Children of Gravity Read online

  “Something like that.” Jenna said shortly, “Look, I won't ask you to do anything worse than you've previously done.”

  Makz nodded in agreement again, “Flattering.”

  Jenna stopped Makz as they traveled along magnetic tracks. She put her hand out across his chest, stopping him in mid-stride. Annoyed, his first thought was to snap her arm off at the shoulder, but he paused his rage for that moment. He looked at her and asked “What?” halfheartedly. Jenna put a finger to her lips to quiet him. She closed her eyes and studied the sounds, Makz looked behind them and raised an eyebrow.

  “How close?” he asked in a whisper.

  Jenna squeezed her eyes tightly shut. She was trying to discern one sound from another. She turned her head to catch the sound. “Not sure, may be nothing,” Jenna answered quietly.

  Makz took her shoulder in his right hand and guided her on. “We'd better get moving,” he stated.

  Jenna shook the noises out of her head and asked, “You don't think I'm imagining it?”

  “I trust your instincts, your senses. Kicked my ass, didn't you?” Makz said wryly as they picked up the pace along the tracks.

  “I need to log on to the UCG, if there's someone behind us, I can help better,” she said.

  Makz popped the latches in the holders for his clips. He was going to say something, then bit his tongue.

  “I can help,” Jenna said in a louder whisper.

  “I don't doubt it. Let's just get some distance between us and whoever that is,” Makz said as he tried to walk softly and quickly, “I don't enjoy the idea of fighting down here.”

  Jenna complied. They jogged along the side of the magnetic rails. The tunnel grew lighter, artificial light stretched out from ahead of them. Jenna stumbled briefly, but regained her footing. There was exposed electronic equipment everywhere. They reached the source of the light, a three-story underground tram station. The tunnel widened and the ceiling had been raised to fit several levels of trains with tunnels heading off in different directions. The station glowed emerald from a few still-working lights. Rows of turnstiles creaked along on their own; the power sources to the tram station had yet to die out. Broken glass and flickering neon sent the light around like confetti. An electric hum dulled all other noise around. Makz helped Jenna along and they sprinted to a stack of magnetic track away from the main part of the tunnel. They stopped there and crouched out of sight. Makz studied the tunnel in the direction they had run from.

  Makz laughed a bit, “Christ, there's no one there. Had me worried there.”

  Jenna breathed a relieved sigh, but her guard stayed up, “Nothing?”

  Makz stood up and pulled his riot pistol out. He put on his heat-vision sunglasses and walked out into the open, further into the station. “I'm telling you, we're alone,” and Makz's body was sent three stories in the air. It looked like he was plucked off the pavement and thrown straight up. His sunglasses floated in mid air before Jenna's eyes. She reached out went to pull them from the empty space. Jenna stopped and looked down, she was standing on a floor with a hexagonal grid of metal embedded in its surface. She cursed to herself and looked up for Makz. He had landed on the third floor with a thud.

  After a moment, Makz also cursed, and said in a plain voice, “Got a broken rib,” He moaned to himself, “Fucking anti-gravity flooring. Fat ass people couldn't walk under their own weight.”

  Jenna backed away slowly, getting clear of the faulty flooring. She knew that there could be variable gravity anywhere in the tram station. She hugged the walls and tried to find stairs to help Makz.

  Beams of light fell down the tunnel from the direction they had come. There was someone following them that had just about caught up. Makz saw this and rolled over on his side. He still had a good grip on his gun, and he checked the safety. He aimed over a railing down the tunnel. He could see the light beams scraping the insides of the tunnel, but nothing producing them yet. He tried to get to one knee, but slumped back down. The pain was surprising. It was an injury he had had before, but it was worse that time. Instead of fighting it, Makz settled into his position.

  Jenna saw the stairs, they were a few meters from her wall. The distance was covered by gravity flooring. She studied the floor and thought about making a run for it. She looked at the ceiling to see what she might potentially be flung into. The metal girders holding up the level above her were sagging badly. Solid steel i-beams were being dragged down to the floor, leaving debris all around. Jenna picked up a chunk of steel and tossed it over in the direction of the stairs. The metal shard arced through the air, and in mid-arc the steel slammed straight into the floor, embedding itself there. Running over it would not work. “Got Jupiter down here, how are you?” Jenna asked in what she hoped was a quiet enough voice.

