Free The Darkness of God: Book Three of the Shadow Warrior Trilogy by Chris Bunch Page B

slot, let the drive whine to life. He lifted the craft and steered it up the ramps, toward the exit.
    A bright red heavy gravlifter was just grounding, blocking the exit, red and blue lights flashing. Firemen wearing exposure suits piled out, heavy-laden.
    Wolfe slid the drive-pot to full thrust, brought the stick up, and sent the lifter careening across the wide sidewalk onto the boulevard. A fireman saw him and barely dove out of the way.
    There were other firecraft grounding on the boulevard, and he saw someone waving. Someone aimed a gun, fired, and the bolt went somewhere Wolfe couldn’t see.
    At full power, he sent the lifter down the street, made one turn, another, then banked the craft up into the darkness and smoke as the hotel gouted fire like a torch.

CHAPTER SIX
    Wolfe held his breath and sliced through the bomb strap. Nothing happened. He pulled it away, feeling it tear at his skin like a bandage long in place. He let the bomb thump to the lifter’s floor.
    Kristin watched dully, making no attempt to stop him.
    He started to say something, rethought his words. “You’ll get over it,” he said gently. “Everybody’s Christ gets killed sooner or later.”
    “You don’t understand,” Kristin said. “It wasn’t just Athelstan — it was a whole dynasty that woman murdered. Kur — Athelstan’s aides — his best logicians — Aubyn may have destroyed us.”
    Again Wolfe held back his words.
    “That’s as may be,” he said. “A little martyrdom never hurt a good cause. But later is for mourning. Right now, we’ve got to think about our own young asses.”
    “It doesn’t matter,” Kristin said. “You can go your own way — go wherever you want. I’ll try to get off Rogan’s World somehow. Perhaps — when — if we recover, we’ll mount another operation against Aubyn for the ur-Lumina.”
    “You want to get slapped again? Knock off the defeatism. You ain’t dead till you’re dead, as the eminent grammarian said. I dragged you out of that hotel; I can drag you a few feet further. Besides, I might need somebody at my back.”
    “How do you know I won’t kill you?” Kristin asked. “I guess that’s what Athelstan and Kur would have wanted me to do.”
    “Lady, a piece of advice: stop second-guessing corpses.” Wolfe’s voice sharpened. “Now pull it together, dammit!”
    The image of that universe-encompassing “red virus” filled his mind.
    “I can’t — won’t — say why,” he went on. “But there’s no time for you to wander back to Batan and debate, oh so goddamned logically, whether you’re coming back for the Mother Stone and what color your little pink dresses ought to be.”
    Kristin took several deep breaths. “All right. What do we do? Take your thirty-fourth easiest option and run?”
    “No. Aubyn’ll be expecting that. We do what any good — if maybe suicidal — gravel-cruncher’s supposed to.”
    • • •
    “A little obfuscation here,” Wolfe said, as he grounded the lifter in an alley behind a business loudly proclaiming itself to be HJALMAR’S LIFTERS — ONLY THE BEST IN PREVIOUSLY OWNED ANTIGRAVITY DEVICES . He opened the lifter’s engine lid, located the tool compartment, and muttered under his breath when all he found was a bent screwdriver and a crescent wrench whose jaws barely met. “How are you at deactivating proximity detectors?”
    “I never learned how,” Kristin said.
    “And what
are
they teaching the young these days?” Joshua said. “Tsk.”
    He unscrewed the registration plates of his lifter and changed them for one of Hjalmar’s finest. “In case somebody happens to be alert,” he said, “I’d rather not get stopped.”
    He considered the night. The whole planet seemed focused on the still-roaring inferno seven miles distant. “Now watch and learn something,” he told Kristin. “Normally any lifter’s proximity detectors are up front. Here, just below the driving lights on the traffic side. Pop the little panel,