“Tread carefully,” I said, stepping up onto the porch.
There was a simple iron latch on the door, no lock. I pushed the door open about eight inches and then it started to scrape on the floor inside. Either the door had dropped on its hinges or the floor had warped upwards.
It was dark inside and the air felt damp and chilly. As far as I could see there was just the one room. A table and two chairs but no other furniture. An old pot-bellied stove that was designed for both warmth and cooking. And not much else.
“Should we light a fire?” Harmony asked.
There was a chance that smoke and heat would draw attention to us, but you had to weigh that against the risk that we’d get trench-foot from the damp.
“Yeah, it’ll help keep the bears away,” I said.
“Are there bears here?” Harmony asked.
“Oh, yeah,” I said. I had no idea really. “Luckily we’re too far north for dragons.”
“I’ll try and find some old dry wood,” she said. “It’ll smoke less.”
She must have been a youth scout. As a child, I’d gone for a try-out but couldn’t get comfortable wearing a uniform. And I was disappointed that they didn’t give out a badge for slime-making. Or for creating explosions. Harmony must have picked up that skill somewhere else. I learned it from my cousin Lucy. She wasn’t a scout either.
I looked around the grim little hut. I didn’t want to stay here. But Floyd needed some uninterrupted time to fix the truck. Harmony could spend the night in the truck, but I’d have to sleep in the horror movie set. Unless she changed her mind about sharing a bed with me. Should I just spread a thin blanket on the floor of the hut among the mouse-droppings in the hope of gaining her sympathy? I didn’t think being pathetic was the best way to try and get her to change her mind about the sex thing. Better if it looked like I was prepared to tough it out. I decided to set up the little emergency tent inside the shack. At least that would keep the cockroaches off me.
I was tangled up in the fabric of the tent when Harmony came back in with the wood.
“You’re pathetic, you know that?” she said. So much for Plan A. She took hold of the tent and shook it. The two carbon-fibre supports snapped into place and the little dome of orange fabric was ready for use.
“Admit it, you were a youth scout, weren’t you?” I said.
Harmony smiled wistfully. “I was thrown out. It turns out you’re not allowed to use concussion grenades to stun fish in the lake.”
“Can you light a fire without explosives?” I asked.
“Yeah, but it’s not nearly as much fun.”
“It’ll be cozy in the tent,” I said.
“I’m sure you’ll be fine in there,” she said.
“It would be even cosier for two,” I said.
“Not going to happen,” she said.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “You want to – I know you do...”
“Not here and not now,” Harmony said. She turned her attention to the stove. Had that been a slight softening of her position? I wanted to think so.
“Am I interrupting?” Floyd said, appearing in the doorway.
“There’s nothing to interrupt,” I said.
“And there’s not going to be,” Harmony said without turning from her task.
“You’d better come and fetch your sleeping bag,” Floyd said, making an exaggerated ‘come outside’ gesture with his head.
“I’ll get some food too,” I said.
Harmony nodded.
“We’ve got a problem,” Floyd said when we were back at the truck.
“Can’t you fix it?”
“It’s almost done,” he said. “I’m going to reverse it into the clearing and catch the last of the daylight.”
“Then what’s...?”
“I picked up a transmission,” Floyd said.
“What did it say?”
“That’s the problem – I don’t know. I can’t access the content. I just know that it was sent.”
“Sent from where?” I asked.
“Here.”
I looked into the trees around us. “Do you think someone followed us here?”
“That’s one possibility,” he said.
“Who else could have sent it?” I asked.
Floyd didn’t want to answer that. He wanted me to figure it out for myself.
“Harmony?” I said.
“If it wasn’t you and it wasn’t me,” Floyd said, “who else is there?”
His argument made sense, but I didn’t like it.
“Was the signal sent from inside the cabin?” I asked.
“I only know that the signal originated somewhere within a hundred feet of this spot,” he said.
“Then there could be someone else out there?” My hand moved towards my gun as I scanned the trees around the clearing. That’s another problem with a forest – lots of hiding places.
“We may have been followed,” Floyd said. “But it is also possible that Harmony sent the transmission. Either way, we must prepare for the consequences.”
“Tell me about the transmission.”
“Brief burst, strong encryption,” he said.
“Revealing our location?”
“Unknown. But that would be a reasonable assumption.”
“How was it sent?”
“Not from the truck or the Trekker,” Floyd said. “Low power, short-range. Not a type of broadcast I have seen before.”
“Short-range means they’re communicating with someone close-by,” I said. This was stating the obvious – what I meant was that the enemy must be near.
“If she didn’t use the Trekker or the truck, how could Harmony...?” But even as I asked this I realised the answer. She had an implant – a tiny computer somewhere in her skull that could connect to the Grid by satellite or any other system available. “Implant,” I said.
Floyd nodded. “I don’t know what she has. If I tried to scan her she’d know about it and block me. But by the size of it, I would say it’s something out of the ordinary. Expensive. That in itself is suspicious.”
“Not really,” I said. “She’s like me, a criminal – and a damn good one.”
