After situating the boy into the airspeeder's passenger seat, Chaz circled the vehicle, settled into the pilot's station, and lowered the plexisteel domed hatch, glancing down once at his chronograph. Still at least ten minutes before Landor would be onto him.

He ignited the engines, then allowed them to idle as he turned to Britain and studied him for a moment. "My name is Chaz," he said quietly.

The boy gazed up silently at him for a moment, then replied, "OK."

"We're not going to your daddy's house, Britain."

"Are we going to the playground?"

"No. We're going to see your mommy."

At that, Britain's young features creased into a concentrated frown as he tried to process that piece of information. "My mommy went away."

"What did they tell you about your mommy?"

The child was silent a moment, squirming in his seat and lifting up onto his knees for a better view out the cockpit hatch. "I wanna go to the park. Can you push me in the swing?"

Squaring his shoulders to the boy, Chaz gently urged him back down, guiding his feet off the seat. "Britain... Listen to me now. Your mother sent me to bring you back to her, because she loves you and she misses you. She needs you to be a big boy and mind what I tell you, all right?"

Britain's face reddened slightly and his body began to shake as full tears spilled from his eyes. "I don't want to."

Sighing, Chaz reached into the leather bag that hung at his side, his fingers locating the remaining hypospray. Keeping it concealed in his palm, he brought his hand to Britain's hair and brushed away the fine wisps of honey blond over his forehead. "It's going to be OK, buddy," he said softly. "I promise."

And with a single, smooth motion of his wrist, the hypospray met the tender skin of the toddler's neck and hissed, and Britain sagged unconscious in the seat. Placing two fingers on the boy's jugular, Chaz checked for a pulse. Then, satisfied that Britain was alive and breathing, he fished inside his pouch again and withdrew the large bag of black plastiline folded up inside.

He'd barely shaken it open when he heard a shout and scuffling feet from the entrance of the ward as half a dozen security officers spilled from the front door. "There he is!!"

"Shit!!" Gunning the throttle, Chaz shoved the airspeeder forward and then into a steep climb, ducking as a searing stream of blaster fire glanced off the port hull.

"Don't shoot, you idiots!" The security chief yanked away one of the officer's muzzles, disrupting his aim. "Get your hoverbikes and pursue! You! Tell Ops to get a tractor beam on that airspeeder! Notify Delta Ring and have them seal off the dome! Move!!!"

Unlike a landspeeder that maintains a constant height of about one meter, an airspeeder was capable of altitudes into the ionosphere, and Landor's spiffy red one had moves that Chaz had thought only a nimble X-wing could perform.

Knowing it would be only moments before the checkpoint between Beta and Delta Rings would be sealed by a ceiling-high forcefield, Chaz barrelled directly toward the edge of the wide plateau, while a high, whining hum from behind confirmed that the hoverbikes had nearly caught up with him.

There was no way to know whether the forcefield had been activated, so the only safe route was through the guard's checkpoint itself—a narrow arch in a tall barrier that separated the higher-security Beta Ring from its less restricted neighbor.

Jamming the stick forward, Chaz dove directly for the ground, pulling up just in time to skim along a sidewalk, scattering a dozen pedestrians in his wake. The checkpoint rushed toward him at a furious speed, and he was only faintly aware that the buzzing hoverbikes, unable to maneuver as precisely, were still in pursuit but screaming along about ten meters above and behind him.

Grimacing, Chaz tensed and nearly closed his eyes as he threaded the speeder through the security station, the backwash of his engines bowling over the personnel who'd gamely attempted to deter him with drawn weapons, only to leap to safety at the last moment.

A scant fraction of a second after he cleared the checkpoint, Chaz heard a series of rapid booms loud enough to make him duck reflexively. The hoverbikes had attempted to fly over the barrier, but Ops had apparently activated the forcefield, and the riders and their bikes had been toasted upon the collision.

"Jeezus..." Chaz muttered. Gritting his teeth, he pulled the airspeeder into another steep climb, then leveled off again. The curved wall of the dome lay directly ahead, fifteen, maybe twenty seconds away.

Lock in the altitude and course. Check.

Releasing the controls, Chaz bent down for the plastiline bag that had slid to the floor, then fumbled at the opening.

Shake it open. Let some air into it.

He grabbed Britain's ankles in one hand and worked the mouth of the bag around them, then up and over the boy's hips and torso until he was completely inside.

Zip it. Zip it. Gotta be sealed.

The waterproof, toothless zipper slid closed centimeter by centimeter until Chaz felt it lock under his fingertips. Then, gathering the bundled child under one arm, he altered the airspeeder's course heading slightly, directing the craft to a point just above the portals that led to the outside.

Careful.

Below, Delta Ring personnel were starting to flood away from the door, screaming and taking cover as the red blur came screaming down from above.

Watch it! Watch it!!

With a bone-jarring explosion, the airspeeder slammed into the biodome's wall, just over the exit, and the ensuing conflagration spewed burning, liquid plasma in a cauterizing spray for nearly 30 meters in every direction, and when the smoke cleared, not even a fragment of General Landor's red speeder could be located.

©1997 Thomas Treadwell