by Corey Ostman
“I’m ok. We’re ok,” she said, glancing at Avo.
Avo kept quiet. Grace imagined a million thoughts behind his eyes. She knew the boy had hoped Tim’s restoration might lead to a way back for Jaya. Well. Maybe it still would.
Raj and Anna arrived, picking their way around cows. Anna plopped down on an unoccupied patch of prairie, reaching out to touch Grace’s knee.
“You and Avo ok?”
“Avo has a puncture—”
“I am fine,” said Avo.
“Let me see that,” Anna said.
“That was a mango LEMP, Tim,” said Raj. He stepped over the last cow and put his hands on his knees, gulping air.
“We were so worried when we didn’t find you near the house after the stampede started,” Anna said, leaning to examine Avo. “You left without your—oh, here.” From a pouch on her belt, Anna handed her Marty, wrapped in its leather holster.
“Hey!” Tim complained as Grace stood and he slid from her lap. Grace took her weapon with a smile, wrapping her belt around her waist and adjusting the holster on her right side. Her hand brushed against her phasewave-slugthrower. Good to have you back.
“And this,” Raj added, holding out her ptenda. It glowed blue as it recognized her bioelectric field, sending its bands out and around. She strapped it to her wrist, then rubbed Raj’s back—he was still out of breath.
“You did it, Raj.” She said, grinning.
“I bumbled into it,” Raj said, but he was grinning too.
“The aposti,” said Avo tightly.
“Where?” asked Anna.
“The cowboy who pushed me was riding alongside the herd. Ephron,” said Grace.
“He caused the stampede,” Avo added.
“Where’s Dad?” Grace asked, scanning the cowscape.
“He was keeping cows away from the other side of the house,” said Tim.
Grace frowned. The cattle had already run by. Had he saddled his horse and gone after them?
“Let’s head back,” she said. “How’s Avo, Anna?”
“He’s going to need some work, but we have what we need in the lab.”
“I am still fine,” said Avo.
Tim nudged Raj. “Can you walk, or would you like me to carry you?”
“Silly mutt. I can manage.”
Grace pointed the way forward. “Platoon, move out!”
She marched ahead, winding her way between sleeping cattle, their sides rising and falling. Tim padded to her left, Avo to her right.
“Grace, I’m out of LEMP,” Tim said. “If an aposti is at the house—”
“I have Marty,” said Grace.
Snoring cattle grew sparse as they climbed the hill. At the top was the familiar silhouette of a man with his rifle. Dad. But even as Grace approached, the earth exploded in front of her father and he collapsed on his side. From the west, the report of a gun echoed.
Dad! Her training kept her from screaming his name.
She ran, closing the distance between them. Her father was unmoving, face down. In the dark, her fingers danced along his back. He was breathing, and she could find no blood. She gently rolled him until he faced up. There was a lump on his jaw and streaks of blood where ejecta had cut through his skin. He’d been hit by the impact of the bullet, not the bullet itself.
“Dad?” she whispered.
I need to get him out of here. She glanced at the house. It was unharmed by the stampede, and it was closer than the barn. One cowboy with a bandage on his head lay on the grass nearby. She couldn’t make out his features in the dark. They’d have to both be carried inside. But first—
Grace picked up the rifle and looked west, where her father had been aiming, through the infrared sight. Far away, she could make out the bounce of a horseman. A small plume of dust trailed behind, followed by a mighty black wall of cattle.
Ephron Panborn.
“I’ve got him,” Grace whispered. She waited for the nadir of her breath and squeezed the trigger.
The rifle reported and recoiled, ejecting a blue-striped case that meant a rubber bullet. The cowboy didn’t go down.
“Damn!” she grumbled, then unholstered Marty. “Your turn,” she said, thumbing its force dial to a heavy but nonlethal stun. The rider was still too far away, but she’d be ready when he got closer.
Raj knelt beside her. “Grace? What happened?”
“There’s a rattlesnake that way,” Grace motioned toward the west. “Can you take care of Dad? And that guy over there. Keep low and out of sight.”
“Sure.”
“Anna,” Grace said and tossed Dad’s rifle to her. “In case you need to cover Dad and Raj.”
