"No prob."

As Silver unlimbered the Fuchi deck from her shoulder bag, the rest formed a protective half-circle around her. The ruins and refuse were motionless as there was no breeze to move bits of paper, no leaves to be gusted by thermals. It was like standing in a painting. All was still. Then the tiniest ripple marred the surface of the muddy pit before them. Delphia froze for only a tick before starting to angle away. "Jessie Owens," he said to them in casual tones. "Saigon bug-out."

"Who?" returned Thumbs.

"What?" said Moonfeather, not amused. "Where are you going? To drop a penny?"

"Warp speed, Mr. Sulu," Delphia said in staccato tones, moving quickly toward the dreary dossplex to their right. Suddenly, the Manhunter was in his hand.

Lowering the Mossberg, Thumbs just stared at him. "Can't you talk English, omae?"

Still moving, Delphia frowned and gestured at the ground. Out of the corner of her vision, Moonfeather saw a bubbling in the muddy water. "Eh?" she said aloud. "Where the frag could mud come from in a city built on solid rock?" Then the bulbous orange helmet of a Gunderson Corporation Jym suit broke the surface, the ork face inside smiling widely.

"Dorsey Park!" screamed Moonfeather, firing her Remington at the helmet. The barrage of pellets hit the armor suit dead on, but failed to break the faceplate. The Jym suit kept on rising, joined now by several others, their massive gauntlets holding automatic weapons wrapped in plastic.

Galvanized, Silver yanked her deck free from the keypad and hit the ground in a dive roll, then came to her feet meters away. Tucking the priceless Fuchi under one arm, she started running for all she was worth, firing her Seco pistol behind her blindly. "It's a trap!"

At her cry, several rapidfires opened up from the gaping windows of the twin plexes. Caught by the crossfire, exposed in the middle of a flat ferrocrete apron, Delphia flew backward off his feet and hit the ground limp as a ragdoll, the Manhunter dropping from his twitching fingers.

31.

The Remington boomed again, and Thumbs' Mossberg added its chattering fury to the battle as the Jym suits fired the bulky pistols and rifles in their cumbersome gauntlets. Silver cried out and clutched her shoulder, but then dropped to one knee and returned fire with her Seco. The small-caliber rounds bounced off the underwater armor like gumdrops.

Shouting City Guards came rushing out of doorways from every direction, and as they cleared the building, Delphia rose with the Predator in his hands, spraying hot lead death everywhere. The Guards tumbled back out of sight.

"Idiots," he muttered, snatching the Manhunter from the ground, while firing the Predator one-handed.

Moonfeather gestured with both hands, and one of the armor suits split apart in a series of ringing crashes, leaving the stunned norm inside wearing only his helmet. Her Remington shotgun spoke again, and this time killed.

As Thumbs frantically reloaded, he looked around for protective cover and saw none. The granite Wall was on one side, the Dome on the other, the pool ahead of them, apartment complexes behind. It was a perfect quadrangle set-up. They were trapped in a valley with snipers to the south, armor to the north. Dead meat. Hasta la bye-bye, amigos.

Thumbs began to run, screaming incoherently over his chattering Mossberg. He touched the third molar on the left side of his mouth with his tongue and accelerated to triple speed. Spreading his arms wide, he began to sweep down toward the others.

With a curse, Moonfeather ducked under his outstretched arm and he missed her. He did manage to scoop up Delphia and Silver as he charged the Jym suits waddling out of the water. Caught by surprise, several of them raised their weapons, but Thumbs had already reached the edge of the pit and leapt over the muddy water.

Even as he was airborne, a net spun toward them but did not connect. Landing heavy but still gripping Delphia and Silver, Thumbs stumbled for a moment. A shot cracked off the rocky ground near his boots. Then another, and Thumbs was sprinting again.

"You meta-motherfragger!" cried Moonfeather, watching the troll race off into the ruins. She threw a shield between herself and the snipers, but the net was already over her, pinning her arms to her sides. Struggling, she was hit by another net, a third, a fourth. The sticky strands of plas got tighter and tighter until she was barely able to breathe.

Slowly, cautiously, the Jym suits approached her, their big guns pointed steadily at her supine form. Unable to get a good deep breath, Moonfeather was reduced to unintelligible curses.

"We got one, sarge!" called out one of the Jym suits over the external speaker.

"Shoot him if he's armed!" commanded somebody.

"Unarmed!"

"Great! Don't geek 'im yet!"

Moonfeather hissed at them. "You gleebs won't be geeking anybody!" she stormed. "I'm not a pirate, you morons! I work for Gunderson Corporation, just like you."

City Guards in uniforms of ballistic cloth joined the Jym suits standing over her. Their faces showed disbelief.

