by John Shirley
“I’m glad you don’t work for Gynella. How about the other settlers—they okay?”
Dakes winced. “Couple more guys dead. A platoon of Gynellans came into Jawbone Ridge. They started searching through the place, looking for the ‘rebels’ from Bloodrust Corners. There was a short firefight when they found some of our guys—a bunch of us left to draw them away from our families. We managed to shake the platoon in the badlands, but we’re kinda worried if we go back, they’ll track us back to our people. Long as they’re out looking for us . . . well . . . our families are safe. Safe as anyone is, anyhow, in a place like Jawbone Ridge.”
“Where’s Glory?” Mordecai asked.
Lucky was eyeing Brick suspiciously, but at the mention of Glory he glared warningly at Mordecai. “Glory’s back there, looking after them. We’re in radio contact. That’s all you need to know.”
Mordecai chuckled. “Take it easy, kid.”
“I’m guessing, Dakes,” Roland said, “you figure we’ll rid you of that platoon?”
“We could do it ourselves, probably,” Dakes said. “I’ve got another ten men waiting for us, about a kilometer back. We got some vehicles. Only, we’re low on ammo, and they’ve got us outgunned. And I should mention, we think they’re on our trail again. Thing is, they could be here in an hour.”
Roland sighed. “We don’t want to get in a fight right here if we don’t have to—it’ll bring that army over there down on us.”
Dakes swallowed. “What army?”
Roland hooked a thumb toward the canyon. “They’re down there. A lot of ’em. And they’re patrolling north and south. And there aren’t a lot of ways to get through to where we’re going. We were just trying to figure that out. Maybe we could help each other on this. We take care of that platoon, rearm you guys, and you help us create a little diversion to draw that army off, out of our way. Might work for you too, make them think the real trouble is based out here.”
“Then they’ll follow us back to Jawbone!”
“No. I’ll see they don’t. Once we get past them, we’ll get their attention. They can follow us. But they won’t catch us. Not the way I’ve got it figured.”
“Okay,” Dakes said. “You’ve got a deal.”
Lucky shook his head. “I think it’s a crazy damn plan. And it’s liable to get us all killed.”
Gong grunted in agreement. “Sure—but if it involves killing Gynella’s bunch, me, I’m for it.”
“You know, I think I’m gonna like this guy,” Brick said, nodding to Gong.
The moon was up, as if it were watching Smartun inspecting the troops. An inspection out in this canyon encampment mostly meant stepping over snoring drunks, edging past grumbling bloody Psychos squatting by campfires, and trying not to step on sleeping Midgets. He had only just arrived from the Devil’s Footstool, and few of the men knew he was commander there—he caught more than a few muttered invectives as he pressed through. Luckily he had Skenk with him as an enforcer, carrying a large and highly effective Eridian energy rifle.
Smartun heard the rumble of an engine and turned to see Fwah Grass, alone on her outrider, tooling along the outskirts of the encampment. She made a kind of haphazard salute and pulled up, parked, and strode over to him. One of the few members of the women’s cadre left alive, she was an obese, cocoa-colored woman in black leather, with a triple white Mohawk, eyes outlined in silver eyeliner, mouth glimmering fluorescently—using a glowing lipstick of crushed Eridium crystals had made her mutate sharp tusks, which curved down from the sides of her mouth past her jawline. Smartun had once seen her sink those tusks into a man’s chest so deeply she was able to crunch through the ribs and wrench his heart out, all in one motion. Still, she had more sophistication than many of the bandits—on her home planet she had been in law enforcement, till she’d been caught robbing narcojuice dealers. Like a lot of other prisoners, she had been sent to Pandora as part of a convict work detail, before the planet was mostly left to rot.
“Hail Gynella!” she called, stopping in front of him, hands on her wide hips.
Smartun blinked. Hail Gynella? When had that started?
“You are supposed to say ‘Hail Gynella’ back, when so challenged,” Fwah said. She spoke slowly, with exacting care, each syllable sharply pronounced, because otherwise her tusks gave her a terrible lisp. “It’s a new rule.”