“Got it,” Anna said. Raj extended his metarm arms under Dan’s armpits. They began the slow process of pulling her father toward the house.
“Who did you see through the scope?” said Tim.
“Ephron Panborn,” Grace answered. “I’ll take care of him soon enough. Where’s Avo?”
“He went toward—”
“Lyle!” Anna screamed.
A bellow erupted to Grace’s right, punctuated with a rifle blast. Grace spun. Her father lay on the ground again, still unmoving. Raj sat stunned, a trickle of blood running down his forehead. The previously unconscious cowboy had wrenched the rifle from Anna’s hands, dropped to one knee, and leveled it at Raj.
Tim backed away, his shoulders low to the ground. His mimic coat turned unreflective black. Camouflage.
“I’ve been counting,” Lyle snarled at Grace. “That was the last of the rubber bullets. The rest are lead. I’m going to kill the canine abomination, but I could just as easily pick off you or your friends first.”
Aposti trained in hand-to-hand combat, but Grace knew she was faster with a firearm. She fired as he was speaking, quickly, before he could retaliate. A phasewave blast rippled outward—but in the gloom, something happened. One second, she had a perfect aim on her bogey; the next second, it was her father. Lyle had anticipated that she could outgun him and had lifted her father’s body to block the blast. The leading edge of the shockwave hit her dad, his body twisting and spasming.
“No!” she screamed, lowering Marty and sprinting toward Lyle. She left the ground and hit both her father and Lyle with the full force of her body. Lyle let go of Dad as they fell, swinging his rifle like a club. She rolled onto her back and the butt of the rifle hit her shoulder instead of a crucial part of her body, rebounding off to the side.
Before she could right herself, Lyle rolled on top of her and smacked Marty out of her hand. For a moment she was back on Ceres, in a life and death struggle with Uriah Panborn. Grace brought her hands forward before he could clamp his hands around her neck. Nausea surged in her stomach. She had to keep his hands away, keep his body from covering hers. Trying to roll him off, she instead found her vision swimming, her limbs uncoordinated. The pain in her temples increased.
“Enough!” Lyle shouted, jerking his hand from her grasp and swatting behind him. As they twisted sideways, Grace glimpsed Tim’s jaw firmly attached to Lyle’s thigh, his claws bracing against the ground.
Anna had grabbed Dad and was pulling him away from the fight. If Grace could keep the aposti occupied for a few more seconds, her father couldn’t be used as a shield again. She kicked off Lyle, her right leg striking his thigh, her left at his shoulder. The aposti rolled onto his back, the force of the spin dislodging Tim, who landed a meter away. Lyle picked up the rifle and fired point blank at the Podpooch.
The rifle cracked and Grace saw a small divot of mimic fabric tear away, metarm gleaming beneath. Her heart leaped into her throat: she knew his blue gel bladder wasn’t that deep beneath the surface.
But Tim was unphased. “That’s the spirit!” he jeered, launching himself toward Lyle’s head.
The aposti did a backward somersault, grabbing Tim’s hind leg and hurling him into the air. Grace rose to one knee, then surged forward. She rammed into the aposti, ripping the rifle from his hand and hur
ling it away.
A boot erupted into her vision, and Grace leaned to one side to avoid a strike to her ribcage. It unbalanced her, but she couldn’t risk a direct hit to her rib injuries from the canyon fall. A rock caught her heel and she fell.
As she hit the ground, her eardrums pounded. At first she thought it was her heartbeat, but then she realized it was the stampede. It had returned! Had other aposti whipped it back toward the house? They were in grave danger.
The grass lost focus to her left and it took a couple of beats before she recognized a camouflaged PodPooch. Tim jumped, tucking in his legs and rolling his body into a sphere that slammed into Lyle’s torso. The aposti absorbed the impact, seizing the PodPooch like a canine medicine ball and throwing him.
Grace staggered to her feet and rushed the aposti just as Tim left his grip. She launched into the air, her right foot extended at Lyle’s knee. She’d taken much larger opponents down with this leap, and knew that he’d buckle under the—
But he slid to one side, and she barely managed to avoid landing on the ground in a painful split. She regrouped into a run from behind. As she turned, she saw Tim had circled in front of Lyle, low to the ground. This is perfect, Grace thought. He can’t watch us both!
