Blightborn (16 page)

Peterson reflexively touches his nose, as if stung by the comment.

Cael, on the other hand, wonders:
Would I really? Kill him just because he did what came natural to him? Just because I’ve killed doesn’t mean I’m a killer. Does it?

“That thing isn’t real,” Peterson says. “Just some prop. They don’t make rifles anymore. Certainly don’t make ammo.” He suddenly puffs out his chest as if this revelation proves that he’s the smartest rooster in the chicken yard.

He smiles.

Lane gives Cael a nod. They talked about this.

Cael lifts the rifle and fires.

Bang!

The shot is louder than he remembers. Loud enough that he almost drops the rifle out of surprise. The gun kicks, too, bucking like a bull who doesn’t want his bits cut off. It jars Cael so bad he barely hears Lane calling to him and pointing—

Peterson drops to his knees, head down, cowering, shaking.

But behind him, back toward stacks of crates and drums, come two more figures—each armed with a blue face shield and sonic shooter.

Lane grabs Cael’s elbow and pulls him forward.

He can’t hear Lane tell him to “Come on!” but he sees Lane’s lips form the words. And before he even tells his feet to comply, Cael’s running through the gunsmoke haze into the Provisional Depot.

Rigo’s torn.

He’s lying there, not thinking of much. He’s back to feeling numb—his leg seems like it isn’t much more than a string of cured sausage dangling from his hip by a ratty old string, which of course is why the others didn’t want him tagging along. He’s torn because on the one hand he’d prefer to recline on the hard berm and maybe, just maybe, take a nap.

On the other hand, that visidex sure is cool.

He picks it up. The screen brightens.

He uses it to block out the sun, holding it above his head like a shield while tapping icons to see what happens. Not much here he understands: documents with numbers and measurements, charts with symbols he doesn’t comprehend—all technical stuff that does nothing for him.

Nearby he hears the sound of what must be the sonic fence powering down:
VOOOOoooooooooo . . .

Dang, their plan is really working.

Rigo thinks about flipping through more virtual documents, but what’s the point? He doesn’t know what in King Hell he’s looking at. Instead, he goes back to the map screen where they found that man Peterson’s visidex—maybe he can keep a distant eye on what’s going on.

But something curious shows up. Something new.

Two arrows pointing to the margins.

He sees a magnifying glass button labeled
ZOOM OUT
, so he taps it.

The map gets a little smaller as his view gets a little bigger.

And sure enough, two more visidex icons appear on the screen.

One west of the depot. One coming in from the east, the way they came. At first Rigo thinks nothing of it because right now his mind is slow to connect things, like two red ants swimming through molasses, but then it hits him:
That isn’t good, is it?
The only folks who might have a visidex are Empyrean. Which means—

Oh dang, oh dang, oh dang
.

Just then: a gunshot splits the air.

Rigo’s heart leaps.

He’s got to tell Cael and Lane they’re gonna have company.

Inside the depot, a sonic blast splits the air with a high-pitched
trill
and clips the side of a pinewood crate, shouldering the box back and sending up a little cough of splinters. Lane darts right, diving behind a pallet of blue plastic barrels, and Cael pulls left, grabbing Peterson by his scruff and dragging him behind the crate that just got clipped.

By now Cael’s hearing is starting to come back, though his ears are still ringing something fierce. He trains the rifle on Peterson, who sits there, a wet stain spreading across the lap of his dungarees.

“Don’t kill me,” he says, lips pinched and sucking inward as
if he’s trying to eat his own mouth. “Please. I got an Obligated. She’s pregnant, too, and, and, and we’ve been trying for a good long while now but finally—”

He’s a Heartlander? Shoot, of course he is. Empyrean wouldn’t leave their own here, same as they hire Babysitters from Heartland stock.

“Shush,” Cael says. Peterson keeps blabbing, so Cael hisses through his teeth, a sound he used to make at Nancy the goat to get her to stop chewing on his pant legs. When Peterson’s quiet, Cael yells over the crate: “I got a rifle trained on Peterson here. And presuming the both of you have ears, you heard that it’s a real damn rifle loaded with real damn bullets.”

