FOUR
An hour later, Cazran sat at a restaurant stall eating Exoboar stew. Other customers constantly bumped into him as they ordered dishes of the cheap slop. Behind him people walked a sidewalk in tight chaotic lines, and behind them speeders whooshed across a six-lane sky street. Smells of spice, cooking meat, and volatile chopped vegetables lured in lower middle-classed rabble to replace those who left with their food. Fumes from speeders and narcotics waved in the atmosphere. This place could dull your senses if you stayed too long. Caz soaked a chunk of toasted bread in his stew and tossed it in his mouth. He chewed, swallowed, took out his comlink and called his ship.
"Abi?" He held the device close to his mouth and whispered, knowing she would adjust the volume settings so his voice was loud in the cockpit.
"Hey baby." She sounded awfully chill. "Comp registered minor burns. Tell me everything."
"Are you drunk?" He lit a cigarette. "Without me?"
"You can criticize my habits when they stand in the way of my job." He heard her light a cig and puff.
"But the day you start chewing on spice, we're having ourselves a serious talk." Cazran updated her on his progress. He suggested they could go through the security recordings of Nukk's recent banquet. "We look and listen for clues. Irene has to have more connection than appeared on the network's contact list."
"I'll find the place and study its security specs," Abi said. "You may as well come back. Join me in the fun."
Caz left the stall and blended with the crowd on the sidewalk. "On my way. See you soon."
"Wait." Abi giggled. "Remember how you wanted me to hack that psychiatrist's files?"
"What'd you find?"
"You're going to love this. It's saucy. Irene had an affair months back. She asked her psych for advice on how best to hide the evidence."
"Tell me when I get back. Give me twenty minutes."
"Fine."
He turned corners and eventually started north along a sidewalk beside a normal, ferrocrete road and three kilometers later the crowd thinned until he was one of only five beings in sight. Flies buzzed around a half-eaten sandwich on the curb. A breeze blew scraps of paper, aluminum cans, and other litter. Clouds of dark smog raced in the sky, sprinkling toxic droplets.
He entered an alley where his speeder bike was chained to a dumpster. He hesitated, left hand pausing a few inches above the left handle bar. The previously hardened grime at the edges of the control panel board had been broken. There was a clean streak in the dust coating the board. He looked directly down at the ground, saw impressions in the dirt and 'crete pebbles. Too bad for you, Caz thought. I spent years tracking on Dxun.
He stepped back and leaned over, studying the footprint and subtler signs. Someone had braced themselves in taking off the panel cover, which they had set down to his right, then shifted their weight to get a better view of the speeder's innards. They had walked around to the other side --- Caz followed the vague prints --- squeezed into the gap between the vehicle and the building wall next to it, and stooped to mess with the power cell under the seat.
Caz opened the control panel and accounted for the placement of wires and mechanical parts. He saw a flattish box with a beeping light stuck to the side. Wires trailed from the box and out of sight into the engine. He pulled a latch and lifted the seat up. Yep. The arse-clown had rigged the engine to explode upon ignition.
Almost any amateur engineer could have defused the rudimentary explosive. After doing so, he tossed it in the dumpster, and reassembled or reconnected all the necessary gadgetry again to return the bike to normal.
He got on, flew from the alley, and within two minutes returned to a populated area, blending with speeder traffic on an air highway. He headed for the hangar bay where his ship was docked. When he took an exit and accelerated, though, blaster bolts flew past him.
He turned long enough to see a masked biker two hundred-meters behind, then directed his attention forward again and tilted his body to the side and back so that he detoured up a ramp to an industrial zone. I'll find better cover in a place like this, he reasoned. And ample more opportunities for escape, if need be, than on an open road.
He zoomed into the durasteel-frame skeleton of a huge skyscraper. Construction droids hovered, flew, and climbed throughout the space. They smelted ore, welded metal platforms to beams, drilled screws, pounded rivets, and carried supplies.
More blaster shots whizzed near him, hitting beams and even a droid who squeaked shrilly and, as Caz saw when he chanced a glance, pointed a torch at the attacker and sprayed a far-reaching stream of super-heated sparks. The other biker swerved and avoided the stream, going off course.
Caz twisted the handles away from him, slowing somewhat, and pressed the altitude controls on which his feet were set, dropping his bike down a shaft. He plummeted thirty-some floors, stopped and jetted into a square tunnel that stretched for a kilometer. He exited out over a wide open area where, below, were small mountains of sand and mineral mixtures on the shores of a mucky lake-sized reservoir.
The hum of a separate speeder's engines reached his ears. He slowed down and glanced back to the building frame, supposing this was a good spot for a stand-off. The enemy shot out of the maze at a higher elevation and began to descend upon him faster than gravity. Caz gave his bike a burst of speed and began a wide curve to the side. The enemy terminated their fall where he had been a few seconds before.
Caz, his laser cannons pointing at their flank, yanked the trigger to fire --- only to find out that his guns were sabotaged. The other biker whirled about and pointed their cannons at him. Too late to dodge.
Caz reared his bike back eighty degrees so that the bottom absorbed the shots. BRAKKA-BRAKKA-BRAKKA! The vehicle shuttered, spewing sparks, flame, and smoke near his feat. The detective pulled the end of a zipline from his belt with his left hand, wrapped repeatedly around the handlebars quick as possible, then let himself fall off the bike. He fell for a quarter of a kilometer, resistance in the zipline slowing him somewhat, while the attacker above zoomed and fired toward where he would be in a few seconds, then ---
BOOM!
Burning heat blew across him, shrapnel pelted him, and light blinded him. The man pressed a button that let loose the zipline from his belt and spun as he fell through empty air, thinking to himself that there were worse ways to die, that he had lived a full life.
He landed on the slope of a sand mountain and tumbled limb over limb, head over feet, finally coming to a stop many meters later on his back. Vision slowly clearing, he saw a plume of smoke where his speeder had been. There were sounds of the giant mixing machines and skycar traffic in the distance. He sat up, feeling wounds and burns when he moved, and looked around for the person who so wanted him dead. They were gone. But why? He carefully took his shirt off and tossed it away. Small puffy burns and tiny bleeding cuts decorated his torso, arm, and face. His neck feeling cramped, he massaged the muscles there and rotated his head.
A splash came from the shore of the lake reservoir, followed immediately by a huge intake of breath. Caz looked to the side to see, fifty meters away, a man walking from the waters carrying a blaster.
The explosion must have sent the would-be assassin into the lake. How fortunes changed. Caz unholstered his blaster, remarkably having stayed latched when he had fallen, and sprang to his feet, flipping the stun switch up with his thumb.
The other man wiped muck from his face and stepped onto land, boots making slurping sounds. He opened his eyes and blinked, saw the detective aiming a blaster at him, then with his left hand jerkily patted at his belt to presumably search for his own blaster that was now gone. Caz noticed the man's right arm hung limply.
The stranger groaned. "Kill me, man. Shoot me in my frakking face."
"Good night." Caz fired three shots into his enemy, who went rigid and dropped.
Caz brought his comm up to his mouth. "There, Abi?"
"What are you doing at a construction site?"
"I need a pick-up. Lost another speeder."