A slow dawning overcame Fiona—Gieo was likely the smartest person she’d ever met, and was probably the smartest person left alive. This realization carried with it a strange, inherent preciousness to Gieo’s life that Fiona found herself more than a little territorial and protective of. If the pilot was right, and humanity couldn’t brutalize their way to victory as Zeke claimed, the world needed her more than a thousand Tombstones.
“Let’s say that’s an accurate assessment, and I’m not conceding it is, won’t the Slark be developing their own aircraft?”
“Exactly! Our technologies flip-flopped, which gives them the advantage,” Gieo said. “They have the oil fields of California. They’re running internal combustion while we’re plunking along with repurposed Slark tech. Eventually we’re going to run out of their fuel, since we have no idea how they made it, and they’ll still have all the fossil fuels they need to crush us. Slark fuel and engines are better, but finite, and we don’t have the infrastructure to return to the fossil fuels we used to use. When all our cars grind to a halt, it won’t matter that the Slark crawlers get four miles to the gallon, they’ll be the only thing running.”
“So we’re screwed?”
“Hardly,” Gieo said. “We can’t figure out how to make more Slark fuel, but we can switch to solar, bio-diesel, and steam, which is exactly what I plan on doing to Mitch’s truck. I’m going to tear out the Slark engine and replace it with the boiler from my dirigible. It’s been running on used fryer oil at an incredibly inefficient pace. I think I can fix that.”
“Is Mitch aware you’re planning on doing this?”
“Aware? He volunteered his truck for the experiment!”
“Zeke won’t like it; you’re chipping away at his stranglehold on the town.”
“Maybe Zeke doesn’t need to keep his stranglehold much longer.”
A second, colder realization followed, and Fiona knew, with dread certainty, she would have to kill people to keep Gieo alive. The inevitability didn’t actually sound all that bad; she hoped the pilot would ultimately be worth it though.
The sun was beginning to set when they arrived at the crash site. Fiona was a little disappointed the Slark hadn’t sent a second recon team. She could always use the easy heads as she’d fully decided to reject Zeke’s proposition. Tracking down the boiler, which Gieo explained jettisoned from the aircraft on impact, as it was designed to, rather than explode and blow up the entire crash site, took close to an hour, but eventually they found the hulking black tank. Mitch’s truck, which apparently had served as a classic car hauler in a former life, easily winched the boiler up onto the flatbed where it was secured with heavy chains. Back at the primary crash site, Fiona kicked her way through the discarded piles of tech in the sand, unsure of what might be valuable and what was junk.
A clanking of metallic legs, not unlike a Slark crawler, drew her attention to the large boulder the crashed dirigible was listing against. Her gun was instantly in her hand with the hammer thumbed back. She couldn’t smell anything out of place, but the sound of Slark crawler legs was unmistakable. She nearly fired out of simply being startled when an upside down crescent, not unlike an overturned wok, peeked around the edge of the boulder, inspecting her with glowing green eyes.
“What the hell is that?” Fiona muttered to herself.
“Ramen,” the little mechanical chirped. He emerged entirely from behind the boulder, walking his mostly spring and solar panel body on two little Slark crawler legs, very similar to a crab’s, flitting twin helicopter props on his back to keep himself upright.
“Like the noodles?”
“More like Range Activated Mechanical…um…something…fuck it, yes, like the noodles.”
Gieo, overhearing the conversation, came running from her duties of securing the main gun pod of the airship to the back of Mitch’s truck. “Ramen, why aren’t you at the lab?”
“I lost primary coordinates and tried to recalibrate from the…”
“…bullshit?” Gieo finished for him.
“I was worried about you,” he admitted.
“Wait, he lies?” Fiona asked. “Why would you teach a robot how to lie?”
“The challenge, of course,” Gieo said. “Do you have any idea how difficult and complex it was to create subterfuge and nuance in an artificial intelligence program? Some of my earliest attempts lied all the time or lied indiscriminately, but Ramen knows exactly how and when a lie should be used. He’s better than many people in that regard.”
“I can also fly,” Ramen added with a little buzz of his propellers.
Mitch came thundering over, shotgun in hand, stopping short when he saw Gieo hugging what looked like a mechanical dragonfly. “What the hell is that thing?”
“Ramen,” Fiona explained.
“Like the soup?” Mitch asked.
“Can we not go over this again?” Ramen asked. “My batteries are low and I’d just like a quiet place to rest and recharge.”
“We’ve got what we came for,” Gieo said, hugging her arms around herself to fight the encroaching cold of the desert twilight.
Fiona fought the urge to put her arm around the pilot. Instead, she agreed they were done, and guided the lot back to the vehicles.
