“Full speed. Ghost Bee fighters,” Walt repeated, and his gut went cold. A tunnel wasn’t open sky. There was nowhere to dodge—nowhere to spiral away from their nail-stim lasers.
“Five kilometers,” Little White said, eyes on the route map. “After that the tunnel stops being straight—hard turns the rest of the way. We shake them in the bends.”
“That’ll be tough,” Walt warned. “Ghost Bees can turn, too.”
That was the point of the design: small frame, high speed, insane agility. Otherwise Phantom Forge wouldn’t have sent them into a tunnel after ground bikes.
The buzzing grew louder. There were a lot of them.
Everyone pushed their bikes to the limit. Bubbles pulled out his big-bore grenade launcher and lobbed the rest of his delayed charges behind them.
The Ghost Bees were still only hazy shapes in the distance when the first nail-stim shots arrived.
Shhhk—shhhk—shhhk!
Pale violet beams hammered the tunnel—front, rear, left, right. One skimmed Walt’s bike close enough that his skimmer jerked sideways. The whole frame tilted; for a breath he thought he’d flip. He wrestled it back under control.
“Walt, you’re in a standard frame,” Bit said, easing off just enough to drop to the rear. “You and Little White go front.”
Behind them, Bubbles’ charges reached zero.
WHUMPH—WHUMPH—WHUMPH—
Fire and smoke blossomed down the tunnel.
It didn’t slow the swarm much. Either the blast missed—or there were simply too many. Ghost Bees punched through the smoke, screaming closer, and the violet rain thickened.
“First turn ahead!” Little White shouted.
She didn’t slow. She shot forward like lightning.
“We’re really taking a bend at four hundred klicks?” Walt called, suddenly very aware of physics.
“Yep. Follow me.”
Little White leaned her bike and ran it up the wall.
Walt had no choice but to copy her line.
The corner arrived in a blink. All five bikes skimmed the tunnel’s curve, so fast the centrifugal force shoved them into the wall. Sparks screamed in long ribbons as their skimmers kissed concrete and metal.
The Ghost Bees were even faster. The first two couldn’t bleed speed in time. They smashed into the bend and disintegrated.
The rest were ready. They slowed just enough to make the turn and kept firing.
Bit, furious now, yanked out his rifle and shot one-handed over his shoulder. Tracer and muzzle flash meant nothing at this speed. Hitting anything was nearly impossible.
“Aim ten centimeters under the nose,” Walt blurted. “That bump is the range sensor.”
Merc glanced back once and drew his laser sidearm. He fired in tight, controlled taps.
“No good,” Merc said after a beat.
“Second turn!” Little White called.
She drove up to the tunnel’s ceiling, skimmed across it, then dropped onto the opposite wall. Her bike scraped through the corner—metal screaming, sparks exploding—then shot forward again.
This time, Merc noticed something: the Ghost Bees whose sensors he’d clipped weren’t flying clean anymore. Each one that took that hit drifted—then slammed into the next corner.
So it did work. Their numbers just made it hard to see.
Merc kept shooting.
Then Walt’s bike took two nail-stim hits in a row. The rear mag-skimmer wheel threw sparks, then died. The bike dropped like a rock.
Walt reacted instantly—kicked in his flight thrusters and lifted off. The bike tumbled, rolled, and split into shards behind him.
Little White was closest. She braked, flipped in midair, dropped back to the floor, and shouted, “Get on!”
Walt landed on her bike and swung behind her.
With Little White driving, Walt had both hands free. He grabbed the FBZ pulse rifle and focused on the swarm behind them.
A Ghost Bee exploded midair. Merc kept drilling sensors. Walt noticed the same thing Merc had: once the range sensor was damaged, the lasers got sloppy. Flight became unstable. Some drones even scraped the tunnel walls.
By the third bend, more Ghost Bees were crashing. The gap widened.
For about three seconds.
Then the swarm surged again.
A beam clipped Merc’s ride. He bailed clean, landed on Bubbles’ bike, and resumed firing without missing a beat.
