Hunted [The Flash Gold Chronicles]

by Lindsay Buroker

  Why couldn’t she have gone back to Dawson to rest, like a normal just-shot person?

  Cedar left her side to follow the tree line toward Sebastian’s claim. The spring foliage soon hid him. Kali took a few steps from the hole and put her back against a spruce. The undergrowth should hide her from anyone who came out of the mine.

  She closed her eyes for a moment, both because looking at the bodies made her uncomfortable and because she wanted to listen for suspicious noises.

  Kali did not have long to wait. In the woods behind her, a soft click-whir grew audible. It repeated, steady and regular, like the ticking of a clock. Oddly, the sound seemed to come not from the ground but from the trees, perhaps ten or twenty feet in the air. It couldn’t be the flyer; she and Cedar had crashed that. The noises were not the same either.

  She craned her neck, her eyes probing the canopy. Though birds should have been chirping to welcome the dawn, no animal sounds drifted from the woods. Water rushed by in the river, and a soft breeze rattled tree branches, but nothing warm-blooded stirred.

  Click-whir, click-whir, click-whir.

  It was definitely coming from the treetops.

  Movement rustled a clump of needles high up on a spruce. Kali squinted. Another breeze? No. The other branches remained still.

  She chomped down on her lip, tempted to investigate, but she should wait for Cedar’s return. If that woman was responsible—and who else would be out here with things that clicked and clanked?—Kali would need help against her.

  She checked on Sebastian’s camp and did not spot Cedar, but his packsack had disappeared. The first man was crawling out of the mine entrance. Time to get going.

  Something sharp stabbed Kali in the butt, and she gasped in pain, almost dropping the drill. She glared behind her, thinking Cedar was playing a joke. The pain had been enough to bring a tear to her eye, and she planned to give him a mouthful of vitriol.

  Nobody stood behind her.

  She patted her rump, expecting shrapnel or a dart protruding from it. That had been too powerful to be a bug bite, especially given the thickness of her trousers.

  Cedar slipped out of the foliage to her side, glanced at her hand placement, and raised an eyebrow. “Problem?”

  She yanked her hand away from her backside and glowered suspiciously at him, but the angle of his approach was wrong. Whatever had attacked her had come from behind. Behind and maybe above.

  Click-whir.

  Kali lifted her eyes. Leaves shuddered. “Something’s up there.”

  Cedar knelt beside her and plucked something from the mud. A tiny metal sphere, perhaps a third of the size of an old musket ball, glinted in the palm of his hand.

  Low voices came from the mine entrance. Another man had crawled out. Blood stained his sandy hair and saturated his shirt.

  Weariness dragged Kali’s shoulders down; she had grown tired of this adventure and wanted to go back to the city where she could rely on the defenses in her workshop to protect her. And where no one need be injured. Or killed.

  “We can go back to town,” Cedar said, perhaps guessing her thoughts. “Wilder...isn’t going to pan out. He isn’t with Cudgel any more.”

  “Didn’t you say his head is worth money in its own right?”

  “I’m not collecting on it. He says he’s gone straight, and I believe him. He’s up here with his pregnant wife and one-year-old son. They’re hoping to find enough gold to make a fresh start.”

  “Oh.” Kali did not know what Wilder had done to earn his bounty, but she could not argue for killing a man with a new family to provide for. “Sorry the trip was a waste for you.”

  “Not a total waste. I got kissed.”

  “By Wilder?”

  Cedar snorted. “By you.”

  “I know about that. I was just making sure I didn’t have competition. This Wilder might be a looker.”

  He waved away her goofy comments. “Wilder did say he agreed with me in that Cudgel was probably on his way up to Dawson. He’s too greedy to miss an opportunity like this.” He spread a hand to indicate the river and the claims.

  A thud sounded beside Kali’s ear, and shards of bark flew off the tree beside her. A gouge appeared in the trunk.

  “Time to go,” Cedar said.

  “Do we face the angry humans by the river or the unknown somethings in the forest?”

  “Your choice. I have ammo now.

