Profiteer

Tetsami clicked on her personal field even as she realized that it was going to do little against the carbine the sniper was wielding. It had sliced through the van in a well-aimed shot that had taken out all the maneuvering controls. All she had left was the power to the contragrav. Without thinking about what she was doing—only that she had to get away—Tetsami goosed the contragrav.

 

As the van slid forward, accelerating and rising, something large and explosive clipped the rear. A dull boom shook the van and suddenly the air inside was hot and rancid. One of the loading doors in the rear fell away— Tetsami heard it. Zanzibar cursed in a language Tetsami didn’t understand.

 

Something slammed into the side of the van—vehicle or weapon she couldn’t tell—and suddenly all the van’s controls were unresponsive. The van drifted off the road, still going top speed. They lost altitude and shot toward the construction.

 

With the controls dead and the construction zooming at her, Tetsami closed her eyes and covered her face with her arms.

 

More shots. The van hit something and vibrated like a bass drum. A dull explosion and an ozone smell told Tetsami that the batteries had exploded. The van tilted and, after an excruciating half-second, rolled. Then, abruptly, it slammed to a bone-jarring halt.

 

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” Tetsami began to untangle herself from the harness. The van was on its side, the floor wrapped around the base of one of the crane towers. “Who’s hurt?”

 

Zanzibar was crawling out from a pile of boxes that littered the back of the van. The boxes had been carrying Shane’s powered armor, and Zanzibar—still cursing— finished ripping open one crate and pulled out an assault weapon. Beyond the security chief, the rear half of the van was gone.

 

“Shane!” Zanzibar yelled, ignoring Tetsami. “Shane! Who are they? How many? Where?”

 

Damn it, Zanzibar, she might be dead. Tetsami uncurled from the seat and found footing to stand upright. They only had minutes, maybe seconds—and Shane was the only one to see their attackers. Tetsami looked at Shane, who was still wedged in the passenger footwell where she’d taken cover. Shane was now in a fetal position, glued to the ground by the chair and the warped front of the van.

 

“Shane?” Tetsami said.

 

There was a groan and Zanzibar almost pushed Tetsami aside to get at Shane. That was enough. “Damn it, Zanzibar! Cover our ass. You’ve got the fucking weapon!”

 

Zanzibar looked startled.

 

“NOW!”

 

The mental logjam broke, and Zanzibar took cover and watched out the broken rear of the van.

 

That was a waste of three seconds. “Shane?”

 

Another moan. Then, “I think I’m trapped in here.”

 

“Where are they?”

 

“Only saw the one. Octagonal high-rise. Roof. North.” Shane began to breathe heavy. “Marines. Colonel’s cleanup crew.”

 

“How many?”

 

Shane took a long time to answer. After another moan she said, “At least three. Snipers cover the intersection, ambush. Ground team, maybe.”

 

Shane had to pause to breathe. Her voice sounded wet. “Circle to get us ...” Shane’s voice faded and she didn’t respond when Tetsami tried to rouse her. At least her breathing was steady.

 

After too long assessing Shane’s condition, Tetsami asked, “You hear that, Zanzibar?”

 

“Yes, damn it. This weapon gives us shit for cover from those snipers. It’s a short-range plasma rifle. It’d hold off a ground team, for a while. But the snipers can hold us down here indefinitely. All they have to do is frag the van.”

 

“You see any snipers?”

 

“One. The guy who took off the rear of the van is halfway up the trapezoidal building to the east of the intersection.”

 

“Any cover out there?”

 

“The construction above us blocks the guy to the north. But the guy to our east—” She waved out the missing rear of the van with her gun. “I could look right at him if I took a step outside. Right on the other side of the highway from us.”

 

“Does the road offer any cover?”

 

“Thirty meters of open dirt with no cover between here and there. We’d never make it.”

 

“No idea where number three is?”

 

“Not even if there is a number three.”

 

Now what? Tetsami looked out the shattered windscreen in the front of the van. The van had come to rest at the southeast corner of the construction. She was looking down the length of the south side of the building, looking at robot workers, stacks of construction equipment, the foreman’s command trailer, and the base of one of the massive, now-frozen construction cranes.

 

Tetsami got an idea.

 

She scrambled over next to Zanzibar at the other end of the van to see out the back.

 

“Watch it! A few more centimeters and you’ll be in the line of fire.”

 

Across the dirt no-man’s-land was the highway, on the other side of the highway was the base of the tower that supported the second sniper, and over the intersection was the ass end of the northeast crane—shorter than the business end, it stuck out well over the intersection.