  “Stay put and keep quiet,” Makz said.

  Jenna bit her lip and nodded. She slid along the wall to a shadowed area. She sifted around in her pack for her Outernet gear.

  Makz, lying on his good side, leveled his pistol down the dead center of the tunnel. He kept both eyes open; one looking down the gun sight, the other half-focused on the wider area. A man with a flashlight came into view, then another. Makz tracked the first man, keeping his chest centered down the gun barrel as best he could. A third man rounded the corner, then another. Makz snorted and grit his teeth. He turned the gun to the side slightly, looking into the transparent handle and counting the bullets in the clip. He looked over his shoulder and around his level of the station, all ruin and failing light. He propped his right foot against a post to try and redirect the gunfire recoil away from his rib.

  The first man stood in the middle of the tunnel and said something to his compatriots. He turned his back to Makz, who pulled the hammer back on his pistol. Makz fired the gun, missing the man and throwing an impressive cloud of dust up from the tunnel floor. The men ducked and scattered. Jenna gave a yelp. Makz shot at the rest of the men, chasing them behind cover. Makz grabbed his side and loudly groaned. Sonofabitch.

  Jenna was tangled in fiber optic cable when one of the men slid into cover near her. She didn't think he knew she was there. Slowly, Jenna put on her headset and warmed up her handheld. It would take a some long moments to log on, so she shimmied herself between the tunnel wall and a station booth. The minute space felt safe enough, but there was no escape from it. Jenna logged onto UPC's massive communications network, the Urban Communication Grid, UCG. She navigated to an Outernet portal and began gesturing in the air to hack her way in.

  One of the men tried to advance his position to somewhere closer to the station and caught a bullet in the leg for his efforts. Makz was down one clip. He watched for movement in the dark as best he could, woeful for losing his glasses. He doubted he could kill them all, but he was sure he could keep them back for a while. One of the men fired blind at Makz from cover. The bullets would have hit the short wall Makz was using for cover, but the anti-gravity flooring was strong enough to push them up and out of range.

  Jenna pushed her way past Outernet security and projected the results on her handheld. She had gained access to the virtual version of the tram station. The display showed the tram station from the upper left corner, an old vector camera was still active. She couldn't see their attackers from her vantage. Jenna superimposed the old Outernet over the current one, using the barely-working camera to update the information. One layer showed the ruins around them and the other reflected a clean tunnel station from antiquity, complete with comfortable lighting and topiary. She looked around both layers of the Outernet for more cameras to try and find the men. She used one layer to show where the cameras were in the past and one layer to show where they were at that time. A partially destroyed camera was above the tram entrance. It was working enough to display one of the men. Jenna saw a telltale tag floating by his head. It was an implant. Unfortunately, it was not something Jenna could hack into. It was simply made for tracking. She made note of the code on the tag and went looking for the art
ificial gravity data.

  Jenna's hiding place started blasting apart, dust and concrete shards flew everywhere. The light from her handheld drew the attention of the advancing men. She slid down to her knees and covered her head with her arms. The man firing at her ran up to her position. He leveled his gun at her as he slowed to a brisk walk. He held his flashlight down the barrel of his gun and bathed her in white light. He sneered and said, “Come out of there, now.”

  Jenna peeked through her arms, squinting through the light. Her handheld was by her hip, it felt like a mile away, not that she had time to use it effectively. She used the walls to help herself up. Jenna stood, half crouched, and asked the man, “Who are you, why are you following us?” She tried to make out his face and clothes, but could only see light.

  The man walked over to her, gun well-aimed, kicking debris out of the way as he moved. “Just get to your feet,” he answered hurriedly. The man shuffled along the floor slower, and winced suddenly. He raised his gun directly in sight of Jenna's head. He yelled out in pain and fired the gun involuntarily.

