Geode was midway through breaking into the second car when Viola's abort message came through. Their heart sank; Viola was so unnecessarily reckless all the time, if she was the one to call things off, Geode had no doubt things were seriously bad. But this was half of why Geode was up here, preparing to mitigate any of the hundreds of possible disasters that could happen on this mission. When things went belly-up, having a backup plan was key to survival.
Geode dug into this car (an Eminence Industrial Emperor 792) and began routing around into its KF coils redirecting the power circuits to feedback into each other. KF coils handled a large amount of power, with high yield capacitors and batteries that could meltdown catastrophically if something went wrong. Or in this case, if Geode did their job right. If Viola was in trouble, the best way to help was to get attention somewhere else, take the pressure off her so she could slip away. Viola was a master of turning the slightest opportunity into a real chance of success, Geode just had to give that opportunity to her. The comms buzzed on again.
"Geode, I need a distraction," Viola instructed. Geode smiled. Despite their radically different approaches to their work, it was always a pleasure to see that when push came to shove they were on the same wavelength.
"Already on it," Geode replied, letting power flow through the sabotaged coils, and then quickly running to take cover behind one of the heavier wheeled vehicles. Geode didn't look, valuing the fact that their eyes were currently not pierced by shrapnel, but they had a good idea of what they'd see if they looked at the Emperor. First, the KF coils on the outside would sputter out, then begin glowing a bright orange as the capacitor banks overheated and melted. A split second later, all the chemicals that made up the capacitor and battery systems, superheated and free from their now-molten containment, would react violently with both the other superheated chemicals and the air they had just flowed into, and a series of simultaneous detonations would rip the car apart. The windows of the pickup truck Geode had sheltered behind shattered as flying bits of hovercar slammed into it, and Geode's ears rung from the noise. There was no doubt in Geode's mind that this would attract some amount of attention.
Now that the center of attention was (hopefully) the garage, all hope of using it as a point of exfiltration was gone. If all the Enforcers in the building were swarming up here, then it would be pragmatic for Geode to be anywhere else; and more importantly, those Enforcers would not be at the railcar.
"Rendezvous at Alpha," Geode instructed over the comms, summarizing that whole train of thought in three simple words. Ears still ringing, Geode went to move to the garage's exit, mentally tracing the map of the building in their head to figure out what the fastest way to the railcar would be if they weren't being particularly subtle at avoiding attention, and how much the added speed was worth the risk. The garage, being on the top floor of the estate (how on earth did Quilst millionaires deal with how convenient parking cars on the top floor was?) was further from the railcar than either Viola or Rune and Taroh, so Geode would inevitably be the last one to make it. This meant speed was more important; they wanted to leave as soon as possible. Every second in this building now compounded the risk of capture greatly. Because of this, a riskier run to the railcar might end up being safer in the long run. Maybe Taroh could use the security cameras to guide them safely and quickly to the rendezvous?
This thought was interrupted by the sounds of yelling and hard footsteps making themselves audible over the ringing still in Geode's ears. It seemed the Enforcers were quicker to react to the noise than they'd expected. Geode pivoted their momentum, sliding into a hiding spot behind some repair equipment as six Enforcers stepped into the room. They were wearing full combat gear, not the formal wear many in the party room had, and were looking around the garage with blaster carbines raised. One gestured at the Emperor's burning hulk in the center of the room.
"Found our detonation. Told you it wasn't a mortar, Kalik," one of them said. Immediately, plans needed to be restructured. Going fast and hoping to be undetected was one thing, but running openly past Enforcers wasn't high risk high reward, it was simply asking to be shot. Fortunately, Geode still had another car they had messed with to use to try and get away. The QQQ Chevalier, that ostentatious but glorious piece of machinery Geode had gotten to sink their teeth into first, hummed to life with the press of a button on Geode's remote RFID controller. KF Coils powered up, emitting a low frequency hum as they emitted a solid stream of reactionless thrust, slowly lifting the one tonne vehicle to about half a metre of the ground. The air around the coils rippled out as the KF-reaction interfered with the movement of light in the air, creating a blurring distortion around the bottom of the vehicle. Immediately, it was the centre of attention of all six Enforcers, who turned and drew up lines of fire on the vehicle.
"Alright! Get out and put your hands up!" an Enforcer yelled. The Chevalier, luckily, had dark tinted windows, meaning it wasn't immediately obvious from the outside that the car was empty. To these hapless Enforcers, this looked like a desperate criminal trying to escape. Geode nudged the control, intensifying the forward thrust to begin to accelerate the car out of the garage. Hopefully it's autopilot would allow it to lead these fools on a little chase-
It had only begun to move forward when the first shot was fired. Blaster carbine shots were quiet, just a little click of the microcompressor and whir of magnets firing, then the hiss of the plasma bolt burning the air around it. It was barely audible over the humm of the KF-coils, let alone the lasting effects of the previous explosion on Geode's eardrums. The shot blasted through the tinted window, flash melting the glass, which rippled inwards from the kinetic force of the bolt before rapidly rehardening, leaving a ripple frozen in the tinted glass. Inside, the bolt struck a headrest, setting the foam within ablaze. If the Enforcers had been truly looking carefully in this moment, they could have seen the driver's seat was empty, and caught on to Geode's ruse. The soldiers didn't give themselves time to pay attention; barely a half second after impact, three more bolts had already struck the car, melting through glass and metal finish, carving into the hovercar like it was armoured with paper and not titanium. But it was the fifth shot that first struck one of the coils. Immediately, the car tilted, no longer being able to balance perfectly horizontal with one of the sources of lift blown out. Like the coils Geode had sabotaged, a gout of flame emerged from the punctured capacitors, and seconds later, it detonated in a violent blast.
The Enforcers did not stop shooting.
Plasma bolt after plasma bolt riddled the car, increasingly engulfing it in flames and breaking apart its thrust. It tilted towards them, the coils on the opposite side still as of yet undamaged and still pushing while the one's closer to the firing line shredded, flaming, and detonating. The force of the active coils pushed the car towards the Enforcers, leading them to intensify their fire power further; soon there would be nothing left but a molten wreck. Geode vaulted up over his cover to run past them, seeing this was the moment they would be least focused. They were cutting it close; passing within about a metre and a half of the Enforcers. Once again, Geode was gambling on chaos and the low situational awareness that resulted.
Once again, that gamble paid off, the ferocious final detonation of the Chevalier's main battery forcing the Enforcers to take cover at just the right moment to allow Geode to run past. A slab of metal embedded in the wall near the door, missing Geode's head by inches. It was a quick sprint to the stairwell from here.
Inside the garage, the Enforcers looked at the multi-million dollar vehicle they had destroyed, now barely identifiable as something that had once been a car; molten lithium and white hot flames that burnt hot enough to cause some of the garage's marble flooring to melt. One of the Enforcers turned to his compatriots.
"Kalik, wasn't Officer Coppercoat's order to take these punks alive?" He asked. All eyes turned to the wreckage; it was clear nobody would have survived being inside, and the destruction had effectively hidden all evidence nobody had been there in the first place. The six stood in silence for a moment, contemplating the fate of their careers.
YOU ARE READING
Outer Olympus
Science FictionIt is ten years since the rebellion in Outer Olympus was put down by the forces of the Hyperion Hegemony. As orphans living under this cruel empire, Viola, Taroh, and Geode have had to beg, steal, and lie to make a living on board Maintenance Six, a...
