by Rachel Aukes
She stepped tentatively toward him at first, then closed the distance to grab onto his belt.
Joe tapped his armlet to make a call. Val answered on the chime.
“I need a pickup,” he said.
“I’m a little busy right now.”
“Make yourself unbusy.”
“Fine. Where?”
“I’m coming through the front door.”
“I’ll be there in five minutes.”
“Make it two.” He hung up.
“Where are you taking me?” Sloan asked.
“We’re taking a little stroll which, from what I see, you could use one or ten of.”
“If you’re kidnapping me, my brother will pay ransom. But if you kill me, there is nowhere you can hide that he won’t find you. He will kill you and everyone you know.”
“Relax. I don’t want to be around you any more than you want to be around me.”
Joe pushed Sloan up to the front door, pausing long enough to see the whole damn army of Sloan’s so-called farm boys out in the courtyard, shooting at fleeing slaves. There must’ve been hundreds of people fleeing the farm, all in ratty clothes and many just skin and bones. He hadn’t expected so many workers to be crammed into the buildings. He could see why Val broke them free, but she still should’ve waited until Joe’s job was done.
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” Joe spoke close to Sloan’s ear. “We’re going to walk right through that courtyard, and you’re going to make sure none of your farm boys shoot at us. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” he said in a surprisingly high-pitched squawk.
“Good.” Joe glanced down at the girl hanging onto his belt and gave her a small nod. Then he shoved his captive out the front door.
“Hold your fire, hold your fire!” Sloan cried out as Joe pushed him forward.
Murcs near them stopped and turned. Most raised their rifles at Joe but didn’t fire. Others stood there, seemingly unsure what to do with their weapons. Joe’s exoshield could reflect some blaster shots, but not if they were in too close or too high powered. The girl had no such protection, so he hoped that she clung to him like a fly on a sticky trap.
The shooting around them died down as they walked through the yard, drawing more and more unwanted attention. He searched for any sign of Val. It’d been at least two minutes already—and felt like it’d been fifteen. A weight started to fill his chest. She’d left him to die. He knew it.
He heard a familiar rumble. The front gate crashed down, and Monster’s bright lights burst forth. He squinted as his helmet’s vision adjusted, and grinned. She’d really come.
“You’re that bounty hunter I hired to kill Vane, aren’t you? What’d she do? Use her wiles to turn you?” Sloan asked.
“Something like that,” Joe answered as he kept Sloan moving forward, though he could tell the man was dragging his feet.
Monster tore through the yard and straight for them. Murcs fired at the vehicle, and Joe winced every time a direct hit penetrated a spot not heavily armored. Sloan cowered as if the cutter was going to run him over, but Joe held him up. Monster stopped abruptly several feet from the trio, and Joe could make out Val, her face covered by a balaclava, in the driver’s seat.
He suddenly feared she would detonate the PED, killing the child along with himself and Sloan. In a rush, he shoved Sloan toward his men, scooped up the child with his left arm, and laid down a barrage of blaster fire as he leapt to the opened passenger door. He tossed her inside and jumped in behind her.
Sloan shook a balled fist. “You’re a dead man! You can’t hide from me!”
“Go, go, go!” Joe exclaimed, yanking the door shut.
Monster reversed abruptly, throwing Joe against the dash. Fortunately, Val had held the girl back, so she wasn’t injured.
The sheriff increased power to the reverse thrusters, and Monster picked up speed. Blaster shots came at them from nearly all directions, and the girl ducked.
“It’s okay, kid. You’re safe now. Those little blasters can’t get through Monster’s shields.” I hope.
She eyed him dubiously; the vehicle lurched as they backed over the fallen gate.
Joe held onto the dash as he watched the soldiers running to the yard, firing at them. “I hope you know of a good hiding place because they’re going to follow us.”
“No, they won’t.” She glanced at her armlet. A second later, a series of explosions tore through a building near the barracks and lit up the night sky.
“What was that?”
“The charging station. That’s where all their cutters were plugged in.”