But they wouldn’t have time to wear the aposti down. The thunder of hooves grew as the outline of a large horse came into view. It galloped, skirting the mass of sleeping bovines, following the path that would lead it around the homestead and to the north. Grace recognized Bloom as she ran past, riderless, a blur of yellow.
“Doesn’t look like your friend Ephron will be showing up,” Grace said.
Lyle laughed and moved closer, his eyes raking across her body, seeming to catalog every injury, smug that the stampede was nearly there.
“I don’t need his help to get you,” he sneered, pivoting to his left and swinging his right leg out.
Grace brought her knee up, deflecting the kick. But as his momentum completed the arc, his right fist smacked into her head.
Over the site of the lost grafty.
She heard snippets of Tim’s voice as she lost balance, the fall in slow motion as her bruised brain tried to piece together reality. Jaya’s memories mixed with her own.
Charlie died liked this.
She tasted dirt and lifted her head, trying to focus, kicking her legs as she scooted away from the aposti and the running cattle, trying to give herself room to recover.
She glanced back, and wished she hadn’t. Lyle was already leaning down to finish her. But behind Lyle was another shape, rushing toward them. Blurry. Not Tim. She blinked, trying to resolve the image.
It was Avo! His legs were wrapped around a longhorn bull’s neck, his hands holding the horns. He was bearing down on Lyle. But Aposti were fast. If he noticed Avo, he’d move out of the bull’s path. Grace gathered her remaining strength and kicked out, aiming for his knees.
Perhaps it was his overconfidence, but she managed to connect. As he tottered, she took a deep breath and rolled to her left, putting in enough spin that even if she lost consciousness, she’s be clear of the lethal hooves. In the whirling blur, she heard a man scream, followed by the sickening crunch of breaking bones.
She came to a stop face-down in the dust and turned her head, coughing. When the dust settled, she saw Lyle’s body a meter away, the geometry all wrong. He wasn’t moving, and she knew he would never move again.
She winced as a heavy thud pounded behind her, certain it was one of the hooves of the stampeding cattle. Grace didn’t know which way to roll. Would it even matter?
She closed her eyes.
Chapter 30
Raj and Anna stood on the porch where they had pulled Dan from harm. Cows bellowed and ran in the distance: a wide infrared mass, staying mostly away from the house, for now. Out on the lawn, Grace lay beside the trampled aposti. Tim stood over her, mimic fabric flickering: his energy reserves were low. A strange green icon winked on and off in the air above Lyle.
“We’ve gotta get Grace,” Anna said.
“Wait—Anna!” He caught her arm as she went for the stairs. “That green light—it might be an explosive.”
“No, it’s a conscience tracker.”
“A what?”
“Raj! Come on!”
Raj scanned the horizon, but in the darkness all he had was infrared, and the cattle moving past made it hard to see beyond a red blur.
“I can’t tell if aposti—”
“Fast, then!” Anna ran down the porch steps, headlong toward Tim’s flickering outline.
Raj jumped after Anna. They ran for only a few seconds, but his heart was in his throat. When they got to Grace, he scanned her briefly to make sure they wouldn’t injure her if they moved her. Nothing life-threatening. He telescoped his arms and pushed his hands underneath her, gripping at her shoulder blades. Anna got Grace’s feet, and together they lifted her.
A loud crack, and turf exploded to Raj’s left.
“Quick, Anna!”
“Back to the house!”
They scampered back, Tim running with them. Raj heard two more rifle shots. Dirt flew into his face.
Avonaco was holding the porch door open. “Two infrared hits, one bearing twenty-three degrees at two hundred thirty-one meters, the other three-thirty-one and one hundred seventy-seven meters.”
“Tim?” Raj asked. “Can you—”
“Sorry, LEMP’s gone,” the PodPooch replied.
Wood splintered over their heads as a piece of the porch roof crackled from a shot. Once inside, they deposited Grace on a couch, near Dan. Avonaco barred the door.
