by Alex Wells
“You were right to bring this to my attention, thank you.” The other speaker was also a man, his voice smoothed and polished, the accent screaming offworlder and upper class. Something else about the voice was eerily familiar, but Coyote cut off that impossible train of thought before it took him to a really idiotic place. “You, down there. Step into the light.”
“Yeah, step into the light,” the farmer said. “Don’t make me come down there and get ya.”
“A moment, if you please.” Coyote struggled to stand on stiff, cramped legs. He should have kept himself moving around, but the cellar wasn’t even tall enough for him, and after three days of high fever he was too damn tired to do much of anything. Still shielding his eyes with one hand, he stumbled into the light. “It’s all a mistake, I swear. I think I got off the train at the wrong stop.”
“Looks a bit of a mess, doesn’t he…”
Coyote found himself peering into a face that was unfamiliar around eyes that he’d recognize anywhere. Eyes he looked at every time he hazarded a glance at the mirror. Eyes far too like his – their – father’s. It felt like ten lifetimes ago, but he could still remember the old man clearly, the cold look in his eyes when he’d shipped his oldest son – and the black sheep of the family – off to military boarding school and Jeuno Prime. And now, somehow, those eyes belonged to someone wearing a company blue suit.
The company man’s arms whipped out too fast for Coyote to track. There was a twist, a crack like the popping of a joint, and the farmer dropped. The company man turned back to Coyote, adjusted his tie, and said, “Killed while you escaped, I assume. I’m surprised to see you alive, Kazuhiro, and here, of all places. Though I suppose I shouldn’t be. We’ve always been survivors.”
“It’s Coyote now. I haven’t been Kazu for something like sixteen years.” Coyote smiled miserably at his youngest brother – Shigehiko, the exuberant prince, the one designed from the ground up because the other kids had been such disappointments. Fuck their parents anyway. And fuck whoever had done the face sculpt on him, he almost wouldn’t have known. “Can’t say I’m impressed by the company you’re keeping, Shige. How does mother feel about it?”
Shige laughed softly. “It’s more complicated than you’d think. Let’s just say that I’ve gone into the family business, since you had no interest in doing so. Now, what’s this nonsense about your name?”
“Coyote,” he repeated. “My name’s Coyote now.”
“How… charming. I never thought you looked like much of a Kazuhiro, though I’m not certain how much Coyote really suits either.”
“It’s served me well enough.”
“What sort of crowd are you running around with these days? You never struck me as the sort to go farmer. Or miner, for that matter. You’re not nearly responsible enough.”
He grinned crazily at his brother. He guessed that was supposed to sting, that casually thrown little barb. But he was well acquainted with his own faults; they kept him warm at night. “Mercenary outfit’s probably the closest to it. We get by well enough.”
Shige’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Don’t tell me you’re associated with that mad Ravani woman.”
“She’s my boss.”
Shige snorted. “Well, that makes things easier, I suppose. I’ve got some information for her if you’d like to pass it along.”
“Shoot.” He wondered how Shige had found Hob; that probably made him her new source that she’d been so smug about. That also explained the sudden question about him having family around. He’d have to warn her about this, even if it meant coming clean on the ugliness of his own history. This was not a level of politics she’d want to get involved in, the arcane kind where people in suits worth an entire year of mining wages sipped cocktails and casually talked about the overthrow of entire planets.
“The schedule’s being moved up. Mr Green – the Weatherman – is feeling quite a bit stronger lately, so he’s decided to visit a town every three days instead of once a week. The date for Shimera hasn’t changed, since they probably won’t have the pad around the train station constructed in time otherwise, but Ludlow will be three days after. And after Ludlow, Delagua and Pryor.”
Coyote repeated the information back to his brother; it was a little trick they’d all learned on their mother’s knee. “Surprised you’re being so free with information. What’s the catch?”
“No catch.” Shige smiled at the disbelieving look Coyote gave him. “Not as of yet. There’s a larger game afoot, and I think your… boss… could prove useful. Unless you’d care to take up the responsibilities you so callously left behind.”
