“With the aid of my mathematical calculations,” Mimi adds. “Not bad,” Vienne says, “for a turtle.”
“Oh, I’m not done yet.” I lift the rolling door to reveal a velocicopter parked on a huge shipping pallet.
In the copilot’s seat, knitting a jumper, her face fresh scrubbed, is a surprisingly calm Charlotte du Save. Sitting next to her is the pilot, his hands bound and a gag over his mouth. When he sees us, he starts hollering through the gag.
“Shut it,” Charlotte says, and pokes him with a knitting needle.
“She’s very calm, considering,” Vienne says.
“That’s because I made a deal with her.” Pinch appears behind us, supporting a very weary but alert Aziz. He really is one tough hurensohn. “If she came peacefully, I’d make sure she got to see her husband.”
“Husband?” Vienne and I say in unison.
“That is right,” the Razor says, appearing at the rolling door, using the steel frame to support himself. There’s blood pooling on his bandaged shoulder, but it doesn’t seem to faze him. He’s every bit as tough as Aziz. It must run in the family.
“You’re here!” Charlotte yells, and jumps out of the cockpit. She runs across the tarmac, letting out a sound that’s part giddy laugh and part scream, and throws her arms around his neck.
The Razor grunts but doesn’t stop her. He wraps his good arm around her waist and closes his eyes. “You are safe. We will go home now.”
Charlotte leans back, wiping the tears from her eyes. “You’re wounded!” she says. “Did they do this to you? I will stab their eyes out!”
“No.” The Razor looks at his brother, then at me, then at Vienne, who places a hand on her armalite. “Like most of my wounds,” he says, “this one was self-inflicted. So if you must stab anyone, you must stab me.”
Charlotte buries her face in his neck, and the Razor grunts, feeling the pain but not willing to let her stop. After a few seconds, he moves her to his side and takes her hand in his.
He looks at me and nods. “Thank you for sparing me and tending my wound,” he says, “But I am afraid that your name will be mud for helping me.”
“My name is Jacob Stringfellow,” I say. “You can’t get any muddier than that.”
“Perhaps I may now take the war truck back to the Warren?” he says, looking at me and Vienne. “Since it was mine to begin with.”
“It’s not my decision to make,” I say, and look to the chief for an answer.
Aziz makes the sign of the Regulator and bows. “May Lakshmi bless your days together.”
The Razor bows in return. “May she grant the same wish to you,” he says, and they turn to go. Charlotte throws an arm around his waist and drapes his arm around her neck, acting as his crutch. For the first time, he sags a bit, and he lets her carry some of his weight.
Charlotte helps her husband into the passenger side, then runs around and jumps into the front seat. The engine starts on the first try, and she puts it in reverse, waving to us and beaming. It strikes me how young she is. How young we all are, really.
That’s what I want, I think—an idea that surprises me, it’s so unexpected. I look back at Vienne, who for some reason has locked eyes on me, and a shiver runs down my spine. We hold the gaze for a couple of seconds; then, with a cough, I break it.
“Just out of curiosity,” I ask Aziz to get rid of the awkward moment, “what’s your brother’s real name?”
“Our parentals named him Festus,” he says.
“Yeah,” I say. “Probably a good idea to stick with Razor.” I look back at the velocicopter. “So where does that leave us? What about the pilot and his copter?”
“We are going to be using the pilot’s services one more time before we let him go,” Aziz says, his voice getting softer. “We’ve got some unfinished business with Medici.”
“Fair enough,” I say. The Orthocrat deserves whatever they decide to dish out. “In the hubbub, I forgot to ask—where’s Sarge?”
“Sarge couldn’t make it,” Pinch says with a smirk. “He got off the copter twenty kilometers from here. The first step was a doozy.” She points to the hydraulic lifter still attached to the flat the copter is resting on. “Can one of you give it a push into the open?”
I start toward it, but Vienne puts up her hand.
