"Yes, and Zarg predicts it will be unlikely they'll move him. Even if they suspect we know of this facility, moving him would delay their project. We have no way of knowing for certain if Zarg is correct in this a.s.sumption."

"One way to find out. You've got muscle, Abner. The sooner we move, the sooner it's over."

"We can't just stage a frontal a.s.sault. The risks are too great."

"I thought you said they wouldn't hurt the Bleakers."

"They wouldn't. The risk I'm speaking of is to my fellow Pilgrims. We can't start a full-blown war. It would draw too much attention. The possibility of exposure, it's too great. So far this conflict has remained underground, and that's where all of us would like it to stay."

"That's not an option anymore, Abner. If you respect life, if you don't want to see any needless deaths, then we end this now. If it ruins your conspiracy, it's a chance you'll have to take."

"I wish it were as simple as that, Mack. Do you think I hadn't already considered this? But, understand, even if I thought it was the best course of action, I answer to certain higher authorities."

"I don't."

Greenman scowled. He had teeth. Tiny, pointed white ones.

"You've put me in a very uncomfortable position, Mack. I like you, but I can't allow you to leave with the information if I can't trust you."

His eyes flashed as he lifted me into the air. He tried to play it cool, but his antennae were twitching like crazy. Seven hundred sixteen pounds of robot required plenty of telekinetic muscle.

Time to see if Lucia's inventiveness could push him over the edge. I activated the gravity clamp, and the sudden anchoring pull proved too much for Greenman. He didn't see it coming.

I slammed into the floor, and his head jerked back violently enough to fall out of his chair.

How long he'd stay down, I couldn't estimate. I had to take care of this fast. I deactivated the clamp because moving when it was on slowed me down. I tossed aside the desk and s.n.a.t.c.hed the little twerp up by his throat. Some green blood was dripping from his teeny tiny nostrils.

His eyes flashed golden. I couldn't activate my clamp fast enough and was. .h.i.t with a blast of telekinetic force. It sent me crashing across the office. I kept my grip, and Greenman came along for the ride. I fell into the model of Empire, crushing it. Another burst of invisible force threw me into the ceiling and held me there.

Knuckles charged in, not even waiting for the door to slide all the way open and punching a hole through it. Three of Greenman's biological goons came in behind him. None of them took a shot with their rayguns. Not with me clutching their boss around his neck.

I could've reactivated my clamp, but Greenman might've gotten caught between me and the floor. Despite his impressive psychic talents, he was a fragile little biological. I didn't want to kill him. Not that I cared about him, but it wouldn't serve much purpose in the long run.

Greenman's eyes flared as he increased the pressure. The ceiling cracked, threatening to give way. Then who knows how far he might push me? But as he increased his pressure, so did I. His eyes nearly popped out of his head.

"You'll break before I do," I said. "Don't make me kill you."

"You'll never get out of here functional," he said through clenched teeth.

"I wouldn't want to bet your life on it, Abner."

Greenman's antennae twitched, and we lowered gently to the floor. The goons kept their rayguns at the ready, but I wasn't too worried. There was only one guy who worried me: Grey. And I posited that if he were in the building, he'd already be here. Greenman had gotten sloppy. He'd a.s.sumed he could handle me all by himself, and he could've if not for Lucia's technological magic. I'd have to remember to thank her.

Knuckles paused, weighing his contrary directives. One: to kick my a.s.s. Two: to keep his boss from getting his neck broken.

"Order them to stand down," I said.

"You idiot," gasped Greenman. "Do you think you'll get away with this? Do you know who I am? I run this town!"

"Well, I guess that means as long as I have you by the throat, I'm king of the world." I gave him a little shake to remind him of his current position. Sure, he could throw me around the room all he wanted, but it wouldn't stop me from crushing him with a simple twitch of my servos.

"Stand down," said Greenman. "Stand down, d.a.m.n it."

Knuckles complied, though he remained at combat-ready status. The goons I ignored. If they'd had anything to tip the ratios in this equation, they'd have already used it.

"You know what I've just realized, Abner," I said. "You're full of s.h.i.t. You talk about morality, about how you care about the people of earth, but it's just talk. And yeah, you won't poison the town because that way you get to pretend you're the good guy. But you're not. I'm wondering if maybe Ringo didn't find those files by accident. Maybe you didn't have him in mind, but you knew someone would get hold of them. All you had to do was wait around for someone to find them and get the bright idea. You look away, do a p.i.s.s-poor job of trying to stop it, and when people die, you act like it's a tragedy. All of the benefits, none of the guilt."

"You don't know anything, you defective piece of-"

I squeezed his windpipe shut. Not certain of his bone density, I risked crushing his vertebrae, but I didn't give a c.r.a.p.

