Profiteer

Make short work of me and the Hegira—though it’d be difficult getting it recharged in this part of town.

 

Must be their idea of fun.

 

Dom pulled his body as far as he could into the shelter of the cockpit just as another shot hit the side of the Hegira.

 

He couldn’t risk return fire. With his reflexes he might get two of them with his pulse laser, but that would inspire the survivor to use a real weapon.

 

He put his left hand, the fully cybernetic one, on the side of the canopy and clamped it there. Then he wrenched the crash harness off, swinging out the missing windscreen.

 

Dom dangled under the Hegira, his left hand clamped around a strut in the canopy.

 

The punks below applauded him.

 

Dom looked down. The gang was closely grouped under the Hegira.

 

Dom looked back along the drive section, at the window on the floor below. The window had been cracked by the Hegira’s impact, but it was still there. It was a risk....

 

He looked at his audience, who seemed to be enjoying the show.

 

If you liked that, he thought, you’ll love this.

 

Dom reached up and pulled the emergency eject lever. His left hand was holding on to the canopy. When he pulled the emergency lever, two tons of gas pressure blew the canopy back on its track, shooting toward the drives. The ninth-story windows of the warehouse raced toward him. He let go, and slammed into the window.

 

For a split second he worried if the weakened window wouldn’t give—

 

He smashed through.

 

As he crashed into the ninth story, rockets blew the driver’s seat down, straight at the punks. The rocket had enough thrust to blow the chair up for fifty meters. It tried to level itself, but trapped by the alley it only managed to slam itself into the walls. The rocket would still be going when it hit the ground.

 

Dom rolled over broken glass to the receding thrum of the seat’s thrusters. As he skidded to a stop, ruining his suit, he caught a brief glimpse of orange as the chute deployed all wrong, billowing itself up to the Hegira.

 

The few real parts of his body hurt.

 

He got on his hands and knees. The entire floor was one room. It was empty, stripped. Anything of value had long ago been ripped off—light fixtures, electronics, plumbing, carpeting, walls, furniture.

 

He had rolled to the far wall. Next to him was a deep shaft. Someone had made off with the elevator.

 

He turned away from the shaft. The floor was about five-hundred meters square. The only light came from anemic moonlight filtering through dust-hazed windows. No one could sneak up on him here. Just empty gray space. At first Dom was surprised at the lack of people or graffiti, but as he heightened the gain on his photoreceptors, he realized that there weren’t any stairs.

 

The missing elevator had been the only access to the upper floors.

 

“Damnation and taxes.” His voice echoed back at him, enforcing the sense of emptiness.

 

He shook with delayed reaction. He forced himself to stop.

 

A sickening screech shattered the silence, followed by a snapping sound. A grinding noise—accelerating in pitch—came from the window Dom had broken through.

 

He looked back as the majestic shadow of the Hegira slowly moved. The nose slid toward the ground. The grinding reached its apex and the entire craft jerked downward.

 

It slid by the window with comparative soundlessness.

 

A half-second later he heard the sound of tearing metal and shattering plastic. The concrete floor shuddered with the impact.

 

He paused a few seconds, rubbing his bruised right arm; then he walked to the broken window and risked a glance downward.

 

The Hegira was longer than the alley was wide. It hadn’t fallen all the way to the street. It was wedged between the buildings again, four floors down. No sign of the punks.

 

Dom’s nose itched with the acrid smell of burning synthetics.

 

He couldn’t see it with the Hegira in the way, but he supposed that the ejection seat’s rocket had ignited the chute during the descent. That wasn’t supposed to happen, but Dom doubted the designers had anticipated their seat being deployed upside down in a narrow alley only thirty meters from the ground.

 

He cast a cursory glance at the building exterior, but there was no sign of a fire escape. He checked all four sides of the structure, kicking out the plastic windows. No luck. He hadn’t expected any. This looked to be a secure building in its day. That meant one way in, one way out. When the neighborhood went bad, the owners took everything.

 

If it had been modular, they probably would have taken the building as well.

 

He walked back to the rectangular shaft that used to hold the elevator. It had been a maglev, and bolts were anchored in the wall every few meters where the magnets had been attached.

 

He took hold of a projecting bolt and put his weight on it. It held.

 

He took a deep breath and began the descent.