In Quaking Hills

by Kate MacLeod

  “I figured as much,” Scout said. “But still, I’d feel better with these back.”

  “This information is going to change things,” he said.

  “Maybe not for the better.”

  “Well, it can’t go on like this forever, can it? Something has to change.”

  Scout looked at the data disks resting on the palm of her hand, then stuck them back in her pocket. “I really don’t know.”

  “Bente wanted me to tell you best of luck,” Ken said. “Truly. Joelle says you’re definitely not going to be one of us, which is a shame because we all really liked you. You would have been an asset.”

  Scout just nodded. She had waited her whole life for the rebels to find her, to make her one of them. She thought that was why her father had sent her on a delivery to the next town on that fateful day when the rock from space had destroyed her whole city. He must have known something. She must have had a destiny.

  Gertrude had convinced her how wrong that was. Having a destiny didn’t lend meaning to the senseless tragedy of losing her entire family, her home, everything in one blow. She could only give it meaning for herself by her own actions.

  She didn’t know what that was yet. She thought it probably waited for her out closer to the galactic center, so that was where she was headed.

  Now, finally seeing the life she had always thought she wanted, she wasn’t sure exactly what she was feeling. It was a sort of melancholy as she looked back at her former self and considered how easily she would have gotten caught up in something that to her current self was clearly a quagmire of politics, with no good guys or bad guys and no clear sign of the right path.

  Also an aching sort of awareness of what a narrow escape she had just had. Because only six days separated her former self from her current self. Six days! It felt like a lifetime.

  “You better hurry,” Ken said. “The big boss likes to keep these calls short. You don’t have much time.”

  “Do you know who—”

  Ken cut her off. “Not even a theory. Now go. And good luck!”

  Scout hitched her belt up, which it absolutely didn’t need since it had adjusted to the size of her waist the minute she had put it on. They had such lovely technology in the galactic center. Then she crawled back down the hallway as quickly as she could. She only heard Arvid and Malcolm arguing with each other behind the closed door and guessed that Ken was right and the call had ended. They could come back out at any time.

  She rose to a crouch and ran at the earliest opportunity, not slowing down until she had gone so deeply into the warehouse the light from the kitchen was no longer penetrating to show her the obstacles around her.

  Reggie had taken the lantern with him but Scout had a flashlight on her belt. She quickly found it and switched it on, then continued on through the warehouse to the natural cavern and back through the tangle of stalactites to the larger cave beyond.

  There was no one there. No sign of Joelle or her captive Tucker, and no sign of Scout’s dogs.

  21

  Scout stood completely still, tilting her head as she listened. She held her breath and tried to slow the heartbeat that was pounding too loudly in her ears. Somewhere, not remotely close by, she could hear a drip of water. Even more distantly she thought she heard the hum of machinery.

  Then she heard a snuffle.

  “Shadow! Gert!” she called. Then she remembered the whistle in her pocket and took it out to give it a blow.

  The dogs came charging out from behind a rock outcropping. Shadow was trembling as he leapt into her arms and even Gert looked torn between deep upset and elation at seeing her again.

  What had happened since she left? And where were Joelle and Tucker?

  Scout sat down on the cave floor so the dogs could cuddle close to her while she put the eyepiece over her left eye and consulted the tablet. There were no new messages. She brought up the coordinates Liam had sent her on the map display and studied the terrain between that dot and her current location.

  If the mining tunnel let out where Reggie said it would, she would find herself on top of the ridge on the far side of the canyon behind the compound. From there it was a long, shallow slope to the prairie floor. An easy walk from there to the meeting point, nothing to jump over or navigate around. She would be there in time.

  If she left right now.

  Scout scratched at the dogs as she looked at the cave floor around her. The bare rock gave no clue what had happened to Joelle and Tucker.

  She didn’t think Joelle would leave the dogs unattended without reason. She had already had Tucker subdued and was settled in to wait. So either Tucker had gotten the upper hand or someone had summoned her away.

