by M. R. Forbes
If Sheriff found out what was on the data chip first, would he destroy or lose the ring after? Would he make himself invaluable, and invulnerable?
“We shouldn’t waste the chance to catch him,” he found himself saying. “I’m with you, General.”
“Not that this is a democracy, but thank you, Colonel,” James replied. “Doc, you’ve got ten minutes to patch yourself, Relentless, and Buzzcut. Then we’re on the move.”
He paused then, silent. Listening. “Shit,” he exclaimed. He fell silent again, probably talking to COMCENT.
“General?” Doc said.
“It’s your lucky day, Doc,” James said a few seconds later. “It seems our shipment from Proxima has arrived and it contains a few unexpected items.”
“What sort of items, sir?”
“A fresh squad of replicas from Proxima,” James said. “Assholes from the Trust, asking about Relentless.”
Nathan’s heart stopped. Had the trust sent more of their soldiers here after him?
“Relax, Nathan,” James said, noticing his distress. His visor slid open. “I’m not about to turn you over to them. I’m not happy about them coming here, at all. It shows a lack of faith on their part. Remember what I told you? The Trust is a tool, and we’re going to use them that way. They sent soldiers? We’ll let them help us catch up to Sheriff. They kill him, and we kill them, and nobody is the wiser. How does that sound?”
Nathan relaxed immediately. “It sounds like a plan, sir.”
“Good. I hate to give up on the chase, and I can’t exactly bring you back to McGuire with them hanging out there, so here’s what we’re going to do. Relentless, you and Doc head north and try to track Sheriff. I’m assuming Spacers train for missions like that?”
That type of training was usually reserved for Special Operations, but Nathan wasn’t going to tell James that. How hard could it be to follow someone?
“Yes, sir,” he replied.
“Do not engage. Do you hear me, Nathan? You keep on his tail, and you stay out of sight. I don’t want you getting killed doing something stupid, not when we have a squad of the Trust’s Black Ops soldiers to back us up now.”
“Yes, sir,” both Nathan and Doc said.
“Buzzcut,” James said. “Grab the portable for Doc.”
“Yes, sir,” the pilot said. He jumped into the helicopter, opened a storage bay under one of the jump seats, and retrieved a backpack from it. “Doc!”
She walked over to the chopper, and he tossed the bag out to her.
James patched into COMCENT again without closing his visor. “COMCENT, this is General Stacker. Redirect the incoming units to the beacon. I need a ride back to base. Call off the drones as well.”
“Yes, sir,” the operator said.
“Stacker out.”
James smiled. His anger had rotated to amusement at the sudden new developments. “Fucking Trust. Let them do the hard work if they want Sheriff that bad. Relentless, they get the drop on Sheriff without me, you do what you need to do to handle them, just like you wanted. Understood?”
“Yes, sir!” Nathan barked.
“Good. Doc, take care of the wounds and then get moving.”
“Yes, sir,” she said.
He turned back to the tree he had knocked over. Then he started laughing.
Nathan stared at his back. He would help James find Sheriff.
Afterward?
That all depended on who could get him what he wanted first.
Chapter 28
“Do you still have that tether in your satchel?” Hayden asked.
They had stopped on the rocky shore, at the base of the bank, slumping onto the large stones to catch their breath before moving on. Looking at the top of the bank, Hayden could see the edge of broken and cracked concrete and a few trees. There was an old pier to the north, half collapsed into the water, but he didn’t see any trife around.
“Yeah, why?” Rhonna asked.
“I was trying to bring the motorcycle with us for a reason,” Hayden said. “I’m not quite ready to give up on it.”
“Are you serious? It’s at the bottom of the river.”
“How deep would you say it was?”
“Twenty feet maybe?”
“How long is the tether?”
Rhonna unzipped the watertight satchel, pushing aside the magazines and finding a small spool of high-tensile fiber. It was thin like a wire but could be manipulated like a rope.
“A hundred feet.”
“Do you think you can swim down and attach this to the bike?”
She didn’t look happy about the idea. The air wasn’t that warm, and she was wet and cold. She nodded.
Hayden smiled. “It’ll be worth it if we can get it back. That smoke doesn’t look more than a few kilometers out, and I’m too tired to run very far.”
“I’m getting there,” Rhonna said. She opened the spool, tying a slipknot in the end.
“Who taught you how to tie knots?” Hayden asked. “Not Hawaii Five-O.”
“No. We had an old book on knots. It gave me something to do.” She stood up and took a step back toward the river.
The Navy ship was stuck aground, a fresh rock in the center. There were trife on the deck, looking out at them. The creatures hated water. Hayden wondered how long they would stay trapped on the ship before deciding to swim. Would they ever try to swim?
Rhonna waded out until she couldn’t stand anymore. She picked up her head, trying to find the motorcycle in the water. It seemed like she found it, because she picked a direction and dove in, swimming out twenty meters, bobbing for a moment, and then ducking beneath the surface. Hayden kept a grip on the spool, hoping they had enough. He was also starting to worry about the remaining charge in his good hand. He had used a lot of extra power over the last twenty-four hours. He just needed enough to get the bike to the shore.