“I’ll handle this,” she says. “You and heavy machinery don’t mix.”
“Hey!” I protest.
“Based on the available data,” Mimi says. “I would have to agree with her theory.”
“So now you’re ganging up on me?”
“I prefer to regard it as providing support,” she says.
Vienne honks the horn on the lifter, and I jump out of the way as she expertly guides the velocicopter into the clear, lowers the flat to the pavement, then backs into the building without looking. She kills the engine and wipes her hands, then winks at me.
“Told you so,” she mouths.
I respond in the most mature way I can muster—by sticking my tongue out at her.
“Monday’s child is fair of face,” Mimi recites. “Tuesday’s child is full of grace. Wednesday’s child is full of woe. Thursday’s child has far to go.”
“What’s with the poetry all of a sudden?” I ask.
“During the journey, I had the opportunity to access several dormant data cells.”
“You know I carking hate poetry, right?”
“Affirmative,” she says. “However, I enjoy it, which means you will just have to suffer.”
While Vienne and I are busying acting like a couple of children, Pinch helps Aziz into the copter. He sits in the copilot seat, while Pinch moves to the back.
She cuts the pilot’s bounds and warns him, “Do what we’re asking, and you’ll keep your life and the copter. Capiche?”
The pilot flashes a thumbs-up. “Roger that.” He hits the engines, and with a squeal, the rotors kick in and the blades start turning.
Aziz opens his door and waves us over. “Sorry it turned out this way,” he says to Vienne, his voice soft but firm. “It was not the payday you expected.”
“Money isn’t everything,” she replies. “But it was fun while it lasted.”
“Charlotte’s with her husband, so we got it right in the end,” I say, even though too many hostiles lost their lives in the process. But that’s a thought I’ll save for another day.
Aziz turns to me. “Vienne was right about you, Durango. You are a good soldier and a master strategist. I am honored to have fought beside you.”
“Enough with the mush,” Vienne says, and pulls me away as the rotors start chopping the air apart. “You’ve got a job to do, right?”
We back up and watch as they lift over, dropping our visors to block the swirling dirt and debris. Our eyes stay on the bird until it’s disappeared from the sky. And just like that, it’s only the two of us standing among row after row of empty storage buildings. A cool wind blows through, stirring up dust and erasing the tracks that the truck left.
“No truck, no copter.” I turn to Vienne. “I guess we’re hoofing it from here.”
“Looks like it,” she says, and bumps my shoulder.
We start walking east, which seems as good a direction as any. At least there’s a new sunrise to enjoy.
“Hey,” I say. “Think there’s anything good to eat in Edda?”
“Probably not,” she says. “So what’s next for you, since we got squat for this job?”
“First I have some business with a man named Lyme,” I say, “and then I reckon I’ll need to find a job or two to earn some coin. A jack’s got to eat, right?”
“For this job of yours, would you happen to be looking for a crew?”
“Probably,” I say. “Know any decommissioned Regulators who might be interested?”
“Maybe,” she says. “If the pay’s right and the company’s good.”
“Like the food in Edda,” I say. “They’ll both probably stink.”
“Makes n
o difference to me. Everything stinks on Mars,” she says, and stops. “There’s just one thing,”
I turn to face her. “What’s that?”
“From now on,” she says, poking me in the chest. “I do the driving. All the driving.”
“Oh,” I say, grabbing her hand, which she does not pull away. “I thought you’d say you wanted your own crew.”
She laughs and leans closer. “Me? I’m a soldier, not a leader.” She pinches her bottom lip, considering an idea. “Still, a soldier could do worse than follow a cowboy into battle. Don’t you think?”
“I dunno about that,” I say. “I’m not sure I can ever live up to the example Mimi set. She left some awful big boots to fill.”
“Don’t worry, Chief.” Vienne lets go of my hand and punches my shoulder. “I think you’ll grow into them.”
