The man came down the steps with easy grace.
It was Jonathan Burden.
Aw, fuck. Fuck.
A few days ago, I’d been chatting with Burden at the snow-blanketed spaceport on Mittel Trevoyvox. Now he was wearing shorts and carrying a .45 in a show-offy fringed holster. “Are we having fun yet? Don’t answer that. Gotta tell you, Sophs, I did not think there could be a planet more boring and depressing than Mittel Trevoyvox, but this, yup. This is it.”
No one got to call Sophia ‘Sophs.’ But apparently Burden did …
… and that wasn’t all he got to do. He slung his left arm around Sophia’s shoulders. She turned her face up and kissed him on the lips, long and deep. My neck fur bristled as I fought an absurd pang of jealousy. The ease of that kiss, expected and willingly given, gave me the impression that they had been on kissing terms for a long time.
When would I stop making awful discoveries about the woman I had married?
That’s what I was here for. The truth. But nothing said I was going to like it.
“Face it,” Burden yawned. “The girl’s not here, or else the army has taken her into custody already.”
“That’s why we should assault their base, before they get a chance to ship her out,” Sophia said.
“Fuck, no. We’re way out on a limb here.” Burden was ill at ease, surveying the bazaar. “All we need is for Starrunner to show up.”
A tiny smile appeared on Sophia’s lips. “You should’ve taken him out on Mittel T.”
“I tried.”
Sophia’s smile spread into a hateful grin. “Well, now you get another chance.” She pointed at me. “That’s him. Kill him.”
21
I was already springing at them as Sophia said, “Kill him.” Burden drew so fast, I hardly saw his hand move. His gun went off behind me as I landed on the table. Cheap electronics showered to the ground under my scrabbling claws. The boy Traveller lunged at me with his bare hands in a harebrained display of courage. He bumped against Burden’s gun arm and sent his next shot astray. I leapt to the ground and raced away among the stalls.
Panic spread outward from the gunshots like a ripple in a puddle. I heard Burden bellowing above the clamor: “Get him. Get him.”
I dashed into a gap between two stalls … and a net descended on top of me. Through the plastic mesh, I glimpsed the excited faces of children. There had to be a dozen of them, all holding the edges of the dog-catching net. As I tried to run, I got more and more tangled up in it. I rolled onto my side and bit frantically at the mesh.
Burden ran towards me, gun levelled. “Outta the way,” he yelled at the children.
Over my own desperate snarling, I heard the growl of an engine. It was right behind me! I rolled in the net, knocking a couple of kids over.
Our technical swept past, missing me by inches.
Ta-ta-ta-ta-ta!
The technical’s roof gun yammered.
Burden hurled himself full-length on the dirt.
People fled in all directions. The junior dog-catching team fled, too, leaving me alone in my plastic prison.
The technical kept going. It knocked down the soup stall. Martin had lowered the cow-catcher plate. It swept the roof and the canopy of the soup stall before it, straight into the Travellers’ stall.
I finally disentangled myself from the net and rolled to my feet.
The technical ground onwards, knocking down the Travellers’ stall, scattering their wares. Exhaust blued the air. The engine roared. Martin pushed the drift of wreckage up against the big rig, trapping the two young Travellers behind it. He then reversed in a big circle, knocking down more stalls.
I raced towards the technical. On the way, I passed Burden. He was sitting on the ground, groaning. Blood welled from a wound in the meat of his left forearm. I thought about finishing him off then and there, but there wasn’t time. Bullets were still flying around, and I was in the open.
Martin leaned across and opened the passenger side door of the technical without slowing down. I leapt in at full tilt. The thought then crossed my mind: If Martin was driving, who’d been shooting? No sooner had I wondered it than I saw the long, spindly grippers clamped on the stock and trigger guard of the roof gun, and the lamp-like eyes telescoped up through the hatch. I tracked the attachments back to MF, who was lying on his side behind the seats. He had extruded his neck to a full three feet, so he could see out while his body stayed safely below. “I got him!” he squealed. “Did you see, Mike?”
