Opening the throttle, Zhu flew after the leftmost motorcycle and the two partisans. He made a quick calculation and gave himself maximum thrust. That ate up jetpack-fuel at a prodigious rate. But this wasn’t an endurance flight. He had to reach the motorcycle now. It was harder flying fast, though, trickier, more prone to misjudgments.
He gained on the pair. Did they hear him? One of the riders looked back. She had long hair whipping in the wind.
It’s a woman. I don’t want to kill a woman.
The woman sitting on the back of the bike didn’t have any compunction about shooting at him. She twisted around and fired a submachine gun. It spat flame.
Zhu wasn’t worried about getting hit up here. She rode a bike over bumpy ground and he flew in the air. She’d need divine luck to shoot him down like this. He’d learned through bitter experience that the dangerous ground soldiers were those who fired deliberately while standing in one spot.
“Qiang?” Zhu asked.
“Behind you and to the left,” Qiang said.
Zhu glanced back. In the darkness, he could barely make out Qiang. The Fighter Rank had fallen far behind.
“Get high up,” Zhu said. “You’re going to watch where they go.”
“I need to give you fire support.”
“You must obey me!” Zhu shouted.
“Yes, Soldier Rank.”
Zhu glanced at his grenade launcher. It was perched on his left shoulder like a predatory eagle. He gained on the motorcycle and fired a grenade. It sailed into the darkness and exploded to their left by forty meters.
The driver never swerved. Sometimes partisans panicked, but it didn’t look like these two would. Zhu fired another grenade for good measure.
The submachine gun blazed.
Zhu grinned to himself. He zoomed lower, gaining even more speed. He was a mere thirty meters above them. He flashed over them and sped ahead.
Now the motorcycle swerved, taking a different direction.
“Talk to me, Qiang. Tell me where they’re going.” Zhu didn’t want to take his eye off the ground. This was going to get tricky. While he was this low, he didn’t want to keep looking back to see where they were.
Qiang fed him data on his targets.
Zhu made a quick judgment and roared ahead for a rough piece of ground. Eagle flyers had broken many an ankle trying this. He needed full concentration.
“Zhu, they’re heading straight for you! I think they know what you’re going to do.”
The girl must be firing the submachine gun, but Zhu wasn’t going to worry about that now. He needed concentration. You’ve trained doing this many a time. Just get it right. Get down and then worry about the combat situation.
Too many Eagle flyers tried to do two things at once. You needed to land right first. Then you could fight. Fighting while trying to land meant you would spill badly.
Zhu watched the ground rush up. He swiveled his body and applied thrust, braking himself. He dropped, braked harder, and dropped at just the right angle. Seconds later, he ran lightly across the ground. His feet blurred and he brought himself under control.
“They’re coming for you,” Qiang radioed.
“They are brave,” Zhu said.
He ran, and with a flick of his hands, he shed the jetpack. It fell, and he ran faster, lighter now. Then he dove, thudding onto the ground, skidding with his chest, using his toes to drag and brake. As he stopped, he yanked his QBZ-95 from the rack and swiveled on his stomach.
“How did you do that, Zhu?” Qiang asked. “I can’t believe it.”
Soldier Rank Zhu ignored the question. He concentrated on combat. I must fight with superior bravely against these courageous Americans.
He sighted the assault rifle, and he let the pair roar at him over the bumpy ground. The headlight wavered and the enemy gunfire quit. The woman must be switching magazines.
Deliberately, Zhu pulled the trigger. The stock shoved against his shoulder as he lay on the ground. Flame belched out of the barrel, illuminating the iron sight on the end. He began firing bursts, and in a moment, the motorcycle slid and the two Americans went down. Zhu watched. The driver stayed down, for he’d shot the partisan in the head. The woman with the flying hair got up and staggered.
Zhu hesitated. She is a woman.
The partisan looked around wildly. Zhu heard her sob. Then he shot her, and she too went down—and she stayed down.