Coyote laughed. “Not a chance in hell.” He had every intention of running back to the den and telling Hob to steer clear of his brother. She probably already had the right idea; she was a paranoid customer by nature. But if intelligence agencies from the Union were starting to take an interest in Tanegawa’s World, it was time to batten down the hatches and lay low.
Shige checked his watch. “I’d love to chat more and catch up, but they might send someone to look for me if I don’t return soon. I assume you’ll be able to get yourself out of here?”
It didn’t really matter if he could or not, Coyote knew. Loyalty to the Union first, family second. Shige wouldn’t piss on him if he was on fire, not if it meant compromising his cover. “I’ll figure something out.”
“Good. Because I’d rather no one else see us together. We look a little too much alike. It’s probably the eyes.”
“The damn Rollins eyes from Father. Even if it looks like you’ve lost the Tsukui nose.”
Shige smirked. “Take care, brother. I’ll find you again at some point soon, since you might know something useful.”
Coyote waited until his brother was out of sight before muttering, “Not a chance in hell, you little shit.” He staggered up the few steps to the surface and dropped to his knees next to the crumpled body of the farmer. One-armed, he rifled through the man’s pockets until he came up with something useful – keys. Two of which might be for vehicles.
At least this area of the town was deserted; everyone was out at the train station, to be viewed by the Weatherman. Coyote took his time, went through the farmer’s house and got himself all the water he could drink and carry, wolfed down what food he could find, grabbed the farmer’s shotgun and his revolver. Farmers got to have guns, how nice for them. To shoot at any native or introduced species that sought to bother their crops, he supposed. Then he made his way out to the shed where the vehicles would be kept. He had to stop twice on the way and just breathe until his vision cleared.
There was a solar-powered harvester in the shed, and a tractor. Neither of them were desirable as a getaway vehicle. Coyote sighed and picked the tractor, since it was lighter and had a better chance of making it somewhere if he stuck to hardpan.
He roared out of the back end of Harmony at a majestic thirty-five kilometers per hour, engine humming away just under the red line. It was frustrating, but, he kept reminding himself, it was better than walking. He gauged a course by the sun and tried to remember where the hell Harmony was on the map relative to anything else. It was on the wrong side of Newcastle, far from any town that he knew.
The solar panels fixed on the tractor meant he didn’t have to worry about running out of fuel. It was just a question of if he’d get somewhere before the sand in the dune fields destroyed the tractor’s drive.
The ride was shockingly green at first, kilometers and kilometers of carefully irrigated fields before he climbed a steep hill and out of the protected valley, into the hot wind and sparse plants of the desert plain. Even that was all right going, though he had to slow down a bit to get through some of the deeper dust bowls. After that was a track of kilometers and kilometers of hardpan.
Too soon, the hardpan gave way to dunes. He picked his way as gingerly as possible, but less than an hour in, the tractor finally stuck immovably, and that was the end of the road. He stayed in the shaded cabin
, running the tractor’s little fan until the sun went down. Then he set out on the dunes, keeping his feet to the west using the stars.
He shivered into the cool night, his mouth sucked dry by fever. The tractor far out of sight behind him, his knees gave way and he tumbled down the slip face of the dune, laying out in the sand at the bottom. “Can’t talk my way out of this one,” he mumbled, fingers curling in the sand. “’Cause sand’s a shitty listener.”
Then silence, and the far off, yipping howl of a species that had never set foot on Tanegawa’s world: coyote.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Midway through the week, and still no sign of Coyote. Hob sent Dambala out by motorcycle, Akela and Maheegan to back him up, round trip and camping be damned. Motorcycles meant they could go armed as heavy as they liked, and make a quick escape if necessary – and that they could keep their eyes peeled for circling eagles. She didn’t say that, but they were all thinking it.
Hob brooded mightily about why she’d been so damn stupid as to send a Wolf out alone. If Old Nick had still been around, he would have thought of all these things, cleared his throat and reminded her what needed to be done in that special tone that implied she was an idiot. Except if he was still alive, it wouldn’t be her outfit to run, her Wolves to get killed, either.
