Stephanie Steele
Chapter 32

Steele watched as the tail lights of Noel’s cruiser faded into the first wisps of smog above the rooftops. She figured he had one place to run. Cyber Corp. That’s where I’ll replace you, and that’s where this ends.

She twisted around and with her coat flapping in the breeze headed for her cruiser. She had no sooner got inside when she was forcefully wrenched out again. She clattered across the sidewalk and looked back to see Nixon, a mass of blonde hair plastered to her skull, her clothes dripping pool water everywhere, climb into her cruiser and start it up.

Steele picked herself up from the concrete to stop her. She’d only got to her knees when the cruiser reversed hard into her, sending her piling into the street. The cruiser took off along the road, stopped, turned and came back at speed. Steele sprang to her feet, a little shook up but no damage done. She ran to meet the fast approaching cruiser, drew her blaster and fired.

The two converged. Bullets pinged off the cruiser, the cruiser blowing up litter in its wake, Steele’s coat flapping behind her like one of Freddy’s super heroes. She holstered her blaster and dove for the onrushing cruiser. She hit it hard and caught the wing mirror, her head smashing against the side glass panel. She ignored the pain.

The cruiser swerved violently trying to shake her off. She clung on for dear life, tossed around like a rag doll.

Nixon swerved towards a parked line of cruisers. Steele’s boot caught a side mirror of one and took the mirror clean off. Steele raised a fist and began punching the side glass to try and break it. It was unbending, pissed off android proof. She hit it harder, over and over, and eventually tiny cracks appeared. More thumps and it splintered like a spider’s web.

Nixon swerved to the left in order to shake her off. Steele flipped into the air, her long leather coat threatening to smoother her, clinging on with one hand, a hand which was slipping and losing its grip. She saw a street lamp looming large in her vision and reached for the roof to pull herself closer to the vehicle. With seconds to spare Steele hauled herself onto the roof and the side mirror which had been her life saver shattered to bits as it hit the post, tiny mirror fragments showering several cruisers as they continued down the street at speed.

Now in a better position Steele rose to her feet, drew her blaster and poured a hail of bullets into the cruiser roof above where Nixon was sitting. They ricocheted in all directions, but slowly, hit after hit, they began to make a dent until one pierced the bullet proof metal.

The bullet caught Nixon in the shoulder. The shock made her swerve towards an oncoming cruiser. The other driver blasted a warning horn and she threw the cruiser back into her own lane, narrowly avoiding a collision.

The rapid change of direction threw Steele off balance and she toppled onto the road, another cruiser shot inches over the top of her. She had to turn her head sideways and flatten herself to avoid being dragged.

Steele stood up, ejected a clip from her blaster and reloaded. She holstered her blaster, watching her cruiser rise into the air. Watched, as it soared to the lower limit of sooty cloud. At this level it banked and began coming around again.

You don’t get away from me that easy, Steele thought and took off down an alley. She reached a fire escape and clattered up it two and three steps at a time, her boots pounding and shaking the structure. She reached the roof but didn’t stop. She sped across towards the other side of the tall building.

In the ten seconds it took to reach the other side she calculated the required speed, angle and trajectory of the target. She increased her speed by 1.2 percent.

Nixon relaxed and wiped wet hair from her face. She took the cruiser into a steady climb and stuck it into auto.

Steele approached the edge of the building which was six stories high but didn’t slow. Her right boot got purchase on the building edge and she jumped. Her speed carried her away from the building but she quickly began to plummet. This super hero couldn’t fly. But she could fall really well.

She landed on the cruiser roof, buckling it under her impact.

Nixon jumped. It took her a few seconds to realise what had happened, but she knew when she saw the flapping leather coat tails in her remaining side mirror.

Steele dropped to her knees and began punching at the already dented roof, trying to make a hole.

Nixon realised what she was doing, snarled, flicked into manual and pulled back on the steering handle, forcing the cruiser into a steep climb.

The change of angle created a problem for Steele. She had to cling to the roof with one hand while she continued to pound her way through ever thinning metal. One more punch saw the metal buckle and her hand shot through into the cruiser cabin. She gripped the edge of the shattered metal and peeled back a strip. It was like opening a can of sardines. Nixon looked up not believing what she was seeing.

“Nice night. Care to join me?” Steele’s hand grabbed her soggy hair and hauled her out of the seat and up through the hole. She held her over the edge, her legs kicking at dirty air. “It’s cops like you who give cops like me a bad name.” Steele hissed.

“Please Steph, he made me do it.” Nixon pleaded. “We can work this out. I love you. Please Steph.” She sounded so sincere it made Steele stop and think. “Remember the night we spent together? We can have that again. I promise.”

Steele felt her emotions trumping her logic. She did have feelings for Rachel. But it wasn’t love, it was lust. That’s all it had been, but still . . . No! Rachel was back in Freddy’s lab. This wasn’t the Rachel she’d spent all those hours of passion with. This was a Rachel she no longer knew, or cared for.

“I’m afraid I’m dumping you.” Steele told her with icy venom, starring her straight in her lovely green lying eyes.

Steele released her grip on the soggy tufts of blonde locks and Nixon fell away, desperately clutching at thin air, her eyes wide with fear.