  She ducked down lightning-fast and put her back against the wall. The man mashed his teeth as he fought the sudden gravity. His flashlight and gun were pulling themselves to the floor. His knees buckled. He fell to the gravity flooring in an awkward pile, struggling to get air into his lungs. Jenna's eyes went wide. She scrambled for her handheld. Finding it, she thumbed through the tram station controls for some help with the anti-gravity. She didn't want to see the man crushed to death before her eyes. Not a fate she wanted for anyone. She worked as fast as she could, going through directory after directory. Everything came up red. Even if she could have found the controls in time, they were probably malfunctioning too badly to use. Jenna sat helplessly as her attacker was compressed into the floor with a sick sound that Jenna would never be able to rid herself of.

  The three remaining men in the tunnel rushed all at once, each diving for closer cover. They moved so fast that Makz couldn't aim and hit them. Makz spat and pulled himself to a seated position. He took a deep breath and pushed himself up to his knees, then feet. He stumbled over to a walkway deeper in the station. He loaded his gun and used a railing to help him along. He looked over a stair rail for Jenna, but could see no one. He decided not to call out and give away his location.

  Jenna gave up on the station logs. She sighed quickly, then went over her options. She could have hacked into Makz's implant, but wouldn't be able to communicate with him that way. She toggled back to the Outernet display on her handheld. She was able to see that the men had advanced around the far side of the station to flank Makz. She got a not-so-brilliant idea.

  Jenna maneuvered back to her original position, the one where Makz had gone sailing into the air. She moved quietly and carefully, passing the crushed man. She swallowed her fear and secured her handheld into her backpack, and tightened the backpack straps. She reached the pile of spare lengths of track around where Makz was thrown into the air and backed up. She propped her foot against the metal bars and got in a sprinting position. She took four deep breaths and ran as fast as she could, right across the faulty gravity flooring. One of the men saw her dart across the floor and fired wildly. The bullets hit open air as Jenna was thrown straight up. Her arms flailed and her legs kicked. She tried to keep her body upright and swim instead of fall. She cleared the three floors at a dizzying speed. After that, the flooring's power diminished and she stood weightless for several seconds. A curious sensation, one that she hoped to experience when not being shot at. She floated out of the flooring's range and began a stomach-turning descent. She yelped as natural gravity tugged her down to the third level where Makz was. She put her legs and arms out to slow her fall then tucked them in to land. And she did so fairly gracefully. Jenna hit the floor with both feet and one hand. She stared into the ground, panting. She looked up with shock on her face.

  Makz was in front of her. “You look like you didn't expect that to work,” he said with a smirk.

  Jenna got up and dusted herself off. “I prefer stairs,” she said, still bewildered. Gunfire once again came from below. Makz held out his arm and led her to find more cover.

  The two of them found a tunnel to the surface. It lead straight up, dropping foggy moonlight into their tunnel. An industrial elevator, but all that remained was the shaft and a broken elevator platform.

  Makz hit the ground hard, the injuries had caught up with him.

  Jenna shouted his name as she went to help him. She stopped in mid-stride, fearing it was the gravity flooring again.

  Makz shook his head, “It's me, this hurts a bit more than I prefer.”

  Jenna bit her lip and tried to help him to his feet. Makz gave a short yell of pain before truncating it as best he could. Jenna gave a shhh, for all the good it would do.

  He handed Jenna his gun. “Let me rest up a bit, I'm fine. Just shoot in that direction,” he said, gesturing backwards.

  Jenna pushed the gun back into his hand. She reached into her backpack and got her handheld ready. “That gun looks heavy, I'll end up shooting my feet. Hold still for a minute,” Jenna said with all of her attention on her handheld.

  Makz yelled, “Move!” as he fired his gun under her arm and hit one of the men. They had found their way to the third level. Jenna let out a scream and clutched her left ear, which rang loudly, “I fucking need those,” She exclaimed as she dove behind Makz's body for cover. Makz's gunfire kept the men at bay.

