Profiteer

Two of the cars pulled around to port and starboard, the third pulled in front of her. That left her with her back to the loading bay of the bunker. The door on the car in front glided open. Tetsami caught sight of a security goon—the goon was in civvies but Tetsami knew the type-—before the corp walked out.

 

The corp wasn’t her contact.

 

Shit.

 

The guy who stepped out was all teeth and smiles, with a generic face that came out of some production vat. Dark blue suit with a metallic shimmer on the edges. The guy dressed to match the cars.

 

The corp extended a hand, and left it there for a long time before he realized that Tetsami wasn’t coming within five meters of him.

 

She moved her thumb toward the throttle. “Who the hell are you?”

 

“I’m assistant VP in charge of operations for GA&A. Mr. Helmsman is occupied back at the company—”

 

Helmsman was the GA&A veep in charge of operations. Tetsami knew him. Helmsman never delegated covert ops. Something was seriously wrong if the man didn’t show.

 

“Bullshit,” Tetsami said. “Whoever you are, I only deal with my employer.” She kept her eyes on the junior veep, but she could hear a hiss as the doors on the other cars opened. More goons, probably armed. The only way she’d get out of this was if they didn’t see her telegraph what she was going to do. She hoped they weren’t armed with projectile weapons.

 

“My dear lady, your employer is GA&A, of whom I am a representative. I can provide you with ample identification. If you would just provide us with the data, we will transfer the gol—”

 

A dull subsonic thud reverberated through the clearing, felt more than heard. It rippled in from the east, and she could hear the piles of rubble shifting around. It felt like a massive subsurface explosion, or an earthquake. The veep toppled to the side as the ground shifted.

 

Tetsami couldn’t ask for a better distraction. She hit the throttle and keyed her personal field.

 

The Leggett slammed into her backside. It felt like the bike was trying to split her up the middle as it shot straight upward, straining the contragrav near the red line. She felt a warm tingle as her field soaked up some sort of energy weapon.

 

She looked down. The ground and the three cars were rapidly receding below her. One of the goons had hit her and was tracking her with his laser on full. Her field was absorbing the beam’s energy, but the heat was getting bad. She could smell the ozone-transformer reek that announced that her field was close to failure.

 

Another laser hit and she’d be toast.

 

Time for some fancy maneuvering. She cut the contragrav and leaned forward. The Leggett was compact, top-heavy, and as aerodynamic as a brick. It dove nose-first straight toward the ground.

 

The maneuver had the desired effect. She dropped out from under the stare of that laser immediately.

 

However, while she’d pulled this stunt before, she’d never done it this close to the ground. It took two seconds for her contragrav to key in from a cold start—there was a good chance she’d plow into something before she gained power again.

 

She switched the contragrav back on and hoped she’d done it soon enough.

 

She was pointed down, straight at the three cars. She could see goons piling out of the cars and unlimbering weapons, but they weren’t pointing them at her—

 

“Lord Mother Jesus Tap-Dancing Christ!”

 

Her epithet was lost on the execs. The ground around them had erupted with troops in powered armor. The execs were surrounded.

 

Tetsami felt extremely stupid. There must have been at least twenty men buried in the rubble around the bunker, and she’d called the place clean because the bunker was empty.

 

The contragrav kicked in when she was barely ten meters above the cars. The seat split her backside again, and her face slammed into the—thankfully padded— handlebars. It was just in time.

 

Through eyes watering with acceleration, she glimpsed something streak past the bunker and target the central groundcar. A smart missile. It maneuvered for the open door. The veep was in the way.

 

She had a subliminal flash of the corp folding over the missile and flying backward into the car. A split-second image of the junior veep doubled over, exhaust shooting out of his midsection.

 

Then the groundcar exploded.

 

The car’s body was armored enough to hold its shape, but flame shot out the windows and the car landed back on its skirt.

 

For some reason, Tetsami thought of the last time she’d ever seen her father. He’d told her mother that the job was nothing to worry about, it was just a “routine penetration.”

 

That word, “routine,” flew through her brain like a runaway bullet.

 

She vectored the drive as she heard another groundcar taken out. The Leggett shot out at a tangent, past one of the armored soldiers—all white enamel and gold and looking nothing like Bleek infantry.

 

The Leggett was maxed at five gees, and Tetsami wished she could get more out of it.