“Okay, hail Gynella,” Smartun said, nodding. “Really, it ought to be something better than that. Perhaps I’ll suggest ‘All glory to Gynella.’ So, Fwah, you’re still acting as if you have a message. You have something more to tell me about besides a new greeting?”
“Eight of the outriders sent to find Roland and the other rebels have failed. They are being ordered to report to you. Gynella wishes you to kill one man from each outrider, as an example. They may be fire-circled, if you like. I do like a good fire-circling, myself. I’ll be happy to take charge of that. I’ve always enjoyed being a party planner.”
Smartun grimaced. He’d rather just shoot them and get it over with. A “fire circle” involved throwing a man into a bonfire with a circle of men around it pushing him back in every time he tried to run out. The screams were rough on Smartun’s nerves.
“Fine,” he said. “You take charge of it. She could have radioed the command to me.”
“She’s maintaining as close to radio silence as possible—there’s someone in orbit, listening in. People she doesn’t want knowing anything about her activities.”
“I see.” Smartun guessed that would be the Dahl Corporation—specifically Mince Feldsrum and his men. She must be worried they were closing in on her. “Anything else?”
“Yes. Drone surveillance suggests rebel bands moving to the east of here. More than one.”
Smartun rubbed his hands together. “Now that is information I can use. Those rebel bands just might be linked up to Roland’s bunch. If we take care of those slinking scumbags, I’ll be freed up to swing the Hatchet Legion against New Haven. There’s a platoon out that way—I’ll radio them to find these rebels and deal with them. They’ve got some Eridian weaponry with them—they should be able to deal with Roland.”
• • •
Roland drove the outrunner hard, leading the three other vehicles across the dusty plains, under a bright silvering of moonlight, and they got to the cold camp of the other fighting men from Bloodrust Corners just a few minutes ahead of Gynella’s search platoon.
The cold camp was in the moon shadow of a landmark. The Jut was a fang-like spike of crystalline rock, thirty meters high, sixty around the base, pitted by weather and marred by dust, in the midst of a veldt-like plain. There were rumors of a great cavern underneath it, where fabulous Eridium deposits could be found, but no one had survived out there long enough to dig for it. A shadowy form could be seen within it, a vague humanoid silhouette, like a man frozen in ice—but most people thought it was just a man-shaped flaw in the crystal. It did make viewers uneasy, especially when the moon shone, as tonight, and the shadowy shape seemed to shift a little, as if restless.
Many battles had been fought in close proximity to the Jut; many men had died. It was known to be an unhealthy place to linger. The area around it was littered with human bones, burned-up old wrecks, blast craters, and rusted weapons.
“There’s a story,” Mordecai told Daphne, as they climbed out of their outrider, Bloodwing cawing on his shoulder, “that when people first settled this planet, the Jut was much smaller. Every time someone gets killed near it—anyway, this is the claim—it gets a little bigger. Like something in there is feeding.”
“What a lotta yokel superstition,” Daphne scoffed. But she looked at the Jut nervously.
“That big guy’s Scobold,” Roland told them as they walked up to the camp. Five outrunners were parked in a row, as a barrier around the cold camp. “He’s your kinda people.”
Scobold was a stout, red-faced old miner who’d killed two Psycho Midgets at once with his bare hands at the battle of Blood
rust Corners—he’d taken their necks in his two hands as they’d rushed him, and he’d squeezed till they stopped moving. Now he stumped out to meet Dakes. “They’re coming. About a klick east of here. You can just make ’em out in the moonlight from the top of the Jut. They’re coming in a big ol’ dump truck and one outrider. Most of ’em in the back of the truck.”
Brick scratched his jaw. “A dump truck? Soldiers in back of a dump truck?”
“It’s fitting,” Mordecai said, scratching under Bloodwing’s beak. “They’re trash, more than they’re soldiers.”
The men laughed at that, and Dakes explained, “See, we sabotaged their outriders, many as we could when we lit out from Jawbone. Gave us a good head start. So they scrounged that thing up, we figure, from the old mining site.”
“A dump truck.” Roland was getting an idea. “That could be valuable. Nuclear-powered, Dakes?”