She surfaced a few seconds later, the rope gone from her hands. She flashed him a thumbs up, and he walked back until the line was taut. He pulled, able to feel the resistance of the machine in the mud at the bottom of the river.
Was he strong enough to pull it out?
He leaned back, putting his body weight into it, and then adding the extra power from his replacement hand. The motorcycle resisted for a moment, and then it yanked free, getting out of the initial crater and sliding along the surface like a large fish.
He heaved, pulling it in, sliding his hands up and repeating the process, over and over. It was a few minutes before the bike made it to the surface, and once it was in far enough, Rhonna grabbed the handlebars and helped push.
“Let’s get it up to the concrete,” Hayden said, once they had gotten it on dry land.
Fortunately, the bike wasn’t too heavy, and between the two of them, they managed to guide the motorcycle up the rocky incline to the concrete. They left it there and returned to the shore to get her satchel and rifle.
Hayden did one more quick scan for trife and then checked the motorcycle. He turned it on, happy to see it was still functional. He found the line of smoke still rising in the south. Would the Liberators come for them on foot? Or would they wait for reinforcements? He and Rhonna had taken out a lot of their soldiers with the help of the trife.
“Any idea where we should go?” Rhonna asked.
“Not really,” Hayden replied. “The bike only has eight percent charge left. That’s good for twenty kilometers at most. We know there are Liberators to the north and south along the highway, and we don’t want to go back across the river.”
“So, west?”
“I hate to be so predictable, but it’s the only direction that seems clear right now. Do you know if there are any settlements in the area?”
“No. This is my first time off Manhattan. I don’t know anything about being out here.”
Hayden knew how that felt. Earth had been just as alien to him once.
“New York was a pretty populated area, wasn’t it?” Hayden said. “Judging by the c
ity. It’s much bigger than Sanisco, which used to be called San Francisco, out west.”
“I guess so.”
Hayden pointed west. There were a lot of buildings that way. A lot more city, in as terrible shape as Manhattan had been. The fighting between the United States military and the trife had been intense, leaving ruin in its wake.
“There have to be more communities nearby, although they may be staying away from the river if the Liberators come through here often.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Experience. The other organized militias I’ve met out here have been all in for themselves. I think that the Liberators connection to Proxima only makes them more dangerous to the people around them.”
“So, west?” she repeated, smiling.
He nodded. “Southwest. Let’s see if we can start moving toward Edenrise.”
“Wait. You want to move toward Tinker and his soldiers? They’re trying to kill you.”
“Because of what I know, and what I have. I’m an entire country away from home. The fact is Edenrise is probably my best chance to get a message back to Sanisco, or up to Proxima Command — if we can trust anyone in Proxima Command. Tinker has to have a comms array to reach orbiting ships, or the ships have to be landing there. If you don’t want to go south with me, I completely understand.”
Rhonna was quiet for a minute. Then she shrugged. “I don’t have anywhere else to be.”
Hayden considered for a minute. “It can’t be that far to Tinker’s camp. Somewhere to the south. Bennett didn’t catch it on the way in, but if they’re using the highway and they’ve kept it clear, it can’t be far from it.”
“Why do you think they would have kept it clear?” Rhonna asked. “Why do you think they would come north at all? Before Nathan came, I mean? I never saw them before yesterday, but they’ve been over here.”
“From what Tinker said on the radio, it seems he’s trying to get people to go to Edenrise. Maybe he cleared a path for them? It’s a lot of effort, I know. It makes me wonder if he’s as much of a black hat as I’ve been assuming.”
“Black hat?”
“Forgotten Earth westerns. The bad guys wore black hats. The good guys wore white. You didn’t have any westerns in your stockpile of old shows?”
“Kilo didn’t like them. He said they were boring.”
“To each their own, I guess. Anyway, if Tinker’s trying to help survivors, he can’t be all bad. If he’s in league with Proxima’s crime syndicate? He can’t be all good, either.”
“Maybe it all comes down to Nathan’s ring.”
Hayden nodded. “It might. We’ll head southwest, past the highway and onto an artery if we can find one. How’s your ammo supply?”
Rhonna retrieved her rifle from the ground nearby. “I put in a fresh magazine. We’ve got four more. Plus the handguns and a few magazines for each.”
“Damn me for dropping my satchel,” Hayden said, shaking his head. “And the Liberator’s gun.”
“You're too hard on yourself, Sheriff. You got us off the island. You got us this bike. We’re still alive.” She shrugged. “And I don’t know. Not only did we make it, but I’m starting to feel alive, really alive, for the first time in a long, long time.”
Hayden allowed himself half a smile. He mounted the motorcycle, and she slid on behind him, cradling the rifle so she could use it if she had to.
Then he twisted the throttle, the bike spitting dirt and kicking out collected mud before jerking forward over the broken concrete.
Chapter 29
Hayden and Rhonna headed west at a decent speed, navigating their way through the surrounding urban landscape. They didn’t begin to slow until they reached a line of trees that seemed to split the battered cement and steel framework of the once densely populated area into two distinct parts.