  And yet she had seen no sign of either of them between here and the compound. So where could they have gone?

  Scout sighed and pushed the dogs away to get back on her feet. She hated not knowing, and she worried that Joelle might need help, but the fact was if she didn’t get moving she was going to miss meeting Liam. She couldn’t risk that, especially not after everything she had done to get this far.

  “Come, dogs,” Scout said and crossed the cave to the red glow outlining the mining tunnel.

  She hoped she wasn’t going to regret this moment forever.

  Reggie had been right about the tunnel. It ran straight and true, the sandy floor smooth and even. The tunnel pierced through natural caverns from time to time, but there was never any danger of losing the path.

  Scout kept the dogs close to her side, not running ahead or falling behind, and her eyes scanned every rock formation that could hide an ambush, but the walk was uneventful. Joelle and Tucker might have gone back into the compound, or up to the top of the ridge, or deeper into the caverns that led to the escape vent from the cell, but Scout was beginning to doubt they had gone down this tunnel before her.

  There was a patch of bright light ahead and Scout switched off the flashlight and stowed it on her belt. The light gained definition, becoming a golden beam of sunshine illuminating a rickety old ladder that led up to the surface.

  Dogs weren’t much good with ladders.

  “Gert, stay,” Scout said, picking up Shadow and tucking him under her arm. It was a bit awkward climbing the ladder with only one hand and her feet, but she only had to go three or four meters before she was out in the sunshine.

  Scout tipped her head, squinting against the blinding sun, then looked around. She wasn’t quite at the top of the ridge. But she was at the bottom of a narrow channel between two broken rock faces that led up to the top of the ridge. It would be a steep climb, but it wasn’t far.

  Scout set Shadow down on the ground. “Stay, Shadow,” she said. He sat down, then lowered himself until he was sitting sphinxlike to wait for her return.

  Scout climbed back down the ladder and then stood looking at Gert. Gert who was twice the size of Shadow. Gert who she couldn’t exactly carry tucked under one arm even if she cooperated, which Scout doubted she would do. How was she going to get her up to the surface?

  Scout turned her attention back to the ladder. It was barely attached to the wall by two sets of screws. She grabbed the bottom rung and gave it a pull until the lower screws pulled free from the crumbling rock. She had to back up and pull harder to get the top screws to give way and by the time she had done it her arms were trembling from the exertion.

  But she could now move the ladder. She set it against the wall so that instead of going straight up to the edge of the opening it met the wall at an angle about a meter below. She leaned on it with all her weight, afraid it might slip at the bottom. It did slip a few centimeters, and then it caught fast against a ridge in the floor.

  She tested it with her weight again, then stepped up onto it. It was holding, not even wobbling, but anxiety still ate at her stomach. If it gave way when she was near the top, it was going to hurt.

  “Here, Gert,” Scout said, crouching to take the big dog in her arms. Gert was a beast, but being on the ladd
er was making her nervous as well. She clung close to Scout’s chest, pressing her head against the side of Scout’s neck. Scout tightened her arms around the dog, then put one foot and then the other forward. It was still a steep climb and she had to focus to keep her balance, but it was doable.

  She reached the top of the ladder and looked up into the sunlight. Gert resisted her first attempt to push the dog up the side of the wall and Scout’s stomach did a somersault as Gert’s frantic twisting nearly sent them both tumbling off the ladder.

  Then Shadow barked, the outline of his head appearing over the side of the hole, and Gert whimpered, wanting to be with her friend.

  Scout gritted her teeth and tried lifting Gert up into the air again. Her arms were still trembling from pulling the ladder free, but Gert was cooperating, staying as still as she could until Scout had her high enough for her front paws to touch the ground above. Then she clawed frantically and Scout got both her hands under Gert’s hindquarters and somehow the dog was up and away, barking and dancing with Shadow in the sunshine.