“She’s lightyears ahead of you, Robin Hood,” Floyd said.
“Just because she has that thing doesn’t mean she’s using it,” I said. “Maybe she’s not talking to anyone.”
“And maybe she is,” Floyd said. “I don’t like maybes. And if she is talking to someone, you’ve got to ask yourself, Who is she working for?”
“It could be that Harmony just phoned out for pizza,” I said. “I’ll ask her.”
“Whoever sent that transmission doesn’t know we’re aware of it,” Floyd said. “That’s the only advantage we currently have. I’d advise against giving it away.”
Trust no one. It was a code I’d lived by for most of my adult life. Very occasionally I would meet someone who made me want to let my guard down for just a little while. Harmony was one of those people. But if I wanted to survive this trip, I had to accept the possibility that she might betray me. Again.
“We’re too exposed here,” I said. “They could surround us easily.”
“What do you want to do?” Floyd asked.
“Send out the drones. Circular search pattern, spiralling out from the hut. I want to know what’s out there.”
“I need my cannon,” Floyd said. “I want to patrol too.”
I thought about this. There were risks involved. The cannon drew its power via a direct connection to Floyd – and in his present body, the batteries were relatively puny. That was the problem with energy weapons – they used energy.
“I don’t want you using it except as a last resort,” I said.
“I’m at eighty-two per cent charge,” Floyd said. “That gives me six shots without diminishing my ability to function.”
“As soon as the drones spot something, I want to know about it,” I said.
Floyd nodded.
“
I’m going to keep an eye on Harmony,” I said. “Find out what I can without alerting her suspicions.”
“I will disable the Trekker and the truck so that she cannot use them to leave,” Floyd said.
I nodded. I collected my sleeping bag and some rations, since that was what I supposedly came out for. Floyd took his cannon out of the trunk of the Trekker and fitted it into place. I wished he still had the big one from the red robot suit.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The fire was rumbling away in the stove and already the air in the shack was a little warmer. I set a small lantern down on the table and its light brightened the interior considerably. It didn’t make it look any more inviting.
I had two cans of chicken curry and emptied the contents into a saucepan that had a folding handle. I put the pan on top of the stove along with two metallic pouches of pre-cooked rice. It wasn’t long before the spicy food scent was banishing the damp wood smell.
I popped open two cans of self-heating coffee. Harmony and I sat opposite each other at the rustic wooden table.
“Next time I get to pick our vacation spot,” I said.
Harmony smiled. “When did you last have a vacation?”
“My whole life is a vacation from the mundane,” I said grandly.
“You’re definitely not mundane, I’ll give you that,” she said.
“Are you going to tell me about it?” I asked.
“What?”
“What happened after the Battle for Cicada City,” I said, “after you flew off into the sunset.”
She stared down into her coffee. “We’ve both made some bad choices,” she said. “Sometimes you have to pay for them.”
“Only if they catch up with you,” I said.
“Don’t you ever get tired of running?”
“If I stop, O’Keefe will find me,” I said.
“The bounty hunter. Is he really as bad as people say?”
“I’d prefer not to find out,” I said. “He’s my worst nightmare.”
“If it was me, I’d turn the tables,” she said. “Start hunting him.”
“And what would you do when you caught him?”
“Kill him.”
“I could never do that,” I said.
“That’s because you’re a better person than me,” she said. “And it’ll probably be the death of you.”
“I plan on living forever,” I said.
“Your actions would suggest otherwise,” she said. “You should stir that curry, it’ll burn if it sticks.”
I got up and crossed to the stove. “I’ll just turn the heat down.”
“You’ve never cooked on a wood stove before, have you?” she said.
“Do you think we’ll make it?” I asked, stirring the contents of the pan. “To New Grimsby?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Do you have a plan?”
“I need a new one. I hadn’t anticipated that we’d attract so much attention. Every time I turn around there’s someone trying to stop me.” I turned to look at her. There wasn’t a flicker of anything in her face. An expert con artist can do that. But so can an innocent person.
“You must have known Crawford’s men would come after you,” Harmony said.
“Crawford?” I said. “Who’s that?”
She looked confused. “J. Clement Crawford. You stole his whiskey.”
“Ah,” I said.
“You didn’t know?” she asked. “Crawford owns Honest Herb’s warehouse. Don’t you check these things before you break in somewhere?”
“We were hired to collect a cargo,” I said. “We didn’t know it was whiskey and we didn’t know we were stealing it.”
“I wouldn’t believe that story from anyone except you,” she said.
“Jacob Flint offered us money to do a job. We thought it was legitimate.”
“You’re working for Flint?” Harmony said. “Why would you think a job he offered you was on the level? The man’s a crook.”
“So are we,” I said.
“No,” she said, “you and me are little people. Flint is one of the biggest criminals on the planet.”
“Why haven’t I heard of him?”
“Because that’s how good he is. Nothing is ever traced back to him. The police only ever catch the little people.”
“And Crawford?” I asked.
“Clem Crawford is the same. Flint is King of the West and Crawford is King of the East.”
