Tally Road Original Story- Chapter 23

It didn't look very impressive, but Siertes goaded Dene on restlessly, her hard reptile eyes scanning every mountain pass. To the others, even Rairate, the landscape was a picturesque sequence of images through which the famous Tally Road unrolled. To Siertes, it was a complex unfolding of familiar traps, a sequence of tactical positions.

She considered briefly, without apparent dismay, that she'd always been on the other side, warily hoping the victim would not take a more difficult path through the well-known switchbacks. Still, she thought, if you're not the fang you're the prey...

"To the right side now!" she snapped.

Dene complied, the whites of her eyes showing. She didn't dare let off the gas- Siertes had shrieked at her the last time she'd done it, and thereafter had kept a running commentary on what the real speed limit, given road conditions, was. Usually this was in excess of the radio-transmitted indicators that displayed across the windscreen. Sometimes it was lower.

The truck blasted by a crack in the cliff face. Rairate was at a turret, facing that direction, and he blinked, wondering if he'd seen something in there. There hadn't been time to react.

"You can go back to the center now!" said Siertes.

The canyon walls blurred as Dene accelerated. She glanced at Siertes, who seemed to be thinking hard.

"Denenke my sweet," said the Tompar, "do you know how to operate the systems on this vehicle? I'm thinking of the radio. Can you work that?"

"I think so," said Dene. "What do you want me to say?"

"Nothing, don't you speak!" snapped Siertes.

"All right, all right! For..."

"No no, I think maybe I will try something. Give me 120 megahertz, band D."

"The police band?" asked Rairate, leaning down from his position at the turret.

"You keep watching, damn you!"

Rai bristled terribly but returned his attention to the road and surrounding landscape.

Siertes cleared her throat. "Calling Ehrt convoy, any Ehrt convoy..."

The radio crackled. "Yeah?"

"We're out in the rain and at mile 1520 of the Tally Road. Can we come under cover?"

There was a pause, and then the radio crackled again.

"Unselbste?"

"Wurchtige." replied Siertes promptly.

Dene turned her head to stare at Siertes, and said "That doesn't make sense..." but was silenced by a neck-chopping gesture from Siertes. "Shut up!"

There was another pause, and then the radio came to life again. "Okay, we're a couple miles ahead of you. We're not slowing down. You catch up, and you identify yourself when you come in range- but you know that already, don't you? Be seeing you. Move it!"

Dene was ready to snap at Siertes for all the disrespect, but the next thing she knew, she was fighting off a brief panic attack- Siertes had scritched her under the chin unexpectedly, and she was still not entirely at ease around the venomous Tompar assassin. She realised she was being spoken to.

"...to join with a convoy, so we can get to the end of this road more safely, won't that be nice? Trust me. You don't have to talk to them, in fact let me do all the talking. But now we need you to do something that I bet you can do real well. Denenke my sweet- floor it, honey. Go as fast as you can and I'll tell you if you have to back off. The next twenty miles are pretty clear. Show us your stuff. Go."

Dene glanced sideways at Siertes, and then the truck leapt forward.

The convoy loomed in the distance. It wasn't especially large- the Tally Road was known for the unthinkable size of its corporate convoys, multiple corporations arranging to run their trucks together for defensive purposes. Those would run for miles and take up the full width of the road...

"Match speed with them." said Siertes, her eyes fixed on the convoy ahead.

"How am I supposed to know what speed they..."

"Slow down now!" hissed Siertes, urgently.

Dene did so. Siertes was already talking on the radio again, but Dene found a control on the dashboard that she figured would give her the convoy's speed. She pushed the button, was pleased at the neat number immediately returned, and looked up to see something flying at her...

The shell exploded on the unyielding surface of the road, and Dene swerved desperately to avoid the blast.

"Don't PING them!" shrieked Siertes, who returned to the radio instantly. "Sorry about that, it was my driver, okay? Liempleso rescombra visme and you can't touch her, but shall we say a teeny bit slow? Are we clear now?"

Dene glanced back to see Rairate's tail, hanging down from his position at the turret, bristled out terribly. The Nerre held his fire, though.

As they gradually approached the convoy, Dene remained tense, ready to dodge again, but there was no further attack. Vehicles made way, forming a lane through which Dene passed, an outer layer of heavily armed and armored trucks shielding an inner layer of larger trucks. Inside the convoy, driving was a matter of trying to match speeds and positions with the surrounding vehicles, and Dene bit her lip fretfully as she worked at it.

"Relax," said Siertes, "this should get us out of the mountains."