“Some kinda isotope power, yeah.”
Roland nodded. “We got to try to get that thing intact, Brick.”
“Sure! I’d like to have one of those. I could dump stuff on people.” Brick looked thoughtful. “And dump people on stuff.”
“Okay, I need Brick with me, two volunteers from the Bloodrusters, and Mordecai on the Jut with the sniper rifle.”
“What about me?” Daphne demanded.
“You? You hang back in front of the Jut. You can be the lure. If they get past us, you can kill ’em all. There’s only ten of ’em.”
• • •
Roland was driving the outrunner; Brick was at the turret. Coming at them about a hundred meters out, limned in moonlight and the headlight glare of the truck, was an outrider, with a Psycho soldier driving and two others clinging to its hand-hold positions, and the dump truck itself, rumbling along more slowly, a few truck lengths behind.
“That’s a self-directed dump truck!” Roland shouted, yelling over the noise of the outrunner’s engine. He’d noticed there was no driver in the cab of the oncoming six-wheeled truck.
“Always wondered why they got a steering wheel and all that if it’s self-driving.”
“It’s got a place for a driver so it can be operated manually if need be.”
“I saw ’em using that one at the mine, but I never figured out how you tell it where to go!” Brick said.
“I’ll show you—when we get hold of it! Now get that machine gun rocking! Time is bullets!”
Brick shouted at the enemy, “Brick is here, bitch, and I’m bringin’ the pain!” and he fired the machine gun, slamming bullets into the two men clinging to the oncoming outrider.
One of the platoon Psychos had a strong shield that held up, but the other one was knocked off the outrider. He was still alive, rolling, his shield sparking, and the dump truck automatically tried to veer around him—but ended up crunching him under its right front wheel.
There was a humming sound, like a supersonic insect flying past—Roland knew what it was. Another supersonic hum, and Mordecai’s sniper shots, using the scope’s night-vision setting, took out the driver, two quick shots—one to weaken his shield, the other to penetrate, blowing his brains out the back of his head. Roland had to swerve to avoid the fiery outrider as it spun out of control.
Bullets splashed his outrunner’s shield, then, as platoon Psycho soldiers in the back of the dump truck fired at him over the front top of the big chunky steel truck’s dump box. An Eridian rifle spat fireballs at the outrunner, and combat rifles chattered. Sparks flew from its chassis, and Roland ducked down in time to miss a spinning fireball that exploded at the base of the turret. Flames singed Brick, but he ignored them, firing steadily at the top of the dump truck to suppress the enemy’s fire.
Roland accelerated, weaving a little as an evasive maneuver, and then they roared past the dump truck.
“Hold on!” he yelled, turning the outrunner as tightly as he could without flipping it.
Brick had his powerful grip on the machine gun, and he spun it around before Roland got the vehicle turned, strafing the back of the dump truck to keep the seven men in back from jumping up and firing.
I hope this works, Roland thought, as he accelerated to pull parallel with the truck, his right front wheel just a hand’s breadth from one of the truck’s rear wheels. He was thinking there was a factor he hadn’t quite worked into the plan. One problem was that they were getting close to the Jut . . . and the truck was aimed right for it.
“Closer!” Brick shouted, firing a long burst of rounds into the back of the truck—most of the bullets spanged off the tailgate top.
Roland nudged the accelerator a little, and the outrunner surged, bringing Brick closer to the speeding dump truck.
“Now!” Brick yelled.
Roland, steering with one hand now, already had the grenade ready. He tossed it into the back of the dump truck. A man screamed, grenade fragments clattered and sparked, as the explosion sent one of the platoon Psychos flying out of the back of the truck, a spinning wheel of blood, gone into the plume of moonlit dust.
Roland accelerated a little more, and Brick made his move, leaping up onto the back of the truck, getting a booted foot into place, his hands clamping the edges, and vaulting into the back, howling as he came to chill the disoriented survivors of the blast.
Up ahead, the Jut was . . . too close. He was surprised to see Daphne had taken him literally, was standing there with a pistol in each hand, in front of the Jut. Which was closer, closer . . .
