by Alex Wells
“Maybe. Dependin’ on the alarms, I’ll sure as hell know if I can’t,” he said. “But they ain’t gonna let us just–”
“I know,” she interrupted. “But that’s what Freki and Geri and Lykaios and Maheegan are gonna do.”
“That so?” Geri said.
“Yeah,” Hob said and offered the scope over. Freki took it before his twin could. “You’re gonna make a ruckus and get them chasin’ ya so we can get in. Then we’ll make a bigger ruckus stealin’ their fuckin’ osprey so they’ll forget about you.”
“That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard,” Geri said.
Coyote laughed and punched Hob lightly on the arm. “That’s my Ravani.”
There were guards stationed around the Newcastle landing field, but compared to what they’d always seen at the mining towns, it was a joke. Punishment for the greenbellies who weren’t enthusiastic enough, maybe. Hob and her three, now mounted up, kept under the camouflage net while the diversion crew went in. They got damn close to the landing field before anyone noticed, close enough that Hob wondered if maybe she should have tried a different tactic. The floodlights on several guard towers swiveled to fix on them, and a voice boomed out across the salt flat: “You are entering a restricted area.”
Geri parked his motorcycle and climbed off it with a drunken swagger. He waved a middle finger at the nearest guard tower. “You don’t tell me where I can go!”
Hob could all but feel the disbelief rolling off the guards. She nudged Dambala and Coyote, and peeled back the net to bundle it into the confused Bone Collector’s hands. While Geri continued making a production of himself – he started picking a mock fight with Freki, she saw out of the corner of her eye – they gave that part of the landing field a wide berth and headed for the fence closest to that hangar.
This never would have worked at one of the mining towns, not in a million years. They had too many bandit troubles, real bandits that didn’t work for Mariposa on the sly. But Newcastle had been untouchable for so long, Hob had figured they wouldn’t know what to do.
“Cease and desist!” boomed out across the hardpan. They really, really didn’t know what to do.
They made it to the fence line with their lights dark. A guard tower loomed overhead, though with them directly under it the person inside wouldn’t be able to see. The plan was that everyone on this section of the wall, bored out of their goddamn minds, would be looking toward the fine entertainment cut by Geri’s crew.
Coyote threw his jacket over the barbed wire and Dambala boosted him up. He was eerily silent, more than she’d thought possible, though he timed his move with more shouting from the other end of the field. Hob gave him a count of two minutes to go clear out the guard tower. She and Dambala pulled out wire cutters from their saddle bags and started working at the fence. There was no way in hell they were leaving their motorcycles behind. With each snap of wire under tension coming free, Hob expected to hear a shout, or the sound of a gun being fired. Snap, snap, snap, snap, BANG.
Hob and Dambala both froze, momentarily. But Hob’s ears told her that the shot hadn’t been that nearby. It was from downfield, where the others still were. Dambala cursed under his breath.
Geri’s voice, attenuated by distance, raised up again. Hob didn’t allow herself the luxury of relief. She went back to cutting through the fence.
Then there were more shots, the sharp retorts of rifles and then the bark of shotguns. Hob glanced downfield to see several lights down, sparking.
“One hell of a diversion,” Dambala muttered.
“Gotta trust ’em.” She wasn’t sure if she was trying to reassure Dambala, or herself. The real secret of leading the Wolves was figuring out the person for a job and then just letting them do what they did best.
Coyote appeared on the other side of the fence, his previously helmet-flattened hair slightly mussed. Wordlessly, he held the section of fence as she and Dambala cut it free, and pulled it aside. “Way’s clear,” he said, as he got back on his motorcycle. “They’re all running for the west gate so they can have a go at Geri.”
Was Geri still even there? Before Hob could ask, she heard shotguns roar. She just had to hope he’d have the gumption to get while the getting was good. Hob got back on her motorcycle and made sure the Bone Collector had a good hold around her waist before she gunned the motor and sent them flying through the hole in the fence.
