Under Falling Skies

by Kate MacLeod

  To Scout's relief, Ruby turned away to go back behind the counter before Scout lost what little control she had over her tear ducts. Scout blinked hard until the urge to cry passed.

  "You weather this last storm okay?" Ruby asked.

  "Well enough," Scout said. "I sheltered with some strangers with political issues they took out on each other."

  "Sounds miserable," Ruby said, then tapped the crate. "What's this?"

  "Where I was, the station owner died. I didn't want to leave this cat all alone so I took him with me when I left. I can't keep him, of course. I was hoping you might know someone who'd take him? He's old, but healthy. Goes by the name Tubbins."

  "Hello, Tubbins," Ruby said, reaching into the crate to pull out the large orange cat. Tubbins was purring loudly. She turned him around in her hands to look into his yellow eyes. "I reckon I can take him. Could stand with the company. It gets too quiet here at night now that the kids have grown."

  "Thanks," Scout said. That was one responsibility she could scratch off her list.

  "How much you want for him?" Ruby asked.

  "He's not mine to sell," Scout said. "But I was hoping you could help me with another thing?"

  "Surely," Ruby said, cradling the cat in her arms and scratching all around his ears. Tubbins purred in perfect bliss.

  Scout took the tablet-shaped device off her belt and set it on the counter, then pulled a single round reflective lens out of her pocket and placed it over her right eye. She closed her left eye as she tapped her way through the tablet's menus. Ruby was frowning slightly as she watched. To her eyes, Scout was tapping away at a blank gray slab.

  Scout found the photograph she was searching for and turned the tablet to face Ruby. She plucked the lens from where it had adhered to her face and held it out for Ruby.

  "You have to look with this," she explained. Ruby looked skeptical, but took the lens and copied Scout's gestures.

  "Where did you get this?" Ruby asked, fascinated. Scout knew the feeling. This technology was far beyond anything they had on their back water planet.

  "It was sort of a gift from one of the strangers I waited out the storm with," Scout said, not entirely truthfully. But surely Gertrude would have wanted her to have her things rather than be uselessly buried with her body. "Have you seen that man?"

  Ruby was looking around the room, watching the display inside the lens feed her impossible amounts of information about the world around her, how far away everything was, the temperature and humidity of the air, the time of day to the nanosecond. Scout nudged the tablet a little closer and Ruby finally looked down at it. It looked like a featureless stone tablet to Scout now, but Ruby with the lens on her face could see the image of a man staring up at her.

  "Can't say that I have," Ruby said after a moment's consideration. "He's distinctive-looking, isn't he, though? With that twist to the end of his nose, and the tattoo under his ear. What is it of?"

  "Baby tiger," Scout said, who had memorized all the information the tablet held on this man, her prey.

  "Let me ping the network," Ruby said, and disappeared into her office behind the counter, the cat still nestled contentedly in her arms.

  Scout put the tablet and lens away, looking back over her shoulder as something momentarily blocked out the sun streaming through the doorway. Someone must have just walked past; there was no one behind her now. Scout pushed back her battered bush hat to run a hand through her short blond curls, already molded down with sweat. She had only been out of the controlled environment of the rover interior for a few moments and already she was a stinky mess.

  "You got a hit," Ruby said, emerging from the back room and poring the cat back into the pillow-lined crate. She found an empty ration package behind the counter and smoothed it out with her hands then began to draw lines on its shiny surface with a thick black markers. "You know Flat Valley, just north of here?"

  "I think so," Scout said, although she wasn't sure. It didn't matter; she wasn't alone on her bike now. The rover's navigation system would tell her the way.

  "Yolanda in Flat Valley knows your fellow. He's not what you call a regular, but she's seen him more than once. I'm drawing you a map," Ruby said, looking up at Scout to be sure she was listening. Scout nodded. "No one in Flat Valley knows who he is or what he's doing out there all alone. He just comes into town for supplies now and again. Just food, nothing suspicious, but they don't like strangers in those parts."

  "Thanks," Scout said, taking the completed map and blowing over it to be sure the ink was set before folding it and tucking it away in her back pocket.

  "Carrying a message?" Ruby asked.

  "Something like that," Scout said vaguely. "I hate to just take this and run, but I'm racing a deadline."

  "No worries," Ruby said. "Take care. That man looks like he might be dangerous."

  "I will," Scout said. "It was good seeing you." She didn't add, "one last time."

  Scout settled her hat back on her head before stepping outside, hands in her pockets as she walked back to the town gate.

  Beyond the town walls the villagers were running farm machinery, harvesting the overripe grain. The constant whir of the motors was punctuated by bursts of thrashing sounds as the grain was pulled through filled the air.

  Then Scout heard something else, something not quite drowned out by the roar of the machines.

  Something was wrong. Her dogs were barking. Not happy barks or even warning barks. These were barks of raw panic.

  She pulled her hands from her pockets and broke into a run.

  Acknowledgements

  My heartfelt thanks to my two beta readers Jennifer Abel and Juliet Nordeen, and thanks as always to my copyeditor Sarah Kolb-Williams and cover designer Benjamin Roque.