“Oh no,” Roland said, realizing there wasn’t time for Brick to climb up front before the truck crashed head-on into the looming Jut. The driver’s-side window was open, as if inviting him to risk suicide. Swearing, he switched off the outrunner’s engine—it kept going on momentum, starting to slow as he clambered, struggling with wind pressure, onto the front of the vehicle and leapt onto the side of the truck at the door. The metal frame of the door struck him in the side of the face, but his hands closed over the rim of the window, and, using all his strength against wind and momentum, he pulled himself through the window. He was halfway in, legs sticking out in the open air. The emergency manual button was right where he’d hoped it would be, on the dash to the right of the steering wheel. He slapped the button, then immediately grabbed the wheel and turned it left—a little too sharply.
The truck spun, its rear end swinging right, and Roland struggled to keep from falling off. Then the dump truck steadied and started off, past the Jut, crunching over a pile of old bones.
Roland climbed in the rest of the way, got into the driver’s seat, found the brake, and stopped the dump truck.
He glanced over at the Jut, now to their right. They’d missed it by a few meters.
Heart pounding, mouth dry and metallic-tasting, he sat there, breathing hard for half a minute. Then he opened the door and climbed out, rubbing the aching bruise on his right cheek.
He saw Brick climb out the back, blood on his fists. Brick walked over to Roland.
“Fun, Roland. That was fun.”
“If you say so.”
Roland reached into the cab and threw the dump switch—the box tilted up on humming hydraulics, the tailgate opened, and the bodies of six assorted dead Psychos tumbled out into a pile on the ground.
“Everyone know what they’re supposed to do?” Roland asked.
Everyone nodded. Even Lucky.
It was about an hour before dawn. After a chilly, uncomfortable night without a fire, enduring the smell of rotting bodies carried sharply to them by a wind from the southeast, Roland had brought his sixteen companions to a cut in the canyon wall north of the overlook where they’d first seen the army encampment.
He’d found the old streambed, scouting during the night, following the canyon north. It cut through the wall of the canyon, but the stream was seasonal, and it was dry now. They’d have to watch out for crabworms or scythids in a streambed, but it was a straight line to Gynella’s soldiers. Beyond the streambed, the ground rose and merged with the side of a butte. There was no
getting past that butte to the north—not without going a long way around it. This was as far north as they could go. With luck it would be enough to misdirect the Gynellan commanders.
Roland climbed up into the cab of the truck, getting behind the wheel. Mordecai was waiting in the passenger seat, his hands clasping the barrel of a big Hyperion auto shotgun, its butt propped on the floor between his boots. “Where’s Bloodwing?”
“I made it stay with Daphne. It wasn’t pleased. But I think it kind of likes her.”
“This whole plan—I must be crazy,” Roland muttered, settling into his seat.
Mordecai nodded gravely. “I was thinking the same thing. About you, I mean, not me. You must be crazy. But fuck it, let’s do this thing.”
“That’s the spirit. Why be safe when you can be crazy? If the sun was up, I’d say we were burning daylight. So . . .” He slammed the truck’s door shut.
He wanted to strike while it was still dark. There would be sentries and soldiers awake but not many, and after a long night’s watch the defense would be bleary and slow to react.
He called Daphne on the ECHO they’d found on one of the platoon Psychos. She had her own communicator, and they’d agreed on a bandwidth Gynella wasn’t likely to use. “You guys all deployed up there?”
“We’re in place,” she replied.
“We’re moving out.”
He leaned out the window. “You guys ready?”
Someone knocked on the roof of the truck to signal readiness. They were ready, and they’d gotten eight good weapons from the dead platoon Psychos—the other two weapons had been wrecked by the grenade.
They’d covered the bloody bed of the truck’s box with sand, but it must still have stunk of death back there. He was glad he didn’t have to belly down on that truck bed like those guys in back.
But if he were back there, it’d be safer than where he was sitting. Since the dump truck had been readied for Pandora, it’d been given bulletproof glass—but no glass is bulletproof if you hit it hard enough.