I stared down at the car’s shifter in dumb incomprehension. Apparently these futuristic cars didn’t need me to pop the clutch and put it in gear.

Behind me, Kiba snorted. I didn’t look, but that snort was packed with ‘arms folded over my chest and expression full of self-righteous alpha male’ energy.

“Best help me out here, boss,” I called out. “Brass Crosses are on their way.”

He snorted again, this one full of annoyance, and reached in oh so slowly over my body, then turned the ignition again. Once more, Black Betty’s lights came on, the engine thrummed to life (even though it didn’t have an internal combustion engine) and she once again began hovering off the floor.

“Now what you’re going to do, rather than touch any of these complicated buttons, is press on the pedal on your right. You do know your right from left, don’t you?”

“Screw off.”

He pressed his big ogre hands together and leaned in like a mother condescending to a three year old. “Well, that will make the car go. The other one, the pedal on your left– that’s the one closer to me, that will make her slow down. Now you try it.”

“Yeah, I get it, you’re salty about me whooping your ass, but if you ask me, you’re going to be better off for it. You’ll be the leader, you’ll get the girl–”

“Anyone hear that?” one of the Syndication goons asked.

We fell silent, and Kiba also pushed a button to cut Black Betty’s engine rumble. In its place I heard the futuristic hum of the magnetic whatever drive engines floating the car… and laughter. That kind of hysterical laughter you get when you’re right on the edge of losing your mind. It was on a loop, something I vaguely recognized from a movie I’d seen ages ago.

“They’re here,” the goon whispered.

“Pedal on your right!” Kiba shouted, and I floored it. He started screaming about weapons and battle stations, but I couldn’t hear anything aside from the rush of wind roaring in my ears.

They came up hard and fast as Black Betty and I soared out the window with crates in tow. The car went straight into the wall opposite the garage, and rather than smash headlong into it, the car went vertical. For a few seconds gravity was all wrong, I was wrenched to the left, and the only thing holding me in was a 70-year old seatbelt.

A button started blinking where the stereo would’ve been back in ’62, and I strained to press it. I was rewarded with +1 Driving skill, which seemed silly, but only for a second.

If I was going to survive this, I would need to upgrade my combat driving skill something fierce.

Seconds later Black Betty and I were on the road again, and gravity got its crap back together. We swerved, fishtailed, missed smashing into a street noodle shop, and got on the road for good this time.

Eventually the two hoverboarders pulled up next to me, and pointed up ahead. And stupid me, my mouth ran on ahead of my brain by going, “What?”

Yeah, it was a friggin’ cross. I knew it was a cross as soon as they pointed, I didn’t even have to see it. The mecha suit was fully airborne, with two big rockets on its back. I barely got a glimpse of two psychotic faces painted on these things before they were blasting off in my direction.

I jerked the wheel hard to the side and took another alley wall for a few horrible moments. “Don’t these people want the cargo?”

“Beats me,” one of the hoverboarders yelled back.

Explosions rocked all three of us, and I felt a brief flash of heat, but that was all. At least their rockets weren’t heat-seeking or smart.

“Two more behind us!” the other hoverboarder yelled.

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I caught them in my rearview mirror, two of the cross cars on jets like the mecha suits. As I watched, it started popping out jetpack wearing cross soldiers, each with a plasma gun of some kind. Those tiny cars couldn’t have held more than two people. Yet four, then five came out of each one.

I pulled a hard right, skidded a little ways, took out a light pole with one of the crates, and got my bearings again.

An arrow was beeping in front of my face: the direction I was supposed to be heading to deliver this cargo to the The Godfather. And it was pointed behind me.

Whoops.

With a flick of several buttons, I had Black Betty pull a quick one-eighty, and I watched in amusement while the cargo crates went tumbling like rolled dice behind me, only to get pulled tight against the tractor beams keeping them in check. They caught a parked car, sending the alarm going weet-weet-weet into the damp night, but I floored it and pelted straight at the oncoming cross soldiers.

And I had my handy-dandy plasma blaster with me.

