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Still determined, I circled again, eyes streaming, shouts strangled by the thick clouds that roiled through the opening below. I called for him until my throat burned and my eyes stung, but my cries were no use. Leave or die, there was nothing else I could do.
Unable to withstand the shock, walls groaned and splintered. The repliterrium exploded with a deafening crash. Nearly overturned by the force, unable to steer, I clung desperately to the handlebars, as the blast hurtled me sideways through one of the peak's windows on a maelstrom of jagged shards that threatened to shred me to ribbons. Battered and slashed, I hunkered low over the rescue sleigh's handlebars and hung on for all I was worth.
The Spire Lab exploded, jettisoning chunks of shrapnel, metal and glass, then collapsed in a deafening roar, an implosion that buckled nearby buildings and sent plumes of silty clouds into the street. As they spread outward, blanketing all in their path, black thunderheads churned upward from the fiery wreckage, blotting out the holodome’s artificial light.
Flung clear by the blast, I hovered nearby, unable to tear my gaze away from the flaming rubble and deaf to the screams of the panicked running in every direction below me. Trapped, roasting alive, if hadn’t been crushed to death, Jo was still somewhere in all that debris. Tears stung my eyes, but I swiped away their salty heat, tearing bloody tracks with the shards still embedded in my skin.
Kill now, cry later. That was the very least I could do for him.
But where was Mazawa now? With only his lab tech to protect him, heading home didn't seem a likely option, now that the soldiers in his personal retinue were all dead. He'd head there eventually, of that I was certain, but first he'd need to marshal more guards.
I veered away from the clouds, steering the Evacu-Sleigh over the flat rooftops of unfamiliar buildings, flashes from laser cannon fire far above and a flickering blue column in the distance, the only glows in the holodome's now-murky light.
The damned hologram in the courtyard was still functioning but something down there was causing it to waver wildly. The color, though it made me grimace, gave me an idea. As I sped to it, my flight taking me over red, then peaked rooftops to a crown of thrashing leaves, the frantic shouts, screams, and pistol blasts grew louder.
They'd stormed the gates!
Scores of frightened refugees stumbled through jagged holes in the Decontamination doors and swarmed over its bridges and walkways. They thronged the courtyard, darting through trees and diving through the hologram in their attempt to flee blasts from the soldiers’ beam launchers and bites from the hordes of hungry Kufugaki who slavered close on their heels. The unluckiest among them were picked off by patrollers on zephyr-chasers who flew ahead, trying to stem their flood.
Easing the rescue craft into the leafy cover, I aided their plight by picking off as many of the flying patrollers as I could. From my vantage point, I couldn’t see anyone I recognized from the Shinu camp. No one carrying weapons of any kind, only tops of heads, flailing limbs and flashes of faces.
No sign of Mazawa, either.
Two more patrols on hovercraft swooped in low and began firing into the crowd. Springing out the mass, MBLs blazing in both hands, a man in drab khakis made quick work of one of them. Grabbing the edge of one of their wobbling but still-hovering craft, he swung himself over its side, then soared off, firing like a madman.
Caught off guard, the patrollers didn’t stand a chance. The first, killed instantly with a head shot, toppled into the crowd. The second managed to sear a hole in the zephyr-chaser's side, before a shot pinned him against the controls. Careening forward, he crashed into an oncoming crowd of Kufugaki like a kamikaze.
My heart sank as I watched it blaze. Crap! If I wanted to find Mazawa, I'd need something faster than an Evacu-Sleigh.
The thief swooped behind the cherry trees and rounded on me with his MBL raised.
"Tucker, don't shoot! It’s me!"
Pulling alongside me, he said, "Whew, Renata! Thought you were the enemy in that get-up. Where in hell did you find that old thing?"
"Never mind that now." I leapt aboard his zephyr-chaser. "We need to find Mazawa!"
"Thought you were supposed to kill him," he hollered.
"Bastard got away."
Tucker veered away from the courtyard. "Where's—"
A zephyr-chaser rocketed out from between two tall grey buildings near the visitor center. Fiberglass squealed and snapped as its side screed along our nose, Tucker's sudden plummet and side-swerve that skidded us over rooftops the only move that saved us from a lethal T-bone collision.
The two guards in the back, both of whom wore crimson Saisei sunbursts on their grey uniforms, cursed at us and made rude gestures.
Its grizzled passenger leaned over the side and started to bark orders at us.
One look at me sent him into enraged spasms.
We swerved and swooped up again, scattering red wooden tiles in our wake.
"Dang! That pilot's crazier than ten pounds of rabid—"
I didn't wait to hear the rest. "That's Mazawa, Tucker! Don't let him get away!"
The zephyr-chaser cleared the buildings and swooped low over the street, driving the frantic mob beneath it like a herd of spooked cattle. Tucker, unwilling to navigate the obstacle course, soared high, where we watched their craft careen around corners.
