Pancake Night 9: Running Wild

by Seven


Disclaimer:  Earth: Final Conflict and its characters are copyrighted by Tribune Entertainment Company.  All rights reserved.



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How about acid?" Liam demanded from the back as Lili landed the shuttle. The insectlike transport slowly settled down in a stretch of grass by the waterside. "A blowtorch?"

"Liam, I am not going to pour acid on you or attack the jacket with a blowtorch," Lili retorted, gripping her head with both hands in frustration. "Can't you just wait a few days?"

"I don't think so," Liam said, squirming next to Da'an. "My deodorant is about to expire."

"Remind me to jump ship when it does."

"Har har."

"Why do you not use your shakarava on it?" Da'an asked, flipping the seat restraints off of himself and rising out of his chair. He grasped Liam by the elbows and helped him lurch out of the chair.

"Because they're turned toward my torso," Liam said reasonably, staggering toward the front shield. "So if I fire them, I break the straitjacket and put a nice hole through my body in the process."

Turning from the Taelon, Liam leapt out of the shuttle, landed on his feet, and started running with the momentum, skimming close to the waterside. Slowing, he turned and smiled at Lili and Da'an, who were descending quickly from it. "I think I'm beginning to get the hang of this."

"Good," Lili said, staring at the sky. "Da'an, where did you tell Zo'or and Sandoval to come on the way here?"

Da'an glanced around, then pointed at the ocean. "I believe they should come out of ID-"

There was a thunderclap and a burst of water erupted from the seawater. Several people, riding in small plastic boats that reminded Liam of milk jugs, shouted and began paddling away. Slowly, a blue-and-purple shuttle rose from the turbulent water and began to skim toward them.

Unnoticed by the two agents and the Taelon diplomat, a white-robed man let go of the side of the shuttle and ran towards a pay phone.

"-over there," Da'an finished unnecessarily. "I was not aware of high the tides would go."

"Yeah, I'm certain that was fun," Liam grinned.

"Do Taelons get heart attacks?" Lili whispered into Liam's ear.

"Let's hope so," Liam whispered back.

The virtual glass of the front shield dissolved, revealing a rather disheveled Sandoval in the pilot's seat, and a positively shellshocked Zo'or in one of the passenger seats. The two stepped off and onto the wharf, Zo'or looking somewhat unsteady.

"I am quite sorry," Da'an apologized, the slightest hint of a twinkle in his blue eyes.

"Zo'or forgives you," Liam interjected as the Synod leader opened his mouth. Zo'or glanced at the young man, taking in the orange straitjacket. Liam turned beet red and smiled apologetically. "They won't let me out of my room without it."

Lili gave Liam a little punch, then turned to Sandoval. "It appears that a group of Taelonists have invaded the Embassy, and we only barely got here alive."

"Were they trying to kill us?" Liam whispered.

"Quiet!" Lili hissed at him, then turned back to an increasingly confused Sandoval. "I think that we should find a way of restraining them," she finished.

Sandoval nodded curtly.

"Except," Liam said, staring off to the side with increasingly wide eyes. "Now they're coming after us with buses."

"Buses?" Sandoval said, shoving past Lili.

A huge, white-painted bus was zooming along the crowded street, regardless of the smaller vehicles in its path. The shaved heads and white robes of the Taelonists could be seen inside.

Liam waggled his tied arms frantically. "Sandoval, you and me should take Da'an and Zo'or away from here in a car. Lili, you fake them out and pilot the shuttle away from here."

"You and I," Sandoval corrected.

"Yeah, whatever."

Sandoval glanced around the busy street briefly, then pointed at a green jeep on the far side of the jammed street. "That ought to serve our purposes."

"How are you going to get past all that traffic?" Lili asked, glancing up and down it.

"Let me handle that," Liam said with a grimace.

In an instant he had leaped into traffic, screaming and swearing and writhing in his straitjacket like a lunatic. Instantly, cars either backed up, smashing their neighbors, or pulled forward, also smashing their neighbors. Sandoval smiled and quickly led Zo'or and Da'an across the street. Liam stopped screaming and ran after them, jumping into the back seat as Sandoval fiddled under the hood.

"You did quite well, Liam," Da'an whispered.

"That was, without a doubt, the most humiliating experience of my life," Liam moaned.

"Worse than the spider-probe?"

"Oh, much worse..."

The jeep roared to life, and Sandoval leapt into the driver's seat, accelerating down the street. Zo'or's look of being completely shellshocked was now devolving into something approaching terror as his implant weaved and skidded madly through the streets, out of Baltimore.

Lili's shuttle zoomed overhead in the opposite direction. The Taelonist bus followed her... but a second bus followed the jeep.