He grinned. “Smart thinking.” The expression quickly faded, though. He twisted around to look into the back cabin and noticed the lock on his weapons cabinet missing. “Wait a second. You used my explosives?”
“All of them.”
The breath left him. “You know how hard it was to get my hands on those?”
“I imagine pretty hard since they’re illegal,” she said matter-of-factly.
“You owe me new explosives.”
“I just saved your life. That should cover my tab.”
“Not even close.” Joe noticed the girl sneakily pocket the credits he hadn’t realized she’d still been clenching in her hand.
He chuckled in her direction. “Good job back there, kid. You earned those credits.”
A blaster shot hit the window directly to the right of his head, and he ducked instinctively.
She jutted out her chin. “My name’s not Kid. It’s Romy.”
“Nice to meet you, Romy,” Joe said.
“Hold on.” Val hit the brakes and spun Monster around, spinning up rocks and dirt as she sped forward, leaving the farm behind them.
The woman spoke then, more softly than Joe thought she was capable of. “I remember you, Romy. You used to live about a mile northwest of Clearwater, on that farm by Snake River.”
The girl nodded. “Yeah. At least until Mr. Sloan took it.”
“You don’t have to worry about Sloan anymore. I’m going to take care of him. You have my word.” Val shot Joe a hard look. “Why is he still alive?”
“Because you went off the plan, and I had to improvise,” he replied.
“What, you think I should’ve left all those innocent people behind to be slaves on Sloan’s farms?”
He glowered. “No. I meant that we could’ve freed them together as soon as the first job was done,” he said, choosing his words carefully in front of the kid.
Val chortled. “And why would you have helped with that?”
“Because I’m human.”
She eyed him for a long moment with a scowl on her face. Then she tapped out several commands on her armlet. There was a click behind Joe, and he felt something fall down his back. He turned and grabbed the PED and held it up. “You’re letting me go?”
After a moment, she shrugged. “You didn’t fulfill your end of the bargain, but after tonight, Sloan will demand revenge on both of us. You’re no safer than I am.” She winced before adding, “Sorry.”
He looked at Romy, who’d either fallen asleep already or was great at faking it. “We need to get her back to her parents.”
Val shook her head. “Both dead. She was given to Sloan to pay off their outstanding debts. There’s nowhere in Clearwater for her where Sloan won’t find her. I’m working on getting a safe place for all these people, but I don’t have it yet.”
He watched the girl for a long moment. The wastelands were a hard place to live, and it seemed that children often suffered the worst. He sighed. “I know of someplace I can take her until you do.”
Sara was going to kill him.
Chapter Nineteen
Cat cleared the room before she answered the video call with her most important client. As soon as her office door locked, she accepted the incoming signal. Gabriel Sloan’s visage appeared on screen, and she noticed he looked more constipated than usual. She disliked the Sloan brothers—they
were murc scum, and she’d fought on the side of Zenith State during the Revolution—but the Sloans paid her enough to assuage her indigestion.
“Mr. Sloan, it’s a pleasure, as always,” she said.
“Cut the crap, Cat. Did you hear about Clearwater?” Gabriel asked.
“I heard that some farmworkers launched a bit of an uprising. Why, was Roderick involved?” she said, though she’d already heard exactly what’d happened, and she wished that her people had been successful in their first attempt to take Havoc off the board. When she’d first heard that Roderick Sloan had gone to Reuben for the knockout ticket, she felt insulted. Now, she felt relief that it hadn’t been one of her bounty hunters who’d screwed up so badly.
“It was more than that,” he fumed. “A bounty hunter teamed up with the local sheriff to ransack my brother’s farm and release all the farmworkers. They very nearly killed him in the process.”
She watched him for a moment before speaking. From what her source had told her, Havoc had been sent to kill the sheriff, then had a change of heart and gone after Roderick Sloan instead. But a key to Cat’s success was knowing when not to tip her cards. “Why would a bounty hunter team up with a sheriff?” she asked.
