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| “Aieeeeeeeeee!”
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| Boone hoofed the driver head-first out of the cabin, pulled himself into the cockpit, honked the foghorn and hauled the wheel hard right. The great rig began slowly to bear around towards the Operations HQ, slewing sand out over the upturned COO gunship as it turned.
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| A dirt-bike punched through that curtain of flying sand, over the gunship’s lazily spinning wheels, and landed clean. Algernon whooped. “Let’s blow this joint, Boonester.”
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| Boone snarled into his wristcom, “We’re not home yet, Algy. Any sign of Georgie?”
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| Algernon gunned his Kawasaki. “She’s tangling with the other cruiser, boss. Sticky bogey, I guess.”
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| Boone scanned the trailer behind his cabin: a wall of green LEDs. ''The [[KPI]]s were already primed''.
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| The detonation timer on the dash ticked down: ''5:30 and counting.''
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| Boone wrestled with the wheel. The rig groaned and screamed under the colossal Gs as it re-vectored to the north. ''Come on, you brute, come on''.
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| The rig leveled up. The Gs eased off. Five clicks yonder, Boone could see operations outpost in the crosshairs, shimmering in the hot desert air. ''Your chickens are coming home to roost, my operational friends.'' He stomped on the metal. The monstrous diesel turbines screamed. The rig thundered forward.
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| ''The timer ticked past 5:00.''
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| ''NOT … WHILE … I … BREATHE.'' — A bloodied fist grabbed the running board. Kurzweil hung on for his life, for his cause, for his ''honour''. At first, it was all he could do, just to keep his hold and stop being swept beneath the monstrous wheels as they pounded the dirt, inches from his ear. He clenched his buttocks as the roadway grated and pummeled him all over.
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| Slowly, he hauled himself back into the game. He got a second hold. He fist-jammed in the wheel-arch. He executed a switch-grip, squirrel-jumped onto the grille, dragged himself up onto the hood, heel-hooked and got a firm boot-hold on the chassis. He clambered up. He clung like a limpet. He edged around the towards cabin door. ''NOT … WHILE … I … BREATHE.''
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| ''The timer ticked past 4:45.''
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| The cabin CB pinged — static squelch. Capcom was rattled. “Hey, Kurzweil, do you read? We see your vector heading north. Please account for your deviation. What’s going on? Is everything in order?”
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| Boone picked up the receiver. “Ah, Capcom, we read you ten-four. All is in order. We are just seeing some interference — regular, totally routine stuff, you know, so — er — we are re-routing to approach from the north-west. All good, over.”
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| There was a pause before Capcom clicked back in. “Heinrich, is that you?”
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| “Er, yeah, Capcom, of course it is. ''Ja'', I mean. ''Ja'', hier ist Kurzweil.” Boone winced.
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| “But you seem to be heading straight ''at'' us!”
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| “It’s, ah, just a transitory vector, Capcom.”
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| ''Transitory vector''? What the hell does ''that'' mean? Your manoeuvre is not in the service catalog, Officer! My [[line manager]] say this is a [[steerco]]-reportable operational risk event —”
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| “No, no, Capcom, it’s routine, totally normal. We do this sort of thing all the time. I cleared with Commander, um, Commander Scheisskopf. this morning.”
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| “Commander ''who''? Who is this? What’s going on?”
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| Boone re-winced. He clocked Capcom’s caller ID on the monitor. “Hey, er, hey Maxine? Listen: the channel is getting a bit choppy, okay? We’re struggling to maintain secure connection. But rest assured: everything in order. Repeat: everything in order. We got this. Tell, er, what’s-his-name — Scheisskopf — we’re under control. Going dark, over.”
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| “Heinrich? Heinrich?”
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| Boone clicked off the receiver. “That was getting boring, anyway” he muttered.
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| ''The timer ticked past 4:30.''
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| The rig roared. Clinging to the outside of its grille, Kurzweil snagged a crimp on the aerial mount. He traversed along the running board, edging with his toes, keeping his weight balanced. He ducked his head beneath the overhang, below Boone’s side-window sightline.
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| ''The timer ticked past 4:15.''
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| Boone’s comlink crackled. “Heads up Boone: you got company.”
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| Georgie’s dirt-bike burst into view off a low ridge, exploding through scrubland and she pulled wheelie.
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| Boone pummeled the dash “Yo! Georgie! Where you ''been'' all my life!”
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| “Not now, Boone, you got work to do — eyes right.”
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| Boone looked right, but too late. With a single fluid motion Kurzweil vaulted up, leant through the window, baffed Boone across the jaw, and grabbed the wheel.
