by Mel Odom
"You haven't told him about the Sheldon search parties?"
Stampede shook his head.
"Why?"
"Because we're going to let the Sheldons be our distraction so we can get away from Pardot. We can't wait any longer. We need to make our break while we're still in the wilderness, where Riley and his troops won't be able to run us down with their ATVs."
Hella nodded and thought about it. The plan was solid enough, and that was all they had. "How long do you think we have before the Sheldons get here?"
"From the way it looks, the Sheldon foot patrols will find this campsite tomorrow."
Hella thought about that, remembering how large the biker gang was and how well equipped Riley and his team were. "The Sheldons are going to get killed."
"I think so too. But Riley and his people are going to take some damage too. During the confusion, we're going to leave."
"Abandoning the expedition isn't exactly what we were hired to do."
Stampede snorted. "Red, at this point if we can get out of this with a whole skin, I'm going to count that as paid in full and a bonus."
Cold dread spread through Hella as she realized what Stampede was talking about. "You don't think they're going to let us leave."
"No, I don't. We know too much about their business. It's a long way back across the Redblight. If we get away from them and tell someone about the fractoids, they could end up chased all the way back home. Pardot has got to know that. The only reason they haven't locked us up is because you got injured and ended up being sidelined. I got to roam around today because you've been stuck here. If we were both able bodied, I think we'd be taking dirt naps or we'd be locked up the same as Scatter."
Hella thought she would be sick, and the need to be outside and gone was overpowering.
"Chill, Red. You need to eat. Heal up. Get rested."
"We're just going to let this happen to us?"
Stampede snorted. "It's already happened, Red. We're just trying to manage damage control."
A chill on Hella's face woke her; then she heard Scatter's hushed whisper. "Hella."
She blinked at the darkness that filled the tent and looked around for Stampede. She relaxed a little when she realized he slept in his bedroll. He held his massive pistols in his hands across his chest.
"Scatter?" Hella started to get up, but the chill on her face pressed her down again.
"Please. Do not move. They are watching."
"Riley?"
"His men, yes. They also have listening equipment planted near this tent. For the moment, I have nullified it so I can talk to you."
"Stampede?" Hella had detected the subtle shift in Stampedes breathing.
"I'm awake." Stampede spoke softly. "I'm listening."
The cold drew back from Hella. Nearly a meter from her face, Scatter's face materialized in thin air and hovered. The fractoid's features looked flat, like a two-dimensional curved mask.
"How did you get away?"
"I did not escape. I've managed to free this much of myself through the electromagnetic field, but maintaining control over this little of myself away from my body is difficult. I need your help, otherwise I am afraid Ocastya is going to die."
"Ocastya?"
"My mate. Ocastya is the name Pardot gave her when he could not pronounce her real name."
Hella figured her name was easily as impossible to pronounce as Scatter's. "She's your mate?"
"Yes."
"She's not recovering from her injuries?"
"Her body is repairing itself very well under the circumstances. I am referring to her self, that part of her that uniquely makes her Ocastya. She needs me with her to completely come back. I have endeavored to explain this to Pardot and Trammell, but neither of them will listen to me. They are only interested in keeping us both prisoner."
"We know that, but there's nothing we can do. Pardot isn't going to listen to us. He's got his own agenda."
"I know but you two remain our only hope." Scatter's face wavered in midair. "Ocastya is running out of time."
Stampede pushed out a short breath. "What's happening to her?"
"Our present bodies are nearly indestructible, meant to last forever, and they very probably will. However, the psychological mind is not meant to do something like that. Experiences are layered into our minds, and eventually the core self becomes dissipated and loses its frame. Without proper anchoring, a fractoid self can become irrational. In order to prevent this, we are paired forever, always true to each other because each of us is half of a greater whole."
