Free Edward by Marcus LaGrone Page B

a two wheel drive or he was sure he
would have been thrown off the back.  Instead, he was merely hanging on
for dear life.  And here he had thought orbital insertions were a rough
ride!  At least there he was in a capsule to protect him and they were
flying in a ballistic arc.  Here the wind was buffeting him directly and
they were zigging back and forth at a furious rate.
    Something caught Edward's eye.  Something
small from the back of the other motorcycle.   “Grenade!”
screamed Edward.
    Zoë swerved the bike over to the median and with a careful
flick of the wrist tweaked the commands to the airfoils in the wheels and
suddenly the entire bike briefly went airborne, hopping the dividing
barrier.  They now had a concrete barrier between them and the
grenade.  They were now also going the wrong way in traffic!  Zoë
kept the bike glued to the narrow shoulder while vehicles blew past them a
whisker’s width away.  A flash and crack announced the detonation of the
grenade, and Zoë repeated the hop back over the median.  Not only had they
avoided the grenade, they had also closed ground!
    “200 meters and closing,” called out Edward.
    “We have you both on traffic control.  The locals are
hard pressed to get ground assets in front of you.  Gunship will be
airborne in less than five minutes.”
    “Where could they be going?  They would have to expect
to be picked up on traffic cameras.”
    “The old ship docks,” interjected Zoë.  “Very few
cameras and the sats can't track well in the concrete jungles.  That is
where they have all the motorcycle races.”
    “You catch that Trevor?”
    “Yes.  The locals confirm that as a reasonable
local.  Diverting ground assets there now.”
    “They saw us again!”
    Sure enough the other bike started to try and pull away again
weaving aggressively through the late morning traffic.  Zoë growled and
her bike hummed as they rocketed after them deftly dodging the other
commuters.  Zoë had the more powerful bike, that
was showing.  She also had the least experienced passenger,
that too was showing!   But Edward wasn't going let himself be
the stumbling block.
    “If I jump off the bike sideways, will it knock you off
balance?” asked Edward.
    “If I know you are going to do it, I can lean the bike into
it.  No problem,” replied Zoë.  “Are you sure you want to jump off at
180 kilometers per hour?”
    “You worry about getting close enough that I can
jump.  I'll worry about how fast we are going.”
    “I'm going to pull up hard to the side of them.  I'm
going to expect you to jump.  If you don't, we'll ram them and it'll be
bad for all of us.”
    “Understood.”
    Zoë opened up the throttle all the way again and Edward
found his claws sinking deep into her driving suit.  He'd probably need to
buy her a new one when this was over.   They scraped the airfoils as
they threaded between a pair of vehicles and briefly pulled ahead of their
prey.  Zoë then snapped the steering and brakes and sent them careening
toward the other bike.  At the last second, Edward raised his Live Steel
armor in a blue shower of sparks and jumped off Zoë’s bike, slamming sideways
into the two on the back of the other bike.  He desperately grabbed hold
of both of them as he felt his armor extend around them.  Good. 
Otherwise they weren't going to survive the fall. 
    Falling sideways off a motorcycle is never a graceful
thing.  Doing it at 200 km/h is even less so.  Fortunately for those
involved, Edward's armor cocooned them all as they
bounced off the pavement, through a street sign, a billboard, over an
embankment and into a lamppost.  When the three of them at last came to a
stop, the other two seemed more amazed at their lack of injuries than
anything else.  Tickled pink to have his quarry, Edward, winked in a pair
of Live Steel swords and kept his prisoners in place as he waited for the
police to arrive.
     

10 
     
     
    As per protocol for a