Dirty Work: Volume 2

Story Two - The New Groove - 3

'Any idea where they were heading?' I yelled to Markro over the buffeting wind, Reyna tucked inside my coat to keep her from flying off in the wind. He braked hard and swung the Zoomus around a tight bend, heading towards the highway as I had thought.

'Not a clue,' Markro replied, his teeth gritted. Riding shotgun behind him I couldn't actually tell that his teeth were gritted, but I had no doubt that this was exactly what he was doing. His feet dug into the side of the tank as we righted ourselves again, the engine back onto full throttle and hitting the main road up to the highway. 'But this is the general direction they were going, so I reckon they'll try to get out the Region.'

Swerving around the kars that seemed to be driving at so slow a speed that one would think they were placed there deliberately to annoy us, we powered down the main straight, the banked helix up to the raised highway up ahead. The black kar that had taken Villa and Siala was just about powering around into it, swerving a little with the other road users keeping visibly clear of it.

'Ah, shit,' Markro said, revving the Zoomus as much as he could and tucking down behind the screen.

'How many of them do you think she's taken out, do you think?' Reyna asked me from her position huddled against my chest.

'Just the one,' I said. 'She'll have the other one pinned with her foot to the back seat and she'll be wrestling with the driver now.'

'Villa'll have a bloody face as well,' Reyna responded, her outlook on the situation as chipper as always.

I nodded, keeping my head down as well and my gun in tight. I had the idea to shoot out the anti-grav generator at the bottom of the kar when we got close enough up behind it, hoping to send it sparking along the ground and into one of the highway barriers, but I didn't have my hopes too high. The whole thing had gone tits up and we were in a perpetual state of our most favourite situations; we were making it up as we went along, this time at a good 80mph.

Hitting the banked turn up onto the highway I ducked down into the seat, feeling my body pushed down onto the machine as our knees went down to the corner as Markro took it tight. I couldn't see that much past him, but what I could see was something I didn't like. As we came out onto the main highway there were now two kars exchanging gunfire, the kar we were after with blast holes and glass shattered from its windows, and a visibly less-damaged vehicle alongside it.

'They've got back-up,' Reyna said, 'how thoroughly un-sportsmanlike of them.'

We got in closer, Siala firing out towards the kar (of identical make and model, probably a trade deal of some kind) alongside her, visible only from the crimson hand wrapped around the trigger of the gun. I hadn't known her for that long, and even in our escape from the group of Red Rose people that had been after her initially I didn't know how much of her old shooting abilities she had retained from her time at Dirty Work. Apparently she had kept much more than I realised. Perhaps this kind of thing was something that just seeped into your blood, and no amount of shedding it would get it out again. Gunfire nowadays left metaphorical black powder on your heart as well as your hands.

'On the right of them,' I shout to Markro in front, 'I'll take out the window.'

Markro swerved from out behind a small family kar making an early morning start to somewhere or other, the grandparents most likely, and ended up on the far right of the highway. By the time we caught up with the small war up ahead of us the three vehicles would span most of the Lower-Bound side of the 17-36. As we sped past the red brick of a kar I saw the little faces of the entranced children peering out of the back windows. I gave a quick salute, or as much of one as I could, before we were past and up into the combat zone.