“Who knows? That sheriff’s been causing problems for Roddy for some time now. She probably seduced that hunter into helping her. Hunters are dumb enough to fall for a lady’s wiles.”
Cat raised a brow but didn’t speak.
Gabriel Sloan continued. “That sheriff’s still causing problems, and she’s hurting the Sloan good name.”
Cat laughed inwardly at the thought of anything good being associated with the Sloan brothers. She asked, “Are you wanting a knockout ticket for her?”
“Yes, absolutely, but first I have another job for you. It’s a big one and needs to take place at sunset tomorrow. And I expect you to carry out this job personally.”
Her brows rose. “I don’t do fieldwork.”
“You will for me.”
She took a breath to maintain her composure. “Of course. My guild can handle the biggest of jobs, though the bigger the job, the more expensive. Especially if I’ll be leading it.”
“You know I have the credits. I’m the richest man in the Midlands.”
She smiled but didn’t correct him. Everyone knew that Arthur Law was the richest. “Of course. Now tell me, what’s this big job you have in mind?”
Chapter Twenty
Rex waited until just before dawn, then sat up in his hole and looked around. The sounds of crickets and wild critters greeted him, which was a relief—if the hunters were out, everything would go silent. He pushed to his feet, dusted off his cape, and made his way back to the Iron Guild.
A sane person would’ve gone in the opposite direction, choosing to brave the desert over a guild full of hunters. Lucky for Rex, he’d never been accused of being sane. He walked slowly, as much because he was weak from thirst as to not scare the wildlife. They’d grown accustomed to him over the past two days and didn’t go quiet on his account.
He trudged back up the long hill. A coyote trailed him for a while, likely out of curiosity since Rex assumed he had far too much gristle to be tasty to any animal out in the Salt Flats. The coyote grew bored after several minutes and broke off to the north. Rex continued onward, listening for any human sounds: footsteps, the swooshing of clothes, or the clicking of a blaster’s composite components.
Only the blissful sounds of nature.
When he reached the hilltop, he went down on his stomach and crawled forward. What he saw made him pause. In the parking lot below, all the bounty hunters were loading into their cutters and pulling out. Even Cat had climbed into a cutter—the driver’s side, of course, as her personality wasn’t that of a person to ride shotgun. Twenty or more vehicles formed a convoy and departed across the desert.
Rex waited until the last lights were out of sight before he stood. He was curious, but more than curious, he was relieved. Not a single vehicle remained in the parking lot. Well, Cat’s cutter and the other rig it’d smashed were still there, but no operational vehicles remained. That made the odds low of anyone being left behind.
Rex chanced it and walked down the hill, through the parking lot, and around the back of the building to where various vehicles were parked within a chain-link fence. When he found his cutter near the end, he grinned. “Beatrice baby, I’m on my way.”
He hustled to the fence, saw that it had no power feeding it, and had the lock picked in five seconds flat. He shook his head. Cat really should think about getting better security.
He jogged to his cutter, checked it over for restraints or alarms, and was about to climb in when he stopped, his eyes caught by what he saw the next row over. He dropped off the step and walked toward the long tank. He knocked on the metal hull, growing even more interested. He hustled around to the back, climbed up the ladder, and strode across the top, stopping at a round cover. He twisted. It didn’t move, and Rex put all his strength into it. Finally, the cover turned an inch, then he turned it some more. It opened with the sound of a hawk’s screech. Rex knelt over the opening and immediately backed away from the strong odor emanating from it. He shone a light into the tank to find the container nearly full.
He laughed, looked up at the stars, and said, “Thank you.”
Rex wasn’t a religious man. He didn’t even know about the gods people prayed to, but he’d seen other people pray, and they always seemed to look up at the sky as though salvation would come for them from a spaceship. He didn’t care one way or another as to what folks believed, as long as they stayed out of his way. But at that moment, he felt like he should be thanking someone for the best present he’d ever received.
Chapter Twenty-One
Sara’s jaw was set as firmly as her hands on her hips. “You’ve developed a bad habit of bringing home strays, Joe Ballast. Just because you send credits my way, don’t think you can send all your trouble my way.”
