thoughts whirred up toward their own limit of acceleration.
And what was in front of him – that, too. He couldn’t just go shooting down the wall forever, even if they never caught up with him. The clouds, when he hit them, would mean nothing; the big Nothing, the place that swallows up the ones who took the big step, just let go and fell. You got there soon enough that way; nobody was so wildly stupid as to pour on the gas to get there even faster. The wind had sliced inside his jacket, chilling the skin over his ribs. He tried to remember, squeezing tight his watering eyes, pulling a fuzzy map together inside his head. Downwall from the Havoc Mass encampment… anybody… some tribe not allied with the Mass, with enough balls or a mutual-aid treaty with the Grievous Amalgam… whatever it would take to pull the posse bearing down on his ass up short… if he could just get there…
That’d be perfect, if the cable the Norton was locked on led straight into something like that. Some bunch with a real gripe against the Havoc Mass, where they’d get a big laugh out of what had happened at the banquet, shelter him until he’d figured out what to do, where to go next. The wind-forced tears ran in razor-straight lines to his jaw as he gritted his teeth and wished.
Can’t fucking remember. He knew it would’ve been no good even if he had been able to; he’d been there in the Mass camp long enough that everything could have changed in this sector of the wall, tribes moved out, new ones taking their place. He’d kept his head down, working, paying no attention to the usual flow of reports and rumors that freelancers based their itineraries on. Anything left in his head from before then would be old news, useless.
He’d have to call up Ask & Receive, pay the info agency for a current-time map, the extra bite for a high-reliability depth. Even with a band of murderers riding hard behind him for his blood, the thought of shelling out that kind of request fee made him hesitate. If there was any other way -
Shit. So much for that major segment of his bank account. It’d gotten so nice and fat when General Cripplemaker had paid him his advance… Back to reality.
He looked off to the right and saw the Small Moon hanging in the sky, bright silver and waiting. Those fuckers. Thanks a lot. But at least it was there for him to bounce his call up to Ask & Receive on the toplevel. If it hadn’t been there, if it had been hidden around on the Cylinder’s other side, he’d have been screwed. No way could he have stopped the Norton, climbed off, and gone looking for a contact point to route his call through the Wire Syndicate network; not with major ugly ass-kicking bearing down on him from upwall.
Even as he blinked on Ask & Receive’s number from the directory, the digits supered over the clouds below, the thought nicked him, whether he could trust his call going through the Small Moon relay. They’d already screwed him over once, in league with DeathPix. But they probably think I’m already dead. That was a comfort. They’d figure I got my lights stomped out back at the banquet. The Small Moon Consortium wouldn’t be expecting him to be making priority calls from this far out from the Mass camp. He could slip in, get the info he needed, and out before they could dink with the relay. He blinked on the last digit and listened to it go bouncing off the reflecting satellite.
YOU WANT IT, WE GOT IT. The info agency’s face spelled the words across his vision.
“Give me audible.” That cost more, too, but there was no time to read dialogue.
“You want it -”
“Yeah, yeah; forget that.” Axxter leaned closer to the Norton’s gauges, hunching his shoulders to his ears, blocking out the rushing of the wind. “I need a map, a, uh, whatchacallit, a rolling trace, center of projection this caller. Got it?”
FEATURES? “Sorry; features?”
“Blank everything except operable transit cables and military tribes in map area. And on the latter, give me size of forces, estimated field strength, and political affiliations. I’m going to need at least eighty percent reliability depth on all that. Make it ninety.”
“It’s going to cost you.”
He authorized the dip into his account. “Just do it. Fast, okay?” The Ask & Receive face zipped away; he glanced at the bank balance in the corner of the field. It had already been slipping away from the call fee; suddenly it dipped, the digit at the front end disappearing completely. The sight hit him like a knife to the heart.
Come on, come on – Jesus H. Christ. Another look over his shoulder. In the distance upwall, the face of the pack’s lead man was just barely visible, at least in the high definition of his imagination. And the warrior’s smirking grin.
Then the map he’d paid for came up, straight snakes and a few scattered patches blotting out the pursuers. Axxter turned around and leaned into the map, studying it.
Worse than he’d thought. His already-knifed heart sank, rolling along his spine. The snakes were scarce in this piece of map: they represented the transit cables, and there were hardly enough to form a square, let alone a grid of any kind. The pulsing circle that was him, the Norton and the Watsonian, hung motionless in the center of his vision, a bisecting line scrolling upward; right at the top, the Havoc Mass posse – black dots along the single cable – edged a centimeter closer as he watched. The blotches, different colors – the Amalgam and its allies always got shades of red, the Mass’s tribes in blues and greens – just a couple of each. And too far away – he was rolling away from the nearest blue, in fact, upwall and leftaround, disappearing in the map’s top right corner.
He scrolled down the map, the pulsing circle and the black dots rolling out of sight at the top. Kept scrolling, seeing nothing but the vertical line of the cable down the 138 middle – until words flashed over: INSUFFICIENT DATA TO MAINTAIN RELIABILITY DEPTH. He gritted his teeth; he’d scrolled so far down the map that it was into unknown sectors of the wall. “Go to fifty percent.” The map scrolled for several more seconds, then went blank, even the cable line gone.