Jerome Preisler - Net Force--Attack Protocol

He lowered the gas pedal, watching the dash screen.

“Eyes on the road,” the AI warned.

“Go fuck yourself,” Zolcu said and kicked forward behind the motorcycle.

As the Regera came speeding up behind him, Carmody suddenly remembered the cartoons he would watch as a boy. The cat chases the mouse around a room. The mouse finally runs straight at a wall and dashes into its mouse hole. The cat smacks against the wall and gets flattened.

Mouse wins.

He squeezed his throttle. The triangle of haystacks was dead ahead. Black humps in the night, looming like three small hills. And the car was right on his back. He could feel its weight and power as a palpable force. Hear the huge noise of its charging engine.

He had seconds. That was it. The space between the pair of nearer haystacks was wide enough for him to get through but not wide enough for the car. Its driver probably thought he would try slipping between them like the mouse into its safe haven, then weave a path around the middle stack, the one set slightly behind the others. The driver also probably figured he could beat him at his own game. The Regera was bigger and faster and all well-tooled muscle. He could catch up to the bike before it reached the outer two haystacks, smash it into one of them, then veer off before running into them himself.

Carmody waited until he’d almost come up to the haystacks and they were the only things he could see with his headlights. Waited until the front end of the Regera was on top of him. It nuzzled his rear fender, bumping him forward so he felt a rough, stomach-jerking jolt of acceleration. And precisely at that instant, knowing the next hit would be full-on, that it would send him flying through the air and plowing into the middle haystack with enough force to shatter every bone in his body, Carmody hammered the back brake with his foot to lock the rear wheel, snapping his handlebars to the right-hand side. As the Ninja started fishing in that direction, he squeezed the hand brake, keeping his foot heavy on the back brake, freezing both wheels as he simultaneously leaned hard to the left and dropped the bike onto its side.

Carmody released the handlebar grips, letting go with both hands, staying loose as he rolled from the saddle, pulling his left leg out from under the bike before its five hundred pound mass could land on top of it. He twisted to his right as the pancaked bike went skidding sideways to his left, his elbows pulled up and into his side, his fingers balled into relaxed fists, sliding several feet clear of the bike, clear of the haystacks, letting his momentum carry him away from them.

He was still flat on his back in the snow, a few feet to the right of the two front stacks, as the Regera sideswiped the one nearest him, its headlights sweeping around in his direction a split second before it would have slammed into the stack head-on, its right flank raking against the piled bundles of hay with a crunch of metal and shattering composite. The impact pushed several bales in the stack’s lower and middle layers backward, undermining its vertical stability. It bent, and it bowed, and then it leaned halfway over, bales falling onto and around the car, pounding down on its hood and roof in a small avalanche.

Carmody heard the crashes, propped himself on his elbows, and saw the Regera backing away from the haystack. It was a battered wreck, the left side of its roof sagging under a fallen bale, its right-front fender crunched and mangled. The door on that side hung off the frame like a broken and partially detached wing. Its driver had turned barely in time to escape wiping out. The car reversed for several feet and stopped parallel to the toppled haystack, facing him, its headlights dark, empty pits. The bale that landed on its roof had smashed all the way through to the cockpit’s passenger side. Its weight had caused the roof frame’s front crossbar to buckle over the windshield. The glass on that side was fractured and bulging out over the hood. Carmody stared through into the car’s interior and saw a pale, watery blue radiance, maybe from the dash screen. The driver was in clear silhouette, his arms stiffly outstretched in front of him, his hands still gripping the wheel. A rigid posture, far from ideal for handling the car. It looked like he’d pushed his seat back to give himself a better angle for watching the screen.

Carmody got to his knees in the cold snow. His body felt like a single large bruise, but he hadn’t lost or broken any limbs and was sure he was in better condition than the car. He saw it shiver a little as the driver changed gears. Probably putting it into Forward. Probably intending to run him over.

“Outlier,” he said into his throat mike. “Now.”

Her headlights flashed on about twenty yards to his left, brilliant and white, lancing out from behind the middle haystack. Then her Ninja woke from its idle with a full-throated growl and spurted into sight, swinging a wide hook around his flipped-over bike.

He was already on his feet as Kali came to a dead halt inches to his left. He mounted the seat behind her, one hand going to her hip. The other went to his holster and drew the Sig.

“Here we go,” he said.

Kali nodded and slashed around toward the Regera, speeding toward it even as the car charged at her. She waited until they were within six feet of each other and then sheered abruptly to her right, buzzing by its left flank.

Riding piggyback in the saddle, Carmody thumbed on the Sig’s rail light to cast a wide circle of brightness onto the Regera’s front tire. He aimed between the dots of his sight and shot three times at the sidewall in quick succession. The tire exploded with a loud bang, shreds of rubber flowering from its rim.

Kali went straight ahead for four or five feet. She glanced over her shoulder, applied weight to her right foot peg, and leaned the bike to the left, giving it a little fuel, slipping the clutch to control her speed as she swung around in a tight, spin-the-bottle U-turn. She was clipping along to the Regera’s right, back toward its front end, moving in the same direction it was.

Carmody pointed the gun at its rear tire and triggered another three. The tire exploded, but the car kept hobbling forward. He had suspected it would have run flats, and that proved he was right. It might continue to roll for a good distance. But it could not go faster than forty miles per hour on the hard, smooth emergency rims, especially over snow and ice.

Now Kali pulled another tight, sharp U, turning back to its left for her second pass. Carmody got ready for his next three shots. As they reached the tail end, he took aim and fired at the left-rear tire, blowing it to bits and pieces that went flying in all directions.

She spun around again, facing the car’s rear. It continued to flounder along, heading away from them. Its driver had lost interest in running anyone over and was trying to limp off like a wounded animal.

“One more time,” Carmody said to her and added his hurried instructions.

He returned his Sig to its holster and put his hands on her hips. Kali raced past the crippled Regera on the driver’s side and quickly overtook it, tooling on ahead for fifty or sixty feet. Then she hit the front brake so the bike’s nose dipped down and the rear wheel bucked up six inches off the ground, spun around on her front tire, dropped the end of the bike, and came to a stop facing the car.

Carmody jumped off the saddle, went around the front of the bike, and planted his boots apart in the snow. The Ninja’s headlights were upped to their brightest setting, and he stood in their wash staring straight ahead at the Regera, backlit like an actor ontsage. The effect was deliberate and purposeful. He wanted the moment to stay with its driver a long time. Wanted him to picture it later on in an interrogation room.