The hovercraft drifted serenely over flat bubbling ooze. Lilijoy immediately demanded that Anda turn in the direction of Sinaloa territory to rescue Attaboy, insisting that she would get out and wade if he did not. Anda countered that the hovercraft was running very low on energy and would need to recharge over the next few days, if they didn’t find a settlement or source of electricity. She suggested he get out and push.

Before the conversation degraded completely, Anda had attempted to explain the need for a plan, allies and resources, while Lilijoy explained the need for Attaboy to not be captive in a cell somewhere having his brain chopped out one piece at a time. Having set out their respective conditions, both were sitting on opposite sides of the hovercraft, trying to stay out of each other’s space.

Lilijoy was alternating between reading The Lord of the Rings and learning to use her Rank Two flowers to create calmness and clarity in her thoughts. Anda sat pondering the impossible task of rescuing a prisoner held somewhere in the vast territory of the Sinaloa Clan, which stretched from the glaciers of Peru up to the snowy wastes of Northern Mexico in a band hundreds of miles wide. He was trying to think of a way to spin this to Renaissance. His organization was extremely reluctant to act for any reason. They preferred to watch and wait, hoarding their obscurity like a dragon hoards treasure.

Their quiet détente was broken by the sight of a hovercraft. Their own hovercraft had active radar, but Anda had turned that off all the way back in Manaus, as it was effectively a beacon for anyone seeking them. Due to this, they became aware of the hovercraft after it had already closed half the distance from the horizon. It was still tiny to the naked eye, but neither of them possessed such a limitation. Lilijoy noticed it first, alerted Anda, and they trained augmented vision on the craft speeding toward them. It appeared to be moving dangerously fast. The nose of the craft was elevated above the tail as it fought to maintain stability against the oncoming air, wobbling back and forth in a chaotic manner.

“It’s going too fast,” said Anda. “That driver is an idiot, or desperate.”

Neither of them could make out any passengers through the tinted canopy, but the reason for the haste became apparent shortly, as five large vehicles appeared on the horizon in pursuit. Lilijoy had never seen this particular type of craft before; they moved faster than the hovercraft, with delta shaped bodies perched on two blades that dipped toward the swamp. At this distance, Lilijoy couldn’t make out if they touched the mud or not.

Watching the pursuit unfold, Lilijoy turned to Anda. “Do you think this is a coincidence?”

“We are in the middle of hundreds of square miles of total desolation. We could never be that lucky,” he said with a grimace. “I’m handing navigation over to you. Take us at ninety degrees to their current course, and we’ll know soon enough if we are involved in this. I’m going to get out the weapons.”

Driving the hovercraft was simple enough that Lilijoy had learned to do it in about a minute a few days ago. The interface was a map with destination points, a speed control, and detailed directional control if desired. There were no physical controls that she knew about, so driving was mostly a matter of deciding where to go, how fast, and where to point. The vehicles were coming from the north, so she set their heading west (toward Attaboy) and punched it.

In this case, ‘punched it’ was more ‘placidly proceeded’. Their craft was not built for speed, and particularly not for acceleration. It was a beast of endurance though. When it had a full charge. Which it really, really didn’t. It had some method of collecting energy from the environment which Lilijoy didn’t care to understand, but it needed a few days of very low activity to top off.

As they drifted off on the new heading, Anda swore abruptly.

“You’re never going to believe who is driving the hovercraft,” he said. A look of contempt crossed his face. “Our old friend Mo is coming to visit. He just messaged me.”

“Who’s chasing him?” Lilijoy asked.

“You’re not going to believe this either. It’s Sinaloa Clan.”

“That’s perfect!” she exclaimed, looking far too pleased to Anda.

“Lilijoy, this is serious. These are bad people. Sinaloa has always been among the most vicious of the clans. They come from bloodshed and crime, and they haven’t moved far from their roots for the most part. We are going to have a hell of a fight on our hands if they decide to take us.”

“Maybe if I let them capture me, they will take me to Attaboy!” she said, already scheming.

“Do you think they would let me go with a pat on the head?” he asked. “All that would do would make you or Attaboy expendable to them. They would have no reason not to take out his brain completely if they had another sample.”

That gave her pause for a moment. As she struggled to come up with a diabolical plan suitable to ‘The Dark Lady of the Thorns’, Mo’s hovercraft veered to join their new trajectory, still gaining rapidly. The Sinaloa craft fanned out, preparing to surround and cut them off and Mo abruptly sliced into a new heading.

“I told him to veer off, or he would get a bullet,” said Anda, brandishing a complicated rectangular gun with a four barrels. “I don’t know if he led them to us by accident, or if he is working with them. We’ll know if they split.”

“Any weapons for me?” She looked at Anda with big pleading eyes.

“I think I have just the thing,” he said, handing her a black knife with a blade as long as her forearm. “Composite material. Probably not as cool as the knife you told me about though.”