The view was terrible. Tally Road was impressive, but little of it could be seen through the surrounding trucks. Dene worked on matching their movements, which was challenging- the convoy was running as fast as it could, and it blocked the view to every side, so the turns of the road couldn't be anticipated. She found herself concentrating on the truck directly in front of her, and sensing the positions of the ones to the side through her peripheral vision. This worked well, but as the road continued to twist and wind through mountain passes, she began to get dizzy.

Siertes watched, and said "You'll get used to it. Keep watching that truck, don't focus on the road. You can't see that anyway."

Dene drove on, and the advice helped. The dizziness went away. The challenge of matching pace with the surrounding trucks remained. When the convoy hit a tight turn, it would slow down and compress almost bumper-to-bumper, and as the pace picked up again, vehicles would be more spaced out. Dene considered, while struggling to match pace, how difficult it must be to coordinate it all. It was like a military formation. She had a thought...

"Where's this convoy going, and how do we get out if we want to?"

"Actually," said Siertes, "it's just as well you asked that."

"Why?"

"We're coming out of the mountains and we need to be running separately from this convoy by then. Can you fake a blowout?"

"Can I what?" said Dene, in astonishment.

"Never mind," said Siertes, who was calculating the odds of Dene freaking out if she grabbed the wheel and smashed them into an adjacent truck. Too great, she decided. "How are we on fuel?"

"Not real good, but we ought to be able to reach a refueling station..."

"We'll use that. Deneke dear one- take your paw off the gas for one half-second, and then resume speed."

Dene did so. The truck sagged for a moment, its motors' voracious appetite for electricity no longer fed. The truck behind her shifted a bit as she regained her position.

"One second."

Dene looked sideways at Siertes, and did so. The truck behind sounded its horn, and didn't close up so quickly this time.

"Now, my sweet- three seconds, and don't say a word when I use the radio. Silence! Now!"

Dene would have liked an explanation, but she didn't fail. Three seconds at no power and her rear bumper banged against the following truck. Rai and Boodins clung grimly to handholds, but Siertes was already on the radio, and her voice was an amazing combination of anger and alarm.

"Auna seg entro vez... Hey, we've got trouble right now, goddammit, hear me? This is AngelDee and we have a fuel outage..."

The radio crackled. The voice was angry. "You know better. Don't even..."

"No, you listen!" snapped Siertes, and held out four fingers to Dene, who promptly let off the gas for four seconds. "We have a fuel outage, you either push us or clear a damn path!"

"We can't push you! Dee, what the hell? Do you expect us to believe..."

"Hey. I know the situation as well as you do," said Siertes- three, three. The rear bumper hit the following truck again. "But we have a fuel outage. Have I ever lied to you?" Four. Bang!

"Bitch."

"Clear a path, we're on fumes here."

"We should kill you." said the radio. "You know better."

"We should blow up real good. Fuel-air mixture- which is all we have left, clear a fucking path!" Three, four. Bang! Rai and Boodins clung to the handholds.

There was a pause. Siertes shot Dene another signal- five. But before the faked outage was over, the radio crackled again.

"Clear Dee a path. Do it! Truck has a fuel outage, and we can't have that."

The path to the rear opened up, trucks breaking their tight formation to create a lane leading to the tail of the convoy. Siertes kept shooting Dene signals- four, two, five, five, one then immediately four, and Dene alternately released and stomped on the accelerator as suggested. The truck worked its way back, and then all at once it was clear of the convoy, which no longer seemed to have such heavily armed vehicles at the rear. Had they moved to new positions?

Siertes had closed the radio channel, and hissed, "Keep following my lead!" as she continued to give hand signals. The mountains had given way to an approaching plain. The convoy was accelerating and beginning to be lost in the distance, when suddenly it was outlined by flashes and explosions.

"Now! Kill the speed and get off the side of the road!" snapped Siertes.

Dene did so with alacrity. The truck's motion slowed to a stop, and for a while they watched the receding flashes of light. Rai and Dene didn't say anything, but a suspicion grew in their minds, which Boodins blithely voiced.

"Did you know they were gonna get bombed, Siertes?"

The snakelike Tompar assassin relaxed, finally. "The main Ehrt convoy always gets bombed. I should know, I've run it enough."

"Why?"

"The police don't like anybody carrying that much drugs into the city, why else?"

Rairate was wearing his aghast and disapproving look again, but Siertes met it with a smirk.

"Hey, ninja-kitty- smile when you've passed through the Tally Road in a single unarmored truck with one turret... alive."

He didn't smile- but Rai did have to admit it was true.

In a few minutes, the truck pulled onto the road again, bound for a refueling station and the spaceport.