“And here we are caught in the middle,” I said.
“I’m amazed you made it this far,” Harmony said. “Not only have you got Crawford’s men after you, but you’ve also managed to swazz-off a gang of bikers and you’ve attracted the attention of a federal Marshal and a Highway Patrolman. How do you do it?”
“We should give the whiskey back,” I said. “Walk away.”
“You don’t understand, do you? It’s not about the whiskey. Crawford doesn’t care about that. It’s a MacGuffin.”
“A what?”
“It has no intrinsic value. The whiskey is a symbol of the rivalry between Crawford and Flint. There is a competition going on between the two of them – it’s been going on for years – to try and prove who is the most powerful. They don’t care who gets hurt. They just want to be the one who wins.”
“Then there’s no way out of this?” I asked.
Harmony shook her head. “We’re trapped. We either deliver the whiskey on time or we die trying.”
“Not we,” I said. “Me and Floyd took the job. You need to get away from us. This isn’t your fight. You can take the Trekker.”
“If I thought I could get away with that, I would,” she said. “But they know who I am. I’m too far into this to be able to back out.”
I didn’t think this was some heroic ‘We’re in this together no matter what’ speech. If she could have driven away from that clearing she would have. And it would have made me happy to watch her go. I didn’t want her tangled up in this, it was my mess. And from what I’d seen so far, Crawford’s people weren’t going to give up until the truck was destroyed and I was dead. If Crawford was as powerful as Harmony said, he could buy whatever people and weapons were necessary to stop me.
“We’re scracked,” I said.
Harmony didn’t disagree with me. “We need a new plan,” she said.
I had the first inkling of an idea. I didn’t tell her what it was because she’d say it was the craziest thing she’d ever heard. Our problem was that a lot of dangerous people kept chasing after us. But what if we went somewhere so dangerous that they wouldn’t follow us? It was crazy. But it was the good kind of crazy. Maybe.
*
I woke sometime before dawn. I wasn’t sure if it was the need to swazz that woke me or something else. I lay in the little tent trying to make myself get up and go outside to empty my bladder. I was tempted to hold it until morning. But once you start thinking about something like that it becomes impossible to ignore. I slid out of the sleeping bag and unzipped the tent.
The shack was dark except for the moonlight through the little window. There was still some heat coming from the iron stove and I could see the embers glowing dark red through the slats of the air vent. I pulled on my jacket and boots, listening for any repeat of the sound that might have woken me. I didn’t turn on the lantern – I didn’t want to ruin my night vision.
As quietly as I could, I opened the door and peered out. Everything in the clearing – the truck, the Trekker, all of it – had that bluish monochrome look. Saphira’s moons were about three-quarters full. From their position in the sky, I guessed that daybreak was a couple of hours away.
The sound when it came seemed very far away. I recognised it instantly and knew this was what had woken me. Floyd’s cannon. I pushed the earbud deeper into my ear to make sure it was active.
“Floyd? Talk to me.”
The device cycled through different channels but picked up nothing but static. I tapped the screen on my watch and tried to contact t
he drones. There was no signal from Gnat or Mozzie. I drew my revolver and cautiously crossed the clearing. I needed to wake Harmony. I was halfway towards the truck when the first shot rang out. I dropped to the ground. The grass was wet against my hands and face. I couldn’t judge where the shot had come from.
Another cannon shot, half a mile away or more. Coming from somewhere back along the trail we’d used to get here, as near as I could tell. This was the third cannon shot I’d heard. It meant Floyd had encountered something he considered a significant threat. I didn’t think he was chasing off a bear.
“Harmony!” I called. She couldn’t still be asleep after the gunshot in the clearing. Her outlaw instincts were at least as good as mine. There was no movement in the truck. I picked up a stout stick and threw it towards the door of the cab. The thud as it hit brought another shot from the trees. This time I saw where it had come from. I aimed and squeezed off a shot.
The slug struck a tree trunk and the orange glow of the brief explosion lit up a small part of the forest. I saw three men standing among the trees. Armed men. They were evenly spaced and I felt sure there were more of them surrounding the whole clearing.
I thought about making a dash for the Trekker, but Floyd had disabled it and I would waste precious seconds reattaching the wires. Staying low, I edged back towards the shack.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Back inside the shack I opened up the front of the stove and rekindled the flames, adding more wood. If the gunmen outside were using thermal imaging, I wanted the stove to be the brightest thing they were seeing. I wasn’t sure if this would help, but it wouldn’t make my situation any worse.
The shack didn’t have a cellar I could use as a hiding place. I could have pulled up some of the boards and crawled into the gap under the floor, but I didn’t fancy getting trapped in that confined space. I was going to have to make a stand. If it came down to a shoot-out, I would keep the old pot-bellied stove between me and the bullets as far as I could.
There were a dozen men or more outside. If they all advanced at once, I didn’t stand a chance of holding them off. If a few brave souls took the lead, I could maybe take them out and encourage the rest to withdraw. At best this seemed unlikely. I wished I had the drones with me. And Floyd. And a tank.
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