Now five riders were down to three bikes.
As the fourth bend approached, Little White leaned back and spoke fast. “After this turn, we swap. You drive. I’ve got a way to deal with the bees.”
“What way?”
“No time. Just do it.”
They hit the bend. Little White bled speed hard, cleared the turn—and barked one word.
“Switch!”
She spun off the seat in one smooth motion. Walt slid forward, grabbed the controls, and took the line. Little White flipped to standing behind him, drew her twin blades, and snapped them together into a longbow.
The slowdown dropped them to the rear instantly.
“What are you doing?” Bit shouted, horrified.
“All of you—speed up,” Little White yelled back. “Don’t look back!”
Before anyone could stop her, she jumped.
She hit the ground, rolled, rolled, rolled—burning off momentum—then came up on one knee with a blue-tipped arrow already drawn.
She loosed it into the Ghost Bee cluster as it entered the turn.
BWOOM—
A blue EMP wave detonated in the corner. Ghost Bees shorted out mid-flight, dead as stones. They slammed into the walls in a chain reaction, explosions stacking into one long, thunderous roar.
Little White threw herself flat.
Loose rock rattled down from above. For a moment the tunnel felt like it might collapse.
But the instant she fired, the other four had understood. They slammed their throttles to the stops and barely outran the EMP radius.
The wave only mattered in the split second it bloomed. Once they cleared it, they cut hard, looped around, and raced back.
The explosions had already faded. The tunnel fell quiet again. The Ghost Bees were gone—wiped out—and the wreckage nearly clogged the passage.
Little White sat up slowly and blew out a long breath.
“Jumping off a bike doing two hundred?” Bit said, staring at her soot-streaked helmet. “What is wrong with your tiny brain?”
“Aren’t we wearing armor?” she snapped, then looked down and finally noticed her nanoweave suit was torn in several places.
“You okay?” Walt asked.
She shook her head once, stubborn.
“That was insane,” Bit said. “At least warn us next time.”
“Wouldn’t matter. Only I could do it.”
Bubbles signed: “Beautiful work!”
Merc lifted a thumb.
Bit, Bubbles, and Merc had all taken nail-stim hits too—but Julian’s custom armor held. That was why the three of them had kept themselves behind Walt and Little White through the chase.
Pebbles still dribbled from the ceiling.
“Move,” Bit ordered. “This section could come down any minute.”
***
Little White climbed back behind Walt. Five people on three bikes pushed forward again.
Seven or eight minutes later they reached the tunnel terminus: the freight transfer station.
Once, it had been a massive cargo depot—multiple T-shaped loading platforms and bays. The tunnel used to connect to the outside; after humanity died, Julian sealed the exit with boulders and earth, leaving only a hidden door for scouts.
They ditched the bikes and sprinted onto a platform. Bit tore open a door and led them inside. A long corridor. A stairwell. Then a cramped room full of dusty equipment.
The station’s comms closet—now an outpost, watching the surrounding area around the clock.
Bit powered up a terminal and typed on an ancient physical keyboard.
“Julian: we reached the safe point. Everyone’s alive.”
A message appeared after a moment.
“Copy. Proceed as planned.”
Only then did everyone exhale.
A few minutes later, the ground began to shake like an earthquake. It lasted less than a minute and then stopped. On a nearby screen, Doomsday Fortress bloomed into a towering mushroom cloud.
“It’s gone,” Bubbles said, staring at the feed.
“Silent Plains is gone too,” Bit said quietly. “Let’s move. Plan.”
“And we’ve got three bikes for five—wait.”
He looked up. “Where’s Little White?”
The others turned, all at once, and realized she wasn’t there.
Walt’s voice tightened. “She didn’t follow. She’s still out on the platform.”
The four of them ran back—faster than they’d run coming in.
They burst onto the platform and spotted her immediately.
Little White was slumped against a wall, head buried in her knees, motionless.
At her feet, a spreading pool of milky-white blood.