  “We can cut back to the trail through the trees.” Kali glanced at Sebastian’s injured men. “I’m tired of hurting people.”

  “You want to hurt machines?” Cedar led the way into the forest.

  “No, but I want to see them up close.”

  “Even if they’re shooting at you?”

  “I’m odd,” Kali said. “I know.” She wanted to know what powered them and what directed them to move—and shoot. Nothing natural. That much she knew.

  Something glided out of the branches. Before Kali got a good look, burning pain lanced into her abdomen. She hunched over, clutching her stomach. Again, the wound was not enough to break skin or rip clothing, but she would have a bruise before long.

  “You all right?” Cedar gripped her shoulder. “I saw it. It’s a foot long and looks like a big butterfly with wings made of the same mesh as the flyer.”

  “If you saw it, why didn’t you shoot it?”

  “Don’t we want your friends to believe we were caught in the cave-in?”

  Right. Weapons fire would give them away. “All right,” she said, “let’s get out of here. That thing is aiming for me.”

  They broke into a jog with Cedar leading the way. Though no trail meandered through the forest, enough people had clomped around their claims that Kali and Cedar could maneuver between the trees, following paths of trampled foliage. Their footfalls drowned out the click-whirs of the mechanical creature, but she feared it was not far behind. Between the packsack bumping on her back and the drill snagging on branches, she was not moving quickly. More than once, Cedar glanced back and slowed his pace for her.

  Without warning, another tiny projectile hammered Kali in the jaw.

  “Tarnation!” she blurted, grabbing her chin. Without the protection of clothing, that one hurt more than the others. Warm blood dribbled through her fingers. “How’d it get in front of us?”

  “I don’t know. Another quarter mile, and I’ll risk a shot.”

  They kept running. Though the balls did not cause overbearing pain, the face shot made Kali aware of the possibility of getting one in the eye.

  The next stab of pain came from the side. She growled in frustration and gritted her teeth.

  Sword in hand, Cedar darted in front of her and crashed into the undergrowth. He leaped into the air and whipped the blade upward so quickly Kali could not track its path. Metal clashed against metal, and something slammed into a tree trunk. Her eyes finally caught up with the action when the contraption clattered to the ground.

  “Keep running,” Cedar said. “There’s more than one.”

  But she sprinted over to check out the device. It was worth a few more balls in the butt if she could take one home to study.

  The winged, bronze and steel creature had a finely wrought carapace, and Cedar’s blade had sliced its body in half. When she picked up a piece, its lightness surprised her.

  “Go, go.” Cedar pulled her to her feet and gave her a shove.

  He was staring past her shoulder, and she risked a glance before running the direction he indicated. And she gulped. No fewer than ten of the flying creatures were descending from the trees and angling toward her, like a swarm of bees.

  Still clutching the broken one, she took Cedar’s advice and ran. There were no clear trails, and she stumbled on roots and rocks. Branches whipped her face and snagged her hair. She almost dropped the drill, but she did not have time to dig the flash gold out, and she refused to leave a piece of that on the forest floor.

  Footsteps thundered behind her. Cedar.

  “Th
ey’re staying out of sword reach,” he said.

  “They’re smart.”

  “Flash gold smart?” He must have also realized no natural explanation could account for the autonomous creations.

  “Maybe.” Flash gold was her father’s invention, and she did not think much of it was out there in the world, if any. She had read of witches animating inanimate objects and controlling them, and thought that a more likely explanation for the swarm, but she could not be sure. She lacked the breath to share her speculations.

  Cedar grunted, then cursed. He was running directly behind her and taking the hits.

  “You don’t have to...do that,” she said.

  The effort of holding the pace was catching up with her. Without the packsack, she would have an easier time, but she was unwilling to leave her tools behind. She could have dropped the drill or the metal carcass, but she might find another use for the former, and she had to check out the latter as soon as there was time. This woman’s work was incredible.

  “Veer right,” Cedar said. “The river bends ahead, and we’ll run into some rapids if we keep going straight.”

  “It’d be nice if...someone would have...made a trail for us.”

