The Kestrel was surprisingly quiet given the amount of technology it ca with.
Luca had each of the sliding doors open. The desert air rushed past, cool and clean. At five hundred feet, the temperature had dropped into the low fifties, but the expedition suit kept him comfortable. He flew with one hand on the yoke, the other resting on his thigh, watching the dark expanse scroll past below.
The TL9 flier practically flew itself. Magnetic pulse drive and inertial dampening, plus a terrain-following autopilot that could navigate a canyon at five hundred knots without human input. The hundred-million-credit price tag bought a lot of engineering, and most of it was designed to make the pilot's job almost unnecessary.
Which ant Luca could focus on more important things.
"Like this," he said, guiding Emily's hands on the secondary controls. "Feel how it responds?"
She sat in the copilot's seat, leaning slightly toward him, her fingers light on the yoke. The Kestrel banked gently left, responding to her input with a smoothness that made the maneuver feel effortless.
"It's so sensitive," she said. "Barely have to touch it."
"That's the point. The flight systems anticipate what you want. You think left, it's already turning."
Her hands shifted under his, adjusting the pitch. The vertol climbed slightly, then leveled out. She was a quick learner. Always had been.
"Got it," she said, and he could hear the smile in her voice.
He let his hands linger on hers a mont longer as the night air stread through the open cabin, carrying the vast quiet of the desert. Stars were blazing overhead, undimd by city lights.
Ryan was in the back with Joey, the two Roadrunner hoverbikes secured in the cargo area behind them. The rest of their gear filled every available space.
"AZ-86 West," Emily said, adjusting their heading. "Fifty miles to the managent boundary."
The highway cut a pale line through the darkness below, empty at this hour. Two-forty in the morning. Even the trucks had stopped running.
Luca pulled up the regional map on his tablet. The Sonoran Desert Portal Managent Zone covered the entire desert, over a hundred thousand square miles stretching from Phoenix down through what used to be the xican states of Sonora and Baja California. One of the largest managed zones in North Arica. Dozens of active portals, most of them low-level, scattered across the territory.
"There." Ryan pointed through the cockpit glass.
A large digital board glowed on the roadside ahead, its bright lights illuminating the roadway.
Emily brought them lower.
The sign listed six active portals in the Arizona Upland Subregion, operated by Ironwood Expeditions. Classes ranged from 12 to 31. Most showed Stable. One was Full, another Unstable. Nothing Critical or Overflow. That was good.
"Ironwood Expeditions," Ryan said. "Never heard of them."
" neither." Emily pulled up sothing on her tablet. "Looks like the regional outfit that runs this zone. Desert Sparks probably works under them."
Desert Sparks should be working further south, in the Organ Pipe area near the old border with xico.
"Set us down," he said. "Ti to unload the bikes."
Emily set them down on the highway. The Kestrel touched down without so much as a bump, the landing struts settling onto the asphalt.
The survival suit he was wearing was designed for this, easy to layer over whatever you were wearing. With built-in water reclamation and temperature regulation, it must have been designed for survival in environnts that would kill you in hours. Probably overkill for the Sonoran in March, but Luca wasn't complaining.
Emily zipped hers up and rolled her shoulders. "These are nice."
"Forty-five thousand credits, nice," Ryan said, tugging at his collar. "I feel like I'm wearing a sports car."
Joey didn't say a word. He just checked each seal on their suits, one by one, then moved on to his triage shell.
Luca clipped his Tomahawk to his hip. His armor was back in the stasis case with the rest of their combat gear, but the Tomahawk went where he went.
The rear cargo door opened with a hydraulic hiss, and Ryan started hauling the first Roadrunner down the ramp, grunting as he lifted it clear and set it upright on the asphalt. The hoverbikes were gorgeous machines, sleek and angular, finished in matte sand with cream accents. The desert variant, according to the store.
Luca grabbed the second bike and did the sa. The Roadrunner was lighter than he expected, maybe two hundred pounds despite its size. Just batteries, repulsors, and a fra designed to go very fast while looking extrely cool.
The tactical goggles ca next. He settled them over his eyes, and the desert snapped into focus. Low-light amplification with thermal overlay and adjustable zoom. Civilian gear, not military, but good enough to see a rattlesnake from fifty ters.
"You look ridiculous," Emily said.
Luca pushed the goggles up onto his forehead and looked at her instead. Really looked. She'd pulled her blonde hair into a high ponytail, tight and practical, the way she always did before a mission. The expedition suit fit her perfectly, hugging her shoulders and waist, the matte material catching the glow from the digital sign. Her eyes reflected the light, green and gold.
"I look aweso and so do you," he said.
She blinked. Her mouth opened, then closed again.
A flush crept up her neck. She turned away, suddenly very interested in adjusting her own goggles. "Shut up and mount your bike."
He grinned. So victories were worth savoring.
Ryan had already mounted his Roadrunner. He thumbed the ignition and the bike humd to life, lifting six inches off the ground on a cushion of magnetic force. No noise. No vibration. Just a faint blue glow from the repulsor nodes beneath the chassis.