All’s quiet out there. Like they’re not sure what to do. Or, Cael suddenly worries,
like they have some other plan in mind
.

He asks Peterson, voice low, “Who’s out there with the guns?”

“Wh—what?”

“Their names.”

“The one’s, ah, Horace Eggbaum and the other is Melinda Swiggins. You’d think that Horace would be the one who’s good with the shooter, but nope, it’s Melinda, and just because she’s a she—”

Cael scowls. “Her being a girl doesn’t matter. My girl back home could’ve kicked my ass three ways from a dog’s day.”

Peterson’s eyes brighten. “You got a girl?”

“Jeezum Crow, shut up, we’re not talking about this right now.” Cael shakes the gun a little to remind the man of what’s pointed at his heart. Then he yells over the crate: “Horace. Melinda. You’re Heartlanders, we’re Heartlanders, so I tell you
what: we don’t want to hurt nobody, so go ahead and put down those pistols you got trained on us. We’re just looking for a ride off this dirt-clod. My sister was through here a couple months back—”

“Young girl,” Peterson says. “Name like Melinda’s but not Melinda.”

“Merelda.”

“That’s the one. She did come through here, ayup.”

“Where’d she go?”

“Like you said. Hopped a ride. Took off to . . . if I remember it right, the Ormond Stirling Saranyu. Flotilla that hangs high in the sky about fifty klicks south of here. You might could see it out there in the clouds—”

Suddenly, another high-pitched warble slams into the crate—

More splinters. A second sonic blast on the other side of the room. Cael hears Lane yelp and curse.

“Godsdamnit!” Cael shouts. “I’m sitting here having a nice conversation with Peterson and, and”—he looks to Peterson—“you their boss?”

“I am.”

“Then for the Lord and Lady’s sake, tell them to drop their weapons!”

“Oh, sure, right.” Peterson clears his throat. “Eggbaum. Swiggins. Drop those pistols now—we’re gonna pop our heads up, and it’s okay, it’s okay; these boys are just looking to get out of our hair.” He says to Cael, “We got a barge coming here in about three minutes. I can get you on there.”

“That seems too easy. Why?”

Peterson gives him a look like,
Well, duh.
“You have a gun.”

“Oh. Yeah.”

“And your sister was nice.”

“
How
nice? You didn’t mess with her, did you?”

“I told you; I got an Obligated! I’m honest in the eyes of the Lord and Lady looking down from their manse. I’d never—”

“All right, all right, I believe you. Stand up.”

Peterson groans and staggers to his feet.

Nobody shoots off his head.

Cael stands up behind him, rifle trained on his back just in case.

Sure enough, across the small depot warehouse stand two others in face shields: a pooch-bellied, saggy-limbed fellow with dark skin and bright eyes, and a tough-looking tree stump of a woman. Eggbaum and Swiggins. Eggbaum’s gun lies by his feet.

But Swiggins is still pointing hers.

“Melinda,” Peterson says, holding out his hands. “Drop the gun, girl.”

“I ain’t your girl, Ronnie.”

“These boys don’t mean to do us no harm.”

“Then tell that one behind you to drop his shooter.”

Cael sees Lane pop up from behind the barrel. The slingshot is in his hand, pocket pulled back. He’s nowhere near the shot Cael is, but he’s lined up nice and got the time to aim. As long as his arm doesn’t tire.

“Miss,” Cael says—

“I’m a missus, dumbass. I’m Obligated like the rest of us.”

“Fine,
missus
, we’re just looking for a—”

At the far end of the depot, behind Eggbaum and Swiggins, a red flashing light starts strobing. Cael startles a little, and
Eggbaum sees his chance and scoops his pistol back up off the floor.

“Aw, godsdamnit,” Cael mutters.

“Eggbaum!” Peterson yells. “Swiggins! Drop ’em! Lord and Lady!”

“Hell no,” Swiggins says, showing her teeth like a feral pig. “We get audited or the Empyrean catch these hayseeds on the barge, we’re the ones who will hang from a gangplank, Peterson.”