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| Boone spat a jeweled string of blood. A copper taste filled his mouth.
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| Kurzweil came again, but this time Boone was braced for him. A sharp elbow to the cheek knocked Kurzweil back, cracking his head against the stanchion. He grunted. Boone clamped him, but the Operations man clamped back. He grabbed Boone by the throat: ''chokehold''. Kurzweil had a grip like a vice, but so did Boone: he squeezed back, harder, and shunted up. ''Mutually assured destruction''. Kurzweil gagged. His eyes bulged. His spittle flew. Still, he cracked out a demonic beetroot grin and mouthed, “''NOT … WHILE … I … BREATHE … BOONE''” and shanked Boone with his [[Runbook]].
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| The rig veered and fishtailed as they struggled.
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| ''The timer ticked past 4:00.''
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| As his air-flow constricted, Boone became light-headed. He scanned the windshield: ''where on Earth were the dirt-bikes?'' He reached for his wristcom, but Kurzweil’s span was too great. Kurzweil rabbit-punched him again and hooked a boot on the door-latch. The door swung wide, with Kurzweil on it. He hauled out Boone out by the throat and dangled him over the road.
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| Boone couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t speak. His muscles slackened. His peripheral vision blackened. His eyes stopped down to tunnels. Kurzweil doubled down on the throat-clamp. Boone flailed limply, catching nothing but air: the big man’s reach was too great. The door swung back. Kurzweil hauled him in and booted his face. Boone collapsed. Kurzweil grabbed the wheel, hauled it back around and lined up the Settlement.
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| The rig ground back towards the western vector. Kurzweil lined up the cross-hairs. They locked and flashed and beeped: ''TARGET ACQUIRED''. On the cabin floor, Boone groaned. Kurzeil boot-baffed him. As he passed out, Boone’s last coherent thought was, ''where the hell are you, Algy?'' Boone slipped into unconsciousness with the hopeless image of his old school chums Georgie and Algy, back at the refectory at St Crustard’s frantically trying to finish their ''Defence Against Indemnities'' homework before the bell went.
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| ''The counter ticked past 3:45.''
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| Kurzweil clocked the counter. Not good. ''Precious seconds to lose now.'' If he was to get all the way into the Settlement, release the payload and then make it out again before it blew, things would have to be perfect from now on. He knew: he would not make it out of that forensic rat-hole on foot. He knew: this could be his Waterloo. ''I do this for the cause'', he thought. ''For all operations people, everywhere''.
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| Boone moaned and shifted woozily in the foot well. Kurzweil baffed him again.
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| ''The counter ticked past 3:42.''
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| Boone collapsed into glamour-glow visions of Georgie and Algernon, holding hands, astride pink unicorns, in a forest of hyper-rainbows, floating joyfully amongst a flock of cute, fluffy green chatbots that were nibbling delicately and licking at their glistening faces. ''It’s fine, Opco! Come on over! You will never look back! Everything is — so beautiful! Operations Officer Kurzweil walked serenely towards him in a silken toga, with a ball of pearlescent light before him. “It is all true, Opco.” Behind him Georgie and Algernon nodded blissfully. “We have solved it. Everything. There is enough management information to satisfy every [[stakeholder]]. You don’t need to worry. There’s an app for e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g...”''
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| The last thing Boone remembered was trying to move his arms and his legs, but he could not. His tongue lolled. He dribbled into the carpet in the footwell. Then everything went black.
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| ''The counter ticked past 3:41.''
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| An insistent horn sounded behind. Kurzweil checked his wing mirror: relief! The remaining gunship, smoking and shuddering, was accelerating back up beside him. Suddenly, Kurzweil saw a path out of this. He could escape after all! He waved at the gunship, urging it forward.
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| As it drew level, Kurzweil set about converting the rig into a guided missile. He locked the steering on the acquired target, set the trailer to autopilot, threw the engine into a high gear and jammed a brick on the pedal. The motor screamed.
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| Boone moaned. Kurzweil re-baffed. Kurzweil cursed the unconscious hulk for even putting him in this position. ''This is just business, you self-righteous berk.'' Then, suddenly, on that desert track, barrelling straight into the jaws of certain destruction, Kurzweil knew what he had to do. ''Yes. This is right. This we should do.'' He reached over and grabbed the unconscious Eagle Squad Leader by his lapels.
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| “Let us make your last ride the one they remember you by, Eagle Squadron Leader Opco Boone.”
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| ''The counter ticked past 3:45.''