Scatter's face flickered and lost cohesion, drifting into a small Milky Way inside the tent. When he spoke again, he sounded more strained. "Every seventy or eighty years, roughly approximating our original life spans, we have to—for lack of a better explanation and this one simplifies the process far too much—reboot."
"How do you do that?"
"We share our lives together. When the one of us that needs to reboot connects with the other, information, personality, memory, and self are exchanged. The core person gets rebuilt from the partner. But we have to be together, in physical contact, for that to take place. If Ocastya is not allowed to reboot soon, even if she survives her injuries and the remodeling of her body, she will never be herself again." Scatter paused. "I cannot bear to lose her."
Hella lay there quietly and didn't know what to say.
"I know I am asking a lot." Scatter sounded embarrassed and mournful all at the same time. "But there is no one else I can ask."
Quietly Hella tried to figure out what to say, but she never got the chance to decide on a course of action. Gunfire erupted around the camp, chattering in the automatic triple bursts that signaled they were being fired from the security bots.
Stampede pushed himself to a sitting position, his face grim in the muted yellow-white light from an exploding shell that momentarily lit his features. "The Sheldons aren't going to wait till morning."
Hella pushed herself up and formed her good hand into a gun. She got to her feet and was surprised by her strength as well as the residual pain in her injured arm.
"We are under attack." Scatter's hovering face spun quickly in the darkness, flickering silver again and again as explosions tore through the campsite. In the next instant, the face dissolved and floated through the tent flaps.
"Grab as much gear as you can carry." Stampede pulled on his backpack, holstered his pistols, and took up his rifle. "We're only going to get one shot at getting out of—"
The rest of what he intended to say was lost to the thundering assault of a nearby mortar round. The concussive force ripped and buckled the tent, and it knocked Stampede from his hooves. Hella got blasted off her feet as well and slammed into the hard ground.
CHAPTER 26
As she sucked air back into her lungs and struggled with the partial deafness brought on by the mortar explosion, Hella stared through the shredded tent walls and marveled that she was still alive. Muzzle flashes punched holes in the darkness all around her. She glanced around, searching desperately.
"Stampede!"
"Don't yell, Red. I'm deaf enough as it is." Stampede surged up from the ground like a mass of darkness come to life. Blood from a wound on his temple matted his fur. He raised his rifle and scanned the camp. His square teeth showed in a smile that held only lethal intention. "Let's get Daisy and get out of here. We can get lost easier in the night."
"Scatter." Hella looked around but couldn't find the fractoid anywhere.
Stampede shouldered his backpack. "What's the first life you save?"
"My own." After years of instruction, Hella's answer came automatically.
"Then let's get it done." Stampede nudged her with an elbow.
Hella's stumble turned into a full-blown run in a half dozen strides. Daisy bleated in fear, and that sound galvanized and focused Hella's resolve. There was nothing she could do for Scatter or his mate at that time. If she and Stampede were free and running, that
could change. She hoped it would change.
The mortars continued to rain death throughout the camp, but the security bots quickly adjusted to the attack. Sizzling lasers leaped from the bots and exploded incoming mortar rounds in the air. Most of them never reached the campsite, but a few still did, and those created instant craters.
Around the camp perimeter, the Sheldons closed in and exchanged gunfire with Riley's hardshells. For the most part, the body armor turned away the biker's deadly assault, but one of the wounded security guards stuttered back with both armored gloves wrapped around her throat. Blood fountained down the black material. Hella didn't break stride, knowing there was no time to save the woman. By the time she could get through the armor safeguards, if the woman were even able to tell her the pass codes to get the suit open, she would be gone.
At the edge of the camp, Daisy fought her tether. She gentled at once when she discovered Hella was there then threw her head up and down in greeting.
Bullets chopped into the brush and trees. A security guard in a hardshell wheeled on them with his rifle to his shoulder. Stampede stamped his hoof, and the ground beneath the security guard erupted. The man flew backward several meters.
Three Sheldons surged forward with their weapons up and firing. They had their heads pulled down so their shells acted like collars and offered protection.
