“Eh kon! Eh kon!” yelled Sleet.
After winding through swerving mountain passes for a while, the road straightened out into Guzornyu city. Up ahead of them on the straight road, they saw a car.
“Does this vehicle have any built-in weapons?” asked Kite.
“No, nothing like that.” Entoryua crossed his arms and leaned back on the seat, putting his feet up on the seat in front of him. “We don’t need them, here. Our men are just that good.”
Kite stuck his gun into Entoryua’s gut. “You’d better fix that attitude, Inspector, now that you’re in our custody.”
Entoryua raised one eyebrow. “I thought I was just a guide.”
“Don’t talk back!” roared Kite. “You’d better behave, slave democrat!”
“As you wish,” Entoryua caved in, lowering his feet.
“Eh Brik!” Sleet barked.
The soldiers leaned out of the windows and started firing.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Those aren’t police! Look at those guns!”
Although the soldiers were still too far away to hit the car, they fired myriad small-caliber bullets, which exploded as they landed.
“Should we get off the main road?” proposed Undertaker.
“That would just slow us down,” said Minh. “And besides, they can track us with the equipment in those cars.”
“What about the electromagnetic wave interference?”
“The bands used for communications equipment and their detectors are completely different, you ignoramus.”
“All I’m saying is they’re going to blow us to bits if we keep going straight down this road.”
“Based on the current distance, their speed, our speed, the atmospheric pressure and temperature…” Minh calculated, “they shouldn’t be able to hit us. But then again, I’m not familiar with their guns.”
“As the resident military expert, do you have anything to say?” Jinto asked Lafiel.
“I’m no Nahenjocs expert,” Lafiel said with a slight air of disgust. “But I suggest getting your Klanyu ready. At this distance, there’s not much attenuation.”
“Any other idea, Minh?”
“We could try a smoke bomb. The old Caminteil Republic Army-issued K-2-11. Its electromagnetic wave bsorption ratio is still considered the highest in the known universe.”
“Why didn’t you use that earlier?” cried Undertaker.
“Do you know how hard it was for me to get one of these?”
“Please, let’s use it,” implored Marca.
Reluctantly, Minh extracted something resembling a canister from his bag. He threw it out the window.
“Ooh. I almost forgot about these.” Minh pulled a handful of disc-shaped objects from the satchel and scattered them on the road.
“What are those?” asked Bill.
“Perception mines.”
“How does a maniac like you get these things?” asked Bill.
“I made those. Just wait until you see them in action,” Minh said proudly. “Actually, scratch that. I hope you don’t see them in action. Keep your eyes on the road.”
“You guys never let me have any fun. We’ve achieved maximum speed, and are actually gaining ground.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Can’t you go any faster?” Sleet bellowed at his car’s driver.
Entoryua stood up for his cowering underling. “He’s going as fast as he can. This is a command car — not exactly built for high-speed pursuit. You should let one of the patrol cars take the lead.”
“Shit! Why didn’t you tell me that sooner?”
“You didn’t ask,” answered Entoryua.
Kite clubbed the inspector with the hilt of his gun.
What a jerk, thought Entoryua as he wiped the blood off his lip. True, we weren’t exactly nice to him, but we definitely never hit him.
Suddenly, there was a wall of black in front of the car, and the driver braked hard.
“Don’t slow down, it’s just a smoke bomb,” insisted Sleet.
As directed, the car plowed straight into the plume of black smoke. Thick gas rolled in through the open windows. Entoryua covered his face with his hand, trying to shield his eyes and nose from the smoke.
Pop! Pop! Although the explosions sounded like toys, the whole car sagged very suddenly to its left.
“Mines! The electromagnets on the front left side are totally kaput.”
No one really heard the driver; they were too busy shielding their ears from the ungodly sound of metal scraping along the pavement.
“Stop the car!” yelled Sleet.
“Don’t stop,” Entoryua told the driver. “Just pull over. Unless you want the cars behind us to rear-end us and cause a huge pileup.”
Following Entoryua’s directions, the driver pulled off the road and slid to a comfortably bumpy stop in the middle of a field.
However, Entoryua’s efforts to save the following cars were futile — as they entered the smoke, the mines blew apart one car’s rear electromagnet, propelling the front end into the air. The car’s velocity pushed it end over end, until it skidded to a stop on its roof. The next car in line slammed into it.
Another car came into the pileup, and another barely avoided it before hitting a mine and spinning to a stop on the side of the road.
The very last car, hearing the crazy noise, pulled off the road before entering the smoke. Soldiers and policemen crawled out of the severely damaged cars, which the police always regarded as particularly tough automobiles.
Amazingly, no one was seriously injured.
As often happened with accidents on Clasbul, the hydrogen fuel in one of the cars caught fire. The ensuing blast singed the eyebrows of all the men scrambling for cover, and the filthy smoke of burning metal mingled with that of the putrid smoke bomb.
It was enough to make Entoryua, the smokiest of smokers, cough.