Once a rough square had been almost completely cut he pushed on the panel, bending it down so he could reach out to the thick bodied white and gold magcycle. It wasn't a precarious reach, in fact it was anchored just inside the broken and bent transparesteel so firmly that he wasn't sure he'd be able to get it free. The problem with magbikes was the amount of power they required to hover and get underway, they were heavy machines, but incredibly fast, able to hover several meters above the ground and go absolutely anywhere but once the power plant cooled down and shut off they were nothing but a half ton of stationary machinery.
Jake pulled himself into the transparent yellow tube beside the vehicle and pushed on it to check how stable it was. The broad, two and a half meter machine didn't budge. He took a look around himself in the increasingly dim light to make sure no one would hear him and jumped up and down a little, testing the integrity of the tube. It gave only slightly, but enough to make him nervous, so he hurried things along.
Swinging one leg over the magbike he put one of his hands on a control handle and felt a tingle. It was only skin deep but he felt he could make a connection with the vehicle. He'd heard of people with subdermal control and interface modules implanted inside their skin, but had never imagined what it could be like. Only a few of them were brave enough to set that interface so close to the brain that they could actually connect with the systems in an intelligent manner and he was quickly becoming aware that at the very least he could send nervous system impulses to technology he was in near direct contact with and there was a subsystem connected to his optical nerves. When I finally get to Zingara station and have a chat with whoever Geppetto left there with answers for me I'm going to have a lot of questions. Jake thought to himself as he closed his eyes and put his other hand on the second handle.
The display between the handles came to life and the bike scanned him. Seating adjustments were made, a warning indicating that the safety shroud; a large armoured shell that was meant to cover the bike and rider was missing and the colour of the bike changed to match his crimson and black vacsuit and long coat. Another warning appeared indicating that the tube system the bike was assigned to was broken, there was no way to proceed past a break in the closed transit system and the most obvious break in the system was marked right under the rear emitters. That's all right, I think I'll try the open road. He thought to himself.
“Open driving enabled. Would you like to begin cold micro-fission?” the bike asked.
He flipped a switch on the right handle and with a shudder the machine came to life, blue sparks and arcing energy poured out of the unshielded emitters at the rear of the magbike, reaching out to nearby objects and pushing the heavy machine off the metal surface of the tube. Jake sat up straight as the aggressive energy field technology strained to reach down to the ground at the rear of the vehicle and started to back out of the broken transit tube. The low frequency buzz of the energy making contact with and amplifying the minute magnetic fields all around filled Jake's senses as the front of the machine cleared the broken transparesteel tube and he throttled up.
The riding height was set low, and as the magbike roared down the street with a stream of arcing blue energy piercing the falling false twilight it made its way over wreckage by millimetres at two hundred kilometres per hour, testing Jake's reflexes and bringing a grin to his face as he engaged the navigational assistance software in his command and control unit. It was normally used for manoeuvring a ship in small ports where there was no Navnet system, but it adapted easily to the grey, ruined streets and tunnels that lay between him and the Commodities building. The data from the Regent Galactic decryption chip added its own layer of data to the map in his mind and on his visor, telling him where their troops, tanks, and command centers were well in advance.
As he moved through the grid of silent streets strewn with the the shells of personal transports, the bodies that hadn't yet been removed, and the ruins left behind by thousands of interrupted lives he couldn't help but feel as though he were moving through a massive steel and stone corpse. Blue light was cast behind and to either side of him, a big, bright, obvious beacon in the artificial night caused by a slow rain of ash and black clouds. They would see him coming for kilometres, and as he listened to the West Watch turn all their attentions to the mountain escapees, he started formulating a plan that would turn all that light and noise to his advantage.
Best Laid Plans
“Congratulations!” shouted Lister Hampon from his child body. It was still surreal, no matter how many times Gabriel saw him in his new incarnation, listening to that boy voice spout the words of his old comrade. Lister Hampon rarely, if ever, had childish things to say, so no matter how elaborate the robes the man child donned or how adult the setting, it always seemed like the child was only channelling Hampon, as though the sharp nosed, angular faced man had possessed his own offspring.
“Thank you, the operation went better than expected and there was no brain damage.”
“I'm sure you're also happy to be rid of Gloria.”
Gabriel looked around the large dressing room. There were racks with robes of all shades of blue and green lining one wall, two tall privacy blinds, a long dressing room table in front of an equally long mirror surfaced wall and in the middle of it all was a seating area with a table laden with fresh fruit. He sat down uneasily, but not because of the surroundings. “As glad as you are. Wheeler went along with it easier than I expected.”
“Who would have guessed that she would have been one of the main factors in Wheeler colluding with Valance. What did you have to trade him, anyway?”
“I gave him the Saviour along with all her provisions and crew. He'll be a menace to Jake Valance if he can find him.”
“Well, it was a small price to pay comparatively.”
“So the Victory Machine is still spewing out status reports on the future?”
“No the location of the Victory Machine has changed so I expect we won't have any new information for at least a few days but the most recent reports had no mention of Wheeler and Valance working together.”
“Along with all traces of the alternate time line, yes?”
“There were a few deep cuts and sacrifices here and there, but yes; all traces of the alternate time line are gone except for one.”
“What's left?”
“Ayan, Oz, Jason, Laura and Minh-Chu.”
“The connection to Freeground? How can you just let that one tether hanging? How can the alternate time line be gone if two of the most critical factors to making a connection to Freeground be allowed to exist?”
Hampon's young face made a tense, frustrated expression. “I said there's no evidence of their future interference. Besides, we're so far past most of the events that concerned us that the potential for an unfortunate turn back into the original time line is nigh on impossible. The Holocaust Virus managed to divert Terry Ozark McPatrick and Jason Everin to Pandem, everyone followed and we even infected the Sunspire so she's single handedly threatening Freeground's hold on the Blue Belt. Freeground Intelligence already thinks Jason and his wife are responsible for the infection.”