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| The rig was hurtling inexorably towards the settlement. Boone seemed unable to stop it. The damaged gunship was belching black smoke and running on three tyres, but it was back in the game, exchanging potshots with Georgie.
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| Captain Algernon Farquhar, B.S.C, D.S.O, Acting Deputy Captain of Eagle Squad saw a narrow dirt ramp coming down the line and knew his time was now.
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| “Cover me, George!” he barked, and ripped hard on his throttle. The Kawasaki surged forward along side the trailer, mounted the ramp and caught ''big'' air. As the bike sailed over the trailer, he kicked out of his stirrups, let the handlebars go, and back-flipped — he hit the trailer roof with the regulation Eagle-Squad three-point landing.
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| The Kawasaki kept flying. It prescribed a flat parabola over the trailer and fell into the path of the oncoming gunship. As the pilot and gunner bailed the gunship exploded on impact.
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| ''The counter ticked past 3:30.''
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| Boone was a heavy bastard. Kurzweil hauled him up and into the driver’s seat, but he was flaccid and hard to shift. Eventually Kurzweil flopped him into position and groped around for his seatbelt. He opened one of Boone’s eyes. He was out cold. ''Good.''
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| ''The counter ticked past 3:15.''
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| Algy shinned down the access ladder from the trailer roof. To his surprise, the trailer’s main back doors were unsecured. He popped the latch and swung them open. Algy dropped in and onto the deck.
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| “Holy hell,” he said, and whistled. The trailer’s entire forty foot length was packed with server farms of [[key performance indicator]]s arrays, RAG indicator clusters, target operating model monitors and other whole banks of various dials, meters, LED displays that Algy couldn’tg becgin to comprehend, winking away.
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| Algy inspected the KPI arrays. Each was fitted with a crypto-locked switch marked “ARM”. ''Every single one was lit''. Over the transom, a digital display carried the detonator count-down.
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| Algy clicked into his wrist comm, “Georgie, this is bad. There must be 40,000 KPIs here. They’re all armed. We got three minutes. I couldn’t switch them off in that time even if they weren’t encryted.”
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| Georgie said, “Copy that, Algy. We have to turn this truck around. It is the only way. Oh! ''LOOK OUT!''”
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| “What?”
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| The giant rear doors, which had been swaying idly, suddenly swung round behind Algy and slammed shut, plunging him into a greenish dark. Algy reached for his trusty service revolver, holstered on his hip with a couple of clips of term and a snub-nosed mezzanine.
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| ''It wasn’t there.''
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| ''The counter ticked past 3:00''
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| The truck rolled on. In the cockpit, Kurzweil manhandled Boone’s insensate body, and almost had the meddling Legal Eagle where he needed him now. He wrapped his fingers round the wheel. Now, for the last touch: his Eagle Squadron cap, set at that irritating, rakish angle. Kurzweil smiled grimly: hew would spare no detail. This had to be ''perfect''.
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| There was a sudden, ear-splitting bang to the rear. ''What the hell was that?'' It sounded like the rear doors slamming. ''Surely not!'' Kurzweil took one last look at Boone, who was still in la-la land, baffed him upside the chops for good measure, and opened the hatch to climb, back into the trailer.
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| ''The counter ticked past 2:55''
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| Georgie squeaked into his bike-com “Algy! Algy! Do you read me! Algy! Come in, over!”
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| Algy hissed, “Quiet, G! He’s in here!” Algy flipped off the intercom
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| Georgie heard the line go dead and shrieked. “Algy NO!”
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| The big man entered the trailed, moved quietly and effectively. “Who goes there?”
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| Algy couldn’t see ''squat''. He fumbled and groped his way to a bank of cathode-ray monitors. He squeezed himself tightly beside them and made himself very small. He scarcely dared to breathe. His breath caught in his throat.
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| executed Putting his head through the British Army blanket that hung down between the seats and the hold, an improvised shield at best, he reversed the Webley in his grip. The old Webley that had belonged to his father during the First War.He.
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| Coldly, he struck Kurzweil across the side of the head.
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| “Got him, Boonie – but are we too late?”
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| Boone looked at the countdown timer. 2:15. The sweep hand mocked him with its relentless spin.
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| “You know what we need to do,” he said.
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| Algie nodded.
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| The big rig accelerated.
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| Boone and Algie looked at each other.
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| “I’m not sure I will see Rugby again, old man.”
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| “And I’m not sure I will ever kiss my girl again … but I will be dam**d if those KPIs are going to wreck HQ.”
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