Useless in a fight? Not so much. It gave me pause to see the robot operating a gun, shooting at human beings. On the other hand, these human beings were trying to kill us. I scanned through the windshield for Sophia. I couldn’t see her.
A bullet pinged off the technical’s hood.
“There she is,” I shouted. Sophia was up in the cab of the big rig, shooting at us through the window.
“Fuck her,” Martin said. He put the technical into forward gear and drove out of the bazaar with pieces of stall canopy still flapping off the cow-catcher plate. “We’re getting out of here.”
“I didn’t find Pippa,” I gasped.
“Too bad. There’s army around here. Watch them blame us for that mess.” He sped up, clipping tents. “They’ll have to catch us first.”
“How’d you know I was in trouble?”
“Didn’t,” Martin said, laughing. “Got worried when you didn’t come back. Figured I would do a reconnaissance. First thing I see is you tangled up in that damn net.”
“Saved my ass.”
But we were not out of the woods yet. I kept my eyes peeled out the back for pursuit. As we passed the Hurtworlds Authority office, I scrutinized the building, worried about that volunteer.
She burst out of the front door, running. Behind her came another, smaller female.
“Stop,” I yelled at Martin. “Stop!”
He braked. Pippa sprinted up to the technical. “Mike?” she cried. “Martin? Is it really you?”
“She was upstairs,” the volunteer panted. “I hid her … She says she knows you.”
“You,” I said, “are a hero. I’d kiss you if I wasn’t a wolf at the moment.” The volunteer could only gape in astonishment. “Stay safe. Wait!”
The panic in the bazaar had died down, or at any rate wasn’t getting any closer. We had a few seconds.
“MF,” I ordered, “all the stuff. Dump it all out the back. Not the diesel. Everything else.”
The bot obeyed.
“Clothes and shoes,” I said. “Toys. Electronics—the good stuff with AI. Music, books, films. Chocolate, candy, vitamins. I forget what else. Give it to the kids, share it around. Oh, and the guy with a beard.” I pointed back to the bazaar. “He may try to pass himself off as a HA official. He is a HA official, but he’s also a Traveller. So are his associates. Tell the army. Don’t give him any help.”
Pippa scrambled into the passenger seat. She squeezed in next to me and closed the door.
“Goodbye,” she called to the HA volunteer. “And thank you, thank you, thank you.”
Martin accelerated back to the main road.
*
Against the odds, we had found Pippa. I studied her as Martin drove at breakneck speed away from Camp 32. Her arms were sticks, her cheeks unnaturally hollow. I wished we hadn’t given away all the chocolate and candy—she sure looked like she could use it. Her ragged shirt and shorts smelled unwashed, as did her dirty blonde hair.
Did she still have the TrZam 008? A chain hung around her neck, but whatever was on it was hidden inside her shirt.
I freed my neck fur from her clinging fingers. “Don’t look.” Of course she did, and saw the unseemly contortions of my Shift back into human form. I struggled into my clothes. Pain sang through my body. I hadn’t been shot, but I had so many bruises from my struggles in the dog-catching net that it almost felt like I had.
Pippa smiled. “It really is you,” she breathed.
“Sure is.”
I uncapped a bottle of soda, drank half of it off in one gulp.
“The army tried to arrest me, even though I didn’t do anything. Charlotte stood up to them.” That must be the volunteer’s name. “She hid me in the HA building. Then those other people came, so I had to stay hidden. For days and days. Then you came. Charlotte thought maybe you were from the Fleet or something. But when I looked out the window, I saw Martin in the parking lot. I thought it was you,” she said to Martin, “but I wasn’t quite sure … But then when you came back, I saw the wolf. I mean, I saw you, Mike. Then I knew. I’m so glad you came for me. So glad. Thank you. I mean, it doesn’t seem like enough, just saying that. But thank you, thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet.” I drank the rest of the soda. Met Martin’s eyes in the rearview mirror. He raised his eyebrows. I shrugged.
Camp 32 fell behind us, shrinking into a green line on the desert, like a false oasis. Where were we going to take Pippa? This hadn’t been in the plan. Not that I’d really had a plan, beyond “figure it out when we get there.” Now we were there ... but so were the Travellers.