"Oh, this is going to be fun," Ryan said.
Luca swung a leg over his own bike. The seat was surprisingly comfortable. The handlebars curved naturally toward his grip. A heads-up display flickered to life on the inside of his goggles, feeding him speed, heading, battery level, and a dozen other trics.
"Emily, Joey, take the Kestrel toward Ajo," he said. "Ryan and I will sweep the highway, see if we can spot any teams working late."
Emily slid into the pilot's seat. She caught his eye through the open door.
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"Be careful out there."
"Always."
She held his gaze a mont longer. Then Joey was strapping in beside her and the mont was over.
"Comms check," Emily said through his earpiece.
"Loud and clear."
The Kestrel lifted off, and Luca watched it bank west toward Ajo until the running lights disappeared against the stars.
The Roadrunner wanted to fly.
Luca twisted the throttle and the bike surged forward, acceleration pressing him back in the seat. The desert blurred past. Fifty miles per hour. Eighty. A hundred. The wind should have been tearing at his face, but the expedition suit's hood had created so kind of aerodynamic shell that kept the airflow manageable.
They should have bought helts. The thought arrived sowhere around ninety miles per hour and stayed. The suit was great, the goggles were great, but there was nothing between his skull and whatever he might hit except faith in TL9 engineering and his own reflexes.
Totally worth it.
Ryan pulled alongside him, whooping into the comms, his bike a dark shape against the darker desert. They had AZ-86 all to themselves, the asphalt stretching straight and empty into the night. No cars, no trucks, no signs of human activity at all. Just two idiots from New Hampshire screaming down the highway on hoverbikes that cost more than most people's houses.
This was what seven hundred thousand credits felt like. The acceleration was instant, the handling impossibly smooth. Every bump and dip in the terrain just vanished, the mag-lev suspension eating the landscape without complaint. Luca had ridden dirt bikes on the trails outside Sandworth, but this was sothing else entirely. This was the future, and the future was stupid fast.
Saguaro cacti dotted the landscape, their shapes strange and alien against the sky. The goggles picked out details the naked eye would miss: animal tracks crisscrossing the sand, heat signatures moving through the scrub.
A shape moved in his peripheral vision. His Perception caught it before the goggles did, that familiar tingle at the edge of awareness that said sothing's there.
He slowed, dropping to thirty miles per hour, and the goggles zood in automatically. A massive lizard, ten feet long with mottled scales that shifted between tan and rust, scrambling across the hardpack on muscular legs.
"Ryan. You plug in your Multitool?"
"Always."
A pause, then Ryan's scanner pinged. The data populated on Luca's HUD a mont later.
[Gila Prowler - Level 12]
The creature's head snapped toward them. It broke into a run, surprisingly fast for sothing that size, legs churning across the hardpack. Before it could close the distance, sothing else moved. A blur of tawny fur launched from the rocks above.
[Mountain Lion - Level 22]
The cat hit the lizard like a freight train, claws punching through scales. The Gila Prowler thrashed, tail whipping, but the lion had already torn out its throat. Three seconds, and the fight was over.
The lizard's corpse dissolved into black dust that scattered in the wind. The mountain lion stared at the empty space where its al had been, then sat down like it didn't know what to do with itself.
"Holy shit," Ryan said.
"Rember when level 12 was scary?" Luca asked.
"I rember when level 5 was scary."
"Simpler tis."
The highway curved north, past the abandoned settlent of Why, following the contours of the terrain. Luca spotted the first signs of Ajo ahead: a water tower, a cluster of buildings, the faint glow of streetlights. A small town in the middle of nowhere.
"Luca." Emily's voice ca over his earpiece. "We have a problem."
Luca brought the Roadrunner to a stop at the edge of the parking lot, Ryan pulling up beside him. Fifty people, maybe sixty, milled around the low concrete building that served as the UER's satellite field office for this sector. Most wore armor and held energy weapons. These were low-level delvers who had been staying at the Ironwood Expeditions hostel down the road. Kids, mostly. Sixteen, seventeen years old. They'd co here to grind the desert portals, build their levels, maybe make so credits. Now they were staring at the digital display mounted on the building's facade.
[SONORAN DESERT PORTAL MANAGENT ZONE]
Organ Pipe Cactus Subregion
Operated by Ironwood Expeditions
ERGENCY ALERT
ACTIVE PORTAL STATUS:
OP-103 > Class 29 > STABLE
OP-107 > Class 15 > OVERFLOW
OP-112 > Class 22 > STABLE
OP-118 > Class 18 > FULL
OP-124 > Class 12 > STABLE
OP-131 > Class 31 > CRITICAL
Last Updated: 02:31 MST
One portal in Overflow. A second, the Class 31, showing Critical. Both south of Ajo, deep in territory that should have been routine.
Luca stared at the display. A managed zone shouldn't have overflows. Sothing had gone wrong.
And if OP-131 blew while they were dealing with the first overflow...
