Kristine Rusch - City of Ruins

I tap my ear. “Mikk, your position?”

He tells me. They’ve made it away from the spaceport. They’re in a vehicle, but it’s a land vehicle.

“We’re coming for you,” I say. “Take this route.”

I’m going to get him as close to the cave opening as I can. With all of us on the move, we’ll get him here quicker.

I glide down the mountainside, wishing for more power. These hovercarts aren’t built for speed. They’re built to carry cargo and people into different environments, not to go speeding down a mountain toward a spaceport.

But I open up as best I can, not caring if the others can keep up.

As I glide, I see the roads spread before me. The spaceport glows yellow in the distance, the fog lights giving the place an odd tinge even in the daylight.

Official vehicles, with Vaycehn’s city insignia on the side, are speeding toward the spaceport from the city itself.

But Mikk is on one of the side roads, climbing up the mountain. The city officials don’t believe my people would go back to the caves we fled. As far as they know, we’re all trying to get off this godforsaken planet—which we are. We’re just taking a different route than they expect.

I glance over my shoulder. To my surprise, Al-Nasir is the pilot who can keep up with me. The others wobble behind us, uncertain about the speed and the balance of the machine. Instead of clutching the weapon the way that Rossetti is, the other soldiers are clutching the side of the cart.

A cloud of dust heads toward us. Mikk isn’t on the side roads. He’s blazing his own trail.

Two official vehicles have made U-turns and headed on the side road he initially took.

We’re running out of time.

I kick the cart into the highest gear. It dips, and for a moment, I think the power is going to fail. Then it recovers and we head toward that first cloud of dust.

It only takes a few minutes to reach it. I float above the vehicle, see that Roderick is driving, Mikk beside him. My two best people. What the hell are they still doing here?

Then I see their passengers: Lentz, Bridge, and Ivy. Of course, the ones who didn’t quite understand the meaning of “emergency” and didn’t get off-planet quickly enough.

Mikk and Roderick clearly tried to save them.

Dammit.

Roderick stops the vehicle, kicking up even more dust. It gets into my mouth and eyes, and as I cough, I hope to hell that the dust doesn’t have any effect on the inner workings of the cart.

Al-Nasir arrives just as I lower the cart. He lowers his as well.

“Mikk, Roderick,” I say, deciding not to greet the other three. “I want you two to pilot the other two carts. We’re heading back to the caves.”

“Have you called for a skip?” Mikk asked.

I shake my head. “We’re going to try something else.”

The third cart lands, then the fourth. One of the other pilots says something.

Al-Nasir translates: “The city vehicles are getting close.”

“Tell them that Mikk and Roderick are piloting. Lentz, Bridge, you’re with me. Ivy, you’re with Mikk.”

“Gee, thanks, Boss,” Mikk says softly.

“Everyone else with Roderick and Fahd,” I say.

Al-Nasir translates for them. My rearrangements still keep one person with a weapon in each vehicle.

Bridge climbs into my cart, Lentz right behind him. Ivy needs to be helped to Mikk’s cart, not because she’s injured, but because the stupid woman is frozen with terror.

The dust cloud is coming closer. We only have a few minutes.

Everyone rearranges.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” I say, making the cart rise. This time, I wait to make sure the others can get off the ground, that the dust hasn’t had an effect on their equipment.

Roderick takes off faster than I realized a cart can go, with Mikk on his heels. Al-Nasir and I will be bringing up the rear this time.

The city vehicle is so close I can hear the thud of its wheels on the ground. Rossetti has turned so that her weapon is pointed at the city vehicle.

Someone in the city vehicle shoots up at us. I hear the shot whiz by. Rossetti is about to answer with her own weapon when I touch her leg and shake my head. Not yet. If we can get out of this without anyone getting hurt, I’ll be happy.

It doesn’t surprise me that the Vaycehnese are shooting. They now see us as hostile, which makes getting off Wyr all the more dangerous.

“What the hell happened?” I snap as we head back up the mountainside. “When you got the evacuation order, you were supposed to drop everything and run.”

“We did,” Bridge said. “Bernadette and I were at the death hole. We couldn’t get back in two hours.”

“And you, Lentz?”

“I was talking to a friend about the problems here on Vaycehn,” he says. “I couldn’t bring my communicator into the meeting. I had no idea until Mikk found me.”

“Risking his life,” I say, and then bite back the rest. Recriminations won’t help.

Mikk and Roderick are good. Their carts are much farther ahead of mine. I stay back just enough to give Al-Nasir cover. More and more city vehicles are coming in our direction.

A small army is heading up this mountainside, and we’re only moments ahead of them.

“Fahd,” I say into my communicator, “tell one of your people to let the captain know we’re coming in hot.”

“Okay,” he replies.

Rossetti seems focused, as if nothing exists but those vehicles below us. She isn’t shooting, but I’m not sure if the vehicles below have shown the same kind of restraint.

I’m pushing this hovercart as fast as I can make it go, but I’m beginning to doubt that “as fast as it can go” is going to be fast enough.

Coop could see the trouble building down the mountainside. Roads filled with official-looking vehicles. He knew that there would be a small army of people heading up to the cave opening before he officially found out the group was in trouble.

Immediately, he had Dix and Perkins stop interrogating the guides and move them to a rock formation some distance away. Then Coop got his team into position around some of the rises on the mountainside.

He gave the team a simple order: disable the ground vehicles, but not the people in them. He wanted everyone to get out of this with no injuries at best, minor bruises at worst.

The old-fashioned carts were coming in low, and not nearly fast enough. More and more vehicles were joining the chase up the side of the mountain, both on and off the roads.

A few people in those vehicles were standing and firing some kind of weapon at the carts. He couldn’t tell if those were projectile weapons or not, only that the shots didn’t seem to be causing any damage.

He sprawled next to his team, his own weapon out. Then he gave the order to fire.

First they shot up the ground ahead of the land vehicles, hoping that would stop them. But the damn things just bounced over the ruts. So he gave the order to shoot the vehicles themselves.

The carts got closer, and they were full.

That was the biggest problem he could foresee. Those carts were badly built, with technology so old—new? (the idea of that made his brain hurt)— that they might not be able to take the weight of the additional people they’d have to carry.

He hoped those things would get them back into the caves, at least. From there, some of his team could run if they had to.

He counted at least twenty vehicles. He shot two. Four others spun out and blocked the road. The others just went around.

The carts came in low. For a minute, he thought they would just go down into the caves, leaving his team to fend for itself. Instead, they touched down.