Peace in an Age of Metal and Men

by Anthony Eichenlaub

  I tipped my hat. “Court,” I said.

  “J.D.” Her voice seemed to harmonize with itself when she spoke. She gestured with a hand. “Welcome.”

  “Sure.”

  Holographic projectors between us flickered, rendering the image of the street where Legs and I had just played his game. Legs was a hazy image directing drones as they cleaned up broken bots.

  “I was thinking,” Court said, “as you played games with the boy outside. We’re not friends. We’re not allies. You don’t like me, and I don’t like you.” She leaned down and peered at me with pure yellow eyes. “So, why would you come to visit me in the middle of the night?”

  She was right. Court and I were not anything like friends. Her recent respect for the law was more a matter of her respect for the new sheriff, not fear of the old one. Truth was, any other night I’d probably have run the other direction if Court came calling. She wasn’t friendly, and she sure as hell wasn’t my friend.

  I strolled along one wall, my boots clanging against the steel walkway. The blinding lights were focused on the entrance, and once I left the spotlight I was able to take in a little more of my surroundings. There wasn’t a damn bit of it that I understood. Tech laced the walls, floor, and ceiling. Conduits ran everywhere and the air smelled of a dry, electric heat.

  “Stop,” Court said.

  I raised an eyebrow at that, but I stopped.

  “You’re getting too close to the Umbilical,” she explained. “We can’t risk you shutting down our operation, can we?”

  “Umbilical?” Looking around, I spotted the cord she was talking about. It was gold with a silver stripe and ran from a central console to a junction where hundreds of other cables originated. “Is that important?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Yes, Sheriff. They’re hard to replace, as I’m sure you understand.”

  “You’re afraid that I’ll break it and break all of your toys?”

  “No.” She leaned in close and peered at me with her golden, glowing eyes. “We have a spare. I just don’t want to have to kill you for such a terrible faux pas.”

  I cleared my throat. “Word is,” I said, “that you’re who people turn to for help.”

  Court tracked my movement with her unblinking eyes.

  “Boy needs the tech to be a football star, he comes to you. Man needs to escape some debt, he comes to you. Woman needs to disappear, she comes to you.” I pulled off my hat and held it against my chest. “So, here I am. I’m asking for help.”

  Court smiled, giving the impression of a coyote finding a day-old kill.

  “See, there’s some bad business going on. It’s not something I can bring to the law and it’s not something I can handle myself. I need weapons, explosives, and some way to get into…” I bit my lip. Court wasn’t someone who would help without knowing details, but giving her details meant giving her power. “I need to crack open a vault.”

  Her laugh was an eerie, echoing chuckle. “Well, lawman, I was expecting you to guiltily skirt the edges of the law, but this is interesting. Are you raiding a private estate, then?”

  “A bank.”

  “I hadn’t pegged you as the bank-robbing type.”

  I spoke through clenched teeth. “Not my choice. It’s something that’s gotta be done, and I think you’ll agree when you have the details.”

  She motioned for me to continue.

  I stepped away from the Umbilical and slipped past an array of screens that appeared to be showing live feeds of several nearby towns. Dead Oak was recognizable in one of them, Josephine’s junkyard visible at the outermost edge. Outside of her wall, I could see a pack of three canines sniffing around, scenting the air and moving back and forth.

  “Swallow Hill,” I said.

  Court’s expression darkened.

  “Mess of trouble happening in that town.”

  “Tell me.”

  I took another step toward the Umbilical. Its weave shone in the glaring lights like the scales of a silver snake basking in the hot summer sun.

  Court moved to follow me, but hesitated. “Tell me,” she said again, her voice more insistent. Her exquisitely sculpted face was less than a breath away from mine.

  “I need into that bank, and I need to do it without killing anyone and without getting caught. Thought you might be able to help with a job like that.”

  “I’m not sending my people anywhere near that town,” she said. “I’ve lost too many already.”

  “I don’t want your people.”

