Sooner Dead

by Mel Odom

  "Yeah, but I recall something about always making sure your risk didn't outweigh the gain."

  "Pardot is menace enough. There's no telling what he can do with any technology he can learn about from Scatter and possibly use. He's already learned enough to track the fractoids when they came into our world. And someone like Pardot?" Hella shook her head. "We can't allow that."

  "Who told you we were supposed to save the world?"

  "Nobody. But somebody did tell me a scout travels through the land, respects it, and tries to leave it as unchanged and better for others as possible."

  Stampede sighed and nodded. He clapped Daisy on the side, startling the mountain boomer into a honked protest "All right Let's go see what we can see. But if it looks back, we cut our losses and save ourselves." He walked away before Hella could reply.

  Mounted on Daisy, Hella took point and rode in the direction Ocastya indicated. Riding helped sort her thoughts, but she still caught a stray memory every now and then that belonged in Ocastya's head, not hers.

  They moved on through the day, stopping only to water Daisy, eating on the go, and paying attention to the wilderness around them. The unforgiving sun burned down, and the humidity from the swamplands and the plant life made the air thick and fragrant. Down in the bottoms where they were, everything smelled of death. The occasional traces of a mineral spring tainted with sulfur reminded Hella of the stories she'd heard about the Christian hell.

  And they traveled, going as fast as they dared.

  As soon as the sun rose the next morning, they were on the move again. Daisy was recalcitrant at first, objecting to the hard ride only because it was boring and she wasn't getting to explore as much as she wanted to or to hunt, but she finally settled into the distance-eating gait that made her a smooth ride.

  At midmorning, they cut a fresh trail.

  Senses alert to everything around her, Hella reined Daisy in and dropped down to the ground. The mountain boomer nuzzled Hella, seeking a treat or a scratching session, doubtless bored again. "Watch."

  Daisy instantly abandoned her attempts and focused on the world around them. She snorted, stomped her feet, and set herself in the ready position.

  Stampede spoke over the comm link. "You've stopped."

  "I've cut sign." Hella knelt, brushed loose dirt and grass from the tire impression cut into the ground, then stuck her fingers into it. The dirt was still moist enough to stick to her fingertips.

  "Who?"

  "Looks like one of the ATVs. Must be Pardot's group, so some of them survived."

  "Could be Trazall."

  "His group didn't have any vehicles."

  "None that we saw."

  "He doesn't like vehicles any more than you do."

  "Trazall doesn't like them because they cut into his bottom line. Too expensive to operate and maintain. I don't like them because you become too dependent."

  Hella brushed the wet earth from her fingertips onto her jeans and stood. "Ground's still damp and the impression is sharp, not worn down. They didn't pass this way too long ago."

  "Headed in the same direction we are?"

  "Yeah."

  "Break off the trail. Find a new path that's just ours."

  Hella didn't like that. "We're going to lose time doing that."

  "Better to find our own way than to get too close to Riley's hardshells and get discovered."

  "I know." Hella peered up into the mountains. "We still have forest up to the ridgeline. I'd rather go up than down into the swamps."

  "Agreed."

  Hella remounted Daisy then cut off the trail and climbed the incline. Soft ground peeled away under the mountain boomer's claws, but she gained purchase and smoothly headed up.

  While she waited for the rabbits to cook in the coals of the fire they'd burned till sundown then allowed to burn down so the flames wouldn't be seen at night, Hella stared at Scatter's image on her palm. It seemed as though he were right there, just out of her reach.

  "You're thinking too much."

  Hella closed her hand and looked up at Stampede. She hadn't even heard him come up to her. "I guess so."

  Stampede knelt with his rifle across his thighs and warmed his hands above the coals. "We'll know more tomorrow."

  "Yeah." According to Ocastya, they were within only a few klicks of wherever Scatter was being held.

  "I spotted Pardot's expedition. Thought maybe you and I would go take a look at them tonight. See what we're dealing with." Stampede grinned. "Gonna have to be sneaky, though. Out here in the woods, away from everything they know, they're gonna be extra paranoid."

  "We're really sneaky when we want to be, though."

  "I know." Stampede gestured at the coals. "Are those rabbits about done?"

  "You can always eat grass."

  "I have been eating grass. Not very much of it around here is good, and it's not gonna fill me up."

  Hella used her knife to fish the mud-encrusted coneys from the coals. She'd left the fur on and caked the whole animal in mud. The heat from the coals had baked the mud hard and, she hoped, cooked the meat inside. Rapping the egg-shaped chunk with her knife hilt, she broke open the mud crust to reveal the coney. The fur peeled easily away with the dried mud and left the cooked meat intact. She handed that one to Stampede then fished out another for herself.

  She cracked open the second rabbit, peeled away the mud and fur, then slit the creature's belly with her knife. She poured the guts onto the pile Stampede had made with his then told Daisy she could eat. The mountain boomer lapped the bloody mess up with her long tongue and chomped happily. Hella pinched the cooked flesh from the rabbit and popped it into her mouth. The meat needed seasoning, but it was succulent enough.

  "When do you want to go see the expedition?"

