Cleon Moon (32 page)

It worked to a degree, with the shots coming less frequently, even though the mafia ships chased after her, but she couldn’t do this indefinitely. They had to figure out a way to lower that forcefield.

“Abelardus,” she called, banking hard to whip the charger around the corner of a dome-scraper and into a wide boulevard leading to a green, tree-filled park that looked like it belonged on Perun rather than this marshy gray hole. “How close do you need to be to people to manipulate them?”

“Depends on if I’m familiar with them,” he said.

“How familiar are you with air traffic controllers?” She weaved between oak and maple trees brought from Old Earth centuries before, their branches stretching toward the top of the dome, leaves fluttering down in the charger’s wake. One of her pursuers cut his turn too close and smashed into a park fountain in an attempt to avoid the trees. Unfortunately, most of the mafia pilots were wiser—they were simply flying above the city, tracking the charger’s path from above. The surround-flow showed other ones zipping ahead, trying to find a way to cut her off or corner her.

“Not very,” Abelardus said.

“I’ll fly close to the tower, so you can try to acquaint yourself and convince whoever’s in there to lower the forcefield, since the city could use a breath of fresh air right now.”

“Fresh air or toxic air?” Mica asked.

“No need to quibble. Abelardus, will you do it?”

“Yes, I’ll try. Get me close. There are thousands and thousands of people in the city, and it’s hard to isolate a single aura.”

The charger’s shields clipped a streetlamp as Alisa cruised out of the park and into an industrial part of the city. The post tipped over, cracking as it fell.

“Oops,” she said. It was the first thing she had hit, which seemed miraculous given her wild path, but she glanced at Leonidas, her expression sheepish. She liked to think she was good enough not to wreck cities when she flew, especially since this craft was faster and more maneuverable than the
Nomad
.

Leonidas rubbed his chin thoughtfully as he watched the broken lamp recede in the rear camera.

“No follow-up from Solstice, eh?” Alisa asked, though they all would have heard it already if she’d come over the comm.

Leonidas shook his head and leaned forward, pulling up a holomap in front of his seat, the virtual edges overlapping the edge of her own map. “I have an interesting thought.”

“Interesting? Does it involve me in underwear?” Alisa asked.

He blinked and looked over at her.

“That’s extremely interesting. I assure you. One day, you’ll realize that.”

He opened his mouth, then shut it again, appearing more puzzled than interested.

Alisa took the charger around a bank of warehouses, the curve of the dome visible up ahead. Aware of four Cobras and Strikers angling in to cut her off—it was as if they knew she was heading for the control tower—she rose up above them and gunned the engine. The ship burst forward with impressive speed, but their enemies opened fire at once, targeting her more easily without the buildings in the way. She weaved, dipping back low and flying through the shop-lined arcade of a mall. One ship’s e-cannon blast took off the roof of a building.

“That wasn’t my fault,” Alisa said. “What’s your thought, Leonidas?”

Leblanc was muttering into his comm again, trying to get a couple of his freighters to provide protection at the control tower, but with the map floating around her head, Alisa could see that his people’s ships had trouble of their own. The mafia had finally had time to get all of their forces into the air, creating a fleet of attack craft. They were swooping all about the bulky freighters, dodging their cannons and pummeling them with weapons of their own. Alisa doubted the charger would get more help from that quarter. In fact, if they didn’t find a way to open that forcefield soon, the mafia ships would take down all of Leblanc’s people.

“Abelardus?” Alisa said—Leonidas was frowning at the map and hadn’t answered her yet. “How’s that tower looking?” It was dead ahead, along with the still-closed forcefield. “Any sexy ladies in there waiting for you to manipulate them?”

“No ladies at all,” Abelardus said grimly. “Or men.”

“What do you mean? It’s abandoned?”

“That’s exactly what I mean. There’s nobody in there to manipulate, and I’m not familiar enough with the controls to operate them. Mechanical devices aren’t my specialty.”

“Guess you and Mica will never get together then.”

“I hadn’t realized that was a possibility, regardless,” he said.

“It wasn’t,” Mica said. “You’re going to have to manipulate that tower the physical way, Captain.”

