Despite her leg and his speed, she was sure she still could get away if he was blind. She flicked out the razors on her free hand and raised her arm to strike, only to feel them slice into her own palm as he squeezed her fingers into a fist. Pale, but immensely strong despite its childlike size, his new hand crushed her bones and ground them together.

He wrenched her up again and swung her out and over the abyss. In a last act of defiance, she spat into his face. He licked the mixed blood and spittle from his face with a tongue that seemed inordinately long before releasing his grip.

She fell, knowing that she would reach terminal velocity unless she hit a projection. There wouldn’t be enough left to put back together. She hoped she would black out before she struck.

52

One wall blinked, its images of the battle on Landing Pad 23 replaced by a detail of a racing woman pursued by a limping man who moved with uncanny speed. As he closed and they struggled, a briefcase toppled over the edge of the platform. It smashed against a projection and opened, scattering circuit boards and computer chips to the wind.

Darkness assaulted Dodger’s senses as his hostess’s cloak billowed out of its own accord, masking her and everything else from his sight. A keening wail overwhelmed the sounds of the firelight, and over all the cacophony, he heard her voice.

“Lost. For myself, no hope. Gone. Fled. For my scattered self, gone.”

His sight returned and she had vanished.

The mad kaleidoscope began again, images racing across the facets. Within seconds, the tumult faltered as individual panels went dark or flared to stark white. Groups of panels froze en masse in blocks, crosses, or stepped triangles. Each geometric portrayed a different scene, but all the panels making up one shape displayed the same image. One showed a gold-eyed man struggling to free himself from fallen debris in a smoking room scattered with bodies. Another displayed a small cubicle where an emaciated decker lay sprawled across his board, the flesh around his datajack blackened. A third, which Dodger at first took to be a rebroadcast, was a window on the Renraku air traffic monitor center where the staff was casually sitting around. In the back of the scene, Dodger could see the reaction force pilots in their ready room, drinking, eating, and playing cards. Their wall clock showed the current time. There were other scenes from around the arcology as well, and they too showed no alarm. Then the facets of the floor froze in unison, having returned to Pad 23, where the Trojan shuttle was rising into the sky.

The fireball flared into being on the Renraku arcology’s left Rank. Three of the undercover guards were torched to cinders and a pair of over-eager Red Samurai were blown back, smoking, to their squad’s position at the building entrance.

“Good shooting, Tsung,” Jaq called out.

Tsung waved back and pointed at the remaining guards on the landing field. Jag nodded and directed her mercs to pour on the fire. Tsung needed cover to catch Hutten.

Their target had gone down in a struggle with one of the Raku guards. Jaq hadn’t expected the guard to come out on top, but she had. For a while, that is. Then Hutten chased her down and threw her from the platform. Now he stood there, looking bewildered.

When Sally reached him, his initial reaction was wary. She said something to him, but with the din of combat Jaq couldn’t hear. It must have been words to the effect of, “We’re here to rescue you,” because Hutten looked at the Commuter, nodded, and lit out toward the aircraft. Sally and the Indians beat a fighting retreat.

No time like the present, Jaq decided. She scattered powder from her pouch into the wind and began to chant. Watching the progress of Hutten and the runners, she tried to pace the spell so that the timing would be perfect.

Debris, litter, and masonry skittered across the platform like autumn leaves before the wind. Luggage rolled on wheels or tipped end over end to race dropped weapons and loose tools to the growing wall in front of the Commuter. It was a meter high when Hutten hurdled it. It had grown to two meters when Tsung, intent on the pursuit, slammed into it. Three of the Indians went down before she could lead them through the smoke clouds and around to the sheltered side.

By then, Jaq had gotten Hutten on board and recalled her four remaining mercs. She was closing the hatch when Tsung spotted her.

“Wait for us,” Tsung called, racing for the aircraft.

Jaq gave the order to lift. “Sorry, Tsung. I’ve got a delivery to make. Have fun with the Samurai.”

Tsung and the Indians made a leap for the Commuter’s landing gear as the VTOL rose from the landing pad. One of the Indians, Jason, managed a grip, but a quick response from the pilot shook him free. Jag watched the Indian land hard and lie stunned. Tsung knelt next to him, gesturing with glowing hands. Her eyes were fixed on the Commuter as it climbed.

Jaq mustered her spell defenses to protect the aircraft and the pilot, only to feel the energies slide past and strike elsewhere. Jaq spun to find Hutten sprawled on the floor of the cabin. The mercs were drawing away in disgust as his skin bubbled and flowed.

“Have fun yourself, bitch,” Sally’s voice said over the radio link.

Dodger found himself able to move again, but he feared that his hostess’s return would change that. In a way he couldn’t describe, he felt her presence still. He wanted to run, jack out while he could, but he had seen the Commuter take off and Sally and Ghost’s people behind. They needed help. He had to get out of here if he was going to do anything constructive.

He turned to find Jenny disappearing into one of the panels, which went dark before he could make sense out of the image it had been presenting. So that was the way out. Reasoning that the image might relate to Matrix positioning, he stepped up to the block that held nine pictures of the deceased decker. He was company property and his equipment would be linked for fast access. It would be a good place to start. Dodger walked forward and found himself in the subprocessor controlling security for Pad 23.

He couldn’t have asked for a better location.

Accessing the camera records, he clipped a copy of the battle and tagged it onto the go-code he was supposed to send when the team had gotten Hutten. He slipped it down the link to the broadcast monitor and sent it out on priority transmit. Sam would at least know what had happened. Maybe he could figure it out.

A strong believer in backups whenever possible, Dodger readied his online storage to accept a dump of the trideo record. When he tried the access again, he got an error message. A quick check showed him that the file had been deleted since he had last accessed it. Wary, he fled the node.

It was a short hop into the pad’s computer system. He activated the service lift and tapped a deck monitor to view the results of his handiwork. Pressed by the advancing Red Samurai, Sally was quick to take the anonymous offer of an escape route. She and the Indians rabbits onto the descending segment of the platform. They leaped off at the first sublevel, and Dodger sent the lift back up and locked it to seal off direct pursuit.