She couldn’t help but wonder, maybe, if that would be for the best. And the person who gave her little pep talks, who cajoled her along when she was teetering and feeling like a shitty leader, was the one who was missing. Now that was some irony there.
She pulled the stained envelope across her desk, direct from Ludlow and set down by Dambala himself five minutes before she’d turned around and sent him back out to go searching. Inside waited the little handwritten contract, signed and countersigned. The simple flimsy felt heavy in her hands: it was probably the largest job the Wolves had ever had in their history. This was no den of bandits that needed to be wiped off the map; this was a planned and calculated attack against a heavily armed security force. Doubts didn’t matter now, because they were committed; the stark signature in black and white made that a certainty. The only mortal sin a Wolf could commit, Old Nick had told her, was to welch on a contract.
She tucked the flimsy away, and pulled out the roster of the Wolves that remained – nineteen strong now, with the new recruits. Only eighteen without Coyote, but she lied to herself, pretended she was sure Dambala would find him and bring him home.
Shooting the Weatherman before hadn’t been easy. It had been an accident, a gut reaction, her hand moving before her brain could catch up. Right place and right time weren’t going to just happen again. They had to be created.
Shimera was the Weatherman’s next stop, and the last chance before Ludlow. Time enough to suss out the situation, count the guns and see the security setup so they could cut a plan in the intervening week.
Hob pulled a small party together to go to Shimera: herself, Freki, Geri, Conall, Raff. They left the base when the night was deep and cold, guiding their motorcycles through the dunes and box canyons between with hands that felt half-frozen in the wind.
They broke from the dune sea that surrounded Shimera before the sun had even begun to rise. The Weatherman would be coming in not long after breakfast if the train didn’t have to plow through too many dunes, and Hob wanted to be in place and watching well before that.
They moved up and down the surrounding area, circling dunes until Geri made a joke about getting seasick, before they found a good path up onto a nearby butte. The top was flat, covered with reddish dust and black rocks, dotted with scrub. The sides facing Shimera were near vertical. Hob had Freki walk the top of the butte, binoculars fixed over his eyes, his brother spotting him with a hand on his belt to keep him from getting too close to the edge. He found a good spot where they could settle and see down into the town – more importantly, get a good view of the train station.
“Geri, you and Conall go into town. Hang around in the crowd. Don’t think anyone will recognize you two.” She rubbed the bridge of her nose with one finger. “You should be fine so long as neither of you has a witchy little secret. And if you do, out with it now or forever hold your peace.” The two men looked at each other. Conall shrugged; Geri rolled his eyes. “Get goin’, then. When all the pomp and circumstance is done, we meet up at the bottom of that little trail.”
As the sun came up, Freki and Raff set up a makeshift blind with camouflage tarp, positioned so the sun would be to their backs. No use having light glinting directly off metal or glass; that was amateur stuff.
It was already stinking hot in the blind when they all crawled in. The men had binoculars, Hob had a scope that she’d pulled from the armory. Attaching it to a rifle was damned tempting, to take a shot at the Weatherman. But none of them were good enough shots to guarantee a kill with a single bullet at that distance. She’d sent their one good sniper, Maheegan, off with Dambala.
Raff pulled a dusty deck from his pocket with scarred brown hands, surprisingly delicate fingers knobbly knuckled from some long ago accident or fight he didn’t talk about. The cards scraped and scratched as he shuffled and dealt them each five. They bet using pebbles and a few dried-up beetles, ones with shells that glimmered with iridescence like an oil slick. Hob tracked time on her pocket watch, the minutes crawling by in the heat.
The sound of a train whistle had Raff scrambling the cards back into his pocket. Hob lifted her scope to her eye, tracking across the ground until she found the train, coming from a canyon. Sand burst up around the engine in a wave as it plowed through a small dune. The train was sleek and silver, its skin blinding in the morning light, curved to a graceful wedge in the front.