Joe fidgeted, wiping at a grimy spot on his helmet, which he’d taken off, before returning his gaze to Sara. “I know it’s not fair to you, and I’m sorry, but Clearwater isn’t safe for Romy, and I might need to disappear for a while.”
“What kind of trouble have you gotten yourself into now?”
He furrowed his brows. “The murc kind.”
She rolled her eyes. “Of course you’d find the worst kind. You know something, Joe? You can’t keep trouble from showing up at your doorstep, but you don’t have to let it in.”
“They were going to kill her. She’s just a kid.” When Sara’s features began to soften, he added, “She’s the same age as Nick.”
Sara’s chin wrinkled for a second, as though biting back the urge to cave.
“I just need to leave her here for a few days until Sheriff Vane finds a home for her.”
Sara stiffened taller. “Damn straight you and that sheriff will find a home for her. You didn’t see a sign outside that reads ‘Swinton Orphanage for Wayward Children,’ did you?”
He shook his head. “No ma’am, I did not.”
She wagged a finger at him. “And don’t ‘ma’am’ me. I’m a year younger than you.”
The door behind Joe opened, and Nick’s brown mop of hair peeked in. Champ squeezed through the opening and ran toward Joe. He scratched the dog’s ears.
“Mom, can I go meet Romy now?” Nick asked.
She pointed to the door. “Not yet. Go take a seat outside and be quiet. Joe and I aren’t finished talking yet.”
Nick’s features fell. “Come on, Champ,” he said, as though the weight of the world was on his shoulders. He held the door open for the dog to follow him back outside.
Sara eyed Joe for a length, then blew out a breath. “Let me go see to the poor child. She must be terrified with everything going on.”
“You want me to—”
“Go outside and wait with my son,” Sara interrupted.
He pressed his lips together, and gingerly stepped
upstairs and outside while Sara walked to Nick’s bedroom, where Joe had sent Romy to wait.
Joe found Nick sitting on the ground, kicking up dust, cupping his chin in his hands with his elbows on his legs. Meanwhile, Champ was checking out every rock in the small yard.
Nick looked up when Joe took a seat next to him. The boy pouted. “Mom’s mad at me.”
“No, she’s not.” She’s mad at me.
“She only tells me to sit down and shut up when she’s mad at me.”
Joe squeezed Nick’s shoulder. “Don’t let it get to you. Parents do stuff like that when they’re stressed. Besides, it’s one of the ways parents get to mess with their kids’ heads. Once they teach you how to walk and talk, they start telling you to sit down and shut up.”
Nick watched him for a moment with a confused expression before shaking it off. “Do you know, does Romy get to stay?”
Joe shook his head. “Sorry, kiddo. Romy’s just staying with you until she finds a new home.”
“But I want her to stay.”
“Romy’s not a puppy like Champ.”
He scowled. “I know that. It’s just that I never had a brother or a sister, and I think it’d be nice. That’s all.” Nick looked up at Joe. “Did you have any brothers or sisters?”
“No. I was born before the Revolution, back when Zenith State only allowed one kid per couple.”
Nick’s eyes widened. “Really? Why?”
“We’d been told the Earth was still poisoned, so we lived in the siloes still, and resources were a lot tighter than they are now.” Joe tried not to think of his childhood, of his earliest memories. He was the first generation to see Earth’s surface, as desolate as it was. Seven generations had come and gone before him underground, never to feel natural sunlight on their skin. Like every person born in a silo, he’d been taught the history of the world. First came the year of the great pandemic, which was followed by the year of the even greater domino collapse: environment, economics, politics, law, and just plain life in general after an “accidental” nuclear war erupted. The surface was no longer hospitable to humans. Most relocated to massive underground shelters. Some clung to the surface; no one knew what happened to them. Life continued that way for seven generations until Joe was born. He knew many still lived in the siloes, rather than building the tiny subterranean homes like Sara’s, and he wondered how different life was for those who continued their lives fifty feet below ground.