"Yeah, prove it, biff," snarled an officer. "What's the password for this month?"

"I don't know the password for pirates, you hoop-wipe!" she raged at him. "I told you, I'm not a fragging pirate! I work for TGC-for Harvin himself-and you nullheads have just screwed up a major covert operation!"

"Yeah, yeah, sure, sure," said a Guard, shouldering his Mossberg. "Sing us another one, slitch."

"Let's stuff her into The Pit," said the officer, holstering his pistol. "We'll find out the truth later."

"I tell you I'm working for the Gunderson Corporation, you sexless gleeb!" Moonfeather spat at them, outraged.

"Nope, I don't think so," said the sergeant calmly as he lowered his pistol and shot her.

"Argh! Jesus and Buddah!" she screamed, trying to clutch the wound in her shoulder. The pain was like a white-hot iron shoved into her flesh. She felt dizzy and sick to her stomach. "Motherless . . ."

"And that's how you subdue a mage," the City Guard told the other soldiers.

"Think again," hissed Moonfeather. She pointed at the officer, a red shimmer briefly tinting the air and then he burst into flames.

A screaming human torch, the norm beat at his burning flesh with fiery hands. When one of the Jym suits tried to grab him, he backed away, shrieking even louder. Stumbling for the muddy pit, his fiery form almost made it when he dropped to the ground smoking and crackling. The City Guards not in Jym suits covered their mouths and pinched their noses shut.

"Ghu, the smell!"

"I'm gonna yarf."

"Slot you, witch," snarled the lieutenant, drawing her gun. The Guard fired at Moonfeather, pumping in round after round until the mage's body bristled with darts. Moonfeather felt the world spin madly round and round, and then a great warm blackness swallowed her whole.

"Narcoject," the lieutenant told the others, reloading her weapon before holstering the gun. "Take 'em alive and easy. Now you and you in the Jym suits get this biff to The Pit for interrogation."

"Yes, sir!" they chorused and lifted the norm as if she weighed nothing.

"Strip her of everything that looks like a weapon ... no, just strip her to the skin, and check inside," commanded the officer gruffly. "But don't play with her. I want her alive and sane for questioning."

"Sir, what about the sarge?" asked a Guard, swallowing hard.

The officer craned her neck to gaze at the smoking form sprawled on the ground. "Looks like his equipment is cooked. Leave it for the trash collectors." Lifting a whistle to her lips, she blew two sharp keens.

Unnoticed among a gaggle of broken and rusted-out vehicles, a wheelless wreck of a trailer truck opened its back door silently on oiled hinges. A ramp descended and technicians rolled out six sleek Hyundai OffRoader motorcycles.

The front wheels were bracketed with small-caliber machine gun ports while the fat tube of a grenade launcher protruded from the top like a unicorn horn.

"Data upload, troops," the lieutenant said, walking over to the low-slung rice-rockets. "Cars can't follow fugitives in the ruins, but these sweet roadsters can go wherever they do, and more besides." Taking the lead bike, the lieutenant climbed on and slid her sidearm into a cushioned holster under the clutch.

"Now, let's go scrag those pirates," she said, revving the electric engines to a whispery hum.

Over piles of rubble and through doorways lacking walls, Thumbs ran and ran, pushing himself to the limits of his body. He sprinted through the broken streets, gaining ground and making time. When there were obstacles, he went around, sometimes over, and occasionally underneath. Cresting a small mountain of rubble, he spied a lone figure standing in the middle of an empty lot a half a block ahead of them. Lurching off to the side, Thumbs forced himself to stop in the lee of a section of macadam tilting upward like a skateboard ramp. Releasing Delphia and Silver from his grip, he slumped to the ground, dripping with sweat, gasping for breath.

"You okay?" asked Silver, stroking his head.

Bent over double, Thumbs wheezed an affirmative while gulping air and licking dry lips. Without hesitation, Delphia pulled out a flask and offered it to the troll. Thumbs gladly accepted the tiny container and drained it in a gulp.

"S-s-s-mooth," he croaked weakly. "W-whatiz?"

"Cold coffee from the Manta," Delphia replied, pocketing the flask. "I also have a PocketDoc. Think you need a stim or a trank?"

His bare chest heaving, Thumbs waved the suggestion aside.

"What happened to Moonfeather?" asked Silver, turning to Delphia. "Did you see anything?"

"She's dead," he said, moving to watch the street through a sagging window frame with gun in hand. "I saw it in my sunglasses behind us. They shot her once, she fried the guy, then they shot her six or seven times more."

"Too bad." Silver yanked the clip from the Seco and checked the load. Satisfied, she slammed it back in. "I didn't like her, but shot six times . . . !"