Bullets cut the air around Hella and Stampede. A least a pair of rounds hit the chain mail and drove Hella back, but she had her hand up and fired automatically. Two of the men went down, mortally wounded. Stampede removed the head of the first with a single rifle blast.
Breathing hard, pain arcing beneath the chain mail, Hella stopped at the equipment chest on the ground beside Daisy, clicked it open, and took out the saddle from inside. Stampede grabbed the chest and started lashing it into place on the mountain boomer's back while Hella fitted the saddle.
A rocket-propelled grenade slammed into a nearby security bot and reduced it to a flaming pyre. The ammunition cooked off in rapid succession. One of the stray rounds hammered Hella between the shoulder blades hard enough to drive her forward and take her breath away. But the chain-mail armor held, though she knew she'd be covered in a massive bruise for days.
Once the saddle was cinched into place, Hella stepped into the stirrup, grabbed the pommel, and swung herself aboard. Daisy quivered in anticipation, already wanting to get out of the firefight. Hella hesitated, not knowing which direction to take.
"North." Stampede hauled his rifle to his shoulder, took brief aim, and fired. One of two of Sheldons nearest them went down with a massive bullet in his face.
Hella hesitated, staring at the skirmish confronting the camp. She didn't like the idea of running from the fight. Scatter and Ocastya might be all right, but she feared for Colleen Trammell.
Stampede stepped up beside her and spoke loud enough to be heard over the gunfire and explosions. "Riley and his people are establishing a line."
That was true. Riley and the hardshells repelled the ground attack, and the security bots had triangulated the mortar teams and were blasting them into the earth or into retreat.
"Colleen is back there."
"She's one of them, Red."
"Not entirely."
"Even so, if we go back there, we're either going to end up dead because of the Sheldons or because of Pardot. We've got to go."
Angry and frustrated, Hella reined Daisy over and pointed her toward the wilderness away from the camp. She put her heels to the mountain boomer's sides and rode, staying low in the saddle as Daisy scampered through the rough terrain.
With incredible speed, Stampede ran behind them, keeping up effortlessly.
Hella headed up into the nearest hill. Plunging through swampland or landing in a sinkhole in the darkness might have meant death. Three hundred meters away, safely behind a clutch of boulders, she reined Daisy in, grabbed her rifle, and dropped to the ground.
Stampede had already settled into a position among the rocks. "We help knock out the mortars; then we get clear and hope Pardot doesn't allow Riley to send people after us."
As she scanned the landscape, Hella dropped prone on a rock, shoved the rifle out ahead of her, and pulled the butt to her shoulder. "Even if he does, we can get away. The ground here is too rough for the ATVs."
Large flashes showed the positions of the mortar teams. Hella identified one of them then used her night scope to lock in on them. She squeezed off rounds and put down both Sheldons. Beside her, Stampede's huge rifle thundered again and again. When she couldn't find mortar teams, she picked off Sheldons attacking the camp.
Two or three minutes later, with dead sprawled on the ground, the Sheldons retreated. Some of the hardshells started out in pursuit, giving in to the bloodlust that filled them, but evidently got called back. Part of the group cycled through the campsite. Chemical firefighting grenades dropped into flaming tents threw out massive amounts of flame-retardant white foam.
Although he wasn't shooting anymore, Stampede lay still and surveyed the battle zone. "They're looking for us."
Searching through her scope and seeing the hardshells scrambling through the camp, Hella silently agreed. A few of the security guards were using binocs to search the surrounding wilderness. She wondered if they even knew she and Stampede had helped them.
"We need to get gone." Stampede pushed himself up but kept using the rocks as cover from anyone spotting them from the camp.
Reluctantly Hella used her elbows and backed away from the rock to keep a low profile. Pain filled her chest from the bruising left by the stopped rounds that had struck the chain mail. She took a moment to build the rhythm in her mind and banish the pain.