She felt the moment her wheels went from saltpan to synthcrete, slippery and louder than she liked. It felt horribly naked to be moving under the floodlights that kept the landing field as bright as day. Their only hope was Geri’s distraction as she headed them straight toward the hangar. And an even more important hope was that Dambala would be able to fly the osprey, because she hadn’t given near enough thought to how the hell else they were going to get out.
They arrowed into the hangar. Hob started to slow, but Coyote and Dambala kept going, looping around the massive osprey that sat, nose pointed at the door. With a mental shrug, she followed them, to find the cargo ramp of the osprey down. Bemused, she kept right on their rear wheels, up the ramp and into the shockingly huge space of the cargo bay. How the hell something like this could even fly was beyond her imagining.
Hob nudged the Bone Collector off and laid down her motorcycle, copying what Coyote and Dambala did.
“Find some rope or chains. We don’t want those sliding around,” Coyote said, and then ran back down the ramp.
“The hell are you getting, then?” Hob called after him.
“Fuel pump!” he called over his shoulder. Then he was gone around the corner.
Well, she was glad he’d thought of that, because it’d never occurred to her. Vehicles that didn’t run on solar – that was a hell of a thought. Hob ran down the ramp and out into the hangar. Feeling so small against the cavernous space took her back to her childhood, growing up in the belly of a rift ship under the rough eye of the cargo handlers. And that memory prompted her to the boards on a far-off wall where the cargo netting and chains hung. As she ran across the stupidly large space, she wished she’d had the gumption to grab her motorcycle. Too late now.
Back up the ramp with her lungs and legs burning, she threw one of the cargo nets to the Bone Collector. “Help me.”
He unfurled it and then stared, like he had no idea what such a thing could be for. With a growl, Hob grabbed the net from his hands. “Go stick that hook in that eye there – no, that one. Fold it out from the wall.”
As she worked to get the motorcycles something close to secured, glancing every few seconds at the ramp like she expected to see greenbellies with guns popping up, she yelled, “You got shit figured out up there?”
“I’m workin’ on it,” Dambala shouted back. “I ain’t done this in near twenty years.”
“Remember faster.” She didn’t know how many minutes had passed already. Every second felt both too slow and too damn fast, as keyed up as she was.
Coyote came barreling back into view. “Get the ramp up. We got lights coming at us. And grab the chocks! Get those first.”
“What the fuck?” Hob looked around, not sure where to even start on that task. She’d already run through every similarity this machine had to a rift ship.
With an exasperated noise, Coyote gave her a shove toward the cockpit. “You go assist. I’ll take care of this.” And he pointed a finger at the Bone Collector. “And you, sit. Out of the way. Over there. Belt in.”
Hob ran up the second, much smaller ramp to the cockpit, her boots echoing loud on metal. She found Dambala in the pilot’s seat, a headset looped around his neck, and his fingers moving over a control panel that was a goddamn light maze as far as she could tell. “Fuck me,” she muttered.
“You and Coyote, you both thought this was a great fuckin’ idea,” Dambala said.
“It’s still a great idea!” Coyote yelled from the depths of the cargo hold. “And hit the emergency line eject when you’re ready to take off, I left a pump running
on both wings.”
Hob really wished that he’d go back to speaking English instead of whatever the fuck he was yelling about now. She glanced through the windscreen of the cockpit to see pairs of lights coming toward them across the landing field. “Come on, Dambala. Tell me you got this.”
“Ain’t even the same fuckin’ model as twenty years ago,” he said, flipping a few more pressure switches over. “Look at that dial on your right. Not that one. Two more up. What’s it say?”
Numbers. She could do numbers. “1205,” she answered.
“Well, could be worse,” Dambala said.
“What’s it mean?”
“That this machine’s in here ’cause it’s got a stabilizer out.”
“That bad?”
“It ain’t good,” he said, but his fingers kept moving across the board. “I flown bigger death traps. Just ain’t gonna be pretty. And if they chase us, could be trouble.”