The back bay door starts to open.

“Scowbarge is here,” Peterson says just as a siren starts to wail in time with the strobing red light.

Rigo pokes the visidex furiously,
tap tap tap tap
, trying to figure out how to get a message to Lane and Cael. He tries to call Peterson’s visidex, but it just . . . sits there, saying
Connecting
over and over again.

Then—

A sound through the air, the vibro-hum of hover-panels, and he rolls onto his belly and crawls forward, peering out.

A big, boxy moo-cow of a scowbarge is flying in low over the corn. Aiming for the far side of the depot, opposite to the side where Cael and Lane entered. He looks down at the visidex screen and thinks,
Okay, that’s one of the visidex signals, probably
—

But it doesn’t seem to line up right, and then there’s the pesky
other
signal that suddenly blips and judders and leaps forward, showing on the screen as surprisingly close—

So close it should be just about on top of him.

A hard knee suddenly presses into his back, and the heel of someone’s hand shoves his face into the crusty clay. He tries to cry out, but fingers snake around his face and clamp his mouth shut.

As the gears turn and the door starts to lift, as Eggbaum and Swiggins both point and wave their guns, as Cael’s chest starts to itch once more, and as Lane’s arm starts to waver, Cael sees how this is going to fall apart: the scowbarge will start to come in for a landing. The pilot will see that they’ve got some kind of showdown going on, with a couple of outlaws trying to pilfer provisions or sow general discord, and the scowbarge will crank up the hover-panels and lift back up into the sky. They’ll call Empyrean agents, who will swoop down on them like a sky full of rat-hawks. Then it’ll all be over, a week’s journey for nothing, all of it for naught.

He looks at Lane, and Lane looks back.

Cael offers a little nod.

The slingshot lets fly.

Cael fires the rifle.

The rock from the slingshot pocket smacks into the woman’s hand—she reels it back, howling, the sonic shooter spinning up in the air at the same time that Cael’s shot finds the light fixture above their heads. A spray of sparks and glass rains down on them—Eggbaum hollers as if he’s got a face full of honey-wasps and flails about, doing a panicked dance.

As the door starts to open, they see the scowbarge.

Cael waves Lane on, and they each leap their respective barriers and charge toward the back, toward the barge, knowing they need to get on board that ship and keep it on the ground long enough to fetch Rigo.

Movement from their right—

Melinda leaps up, arms out, and tackles Lane.

The slingshot spins away.

Cael makes a snap decision—his friend can handle himself. The barge is the goal. The barge is
everything
.

He keeps running.

The scowbarge isn’t much to look at—just a large, chunky box, the spectacled pilot barely seen behind a tinted wind-visor. The ship starts to land, docking pistons telescoping, ready to engage—

Twenty feet. Ten. Cael makes a run for the front nose cone of the boat, which is more
nose
and less
cone
—a hard-angled grille with rusty metal ribs. But then he catches sight of the pilot, who sees him charging, whose gaze flits to the fumbling fracas in the depot. The pilot’s mouth forms a panicked O shape—

Cael leaps—

The scowbarge jerks backward, hover-panels glowing bright.

Cael’s fingers grace the rusty grille of the scowbarge even as it starts to lift back up—he feels it carry him up, up, up, his fingers burning at the knuckles, rust biting into his skin—

He loses his grip.

The ten-foot drop isn’t a killer, but his legs fold up underneath him, and his back smashes flat against the dirt yard outside the depot gate. His own rifle smacks him on the head, and for a moment his eyes go wonky—vision drifting into two halves,
each distinct from the other and bouncing from blurry to clear and back to blurry again.

The scowbarge drifts backward as it lifts upward.

A slow escape, but an escape just the same.

The blurry shape begins to ease away—and with it Cael’s hope of hijacking a ride to the flotilla.

He reaches up a hand, as if that’ll do anything.

Then—

A black shape streaks fast from the east.

It strikes the scowbarge—

Fire geysers from the opposite side.

The scowbarge explodes.