Peace in an Age of Metal and Men (20 page)

“What the hell?” I said. “You have it for ten seconds and you broke—”

“Shh.”

My jaw kept working like there were words, but I just didn’t have any.

He smiled an impish grin at me. “It’s supposed to do that.”

“Huh.” I wasn’t convinced.

The city boy pulled the two halves of the cube open, revealing a smaller cube inside made of a shiny metal like the one he’d found in the console. It looked like an exact duplicate, as a matter of fact. Zane switched the two bits and powered my glow cube back up.

Zane scoured the data on the cube for hours with me watching the whole time. Every few minutes he would mutter a curse unbefitting of his civilized nature. Abi went back to searching the place for more clues, and Ben went back to staring distrustfully at Tucker.

“I’m on your side,” Zane said. “It’s not like I’m going to run off, you know.” He flipped through a few images. They were hazy but clear enough to see that they were nothing more than landscape photos.

“You’re on your own side. Just like everyone else out here.”

“Fair enough. But they don’t have to be opposite sides. We can be allies.”

“Sure.”

Zane looked up from the display. “That didn’t sound convincing.”

“Wasn’t meant to be.”

“It’s not like we’re going to get anything off of this.” He cycled quickly through some images. “It’s barely compatible, so much of the data is unreadable.”

“There’s got to be something.”

He sighed. “I’ll keep looking.”

“Wait.” I grabbed Zane’s shoulder. “Go back.”

“What?”

“Back. Go back two pictures.”

He waved his hand, swearing when it didn’t respond on a first couple tries. Finally, he got the image to cycle back.

“That’s it. See that building there?”

“The tower with the glass dome?”

“You think that’s Quintech?”

“Could be, but there’s no location information on these images. It tells us there’s a building, but not where the building is.”

“Take a closer look.”

He squinted at the flickering image for a full minute before giving up.

“Those hills in the background. See how one has that broken look to it?”

“That’s near Swallow Hill.”

“We figured that already. But since we can’t fly there, it’s going to take too long to search those hills. We need an exact location.”

“I have the exact center,” Abi said. “I calculated it while you were visiting the bank.”

I pondered that. “Those blue lines.”

“Yeah.”

Ben and Abi were peering at the image now, somber looks on their faces. We all knew what it meant. We’d need to go into the most dangerous place in the Texas outland and take apart whatever was projecting that field. Until that happened, there wouldn’t be any way to get enough firepower close enough to take Francis down.

“Zane,” I said, “can you pull up any other information related to that picture?”

He furrowed his brow. “There’s a lot,” he said. “Blueprints, diagrams.” His eyes widened. “Even some partial research notes. Everything but location.”

“But we know that already from Abi’s calculations.” I rubbed the bridge of my nose. “We might just have enough here to put together a decent attack.”

Ben spoke first, “You’ll have to walk there.”

“Why?”

“You’re the only one besides Tucker without full headgear. You can’t fly because of the field, and I’m guessing they’ll have tightened ground security after the bank.”

“Walking’s too slow.” I tapped my leg. “Plus, doc says to stay off this if I can. Can we use that six-wheeler that Tuck rode off with?”

“I doubt it,” said Zane. “They’ll be looking for something like that. These people aren’t stupid, you know. Those things are noisy. Easy to target and track.”

My head pounded. “So, we need a way to cover ground fast that isn’t flying and isn’t noisy.”

Zane shook his head. “Then what can you do?”

“Get some rest.” I pulled my pistol and took over his position watching the exit. “Tomorrow’s going to be a hot one.”

The horses thundered across the plain, racing from nowhere to nowhere. Why were they galloping so hard? They didn’t seem to be running to anything or from anything. They were just running for the pure joy. For freedom.

High above, I banked forward and down, sliding in gently behind the herd.

Zane rode to the right, standing in his red convertible like a showman whooping up a crowd. The wind swept the tight curls of his hair back and his black duster billowed out behind him like a cape. He was clearly enjoying himself, not bothered at all by the sweltering heat of the early morning.

And it was hot. The night had been one where you can’t sleep for fear of waking up roasted like a pig. When morning came and the sun kissed the earth with its new day, the temperature did nothing but rise.

To my left was Ben. He rode his damaged truck with a fierce look that mixed frustration, anger, and determination. The leaky gravity drive on the thing still washed over me from time to time, a sensation I felt in my belly like I was falling. He’d tinkered with it for an hour after the sun came up just to get it in good enough shape. After Zane had come back from dropping Tucker and Abi off at the junkyard, Ben had tossed out a few choice cuss words and declared the truck good enough.

I waved Ben off farther to the left and lowered my skidder so that I was only a few meters above the soil. We were moving fast, not anywhere near as fast as the skidder would go, but fast enough to resemble the last time I’d tried to corral this feral herd.

If I ran up to the horses fast, I’d have to slow down when I got to them. My only way of doing that was to fire the thrusters forward, and that’d be a lot like firing cannons at a horse and then asking it to stand still.

Zane and Ben dropped to the same level. Ahead, and a little to the right, was our destination. The valley that held Francis’s hideout was also going to be where we corralled the horses. Once they were stopped, we’d approach them on foot and collect the ones that still had enough training to make them workable.

The lead horse—that same black I’d tried to rope before—banked hard right, pulling ahead of the rest and looping hard around Zane’s side. Zane swooped out to try to bring it back in, but it stopped hard, turned, and ran in the opposite direction. Several dozen other horses followed suit.

“Keep at ’em!” I shouted, waving Ben and Zane forward.

There were enough horses left in the herd. Hell, for my plan we only really needed one. There was no reason to catch all of them or even the best of them. There was no reason to go after that towering black.