“Ok,” Raj said. “The Donners have a weapon cache somewhere in the house, right?”
“Somewhere,” agreed Anna.
“You mean you don’t know?”
“You’re the one who grew up here!”
“The cattle are coming toward the house,” said Tim. “That should buy us some time from the aposti.”
“Toward the house?” said Raj.
“I’ll get my guns,” Anna said, heading for the basement.
“Toward the house.” Raj ran his hands through his hair. “Ok. Avonaco, can you check the rooms upstairs for weapons?”
“I will look.”
“Good. Tim, I need estimates.”
“Four to eight aposti. And at least a hundred cattle. The thickness of the ranch house walls will suffice for the aposti but not for the cattle.”
“The cattle will cleave around the house,” Raj said. “It’s the aposti that’ll get here first.”
Anna bounded up from below, carrying her weapons and the spare nuclear pack. She hefted it beside Tim.
“Oh, she’s good,” the PodPooch said. “She brought me a recharge.”
“How long will the energy transfer take?” Anna asked, uncoiling the connecting cable and plugging it into Tim’s ventral hatch. His mimic surface flashed white with alternating stripes of yellow and blue.
“Ooh! That’s spicy!” Tim barked. “Nineteen seconds to recharge.”
“I saw blips behind the cattle,” Avonaco said, coming down the stairs. “At least four aposti, if none of them are ranch hands.”
“Maybe this’ll scare them,” said Tim. He groaned as his coat went bright white. Every corner of the small living room was illuminated, brighter than the sun at noon. The chassis was drawing maximum current from the nuclear pack.
“Don’t overdo it, buddy,” said Raj.
“I could not find any weapons. I found bullets,” said Avonaco, holding up some boxes.
“Halfway there.” Raj rubbed his eyes. “Anna, what’s a conscience tracker? Do we have to worry about the aposti going mechflesh on us?”
“It’s belt tech,” said Anna. “Programmed to buzz the location and last wishes to the next-of-kin when a roider dies. Helps the relatives decide whether the body should be retrieved.”
“I did not see one of those icons when I knocked the bad cowboy off his horse,” said Avonaco thoughtfully.
>
“Ephron?” Raj said.
“Yes. So I suppose he is still alive.”
“I am ready,” Tim barked, his eyes a scintillating blue-white. “Please disconnect me. And open the front door.”
Avonaco went for the door as Anna removed the cable.
“Be careful, Tim,” said Raj.
“No worries,” Tim said as he passed Raj, heading outside. “I will keep the house safe.”
“…I know you will,” said Grace weakly from the couch.
“Grace!” said Avonaco.
“Are you ok, Grace?” Raj asked.
She rose and walked a step, then staggered and used the back of a chair for support. Raj’s eyelid scans showed strong vitals, but she’d been through a tough fight.
“Grace, I’m worried about the hits you took to the head. Can I give you a medbind?”
“Yeah.” Grace put a hand to her temple. “Not gonna fight you on that one.”
“I’m on it,” said Anna, dashing down to the lab again.
“One for Dan, too!” Raj called after her.
Tim’s LEMP discharged outside, punctuated by bellowing cattle.
Grace sat back down and put a hand on her dad. “What’s happening now? Dad ok? Where did Tim go?”
“Your dad has a concussion. He should be awake soon,” said Raj. He looked out the window at the prone mass of cows. “And Tim’s taking care of the stampede.”
“Aposti closing in! I see three on this side!” shouted Avonaco from the door.
They heard the report of a rifle, and a window in the kitchen shattered.
“I heard a shot!” shouted Anna, racing up the stairs. She tossed Raj the medbinds. He fixed one to Grace’s temple, then Dan’s.
“Anna,” said Grace. “Go to the closet by the door. There should be some shotguns there. The bullets—”
“I found bullets,” said Avonaco.
“You can have them,” said Anna, holding up her guns. “I’ve got LEMP.”
“What’s the range?”
“Four hundred meters.”
“Ok, good,” said Grace. “Anna, there’s a good view of the south pasture in the kitchen. Crouch down by the stove and cover that lookout. If you see anybody heading toward the house with weapons drawn, blast ‘em. It won’t be the ranch hands.”
