by Alex Wells
“Whatever for?”
“An operation of this sort will need coordination,” Shige said smoothly. “If nothing else, we want to make certain that the towns aren’t able to warn each other. A simultaneous crackdown will minimize the level of resistance and leave us with more able bodies.”
Ms Meetchim tapped her lips. “This sounds like a task better left for the security chief Lien.”
He pivoted smoothly: “While he must inarguably be in charge of planning the coordinated disciplinary action, I think he might benefit from managerial oversight, don’t you? We need an able workforce, and he tends to be a bit…”
“Bullish,” Ms Meetchim said dryly. “He has been itching to burn this infection clean. I can’t say that I blame him.”
He held his hands out, palms up in a helpless gesture. “We unfortunately must work with the reticent children we have available.”
Meetchim snorted. “A sad statement of truth. Well, once we’ve got our new workers, we can deal with the disciplinary issues more permanently.”
“Of course.” His sag of relief was purely internal. “If I may be excused, sir?”
She waved a hand at him. “Certainly… oh, Mr Rolland?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Do fetch me a cup of coffee first. No one makes it up to your standards.”
He made himself smile. “Ah, the real reason you don’t want me running about the mining towns.”
“I’m so glad you’ve re-found your competence,” Meetchim smiled. “I’d be lost without you.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
16 Days
The afternoon sun beat down on Hob, the twins, and their squads as they squatted in one of the patches of shade in the exercise yard with plates of reconstituted mashed potatoes shaped into pancakes and smothered in chili. There was the bare whisper of a breeze coming over the walls, which made the yard a cooler place to be than the mess room. They were all still coated with orange dust from the desert, fresh off more scouting trips to the wildcats. Hob wasn’t happy with her come-up-all-empty scouting jaunt, and judging by the looks on Freki and Geri’s faces, she was about to feel less happy. At least Coyote was still out. Maybe that was some hope if he wasn’t just getting his skinny ass in more trouble.
“You got that map handy?” Geri asked.
Hob pulled the folded-up flimsy – actually a series of flimsies taped together – out of her pocket and handed it to him. With her other hand she shoveled a spoonful of Lobo’s tearjerker chili into her mouth.
Geri unfolded the map and tried to smooth it over one broad thigh. “You ever fuckin’ heard of rollin’ maps instead of foldin’ ’em?”
“You volunteerin’ to ride around with a fuckin’ map case strapped to your bike?”
He grumbled under his breath, thick fingers touching the locations she’d marked on the map so far. He dug the stub of a grease pencil out of his pocket and made his own marks, then traced lines out from them in a pattern that probably meant something to him but might as well have been magic to her. “Everythin’ this side is empty.”
“Had a fuckin’ feelin’,” Hob grumbled.
“And there ain’t anythin’ new, least this far out, I’d wager.” He traced a rough shape around the camps they’d checked. “We’d’ve seen a dust cloud risin’. We didn’t see shit. Not even eagles.”
Freki, mouth occupied with chewing, grunted agreement. He plucked the pencil from Geri’s fingers and made his own marks.
“So we’re talkin’ a whole new area. One that you ain’t picked out in your figures. Fuck.” It would be back to the drawing board, and she was already damn tired of being bumped back to square one.
“Like they only stopped long enough to take the mining machinery. Didn’t clean nothin’ up,” Conall confirmed. His bright red hair stood out from his head in uneven spikes. “Weren’t signs of bandits or nothin’, that we could see. Two days’ worth of sand blown in if the wind was constant.”
“Think our… employer’s gonna have something useful to say about that?” Geri asked. It wasn’t any kind of secret, where the money for this job had come from.
“S’pose if we run totally dry, I could call him up, see if he can witch up some answers. But I doubt it.” She wasn’t looking to avoid him, exactly, and she wasn’t shy about wasting his time, but it wasn’t a thing to do lightly. “So what the fuck changed to make ’em pull up stakes everywhere so sudden?”