  “You’ll owe me.”

  “How much?”

  Court smiled again. “A favor.”

  I scowled. “What kind of favor.”

  “Oh, something simple, I’m sure.”

  I looked back at the screen, where the pack was circling around the junkyard’s barrier. They were coyotes. It was hard to tell from the image on the screen; they might have been wolves. No, I thought, they were coyotes. Giant ones. Ugly.

  “You have a deal, Court. Just get me the goods by sundown tomorrow.”

  She glided silently back to her seat near the altar. Her red hair flashed and flailed for a moment, attaching to the tech around it. “They’re doing something forbidden, you know,” she said in a soft voice.

  “Forbidden doesn’t bother me, ma’am,” I said. “What they’re doing is wrong.”

  “You don’t understand. The sub-quantum net has only one field generator. That field is like a still pond centered around the tower and we’re just little insects making waves in it.” She cocked her head to one side. “That generator is in Austin; it’s run by Goodwin.”

  I put my hat back on and strolled to the door.

  “When a second transmitter comes online the two resonate. It causes disturbance in both fields, and if the power is just right, the two will collapse in a most catastrophic fashion.” Her jaw relaxed and I got the impression that I was seeing her let her guard down. “Texas is in danger if that field drops, Crow.”

  I pulled the door open and squinted back through the blinding light at Court. “All of Texas isn’t my problem,” I said. “I’m just looking to save a few people in a small town from something that’s doing them wrong.”

  Chapter 15

  By the time I flew up on top of the ridge, I was so exhausted that I flopped onto the ground and didn’t move until Zane nudged me with his boot.

  An irritated grunt escaped my lips.

  “Fine,” he said. “Rest. You deserve it.”

  When I woke a few hours later, it was to the smell of frying meat and wood smoke. I shot up in a panic, heart racing as I felt at my chest, belly, ribs. The ribs did not appreciate me sitting up so fast. The pain in my metal arm had grown worse, and my head was pounding with a new headache. I wasn’t on fire, though. Nobody was cauterizing wounds this time.

  Zane watched all of this with a mildly amused expression on his face. The sky glowed red over the eastern ridge, but the sun wasn’t yet up. The handsome city man had started a small fire, and on it he was cooking bacon and eggs in a thin metal pan.

  “Mornin’ sunshine,” he said. He slid the breakfast foods into a bowl and set them down on a stone next to the fire. “Care for a bit o’ grub?”

  I rose, stretched, and cast off a thin blanket that I didn’t remember having. The stone next to Zane was passably comfortable and the eggs and bacon were absolutely heavenly.

  “The man can cook,” I said.

  “Among other things.”

  “Fine food’s the way to a man’s heart, Zane. Bacon’s the way to his soul.” Could this be the same guy I thought of as a manipulative sleaze? I crunched the last piece of bacon and licked my fingers. “Got anything to drink?”

  “Just water and whiskey.”

  “Make it water,” I said. “Save the whiskey for later.”

  He handed me a flask and I took a long drink. The water was warm and tasted like the sterile chlorine of city water, but any water is good after a long night in the desert. I closed my e
yes and breathed the cool, dry morning air. A wind was picking up, sending the dusty scent of the wasted land up into the sky.

  “Are you surprised that I can cook?” asked Zane.

  “I’m surprised every time I meet a city boy who can do anything.”

  “You don’t like us much, do you?”

  I sighed. “It’s not that.”

  “You just have this idea of what we are in your head and we’re all the same to you. I know the look you keep giving me. It’s distrust. You expect me to stab you in the back, either figuratively or literally.”

  “Will you?”

  He gave me a dirty look.

  “During the war your people killed mine. After the war, your people crushed our way of life. You didn’t care what life was like out here, only that you had power and food.”

  “Life in the city isn’t easy, you know.” Zane was cleaning up his dishes and thrust the still-hot pan into its carrying case. “Up above it’s all glitz and glamor, but down below things get pretty rough. Some of it would make life out here look like luxury.”