Back in Tombstone, with Mitch’s truck hidden away again along with the incredible haul of tech, they placed Ramen on the roof of the saloon to await the morning sun, before retiring to their respective rooms. Fiona pulled the paper-thin curtains closed over the windows while Gieo set about lighting the candles and lamps. The domesticity of the shared chores carried a familiarity, warm and comfortable, that Fiona found strange, but inviting, considering she’d only met Gieo earlier that morning.
Fiona slung her lengthy form down the middle of the bed, letting the metal, rail headboard push her hat down over her eyes. She wasn’t particularly tired, but always took rest when and where she could get it, much like any other predatory cat.
“Have you thought any about what I said earlier?” Gieo asked.
“Nope,” Fiona lied.
“Maybe I can convince Zeke to change course.”
“He doesn’t like risk, doesn’t care for tech, and he’s more interested in making the Slark suffer than actually getting rid of them,” Fiona said.
“Maybe Tombstone needs a new potentate.” Gieo slid across Fiona’s lap, straddling her waist. “This is our world. It’s time we took it back and became what we were before.”
“What if I don’t like what we were before?” Fiona tossed aside her hat, grasped Gieo by the shoulders and threw her onto the bed beside her. Before Gieo could react, Fiona was on top of her, straddling her waist. She grabbed Gieo’s hands and pinned them above her head. “I like this world, like my place in it. I don’t want to go back to being a pampered coke-fiend flouncing around in my underwear.”
“Then at least rule your world.” Gieo was smiling, clearly enjoying the rough treatment, which irritated Fiona more than a little bit.
“Maybe I start with you,” Fiona hissed.
“Maybe I don’t believe you could.”
Fiona let go of Gieo’s hands and sat back a little on her lap. “You don’t even know me.”
Gieo reached up, grabbed Fiona’s hands, and replaced them in the pinning position above her head. “I do too,” she protested. “I wrote an unofficial biography of you; sure, nobody wanted to publish it, but I did do all the research.”
Fiona restrained herself from pointing out how crazy Gieo sounded; the phrase, ‘takes one to know one’ prevented her. “Okay, fine, you know me, but I don’t know you.”
“I’m a Leo, I liked Korean boy bands when they still existed, my favorite food is sushi, my favorite sushi is yellow-tail, and I used to have a pug named Gizmo,” Gieo rattled off quickly. “See, now you know me as well as anyone.”
Fiona slid off Gieo’s lap and sat on the edge of the bed. The pilot was confusing, paroxysmal, and irritating—all of which would have been fine, if she also wasn’t
attractive. Fiona couldn’t rationalize her desire for Gieo as anything other than her being the first woman she’d seen in ages that wasn’t both a prostitute and straight; of course, there was a great deal more to it that Fiona didn’t want to admit to herself regardless of how aware of it she was.
“But seriously, was being rich and famous actually that bad?” Gieo asked.
The part of Fiona’s brain most in charge of impulse control never functioned correctly. Things easily jumped from being thought about to being done. She called them chaos tics, and she had been more than a little surprised to find most people had them; the only difference was, most people didn’t scream “FIRE!” in a crowded movie theater, shove people off curbs, or throw drinks in peoples’ faces just because the thought occurred to them. Fiona, of course, did all these things. More often than not, a chaos tic of sorts passed through her mind and her body opted to carry it out. She grabbed Gieo’s hand, flipped the pilot over onto her stomach and straddled her lower back from behind. She deftly removed her belt and bound Gieo’s hands to the wrought iron headboard piping with it. When Gieo began to voice her objection, Fiona shoved her face into the pillow resulting in a muffled stream of what she guessed to be Korean swear words.
Dodging Gieo’s clumsily kicked legs, Fiona yanked down the back of the pilot’s riding pants to mid-thigh, exposing her taut, little behind, lovely in black, cotton panties with little cherries on them. Fiona marveled, if only for a moment, how clean all of Gieo’s clothing was.
Fiona brought her hand down hard on Gieo’s behind with a resounding slap. Gieo’s kicking ceased. Fiona swatted her again and again with her left hand, still holding Gieo’s face into the pillow with her right. All the fight immediately drained from the little pilot. Red, angry hand prints rose on the soft curve of her flesh around the black edges of her underwear. Fiona, thinking she’d taught Gieo a proper lesson, released the pilot’s purple hair.
Gieo’s head rolled far enough to the side for her to look up at Fiona through sparkling eyes. She began to squirm a little against the belt holding her hands, making the leather creak. It took a few moments for Fiona to realize it wasn’t actual struggling against bonds, but something far more sexual.
“Fuck me, please,” Gieo whispered.
Fiona glanced from Gieo’s pleading eyes to her behind, writhing against the pants pulled partially down, lewdly pushing up for attention. She couldn’t take her eyes off the beautifully curved ass. She was breathing heavily, her heart pounding, and, for some strange reason, her mouth began watering. She brought her gun hand down hard on Gieo’s right cheek with a loud, satisfying thwack.
