Chapter 26

The shoulder radio was going bonkers; Gatska couldn’t understand what any of the Corporate or Jurisdiction officers on the channel were shouting because no one was observing protocol. He tried, once, to shout back into the terminal to establish some order, but no one could hear him, either, due to the chaos. Apparently shots had been fired, and someone was pretty sure it was Alicia Mosely and an accomplice, but that’s all he could decipher before the line erupted into a frenzy of competing reports. He palmed himself on the forehead, both to center and punish himself, and turned to run back to his transport. You knew it, Vinny! This is why you trust your instincts, you rookie!

Gatska knew that there was something off about that transport that went over the side of the building. Transports didn’t go off the sides of buildings. They went up and away, not over and down. Something had told him to drop everything and follow, but no, he’d convinced himself that his luck couldn’t be that good. He had a set of tasks, he was there to complete them, and goddammit, he was going to get his work done and get back to his office before Terra Harvest or anyone else could get in the way. He was wrong, and he knew it now. His shoulder radio erupted before he could even get onto the lift and now he was running back to his transport, shouting for his driver to get ready for a pursuit.

Gatska’s driver, Krynn, opened the door and was waiting for him so that as soon as he hopped in they could take off. Thank god for competent support. Gatska dove into the vehicle, slammed the door closed behind him, and they were up and away before he could settle into his seat. “The exhaust vents, they went off the building that way, East side!” Gatska said with only marginal excitement in his tone. Inside, though, the adrenaline was building. This was big; he could feel it.

He commanded himself to be calm. He knew this could be it - this might be the break he needed, but overeagerness would only work to spoil things. Krynn followed Gatska’s directions and swept the vehicle over the side of the building. Up, over, and now down the side of the building, with Gatska scanning the traffic to find his query. It was the beginning of the work day and commercial and industrial transports zipped up and around the hovering cruiser, rocking the craft gently back and forth. Through the busy sky lanes, though, he saw it. A glint of black metallic; his heart jumped and he strained to keep himself from opening the transport door to jump down onto the suspects himself. “There! Down, now! Don’t lose them!” He yelled, gesturing over the passenger partition and up through the front windshield so that Krynn knew where to pursue.

They closed the gap eerily quick, zipping down and through several lanes of oncoming transports. Horns blared and several vehicles swung out of their lanes and off to the side of the flight lanes to avoid colliding with Gatska’s cruiser. Once through the traffic and only a few hundred feet over the suspects, Krynn slowed the Jurisdiction Cruiser to match the speed of the fleeing vehicle. Now that they were closer, Gatska realized how Krynn had caught them so quickly. There was something wrong with the fleeing vehicle. Smoke was rising from the front end, and the transport was moving much too slowly to be making a serious effort at getaway. Gatska climbed into the pilot’s cabin with Krynn and sat in the passenger seat, straining his neck for a better look.

The small vehicle, a sports transport - for flying fast and getting away from the Jurisdiction when they chase you for it - was already sinking. Gatska decided to send the finishing blow. “Krynn, hit ‘em with the jack,” he instructed. As if he’d been waiting for the order, Krynn smiled and organized his readout to send the cruiser’s payload down at the subjects. Gatska heard a rising buzz as the weapon primed and then felt a hollow kachoonk as the cruiser rocked backward. Krynn fired the grounding-jack and Gatska watched a black anvil shape descend quickly to the vehicle. A black, anvil shaped hole appeared in the front end of the transport and the vehicle started to sink to the promenade below, but not before turning down a smaller side street in one last attempt at escape.

“Don’t lose ‘em, Krynny,” Gatska encouraged, the excitement rising in his voice. We’ve come this far, wouldn’t it be embarrassing to let them get away while they were flying a broken transport. Gatska laughed. “By god, Krynn, I think we’re gonna’ get ‘em!”

“Don’t worry, detective. They’re not getting away from me,” Krynn boasted. As promised, he pulled the cruiser sharply around the corner and regained clear sight of the suspects. Except now, Gatska couldn’t quite rationalize it, but the transport looked like it was headed straight for a building. As he was trying to make sense of what his suspects were doing, it happened.

The fleeing transport dipped and crashed into a large glass building-front on the promenade level. Gatska gripped his seat and grimaced as he let out a pained groan in response to the probability of civilian deaths. The vehicle rocked gently as the shockwave rushed past them. There were people in there, you assholes! He thought. He may have just watched this turn into a mass casualty event.

“Oh shit,” Gatska and Krynn said in unison.