  “We’ll meet up with it soon.”

  When Kali tried to follow his instructions and run right, movement in that direction made her falter. Two of the creatures swooped out of the canopy.

  Cedar’s rifle cracked. One of the constructs flew backward, smashing into a tree. The other returned fire. The bullet was too small to track, but Cedar cursed and dropped his rifle. He snatched it up and caught up with Kali.

  “They’re herding us,” he said.

  Yes, she was getting that feeling. “To corner us...at the river? I’m hot and tired enough to jump in and...take my chances with the current.”

  “With all that gear?” Irritating that he did not sound out of breath. “You’d sink like a gold bar.”

  Before she could think of a retort, the trees and undergrowth ended, and she stumbled onto a granite bank, damp with spray. In the center of the river, white rapids frothed and churned, but Kali’s gaze went to a shallow niche filled with calm, dark water—and a brown-clad figure standing in a metal boat. No, not a boat. The lower half of the flying machine, the half they had not found in the wreckage. The furnace and boiler appeared undamaged, and puffs of gray wafted from a narrow smokestack. Some sort of screw-style propeller kept the flying-machine-turned-land-vehicle-turned-boat from drifting out into the rapids.

  Kali slowed down, not sure what to do next. Stop and talk? God knew she was curious about this woman. Or turn right and run downriver, taking her chances navigating the treacherous slabs of rock framing the waterway?

  Cedar had no trouble deciding what to do: he fired his rifle.

  The transparent barrier still protected the piloting area, but since the woman was standing, her torso rose above it. The bullet slammed into her chest. Or it should have. It clacked, as if hitting rock, and ricocheted off without the figure reacting. Actually she did react. She tilted her head and gave Cedar a look that managed to convey, even with goggles covering her eyes, pity for such a simple creature whose only solution to problems was gunfire.

  He seemed to get that message too for he growled like a bear roused early from hibernation.

  Click-whirs grew audible over the roar of the rapids. The flying constructs drew closer, forming a tight semicircle at Kali and Cedar’s backs. One buzzed a couple of feet from her ear.

  “What do you think of my cicadas?” the figure called. The head wrapping did not cover the speaker’s lips, so the voice came out clearly. It definitely belonged to a woman, an older woman, Kali guessed. “Incase you’re thinking of fleeing, I should inform you that you’ve experienced only Setting One of their firepower. There are three settings.”

  “Who are you?” Kali asked. Maybe the question should have been, “What are you?”

  Though the voice and the swell of a bosom beneath the brown wrapping made femininity clear, Kali struggled to believe this was a mere woman. Cedar had shot her the day before—they had seen blood—but no sling cradled the arm, nor did the figure appear wounded now.

  “Who do you think I am?” the woman asked, a smile in her voice.

  Kali glanced at Cedar, but his face was masked, and he said nothing.

  “A witch who studied engineering?” Kali said to the woman. “Or an engineer who studied witching.”

  “Witching.” The woman chuckled.

  “Oh, good,” Kali muttered. “I amuse her.”

  “Your first guess is most accurate.” She smirked. “Huzzah.”

  “And what do you want with me?” Kali asked. “It is me, right? I couldn’t help but notice your little butterflies had a fixation for my bottom.”

  “I’m here to kill you.”

  Cedar took a step forward, his knuckles white where he gripped his rifle. “If you try, I’ll kill you first.”

  “Not likely, dear,” the woman said. “You don’t seem too bright.”

  “Why?” Though Kali did not think Cedar would be rash enough to charge the woman, she put a hand on his arm anyway. The hard knotted muscles beneath the sleeve testified to the tension in his body. “Why kill me? Most people just want to kidnap me. Which is a might inconvenient, too, but preferable to death.”

  She eyed the woman’s vessel as she spoke, mulling over a way to sink it or push it out into the rapids. If they could manage that, the river might sweep their foe miles downstream before the woman could pull herself to shore. That would give her and Cedar time to escape. But if the “cicadas” truly had a setting three times as powerful as the one she had already felt, she might be filled with holes before she could reach the shallows and the boat.