“Figured it was all bust real quick?” Raff offered from past Freki, but didn’t sound convinced.
“I’d feel better if I thought that was true,” Hob said.
“So would I,” Geri agreed. “Shit.”
From above, on the guard walk, Lykaios called down, “We got two riders comin’ in.”
Hob frowned and called up: “Just two?”
A pause, then Lykaios answered: “It’s Diablo and Akela.”
“Huh. Early, ain’t they?” Geri said.
According to Hati, the two had gone off to Primero this morning, to barter for some medical supplies since they’d have the best stuff. Hob had been expecting that and given them permission ahead of time. Diablo had a fresh face and wasn’t wanted by security, and he knew what the hell he needed for his own infirmary. Akela didn’t mind cooling his heels and reading one of Hati’s novels outside the walls while he waited for business to get done. Primero was far enough away to be an overnight trip, even a two day if no one was in a hurry. They’d been gone a hell of a lot less than a day. “Yeah, real early. Guess we’ll find out what’s got their asses on fire in a minute.”
The two men still shed orange dust in clouds when they blew in through the garage door. Diablo’s dark olive cheeks, brushed with black stubble, were clean thanks to his helmet. He headed straight for Hob, Akela on his heels. “Ospreys,” he said.
Hob frowned. The last time she’d seen the company fly an osprey was when they’d been bringing new heavy equipment in to Shimera, stuff that wouldn’t fit right on a train, years ago. And that had been only one. “In Primero?”
Akela, at Diablo’s shoulder, shook his head. “Never made it that far. Doc spotted the ospreys before we hit halfway.”
“They must’ve been coming out of Newcastle,” Diablo said. “A whole group.”
“How many?” Geri asked.
“Five of ’em. Flyin’ together, in a big V.” Diablo shook his head. “I didn’t even know they had so many. When my town flooded out and they sent in help, there were only two and we thought it was the third coming of the savior.”
Hob tried to imagine being from such a place, where a flood could happen, and where the coming of the greenbellies might mean salvation instead of trouble. Her brain couldn’t wrap around it at all. The farm towns might as well be from a different planet. “Which way were they going?”
Akela took out a scrap of flimsy and offered it over. “This is the bearin’, best we could figure.”
Hob spread her map out again; Freki and Geri leaned over it with her and together they traced the line, assuming it came out of Newcastle. It didn’t head anywhere near the old wildcat sites, or any of the towns.
Geri whistled between his teeth. “Where the fuck they goin’?”
“Don’t know,” Hob said. “But we’re gonna find out.”
An hour and a half later, Coyote and Dambala leaned over the same map, now freshly marked with all the busted wildcats they had seen, and eyed the neat red line that Freki had put on it. Coyote glanced up at Dambala, an unreadable look on his face. “You know what they use on wildcat sites, right?”
“Much as any of us do,” Dambala said.
“Think they’d be able to fit it all in a few ospreys?”
Dambala shrugged. “If you were askin’ twenty years ago, maybe I’d know.”
“Guess,” Coyote said. “I have faith in you.”
Hob watched the exchange with interest. She felt the edge of a past here, something normally taboo. No one knew Dambala as well as Coyote did, and vice vers
a. If he was dragging history out in front of everyone, there had to be a damn good reason.
Dambala cleared his throat. “They usually move that shit in trucks. If we’re talkin’ cargo ospreys, they’re made to carry and drop armored attack vehicles and full-loaded transports. So yeah, I guess so. If it’s real cargo birds and not fast runners or gunships.”
Coyote turned his gaze on Hob, eyebrows arched expectantly. “So you’re thinkin’ that they pulled out of all the wildcats and they’re moving the equipment somewhere else in the ospreys,” Hob said.
“It makes sense as a working hypothesis,” Coyote said. “Even big cargo ospreys are an order of magnitude faster than a truck – and they have better range.”
She glanced up at Dambala, feeling hopelessly out of her depth. They’d never talked air equipment, because people simply did not fly on this planet. “Can we follow ’em?”