"Seen . . . worse . . ." gasped Thumbs, holding his sides while trying to stand erect.

"Yeah?" she asked. "How?"

"N-netgun. Modified."

"What do you mean? Electrified? Coated with poison?" Delphia sounded interested even as he peered around the side of the macadam rise, watching for pursuit. Oddly, there was none. He didn't like that.

Taking a deep breath, Thumbs held it for a minute, then let it out slowly. "Ya know what monofilament is?" He was breathing almost normally now. "Hair-thin wires stronger than a steel I-beam and sharper than a razor?"

His companions both nodded.

"A chummer in Orlando did a run against Zeller Geo-Medical and got shot with a netgun and the net was made of monofilaments. When he tried to struggle free . . . pieces of him just kept falling off . . ." He made a face. "Madre mia, now that was nasty. The gleeb with the netgun called it a Julieanne, for some reason."

Moving to the other side of the asphalt ridge, Delphia carefully peeked out through an irregular hole in the crumbling macadam. "You flatline him?"

"Natch. But first I shot him in the knees, stole his toy, and put four of the things on him." A wolfish grin. "I enjoyed watching him die. Frag with my friends, and you're fragging with me."

"You make your own justice on the streets," said Silver, sliding her padded bag off her shoulder.

Thumbs threw her a grin. "No bounce on that, pretty lady."

"Yama," said Delphia, holding up a hand in the universal sign of stop. "Somebody is coming this way."

"Who? Where?" asked Silver, Seco at the ready.

"An elf," said Thumbs, peeking over the ragged wall. "Where'd he come from?"

"I passed him while we were running. I saw him down another street, searching among the rubble."

Dressed in utilitarian coveralls, the elf was standing in the middle of the courtyard, tall and thin like all of his race, the sides of his long blonde hair woven into decorative braids that hung from each temple in the latest Miami fashion. On his back was a plastic haversack, in one hand a wooden staff covered with living vines, and hunched on one of his shoulders was an albino ferret. Both of them were staring at a ragged piece of red cloth the elf held in his hand.

"Could be an outrider searching for us," suggested Silver. "Drek! He's got a staff!"

"Might be a mage," agreed Thumbs, easing the safety on his Mossberg. With a jerk, he realized what he had just done and snicked it off once more. "Think we should light him up?"

"We just lost a mage," said Delphia, tucking the Man-hunter into his belt holster and swinging the Predator around in front. "If he's out here, it could mean he's either hunting us, or being hunted himself." Delphia turned off the laser spotter on his chatter gun. "Let's give him a tick before we do something irreversible. Hai?"

Squat and heavy, the Mossberg CMDT leveled. "Natch." Slim and polished, the Seco did the same. "Hush," said Silver, creeping along the wall away from them. "I want to hear what he's saying."

"And to whom."

"Here is where they were killed, little one," said Emile, his senses stretched far beyond the physical limits of his meat body. The shattered visions of his dreams were clearer at this location, the anguished spirits of the long gone finally able to plead their plight to a receptive mind. "Yes, I hear you ... all of you. Twelve shamans and mages. They gathered you together to perform a great task, a . . ." He closed his eyes and tightened his hand into a white-knuckled fist around the tatter of cloth. "A masking, yes, a cloaking of some kind to hide a large cold thing."

Grand snarled and hissed.

"Yes, then Gunderson killed you." Emile grimaced sadly. "Harsh coin, indeed, for a job well done. But they shall pay for this betrayal."

What he saw next was unexpected. At first he wasn't sure whether the raven-haired norm was real or part of the visions he'd been seeing.

"More likely killed to hide the location of the item," she said, lowering the muzzle of her Seco. "The corp zapped them to hide the location of the coldframe."

Emile stared at her, watching her aura flicker and dance in the artificial lights of the immense dome.

"Yes, it is true. But how do you know this, decker?" he demanded.

"We found it out in the deeps," said a troll, coming up to join her. The male was also armed, heavily chromed, and covered with gang tattoos, yet Emile sensed no immediate danger from him. "They probably thought it was the only way to keep the location of the supercomputer secret."

"What fools," Emile said. "Three may keep a secret only if two are dead."

"They also did it to remove any mages from this place," said a norm male, stepping from behind a crumbled section of sewer pipe. This male wore a badly rumpled suit and was also armed.

"He's alone," the man said to his companions.

Annoyed, Grand chittered in response, and Emile scratched him reassuringly under the chin. "Why would they want to do that?" he asked.

"Mages carry power in their minds. They cannot be unarmed. Twelve mages . . . you did say twelve, correct? That's a fragging army in a slave society."

"Slaves, yes, I have seen that, felt that," Emile said slowly. "I must admit, I do not like this place, or those who hold it in their power."