  “That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? Gotta be better at everything than us, even being bad?” I jammed my finger at his chest. “You just show up and demand that we jump and you expect us to jump. Goodwin’s got something that needs doing, so he sends the right reasons to make me do his dirty work.”

  Zane pushed my finger away without breaking our locked gaze. “Your people killed mine too. You killed them.”

  We would do it again too. We might do it again. Maybe. “I don’t like this,” I said. “You know that.”

  “You backing out of this, Crow?” That quirky smile again. Was he taunting me?

  “You damn well know I’m not.” My fist clenched. “But you better know I’m not happy about it, and Goodwin better know that if he pushes us too hard we’re not going to take it.”

  “You wouldn’t fight.”

  “What did you just say?”

  “You wouldn’t fight. By ‘not going to take it,’ you mean you’ll grumble and be upset, but you damn well know there’s not going to be another Civil War.”

  My shoulders slumped. He was right. The people of Dead Oak didn’t have another Civil War in them. Neither did the city folk. Corporations like Goodwin kept gaining power in the city. Nobody liked the way of the world, but nobody wanted change badly enough to risk their own life. Even my Hopi tribe’s only solution was to withdraw from the world as it slowly crumbled. It was the peaceful solution, but really not a solution at all.

  “I imagine you don’t want to be around when I visit Tucker,” I said. My metal hand slotted into the console of my skidder and the feel of power surged through me. “And Josephine won’t let you near her junkyard. Looks like you’re sidelined while the rest of us do the work.”

  Zane nodded.

  “Make yourself useful.” I scratched my head under my hat. “Head to the city and figure out Swallow Hill’s history. Tech like I saw in that bank didn’t come from the desert. We don’t go for that kind of thing. It’s got the smell of a corporation on it, but we’re not going to know which one until you do some digging.”

  “Don’t you think I’ve tried that? The data’s been wiped.” Zane kicked a rock off the ridge. “Obfuscated, anyway.”

  “Try harder.”

  His fists balled into tight knots. “Maybe you need to try harder.”

  “I’ve been.”

  “No, you’ve been sitting comfortable and playing safe.” He tapped his ear with one finger. “That earpiece will help, J.D. It’ll let you see what’s happening, but you’re too scared to take a risk. Too safe to trust one damn person.”

  I pulled the earpiece out of my pocket and looked at it. The slender tendril writhed in the morning sun. My lip twisted up in an involuntary expression of disgust. I flicked the piece at Zane and he caught it.

  “You get that info and stick that in your own damn ear.” I swung onto my skidder and hovered a couple meters up. “Did you see me play down in the town last night? Did you see how hard I had to work to get in that door to talk to Court?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Try that hard. I’ll worry about who I trust.”

  I launched myself up and away from the ghost town. The air was a cool breeze against my face. As I rose, the yellow sun broke the horizon, starting on its long mosey across the sky.

  Chapter 16

  Tucker Hale was a son of a bitch.

  In fact, Tucker Hale was the son of a bitch that other sons of bitches looked to when they wanted to feel like charitable gentlemen.

  In the war, he’d been one of my closest buddies. We were both naturals back then, capitalizing on our poverty and heritage to slip between the cracks in the enemy lines. Before I got my metal arm, I was one of the best. Tuck was better. He didn’t hate tech the way I did. Once we slipped past the scanners he’d improvise weapons and wreak more havoc than a full frontal assault could possibly muster. He was handsome too and would often use his charm to woo his way into the secrets of those city-dwelling bastards.

  He didn’t look so handsome older and upside-down. I was the one upside-down, actually, but the effect was the same. His long, stringy gray hair and bulbous beer belly didn’t do his square jaw many favors. His grin was missing a few of its teeth and all of its warmth.

  There was plenty of time to contemplate how good Tucker had always been with traps as I spent the better half of the afternoon hanging upside-down from one of the half-dead trees on his estate outside of Dead Oak.