MF had been silently staring at Pippa all this time. Suddenly he shot out a gripper and fumbled at her neck. She cried out, shrank back, but he’d caught hold of the chain around her neck. The TrZam 008 popped free of her t-shirt, diamonds sparkling in the sunlight.
“Lay off!” I shouted, chopping my hand down on MF’s gripper. He let go. Pippa scrabbled into the far corner of the technical, clutching the device. “Leave her alone. That’s hers.” Shame gnawed at me. I didn’t want Pippa to see us as predators like the Travellers.
“Aw babe!” MF groaned. “Lemme just see it! Come on. I’ll give it back! I only need it for a minute!”
“The famous crown jewels?” Martin said. “Not even gonna let us have a look, darling? After we saved your life?”
“No,” Pippa gasped. The device vanished inside her grubby fist. The gratitude in her eyes changed to fear.
“Are you sure?” Martin waggled his eyebrows. “I’ll do stupid snake tricks for it …”
“Gimme!” MF blared. He lunged past me and reached for Pippa again. She ducked, not fast enough. His gripper caught her chin, and she let out a cry.
Shocked by MF’s violence, I caught his gripper and twisted it sideways. It started to retract into his housing. I bore down, using it as a lever to knock him onto his side. I brought one knee down on the brushed-steel surface of his chassis. “Stand the fuck down, MF. That’s an order!”
“Go easy on the suitcase,” Martin said.
“Just reminding him that he works for me.”
I had never actually pushed this point before. I wasn’t sure, when it came down to it, that MF did work for me. He lived in my spaceship. That wasn’t the same thing.
But lying there on his back, he squeaked, “Sorry.” His neck curved up and his optical sensor covers blinked at Pippa. Her chin was bleeding. “Sorry! I didn’t mean to do that! You’re much too cute to hurt!”
“Forget the device,” I said. “We’ll discuss it later. Marty? We’ve got a seventy-hour drive back to the spaceport. There could be other Travellers around. I’m not confident of making it. Let’s call the St. Clare.” It was illegal to land a spaceship outside the spaceport. But I would rather commit a crime than wind up dead.
“Already did,” Martin said. “They’ll contact us on the HF when they’re in the air.”
I smiled for the first time since we reached Camp 32. Good ol’ snake. “Excellent. Pippa?” I didn’t know what to do for her, how to help her. “You hungry?”
She shook her head, still eyeing MF fearfully. “I don’t need anything.”
“Well, I’m hungry.” We had some iron rations—vacuum packs of polenta and tempeh, dried fruit, whatever Irene had selected from the St. Clare’s stores. When I opened packets and started eating, Pippa changed her mind. She gnawed the unappetizing long-life foodstuffs with utter concentration. As I had suspected, she was starving. The desert jolted past.
“Do you know why they were after you?” I said at length.
She looked up. Mouth full. Frightened. “The pedlars?”
“Yes.”
“I—I … no.”
“They were Travellers. The same ones that tried to kill you on Gvm Uye Sachttra.”
Her eyes flicked from me to MF. “I guess maybe they wanted the crown jewels.”
“I don’t mean to pry, but what are the crown jewels?”
“I don’t know.” She stuffed a dried fig into her mouth. “I don’t know!”
Martin said, “Heads up.”
His tone gained my total attention.
“Company.”
I twisted and looked out of the technical’s narrow slot of a back windshield.
A puff of dust rose from the road behind us.
As it crested a shallow rise, I made out the glowering profile of the Travellers’ big rig.
They were chasing us.
22
The Traveller rig caught up steadily. Within a few minutes, we could hear its engine growling across the desert, a menacing echo of our own engine as Martin pushed the technical to its limits.
80 klicks per hour. 100.
There was nothing else on the road, if you could call this smoothed-out strip of desert a road. The sun was finally starting to sink, lengthening the shadows of small boulders and sparse thorny bushes. Ahead of us, the plain stretched unchanging to the horizon. There was nothing between here and Camp 31, about 30 klicks away.
