Jak Koke - Stranger souls

Jane didn't know what to say. "Uh… thank you."

Alice fixed Jane with a hard stare, her sea-blue eyes crystallizing to a frozen gray. Jane found that she could not move to look away.

"I did not rescue you lightly," Alice said. "It took a great deal of effort, and much sacrifice. Rox's system is one of perhaps five in the world that are protected from me. For the present at least."

Jane found she could not respond.

"In return for saving your life, I will ask something from you in return," Alice said, then a smile graced her lips. "Not now, but in the future."

Alice's smile hovered in Jane's mind, endearing and attractive, but haunting, overpowering, and not to be denied. "Goodbye for now, Jane-in-the-box."

Alice's words whispered in her mind for several seconds

after the silent city had faded around her. Then Jane was back in her riveted steel box, and the image of Alice's smile had dissipated. Wonderland was gone, and Jane wondered whether the shock of her encounter with Roxborough had induced a hallucination of the whole thing. It had been so real, like nothing Jane had ever seen on even the most detailed of sculpted systems. She hadn't known she was even in the Matrix.

"Jane!" came a voice through one of her links. "Do you copy? Jane, where the frag are you?" It was Axler.

"I'm here," she said, bringing herself back into focus. "Give me the status."

"Status is that we're fragged up in the yin-yang down here. The helo went down. I was hoping Dhin had switched to Plan B, but I can't raise him, so he must've gone down with the helo, and we're pinned down so we can't make the T-bird."

Jane scanned her other feeds, seeing Axler's mistake immediately. "Stand by, Axler," she said. "I'll have you out in nanos."

Ryan saw the world at a slant; his eyes open, his head hanging at an awkward tilt because the drug in the dermal patch on his neck prevented him from lifting it. The fiery afterimage of the helicopter crash glowed in his mind as he watched Axler and the others crouch in the cover of the jungle's undergrowth. Security forces from the clinic were scrambling across the open area and beginning to penetrate the thick greenery.

"Jane, how are you going to get us out?" Axler yelled, even though she was speaking through her internal communications. "They've hemmed us in. We can't get to the T-bird."

Just then Ryan heard the roar of an autocannon and the scream of jet engines as a Thunderbird blew into the space in front of them and mowed down the security forces. The Thunderbird was a huge vehicle, easily twice as large as the helo that had crashed a few minutes earlier. But the T-bird was an LAV, a low-altitude vehicle designed to move below radar. Meant for extended use in hostile territory, it was painted in camouflage greens and blacks and shaped like a bullet that had been flattened lengthwise. It floated on the thrust of six jets that pivoted independently.

And as it flew past, the trees brushing its belly, the autocannon blew the trees to splinters as it tried to close off the sec forces. The noise deafened Ryan, the destruction phenomenal. "Axler," came a voice. Ryan barely heard it through McFaren's audio headphones. "Axler, do you copy?"

"Dhin, is that you?" Axler said. "Where the frag have you been? Thought you'd bought the proverbial vatfarm when the helo went down."

The T-bird banked around for a final sweep of the security forces, which had scattered before its onslaught. "I switched to Plan B as scheduled. I was in the T-bird, rigging the helo by remote control," Dhin said. "But the explosion caused massive feedback in my vehicle control rig, and I lost communications for a minute."

"All right, cut the chat," Axler said, then she turned to Grind and McFaren. "You two ready?"

"Been ready for five minutes now," McFaren said. The human looked pale, barely able to stand as he concentrated on his magic. "I've never seen so much juju tossed about like it was nothing. Luckily, only two of the really powerful mages seem to care about us."

Grind just nodded, then lifted his arms as the T-bird descended, mowing down any remaining trees with its weapons. It took only fifteen or twenty seconds before it settled on a precarious mound of chunky pulp. Grind's metal arms were cold against Ryan's skin as the dwarf carried him up to the sliding side door and into the vehicle.

Then the door slammed shut, and Ryan was thrown against the corrugated metal floor as the T-bird lurched into the air. Grind's metal arms lifted him into a chair that faced away from the near wall, and the dwarf used his third arm to pull the safety harness over Ryan's shoulders, buckling him in as the vehicle accelerated away from the fight. Or at least Ryan assumed that was what it was doing as it swerved and dodged.

"Grind, get to the cupola and man the assault cannon," Axler yelled. "We're not in the clear yet."

But the black dwarf was already climbing into the rear compartment, strapping himself in and plugging his hands into the control panel. "On it, chica," he said.

That brought a quick glare from Axler.

The central chamber of the T-bird was snug, with four chairs along the walls facing in toward cargo tie-downs. Only McFaren sat in the chamber with Ryan. The mage was limp, his body held in the chair only by the straps of his safety harness. Axler was in the back with Grind. Ryan could see Axler's left side through the open compartment door as she sat at her console, and Grind's boots were visible on the

stem of the cupola's high chair. Dhin was in the cockpit that Ryan assumed was through the small door on his right.

"Incoming missile," came a synthesized voice over the speakers. "Ares Macrotechnology model CH45ET200A, Cheetah. Radar guidance with heat-seeking backup."

"We've been painted." Axler's voice.

"Activating stealth mode in two seconds," Dhin said through the speakers.

"Flare balloon ready," said Axler.

"Mark," said Dhin.

"Flare away. Jamming chaff away."

"Stealth mode engaged. We are running cool."

Ryan felt the T-bird slow, and it immediately grew warmer inside the compartment. Then an explosion broke his ears and rocked the T-bird around him. The straps dug into his shoulders as the vehicle shook, but it was all over in a few seconds and everything seemed to be intact.

"Yes!" cried Grind. "Dodged that fragger."

"Nice flying, Dhin," Axler said.

"They seem to be letting us go," Dhin said. "For the moment anyway."

The speakers filled with a new voice, one Ryan thought he recognized, "We won't give them the time to send aircraft. Fly straight to the Canal Zone. I should have new identification for you within the hour."

"Copy that, Jane-in-the-box."

"How's the cargo?"

Axler looked up from her console and glanced through the open compartment door to survey Ryan. "Alive, but he's been through some major drek, Jane. He's not himself. I had to dose him and carry him out."

There was a pause. Then, "I was afraid of that," Jane said. "I'll get a doc ready to scan him when you get in."

"Copy, we'll keep him safe."

The T-bird ran steady and smooth now. And after a few minutes of silence, Axler and Grind returned to sit in the central compartment with Ryan and McFaren. McFaren sat up, said, "We're being followed in the astral. I sent some spirits to slow them down, but it might be a problem." And without waiting for a response, he fell asleep.

Axler took the chair next to Ryan and pulled the derm

patch from Ryan's neck. "You should be able to move in a few minutes," she said. Then she removed some handcuffs from a black nylon bag on the wall, and she anchored his wrists and ankles to the chair.

Grind watched her, a pained expression on his ruggedly wrinkled face. "Is that really wise-"