Yet, she was the one I wanted.

I waved the others forward and banked my skidder hard right. Waves of dry heat baked my body as the sun made hell out of earth. My lips were cracked and dry, my face red from the blistering heat of the previous day. None of it mattered. All I wanted was that horse.

Rushing wouldn’t get it. With my metal hand seated firmly in the control console, I had to negotiate my lasso one-handed. It wasn’t hard since I’d set things up just right ahead of time. I looped the rope around the hook, just so. The loop dropped free and with a whoop I started it spinning.

The horse ran hard, outpacing the other that had followed it. She was a beautiful creature, all black and shining in the morning sun. The rhythm of her thundering hooves beat like a primal drum in a music that played across the landscape for anyone willing to listen. As I drew slowly closer, her cadence quickened into a new pattern. She was running.

I threw the lasso hard as I could, but the wind took it and pulled it off course. The thing fell useless far off target. Without missing a beat, I looped it back up and set it spinning again.

The second throw was closer. It touched the horse on the flank, bouncing harmlessly off her side. The touch of it seemed to startle the creature and she started a long arc to the left. I ground my teeth and kept my pace, slowly gaining ground. Still, I didn’t dare let myself get too close.

The third throw of the lasso looped nicely around her neck. I let out a whoop of joy just as she turned hard.

The rope ran under the skidder and the pull rolled me ninety degrees. Rocks whipped by, nearly close enough to knock off my hat. Using the neural controls, I immediately compensated for the change and flipped back up. I eased up and applied a little pressure.

She applied more. My skidder lurched forward, and the tension tuned the rope like a guitar string. I let out a little more rope, increasing our distance little by little. She pulled, and she gained ground, but she wasn’t getting away. Once I had some distance, I eased the thrusters and flexed a bit of solid-fueled muscle to slow us down.

The horse slowed from a run down to a stop in about the span of five paces. I matched her movement. She snorted. I snorted back.

Then I landed and stepped off my skidder.

She eyed me and skittered back a few steps. I eyed her back, stepping slowly closer. When I saw the whites of her eyes, I stopped. Her whole body moved with deep breaths. We stood facing each other for a good long time. Her breaths slowed, but her eyes still showed fear.

Her eyes weren’t focused on me. She was looking at my metal arm.

“I know, girl,” I said in my most soothing voice. It came out more as gruff, but it was the best I could do. “I don’t like it either.” My metal arm wasn’t going to do me much good, so I pulled it into my poncho and hid it as best I could.

One thing I learned living among the ranches of Texas is that horses aren’t stupid. Well, they are, but they’re never stupid when you want them to be. Just because she couldn’t see my metal arm didn’t make her forget about it. This old lady had been living away from people for a long time, surviving just fine in a sweltering heat that should have scoured the land clean a long time ago. She didn’t have any need of me and she sure as hell didn’t need to have anything to do with my tech.

I reeled the rope in and took a step forward.

She took a step back.

“It’s all right, girl. No need to worry.”

Another step forward.

Another step back.

“My apologies,” I said. “I wish I could let you run free, but I need your help.”

She snorted.

“There’s a bad man. Maybe more than one. I need a way to travel fast without warning them that I’m coming.” Reaching down to my belt, I touched Ben’s harness. If I could just get a few steps closer, I’d be able to attach it to the horse and she’d settle without any problems.

She looked at me with those big brown eyes. The whites had disappeared and her expression now seemed to be one of calm understanding. It seemed to be one of acceptance. Whatever it was, it drove a big stab of guilt right into my belly. How could I use this technology on her?

There wasn’t time to mess around. It might already be too late, but if it wasn’t, there definitely wasn’t time to get to know a horse and to let the horse get to know me. There wasn’t an option other than the tech, was there? This was the whole reason we went way the hell out there. My thumb fingered the back of the harness, where a nodule held the most offensive tech I’d ever had the pleasure to run across.

Stepping forward, shoulders relaxed, I unclipped the harness from my belt—

Her hoof snapped out so fast I hardly had time to blink. She kicked the hat right off of my head and made a noise like a neigh and a scream mixed in one. I stumbled backward, tripped, and ended sprawled on my back with hooves still above me. The whites of her eyes were showing again, and her pupils were tiny pinpricks.

Hooves slammed down on each side of me, missing my legs by mere centimeters. The ground shook with their crushing force and the horse skittered backward.

After a minute, I sat up. The offending harness was still in my hand, so I tossed it away so that the big girl could see what I’d done.

“That’s fine, we don’t need any of that.”

But I wasn’t so sure. There hadn’t been much trust, but it was gone now. Rebuilding trust was harder than earning it in the first place. Her eyes darted to where I’m sure she remembered I’d hidden my metal arm. What made her distrust technology like this? It didn’t matter. That distrust was there and it was going to be tough to get past.

Meanwhile, the sun was making its long walk across the sky. The hot early morning was turning into a scorching late morning. Noon would be brutal if we were still out here in it. There was plenty of water packed on my skidder, but this couldn’t take all day.

Standing, I held my hand palm forward and took a few steps forward.

She let me. I don’t know why, but she did. The rope was still around her neck, though I wasn’t holding it anymore. I pulled the lasso off over her head and let it drop to the ground.

She was so beautiful. Her hide was rough and smooth at the same time, her coarse hair shining in the morning light like black gold. She leaned into me when I touched her cheek, seeming as happy to get the attention as I was to give it. Long minutes passed with her nuzzling my chest and me scratching her ears.

This was the next step in my plan, but it felt like so much more. A tear nearly came to my dry eye as I stroked her hide. I felt like this was how it should be. Standing next to that great beast seemed natural. It seemed right.

I felt complete.