He shifted a little uncomfortably on his feet. “Max air velocity’s gonna be between seven and nine hundred kilometers an hour, boss,” he said, apologetic. “Maybe more. Depends on the model.”
Hob took a long, thoughtful drag of her cigarette. “Guess first we’ll have to see if it was just the one convoy afore we get too excited.”
“And if it ain’t?” Dambala asked.
“We’re gonna have to track ’em somehow.” Hob glanced up from the map, met the eyes of the men around her. “And if they’re sendin’ out ospreys, then the Weatherman has to be with ’em or near ’em. Otherwise, that’s a lot of money to have crash in the desert.”
Coyote hissed under his breath, something in the tone so like the Bone Collector that she gave him a sharp look.
“Can’t go fast enough to follow ’em,” Dambala said. “And we ain’t got range finders or anythin’ like that. Trust me, ain’t none of us that good at estimatin’ distance, not even Maheegan.”
“We can triangulate,” Freki said. He nudged Geri, like that had been more than enough words for him to speak at once.
Geri nodded. “Easy stuff. Three teams in different places, where they’ll be able to see the route. We got enough good watches that we can keep the times synced.” He pulled a crumpled flimsy from one of his pockets as Hob looked at him uncomprehendingly, and liberated the grease pencil from his twin’s hand. Coyote nodded slowly along, a little smile on his lips, his eyes glittering.
Geri put three marks on the paper. “The squads, right? Osprey shows up. Everyone checks their time every two minutes to keep it simple, writes the location of the osprey. So at 14:22, say, squad one sees it at this angle…” he drew a careful, dotted line, “and squad two sees it here,” a second dotted line that crossed the first, “and squad three sees it at this angle.” He added a third dotted line.
“Only need two squads,” Hob said.
“Need three ’cause our maps ain’t that great,” Freki said.
“And we keep advancin’, figurin’ the route as we go,” Geri added. “Ain’t gonna just be a straight line on a map if it’s any kind of distance.”
“Sounds slow,” Hob observed. Freki gave her a shrug that wasn’t exactly an apology. “But better’n nothin’.” She took a long draw of her smoke, eyes half-closed. “Get provisions and campin’ gear for nine set up. Five days’ worth. We’ll start for Newcastle before light tomorrow and see if we even got anythin’ to be excited about, then go from there. Dambala, you’re gonna be watchin’ the base. Me, Freki, and Coyote each run a squad. Geri’s with me, and Maheegan. Everyone else, pick two. The rest, Dambala, put who you think can pass to go into town and see if they can figure out what the fuck is even goin’ on.”
She continued to smoke as the men filed out. Coyote lingered behind; she’d expected that.
“Geri looks like you fed him a rotten lemon,” he observed lightly.
“Must mean I’m doin’ somethin’ right.” She eyed him. “You think this ain’t fast enough.”
“We both know it isn’t.”
“Got any better ideas?”
He grimaced. “Not yet. I’m… percolating.”
“And now you’re a fuckin’ coffee pot,” Hob snorted. “I hate this watch and wait shit.”
“You weren’t meant to be a spy,” he agreed.
“Only thing I got to look forward to is shootin’ someone on the other end of it,” Hob said. And by then, she reckoned it would feel like a goddamn relief.
Chapter Thirty-Five
16 Days
“She’s home for the night now,” Mag said, crumpling the scrap of flimsy Omar had just brought for her in her skirt pocket.
“Yeah, I know,” Clarence said. He stayed sitting, his head in his hands.
It had been three days of them running around and dealing with their own jobs in the young strike. Clarence had gone to have another chat with Bill, and then check on their people door to door. Mag had been sneaking around to take a quiet inventory of their supply caches, and the results were grim: over three quarters of what they’d had was gone. All that remained were the things she’d hidden in private houses where someone was always home, and a few extra things she’d buried herself and not told anyone about. Those were safe in the church now.
