Gareth felt his upgraded muscles strain to hold onto the side of the truck as it pitched over until his back was parallel with the ground. He had a boarding rail in one hand, where the driver could reach up when climbing in, and a running board under his feet.
And about three thousand feet of warm night sky below him.
He managed to swing his right foot loose and get it under the running board, using that and the rail as a pair of anchor points to hold himself up.
Gareth punched the driver’s window with an angry fist, but it bounced off. Safety glass, he presumed.
The truck righted itself for a moment, and then rolled again hard, like an angry gator with fresh prey.
Now he was losing his temper. They could manage to dump him, but Gareth wouldn’t be killed, unlike any other officer in the service. That still made this attempted murder.
He snarled.
One thing Gareth had learned about his new form was the ability to trigger it in pieces, for lack of a better term. He didn’t have to fully transform his body, but could instead just dramatically escalate his strength beyond anything an unmodified Vanir could do. It helped that rage just fueled him right now.
He leaned into a minor transformation, even as the vehicle righted itself a second time. Instead of just punching the glass, the Star Dragon put all his might into annihilating it.
Nothing was capable of resisting that might. And it did not.
Even the most bullet-proof glass wasn’t dragon-proof,
Gareth reached in with a hand that had started to turn scaly and green. The driver grappled with him, trying to do something. Knock him loose, perhaps? Force his hands away from the controls?
Gareth would never know. A raygun suddenly blasted the entire console in front of the driver and the truck’s engines died.
“See you in hell,” a sour voice rang clear in the sudden silence, and then the vehicle’s upward trajectory abruptly slowed as it discovered gravity.
Gareth snarled.
Now, attempted murder of a Constable had moved up to mass murder. At least four people, including himself, Morty, Xiomber, and the driver, plus whoever else might be in back, plus anyone who would be killed when an out-of-control panel van slammed into the ground at terminal velocity.
And there was nothing he could do about it.
Or was there?
Gareth was supposed to keep his powers secret. A surprise weapon to spring on the bad buys at the best time. At least, those that hadn’t already been there, or heard the stories.
But if he did that, innocent people would die tonight. Even criminals who didn’t deserve this end.
Gareth let go of everything but his left hand on the boarding rail and let the rest of the transformation take hold.
Even a Star Dragon couldn’t lift a heavy vehicle like this, but he had to try.
“Mayday,” the dragon’s immensely deep voice called out, hoping that someone was monitoring the channel.
Someone who could help.
“Gareth, this is Baker,” her voice came back instantly. “What’s your situation?”
Gareth felt the truck reach the top of the parabola and pause for a second at its highest point. He shifted around so that he could grab the two front windows with his front paws and hammered his claws into the armored sides of the back. His wings caught the night air and bit as the immense dead weight pulled him towards the planet below.
“Total vehicle failure,” Gareth said precisely. “One Elohynn criminal in flight. At least three others trapped in the vehicle. Can anyone help?”
The strain on his shoulders felt like they would tear loose at any moment. He flapped, but barely made any headway, until he had a thought.
Gareth pushed his entire body backwards, letting the weight of the vehicle shift itself forward. The nose of the truck went down, and Gareth could see better where he was going.
He didn’t have to slam into the ground when it got here, but the others didn’t have that option, and the ground would be here faster than anybody could arrive that might be able to prevent the giant anvil in his grip from smashing itself to pieces on the ground, plus any towers or restaurants that managed to be in the way of falling death.
“Can you make the river?” Baker asked calmly. “Ditch there where we might be able to rescue survivors?”
Might.
It was night, and that water would be dark and cold. The men inside would have seconds to escape, assuming the van survived impacting the water, before they were pulled to the dark, murky bottom.
And from this height, hitting water was going to be like hitting concrete, because there was no way he was going to flatten them out enough to matter in the next thirty seconds.
“Negative,” he said.
Gareth looked other directions. The river was just too far away, and the towers beside it too tall. He’d probably end up slamming into one as he went by, trying to avoid killing people.
He was back to Ethics 101 at school. Do you choose to send the runaway vehicle crashing into a tree to save pedestrians, thereby killing the driver, or do nothing and let the vehicle kill the pedestrians instead?
How do you decide who has to die today?
In some ways, that wasn’t even a thing to discuss. The three inside might have to die, but Gareth would not put anybody else at risk to die, possibly with them, rather than instead.
Blinking lights on the ground caught his eye. The tube station was close. But the entire facility was dark right now. Gareth had learned enough to know that meant there were no ferries currently in orbit overhead.
“Can you contact the station?” Gareth strained to make the words intelligible as he pushed everything he had into his shoulders, trying to turn the massive dead weight to starboard. At the very least, there were open fields in that direction, so he would only kill the two men who had brought him here, and the driver.
Hopefully.
“What station?” Baker asked.
“The tube station,” Gareth roared. “Have them turn on the generators and open me a tube into space. Do it now.”
He took a breath and leaned over to the left.
“Morty, can you hear me?” he called.
“Is that you, kid?” the Yuudixtl physicist called back in a hopeful voice.
“It is,” Gareth replied. “Can you find the emergency oxygen masks?”
Every flying vehicle had to have them, by law, on the presumption that they might go through a wormhole at some point, and all of those were in space. Because the law said emergencies and mistakes happen, you had to be able to survive suddenly losing a vehicle seal and facing vacuum.
This vehicle was turning. Falling in a different direction, perhaps. Not into the heart of the art district, nor the Hall of Arts.
If he could only make it that far before his friends had to die.
“Got ’em, Gareth,” Xiomber’s voice came back. “What are you doing?”
“Put them on now,” Gareth roared in a voice that much of the city below might have heard.
Baker had gone silent on him. Hopefully that meant that she was calling someone over at the tube station, waking them up. Doing something that would prevent a lot of unnecessary deaths tonight.
Gareth strained through the pain. It felt like his wings were being pulled out of their sockets to the point that he might not be able to escape when this thing hit the ground. He would just have to deal with that.
Or watch his friends die. He could always just let go right now and survive with nothing more than bruises and pulled muscles. Three presumed criminals would suffer the ultimate sanction, and they would never again be a threat to the Accord of Souls.
That wasn’t why he had joined Earth Force. Wasn’t what made him an agent of Sky Patrol.
Gareth St. John Dankworth was not a man who surrendered.
He pulled harder. Growled. Metal actually began to deform under his grip as his claws ripped into the steel of the truck’s carcass.
Ten seconds to impact.
Gareth howled in pain and frustration. They hadn’t dreamed big enough, back when they created a Star Dragon. He should have gone for something big enough to lift a tank or a star shuttle off the ground.
Then Morty and Xiomber and the poor driver wouldn’t be about to die from his failures.
Five seconds.
Light.