Jon Grimwood - redRobe

Layers of hard attack SFX overlaid manically over-driven guitar and pumping double-tracked, adrenalin-fed bass.

Another minute of climbing and Axl was officially above the treeline, though a few stunted firs protruding bonsai-like from snow-flecked rock didn’t seem to have got the message.

Somewhere down in that valley was Mai and he had to get to her first. Powdered snow whipped into Axl’s face as he searched from Cocheforet up the other side of the valley towards the high plateau, looking for the red flash of Mai’s coat. But there was nothing.

Which was the point Axl finally stopped reacting and started to think. Bruiser guitar chords chopping off into an after echo of silence. What he needed most, he realised, was some help. This wasn’t one he could win on his own… Instead of looking down into the valley, Axl began to scan the sky.

‘Lapwing defence,’ said a voice behind him. ‘Make a noise, be visible, draw the enemy away.’ Rinpoche cocked his head to one side and frowned. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘just ‘cos your sergeant said something doesn’t make it true. Bit like you and the old bastard. Your big problem is you’re too trusting.’

Axl looked at the silver monkey in disbelief. Next it would be telling Axl that he’d been set up.

Rinpoche nodded. ‘Oh, and I put a patch into your head for old time’s sake.’ Rinpoche said, before Axl could ask how the monkey knew what he was thinking. ‘I mean, fuck knows, it wasn’t difficult. You’ve got more wire in there than jelly.’

He’d come back to that later, Axl decided, much later.

‘You know where Mai is?’

Rinpoche did, that much was obvious from his sly grin. ‘Now Clone’s gone, she’s busy negotiating,’ the Colt said, his voice studiedly casual.

‘She’ll be fucking dead if I don’t get to her first,’ said Axl.

‘And if she isn’t she’ll wish she was when Emilio gets through with her. You’ve got to warn her.’

‘No,’ said Rinpoche apologetically. ‘You’re on your own. Tsongkhapa can’t take sides. And I…’ The ex-Colt shrugged. ‘But for the record, Colonel Emilio has just notified Vajrayana that PaxForce intends to arrest a Spanish whore called Juanita. That’s Mai…’ Rinpoche added, as if Axl wasn’t capable of working that out for himself.

‘And off the record,’ the silver monkey glanced around him. ‘Last time I looked she was trying to persuade some kid he wanted to take her with him when he left.’

Rinpoche didn’t need to say how and Axl didn’t need to ask. He got a picture in his head, rough cut like bad mix. A drop shot of clouds, then valley sides with a tiny waterfall, trees seen from above, a river bank, Mai…

‘Okay?’

Yeah, it was. She’d gone through the village from Escondido, met the kid and walked out along the valley bottom. Unless she’d arranged to meet the kid there. But that didn’t seem likely and—with luck—the kid with his trousers pulled down round his ankles hadn’t told anyone where he was going or why.

Mai had been stripped naked under a boy who looked about twelve, her eyes open to watch the clouds as the boy held her arms up over her head.

Maybe Rinpoche heard Axl’s thanks, maybe not. Axl didn’t wait around to find out. Kicking the Honda into gear, he gunned the throttle and slipped the clutch until the fat back wheel bit mud. It took a moment or two for the treads to find optimum depth and the tyre pressure to self adjust. But then everything came together in a blur of trashed-up bass lines and the gyro kicked in as the bike crested a tiny ridge and started to slide diagonally across a long shale bank.

Even in Day Effé there were fuck-wit city suits who did black runs for fun. Mostly they wore full body armour, kevlar-mesh bonded to funky silver leather, chitin shoulder pads and knee protectors with full tsunami function. Axl wore cargo pants and a cotton shirt. So slicking down shale was as open an invitation to get the skin flayed off his body as it was possible to get, at least without going near PaxForce.

Needless to say, it wasn’t skill that kept Axl upright when the fat back wheel hit a bank and the Honda took off to land with a long sideways skid, it was the fact that combat bikes were built for pig-shit-thick grunts with colour co-ordinated riding abilities.

Another drop and then a second ridge raced towards him and the earth dropped abruptly away. There wasn’t even time to swear before the ground that wasn’t there came up to meet him and the bike jumped fifty feet before touching down again on wet grass, gyro whining.

Axl had a problem, and his problem was that someone had seen Mai leave the village or else the boy had told a companion how he planned to spend the morning. Dumb fuck. Down to Axl’s left was a diagonal line of conscripts positioned in combat formation, a regulation three paces apart and three paces behind as they swept the valley bottom. The grunts weren’t even bothering to stay in cover.

They looked like tiny toys, Axl thought, and then he didn’t think anything because the Honda was airborne again, grass falling away beneath him.

Mono shocks cushioned most of the landing and his knees took the rest, but hitting the saddle still felt like someone was trying to kick his spine up through the top of his head.

And then Axl was racing into a belt of firs, loose gravel giving way to a crust of dead pine needles that cracked and slid like unset lava beneath the wheels of his Honda. Staying upright ate up the next few minutes.

When the pines finally gave way to slopes of pasture complete with stolid yaks and dazed-looking Tibetan goats that scattered as the Honda catapulted out of the tree cover and headed for their herd, Axl was already almost too late. The fat woman walking point ahead of the sweep of solders was almost at the bend in the river.

‘Fuck,’ Axl gunned the engine angrily, flicking the rev readout from green to red as he blipped the engine up past safety. Maybe it was the scattering goats or perhaps the wind finally changed direction to bring them the unmistakable, hysterical whine of the two-stroke but either way, the man running tail flipped round and unslung his snubPup.

Guitars screamed a warning.

A burst of speed carried Axl along the slope above the soldiers and by the time they realised he intended to get ahead of them Axl was already there, the Honda’s rev readout flashing purple with electronic pain.

Now he just had to reach Mai—and fast—because letting defMoma stumble over the top of a bank and find Mai naked, sprawled beneath some second-grade conscript was one way to guarantee that the sergeant took close personal interest in showing the girl that NCOs did it better.

In fact, the only thing that stood between defMoma just hurting Mai and actually cutting her throat was the fact that the fat woman had firm orders to arrest the girl, which would hold off the throat slitting if not much else. And Axl wasn’t about to let either happen.

Not if he could get there first. And he was going to ...

Hill/Slope/River. Axl got the flash played straight into his brain, just like he was running some top-grade satellite positioning software. A quick nudge on the handlebars, a nudge of the accelerator and the Honda X3 was rocketing down a long slope towards a bank that flipped the bike up and then dropped it all the way down to the river and Mai.

She was naked, cock-eyed tits as beautiful as he remembered them, her hips full and soft. And it was obvious from the blind panic in her unfocussed eyes that she didn’t have the faintest idea who was riding the bike falling towards her.

The conscript sitting naked nearby should have gone for a weapon but went for his trousers instead. He was still trying to yank them past his knees as Axl decided to try for a skid stop and quickly decided it was a bad idea.