  Special Excerpt

  If you enjoyed this novel read on for an exclusive excerpt from

  * * *

  In Quaking Hills

  * * *

  Available January 2018

  * * *

  CHAPTER ONE

  * * *

  After spending the last four days of her life hiding out from a deadly solar particle storm in an underground bunker, trapped inside with six treacherous women and a trio of girl assassins, it would be terribly ironic if Scout Shannon died now, plunging headlong into a ditch, because she had never learned to drive.

  But Scout wasn’t in a place to appreciate that irony. Not with the front end of the massive rover tipping dizzyingly down into the ravine despite her pushing, pulling, and stomping on every control she could find. She had nothing in her stomach except an excess coffee, but even that was threatening to come back again, the bitterness washing up against her back teeth in spite of her best attempts to swallow it back down. Her hands were so slick with sweat they slipped over the control yoke. She hooked her forearms through it and pulled back as hard as she could, mentally begging for the rover to reverse away from the cliff already.

  She wasn’t even sure that was the right thing to do.

  The rover hung for a moment, teetering back and forth on the edge of the ravine. She could see loose rocks bounding down past her on either side, first a few bouncing and skittering randomly but then more, like a wave. Entire sheets of gravel were sliding off the hillside to plunge down into the ravine. It was a surreal sight, like the hill was melting, rock like hot wax pouring over jutting boulders and past scrubby trees whose tenacious roots clung stubbornly to the rock face.

  Years of sheering winds had twisted the trunks of those little trees into knobby, spiraling shapes that branched off at random. Now those branches shook like the bony arms of ghosts attempting to scare this new disaster away but never succumb to it. Scout wasn’t sure whether she found those defiant trees frightening or comforting. It would, she decided, largely depend on whether she, like the trees, stayed firm or if she was washed away in the tidal wave of loose topsoil.

  The two dogs in the rover’s cockpit with Scout were barking like mad. The movement of the
rover wasn’t what was bothering them—they had started barking a moment before Scout had lurched over the unseen obstruction in the trail and lost control of the vehicle—although the rocking was tossing them about ruthlessly. Scout was belted into the driver’s seat, but the two dogs were trying desperately to hold themselves still even as they kept barking, heads tipped back as if they were addressing their warning to the sky at large.

  Gert, a dark-haired mix of unknown dog breeds, was more or less wedged between the passenger seat and the front console of the rover. Her large head repeatedly impacted against the hard edge of the console but she didn’t wince or even seem to notice. The rat terrier, named Shadow despite his mainly white coloring, was smaller and nearly went tumbling back into the main body of the rover. Scout had to take a hand off the yoke to catch him by the collar before he went flying down the steps. He yelped briefly in surprise but then resumed his anxious barking.

  What had set them off in the first place? Scout didn’t have a clue. She tucked the little dog close against her stomach and got her hand back on the yoke, not that there was anything she could do now with none of the rover’s treads actually on the ground.

  Besides make things worse. She could usually find a way to manage that.

  The rover was still rocking back and forth, the long drop to the bottom of the ravine dipping in and out of view in front of her. The landslide of rocks around her was unceasing. If the rover tipped either way, if its treads touched down on that moving surface, would she be carried away like driftwood on the tide?

  No, surely the rover, built to comfortably house a group of four researchers on a long-term expedition, was too heavy to be dislodged so easily.

  Still, there was more going on here than her lousy driving. They had hit something, or something had hit them. Had the dogs been barking even before then? Scout wasn’t sure. Her memory of the two events overlapped and refused to settle into a definable sequence.

  The teetering slowed, then the rover balanced for a moment at an untenable forty-five-degree angle before settling back on its rear treads. Scout made extra certain she had the engine in reverse before slowly easing her foot down on the pedal. The rover rolled back away from the edge. When the windscreen no longer showed even a hint of the plummet to her death that had been in store for her a moment before, she braked the rover and killed the engine.

  Scout slumped over the yoke, trembling all over. She wasn’t nearly recovered enough after the events of the last four days for such stresses. She pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes, but despite the terror still making her heart pound, no tears came. She was too exhausted for more emotions, apparently.

  Once her heart had slowed, she pulled her hands from her face and looked to her dogs. Gert had stopped her frighteningly deep barks, those low rumbles that made her seem particularly hellhoundish. Shadow was still barking now and again, but with the air of a guardian unsure if the danger was really past. Scout put a comforting hand on his head and he gave one last halfhearted woof before settling down onto her lap.

  Poor fellow. As bad as those days underground had been for her, they had come far too close to killing Shadow. Scout picked him up in her arms and carried him down to the back of the rover where the stacks of bunks were. She laid him at the foot of the bottom bunk and he curled up on the faded quilt there, turning round and round before finally settling down and tucking his nose under his own paw.

  Gert, standing at Scout’s heels, made an inquiring sound. From the head of the bed the cat Tubbins made an equally inquisitive mew and Gert, her worry over Shadow now completely forgotten, tried to leap past Scout to get at the cat she had nearly killed days before. Scout stopped her with a well-placed knee.