  Scout pressed her head to the wall of the shaft and waited for her arm muscles to recover.

  If she had to, she could climb back down and set the ladder more vertically so it ended closer to the surface, but Scout was suddenly very anxious not to go back down into that dark hole. She was done with lurking underground, she hoped forever.

  At last she reached up, finding a firm hold for each hand. Then she groped first with one foot and then the other to find holds a little higher up for her toes. The holds were shallow, but scraping at the walls with her boots didn’t help her find any more higher up. She was running out of options.

  The trembling was back in her arms. Either she was going to have to quit or she was going to have to hurry. Scout gave a mighty yell, then forced her muscles to do her bidding, pulling herself up and over the edge.

  She rolled out of the hole and lay flat on her back to catch her breath. It wasn’t hot, not yet, but she could sense already that she was going to be regretting her lack of water by the time she reached Liam.

  The real work of the day hadn’t even started yet. It was too soon to be this exhausted.

  Scout hiked herself up on her elbows and then to a sitting position. Her arms ached terribly and barely functioned at all when she lifted them up to push back her sweaty hair. Luckily she wasn’t going to be needing them to walk.

  She got to her feet and whistled for the dogs, who came running to her, tongues lolling out of their mouths.

  “This way, dogs,” she said, leading the way up the steep, narrow channel between the two rock faces. It was like those two towering cliffs had butted heads a long time ago, grinding away at each other, filling the space between with bits of themselves. The footing was none too steady and Scout found it slow going, not the least because once again she needed to use her arms to keep her balance.

  The dogs had an easier time, racing past her to the top of the ridge. She could hear them playing up there, occasionally taking breaks to go back to the top of the channel and look down at her and her slow progress before returning to their game.

  By the time she reached the top she was bathed in sweat, moisture she could little afford to lose. She told herself again that the rest of the walk would be easier. She whistled for the dogs to rejoin her and they came charging out of a stand of scrubby grass to her side.

  Shadow sat next to her, looking up at her for further orders. Gert, as usual, was distracted by something else. Scout saw the bristles forming up Gert’s back and her low growl was building to a deep woof when she suddenly gave a hurt-filled whine and fell to the ground.

  “Gert?” Scout dropped to a knee, running her hands over the dog’s dark fur. What had just happened?

  Then Shadow staggered back from the edge and fell drunkenly to his side.

  Standing out starkly against his white fur was a tiny needlelike dart.

  Scout looked back down the channel to see Tucker standing halfway up the steep slope with a rifle aimed at her.

  “Don’t move, Scout,” he said. “Why don’t you stand up and keep your hands where I can see them?”

  “Why should I?” she shouted, her voice magnified as it bounced back down the channel.

  “Your dogs will be fine. I even calibrated the dosages for their sizes. I’m not here to hurt any of you.”

  “Where’s Joelle?” she demanded.

  “Joelle is fine. She’s back at the compound with her father. I can message her if you like. Why don’t you come back down here and we can do that?”

  “I’m not going back down,” Scout said, still crouched over Gert. She found the dart in the dog’s dark fur and plucked it out, then did the same for Shadow. She wasn’t sure if that would even help.

  “You’re not leaving,” Tucker said. “Believe me, it would be better if you came with me.”

  “What’s the alternative?”

  “Malcolm has us chase you down on the motorcycles. Those guns don’t fire darts.”

  “How just like you, always coming at me with the kinder option,” Scout said.

  “I’m glad you recognize that.”

  “I was being sarcastic.”

  “I thought as much, but I figured I’d give you a chance to be sincere.”

  Scout laughed, a harsh sound as it echoed around them. “I’m not the one with a sincerity problem.”

  “I can explain everything,” he said. He kept the rifle trained on her but started to continue the long climb up to the top of the ridge.

  “I don’t need an explanation,” Scout said. “I just need to go. You have everything, why can’t you just let me go?”