I went over to the reader terminal, ejected the data tube, and tucked it safely into my inside jacket pocket.

"I'm walking out of here," I said. "And if I scan anyone within ten feet of my personal s.p.a.ce . . ." I gave Greenman another little shake, to remind him of his position and because I was starting to like the way his eyes crossed after I did. "Are we clear on this?"

I loosened my fingers enough that he could squeak his reply. "You think you can just walk away." He sucked in a shallow breath. "You think I let anyone get away with this?"

"Shut up, Abner."

Abner Greenman may have been a big cog in Empire behind the scenes, but right now he was a squishy biological at my mercy. He shut up. His fish eyes narrowed, and I knew there would be consequences. But I'd deal with them later.

"I scanned a rotorcar when I came in. Teal Hornet. Who has the keydisk to that baby?"

The disk was scrounged up and given to me. Knuckles stayed at an exact eleven-foot perimeter, but he wouldn't make a move until Greenman gave the go command. And Greenman could barely breathe, much less bark orders. No one tried to stop me, and they were smart not to.

The Hornet started up without a sputter. Its three rotors roared to life. They didn't need to make that much noise, but you had to expect that from a hot rod. I retracted the landing gear, switched off the alt.i.tude regulator, and the Hornet crashed to the floor.

Greenman winced. "G.o.d d.a.m.n it, you stupid outmode. Do you know how much this car is worth?"

"A few hundred less than it was three seconds ago," I replied.

I tapped a pedal, and the car rose. I struggled to work the gearshift while keeping Greenman clutched tight.

"Not easy to fly a rotorcar with one hand," he gasped with a smug smile.

I don't know why he was smiling. It only gave me more motivation to kill him.

"I'll manage, Abner." I turned to one of the closer goons. "Open the gate."

These guys couldn't change their underwear without first checking with Greenman, and the goon looked to his boss for confirmation. Before he could get it, a low vibration rattled the entire warehouse. It grew into a rumble violent enough to topple over carefully stacked boxes.

Greenman said, "They wouldn't dare." I could tell from the way his eyes went wide like two forty-fives that they would and they had.

Lights filled the warehouse windows, bright as day, glaring and harsh. The ambient temperature began to climb at a rate of 3.6 degrees a second. The biologicals began to sweat and cough. Steam rose from their moist flesh. An oil line burst in Knuckles' neck, spraying a fountain of black liquid. Greenman's smooth emerald skin darkened and blistered.

"Get us out." He wheezed. "Get us out now."

I should've tossed him out of the Hornet, left him to burn with his boys, but I didn't. It wasn't for any other reason than it simply didn't occur to me at that moment. He was too busy dying to be much of a threat, allowing me to drop him in the pa.s.senger bucket seat and push the accelerator b.u.t.ton down as hard as I could without breaking it. The Hornet zipped forward. No time to worry about the bay door now, so I rammed through it. The rotorcar was a well-made model and with the speed behind it, we smashed our way through without a problem. It did lose a headlight though, and the windshield shattered.

I nearly plowed into a parked heavy transport. A harsh twist of the wheel and a stomp on the alt.i.tude pedal got us clear. The Hornet kissed the top of the transport, and I almost lost control. The starboard side rocked downward to a forty-three-degree angle and Greenman bounced around the interior.

Flying in Empire is no easy task. Outside of the designated civilian flying zones, the sky was an obstacle course of sweepers, automated transports, and skysc.r.a.pers. A trio of sweepers entered my flight path, and I wasn't quick enough to avoid one. I ripped through the blimp. The Hornet took a few more nicks to its finish from the gasbag frame, but was otherwise unharmed. The drone went down. The emergency countergrav system kept it from dropping from the sky.

I kept accelerating as I scanned the rearview.

There was a mothership floating over the warehouse.

It was a flying saucer the size of a city block covered in hundreds of blinking lights, making it brighter than the night sky. The real source of the brightness were three twenty-foot antennae, each crackling with power, each pointed downward at the warehouse, leaving trails of white hot electricity as they rapidly rotated around the saucer's rim.

A G.o.dd.a.m.n mothership.

It looked like the Pilgrims' underground war had come to the surface in a big way.

Greenman spit out a string of unfamiliar alien words that weren't in my dictionary banks, but I got the idea. "Those idiots. They'll ruin it all. Everything we've worked for."

The mothership's array pulsed, and the warehouse disappeared in a seething ball of green and orange fury. The explosion would've been deafening but for the luck that the saucer contained it in a forcefield to limit the collateral damage. Still, some of the roar registered at an unhealthy decibel level in my audios and left me with static for two seconds.