  "As soon as we finish these rabbits." Stampede gnawed industriously. "We'll give them time to settle in good for the night."

  Swaddled in the shadows on the mountainside a half klick from the expedition, Hella lay prone on the ground and peered through her binocs. She'd switched the lenses to low-light properties so she could see almost as plainly as day.

  Less than half of the defense bots remained from the initial number, but Riley—assuming he was still alive—had them assigned to the perimeter.

  "Not exactly on stealth mode there." Stampede's whispered comment carried over the comm link. Ocastya hadn't been happy about staying behind at the cold camp, but she had.

  "Riley isn't big on stealth."

  "He likes having a presence, getting noticed."

  One of the nocturnal creatures only partially kept at bay by the light from the encampment got too close to the perimeter. A defense bot's gun roared to life a moment later and threw a hail of bullets into the transgressor. Even with the binocs, Hella never saw what it was. Whatever it was, it writhed in agony for just a few seconds then lay still.

  Two hardshells left the camp to confirm the kill. They moved cautiously but quickly. Once they'd finished, they returned to their posts.

  "Riley still has a lot of firepower."

  "Gotta be going through it fast, though." Hella tracked her lenses through the camp and finally found a hardshell she recognized as Riley. The knot in her stomach loosened a little; then she felt ashamed almost immediately. Riley was the enemy. She couldn't lose sight of that. Riley would have killed her and Stampede if he'd gotten the chance. Still, part of her was glad he was alive.

  Another burst from a defense bot ripped through the trees. A severed branch and a small cloud of leaves fell to the ground as a furry mass flailed in spastic reflex.

  "That was a slayer?"

  Hella watched two hardshells duck through the trees and check the mutated raccoons mangled body. "Yeah."

  "Riley wants to be careful and not pull a colony of them down on the camp."

  Mutated raccoons could be fierce and were often called masked slayers by the locals. The largest were a meter and a half tall and weighed eighty pounds, though still svelte en
ough to hurl themselves through the trees. They also possessed near-human intelligence and tool-making abilities and could be total terrors when they took up the revenge trail.

  Self-consciously Hella glanced up in the trees around her, making sure none of the masked slayers lurked nearby. Once they got it into their heads that humans were targets, they didn't care which humans they attacked.

  Stampede chuckled in her ear. "Nervous?"

  "I hate those things. When you're in the middle of them, you never know where they are until it's too late." They'd had a few encounters with the mutated raccoons and had always been good enough—or lucky enough—to escape with their lives. "They don't know when to stop until you bring out fire."

  "Riley and his people are following an old road, right?"

  Hella trained her binocs on the area before and after the camp. She felt bad because she hadn't noticed the unnatural straightness in the tree line around the camp. The forest hadn't yet broken through the line created by the old highway. "Yeah."

  "They're going to miss the area where Ocastya says Trammell and Trazall are holding Scatter."

  "Yeah."

  "That means they haven't sniffed out Trazall's true trail. He's probably got a small group staying out in front of the expedition, putting down false sign. Since Trazall can't just overpower and kill Pardot's little hunting party, he's going to lose them in the swamp and let nature take its course." Stampede was silent for a moment. "Not a bad plan, actually."

  Although she wouldn't say it, Hella didn't like the idea of Riley's getting killed out in the wilderness. She couldn't explain that reluctance even to herself.

  "That's probably what would happen. If we let it."

  Hella stared at Riley through the binocs. "You're not going to try to join up with them again."

  "No. They'd probably shoot us on sight. But we're not going to lose them either. We're seriously outmanned here, Red. We're going to create advantages and use them. Pardot and Trazall are enemies. We all want the same thing, but we can't afford to take Trazall on head-to-head. We're going to let them engage each other. If that helps us."

  "We're going to guide Riley back to the lab where Trammell is?"

  "If it suits us. C'mon. Let's head back. We need to get up early and find this lab then figure out if having Riley and Pardot on hand there is going to help us."

  Hella put her binocs away then faded back into the darkness with Stampede.

  CHAPTER 31

  That was a mil-site that was off the grid even back before the collider blew up the world."

  Hella trained her binocs on the installation, taking in all the straight lines of it that were revealed through the overlapping brush and trees. At first glance, the building blended into the surroundings, but upon further study, she saw how it had pushed up from the ground like bones breaking through a decaying corpse. The engineers had built it to outlast the stone around it, to weather attacks and breaches, and the steel-reinforced concrete still stood. One day, when the earth around it ground down into dust, the building would stand fully revealed.

  Someone had put considerable effort into keeping the complex disguised. If Ocastya hadn't led her and Stampede to the area, Hella doubted she would have seen it.

  She lay among the rocks of an adjacent mountain and studied the complex through her binocs. Morning hadn't yet burned away, and long shadows lay over the ground from the nearby trees and the tall mountains.

  Ocastya sat beside her and regarded Hella curiously. "Why do you use that device?"

  "Because I can't see the building from this distance."

  "Of course you can."

  "I think I would know."

  "You simply have to alter your eyes to compensate for the distance. It is an easy adjustment. Let me show you."

  Hella waved the fractoid's hand away before she made contact with her head. "No. Don't."