I blush, a knot caught in my throat. “I sure hope so.” But I’m not counting on it.
Without another word, we both turn toward the towering Olympus Mons, the tallest volcano in the solar system, and for now, our guiding star back to New Eden. From there, who knows what will happen? But with Vienne as my partner, I like our chances.
“Would you like me to calculate the odds of your success?” Mimi asks.
“No thanks,” I say as I brush the back of Vienne’s hand ever so lightly. “This is something we’ll have to figure out ourselves.”
Read on for a preview of Durango’s next adventure,
Shadow on the Sun,
AVAILABLE MARCH 26, 2013
Chapter 0
Hell’s Cross
Outpost Fisher Four
ANNOS MARTIS 239. 1. 12. 08:01
Ice forms on the lens of his scope as Fuse waves the red dot sight of his armalite above the soldier’s ear. The blighter is a Sturmnacht scout, and he’s no more welcome near the Hell’s Cross mines than a chigger at an Orthocrat’s garden party.
In the year or so since deserting his old soldiering life and coming to live among the miners, Fuse has seen more and more of Lyme’s Sturmnacht deployed to Fisher Four. Where once you went months without seeing outsiders, now you couldn’t hock a loogie without hitting one of those jackbooted thugs.
“C’mon now,” Fuse says as the frigid air freeze-dries his breath.
With overgrown hair, thin sideburns, missing teeth, and ears too long for his pointed chin, Fuse rests against the iron-gated entrance to the mines.
The Sturmnacht soldier crests the hill. He scans the ridge with a pair of omnoculars.
“Stop moving about, see?” Fuse says. “I’m a fair dinkum shot in the right conditions.” Especially if the conditions include a few kilos of C-42 explosives and a remote detonator.
When the soldier’s gaze falls on the iron gate emblazoned with the words No Work, No God, he raises his rifle.
“Oy! The bugger’s spotted me,” Fuse says under his breath. “It’s now or never.”
He pulls the trigger. The crack of gunfire echoes across the Prometheus Basin, and the sound rises into the steel blue sky. The bullet hits the frozen tundra. It spits chunks of ice and snow into the scout’s goggles. But except for gouging a large hole in the ground, it does no damage.
The scout turns to run.
“Carfargit, Fuse! You can’t hit the broad side of a broadside!” He sights down the scope. He finds the target again.
Crack!
The next bullet hits nothing but air.
“I’ll be stuffed,” Fuse says. “I should’ve just blown the blaggard up.”
He aims for a third shot, hands shaking.
Too late. The scout has reached the crest of the ridge. He’s signaling his comrades. Fuse switches his scope to distance view. A few kilometers away, a company of armored turbo sleds turns toward the scout.
“Fuse! You call yourself a Regulator!” Swinging his rifle over his shoulder, he tromps through a snowdrift to his bike, a hodgepodge of spare parts that can break a hundred forty kilometers per hour.
If he can get it started.
And if it doesn’t explode.
Again.
He jumps on the seat, grabs the steering bar, and kicks the starter. The engine sputters to life, and he pats the gas tank. “That’s my baby!”
As the sound of the Sturmnacht sleds grow louder, Fuse guns the engine and rips across the tundra, the studs on his tires chewing up chunks of ice. He plows past a steel tower lift mechanism and the tipple, then several small mounds of heavy guanite ore.
The bike skitters past a sign declaring DANGER! NO ADMITTANCE! His headlight shines on a small tunnel with smooth walls. He hunkers low, afraid to snag his noggin on the ceiling. Then with a squeal of brakes, he brings the bike to a stop. He grabs a signal box from a hidden nook. Types in the pass code. Then presses the dual ignition buttons.
Boom!
At the far end of the tunnel, the roof collapses, blocking the entrance to the east mines. If the Sturmnacht want to catch him, they’ll have to haul butt to the west side, which he’d blow, too. If he had time.
But time’s not on his side.