I brought the Hornet to a rough stop. It bucked, and Greenman banged his head against the dash. You'd think he'd figure out to put on his seatbelt by now, but since I kind of enjoyed recording him getting banged up, I didn't suggest it.

"d.a.m.n it, Megaton. Don't you know how to drive?"

"Sorry," I said. "Haven't actually gotten behind the wheel of a rotorcar before. Only read a manual to pa.s.s the written portion of my driver's test."

I expected the mothership to fly away now that it'd done its job. It didn't make much sense to leave it floating there for all the earthlings to see. They weren't the brightest bunch, but even they'd figure something was up. The saucer remained over the smoking crater.

"Get out of here, you morons," said Greenman through clenched teeth.

The Hornet's radar beeped. The words SCAN LOCK flashed across the screen in big red letters.

"Oh oh," I said.

Seven bogeys launched from the mothership in rapid succession. I zeroed in on the lead bogey. It was a sleek, cigarshaped projectile. Too small to be a manned craft. My threat a.s.sessor pegged it as a missile.

The mothership zipped away, disappearing into the sky in a flash. The seven missiles remained and continued rapidly on an intercept course. Our escape had not gone unnoticed, and we weren't about to be let off the hook that easy.

I turned the Hornet around and pushed it into overdrive, but no way a rotorcar was going to make it very far.

Greenman opened the glovebox and pushed a secret b.u.t.ton. The Hornet's propellers retracted as a rocket booster extended from the rear. An illegal skyracing mod, but I wasn't complaining at the moment.

"Punch it, Megaton."

I stabbed the accelerator. Blue fire exploded from the Hornet's booster, and the speedometer readout jumped to four hundred miles per hour and kept spinning. My reflex model kept us from crashing into anything. I zipped through a sea of skysc.r.a.pers, under an overpa.s.s, and over a skyway jam.

Radar told me the missiles were still gaining. I didn't risk taking my opticals off the sky to see how close, but the warning beep kept getting louder and faster.

"Talk to me, Abner," I said. "I need parameters. What are we up against?"

He glanced behind us. "High impact torpedo drones."

"Torpedoes? I thought you were colonists."

"We brought them for defense," he snapped. "Just in case. The galaxy can be a dangerous place."

"Can we lose them?"

"Doubtful. Their tracking systems are practically infallible, and their tachyon drives make them twice as maneuverable."

I made a sharp right to avoid a transport convoy.

The radar squealed.

"Activating countermeasures." A secret panel slid down in front of Greenman's seat, and he threw a switch. The Hornet launched a decoy drone. The torpedo veered off at the last seven-tenths of a second, close enough for me to detect its angry buzz, and chased after the decoy. It exploded, and the shock wave nearly threw the Hornet out of my control.

"Pays to be prepared," said Greenman.

My a.s.sessor measured the concussive force unleashed and warned that a direct hit would pose a significant risk to my internals.

"How many more decoys do we have?" I asked.

"Three."

The radar did that squeal again as two more torpedoes closed in. Greenman threw them off with another decoy. They veered away after it, but these two were smarter than the last and quickly calculated it wasn't their target. They zipped back in pursuit.

"d.a.m.n it, Mack," he said. "We're not going to last long if you keep letting them get a lock on us."

"You want to drive?" I asked.

"I don't know how."

I pushed the Hornet into a hard dive. It was a dumb, reckless move, since the lower you went, the more crowded the skies became. I was hoping it would flummox the torpedoes' tracking systems, but they didn't even slow down. The Pilgrims hadn't seen fit to share tachyon drive technology with the earthlings. The torpedoes could turn at any angle without loss of speed or maneuverability.

"You don't know how to drive?" I asked.

"I'm a very important man," said Greenman. "I don't have to drive myself anywhere. Stick closer to the buildings or they'll get another lock."

I was learning as I went, and doing a pretty good job of it. But I wasn't designed with piloting in mind, and whoever had made the steering wheel hadn't considered an operator with an eight-inch palm span. The radar was making an unhappy presqueal again.

I banked sharply into a skysc.r.a.per, waiting a full three-fifths of a second longer than my difference engine advised before averting to a parallel course. The radar made a happy ping.

"Better, Mack."

"I learn fast," I said.

By devoting a hefty portion of my attention to navigation, I was able to zig and zag through the skies with precision. There were seventeen near misses with fellow commuters, and I traded paint with a transport. But I managed not to crash and burn. The drones on my tail weren't easily discouraged though, and they were drawing steadily closer. Twice more, they nearly scored, but Greenman's final two decoys threw them off. One torpedo fell for the drone and exploded. The other didn't. We had no more decoys and five torpedoes left.

"Give me options, Abner," I said.

"Options? We die now. That's our option."