Urban Renewal -19-

Urban Renewal - 19 -   by Erin Halfelven Art by Heather Rose Brown

Spartako came in low and fast, not so much riding the jetcopter as wearing it. His targeting software picked out the patrol car parked on the verge of the airport runway. The man standing beside the patrol car fit the profile for Frank LeJeune and wore Frank LeJeune's cellphone, which Spartako confirmed by ringing the cell. Still a half-mile away, the cyborg assassin twisted the tails of two incendiary rockets and sent them on their way.

Billy Blueblazes left the edge of the river just at that moment, racing up the sandy wall of the riverbed and the low hill between the water and the streets around the airport. Not even a mile away and slowing now from nearly fifteen hundred mph to about one thousand. The shockwave around him had some peculiar properties due to his flaming forcefield but there would be lots of broken windows in Marshalldale and Wenatchee today.

Spartako dived lower, under the curve of the hill, and changed heading to intercept just where Billy would reach the street. He armed his transonic missiles and prepped their target computers; for a cyborg, a matter of attention and thought. When Billy topped the rise, Spartako would release the transonic hunter-killer missiles.

East of the city and above it, Penny directed the Knight to switch from atomic jets to chemical, using the residual heat from the atomic fire to super-charge her directed flames. The golden alloys of the sixteen-foot tall Knight-body glowed with re-entry as well and internal heat pumps shed that energy into the jets, too. Lasers and masers from the robot's head beamed at the jetcopter, hoping to scramble the control signals from the cyborg to its missiles.

LeJeune dived behind his car and rolled under it, intending to come up behind the fire and rescue truck beside it.

In the Munson sedan, Tessie screeched at Leo from the backseat, "Turn here!" Leo cut the corner, almost hitting the curb, but controlling the turn onto a service road at the opposite end of the airport from everyone else.

On the runway to their left, a puddle-jumper commuter aircraft taxied toward the terminal building. Down at the end of the service road, two missiles arced out of nowhere at a parked fire truck.