Graham Paul: The battle of Devastation reef

“Slow down, slow down,” Anna yelled. “Not so fast, Michael.”

He ignored her. This was getting dangerous. They had had the advantage of surprise the first time. This time the bad guys would be expecting them. With less than a hundred meters to run, he was proved right when guns opened up from broken ground upslope of the bluff, muzzle flashes lighting up the ground around what had to be two shooters.

“Steady!” Anna called.

A burst of ground fire found its mark, slicing through the windscreen and into the cabin roof. “Shit!” Michael flinched away from the blizzard of plasglass that filled the cabin, stray shards slashing cuts into his face. He wiped away the blood dripping into his eyes. He pushed the mass driver to emergency power, the cabin once again filling with muzzle flash and racket and acrid smoke as Anna emptied her guns into the attacker’s flier, a metallic phock phock phock telling him that they had been hit again.

The noise stopped. “Oh, shit,” Anna said, her voice barely audible over the noise of air ripping through the shattered windscreen.

Michael paid no attention, his attention focused on getting them safely away. He steadied the flier on vector away from the Palisades and handed control over to the AI, ordering it to get to Bachou. He turned to Anna.

She lay back in her seat, head slumped to one side, hair thrashed wildly across her face by the blizzard of cold air pouring into the flier’s cabin. Michael commed on the cabin lights, shocked by what he saw. Her skin was pale under thin skeins of blood from plasglass cuts, her mouth a tight, pain-twisted slash. Michael’s stomach lurched. “Anna,” he said frantically, shouting to make himself heard over the noise of the air buffeting the flier, “what’s up? Tell me!”

“Not sure. I think one of them hit me.” Her voice was faint.

“Where, Anna, where?” Michael yelled. Desperately, he threw off his straps and knelt in his seat to get closer. “Where are you hit?”

“Up here, I think.” Feebly she pointed to her chest, high up on the right-hand side. Michael’s heart skipped a beat; he saw the blood spreading across her chromaflage cape. He reached up to the overhead stowage to grab the first-aid kit.

“Nothing anywhere else?” he said.

“Don’t think so.”

Michael patched into her neuronics. She had a single wound to the shoulder; that was the good news. The bad news was that her shoulder was a mess and she was bleeding internally. Quickly, Michael packed the entry and exit points and commed Bachou Hospital. In seconds, the trauma AI connected to Anna’s neuronics and downloaded her vitals. The AI’s air of calm confidence did wonders for Michael’s state of mind, and it soon had him ransacking the first-aid kit for the unholy mix of drugs and nanobots it wanted pumped into Anna. The AI kept him so busy that the flier’s announcement that they were about to land at Bachou caught him by surprise.

He left the flier’s AI to it. Hands shaking, heart racing, and racked by guilt that he had allowed this to happen to Anna, he was in no fit state to pilot a flier. The instant they landed, the system took over; the paramedics had Anna out, in a trauma tank, and on her way to the hospital before he even left his seat. Not that he wanted to get out; he was exhausted, at a loss what to do next. He had trouble believing what he and Anna had just been through. Not even two hours ago, she had been in bed asleep and he had been lying on his back looking at the stars, wondering how to keep his life under control. It was total madness, he realized with a sudden flash of anger. What the hell was the world coming to?

A soft cough interrupted his thoughts.

“Michael Helfort?”

It was a tall rangy man in plain clothes. “Yes?” Michael said.

“Lieutenant Hartcher, Bachou police. I think we need to talk. You okay?”

“Yeah, think so. Minor cuts,” he said, wiping eyes gummy with congealed blood. “But I need to get to the hospital.”

“Yes, you should. You need to get checked out first, and we can get an update on Ms Cheung’s progress. I’ve spoken to the hospital, by the way; the surgeons are ready to start work on her when she arrives, but the initial report from the paramedics is that she should be fine. The trauma tank has her stabilized. Your parents are already there. Miss Cheung’s are on their way. You okay to go?”

“Yeah, think so,” Michael said, voice shaking.

He forced himself to follow Hartcher as the policeman headed for a small mobibot. Michael swore softly: The instant he showed himself, a small but determined group of holocam-toting media brushed aside the police holding them back and made straight for him. Ignoring Lieutenant Hartcher’s protests, they surrounded him, the questions thrown so thick and fast that he had no idea who wanted to know what.

“I’m sorry, folks,” Michael said, raising his voice to cut through the racket, hands up in a vain attempt to keep the holocams out of his face. “There’s nothing I can say. I need to get to the hospital. There’ll be a statement from my agent later. Thank you.”

Following Hartcher’s lead, Michael dropped his head and barged a way though the milling mob, the media’s strident demands for answers ignored while he fought his way to the safety of the mobibot.

“Let’s go over it again one more time.”

Michael stared at Hartcher. It had been a long day, and postcombat fatigue had set in with a vengeance, the energy draining out of his body as adrenaline burned off. But no matter how many times he told the police lieutenant what had happened, the man always wanted to hear it one more time. Something inside snapped. He shot to his feet, his chair skidding back into the wall. “Enough, Lieutenant! Enough! Tell you what, I’ll just give you my complete neuronics records. Uncut, unedited, the lot. Will that do?”

Hartcher’s eyebrows shot up, his surprise obvious. “We normally have to go to court for those, but if that’s what you want to do, fine. Com them over, but before you do, let me just confirm that you have understood the caution I gave you earlier.”

“Yes, yes, yes,” Michael snapped. “I know my rights.”

“Don’t tear my head off, Michael,” Hartcher said patiently. “People died today, and by your own admission, you killed at least one of them. You and Ms. Cheung might be facing homicide charges.”

Michael glared at Hartcher. “Justifiable, don’t you think, Lieutenant?”

Hartcher shook his head. “Maybe, maybe not. It’s not for me to say. You know that. It’s a matter for the prosecutors and for the courts to decide if it ever gets that far. Anyway, com me your records and we’re done.”

Michael did, cursing his stupidity. If he gave Bachou police access to his full neuronics records, they would see every thought, emotion, and sensation, everything his brain had experienced during the attack. His mind would be laid bare for total strangers to poke and peer at, its every secret open to their examination. It was a deeply unsettling idea. No wonder there was a flourishing black market in full neuronics records; no wonder pornovid stars made so much money. What he was doing was something no sane person should ever do for free. He gave himself a mental shake; what was done was done. There was no point wasting any more time agonizing over it.

Hartcher nodded. “Okay, received. Thanks. You can go. I’ll arrange a mobibot to take you back to the hospital. We’ll need to talk to Ms. Cheung, of course, but that can wait.”

“Of course.”

“By the way, the hospital’s been in touch. The surgery’s gone well. Ms. Cheung will be fine. A bit stiff and sore until the nanobots finish putting her shoulder back together again, but otherwise okay.”