  “Come on, Gert,” she said, catching the dog’s collar until she had her attention. Gert was twice Shadow’s size but really still a puppy. When she was growling that fearsome growl it was easy to forget how young and innocent she was, but when she looked up at Scout like she was doing now with those warm brown eyes it was hard to remember she was ever anything but cute and harmless.

  Scout pressed the button that caused the door to emerge from its recess, creating a little square of space between the dining nook and the bunks. It rolled out about half a meter, then the door swung open, letting in the full blaze of the midmorning sun.

  Scout started sweating at once, and she wasn’t even outside yet. But, hot as the air was, she stopped first to pull on the new long-sleeved sun-protective shirt she had found when scrounging for usable items back in Viola’s compound before she had blown the explosives that had blocked all the ways out, the closest she could get to giving those she had left behind a proper burial. The shirt fell midway down her thighs, barely past her cargo shorts, but she smeared sunscreen on her bare calves. She settled her father’s battered old bush hat on her head before leaping down to the ground. Gert jumped down after her, less than gracefully but unbothered by her hard landing.

  Scout looked up the slope of the hill behind the rover. What had been old, fractured rock covered with loose grit and sparse crabgrass was now just bare, somewhat more fractured rock. Like someone had swept the ground smooth. Everything remotely loose was all at the bottom of the ravine now.

  There was no way she had done all that damage with the rover. And after backtracking a ways along the trail she had been following and finding no obstruction, Scout was beginning to doubt she had hit anything either.

  Something had made her lurch, lurch hard and nearly tumble over the cliff. And it had shaken everything around them loose, hard enough to make it all fall away in a sheet. What could do such a thing?

  Scout had heard of earthquakes. The southeastern cities on the ocean sometimes reported them. She had never experienced one herself; no one had, not this far north and west. The land was flat here, nothing but prairie all the way to the horizon, split down the middle by the narrow spine of hills she had just been crossing.

  Had she just experienced an earthquake?

  Then a second thought hit her, sending a chill rippling over her skin despite the already stifling heat of the day. Was it going to happen again?

  Scout whistled for Gert and then climbed back into the rover. Just in case, she’d rather be back out on the flat prairie on the far side of the hills as soon as possible. If that was an earthquake, there might be others, and she’d rather be out in the flat grasslands when it struck.

  Besides, she had a destination to reach. More than that, she had a mission. And her clock was ticking.

  Liam McGillicuddy, the galactic marshal she had been trading messages with, was coming to meet her in three days. His partner, Gertrude Bauer, had died during the solar storm, but she had saved Scout’s life before losing her own. Scout was taking care of all of Gertrude’s things, her gun and badge but also other assorted equipment all attached to a belt Scout wore around her own hips now. She was sure Liam was coming to get it all back; it seemed too valuable not to recover. Some other galactic marshal would probably be carrying all of it soon.

  But perhaps Liam himself was coming not just to get the belt but also to meet the girl his partner had died for. And Scout would introduce him to the dog she had named in Gertrude’s honor.

  Scout didn’t know why he was coming in person, or what he intended to do, or what she should expect. She had written him a long message telling him everything that had happened since she had met his partner out on a hillside the moment before the solar storm had started. She had reported every poisoning, stabbing, and accidental death that had gone down over the last four days.

  His response had been terse: just a set of coordinates and the words MEET ME.

  Scout didn’t know what that meant or why he couldn’t say more. But his prior exchanges with Gertrude said he was not a terse man. There had to be a reason.

  Scout had spent the days after Gertrude’s death, the days she was still trapped underground by the ongoing coronal mass ejection event bathing the surface of her planet with deadly solar p
articles, researching Gertrude’s last mission, the one she had left uncompleted. It had not been an official mission. Technically, she had been on a long-overdue vacation. In reality, she had been chasing down a man that she had caught once before but who had later gone free on a technicality.

  Gertrude had known he was guilty; her own grandmother was among those he had conned and left destitute on a forgotten world even harsher than Scout’s home world of Amatheon. So Gertrude had taken a leave of absence to chase him. Scout got the sense that her boss had pretended not to know what she was really up to. She doubted he would be able to do the same for Liam if he tried to finish what Gertrude had started. Two galactic marshals using their vacation time to pursue the same personal vendetta was probably the sort of thing that would get a boss in trouble from the bigger boss, Scout guessed. Maybe that was why his reply had been so short. His boss might be reading his messages, to be sure he didn’t break any rules.

  But Scout could. She could find the con man in the next three days and drag him to where Liam was going to land his ship to meet her. Gertrude had accumulated more evidence; it was all on the tablet in a pouch on the belt. That evidence plus the recaptured culprit—Scout didn’t know anything about galactic law, but surely that would be enough.

  She knew all the steps to take to find this man and bring him to Liam. She was less sure what to do with the two data disks hidden deep in her front pocket. She couldn’t read them herself, but she knew they contained information that the Planet Dwellers wanted, the Space Farers had proved they would kill for, and the rebellion that lurked in the hills had attempted to secure for their own uses.

  Scout didn’t know which of the three she could trust. She was pretty sure it was none of the above. For now, she kept the secrets others had died for safe in her pocket where she could always feel them pressing into her thigh. Maybe she could ask Liam what she should do.