And worse, there’d been the talking to people to corroborate Mag’s story. It wasn’t that Clarence didn’t believe her; Mag trusted him when he said that. Clarence had always had her back. But they had to make sure that Omar wasn’t mistaken, that it wasn’t some kind of nebulous plot to sow dissent in their ranks.
Ultimately, Clarence was grasping at straws, trying to find an impossible way for both Mag to not be crazy and Odalia to not be a damned traitor. And when she wasn’t so angry she couldn’t see straight, she had it in her heart to bleed a little for him. Odalia was one of Clarence’s oldest friends in Ludlow, bound up by countless jokes about their shared family name.
But mostly, she wanted to shake Clarence by the collar and tell him to pull himself together. It was tempting, to give him a good witch power shove in that direction, but she refused to be what Odalia had tried to make her into.
This was an emergency, but it also wasn’t. The damage had been done. They’d cut Odalia so quietly from the loop that she hadn’t noticed. They’d even fed her a couple pieces of misinformation, just to see if that’d get the greenbellies to chase their tails a bit.
“They been digging up the east side,” Mag said evenly. She was back to screaming angry, and screaming right now wouldn’t do any good. “All the spots we said.”
“I know that, too,” Clarence said. “I watched ’em for a bit myself.”
“Then you know we gotta.”
“Don’t mean I like it.”
Mag slapped her hand on the table next to him. She was meanly gratified to see him jerk back. “Where’s your mad at now, Clarence?” she demanded. “She had a side to pick. Us or them. She picked her side and then fuckin’ lied to us.”
“I am mad,” he said, though he didn’t sound it at all. “But I’m also fuckin’ tired, Mag. This ain’t the same as beatin’ a stupid idea out of someone’s head.”
Maybe he could be sad around his mad, Mag thought grimly, because Odalia hadn’t been trying to convince everyone that he was crazy. “And it’s still gotta be done. We ain’t takin’ more of their hits. So get on your feet, Clarence Vigil. Freedom ain’t ever been pretty.”
Of all things, his lips curved into a little smile, and he pulled himself up out of his chair. “How you want to do this, then?”
It felt like he’d just dropped it all in her lap, and she didn’t like that either. But maybe he knew that he didn’t have the tough in him for someone who used to be his friend. Betrayal hurt, Mag knew. It made some people bleed to death inside. “I’ll talk to her. Have it all out of her like I did Omar. You listen in.”
His jaw set and grim, he said, “Then let’s go, before she sleeps. Powerful rude to wake someone up like that.”
They walked together to Odalia’s house. Mag went to the front door and knocked, while Clarence headed a
round to the back to keep her from running. He also knew how to jigger the lock she’d put on her kitchen door, he’d told Mag, and he could do that quiet.
Odalia, not looking too fresh herself, opened the front door. She frowned. “Somethin’ wrong?”
“Yeah,” Mag said. “Can’t talk about it out here, all open-like. Sorry to keep you from sleepin’.” And somehow, she managed to summon up a little smile from the depths. Like this was some kind of normal day, like she didn’t want to kill Odalia dead right on her front step.
“Sure, come in.” Odalia led her inside to the kitchen, and went over to the counter. “You want a cup of coffee?”
“Not really.” The thought of putting anything in her mouth made her feel sick.
“I’ll make one for myself.”
Mag felt Clarence nearby, hiding in the shadow of the narrow stairs. There was no reason to wait, and good, because all that hot rage burning in her stomach needed to be let out. “I know what you done. I know you sold us out.”
Odalia went still for a moment. Mag expected denials, maybe Odalia trying to convince her she was crazy again. But the woman turned – and instead of a cup of coffee in her hand, it was a gun, compact and black. She’d seen those kinds of guns on the belts of Mariposa officers before, normally ignored in favor of their much heavier rifles. “You don’t know anythin’, and you’re gonna know even less after I shoot you in the head,” Odalia said calmly. “They pay good money for dead witches, and get your sickness out of town at the same time. Sounds like a deal to me.”