The Kestrel sat on the road beside the field office, Emily and Joey already out and moving toward the building. Luca dismounted and pushed through the crowd.
People recognized him. Of course they did. The UER had plastered their faces across every news feed on the planet. He heard his na passed from mouth to mouth as he pushed forward. That's the captain. The kid who went to Alpha Centauri.
He ignored them. Pushed through to the field office doors.
Inside was chaos. Three UER officers in desert fatigues worked the communications station, fielding calls and updating displays. A fourth stood at the main screen, shouting into a radio.
"... negative, we do not have assets in position. Repeat, comms are down across the southern sector. Last ping from Desert Sparks was OP-107 at 01:47..."
Luca's stomach dropped.
Emily appeared at his shoulder. The officer at the main console turned. His na tag read VASQUEZ. His expression read I don't have ti for this.
"Triumph Initiative?" He looked them over, recognition flickering across his face. "Look, I don't know why you're here, but you need to leave. We're evacuating the town."
"We saw the board outside," Luca said. "You have a portal in Overflow. What's the situation?"
Vasquez hesitated. "OP-107 went Overflow about forty minutes ago," he said. "We don't know why. It was on schedule, last cleared three days ago. Shouldn't have had the buildup for this."
"How many teams are in the field?"
Vasquez pulled up a roster on his tablet. "Too many. Desert Sparks was running escort for a group of six delvers at OP-107 when it blew. A grinding team from Yuma was working the eastern flats. Two solo hunters running contracts near the border. And a group of kids from the hostel who went out to farm levels this morning." He shook his head. "Nobody expected this. We can't raise any of them."
"Interference from the portal energy?" Ryan asked.
"Most likely. The whole area's a dead zone right now. Can't raise anyone south of the managent boundary."
"What's the response?"
"Air support from Luke and ground teams from Yuma Proving Ground are en route. ETA ninety minutes." Vasquez's jaw tightened. "Until then, I'm declaring the region off-limits. No entry, no exceptions. We're evacuating Ajo as a precaution."
Luca did the math. Volu mattered, and every minute made it worse.
And Desert Sparks was out there protecting delvers who probably couldn't handle a Class 15 on a good day. Plus the grinding team. The solo hunters. The hostel kids.
"Where exactly?" Luca asked.
Vasquez pulled up a map. Three red dots pulsed south of Ajo, clustered within a ten-mile radius. A fourth dot, orange and blinking, sat at the center: OP-131, the Class 31 on Critical.
"Here. About forty-five miles south, in the Agua Dulce foothills near the old border. Desert Sparks' last known position was near OP-107." He pointed to the easternmost red dot, then traced his finger down the portal registry. "That's a Class 15. Four-hour delve for a team that size. They should have been done by oh-one-hundred. Desert Sparks would have been holding the periter outside."
The crowd outside was growing. Luca could hear vehicles pulling into the parking lot, voices raised in confusion and fear.
He looked at Emily. She looked back. Neither of them said anything.
Vasquez stepped forward. "I said off-limits. No exceptions."
"We heard you," Luca said.
"Then you understand I can't authorize..."
"You don't have to authorize anything." Luca t his eyes. "We're not asking permission."
He walked out before Vasquez could respond.
A klaxon blared from speakers mounted on the field office roof. The crowd flinched. Then a recorded voice, calm and chanical:
"Attention. Mandatory evacuation order for Ajo and surrounding areas. All residents and visitors must proceed north on Highway 85 imdiately. This is not a drill. Repeat: mandatory evacuation order in effect."
The crowd parted around him, whispers turning to murmurs, murmurs to shouts. Soone had a cara. Soone always had a cara.
A guy pushed through the crowd. Maybe nineteen, armored vest over a hoodie, eyes red-rimd. "My sister's out there. She went with the hostel group this morning."
Luca stopped.
"We're coming with you," the guy said. Behind him, more figures were already moving toward the armored trucks parked along the street.
Vasquez appeared in the doorway. For a mont, Luca thought he might try to stop them. But the officer just stood there, watching, his expression caught sowhere between frustration and sothing that might have been hope.
Vasquez's jaw worked like he was chewing protocol to pieces. Then he looked past Luca, at the kids outside, and exhaled. "Desert Sparks' beacon frequency is 147.3… If you can get close enough, you might be able to raise them."
The Roadrunner humd to life beneath him. Ryan mounted the second bike. Emily and Joey were already climbing into the Kestrel, the vertol's engines spinning up with that characteristic magnetic whine.
Behind them, engines rumbled. Two armored trucks pulled out of the parking lot, headlights cutting through the darkness. The guy with the missing sister was in the lead vehicle, leaning forward in the passenger seat like he could will it to go faster.
Luca nodded to them. Twisted the throttle.
The Roadrunner shot forward into the darkness, a convoy forming behind him. Sowhere behind them, the thrum of rotors cut through the night. A wing of Apaches, running lights blinking, thundered overhead toward the southwest.
The cavalry was coming. But Luca wasn't waiting.
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