“Don’t think I ever seen one quite like that,” Hob said, looking down at the passenger cars. There were only three, and the shape of them was unmistakable, though they had no windows.
“Me neither,” Raff agreed.
“Bet it’s armored.”
“I don’t take sucker bets.”
“Took enough of ’em off Freki just now.” The shape of the train, everything about it, made their normal robbery style impossible. The thing looked like it had been poured from molten metal; there wasn’t a handhold or a hatch to be seen. “I think if we want on that thing before it gets to the station, we’re gonna just have to find a way of stoppin’ it. Take a good look at the wheels.” Most trains dealt well with track disruptions; they had to in a place where tracks could be easily buried.
“Thing’s probably magnetic.”
Hob huffed out a sound of agreement. “Anyone could get that shit to work here, it’d be with a Weatherman aboard.”
The train pulled into the station, the squeal of the brakes echoing. It didn’t matter how clean and sleek something looked; dust got into everything. The doors slid smoothly back, releasing a flood of men in green Mariposa uniforms, each armed with a rifle. Hob scanned the outer edge of the crowd to find uniforms there too, probably from the town’s garrison.
“That’s a lot of greenbellies,” Raff muttered.
“As expected.” She tracked movement within the town: another man in green, herding a couple ahead of him toward the square. Probably picking up stragglers for the Weatherman’s little viewing. “Hell of a lot, but not more’n we can handle if we take the big guns out and get ’em parked somewhere useful. Element of surprise, bottleneck ’em, I think we can take away the number advantage. But we gotta hit this thing far out of town. Don’t need the Ludlow garrison breathin’ down our neck too, and in-town fighting’s what fucked us before.” Too much uncontrolled territory, too many noncombatants, no way to make an effective trap. She’d learned that lesson well.
“Weatherman’s comin’ out,” Freki said.
Hob dragged her field of view back up to see the thin, reedy man exit the train car. Just the sight of him made her feel a little sick. Her free hand found its way to her revolver, guided by instinct that screamed it’s unnatural, kill it, kill it. “That’s him, all right,�
� she said with a mouth suddenly dry as the sand around them. That was the one she’d shot before. Damn. She forced her hand to her cigarettes instead, slipping one out. A quick glance at Freki and Raff told her neither seemed more than curious.
“If we could do more’n stop the train, mayhap if we could damage it, derail it or somethin’, that’d take some of the greenbellies out before we ever had to fight ’em,” Raff commented.
“Tryin’ to derail that thing’ll be a bitch, but we got time to work the problem. Freki, you’n your brother’s good with numbers and the like. Figure out a way to do it.”
Freki grunted in response. Hob focused on the Weatherman again; he moved through the crowd. She shuddered, lips curling back in revulsion at the sight of those spidery hands. He picked out a young woman; the guards grabbed her, shoved her toward the train. “Bastard. Anyway… you can go make nice with some o’ the engineers in Ludlow. Find out what you can about the explosives they use for minin’.”
“No one’s gonna sell us explosives,” Freki said. “Guarded too close.”
“Bet they ain’t guarded that close on the trains. Get us the specs, and if Coyote’s supply train timetables hold true…” Down in the town, the guards separated more people out from the crowd, probably the woman’s family. “Once we got the stuff, don’t matter none if they know it’s missing. By the time they figure out who’s got it, we’ll have ’em.” She tucked the cigarette between her lips. At this distance, no one in town would be able to see the smoke or the glow, and she needed something to calm her nerves, the unending beat of fury that just looking at the goddamn Weatherman had lit in her. She snapped her fingers. “We got a week, some town oughta be gettin’ in some charges atween now and then…”
Down in the town far below, the Weatherman froze, spine going ramrod stiff, straining as if he was a hound that had just caught a scent. She wondered what unfortunate bastard was about to get pulled from the crowd–
He turned and looked at her, down the barrel of the scope, straight into her brain. Unseen claws dug into her head, all around her face, yanking her toward the edge of the cliff. Hob dropped the scope, one hand swiping at her eye, because without the scope he was still there, mouth moving and whispering.