“Might be trouble, then.” Hob looked out the windscreen again. The lights were almost there, resolving themselves into several small cargo haulers, filled with people. Not friendly people, she was sure. “Bala, we’re almost out of time. There a… there a gun on this or somethin’?” Visions of sitting in a big gun like some kind of action story hit her. That could work.
“This look like a fuckin’ combat model to you?” he snapped. “Sit down.”
She sat.
“Give me that number again.”
Hob looked at the dial. “1460,” she read.
“OK,” he said, like that held some deep and important meaning. “OK.” He stabbed a finger at another button.
Around them and beneath them, the osprey roared to life. Like the rift ship taking off, but the vibration kept growing, louder and louder. That was how motors sounded when they weren’t running on electric, Hob realized. She tried to shout a question to Dambala, only to find he’d put the headset on. He gestured impatiently at another one near her, and she stuck it on her head. The noise blessedly cut off.
“All secure back there?” she heard Dambala ask over the headset.
“Buttoned up tight, darling,” Coyote answered. Even odd and tinny with transmission, there was unmistakable glee in his voice. “I haven’t had this much fun in years.”
“God fuckin’ help us,” Dambala muttered. He leaned over and pointed to several buttons on Hob’s side. “This one, this one, then this one. When I tell you. And keep an eye on that dial there,” he pointed at a different one. “Tell me right smart if it goes below twenty.”
“It says eighteen,” Hob said.
“Fuckin’ gorgeous,” Dambala growled. There was a strange, distant pinging, then another. “Are they fuckin’… they’re shootin’ at us.”
“Should we–”
He pressed a few more switches, slammed his fist down on a big red and yellow striped button, and gripped the small handles in front of him. “Fuckin’ morons.” One of those controls must have been the throttle, because the osprey started moving forward, rolling out of the hangar.
Hob saw greenbellies scramble to the side, and heard more of that distant pinging. Then Dambala shouted at her to do her damn job and she hurried to press those buttons and put her attention onto the dial. She felt the shift in acceleration going from forward to up, felt the vibration and rumble as the osprey’s engines turned for vertical take-off.
Another volley of pinging went down the skin of the osprey as they rose into the air. On the panel, several lights suddenly went red, an alarm sounding over the headsets.
“Bala…” Coyote said from the back.
“I got it,” he yelled. He half-looked at Hob, “2-F Cut. Find it, push it.”
“OK…” She ran her hand over the switches, reading as fast as she could and cursing herself that it wasn’t faster. She’d never been a quick reader, and the labels on the switches were tiny.
“Any day now!” Dambala yelled.
“I’m fuckin’ lookin’!” She spied the switch, in a row of equally incomprehensible switches, and snapped it down. The alarm swapped out for a different, less urgent sound. All the while, the osprey kept shooting straight up. Then they came to a halt, just hanging in the air. Dambala shifted the sticks and they moved forward, weaving a little drunkenly.
“Come on, come on, there’s a girl…”
For a moment, Hob thought Dambala was talking to her, but realized he was muttering to himself and the osprey. “You got it… come on… all right.” His tone shifted, and he glanced at her. “Gonna go fast as we can, to get distance afore they can scramble one of their helicopters. Don’t fuckin’ touch nothin’ ’less I tell you.”
She felt so in over her head that she was happy to nod. Then someone grabbed her shoulder – Coyote. She tugged the headset off so he could lean in and bellow in her ear, “Go back. I can handle Grumpy McAsshole here.” He laughed as Dambala, eyes still fixed ahead, swatted him on the side.
Grateful, she untangled herself from the safety belts and slithered around Coyote. He grabbed her arm and pulled her back for a second. “Smile, boss. We just stole a five hundred million credit flying junkpile.”
Stunned, she didn’t resist as he gave her a little push down the narrow cockpit hall. She turned the number over in her head, trying to make sense of it. No, too big. A little unsteady, bouncing back and forth on her feet as Dambala kept fighting the controls or the wind or his own temper, she made her way into the cargo bay. The Bone Collector was a huddle in a fold-down seat, his arms clutched around his middle.