There was no outward sign of trife. No black forms crouched along the rooftops or in the rocky crevices of the rubble that surrounded them. No dark eyes were staring at them from the shadows. No shadows were moving in their peripheral vision to keep watch on them.
It made sense because there were no people either.
They bypassed the trees, crossing to the other side of the city. They kept riding for half an hour, staying on a westerly course. Hayden’s attention was split between the road ahead of them and the battery indicator on the motorcycle’s display, wearing down toward zero. Like many of the forgotten Earth cities, there were plenty of old cars left abandoned on the side of the road. Few enough of them were potentially operable, and without a good mechanic and a truck full of replacement parts, they would be impossible to get into working order.
He didn’t relish the idea of heading south on foot. Not when the Liberators had cars and drones and at least one aircraft. The upside was that it would make them harder to pick out from a crowd, but only if they could find a crowd to join.
There was no indication that the Liberators had managed to stay on their tail. Rhonna tracked the sky, searching for drones or the airship without result. The world around them was nearly silent. No cars. No engines. No motors. A barking dog in the distance. An occasional bird that swooped across the street ahead of them, likely wondering who the aliens were. Hayden had been through vacant areas like this before, but there was a different quality to it here. It felt to him as if the whole planet was holding its breath.
“Sheriff, stop,” Rhonna said suddenly, breaking the silence that had been holding them for nearly an hour.
Hayden hit the brakes, bringing the bike to a standstill. “What is it?”
She slid off the seat, rushing over to the side of the road. There was an old grocery store there, filthy and faded, the windows mostly shattered, the shelves almost certainly empty. She stopped at the entrance, where the doors were hanging open on rusted hinges, destroyed by looters over a century earlier. Weeds and grasses grew around the face of it, and through the small parking area nearby. She picked something up, turning and showing it to him.
It glinted in the sunlight, metal and shiny. She carried it to him.
“A necklace,” she said. “Too clean to have been sitting out here for years.”
He took the jewelry in his good hand. An infinity symbol hanging from a silver chain. Freshly polished.
“Someone’s out here, somewhere,” he said. “And they lost their necklace.”
“You think they’ll come back to look for it?” Rhonna asked.
“Not if they’re smart. Still, it’s a good find. It means we’re headed in the right direction. Assuming they don’t have transport they have to be within a few klicks of here.” He looked down at the bike’s charge indicator again. “Good thing, too. We’re at three percent.”
She slid back on the bike behind him, and he started moving again. They rode another two kilometers before breaking out of the rows of dilapidated buildings again, coming to the eastern side of a four-lane highway, heavily littered with cars. Hayden could see buildings across from it, big and flat and surrounded by the long rectangles of truck trailers. Hundreds and hundreds of them spread out across the entire area.
“What do you think?” Rhonna asked.
“If I were looking for someplace to survive the trife, this might be it,” he replied. His eyes swept across the field of cars resting on the highway. “It looks to me like those cars have been moved around a bit. A defensive perimeter, maybe?”
“If you say so, Sheriff.”
Hayden put the motorcycle in motion, riding it across a small field and between a pair of trees, to the front line of cars. Now that he had reached them, he was more certain they had been arranged in an intentional pattern. There was enough space for vehicles to travel down the road, and further off he could see a secondary path had been cleared. Tracks had been dug into the dirt by multiple crossings of heavy machines. It was hard to say how old the tracks were, or if any of the machines were still operating in the area. Maybe there were still people here, or maybe they had decided to leave.
/> He angled south, heading for the dirt path. When he got closer, he realized the trail cut through an old waste yard filled with all kinds of scraps and junk abandoned long before the war. It was rust-colored and ugly, but there was a particular order to it that made him think it too had been organized in a certain way. There were plenty of dark crevices where people could hide and shoot at unsuspecting invaders if needed. He still wasn’t sure if any of the work was recent, or if it was further remains of the war that followed the war. The one humankind waged on itself in its desperation to survive.
The war he was still trying to fight.
He didn’t see anything that suggested people had been through recently. If it hadn’t been for the necklace Rhonna found, he would have been nearly convinced the area was deserted. Still, if there had been a settlement here once, maybe there was something in it they could use.
The motorcycle’s charge hit one percent as he considered it, making up his mind for him.
“We’ll head through the perimeter and check things out. Scout that building over there.” He pointed to a long, low building to the northwest, on the other side of the junkyard. “If there is or was a camp, I think it will be in there.”
“What about over there?” Rhonna asked, pointing southwest. Hayden craned his neck to look past a line of trees. “It looks like train cars, like where I used to live in the subway with Margie and Kilo.”
“This whole area could have been one big settlement at one time. It looks like the path cuts between the two. The tracks seem to head toward that building, though. I want to check it first. Maybe there’s an old battery or something we can steal some charge from.”
Natalia was the engineer. She was the one who could take a two-century-old acid-lead battery and make it hold a charge again. She was the one who could rig wires to transmit power from one device to another or salvage stuff that shouldn’t have been salvageable. She had taught him basic skills in that regard. Survival skills. Spending so much time in the Expansion Zone, he had never thought he might need them. It was a good thing he always paid attention when his wife was talking.