Several shots flew into the night, mine turquoise laser blasts, theirs cotton Jack pink. The place turned into a fireworks show, with blasts sizzling into Black Betty’s fenders and the buildings nearby, and the crates. I ended up getting four shots off, and only one of them scored a hit, with one cross spiraling off to his death, and his jetpack explosion turned night to day for a brief second.

“Whoooo!” I screamed, and blasted another one of them on my way up a wall, briefly upside down, and into the world’s ugliest barrel roll.

Betty took out at least one other jetback cross, probably more like three, and the crates scored another hit.

My phone rang.

“No time, whoever you are!” I screamed to my phone, blasting off wildly behind me with the plasma blaster.

I was most of the way down the street when the mecha suit turned the corner.

“Damn,” I hissed.

Another lightning fast left had me up a wall and into a dark alley, where again the crates whipped around and blasted another of the Brass Crosses out of the air. He exploded a second later, well behind me.

The remaining swarm of half a dozen of them settled in above and behind me.

“She gets up to twenty meters of air, huh?” I shouted at myself.

“That she does, user DIRK STONE!” Calamari? What the hell was he doing here?

“Jesus!” I screamed, and yanked hard on the yoke. Then, I overcorrected just a little. Good thing I did, too, because a series of tiny rockets exploded just off to my right.

Calamari, who had been in a teensy ice box in the console storage space between the two front seats, flattened down a little, as if he were subject to g-forces and not a hologram.

“I see you’re back up to your old hijinks, DIRK STONE. It wouldn’t be a normal day if you weren’t in MORTAL PERIL, would it?”

“How did you–”

“I’m everywhere you want to be,” Calamari said cheerfully. “Which is a total lie, but it sounds good nonetheless. I’m actually anywhere you can replicate food or drink items! Handy, huh?”

Several plasma blasts fizzed by me, and at least two of them blasted Betty, which was super not cool.

“I’m trying to drive here, okay?”

“Just so you know, there’s a bogey on your seven o’clock.”

“I need the largest pumpkin you can replicate, yes I’ll accept the charges.” I reached down into the little drinks cooler and pulled up a rather sad, pale orange imitation of a pumpkin, then threw it in the direction of my seven o’clock. A plasma blast later and it was a web of pumpkin guts spraying all over my pursuer’s face.

Idiot jerked so hard to one side he bashed himself into a tree. I grinned at the explosion, and sent several more wild shots behind my back.

I laughed. Calamari followed suit, honking laughter in the weirdest way possible. It was like if a goose and a mermaid somehow had a baby, and that baby was a sentient squid.

My phone rang again.

“You should answer it,” Calamari advised.

The little arrow pointing in the direction of my eventual drop off point was beginning to get away from me, so I took a wide right, made sure the tumbling crates didn’t fly off. Then, after a few more wild shots at my remaining pursuers, I gave Betty some juice and zipped off again.

“Who is it?” I asked, and when he started to say something, I blurted, “Yes, I’ll accept the charges.”

Five Credits later, Calamari informed me that Doug was calling.

I avoided several cars, got some air, and started running along the tops of the buildings in this area. I hadn’t seen the hoverboarders in a few minutes, and wondered if the Brass Crosses had gotten them, or if they’d just given up and returned to their base.

I jammed my finger against the accept button and got Doug on the line. “This has better be short and to the fucking point, Doug, I’m in MORTAL PERIL here.”

“Not for long, padre. You’ve only got three minutes left on the spell.”

I swore, then stopped swearing. “Uh… okay. What’s that mean?”

He literally said, “Shrug. I’ve never done this spell before.”

“No way you did that to me. I am not your lab rat!” I chastised him, peering at the three Brass Crosses still on my tail, along with their damned mecha suit. They hadn’t suddenly and miraculously decided not to come murder the guy in the awesome car with the valuable crates being towed along by the magic of science.

“Calamari, what’s in the crates? Yes I’ll accept the charges.”

“Are you sure? It will cost ten thousand Credits for me to override the shielding on these crates and discern their contents.”

I couldn’t help it; I swore a whole lot more.