Dark Matters - Michelle Diener Page 0,1
the controls seemed the same as the game. Rool had told her when he'd first introduced her to the game that playing it was just like driving the real thing.
She maneuvered through the parked hovers in her way, and then drove straight for the closed door that was surely the exit, and when she got close enough it started to open. She eased back on the throttle, trying to make as little noise as possible, drifting forward as the hinged door swung up. Just when there was enough space to fit through, she heard a sound behind her and glanced back.
Four Tecran--strangers to her--burst through the door from the corridor, weapons in their hands.
She faced forward again, panic making her heart leap in her chest, and punched the accelerator.
She shot out into a cold, foggy night, the acceleration forcing her back in her seat.
The road from the garage was short, ending abruptly in a T junction and stretching left and right. She heard shouting behind her and she was about to choose a direction, her hands uncertain on the controls, when something hot sliced past her cheek on the left, then another close to her hip on the right, forcing her to continue on straight, over the rough ground beyond the road's end.
She caught the sudden flash of rock and bush below the hover, and then she was suddenly airborne, a bank of fog blocking any view of what lay ahead.
The hover dropped.
She screamed, the sound wrenched from her as she went into free fall.
The wind snatched the scream from her mouth, making her breathless, and then suddenly she was through the fog bank, below it, and the hover's lights, as well as lights that came from somewhere to the right, showed her just what was happening.
She was falling down the side of a cliff toward the sea below.
She couldn't scream again, the sound frozen in her throat as she dropped, as she realized the height of the fall. She blinked watery eyes to make out the rough waves surging below her.
Self-preservation suddenly kicked in.
She knew what to do!
Knew from the racing game she'd played at the facility that the hover needed the ground to be at least five meters below it to fly.
She had to strap in--snap out of her confusion and fear, and strap the fuck in.
She fumbled for the buttons, and the straps shot out, securing her in the seat, and then, with the foam of the waves close enough to blow up to catch on her slippers, she turned the hover hard right, swinging her body to tip it ninety degrees onto its side.
Gravity pulled at her, almost wrenching her hands from the controls, and foam flecked her hair and her cheeks. Suddenly she was driving sideways, using the cliff face as the ground to hold up her hover.
Rool and Ziller had shown her this trick right at the start of her introduction to the game and they'd laughed when she'd used it to win against some of the other scientists.
She felt the hover stabilize, speed up, and she punched the accelerator as hard as she could.
Behind her, she heard a massive boom, and red and orange light filtered through the fog above her.
The facility.
She almost lost her grip, almost plowed into the cliff face she was skimming, and the jerk of the hover jolted her back.
She'd wished herself free of that place many times, and she'd had an uncomfortable relationship with the scientists and doctors who had kept her there.
But tonight it seemed they'd sacrificed themselves to get her free. Although free from what was still something she didn't understand.
Chapter 2
Bane eavesdropped in on the first full meeting of the heads of the United Council team headed for Tecra. They were sitting around a large table in a conference room on the sleek spaceship Urna, and they were not a cohesive group.
They had spent the first few days of the journey talking to their own people, organizing their staff and getting to know one another.
This meeting was the first time the leaders were gathered together and he found the interplay of diplomacy and strategy fascinating.
Some were pleased by Bane's presence, as he paced beside the Urna in convoy with them, while others feared or despised him. The conversation, instead of being about the trouble ahead of them all in Tecra, circled back around to the need for him to accompany the Urna, and the resentment from some of the group that the Grih had gotten