  Tucker took a swig from a bottle of bourbon. “You dropped your hat.”

  I scowled at him, knowing full well that scowls have a funny way of not working upside-down.

  “Wasn’t sure if that’d hold you,” he said. “Made it for them coyotes that’ve been skulking around lately.”

  It was a good trap. Thin metal cables held my feet while my metal arm was pinned to my body by another set of razor-sharp cables. My metal arm was strong enough to break the lines binding me, but if I tried I’d likely cut myself in half.

  Tucker picked up my hat and put it on. “Well, J.D.,” he said, “it was nice talking, but I’m going to be seeing you. You’re not the sheriff anymore, so I’m going to assume you’re just trespassing.” He paused. “In fact, I’ve been getting a lot of trespassers lately. You know anything about that?”

  “I ain’t here to give you any trouble. Just talk.”

  He raised an eyebrow and took another swig. “Talk? Really?”

  I nodded.

  “I had no idea.” His voice dripped with sarcasm. “Was that what you were here to do last time when you rolled in, guns blazing, and ran me and my buddies up to Iowa?”

  Iowa was a prison plantation near the Canadian border. I had sent Tucker and his crew up there for a spell. “That was twenty years ago, Tucker.” My head pounded from the rush of blood. “And you had it coming. You were robbing banks.”

  He chuckled. “We sure were. Them banks needed robbing, and you know as well as I did that it was nothing but city money we were taking. We were doing good.”

  “You were breaking the law.”

  He nodded, took a swig, and then turned to walk back to his house. “I was breaking their laws, J.D. Not any laws I recognized.” The big, metal door closed behind him, leaving me to hang from an old oak.

  An hour later, he came out, looked at me with feigned surprise, then returned to his house. I tried to call out to him, but my voice was nothing but a rasping whisper. The sun pounded down on me like it was trying to have me cooked in time for supper.

  It seemed like hours after that when Tucker came out of his house again. He walked up to me, reached up, and loosened the ties around my feet, dropping me in a heap to the ground. Using a metal hook, Tucker snagged the wire wrapped around my feet and dragged me into the house. Razor wire dug deep into my arm, soaking my shirt with blood. Once we were inside, he cut the wire and let me loose.

  Tuck’s place closely resembled my ow
n. He had a single chair, a single bed, and a single table. Light from circles on the walls suffused the room with a bluish glow. My place was mud and his was concrete, but otherwise we lived similar lives.

  Tucker reached into a cooling unit under the bed and pulled out a couple of brown bottles with resealable caps. He popped one open and handed it to me, then popped the other and took a swig.

  I sipped cautiously, feeling the cool fizz on my cracked lips. The brew was smooth, with a touch of bitter at the end. It smelled like honey and wheat, like fresh-baked bread.

  “Good beer,” I said.

  “My own brew.” He took another swig. “Gotta keep myself busy when I’m not robbing banks or holding up rich folks for their pocket change.”

  I smiled. “You always give folks such a warm reception?”

  “You always send your war buddies to prison?” Tucker eyed my metal arm like he thought it was going to fly off and attack him.

  I took another swig and rolled it around in my mouth. My side still stung where the wire had cut into my skin, but I was careful not to show any pain to Tucker. It would be a shame to give the cruel bastard that kind of satisfaction.

  After a time, I broke the silence. “They say it’s getting hotter next few days.”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Sure.”

  “Unless it’s got something to do with brewing beer, I steer clear of the tech and trouble.” He tipped his bottle at my arm. “Unless it comes looking for me.”

  “Can’t help what I am, Tuck.”

  “Only what you do.”

  We sat in silence for a time, sipping beer and hiding from the heat in Tucker’s little home. A few times I wanted to say something. An apology sat at the tip of my tongue for minutes, but never quite formed. What was I going to apologize for? Arresting him when he broke the law? Leaving him to fight the war after my arm had been severed?