“What, by blowing it up?”

“That is physical.”

“Some manipulation.”

Though Alisa hated the idea of willful destruction, especially when that tower rose up from tenement buildings where people were probably pressed to the windows, gawking out at the chaos, she lifted the nose of the charger so she could fly toward it. She skimmed the rooftops, one hand resting on the weapons panel. Would blowing it up do anything? She had no way of knowing if the generator that controlled the forcefield was inside of that tower. She might hurt—or kill—innocent people for no reason.

“Here,” Leonidas said, zooming in on three black rectangular buildings a third of the way around the dome from them. The dark, windowless lumps rose from amid open pavement, with fencing around them littered with warning signs. “These are the geothermal power generators for the city. If we knock them out—”

“Yes,” Alisa said, banking to head in that direction, immediately liking the idea. If they knocked out power to the whole city, the forcefield should go down, and it would create chaos—and darkness—everywhere. Even better, there weren’t any tenements around those generator buildings.

She was tempted to reach over and thump Leonidas on the shoulder to thank him for the idea, but a pair of Cobras sprang out from behind the control tower as she veered away from it. They hadn’t shown up on the display, and she cursed, urging the charger to greater speed as she streaked away from them. They zoomed after her, weapons firing. Alarms lit up as the blasts slammed into the rear shields.

“I think they knew what we had in mind,” Alisa muttered, diving for the streets again.

She would have preferred to fly straight toward the generators, but she was forced to whip between buildings again, using the structures for cover from the fire. The charger had decent shield power, but it couldn’t take hits indefinitely, and she had no idea if Leonidas’s plan would work. What if there was backup battery power allocated to the forcefield? Or what if the generators were too shielded to blow up, even with e-cannons?

“The sexy mind manipulation of air-traffic tower employees?” Mica asked.

“Exactly,” Alisa said. “Though technically, it was the employees I thought would be sexy. Not Abelardus's mind manipulation.”

“It’s possible I’m offended,” Abelardus said.

“You don’t know for sure?”

Alisa turned into an alley to avoid a Striker flying directly overhead and shooting downward. Its blasts struck the street she had left as she flipped the charger on its side to make room for the wings.

“I won’t know until I see whether you actually get us out of this,” Abelardus said.

“I’m sorry about this, Captain,” Beck said from the back. “I didn’t mean for you all to get in trouble on account of my being predictable to the White Dragon folks and getting trapped.”

A mafia ship waited for her when she came out of the alley. Instead of veering—which would have opened her flank up for fire, Alisa drove the charger straight toward it. Their enemy only got off one shot before pulling up in an alarmed jerk. Alisa flew them through the airspace it had occupied and onward. The bank of generators came into sight.

“Don’t worry about it, Beck,” Alisa said. “We managed to find trouble of our own without you. This is part of a typical day.”

Leonidas looked over at her.

“Going to argue?” she asked him.

“I thought to nod in agreement, actually.”

“It’s good when we’re in agreement about things.” She smirked at him, but dared not look away from the controls for long.

The Striker she had startled into moving had gotten over its surprise and was chasing after them. Four Cobras appeared behind it, and several more jumped into the pack. The alarms beeped as weapons fire found the charger’s rear shields again. The display flashed yellow at her, the power dropping below forty percent.

“Any particular one look nice to you?” Alisa asked as they sped toward the generators. “I don’t think we’re going to get a chance to do this more than once.”

Even as she spoke, more ships veered away from the fight with the freighters. She had a feeling the mafia people knew what she had in mind. Their rush to defend the generators made her hope that Leonidas was on to something, that this might work.

“All of them,” he said and reached for the weapons panel in front of his seat.

She fired her weapons at the same time as he did. The charger reverberated with the power of both of the ship’s e-cannons firing. The blasts slammed into the dark, featureless buildings, and Alisa held her breath as they flew past. Were they shielded? Had they gotten them?

The rear cameras caught an explosion, and she found that encouraging. As she banked, willing to risk the fire of all those pursuers in order to unload the charger’s weapons one more time, the dome went dark. Every light in every building went out, and so did every lamppost lining the streets—the ones that remained standing after Alisa’s wild flight.

