Preying for keeps

38

The interior of the monorail engine was built in a T-shape, with a short corridor between the electromagnets that led into the control cross-section. Voices came to Skater over the throb of the transformers. He recognized McKenzie's at once.

Gunfire broke out behind him, made alternately louder and muffled by the swinging door. Whoever was in the engine with McKenzie must have thought the sound of the breaking lock was part of the general racket echoing through the monorail.

"Kid," Duran called over the commlink, "we're pinned down. You're solo."

"I read you," Skater replied. He kept moving forward as gunfire crashed behind him.

"Look out," Wheeler called. "There's a maintenance rig coming at us up ahead."

Skater peered around the corner and saw McKenzie in the control booth with three other men. He was holding the deck in both hands, looking rumpled but not hurt. On the other side of the windshield, the lean lines of the skeletal maintenance rig designed for working on a monotrain that had stalled between stations swelled into view.

"It's matching our speed," Wheeler said. "Closing the gap between us. We're coming. Just hang on."

Skater knew McKenzie wasn't going to wait, though.

Even now, he'd managed to get another team aboard the monotrain. That maint-rig had to be his doing.

The control room was generally unoccupied except during safety inspections, Skater knew. There were no innocents in the area. He used the commlink. "Wheeler."

"Go."

"You've still got access to the engine's dog-brain?"

"Yepper."

"On my mark, put on the brakes. Does everyone copy? The rest of the team quickly checked in with an affirmative.

The maint-rig closed on them, only meters away now and moving fluidly enough to change speeds with them. Sensing the presence at his back. Skater wheeled. Duran stood there, breathing hard, blood covering his upper body. "I got your back, kid."

"Where's Elvis?"

"He got shot up pretty bad, but those slotting trogs are hard to kill. He's holding the rest of McKenzie's people off us till the others arrive."

In the control booth. Skater saw McKenzie toss the deck aside and take the steps down to the side door. The maint-rig was getting closer, filling the windshield now as it came at them.

"Wheeler," Skater called, "do it!" He hung onto the side. clutching at a pipe as tightly as he could.

A heartbeat later, the engine's brakes shrilled as they seized up. The engine and the cars had an antilocking system on the brakes to prevent derailment and compensate for load shifts, but anyone not belted down still got a hefty reminder about the physical laws of momentum and inertia. Screams and curses from the passengers cowering for their lives ripped through the noise.

Skater felt like his arm had been torn from its socket, but he held on grimly. Through the windshield, he saw the maint-rig shoot away quickly, then its brakes joined the shrill screaming of metal on metal.

The three Mafia soldiers were scattered across the control booth. But standing in the doorway as he was, McKenzie kept his feet, which told Skater that the man had cyber-enhancements. There was no other way he could have stood against the braking action. Even before the engine had come to a complete stop, McKenzie was in motion. The side door let out over the four-story drop, but that didn't keep him from finding handholds along the bullet-shaped nose and scrambling toward the maint-rig.

The three Mafia soldiers were getting to their feet, looking back at Skater and Duran.

"Go, kid!" Duran growled. "I'll handle things here." Skater broke cover at once, locked on McKenzie's fleeing form sliding across the engine's nose. A bullet hit him in the side, slipping around the Kevlar plates, and ripped into flesh. He was knocked off-balance but didn't know how bad he'd been wounded. Staggering, he made it into the doorway with difficulty and leathered the Predator.

Warm blood continued to run down his side as he swung out over the four-story drop and reached for the first handhold. He missed, and swung wildly back. Both feet came off the last rung in the doorway. For an instant he hung over the city, about to be dropped into it like a treat to a hell hound. The sprawl wouldn't even remember him once he was gone. Then his feet found purchase and he pushed himself onward. He located the handholds and footholds he needed, crawled across the hot metal of the engine. Bullets cracked and whined around him as gunners in the maint-rig tried to shoot him.

Skater was aware of the bloody trail following him as he slid off the engine and dropped onto the monorail's track. The single metal rib was only slightly less than two meters wide, hammered smooth by the wear and tear of years of service.

McKenzie was moving rapidly, but not running, across it. The distance separating him from the maint-rig was less than sixty meters and closing.

Both monorail vehicles only had running lights, nothing that would project enough illumination to cut through the darkness around the track.

Skater was aware of the gunfire lighting up the inside of the engine he'd just quit, as well as the numbing chill that had spread up his side. He ran after McKenzie, keeping to the shadows and not pulling the Predator because it would give the Mafia guns a flash to fix on. The footing beneath his boots was uncertain, and his boosted reflexes were strained to keep him on the track. Bullets whipped by his face, but as he closed on McKenzie, he knew he was offering an increasingly smaller target for the hostile shooters to hit. McKenzie, whether he wanted to or not, was protecting him.

"Shoot the fragger!" McKenzie screamed, trying to pick up the pace.

Skater concentrated on his target, letting his reflexes do their job. He drew within ten meters of McKenzie. The maint-rig was shutting down, its brakes showering sparks that fell like plummeting comets and winked out long before they hit the ground. Beyond it were the advertising lights of the Warwick Hotel. Skater remembered staying there one weekend with Larisa. They'd been celebrating something, and it made him sad to realize he couldn't remember what it was.

And now he could never ask her.

The distance between him and McKenzie dropped lo five meters. The maint-rig was almost at a standstill forty meters distant. None of the bullets were coming close. McKenzie was too big and too blocky to shoot around.