“Or you can keep spanking me,” Gieo moaned. “That works for me too.”
“Is there anything you’re not going to enjoy?” Fiona grumbled.
“I’m not sure. Why don’t you start doing things to me, and I’ll let you know when I don’t like one of them?”
“You’re infuriating!”
“Look, you can keep doing what you’re doing, alone, trying to hide your past while slipping under everyone’s radar, or you can try something worthwhile, find someone to care about you, and become something great,” Gieo said. “Remember what we talked about earlier? Whoever adapts and recovers the fastest survives.”
Fiona hated when other people started making sense.
“I don’t like being told what to do!” Fiona punctuated each worth with a hard slap of her open palm against Gieo’s already red behind. As much as she intended the swats to hurt, the pilot still seemed more aroused by them than anything else.
“Fair enough,” Gieo moaned. “You can tell me what to do.”
Fiona left her hand on the warm curve of Gieo’s behind; the heat rising off the spanked portions thrilled her far more than she expected. The possessiveness she felt regarding the pilot was manifesting itself in some peculiar ways, and Fiona believed, on a very instinctive level, that what was beneath her hand was not only hers to protect, but hers to do with as she pleased, and not just because Gieo all but said as much.
“I don’t know what I want,” Fiona murmured.
“No kidding.” Gieo made quick work of the belt around her wrists, undoing the bonds from the inside out, retrieving her hands easily. She rolled across the bed away from Fiona toward the opposite edge. Hooking the heels of her boots on the footboard, she pulled her feet from them and inched her pants the rest of the way down to toss them off the bed as well.
“How do you keep your clothes so clean?” Fiona asked.
“I have these incredible machines that do it for me,” Gieo snarled. “I’m thinking of calling them a washing machine and a dryer.” Gieo rolled onto her side, facing the wall, with her back to Fiona.
Fiona couldn’t keep from staring at the delicate curve of Gieo’s hips, the slender waist hugged by the jacket, and the artistic line where her shapely, slender legs met the round swell of her ass. Something long dormant tried to claw its way out of the darkest recesses that Fiona had banished it to; she wanted Gieo, not just sexually, although, at the moment, carnal lust dominated her thoughts about the purple-haired pilot, but wanted to be around her, to listen to her talk, to have Gieo’s hand resting on her thigh when she drove. It was difficult to admit how lonely she’d been, and even more difficult considering the first person who might quell the loneliness was exotic, intriguing, and hotter than the Arizona sun.
“Do you want to make out?” Fiona asked and nearly pistol-whipped herself immediately after for how astoundingly stupid and childish the words sounded when left to hang in the air.
Gieo rolled over onto her back with a grin that looked to be comprised of equal parts delight, disbelief, and sarcasm. Fiona felt her cheeks warm with a furious blush. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone or anything had made her blush, let alone something as innocuous as a grin. Every second Gieo went without actually saying yes or no to the request compounded the embarrassment until Fiona was on the edge of jumping out of her own skin.
“Sure,” Gieo finally said. She reached up with both hands, grabbed the front of Fiona’s denim jacket, and pulled her down until their lips met.
What Fiona perceived as her relative sexual inexperience, compounded by six years of rust, left her breathless and stunned by the pilot’s verve. Her primary concern, aside from figuring out how to breathe effectively without actually letting her lips part from Gieo’s for one second, was to get more skin-on-skin contact. Gieo seemed to sense Fiona’s desire, and teased to stoke the fire. She squirmed coquettishly away from Fiona’s touches, refused to relinquish her hold on the jacket Fiona desperately wanted to be rid of, and put her own weight into the balancing act required of Fiona’s arms to maintain the kiss.
Without another option left to her, Fiona broke the kiss long enough to hiss the single word on her mind, “Evil.” In a surprisingly strong move, Gieo used Fiona’s bodyweight against her, knocked out one of her support arms, and flipped the much taller woman onto her back, rolling easily on top to pin her.
Gieo’s bare leg thrust its way up between Fiona’s, rubbing her knee meaningfully into the crotch of Fiona’s leather pants. “You passed on fucking me,” Gieo whispered, her lips flickering over the tip of Fiona’s nose as she spoke, “but you can dry hump my leg since you’ve clearly changed your mind.”
Fiona hated the change in power dynamic. She held stock still, refusing to give an inch. She couldn’t shoot the pilot, which was usually how she brought power struggles to a close, but she couldn’t give in either. Gieo made Fiona’s decision not to accept the offer all the more difficult by leaning down to begin kissing her again. Fiona closed her eyes, thrilling at the sensation of the pilot’s insanely soft lips, the teasing of the talented, darting tongue against hers, and the tickle of Gieo’s braids along the sides of her face. With little more thought than is given to breathing, Fiona’s body responded of its own accord, and she began writhing against Gieo’s leg in slow gyrations.
The Gunfighter and The Gear-Head Page 4