“Note to self.” He taps his temple. “When the hurly-burly’s done, get your carcass over here and open a wormhole in Tunnel B7.”
Back on the bike, he zooms across the high-arched stone bridge that stretches across a mammoth gorge. Above is a sky of stone. Below is a dark abyss that some say reaches Mars’s cold iron core.
Fuse reaches the far side and throttles down. He coasts into Hell’s Cross, the former central complex of a subterranean mining town, now almost deserted. Faded flags hang from the arches. Rusted razor wire tops all the cracked stucco walls. Everything is coated in a fine coat of guanite dust. Home sweet home it ain’t.
Fuse parks his bike in a flat-roofed corridor littered with empty crates. He runs up a flight of steps. Huffing for breath, he throws open the third door on the left and yells, “Áine! The Sturmnacht are coming!”
On a mattress in the corner, Áine rests with her back against the wall. Her moon-shaped face is puffy and covered in red blotches, and her pregnant belly strains against her threadbare overalls. She looks liable to pop in a nanosecond.
Áine’s grandmother, Maeve, hovers nearby. Maeve’s face is framed with silver hair and furrowed with wrinkles as deep as a canyon. As far as Fuse knows, she’s the oldest person on the planet—he’s never seen another mug so puckered and craggy.
“How d’you know they’s the Sturmnacht?” Áine asks.
“I spotted a scout.” Fuse frowns. “And he spotted me back.”
“I told you to shoot anything that moved!” Áine says.
“I’m not like Jenkins was—shooting’s not my thing, you know that,” Fuse says. “Blowing stuff up is.”
“Zip it!” Áine struggles to her feet. “There’s no use in it now. We’ll hole up in one of the survival vaults. Live on the emergency supplies. It’s the only chance we’ve got.”
Maeve clucks and shakes her head. “You’re in no condition to run, Áine.”
“She’s in no condition to get press-ganged by the Sturmnacht, neither,” Fuse says. “Those slavers need strong backs to reopen the guanite mines, and if you ain’t fit for work, they’ll find something else you’re good at. Come on, you lot, let’s get her moving.”
Maeve gives a tight-lipped smile. “Since when do I take orders from you, Regulator?”
“Since right this minute.” Fuse leads Áine down the stairs and through the courtyard, her head resting on his shoulder.
“There’s a power sled ’round back,” he says. “Step lively now. We’ve not got much time.”
He lifts Áine into the ore loader. Maeve stuffs pillows behind her back and supports her head, then hauls herself into the driver’s seat and starts the loader up.
Fuse kisses Áine and then scowls at Maeve. “Take care of my wife and little one.”
“Who happen to be my granddaughter and great grandchild.” Maeve tries to laser him with her eyes. “Don’t you forget that.”
&nbs
p; Fuse’s lip twitches as he turns to leave. The things he’d like to say. But now’s not the time.
Áine grabs his jacket. “Where’d you think you’re going?”
“To the surface,” he says. “If you’re to live, I’ve got to find help.”
“I always knew you’d run out on me!” Áine says.
Fuse kisses her hand. “Ain’t running out on you. Your grandmum’s right here. Besides, I’m useless at this birthing business.” He jumps to the ground as the loader starts to pull away. He blows her a kiss. “No child of mine is going to be born a slave. You’ve got to hide, before it’s too late!”
“Nobody can help us!” Her bloated face turns into a sneer. “It’s already too late!”
That’s where you’re wrong, Fuse thinks as he jogs toward a wormhole that will take him to the surface. There’s two somebodies that can help us. All I’ve got to do is find them before the Sturmnacht kill you.
About the Author
DAVID MACINNIS GILL is a former high school teacher. In a starred review, Kirkus called his first novel, Soul Enchilada, an “action-packed power-punch of a debut.”
www.davidmacinnisgill.com
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Copyright
Text copyright © 2013 by David Macinnis Gill
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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