  The woman’s gaze fixed on the drill. Kali had turned it off, but the flake of flash gold continued to glow, as it would for all eternity unless someone destroyed it. Maybe it was visible from the boat.

  “The secret of flash gold must die,” the woman said.

  Ah, yes, visible from the boat indeed.

  “Most people want the secret,” Kali said, “which I don’t have, by the way, so there’s no need to kill me. As far as I know, nobody living has the secret.”

  Kali subtly poked through the innards of the broken cicada, looking for a clue that might let her nullify them all. If they were decommissioned somehow, charging the boat might be a less foolish proposition. Her fingers tingled as she touched some of the fine gears. Magic?

  Cedar watched her hands through hooded eyes.

  “You know how it’s made even if you lack the power to imbue it,” the woman said. “You’ve studied your father’s notes, I’m sure.”

  “Notes?” Kali said. “Was he supposed to leave notes? He must have forgotten. He was busy dying.”

  “Ezekiel kept excellent notes. I know. I was his research partner for more than ten years.”

  Kali blinked. “You knew my father?” She had never met anyone outside of Moose Hollow who did. Old Ezekiel had done a good job of falling off the map when he came north. If Sebastian had not blabbed to the wrong people, all these troublemakers would never have known of her existence.

  “Yes, did he never speak of me? Amelia?”

  “No.”

  “That figures,” the woman said, voice like ice. She—Amelia—picked up something. A small bronze box. Some sort of controller for the cicadas? Had she grown tired of chatting?

  “My father didn’t speak to me about anything,” Kali said, trying to buy more time. She went back to prodding the wreckage of the broken cicada. “If you were lovers or something, he might still have cared. I just wasn’t...a confidant of his. He barely acknowledged me.”

  “Because you lack power, I imagine. If the arrogant coot hadn’t been obsessed over looks, we might have...”

  She did not finish, but Kali could guess. They might have had a child. So, this was some spurned woman her father had not chosen for a lover. Maybe Amelia wanted Kali dea
d for more reasons than flash gold.

  “Sorry, he didn’t love you,” Kali said. “But it’s not my fault. Killing me won’t—”

  “It will ensure no more flash gold is ever made,” Amelia snarled. “It’s bad enough that it exists at all, but now that gangsters know about it, they’ll not stop until they capture you and wring its recipe from your brain. They’ll find someone who can imbue it, and the world will suddenly have power enough that countries can destroy each other without ever fielding an army.”

  Kali’s probing in the broken cicada revealed a small cracked compass. “Don’t you think flash gold has power for good? To be used as an energy source? It’s more efficient than burning coal or wood and—”

  “Don’t lecture me, child. I know what it is. I helped invent it. And then I watched as the first experiment burned half of a town and killed dozens of people. I was caught in that fire.”

  For the first time, Amelia lifted a hand to her face and pushed up her goggles. She used her left hand. Maybe that bullet in her right shoulder had hurt after all.

  Next she removed the wrapping, letting it fall about her neck like a scarf. Short graying blonde hair framed a narrow face with a pointed chin. She might have been pretty once, but shiny scar tissue ran up and down the right side of her face, contorting her features.

  “I have that lodestone with me,” Cedar whispered, and Kali realized he had been watching her finger the compass. “Wrapped up in the bottom of my pack.”

  Kali caught on immediately. If the cicadas used the compasses for navigation, a lodestone, with its magnetic properties, might be enough to throw them off by a hair. A hair might be all they needed. “Get it,” she whispered back. “Hook it on the lead one’s wings.”

  She tossed the broken machine aside, and took a couple of steps toward Amelia, placing herself to block the woman’s view of Cedar. “I’m sorry you were injured, but look.” Kali held out the drill with both hands. “Flash gold is a brilliant invention. It needn’t be used as a weapon. I’ve used it for tools and plan to use it for transportation. I’m sure there are a million ways it could make people’s lives better.”

  “It would only take one unscrupulous person to use it to destroy the world,” Amelia said. “It’s too dangerous to keep around.”