Rising Tomorrow (Roc de Chere Book 1), Mariana Morgan [epub e ink reader .TXT] 📗

slums, full of crime, exploitation and desperate families trying to protect each other. It was a rough place to survive. Many did not.

And that was the terrain Inspector Norah Bellefeuille expected Sergeant Carlotta Ingram to fly over to return one of the richest Elites back to her ostentatiously huge residence.

***

‘What the—?’ Gonzalez froze behind his desk.

Wagner was locked in his office, apparently busy, which gave Gonzalez the opportunity to watch Ingram’s flight. His instincts had told him something was off when Wagner agreed so easily to let the Elite woman depart with their only hard evidence, and now he knew what that was.

In a couple of large strides, he crossed the space to where Bellefeuille was sitting and pulled her headset off her head. With his other arm he knocked the woman unconscious before Bellefeuille even had a chance to react. Shoving the unresponsive dead weight aside, he took her chair, pulling the headset onto his own head.

‘Bandit. I repeat, bandit. Eight o’clock. Outer lanes. Distance less than two kilometres. Approaching fast.’

‘Roger!’ Ingram responded automatically, increasing her speed way past the acceptable limit. She was already above the slums, away from city traffic, so at least she didn’t have to worry about panicking civilian aircars getting in her way.

With her other hand she toggled through her traffic display options. The contact had just entered the far edge of her traffic display screen and it was indeed approaching fast. She didn’t understand how Gonzalez knew it was a bandit, but she didn’t question his assessment.

Stupid, useless junk, Ingram grated, missing dearly the state-of-the-art military aircraft she loved so much.

Of course, the primitive receiver she had at her disposal had nothing in common with the highly specialised military gadgets. The XST was not a fighter. It could fly much faster than normal traffic rules allowed, and was capable of some damn fine manoeuvres, which of course weren’t allowed in the city zone, but it was also butt-naked defenceless. And it had shit quasi-sensors.

Ingram’s brain raced. Directing her to the East Side no longer seemed odd. Virtually no traffic. Easy target acquisition. And more importantly, nothing of value to the damn Elite if they crashed, killing a few dozen Leeches in the process.

For a moment it looked as if the increased speed was enough, but then the pursuer started gaining as they realised their prey was no longer oblivious to their presence.

***

Out of the corner of his eye, Gonzalez noticed a commotion around him, but his attention never wavered from the screen. His fingers flashed on the holo-keys.

‘Ingram, it’s an XLF.’

‘Fuck.’ The word came out almost emotionless.

She had a bloody police fighter on her ass. A long-range, armed police fighter. There weren’t many of those still in service. They had constituted the primary defence of the cities during the Wars, allowing the police to defend their citizens as part of the City Air Defence Forces’ response, but in the following two decades of peace their usefulness quickly diminished. Those XLFs that developed faults were decommissioned and recycled without anyone bothering to fix them.

Every large city still had a few on standby, ready to subdue any violence that might arise from more rebellious Leeches. Usually, the XLFs were loaded with air-to-surface ballistic missiles. The missiles were very accurate, but that didn’t make the devastation any less horrific when they hit a crowd of people. The appearance of an aircraft like that above the slums usually led to panic as the Leeches tried to hide underground.

Somehow, Ingram doubted that the XLF on her ass was still carrying ballistic missiles. They would be virtually useless against an XST.

‘Mountains. Head east.’ Gonzalez’s voice was firm but calm, almost soothing.

‘I won’t make it.’

‘Dammit! You can lose him in the mountains.’

‘Not without fucking fuel!’ For just a second her voice rose as she realised the extent to which she had been set up.

Gonzalez swore under his breath. A fully topped-up XST, like the one Ingram was flying, could make it well into the mountains, and back at a squeeze. Obviously, no one had bothered to fuel it up past what was required for a leisurely flight to drop off Eloise Moretti. Or worse, Wagner had ordered Bellefeuille to drain the tank.

He gave the unconscious woman a disgusted look.

‘I’m going to land.’ Ingram’s voice was calm again despite the adrenaline coursing through her own bloodstream.

He wanted to object. To give her a better option. Anything. But he had nothing.

Something brushed against him, but his sixth sense told him it wasn’t important, so his eyes stayed glued to the screen.

‘There is a second one coming. Outside of your sensor range. Same bearing.’

‘What’s going on? What’s going on!’ Eloise was shouting so loud her voice cut through Ingram’s noise-cancelling headphones.

‘Calm!’ Ingram ordered, busy scanning the ground. ‘I can’t—’

‘Incoming!’ Gonzalez’s voice cracked in her ear. ‘Two missiles. Speed—’

Ingram didn’t consciously listen to the report. She knew she was absorbing the numbers on a subconscious level, her body adjusting and calculating. All of her conscious attention, however, was focused on finding a spot to land.

She was just about to dive, but then her resolve wavered. The lower she was to the ground, the bigger the chance of collateral damage, but she couldn’t lose the missiles in the open air. She couldn’t fire back. The only chance she had was to manoeuvre tightly around the buildings as the slower-to-turn missiles struggled to keep up, hoping that she would get lucky for long enough. A standard XLF carried eight missiles. She would have to get lucky eight times.

‘Dive!’ Gonzalez ordered, and she did, obediently responding to the voice of command, and a small part of her soul died in the process.

She was about to murder helpless Leeches to save an Elite.

‘Get me the code to the safety storage box,’ she demanded, sending the XST into a mad zigzagging pattern between the buildings. The missiles were approaching. Their signature was flashing and intermittent, and yet visible, for the XLF that fired them was an equally useless piece