AL:ICE-9 by Charles Lamb Page A

huge smile on his face.
    “Fly?” Sara asked.
    “Cool, huh!” Jake answered, “Once you are moving, a small pull on the handlebars and it will nose up and you gain altitude, push forward and it goes down. Pull right or left to turn, roll back on the throttle to stop. As long as power is on, it will hover at whatever altitude you stop at and it will never go below two feet off the deck or AGL, which is Above Ground Level. As long as you are in motion, you are good. In theory you can’t crash into the ground but we have, however, proven that it is possible to wreck one in flight,” Jake completed that last part while looking directly at Joe.
    “Hey, you were the one who was showing off on the first model,” Joe said defensively, and then said to Sara, “Jake is the only one so far who can do a complete 360 loop and come out going the right direction,” he finished.
    Apparently choosing to ignore the relevance of Jake doing stunts on a prototype, she asked, “What are the levers for by the grips?”
    “The one on the left is for reverse, pull in the lever and the motor moves backwards instead of forward, the one on the right is a panic brake. Rather than a smooth deceleration via the throttle, grab that lever and hold on,” he finished. On the running boards just behind the shield, she could make out a foot pedal on each side of the driver’s seat.
    “What are those for,” Sara asked.
    Jake replied, “Back in the day, a Cavalry Trooper could control his horse by pressure from their legs and knees on the horse’s sides. This freed up their hands for fighting. The pedal on the right controls forward and reverse, the one on the left turns right and left. Once you let go of the handlebars these allow you to control the hover cycle. You can’t change altitude, but everything else works.”
    “Ok Jake, so besides a new toy, this is all in aid of?” Sara asked somewhat skeptically.
    “Like I said, Cavalry,” Jake replied, “we will never have enough troops to go anywhere and overrun a position with straight infantry. We need a small unit that hits like a big one. Each of these has two 7.62 machineguns and an energy cannon. They will do over 200 miles per hour, though we try to keep them under 150. Like our fighter squadrons, they are four to a unit, called a troop. Collectively this is the 10 th Cavalry.”
    “10 th ?” Sara asked, “what about the other 9?”
    Abby chimed in, “Jake explained that the 10 th Cavalry was a unit with a reputation of fierce fighters who overcame overwhelming odds on many occasions,” pausing with a confused look, she continued, “I didn’t understand the relevance of them all being black, but Joe’s black so it works for us either way!”
    ----*----
     
    Sara shrugged at the relevance of that statement as well, why would anyone care what color your skin was? Who had time for such nonsense? The world today was a melding of individuals all just trying to survive. Your value was what you brought to the table for survival, not how you looked. Looking around at the assembled team, she could see a mixture of family histories and ethnic backgrounds. Most, like her, had no idea where her family came from pre-attack.
    “OK, Jake, so what are we going to do with cavalry?” Sara asked.
    She watched as Jake stepped to the rear of his hover cycle and activated a screen on the inside of one of the open doors. A map appeared and on it, and she could make out Catalina Island, where they were all currently, and the LA mainland. There was a blinking red dot, far inland, which she assumed was their destination.
    Jake began, pointing at the island, “we are here, the abandoned transport is here,” he said pointing at the dot.
    “We are about 60 miles away, which means we can be there in about 35 minutes easily. On the way here, I identified several tall building in the surrounding area where I want each of the two person teams to position themselves. We will split into separate groups