If her hands hadn’t been large for her size, the handle would have been too big. As it was, it fit her hand just fine. Unlike the evil knife, it only had one sharp curving edge with a row of jagged teeth on the other side. It was light and swung fast.

“Thanks, Anda!” she chirped.

Two of the Sinaloa craft broke off to follow Mo, dropping behind them. Another was parallel to them a good distance away, getting ahead to cut them off. The other two converged from two directions.

“Lilijoy, take our speed down, keep it straight.” Anda said softly. He had created a small opening at the side of the canopy and was positioning his rifle’s barrel. He pulled up the interface for his weapon and connected it to the hovercraft’s data flow. Augmented vision skills flowing, the targeted areas of the craft were highlighted, all variables accounted, compensations fed into the weapon. He was using standard variable finned explosive rounds; the nasty ones were better saved for the ships behind him. The range was six hundred meters, and his target the size of a deck of cards, an easy shot with this tracking ammo.

The amphibious assault craft had two stabilizing pontoons ending in winglike feet, each almost a miniature hovercraft in its own right. These feet adjusted for the lift in the upper body at high speeds and assisted it at lower speeds, creating a highly efficient craft capable of high speeds and good maneuverability.

He squeezed the trigger, re-targeted and squeezed again in under a second, just as the first round struck the bottom of the left stabilizer. The second shot impacted the middle of the same stabilizer, causing the entire craft to twist sideways and drive the damaged wing-foot into the mud. The materials of these craft were highly resistant to penetration; the passenger compartment and vital mechanisms were very hardened targets. The craft, however, was not resistant to the laws of physics, and it spun once around the grounded wing before deciding to roll and cartwheel across the swamp. He winced in sympathy for the occupants. They were having a hell of a ride, followed by a very nasty swim. If they were lucky.

Lilijoy kept an eye on the two coming up from behind. They were gaining fast, only back a few hundred meters now. The flanking vehicle had just finished cartwheeling across the swamp when they opened fire. Mounted guns at the front of both assault craft tore into the top of the canopy, sending Lilijoy and Anda to the floor as the canopy deformed and shredded into strips that tore off like cloth, falling on them and blowing over the marsh.

“They’re aiming high!” yelled Anda over the numbing percussion of the impacts. Then his voice came to her internally “Show yourself for a second and see what they do.”

Understanding what he was after, she jumped up and looked back, just long enough for them to see her, then fell back down. The two enemy crafts were holding about fifty feet back, maintaining the suppressive fire. When she was visible, the fire paused ever so slightly, before beginning to walk down the canopy to keep them pinned in place.

“Oops,” Anda sent. “I thought they would be more timid.”

Lilijoy responded, “Get ready. This time I’m staying up. Let’s see how bad they want me.”

“Hold on...crap,” said Anda as Lilijoy defiantly leapt to her feet. She faced the two assault vehicles and gave them the finger with her good hand, screaming something incoherent in her high voice. She messaged Anda at the same time.

“3, 2, 1. Now!” As she counted down for Anda the gunners made the split-second decision not to shred their prize into bloody scraps, and quickly walked the guns away from her. Anda put his gun over her shoulder and fired three shots.

I never thought I would be using a twelve-year-old girl for cover, he thought as he pushed her back down with the barrel of the gun.

“Remind me to get some drones,” he sent to her.

He fell on top of her holding his gun up high, as his ammunition encountered the canopy of the right-hand vehicle. This time, he had used the nasty stuff. The bullets smacked into the material, leaving tiny cracks in the top layer and adhering. That was plenty for the bugs filling the rounds to get a foothold. His gun could fire four rounds at a time, so in a fraction of a second, twelve scratches turned into twelve holes, and a portion of the enemy's canopy began to sag and fall.

That was all he needed. He used the camera at the end of the gun barrel to fire the antipersonnel bullets from where he lay, holding continuous fire for three seconds. Dozens of bullets came out of the barrels, forming small pinwheels as the heat of their travel stripped their covers. By the time the short-range weapons had traveled to the enemy, the micro-wire bolos had expanded to several feet in diameter, filling the interior with slicing tangling threads. The threads were coated with several different fast acting neurotoxins. Hope they have good med bugs, he thought. Just not too good.

In the seconds this action took, the other vehicle approached more closely, and gained elevation to aim carefully into the body of the hovercraft. Several controlled shots made hollow phutting sounds and Anda’s body jerked with the impacts. Trapped under his body, Lilijoy screamed. The reality of the situation had just hit her. This was no simulation, and they would not be waking up a few hundred meters away if they died.

“I’m fine,” Anda’s voice sounded inside her head. “It takes a special bullet to get through my skin. One of my people’s specialties, you know. Keep, screaming, though, it sets the scene nicely.”

Lilijoy swore at him in her head while she screamed and whimpered out loud.

“Can you see what’s going on?” Anda asked.

“A little.”

“That’s better than me,” he replied. “I have to play dead for a bit. Tell Jiannu to pass me your visuals. I’m sure she’ll know what to do. I have one angle out of the rifle camera, and don’t forget we both have echolocation. Mine was getting a bit confused with all the noise, but it’s back now."