  “Do we, Scout?” he asked. He was making much quicker work of the climb than she had and was getting too close too fast. “Do we really have everything? More to the point, do we really know everything that you know? Or is there something more, something that still might help us with our mission?”

  “I didn’t even know what was on those disks,” Scout said.

  “Stand up,” he said, stopping a few meters short of the edge. “Leave your dogs, they’re fine. Just take a few more steps back, but keep your hands where I can see them.”

  Scout narrowed her eyes at him but she was all too aware of the rifle barrel bearing down on her. She got up and stepped backwards slowly. She kept her hands up, palms out, but close to her hips.

  Just as Gertrude had always done. Only she had always had her pistol on her. Scout had lost that just when she suspected she would no longer have qualms about using it.

  “I honestly don’t understand why you want to leave,” Tucker said. “We’re a family here, and you could be a part of that. Don’t you want to be a part of that?”

  “Not that family,” Scout said.

  “I know Malcolm is taking things a little hard, getting a little heated up. We all know that. I was supposed to fetch something he needs from McFarlane but as you know there wasn’t anything there. And without it, he gets a little . . . his emotions run a little hotter than normal. But he’s going to be getting help now. The big boss has spoken to Arvid and Joelle about it. Someone is coming to take his place here, and then Malcolm is going to rest for a while back in the city.”

  “You think my problem with this situation is confined to Malcolm giving fiery speeches?” Scout asked.

  “What else could it be?” he asked, sounding genuinely confused. “Politics?”

  “It’s you, you idiot. You lied to me. You betrayed me. There’s no way you’re ever coming back from that in my eyes. I don’t forgive stuff like that.”

  “I told you, I can explain,” he said.

  “And I told you I didn’t want to hear your explanations,” Scout said. “I know how good you are with talking. You say all sorts of things that sound true, and maybe you even believe them when you’re saying them. I don’t know. But they won’t be true forever. They will only be true until you need something else to be true.”

  “That’s crazy talk.”<
br />
  “Is it, Tucker? You swore to me you never set foot in McFarlane’s hut until I went inside, but tell me true. I just saw you shoot both my tiny little dogs from quite a long range with that dart gun. You didn’t need to go inside that hut to kill him, did you? Then you saw me coming and stashed the gun before revealing yourself. Am I close?”

  Tucker didn’t answer for a long time. Finally he responded with a barely audible “You don’t know me.”

  “I know enough to know that I don’t want to,” Scout said. “Ever.”

  Tucker stared at her for a long moment and Scout braced herself for an explosion of maniacal laughter or angry words or even excessive weeping.

  In the end he threw his head back and bellowed rage at the sky. But it didn’t really matter what he did to vent his emotions. Because at the same time, the barrel of the rifle swayed away from her, and that was all the opening she needed.

  Gertrude’s gun might be tucked away somewhere in Malcolm’s office, but Scout had made it through a rough lifetime without such things.

  A slingshot and a pocketful of stones had always been enough for her, and they didn’t let her down this time. Tucker’s howl of rage ended abruptly and he fell back against the rock face behind him. His eyes were already losing focus as he slowly slumped to the ground. His gaze found hers as if through a fog only he could see. His gray eyes were full of hurt at what he considered her sudden betrayal. His lips worked as if he was trying to speak her name but couldn’t get a breath to form a sound.

  Scout was unmoved. She waited for the rifle to fall from his grasp before rushing to him, seizing the gun and throwing it with all her might into the depths of the canyon.

  Then she looked down at Tucker. She had hit him square in the forehead, a nice match for the lump she still sported over her right eye.

  He was turning gray. Scout dropped to her knees and grabbed his wrist to feel for a pulse.

  He wasn’t dead. Still, she could have killed him. Very easily.

  Too easily. Apparently it didn’t even matter whether she had a gun in her hand or not. She was capable of murder with nothing more than a rock.