Mystified, Michael did as he was told. To his surprise, the restraints fell away. “What the hell,” he hissed. “How did-”
“Don’t ask,” Hardy said. “Now, one of the guards will unlock the doors before we get to Shanghai. The moment we’re hit, wait for my word, then kick your cage door open and follow me out. And stay close.”
“What then?”
“I’m going to run. Unless you want the bad guys to blow your brains out, you should do the same.”
“See the orange jumpsuit, sport?” Michael hissed. “I won’t get 5 meters.”
“Better than having your brains blown out. When the bad guys get inside, it’ll be a bloodbath, so I know where I’d rather be. Just follow me out and run like hell. You’ll be fine.”
“Okay,” Michael said, “and thanks.”
Hardy did not respond, so Michael sat back. His mind reeled. Hope flickered into life, but only for an instant. The whole thing smelled wrong. It was all too pat, too neatly packaged, too convenient. It was a Hammer setup; it had to be. But why would they want him out of the mobibot? If they wanted him dead, why didn’t they just blow the bot apart? They wouldn’t give a shit about the collateral damage; they never did.
Then it came to him.
The Hammers wanted him alive. That was why they wanted him outside. They couldn’t risk trying to extract him. The ever so helpful Max Hardy had been right. It would be absolute pandemonium: smoke, gunfire everywhere, prisoners running around like headless chickens, guards trying to contain the situation until reinforcements arrived. And Michael wasn’t the only Cat 1 prisoner onboard. The Hammers would have to pick him out of the eight other Cat 1s, and that would be difficult in all the confusion.
Now it all made sense to Michael.
The Hammers could force their way in to get him, but that would be time-consuming, and the chances of his being killed would be too high. It was all too uncertain, too hard to manage, so the Hammers needed him to get out of the bot under his own steam, and that was the job of Mr. Hardy.
The second Michael appeared, the Hammers would scoop him up and be gone before the Jamudans even had time to think, let alone react.
High risk but high return, and it would have worked if he’d gone along with Hardy’s plan.
For a moment he thought he’d found the way out of the trap that had been laid for him: He would stay in the mobibot and keep his head down until it was all over. But it was only for a moment. That would not work. If he failed to show, the Hammers would come in after him. They had to, and they would, guns blazing. That way Michael would die sooner rather than later and a lot less painfully, but that was scant comfort.
He’d rather not die at all.
Much faster than he wanted, the clock ran off the last few seconds. His strategy for survival was little more than a half-baked idea when, with a violent crash, an explosion lifted the front of the mobibot up into the air and dropped it back down with a crunch of torn metal. The impact smashed Michael’s head against the side of the cage and tore his scalp open. Blood ran hot down his face and neck.
“Now!” Hardy shouted.
Michael kicked his door open.
“Follow m-” Hardy said.
But Michael was already moving. His arm came up fast from below waist level and drove a fist into Hardy’s throat that dropped the man as if he’d been shot. Michael did not waste a second; he plunged into the smoke that was fast filling the prisoner compartment and threw himself at the exit.
The door offered no resistance. Michael tumbled out and hit the road hard. He scrambled to his feet and waved an arm at the door. “Helfort’s coming!” he screamed. “Helfort’s right behind me.”
It was not hard to work out why the Hammers fell for it. Michael was supposed to be the second orange suit out, not the first, and so they waited. Their indecision gave Michael the chance he needed, and he took it. He sprinted to the front of the blazing wreck of the mobibot. Flames scorched his face, smoke eddying and twisting around him as he ran for his life.
Then the Hammers woke up, sending a blizzard of rifle fire in Michael’s direction, the air flayed by hypersonic rounds whiplashing past before whanging off into the mobibot’s armored skin. But only for a few seconds, and then Michael was around the front of the flaming carcass. He plunged through air thick with acrid fumes that ripped at his throat and lungs. On he ran, keeping the wrecked mobibot between him and the Hammers, praying that his ambushers had been too confident to position anyone to cut him off.
Michael burst clear of the smoke into a scene of complete chaos. The road was choked with bots of every shape and size forced into emergency stops by the city’s traffic management system, the spaces between them fast filling with confused and uncertain passengers, most slow to realize that they too were in mortal danger, with barely a handful taking cover as rifle fire filled the air. On Michael ran, barging the standing aside and hurdling the rest.
Just as Michael allowed himself to think he had escaped the Hammer trap, two men, one white-blond and the other with his head shaved so close that the sun glistened off his scalp, stepped from behind a cargobot, assault rifles pointing right at him, rock-steady. “Stop, Helfort!” Baldy screamed. “Stop and drop, right now!”
Michael ignored them, but only until the pair sent a burst of fire shrieking past his head. Sick with defeat, he skidded to a halt. “Okay, okay,” he said.
The two men were on him in an instant. Michael screamed as they yanked his arms behind him, brutally indifferent to his pain. Cuffing him, they dragged him to his feet and hustled him away down Shanghai Boulevard.
“Zero, Six. We have him,” Michael heard Blondie say.
“Roger that, Zero,” the man said a few seconds later. “Egress Bravo, understood. Six, out.”
On they went. Michael knew that his chances of survival were fading fast. He had one chance, and he took it. Without warning, he exploded, a single violent movement that drove a shoulder into Baldy even as he rammed his left leg into Blondie’s knee, He took both Hammers by surprise, and the three of them fell to the road in a twisted, tangled mess, with Michael kicking out in all directions in an attempt to slow things down.
“You little fucker,” Blondie snarled, struggling to get his rifle free.
The fight did not last long. Baldy finished it with a crushing blow from his rifle butt to the side of Michael’s head, a blow that drove him to the edge of unconsciousness, the pain blinding in its intensity. But he clawed his way back to the light; to survive, he had to take whatever chances came his way, however slim, however transient.
Cursing, Baldy and Blondie hauled Michael to his feet, and they were on the move again, his body dragged along limp between the two men and into a narrow lane. A few meters down, a small cargobot waited for them.
“Thank Kraa for that,” Baldy muttered. “I’ve had enough of this.”
The words snuffed out the last tiny flicker of hope left burning in Michael. It was over; the Hammers had him.
“Me, too,” Blondie grunted.
Just short of the ramp, they stopped. “You hold him here,” Blondie said, “while I get the ramp down.”
“Roger that,” Baldy said, dropping Michael to the ground. “You move one millimeter and I’ll blow your leg off. Got it?”
“Yeah, yeah … asshole.”
Baldy laughed. “Nice try, Helfort. I’ll tell you this,” he went on as the ramp started on its way down, “I think I’ll enjoy-”
A soft, wet slap cut the man off. Baldy stood swaying, his mouth open, a look of surprise on his face. He stayed upright for a few seconds, and then with a soft grunt he crumpled to the ground alongside Michael.
First one and then another and another and another person rushed past, their black jumpsuited figures hung with equipment.
“About time, guys,” Michael said.