Refugees, Kufugaki, even soldiers weren't safe in the path of their trajectory. Still flying too low, the craft plunged down a narrow street, its tail wings leaving a trail of sparks as their tips scraped against the walls of buildings.
Swerving again, it plunged into a wider thoroughfare, straight into the path of an oncoming platoon of Squaddies. It plowed through the hapless youths, mowing them down as easily as a blade through stalks of goldenrod. Still screaming, Mazawa kept thrusting his hands skyward. Hunched over the controls, its female pilot shook her head fiercely.
Tucker, who'd been watching them with one MBL at the ready, laughed. "Some pilot! Easily-rattled and afraid of heights." Seeing what loomed around their next corner, he whistled through his teeth. "One look at that and she's gonna freeze up faster than molasses in liquid nitrogen! If you wanna take him down, Renata, here's your chance!"
We sped ahead, then swung about. There we hovered, waiting for Mazawa's craft to round the next corner and turn onto a street paved with white stones.
The crowd had now reached the gated enclosure. Though the two sentries still stationed outside its gates fired like mad, they were no match for the manic, unruly mob, and the two men in field camo who crept out of an alley behind them didn’t help.
Kim and Kentaro killed the frightened sentries and opened the gates. Then, stealing the guards' hovercraft, they roared above the crowd, urging them to flee to the fields and orchards.
Mazawa's craft now entered the scene and, just as Tucker predicted, juddered to a mid-air standstill when the pilot found herself facing a cloud of spreading silt, impenetrable as a wall.
Screaming, the guard wrenched at the zephyr-chaser’s controls, attempting a hairpin U-turn, despite the frightened refugees and hungry Kufugaki from the courtyard who were already rapidly closing in on her tail. As she struggled, forms began to shamble out of the cloud in front of her.
Human forms, mindless of its noxious haze: the drugged Kufugaki from the Solar Gate.
Team Saisei immediately opened fire on them. Mazawa, who'd had enough low flying for one day, lunged at his pilot. Yanking her pistol from its holster, he seared a hole in the side of her head before she knew what was happening. Sliding over, he wrestled with the zephyr-chaser, which was still at an angle to us.
As he began to rise, two shots from Tucker sent his guards plummeting into the street to be trampled by refugees.
"Not Mazawa, Tucker! He's all mine!" I leaned forward over the nose of the craft, MBL in hand, waiting on Mazawa's ascent. When he was level to us, I took aim. Fired.
The blast from my MBL hit his portable oxygen tank, detonating it as efficiently as a bomb. Exploding, it set him ablaze.
Mewling in pain, arms flailing, Mazawa sprang up, but without stopping his craft. Unable to tamp flames and balance at the same time, he pitched backwards over the side of the zephyr-chaser and landed in a tangle of limbs on the street.
"That's for my father, you sonofabitch! And this one's for my mother!" I fired at him again. "And this one—"
The MBL petered out with a whine.
"Relax, Renata, you got him!" Tucker clapped me on the back. "Can't kill a man more'n once!"
Except—I hadn't killed him.
Mazawa rolled over in the street. No longer ablaze, but bleeding profusely, he pawed at the stones, mewling in pain with each feeble attempt at movement.
Foiling his pathetic attempt to crawl from the street, a fresh wave of frightened refugees and angry guards, rushed the gate like a living tsunami. Grinding his limbs against the stones, they fractured bones and mashed his face into a bloody pulp.
Tucker gazed expectantly at me, then angled the barrel of his MBL at Mazawa. "You want me to take him out?"
Staying his pistol with my hand—because I had a much better idea—I screamed to the figures below, "Get him!"
The Kufugaki swarmed over Mazawa. His horrified, anguished cries, cut off in midstream, were soon replaced by meaty tearing, snapping and crunching sounds. Blood arced skyward through the spaces between the Kufugaki and seeped out around them, spreading in thick dark pools about their feet.
Silently, Tucker and I watched from above, until the Kufugaki finished their meal. One by one, they began to move on, faces smeared with thick blood and gore. One herky-jerked away with a foot, still sucking at its gnarled toes, while another, also partial to a moveable feast, wobbled away with Mazawa's intestines slung like a garland of sausages about her neck.
"Wow, that was..." Tucker trailed into stunned silence.
All that was left of Mazawa was a crumpled plastic mask in a pool of blood.
"Exactly what the sick motherfucker deserved."
"I wish Jo could've been here to see this. He'd be so darned proud of you."
"All of us." I wiped my eyes, then turned away coughing, so he'd think the cloud of silt was responsible for my tears. Eyes streaming, I watched more refugees hurry past. Their number seemed much smaller than before. We'd destroyed Mazawa and avenged my mother's death, but Jo would never see, would never know what we'd done. Some things even the Idoron couldn't do.
Tucker's voice intruded, "Hey, where is Jo, anyway?"
"The Spire Lab." I pointed into the cloud. "I'll show you."
We'd barely taken our seats when a series of booms echoed across the holodome.