“It’s going to be rough?” I muttered. I looked up at Hense. “You got a good grip?”
She didn’t answer immediately, as if seriously considering the question, and then nodded once.
The tearing sound now became a scream that hurt my ears, and the sensation of being sucked up out of my seat was replaced by one of being pushed down into it by a huge invisible hand. Hense came crashing down, half on top of me and half in the aisle, letting a soft grunt escape. As if by magic, the normal gravity of the hover was restored. I celebrated by leaning forward, putting my head down between my knees, and puking up a thin gruel of stringy phlegm.
The vibration snapped back twice as bad, jittering me up and down in my seat and shaking loose anything not welded in place. Marko’s bag of tricks started burping up its contents, which jumped around the cabin like living things. Hense pulled herself into her seat and strapped herself in again more tightly. Before I could say anything to her, the hover flipped over and I was being sucked out of my seat again, the straps cruelly digging into my shoulders, whatever rancid blood I had left inside me rushing to my head.
“Hang on!” Happling’s tiny voice shouted. “This ain’t gonna be pretty!”
Turning my head wasn’t easy; the invisible hand didn’t like it and pushed back, hard and smothering. Hense was being pulled out of the seat slowly but irresistibly, her body just too damn small for the restraints to be of much assistance. Slowly, fighting for each inch, I got my arm extended toward her and took hold of her lapel, digging my bony fingers into the material and trying to exert some downward force on her.
The noise became a wall of sound, impossible to discern individual parts, like god tearing the universe apart. My stomach started doing flips and I realized we were in a spin, gravity jumping from top to bottom over and over again. Something heavy and solid thunked into my head and I barely noticed, the new pain swept away on the river of my other discomforts.
Then everything went quiet and still. The cabin stopped shivering and resolved into a solid room again, Hense and I dropped snugly back into the seats, and aside from a tinny screeching noise, it was peaceful. I blinked, staring at Hense, who stared back at me with something close to amazement on her face.
I realized the screeching noise was Happling screaming in the cockpit a second or two before we smacked down into the earth.
It was common knowledge that the SSF had only one factory still building hovers. It was automated and dated to sometime just after Unification, located somewhere in fucking Indiana or some shit like that, the middle of nowhere, not a city left for hundreds of miles in any direction. Droids churned out hovers from raw materials, and the hovers were perfect-not a single seam, not a single loose bolt, 100 percent operational upon delivery and built to fucking last. Which was good, because the SSF had been hot-fixing that single plant for twenty fucking years, making repairs as needed but unable, or for some reason unwilling, to build a new goddamn plant. You had to admit, Droids took away every damn job there was, but they built some high-quality hovers.
We must have hit the ground going about three or four hundred miles an hour, the shock of it swirling up through me, shoving my organs into new configurations and smoothing my hair briskly, and then we bounced, everything going still and silent again for about five seconds, when we hit again. The shuddering resumed, along with a completely new noise that sounded like we were stuck in some giant’s throat and he was trying to clear us, an almost wet-sounding roar in time with the brain-swelling shaking. But the goddamn hover held together. It went on and on, longer than I thought possible, longer than I could stand, until I realized I was screaming, too, just pushing my voice out so it could be swept away in that maelstrom as if I hadn’t made any noise at all.
Slowly, things scaled back. The noise became merely unbearably loud, the shaking became just turbulence, my own scream became audible and I let it die, my throat burning. I could feel the momentum of the brick, a coherent force again. We were spinning lazily, grinding against the earth but slowing down steadily. My hand was still clinging to Hense’s coat so tightly my knuckles hurt, and I looked at her. To my amazement she smiled, her teeth white and perfect, the product of decent medical care.
“Mr. Cates,” she said, her voice for the first time a little unsteady, “you were fucking useless during that.”
There was a crash and then Marko rolled into the cabin covered in dust and sporting a deep gash on his forehead that spat blood at an alarming rate. He stumbled to his knees and managed to stop himself more or less upright.
“Anyone alive back here? That man,” he continued without waiting for an answer, “is a fucking maniac. He laughed the whole way down, like this was fun.”
“Fucking pussy,” Happling’s tinny voice chortled from Hense’s coat. “Fucking pussy was praying in here. To god or something.”
With a loud groan and final shudder, the hover ground to a stop.
“Thank fucking god,” Marko muttered.
Hense was up in a flash, striding forward. “Happ? You all right?”
“Fine,” Happling shouted back. “I think the pilot’s the only one supposed to survive a crash in this tub.”
Paris. Like Newark a ghost town, except bigger, I thought. “I’m fine, too,” I said, forcing myself to unstrap and stand up, my legs shaking and my head swimming. “Thanks for fucking asking.”
“Mr. Marko,” Hense said, “good work. Get a fix on our position, if you please, and scan outside and let me know what’s waiting for us.”
Happling appeared in the hatchway, arms hanging on the lintel. He looked fresh and unharmed, the bastard. “We’re within half a mile of Paris, I’ll tell you that,” he said, satisfied. “I caught a visual before we ditched.”
Marko remained kneeling on the floor. “Sure, sure. Give me a minute. I’m trying to swallow my lungs back into my chest.” He took a deep, quivering breath and reached for his bag. I was happy to see his arms shaking as he moved. At least the goddamn Techie was as exhausted as I was.
I was content to watch the kid pull some of his equipment together and start waving weakly at it, his face once again bathed in the sick green light of his tiny screen. “I don’t see any signs of life out there,” he said. “Looks like we’re within a mile of the city, like the captain said. I can get a fix on the beacon signal that ought to lead us straight to its source, which I presume will be Mr. Kieth.” He let his arm drop limply to his side. He looked around. “I’m guessing we’re walking there.”
Happling leaned forward and clapped him on the back. “You can ride on my shoulder, like a fucking parrot.”
Hense was all business, checking her weapon with a few quick, efficient moves and looking around. “We’re all alive and uninjured. Let’s move. We don’t exactly have time.”
Happling straightened up. “Right. Gather your gear, Marko.” The big man looked at me but said nothing, storming into the cabin to retrieve his bag of guns, ripping it open and pulling one of the shredders out. He tore the huge clip from it, inspected it jauntily, and slammed it back into place. There was the almost inaudible whine of the rounds being counted, and then the readout on top of the rifle flashed green, and Happling grinned.
“Here come the boom stick,” he said, slinging the rifle and bag over his shoulder and marching to the hatch. He looked back at Hense and waited for her nod before smashing the release with his hand. The hatch popped open with a hiss, and weak light filtered in. Happling crouched down with the rifle against his shoulder and did a fast turn, eyes wide and alert. Without putting the gun down or taking his eyes off the scene, he said “Clear” over his shoulder and then jumped out and down.