A flailing hand grabbed Steele’s leg, pulling her foot from under her and she felt herself falling now. Her hand caught a shard of peeled back roof and she hung there, thirty stories above the ground and rising. She could do nothing but hold on. She looked down and saw that Nixon was clinging to her ankle, her weight causing the shard to cut into her hand. She felt the synth skin tearing across her palm, felt the cutting pain, but she could do nothing. And still the cruiser climbed higher, taking them ever further away from terror firma.

On the cruiser’s instrument panel a warning flashed up.

POWER FAILURE. PLEASE REBOOT SYSTEM

The cruiser slowed and stopped gaining altitude. It hung in the dense cloud for a second then gravity took it in its grasp and it began to fall back to earth. The nose turned downwards and Steele and Nixon buffeted against the cruiser, wind and dirt particles stinging their eye lenses. Steele reached for her blaster and was able to release it from the holster. Squinting into the wind she aimed at Nixon’s hand. Her own hand wavered in the slip stream, unable to fix on its target. Then they hit a smooth pocket of air and she found her aim true. The bullet hit Nixon’s hand and dislodged her grip. She fell away but only as far as the rear fender. She looked like a flag flapping in the wind.

With less weight Steele was able to haul herself up and climb into the cruiser through the hole in the roof. She slipped into the seat and pressed the re-start button. After two attempts the cruiser sprang to life and Steele fought to bring it out of a fatal nose dive. But it was slow, the controls weren’t responding fully.

The cruiser broke through the dense cloud. Buildings and lights began hurtling towards her. It began to level off but not fast enough. The ground was coming up to say hello. Steele pulled harder on the control and bit by bit the cruiser started to come out of its dive. But it was painfully slow and the ground was approaching agonisingly fast.

The cruiser swept down passed a twelve story building, passed the tenth floor where a young boy watched with mouth agape, passed the seventh floor were a couple were arguing, passed the fourth floor where washing hung from a balcony, and towards a street of busy market stalls.

Steele’s hands pulled harder than ever on the steering handle until she thought she might snap it. She gritted her teeth as the cruiser swooped passed the first floor of the building, closed her eyes slightly, bracing for impact. At this speed there’d be nothing left for Freddy to put back together. He’d be lucky if he found anything, or if he did it would be hard to separate cruiser metal from hers.

With inches to spare the cruiser levelled, bumped the hard surface of the road and bounced up a foot. People ran for their lives, tripping over each other to avoid the one tonne missile looking for a target.

She flipped the cruiser from side to side to avoid hitting people and market stalls but it wasn’t responding as it should. She hit a stall of fresh meat. Beef, pork, horse and dog meat scattered the immediate area. It looked like a bomb had gone off. The meat looking like flesh torn from bodies. She careened into the upper canopy of a flower stall, ripping the tarpaulin to shreds and sending a plume of brightly coloured plastic flowers into the air, adding floral tributes to the fallen meat casualties.

A man flung himself to the floor. A woman dropped to her knees and prayed. A droid cop took out his blaster and aimed it at the charging hulk. The cruiser took the blaster clean out of his hand as it flashed over head. A Face reader popped up in front of her and shouted, “Stephanie Steele”. The cruiser impact sent it crashing into a wall and it landed on the sidewalk in bits.

Steele struggled with the controls, stamped on the brakes. Neither were responding well. Her velocity refused to reduce. She had to get this thing out of here. She pulled back on the steering to take it up. Nothing! Shit!

Outside the cruiser Nixon was pulling herself up and over the vehicle towards the hole in the roof.

Steele saw to her horror that the street was running out. At the end and directly in her vision was a large store where pretty girls where selling themselves behind large plate glass windows, unaware that in a few seconds they’d be dead if she couldn’t do anything about it.

As she got closer Steele could see the looks on the girls’ faces. At first they just continued dancing and swaying seductively, trying to entice customers, then their motions slowed as they noticed the cruiser and the punters moving away. Still they didn’t move, just looked, understanding that the cruiser would at some point turn. Then the slow realisation that maybe this exocet was coming for them. It took their slow human brains too long to tell their human feet to move. Some made it to safety, others tripped on their high heels and only survived because their ankles gave way.

Steele turned her head away. Nixon flattened herself to the roof. The cruiser, spewing black smoke from its rear hit the largest window at sixty five miles per hour. The glass shattered, sending deadly shards into the air. Men, who had been seconds before browsing the girls, found their faces and bodies dripping with blood, glass shrapnel embedded in their soft human skin. The girls themselves were bathed in remnants of the window and found themselves cut and bleeding also, but otherwise unharmed.

Their shrieks were left behind as the cruiser pierced a path into the inner sanctum. Plush sofas, beds and sheets took a battering. More girls inside darted away to avoid certain death, their clients, some naked, hit the floor.

Nixon made it to the hole in the roof and reached inside and grabbed Steele round the throat and attempted to haul her out of the seat, reversing their earlier roles. Steele responded by pulling back on the steering handle. The cruiser lifted up and thumped into the ceiling knocking Nixon from her perch. She flew into a wall, smashing a hole in the plaster and fell, bouncing off a sofa and landing in a heap on the floor.

The cruiser continued through plaster walls, obliterating everything in sight. Steele held her nerve, hoping she wouldn’t meet a solid structure. She envisioned the cruiser concertinaing into a small lump with her inside. Instead she crashed through a wooden loading bay door, splintering it. Wood, bricks and metal spewed into the alley. Emerging from it, the cruiser, battered but still going, started to climb. Steele found the controls responding again. She pulled back on them and began an ascent, away from people, market stalls and to her relief, her death.