“Fuck me,” Gatska said dryly, hand on his forehead, eyes glued to the aftermath of the destruction he’d just witnessed. He almost couldn’t pull himself out of it; it was like he was in shock. He’d seen some shit in his time with the Jurisdiction, but it never failed to cool your blood to watch a transport crash, knowing that the occupants probably hadn’t survived. After a few seconds of silence, his instincts kicked in. Gatska turned to Krynn, finger outstretched at a clearing in the promenade between some food-stalls large enough for the transport to park temporarily. “Get some Jurisdiction backup and some emergency personnel on the way, but get me parked down there first. There’s no way they’re getting away this time.”

Without speaking and with wide eyes, Krynn swept the cruiser down and placed it neatly between the two food vendors, both of whom had suddenly closed up for the day and fled at the sight of the crash. The promenade was mostly empty, save for a few onlookers who had come out of the neighboring buildings or were sticking their heads out of their windows of the second floors. A cold wind was blowing through the street that carried the smell of burning plastics and leaking chemicals. Gatska looked at the building that his suspects had crashed into, a hotel from the looks of it, and surveyed the broken glass building-front. The entire glass pane was smashed and smoke billowed from the opening that his suspects had created.

As he ran to the building, he began noticing the sounds of the devastation. He could hear a fire flapping happily from the lobby. A hissing noise spat spitefully from the crashed transport. An infant scream-cried in protest of the chaos, its mother, who’d pulled herself from the lobby of the hotel just in time to avoid being crushed, still had glass in her hair and streaks of blood down the side of her face. She bounced her child on her hip with a dazed look on her face, staring off down the promenade at nothing in particular. She didn’t even look at Gatska when he passed, in fact he thought she might have even looked down and away from him as he tried to catch her glance. Health and Fire Services will take care of her - I’ve got bigger gears to grind, he rationalized to himself as he passed the other gathered and shocked civilians. Broken glass crunched under his shoes as he stepped over a broken wall and disappeared into the smoke of the devastated lobby.

It was hazy, but Gatska could still see clearly through the lobby to catalogue the damage. The transport had crashed squarely through the big glass storefront and landed right in the goddamn middle of the luxurious room. Several Clerk Kiosks were crushed and some furniture was sticking out from underneath the crashed transport. A fire burned merrily in the front of the transport and smoke flowed eagerly up into the ceiling area of the lobby before being carried out of the building by the pressure of the new opening that his suspects had created. A smell chemical, probably anti-freeze or some maybe a performance enhancing fuel for the car, pooled around the vehicle, soaking the carpet and upturned furniture. Miraculously, no one had been injured. A quick glance to the front of the building confirmed to Gatska that most everyone in the lobby had noticed the impending crash and somehow managed to escape, and he heard no sounds of pain and no signs of death inside.

They’re lucky that I don’t get to add manslaughter to their rap sheet, Gatska stewed. He’d already grown frustrated with his suspects because they’d been hard to catch and he’d caught some shit for their elusiveness. Now, though, they’d done some serious property damage and put innocent civilians in harm’s way. In Gatska’s mind, the mind of a seasoned detective who’d seen most everything, this begged a question: why were they trying so damn hard to get away? Sure, criminals didn’t like to be caught, but these folks had crashed into a building to get away from him - that was psychotic. There was something heavy here, he could sense it.

Careful to step around the puddle of liquid now growing around the vehicle, Gatska circled around the transport and looked in at the pilot’s seat; empty. That was some serious luck - not only had they managed to avoid injuring any innocents in the lobby, they’d both somehow gotten away unharmed. Well, not totally unharmed, he realized. There was a faint, but trackable, trail of blood. One of them had cut themselves or busted their nose in the crash and a trail of coin sized blood droplets led Gatska away from the crash and behind the main check-in desk of the lobby. He scanned the trail ahead of him and spotted a door behind the desk.

He jogged over and tried the handle; locked. In a fluid motion, he withdrew back from the door and slammed his shoulder into its weakest point, busting the thin faux-wood barrier off of its hinges and tumbling into the next room. The small windowless employee break room was empty sans a fabric couch and plastic writing desk and chair. No suspects, but he immediately regained the trail, or at least a direction to follow - the blood continued into a back room that went either into an alley behind the hotel or into a stairwell to ascend the tower, but appeared to stop after this room. The suspect must have gotten smart to the trail they were leaving. Here endeth your luck, Vinny, and beginneth your reliance on your skills.

Gatska crossed through the room and drew his sidearm. The next room over was a large atrium like space with a metal stairwell that rounded up and up and up. Interestingly, though, the steps also went down. To where, Gatska had no idea. A stairwell that went down could only be going to the level below, but inter-level hatchways were illegal, and this hotel seemed bougie enough that they’d stay away from unnecessary risks like that. He looked up and down the stairs and sighed. Looks like a coin flip, old buddy. He made his decision and moved to run up the stairs when he heard a door slam, quite a ways below him from what he could tell. He swiveled and ran down the stairs instead. The steps groaned noisily under the weight of his boots despite his efforts at stealth. He cursed under his breath; Patty had told him he’d gained a few, but now he worried that not only was she right, but that it might cost him this bust.