A silvery wisp formed in front of her. A moment later, the wisp wore Scatter's perfect features. "Hella, you are alive."
"Yes." Hella stayed hunkered down. She started to call out to Stampede, but she saw him turn around and knew that he had heard the fractoid.
"I am glad you lived."
"So are we."
Scatter looked around and it was strange watching the disembodied face twist and turn. Hella couldn't help wondering how far his range to control the small group of fractoids would extend. "You have left the camp."
"We had to."
"Ocastya and I are still prisoners. You cannot leave us. We cannot help ourselves at this juncture. Ocastya needs help. She needs to reboot."
"I know." Stampede walked over to join them. "It's a long way back to where they came from. A lot of things can happen. After tonight, Riley and his people are going to be hard pressed to continue to provide security for the expedition. If we can, if a chance presents itself, we'll help."
"I only hope that is soon enough." Scatter clearly wasn't happy. "I will send this much of myself with you, but I will need to focus my energies on helping Ocastya. That way I can keep you informed of our location."
"All right."
"Hella, may I ride with you? To conserve energy?"
"Of course."
"Please hold up your left hand."
Not knowing what to expect, Hella held out her left hand. As she watched, Scatter's face floated over and nested in her palm. Within seconds, his likeness had settled into a microthin layer over her palm. She flexed her hand and found the new coating didn't restrict her movements and wasn't noticeable.
"I will be in touch when I am able. Unfortunately I will have to initiate the connection. You will not be able to call to me."
"All right."
"Now I must go back to tend to Ocastya." Scatter sounded fatigued and worried. "I wish you good fortune." His likeness faded from Hella's palm and left only the shiny layer behind.
Hella flexed her hand then reloaded her rifle and clambered back aboard Daisy. Stampede fell into step with her as they jogged through the trees and crested the hill.
"Keeping up with the expedition isn't going to be a problem, Red."
"I know." Hella stayed focused, sweeping the surrounding landscape in c
ase some of the Sheldons had scattered and gotten lost.
"We can travel faster than they can, but they're going to maintain the tactical advantage. More men. More guns."
"I know. But there has to be something we can use to shift that. This is our world. We know this place better than they do. And there's a whole lot of distance between here and where we got them. We've got days to think and plan."
The expedition moved out early the next morning.
From her position high in the mountains, Hella watched the ATVs grinding cross-country through her binocs. She reached down and shook Stampede awake. "They're on the go."
Stampede glanced at the eastern sky and saw the sun was barely up. "Got an early start."
"Probably didn't sleep after last night." Hella continued watching the line of hardshells and ATVs snaking through the forest. She caught only glimpses of them, but the overall movement of the expedition was plain. Disturbed birds took off from treetops as the noisy vehicles neared, creating a visual marker system to the trained eye.
"They're navigating by GPS, not maps." Stampede stood and stamped his hooves to work out kinks in his legs. "That'll slow them down too." He scratched his chin, and his ears twitched. "Why would Pardot do that?"
Hella didn't have an answer either. She and Stampede had created maps of the area and given them to Riley as they'd traveled. There were no real trade trails through there, but the expedition could get to one if they traveled north.
"Maybe they're staying off the trade routes, hoping to lose us." Stampede shifted his gear. "Could be Pardot is thinking we might try to rob him."
"The two of us?"
"He could be worried that we could convince someone on the trade routes to throw in with us." Stampede rolled his head, and his massive neck cracked. "Let's get moving. We'll find out soon enough. With them moving on not enough sleep, they should break for camp early this evening. At the very least, they'll be fatigued tonight. That'll work to our advantage."
Hella rode Daisy and the forest around them became an endless sea of green leaves and gnarled bark. The mountain boomer's movements still caused twinges of pain to skyrocket through Hella. She undressed her wound and worked on it some more. She expected to have it healed completely in another two or three days.
