He hit seventh gear and rapidly approached the motorcycle's maximum speed of three hundred and thirty-nine kilometers per hour.
"White Lion Two-Six, keep it steady," Junichi cautioned Lleónart through his helmet's radio receiver. "Túnel de Vallvidrera in twenty-five seconds. Target is now headed toward the old Agbar Tower–take Diputacío–arrival time in five point forty-two minutes."
Lleónart checked the speed, rpm, and fuel holographic digital gauges that appeared at the base of his tinted helmet's visor. He wanted to see the GPS map displaying his location and the location of the target. Instantly, the digital gauges were minimized on his visor's screen and a real-time satellite map maximized before his hazel eyes. He analyzed the pulsating red line that charted the path to the shattered tower trying to discern an alternate route other than the one chosen by the NAV.
"Don't waste your time," Junichi, the chief navigation engineer, said with irritation. "Always second guessing the machine. Have some faith in the damn thing."
"Only in me," Lleó replied as he leaned the bike through a smooth corner on the dark, desolate toll-way. "Machines are predictable–"
"Not when they're manned by pilots–" Junichi corrected.
"Suspend unnecessary talk," Xavi, commander of the operation, demanded of Junichi and Lleó. "Keep this channel clean. We're picking up drone chatter."
Lleónart saw the Túnel de Vallvidrera come into view through the night-vision setting of his visor and tucked his elbows, knees, and body into the bike to reduce unnecessary wind friction and maximize speed. He minimized the GPS map on the screen with a thought and pulled up the destination counter seeing the numbers descend from five, four, three, two, one; he was now in the absolute dark of the tunnel traveling at three hundred and thirty-nine kilometers per hour.
In the quiet of the long tunnel, where he was out of radio contact, his mind thought of the incident that brought him to the center of the covert putsch planned by his neo-renaissance patron, Takagawasan.
YOU ARE READING
White Lion Rising
Science FictionThe Great Quake of 2022. "It all ended in that year." Japan destroyed by a series of earthquakes and tsunamis. "Then the Great Quake of 2025 threw the whole of the Pacific Coast of the United States into the sea." Crippled by the Great Recession, s...