Lilijoy had almost forgotten. She focused and formed her overhead view. Her fake screams were distorting it a bit, and there were odd blind spots where the canopy still stood, but she could see that the assault vehicle was pulling up next to them. The canopy was opening, and three men were preparing to step out and into their hovercraft.

“Look at how they move,” Anda sent her. “Not smooth or controlled. These are grunts.”

“?” she sent.

“Foot soldiers. Lower Rank. We can take them. I’ll go high, you go low.”

“Very funny.”

“Two handguns and a knife. I’ve got an angle on one with a gun now. Taking a shot.”

The gun, which had fallen propped up over Lilijoy’s and Anda’s torsos, spat a few quick rounds before the recoil spun it around and onto the floor.

“Physical triggers are an affectation,” Anda sent.

Then he kicked out with both legs at the man who had hopped down behind him, missing but using the momentum to spring up from his arms, palms on either side of Lilijoy’s head. The bullets missed as well but sent all three enemies diving for cover. In the now crowded interior of the hovercraft. Lilijoy scrambled to a crouch and hurled herself onto a pair of legs, slashing with her blade. The man’s pants and flesh parted easily, though it just wasn’t the same with a knife that wasn’t so into it.

Hands scrabbled at her head, but the man had no chance as one of Anda’s feet came down on his chest, giving Lilijoy a clear shot at his femoral artery. Thanks medical skill, she thought. Anda had thrown himself backwards at one of the pistol wielders in his push off the floor, taking another shot in the back at close range. He shrugged it off as he stumbled backwards with the man caught behind him. As his foot found the place on Lilijoy’s victim, the man behind him was caught on the tattered edge of the canopy. It caused no damage, but when Anda thrust back with his hips, the man was pushed over the canopy to fall with a wet sucking sound into the muck below.

Both vehicles were traveling at a low speed, and the sounds of the man's struggles in the bubbling mud faded in seconds. The last man stood, recovered from his dive to avoid Anda’s rifle. He held a knife much like Lilijoy’s, only twice as long . He half swung it into Anda, who blocked it with his hand. The man’s eyes widened briefly, and then diverted to the side, following a fourth man who had just vaulted out of the assault craft, firing two pistols as he twisted in the air. Both shots struck Anda in the forehead directly between his eyes and flung him back onto the floor of the hovercraft, his body spasming.

Lilijoy took advantage of machete man’s distraction to push her knife up under his rib cage. One advantage of being short is good leverage, she mused. As he fell, she turned to the new figure, who had landed crouched, balanced on the back of one of the seats.

"Anda?" Lilijoy messaged.

There was a moment of stillness. The man...no, the woman, looked at Lilijoy and smiled. Then she pointed her left gun at Lilijoy and gestured to the assault craft.

Lilijoy shook her head and held her knife in front of her, listening for Anda’s heart where she stood. It was beating, so she felt a bit better. He hadn't replied though.

“Get out of here!” she yelled, frustrated by the woman’s odd smirk. The woman shook her head and holstered her guns. She languidly lowered her legs to the floor, somehow not moving her upper body.

Then the floor of the hovercraft came up to meet Lilijoy's face, and her knife hand was somehow held behind her back. Her dead arm dangled uselessly, as always, trapped under her torso uncomfortably. A voice softly sang in her ear, inflected with an accent new to her.

“Little mouse, little mouse, playtime is over. Make me happy and you can have all the pleasures this world has to offer. Make me sad, and I will cut off your arms and legs and hang you on the wall for decoration. What do you think little mouse? Shall we go to my house?” She chuckled at her rhyme, unfortunately.

Lilijoy slumped. This was the first time she had faced an opponent so much quicker than her. Even the spider hadn’t moved so fast. This woman could crush her with one arm behind her back. Even boost wouldn’t help; she was sure the woman could do something similar, not that she would need to.

She nodded her head.

“I didn’t hear that, little mouse. Should I ask one more time?”

“Yes. Yes, I’ll go with you.”

Tears of frustration welled up. She could see Anda’s still form from where she lay, couldn’t look away even if she wanted to, with her face crushed against the floor. The pressure slowly abated, and she was allowed to stand. The woman hopped up to the side of the hovercraft, where the canopy used to be, not even bothering to keep contact with Lilijoy. She gestured impatiently. Lilijoy hopped up beside her and eyed the gap between the two vehicles. The scummy surface of the swamp passed ten feet below.

She hopped across quickly and turned to face the woman, who casually hopped as well. As her foot touched the edge, Lilijoy swung her left shoulder, whipping her useless arm up to the woman’s face. The rhyming woman made a scoffing noise and grabbed it, as Lilijoy spun, impossibly, all the way around to the right, to shove her with all of her tiny weight. There was a soft crack. The woman’s face went from amused to bewildered, too horrified as she lost her balance and fell into the passing mud, still holding Lilijoy’s left arm.