At 120 kph, the technical started to rattle and rock dangerously. Martin struggled to control it, while bouncing over the uneven road surface. He finally had to ease off on the gas. “This is it!” he yelled. “Can’t go any faster! They’re gonna catch up!”
The Traveller rig was relentlessly closing the distance, engine howling.
“Pippa,” I said, “get down on the floor. Give me those ammo canisters when I tell you to.”
I wasn’t letting MF do any more shooting. His aim was crap, anyway. I stood up, steadying myself on the machine-gun’s tripod. Hot, dusty wind thundered into my face. The gun could rotate 360 degrees. I hauled it around to face backwards, locked it, and flipped the lever to automatic.
The Traveller rig was now only about 200 meters behind us. I sighted on the grille, which had been chopped up to look like teeth, and fired.
With no ear protection, the roar of the gun seemed to scour out the inside of my head. I struggled to keep it level, while resisting the urge to clap my hands over my ears. Sparks flew off the Traveller rig’s hood. One of the square, eye-like panes of the windshield frosted over. I was at least hitting the rig, no mean feat at 100 klicks an hour while bouncing all over the road. The canister clicked empty. I reached down, shouting, “Reload!” Pippa slapped a fresh canister into my hand.
The frosted side of the big rig’s windshield shattered. I hadn’t done that. The butt of a handgun whaled on the glass from inside, knocking out the shards. Then Sophia’s head and shoulders emerged. Half inside the cab, half out, she braced her elbows on the hood and fired at me.
I ducked back down inside the technical. Kneeling under the tripod, I fitted the fresh ammo canister into the machine-gun.
The back window of the technical blew out.
“Aim at the driver,” Martin yelled, “the driver!”
We were running out of time. The rig was so close now that it blocked out the sun from the hole where our back windshield used to be. I could look out and back into the grille’s teeth.
Sophia fired again, this time hitting the edge of the hatch, keeping my head down.
The big rig nudged our back bumper. The jolt threw me against the seats. Martin cursed and stamped on the accelerator.
Another bump.
I popped my head out of the hatch.
Sophia had started to climb out of the rig’s windshield, sliding feet first down the hood. She meant to board us, at 100 kph.
I looked into her eyes, and at the gu
n in her hand, as she struggled to bring it up—too late. She had not thought I would actually shoot her.
And I didn’t.
I fired into the other side of the windshield, smashing it and perforating the body of whoever was driving.
I would never know if it was the boy who had wanted his own ship, or the girl who had been bored with playing pedlars. Both of them would have been novices, the second-lowest level in the Traveller hierarchy. To the Travellers, novices are two a penny. They sign up for nothing—for the promise of something—for the good times. This one died instantly.
His or her body must have fallen across the steering wheel. The rig veered off the road. Sophia slid across the hood.
She was flat on her back, holding on with one hand over her head, inches from death, and yet she still found the will and the focus to get off one more shot.
She was aiming at me, but instead, by sheer luck, she hit our right rear tire. It blew out. The first I knew of it was when the technical lurched suddenly to the side. We were still going 100 kph. At that kind of speed, any sudden loss of stability can be fatal. We lurched. Martin frantically steered into the slew. We fishtailed, but didn’t stop. The technical rolled, first on the road and then off it, bouncing like a toy flung by some angry giant.
I wrapped my arms and legs around the machine-gun’s tripod, which was securely bolted to the floor, and held on for dear life as MF and the jerrycans and everything flew around, crashing into me, down and then up again.
The technical rolled one last time. I lost my grip on the tripod. We skidded a few more feet, and stopped.
I opened my eyes. I was looking up at the tripod, and at the side wall.
When I moved, broken safety glass crunched under my back.
The good news was I could move. Nothing broken.
The reek of diesel filled my nose.
I turned my head. MF lay beside me in a pool of diesel. One or more of the jerrycans had come open.
“Out.” I struggled into a sitting position. “Out, out, out!”
Martin had been wearing his seatbelt. Pippa had survived the crash by bracing her body against the sides of the footwell. MF forced the back door with his grippers. Shaken and bruised, we clambered out into the sunset.
Dirty Job Page 13