  Jenna typed a few commands on the screen and extended a length of tangled cable from her pack. “Old-fashioned way, no time,” she said mostly to herself. She inserted one end into her handheld and the other into Makz's data port behind his right ear. He sat up in sudden shock, mostly from her cold hands. The data connection came up on her display and she navigated to his implant. “Hold on, almost done,” Jenna said as she tapped the screen one final time.

  She kept low while he aimed his riot pistol at the men's positions. Then it hit him. A wave of dizzying euphoria. It was almost like a Pulse dose, but simpler. Whatever she had done, he felt good, great, and he loaded another clip and got on his feet immediately. He grabbed Jenna's arm and ran with her to the broken elevator. Jenna's data cable snapped loose as she was whisked away.

  The men followed in a running gun fight. Makz kept Jenna in front of him and he fired sparingly behind them, just enough to keep the men back. They reached the old platform and looked up into the stars. The surface was fifty meters up. Sheer walls along the shaft. The elevator controls installed onto the platform were dead.

  Jenna panicked as she fumbled with the dials and switches at the controls, “I can't do this, I can't turn this thing on.”

  Makz kept her body covered. He looked at the floor. “This thing has its own gravity, can you mess with that?”

  Jenna saw the gravity flooring of their platform, stomped on it, went down to her hands and knees and looked for an access panel. She found a series of cables embedded there. She ripped up a sheet of the floor covering them and looked into an array of still-working electronics. Electronics whose designs were completely foreign to her. A bullet whizzed past her ear. “I don't know how to fix it. It doesn't look like this on the Outernet,” She exclaimed.

  “Just start fucking with it,” Makz said as he glanced back.

  “Jupiter, dumb-ass,” Jenna retorted.

  Makz pushed her down as the men broke from their cover and charged. Makz slid to his belly and pistol whipped the circuit boards in the access panel. Sparks showered up. Jenna crab-walked backwards and grabbed onto a railing. Makz and Jenna felt the earth drop out from underneath them. Makz floated up quickly. Jenna was holding onto her railing, her body upended, her feet pointing into the sky.

  Makz's body started accelerating. The men tried to shoot him out of the air, but Makz fired back, hitting both in their center masses. Jenna lost her grip and shot up with Makz. They flew disconcertingly quickly towards the shaft entrance, losing control of where their li
mbs went. They flailed over to the side of the shaft, sliding up the rough concrete. Their ascent slowed, the anti-gravity began losing steam. Makz clasped onto a small indentation in the shaft that held a spotlight. He gripped it as hard as he could, using his other hand slide his gun into his waistband. Jenna tried to grab onto his shoulders, but was thrown up with greater speed, she surpassed him and slid over the top of the shaft. Jenna landed in a wide concrete lip with a thump. She turned her body and tried to reach down to Makz.

  Makz looked at her, three meters up, and laughed, “I doubt you could lift me.” Makz shouted as he hefted his body straight up with all of the strength in his arms. He reached up and grabbed the ledge as his feet found a crack in the wall to stand in. He got himself up with Jenna's help. They both could hear his broken rib shifting.

  They sat at the precipice with little breath left. Makz ran his hand over his face and ribs, relieved. Jenna was still in shock, clutching the pavement for dear life.

  “Makz, how did you know they were going to shoot at us back in the tunnel? I mean, you just started firing,” Jenna asked.

  Makz took the gun from his waistband and put it back in its holster. “And they fired back, so what,” he answered to the tunnel.

  “But they hesitated, one of them could have shot me point blank,” she said, confused.

  “Got any enemies? Besides me?”

  Jenna shook her head. She remembered the tracking tag she read from on of them. She decided to keep quiet about it. “First things first, let me see that rib,” She said, changing the subject.

  Makz lifted his shirt and displayed a new bruise forming. “It's not bad, whatever you did fixed me right up. I feel like a million credits,” Makz said thankfully.

  Jenna frowned, “All I did was block it, block the pain. Your old implant was made to keep control of your brain chemistry, I forced serotonin to the right places, you're still in pain, you just don't know it. And the more fighting and running we do, the worse your rib will get.”