There were no other doors as he descended, but after 3 flights of stairs, Gatska came to the obvious bottom of the stairwell and another door. He pushed on the open-bumper and was relieved to be admitted into the next room - an industrial looking concrete hallway that turned sharply to the right after a few hundred feet. Where the fuck are we, he wondered to himself. This hallway looked like it belonged in one of the horror flicks he streamed on Saturday nights, complete with a flickering light at the end of the short passageway. He steeled himself, gripped his weapon firmly, and stepped into the hall.

The door slammed closed noisily behind him. He jumped in surprise - he thought the hydraulic swing at the top would have feather-closed the door, but as he examined the hinge, he noticed that it had been yanked apart, and that the heavy metal door had been rigged to slam closed after whoever came through it next.

One side of his mouth turned up in a suspicious grin - that was intentional. He hadn’t heard the door slam, he’d heard the Mosely girl breaking the door. He was stuck now. His senses sharpened and his adrenaline spiked; he’d stepped into a trap. As if on cue, the lights in the hallway flicked off and Gatska was engulfed in a suffocating darkness. His breath caught in surprise and felt the hackles on the back of his head raise in alert. As he pushed the panic away and regained his composure, he heard footsteps, running away, further down the hallway. It sounded like 2 people. He released the safety button from his sidearm and reached his free hand into his coat pocket to extract his hand terminal.

Terminal in hand, he activated the flashlight and observed the hallway from down the sights of his weapon. Gatska pushed himself forward, stepping carefully down the hall and around the corner. As he turned, the lights glared on and a loud noise filled the hallway, the sound of a heavy hip-hop beat with a lot of bass; it felt like his eardrums were about to burst. He fled back around the corner and fell back against the wall, bringing his hands up to cover his ears as he leaned backwards.

Whatever it was, it wasn’t going to stop - he’d have to continue onward even if it cost him some hearing. He dropped his hands from the sides of his head, cringing at the pain in his ears, and turned to round the corner again. He peaked around the corner and risked a quick flash with his light to scan the hallway. There was no one there. This must have just been another ploy to delay him. Motherfucking amateurs, Gatska thought as he rounded the corner. A real thug would try to ki- a violent explosion rocked him violently backward in a blast of heat and fire. The hallway that his suspects had fled through now collapsed in on itself, and something told Gatska that if he didn’t get the fuck out now then he might be crushed soon. Still on the ground, he looked up at the ceiling. As if it had been reading his thoughts, a crack formed in the concrete above him and dust sprinkled down onto him.

He’d definitely been badly burned, and he may have broken some ribs during his fall, but he could move, and that was good enough. He pulled himself up and began shambling to the door. His ankle didn’t seem to want to support his full weight, and he stumbled into the wallway, catching himself with a noisy clank as his gun-hand slapped against the wall to steady his balance. As he leaned against the wall, the pain shot through his entire body; he shouted at the sudden jolt. Yep, he’d definitely broken several somethings. The concrete settled noisily above him, reminding him of his bigger problem, and he felt the concrete dust powdering the top of his head and his shoulders before spattering softly against the floor.

No doubt now, Vinny old chap, this mother’s comin’ down. Using the wall as a crutch, he continued his limping shamble down the hallway and yanked the door open; only the door wouldn’t budge. Apparently, without the hydraulic aid, a user needed to pull the full weight of the door, and this metal fucker was heavy. Gatska couldn’t support himself enough to get the correct angle to pull the door without falling. He tried twice and then screamed in frustration. He chest was burning in an intense pulsing ache, and his ankle folded and sent a shockwave of anguish through his body every time he stepped wrong. I’m going to die here, aren’t I?

To Gatska’s surprise, the door swung open and the frightened face of the bloodied, shocked mother from the street looked in at him, though she’d entrusted someone else with her child for now. “Come on, sugar! The whole damn building’s comin’ down!”

Gatska staggered to his feet and limped out of the hallway as the crack in the ceiling finished its run and concrete began to chip and then tumble from above. A hand-terminal sized piece of concrete struck Gatska on the shoulder and knocked him forward and off balance, but the woman caught him and helped him to the exit of the lobby. As they reached the street, Gatska collapsed face first onto the pavement and took his first real breath in more than 10 minutes. HIs entire essence screamed in revolt of what Gatska had just put it through; smoke had burned his lungs and face and the real pain was revealing itself now. Gatska closed his eyes and felt the hard concrete against his singed face.

Then he felt it. The crowd gasped and screamed around him as he felt a deep rumble and heard another round of crashing and destruction. He didn’t have to look to know what had just happened; he’d barely made it out in time.

Gatska lay on the street and, for the first time in a long time, wished he wasn’t a cop.