Hob noted he wasn’t wearing a headset and leaned over to shout in his ear. “You look like shit.”
He said something, but she couldn’t hear it at a bare whisper. She leaned down to try to get a better look at his face, then jerked back as he vomited a thin wash of bile onto the deck at her feet. With a grimace, she pulled her handkerchief out of her pocket and offered it to him. He clutched it in his hand and didn’t do anything useful with it.
Better to leave him alone, she thought suddenly. Since he might be all that was really keeping the osprey in the air. She sat next to him, wondering if she ought to rub his back or some shit, but that had never been her thing. He solved that particular question by laying down with his head in her lap, his mouth in a grim line.
“You better not barf again,” she shouted. His only response was his nostrils flaring around a snort. Hob pulled the headset Coyote must have abandoned on. “You knew,” she accused Coyote.
He laughed. “I am familiar with that particular look.”
“How’re things looking?” she asked.
“We’re still flyin’, ain’t we.” Dambala answered.
“Can’t argue with that. How about the bit where we go from flyin’ to landin’?” Hob asked.
“Guess we’ll all find out in an hour when we get there.”
She’d never been the sort to want comfort, and knew better than to expect it now. But she stroked the Bone Collector’s hair, and that made her feel a little better, even if it probably didn’t do jack shit for him. “Hour ain’t so long as that,” she told him. Impossibly quick, considering how long the journey normally took on a motorcycle.
“Weren’t the life expectancy I was lookin’ for,” Dambala muttered.
Chapter Forty-Five
5 Days
The shaking hands that offered the folded flimsy to Mag showed the permanent black speckling of embedded mine dust, and new angry red of split knuckles and dirty brown runnels of dried blood. She steadied the man’s hand with her own and took the message. “You’re safe now,” she said.
He shook his head. Black stubble bristled on his dark cheeks, marred with more dried blood, more bruises. “Ain’t such a thing. They’re all around you. Us. Took my partner. Soon as we were out of sight of Tercio. Took our daughter. I… I wanted to go with ’em, but they said I had to bring this message to you.”
She poured him a cup of water, which he gulped down. His eyes widened with surprise when she poured him another, but he
sucked that down just as readily. “You gonna try to go back out to ’em now?” she asked.
“I got any choice?”
“No,” Mag said. “Not really. We ain’t lettin’ anyone leave. We all got to stand together, or none of this means anythin’.” And now he’d seen too much. He knew they had water, and how many people, and how many guns. No more traitors. No more spies. She refilled his glass again. “I’m sorry. I know what it feels like. They took one of mine, too.”
He buried his face in his hands. “Wish I’d never fuckin’ voted for this.”
Mag stood, brushing her skirts down. Dust drifted away from her hands in ribbons. “We ain’t the ones who took your baby. Remember who the enemy really is. Remember what we’re here to do.” She rested her hand briefly on his shoulder, and he didn’t push her away.
Outside the room, Omar waited. “Take him to Brother Rami once he’s got himself back together,” Mag said. “But keep an eye on him, hear? They got him deep.”
Omar nodded, arms crossed, then jerked his chin toward the flimsy she had in her hand. “What’s the shit today?”
“Same as yesterday,” Mag said, and handed it to him. “Phony amnesty, tryin’ to get us to surrender. Think they still don’t know we got water, and that’s good.”
“Mag!”
She turned to see Diablo coming in, a dusty bandana pushed down around his neck. He and most of the other Wolves had stayed on while Hob took her small party off on their latest fool’s errand, though she’d had Hati and one other go back to their base to wait. Mag was grateful for every experienced gun she’d left to ride herd on the miners. They were getting leaner and meaner by the hour, but they still had nothing on people who had been professionally harassing TransRift for years.
“There a problem?” she asked. There was always a problem, these days.
“Just got back from the run in to Walsen,” Diablo said. “What’s left of it.”
“Anythin’ useful?”