“That’s it,” Abelardus said. “The forcefield is down. Go, go!”

Alisa could not see the exit from halfway around the dome, but she took his word for it and flew in that direction, weaving only if someone was firing at them. She did not bother returning fire to the ships along the way. She wanted to get out of there.

Someone gripped the back of Alisa’s seat. Leblanc? She didn’t turn to look, saying only, “Tell your people to get out while they can, Chef. I doubt it’ll take these people long to get backup power going.”

The ship’s running lights played over the dark city below—and over the hulking body of a freighter ahead of them. It was blocking the exit.

Alisa almost cursed at Leblanc and ordered him to get his people out of the way, but that ship had the familiar gray paint of the rest of the mafia craft. It rotated toward them, weapons hot. She pulled the charger up, nearly kissing the dark dome as she contorted them in evasive maneuvers. Fiery white energy blasts lit the air, scant meters behind them. She could glimpse the dome exit behind the freighter, the forcefield down, but its bulky body was as effective as a plug.

“These people
really
don’t want us to leave,” Alisa said.

She glanced back, wondering what would happen if she had Beck roll their captive out the hatch. Did his people like him enough to fly down and get him?

“My captain is coming,” Leblanc said as Alisa noticed a heavy freighter barreling toward the one blocking the exit. “He’s low on weapons, but he said he has an idea.”

“Sounds alarming,” Mica said.

Alisa did not disagree, but was relieved when the freighter that had been trying to shoot them, turned to face this new menace. The chef’s captain did not fire, but instead bore down on the mafia vessel.

“Ah, they’re taking a maneuver from my flight manual,” Alisa said, “one that is admittedly more appealing when you’re flying someone else’s ship and don’t have to pay for repairs.”

As the mafia freighter shifted further to face the Leblanc ship, all of its power going to its forward shields to repel the attack, the rectangular exit came into view, the first hint of a grayish dawn making it brighter than the dome interior. There wasn’t much space, but Alisa’s borrowed charger was not a big ship. She streaked around the hull of the freighter, almost skipping off its shields, and let out a triumphant whoop as they finally escaped the dome.

She did not hesitate. She turned their nose toward the sky, the rising Rebus sun warming the charger’s belly as she aimed them into space.

“Are we taking the scenic route?” Mica asked.

“I figure those people wouldn’t have much trouble tracking us back to Terra Jhero if we fly straight there,” Alisa said. “Solstice didn’t want the White Dragon to know this was her ship, so if there’s a chance we can fly off their radar before coming back down to the moon, I’ll take it.”

“Solstice?” came a slurred groan from the back of the craft. The White Dragon man. He was finally awake, and was that fear in his tone as he said the name?

“We’re heading to Terra Jhero,” Alisa said, though she couldn’t even see the man. He was still on the floor with Beck and Abelardus keeping an eye on him.

Another groan came from the back, one of dread.

Maybe that meant Alisa’s concerns about Solstice arranging a trap for them had been for naught. If the White Dragon people feared her, they probably weren’t working together. Alisa shuddered to think what Solstice had done to elicit that kind of response from a powerful mafia lord.

She looked at Leonidas as the charger accelerated toward an orbiting position, wondering if he had similar thoughts. He gazed at her, a pleased smile on his face. Ah, maybe he wasn’t contemplating Solstice at all.

She reached over and patted his arm. “Nice thinking with the generators.”

“Thank you.”

“Do you think Solstice will give us that dino money and let us go?” Alisa asked.

“We shall find out.”

“You might have to use your charms on her again.”

Leonidas raised his eyebrows. “You wish me to be terse and aloof with her?”

“Apparently, she likes that.” Alisa grinned at him. “And you do it so well. You could throw in some gruffness and grumpiness to truly make her heart flutter.”

“You are an odd woman, Alisa Marchenko.”

“Endearingly odd, right?”

“Perhaps.” His eyelids dropped to half-mast, making her think bedroom thoughts, even though she was positive he did not have such things in mind. Unfortunately.

She resorted to making a joke, as usual. “Your proclamations of heartfelt adoration are making me melt into a puddle in my seat.”