  Ocastya withdrew her hand and looked hurt. "I apologize."

  "You don't have to apologize."

  "I offended you. It is only logical that I apologize."

  "You tried to help. I appreciate that. But I can't adapt to many changes like what you're suggesting."

  "I do not understand."

  "The things you and Scatter do, they're not normal for me."

  "Of course they are. Your nanobot assembly is capable of many things."

  "Let me rephrase that. Those things you do aren't normal to me." Hella took a moment to assemble her thoughts. "When I first discovered I could morph my hands into guns and process metal and chemicals through my body, I went into total swampmelt."

  " 'Swampmelt'? That term is unknown to me."

  "It's when something unusual happens. It's like your brain locks up. Like when a section of the swamp suddenly bubbles up and sucks down whatever is above it."

  "You mean you were surprised."

  Hella glanced at her. "How did you feel when you discovered you were in freefall in this world and one second away from becoming a comet?"

  "Oh. I see."

  "Yeah. Like that."

  "But appearing in another world, falling to earth from a high altitude, those are very unusual things from anyone's standard, I would think."

  "Changing my body is very unusual to me."

  "I understand. This is a skill that could save your life, though."

  "The fewer changes I have to adjust to now would be great."

  Stampede shifted a couple of meters away and snorted in disgust. "Maybe we could leave off the chatter and concentrate on studying the complex."

  "What would you like to know about the complex?"

  Stampede looked at Ocastya. "What do you know?"

  "The construct buried in that mountainside is three hundred forty-one point seven meters above sea level. It measures one point nine klicks from north to south, two point three klicks from east to west. It is five stories deep."

  "How do you know that?"

  "I have hacked into the computer security that monitors the systems throughout the complex. Not all of them are working, nor are they all working at peak efficiency, but there is enough information in the data files that I can tell you that. I can also tell you the average ambient temperature inside the structure is sixty-eight degrees."

  "You did that from out here?"

  "Of course. My mate aided me."

  Hope leaped inside Hella. They hadn't discussed Scatter in hours. "He's still alive?"

  "Yes, but he is dwindling." Ocastya pursed her lips and stared at the building. "I am afraid there is not much time left to him. If we are going to do something, it will need to be soon."

  Stampede turned his attention back to the building. "Can you get us inside?"

  "I can get us through the cybernetic safeguards monitoring the building, but I cannot keep the guards from seeing us."

  "Getting us in will be enough." Stampede focused his telescope. "I've got a plan for the flesh-and-blood contingent of the security system. Can Scatter hold out till tonight?"

  Ocastya was silent for a moment. "I believe so. He says he can."

  " 'He says'?" Hella glanced at her palm. The image of Scatter there wasn't saying anything.

  "Yes. He is hard to understand because the machines Colleen Trammell has him hooked to are attacking his personality core."

  "Why is she doing that?"

  "I do not know. My mate does not know."

  Stampede rolled over onto his back and put his telescope away. "We've got a few hours before we need to make a move. Until then, we need to rest. Ocastya?"

  The fractoid looked at him.

  "Do you know where Scatter is inside that building?"

  "Counting the topmost floor as the first, my mate is on the fourth floor down."

  Stampede rummaged in his pack and took out paper and a pen. "Can you draw a map of those floors? Show us what we're headed into?"

  Ocastya took the paper but ignored the pen. She held her palm over the paper, and Hella watched in amazement as lines burned onto the page.
"I am using thermal energy." The fractoid smiled at Hella. "If you were trained properly, I believe you could do this as well."

  "If you can do all of this, why can't you or Scatter turn your hands into weapons?"

  "We are no longer organically based. Your ability to process materials and chemicals is something that is uniquely yours, Hella. You are very special. I do not know why, though I am curious." After Ocastya burned each page, she handed it over to Stampede.

  Hella took jerky from her chest pouch and started eating. She lay back, grateful for the shade that covered them, and closed her eyes. Stampede would wake her when he had something she needed to know. Until then, she'd rest. The previous night's excursions had left precious little time for sleep, and she was still tired from helping repair Ocastya.

  She didn't sleep well, though. In her dreams she was helping restore the fractoid, but she got sucked into Ocastya's memories like a fly on a spiderweb and couldn't free herself.

  Three hours before sundown, Hella and Ocastya rode Daisy through the wilderness in the direction Pardot's expedition had gone. Stampede easily loped alongside the mountain boomer, and it became difficult to keep Daisy from breaking out into a full-fledged run.

  As expected, the expedition had gone right by the hidden military complex. They were hunting blind.

  Nearly two klicks from the expedition, Stampede pointed to a tall outcrop. "There." He took off toward it.

  Hella reined Daisy over and charged up the mountainside after him. By the time she reached him, Stampede was already setting his long rifle up on its fold-out legs to get a steady shot.

  "We're one point seven klicks from the expedition." Stampede lay behind his weapon and squinted through the sniper scope. "How far do you think we are from the mil-plex?"

  Hella lay beside Stampede and peered through the spotter scope he'd unpacked as well. "Seven point five, eight." She'd kept track through her spotter scope, ticking off landmarks and mapping the distance, because he'd told her to in order to backstop his own efforts.