At three meters, Skater launched himself into the air. He crashed into McKenzie's back and sent the big man sprawling.

Even with his low-light vision. Skater got confused in the dark. He tried to control his slide across the slick surface of the rail, but couldn't. As he was about to go over the side, he hooked an arm back across the rail and brought himself to a stop. Grease and machine muck covered the front of the maintenance uniform as he pushed himself up.

McKenzie, larger and heavier, raised up in front of him. "You stupid son of a slitch," he said. "I've already left too many jokers like you lying in gutters on my way up. You came out here on this rail to die."

Skater stood and assumed a defensive position. The maint-rig was coasting to a full stop twenty meters behind McKenzie. Men were already climbing out onto the nose with weapons in their hands. "If I go, you're coming with me." He drew the Predator, but McKenzie knocked it away before he could take aim. The force of the blow numbed his arm.

A few rounds from the men on the engine danced around them. One slammed into the Kevlar plate over Skater's right thigh and knocked him off-balance. He recovered quickly, then slammed an overhand right into McKenzie's face as the big man closed in.

McKenzie shook his head and backed away. He snorted, blowing out bloody mucus across his lower face. He came in again, using his greater size and strength to push Skater back.

Skater scored with another overhand right, but McKenzie was able to slip some of the blow and returned a backhanded slap that almost lifted Skater out of his boots.

"You out here for the dragon?" McKenzie grunted, closing in again. His hands were up, guarding his face. "You really think that big worm gives a frag about you?" He popped out a hand, splitting Skater's cheek open.

Skater shook his head, trying to clear it. McKenzie could box, and for the kind of footing they had to work with, it was a better style than the martial arts Skater knew, He raised his hands and tried to cover himself.

McKenzie chopped at him, moving easily now, the natural skills melding with and taking advantage of the cyber enhancements. "Golden gloves for four years, punk. Nobody manhandles me. And you, you get the privilege of seeing why close up."

Skater tried to avoid the vicious jabs, but they were everywhere: his face, his body, and twice McKenzie tried to punch him in the crotch. He could feel his face swelling, his lips puffing. Everything he was able to connect with, the big man just seemed to shrug off.

Abruptly, gunfire sounded from the engine behind Skater.

"We're here, kid," Duran said over the link. "Get clear."

Over McKenzie's shoulder. Skater saw the Mafia gunners suddenly realizing their predicament. They scattered like pigeons, and three of them fell from the maint-rig, hit by bullets from Duran and the others.

Skater held his ground, feeling his legs go to rubber beneath him. McKenzie looked away for a moment, perhaps startled by the sound of gunfire. Drawing up his reserves, Skater went for him.

McKenzie glanced back and saw him coming. He turned, his bands bunching into fists. "Why didn't you quit when you had a chance, ditbrain?" He launched a right cross. "Now you're gonna die."

Skater blocked the blow and retaliated with a right hook to McKenzie's stomach that drew a cry of pain from the big man. Before McKenzie could draw back, Skater stepped on his foot, pinning him there, and shook him with two more vicious, stinging hooks.

McKenzie tried a roundhouse, but Skater blocked it too. The dark anger was working in him now, combining with the boosted reflexes and extra adrenaline to switch off die

"Do you remember her name?" Skater demanded, hitting the man in the face with a left.

McKenzie was slowing down, out of gas. His guard was there, but loose, no longer invincible. He looked like he didn't know what Skater was talking about.

"Did you even know her name?" Skater asked. The woman you had Synclair Tone murder?"

"Frag you," McKenzie snarled. "She was just another loser. Just like you."

"No," Skater said, balling up his right hand again. "She's the reason you're going down." His fist exploded on the big man's jaw. "I wanted you to know that. For me, this wasn't about money." Before Skater could swing again, something slammed into the right side of his face. Hot, bright pain went nova in his right eye, and the sticky warmth of blood cascaded down his cheek, already soaking into the material over his shoulder. Nausea reared up inside him, twisting like a beheaded snake. He struggled to remain on his feet.

McKenzie laughed. "Now we'll see who's going down tonight."

Half-blind, the pain pushing him so far out of his mind he was operating almost entirely on instinct, Skater grabbed one of the big hands that shoved at him. He felt himself go over the side of the monorail track, felt the drop yawn below him, and yanked on McKenzie.

Then gravity kicked in and started him down. McKenzie was yelling somewhere beside him. Twisting in the air, blood splashing over his face, Skater grabbed the lip of the track as he dropped, barely able to spot it. His left hand gripped it, but he couldn't close his right hand properly. It felt broken inside.

McKenzie's scream fell away from him, lasting a long time, then ending abruptly.

Skater looked down, seeing the four-story fall waiting on him. He tried to pull himself up, but he didn't have the strength to save himself. Already his fingers were beginning to slide; a moment more and they'd slip completely free.

He wasn't surprised when it happened. Suddenly there was nothing more under his palm, under his straining fingertips. He remembered thinking that he was sorry he wouldn't be able to take care of Emma the way Larisa had asked him to, because it was the first time she'd ever asked him to do something for her.

Gravity drew him in.

Then an iron grip slapped around his wrist and halted his fall.

Almost unconscious now, Skater looked up and saw Duran grinning at him, lying prone on the track, one scarred hand knuckled into a death grip. "What's the matter, kid? Get tired of hanging around?"

Skater tried to answer-something-but the waiting shadows took him in, giving him shelter from the pain and confusion.