Deus Ex: Black Light by James Swallow Read Free Book Online Page A

rebar struck the drone with enough force to dislocate one of its rotors, and it plummeted into a crash spiral.
    More shots cracked at Jensen’s heels – lethal flechette rounds now – as the guards came through their improvised exit. Stacks was already pulling away, the pick-up’s wheels spitting ice and rainwater as he slewed it around toward the highway.
    “Come on!” he bellowed. “Run, damn it!”
    Jensen broke into a sprint and leapt the last half-meter to the tailgate, scrambling aboard as other loose items spilled out on to the road. “Gun it!” he shouted back, as a round cracked against the bodywork.
    “Oh yeah,” Stacks called back, stepping on the gas pedal and aiming the truck into the wall of rain. “Let’s make those bastards work for it!”
    * * *
    The service track from Facility 451 joined a road that crossed the peninsula, and from Stacks’s reading of the pick-up’s sat-nav screen, it connected up to a bigger interstate freeway a few miles further on.
    Jensen slipped into the cab alongside him and confirmed what he already suspected. The pick-up had only local tags, and no clearance for interstate travel, which meant the moment they took to the freeway, police drones would be scrambled to intercept them.
    “That’s gonna happen no matter what,” said Stacks. “Odds are, our pals back at the ranch are calling the State Troopers right now with a description of these wheels.”
    Jensen shook his head. “I don’t think so. I know how these people work. Thorne’s gonna use her own assets to come after us first. Locals will be a last resort.”
    Stacks shot him a look. “
These people
?” he echoed. “Ain’t that the World Health Organization you’re talking about? You make ’em sound like the, what, the CIA.”
    “You just spent eighteen months being held prisoner by them,” Jensen shot back. “You tell me.”
    “Fair point…” Stacks conceded. “Shit. This is all fucked up.”
    “No argument here.” Jensen leaned over the sat-nav screen, scrolling around the map. “Look, there’s an automated service station where the roads link up. Head there. We’ll ditch this thing, find another vehicle.”
    Stacks scowled. “Hate to break it to you, brother, but if you and me ain’t the only humans within fifty miles of that, I’d owe you a buck. Nothing but them goddamn big-ass robo-trucks run up and down this stretch of road, from Anchorage down to the border or back to the oil wells. Alla that acid rain and everything, Alaska don’t get tourists no more. Towns round here are dead and gone.”
    “I know,” said Jensen. “And I got a way we can use that. We get on board one of those automated rigs, we can ride it down to Juneau, get a connection back to the States. Put as much distance as we can between us and Facility four-five-one.”
    “I hear you,” Stacks said, with feeling. “But you forgetting, those mechs have killer security, yeah? Don’t take no hitch-hikers.”
    “Yeah.” Jensen ran a hand over the hexagonal plate above his right eye, bringing another of his augmentations back to life. “I know a guy who can help us with that.”
SOLDOTNA STATION – ALASKA – UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
    As Stacks predicted, the auto-station was utterly devoid of human life, and likely had been for a long time. A few faceless tanker trucks emblazoned with corporate logos, their prows bristling with antennae and sensor palps, filled machine-controlled refueling bays where spidery crane arms fed power umbilicals into waiting slots on their flanks. Jensen watched one of them finish topping up the charge in its massive batteries, and detach itself with a surge of movement. The robotic vehicle cruised past him toward the freeway on-ramp, infrared running lights flicking on. A shocker turret mounted on the side of the tanker turned to track him as he stood there, a mute warning to stay away. The simple artificial intelligences that drove these trucks had only a cursory interest in