Horizon (3 page)

After everything was settled, Hoku and Dash followed Odd to the campfire and accepted strips of stringy meat. They met two more Upgraders named Pocket and Zeelo. Pocket was Hoku’s age and had a pair of twisty animal horns sprouting out of his head. Zeelo seemed old and crusty, and when she smiled, Hoku saw row after row of sharp metal teeth.

At least none of the Upgraders had named themselves “Instant Death” or “Annihilation.”

“What about the one watching us from the cliff?” Dash said calmly. “What is that one called?”

Odd glared up at the cliff, but Mags chuckled. “That scamper is Squirrel, and she’ll be down when she’s ready. Might want to keep your packs secure while you’re here, though. Sparkly bits have a way of disappearing lately.”

Once Dash pointed her out, Hoku could see Squirrel clearly. She was small, hunched, and had metal extenders attached to her feet. Wait, no. Those metal devices
were
her feet.

“Who chops off their own legs?” Hoku muttered.

“I’ve known a few who’ve done it,” Mags said, “but not our Squirrel. No, someone else did that for her.”

The world seemed to spin. Hoku swallowed, his mouth suddenly as dry as desert sand.

“Young as your years, are you?” Mags said, shaking her head. Her hair bounced around her face. “Seen worse than that my first year of medtek apprenticing.”

Odd grunted and settled down by the fire. Hoku, Dash, and the Upgraders followed his lead. “We’ll see much worse soon,” Odd said. “War makes a mess of things.”

“Are you really taking those people to Karl Strand?” the boy called Pocket asked. He had skin darker than Aluna’s and eyes like deep ocean. Hoku loved the way his horns slid out of his temples, curved back toward his face like a nautilus shell, then poked out to the sides. Had it hurt to attach them? Even if it did, the effect was worth it.

“We are,” Dash said, gnawing on a stick of meat Zeelo had offered him.

“Strand will give us whatever we want for them,” Hoku added. “That winged one is an Aviar. Her people killed Strand’s Sky Master. The one with a tail is a Kampii. Hers killed Strand’s Sea Master.” They didn’t really kill Fathom, they just disassembled him, but the Upgraders didn’t need to know that.

“Haven’t met Strand myself. Haven’t even seen him,” Odd said. “But I hear he’s a dangerous man to play. You could sell those pretties to us and go on your way, richer and alive.”

Hoku pretended to consider the offer. “It’d take more than you have to buy our cargo.”

Odd stared at the fire, then laughed. “Yeah, true.”

“Shut it,” Mags said. “We do fine.” She pulled a clump of her springy hair and rolled it between her fingertips. “Could always do better, though. You maybe up for a deal?”

“We’re listening,” Hoku said.

Mags looked at Odd, but he was still staring at the fire. “We take you to Strand, we split the reward,” she said. “You only got two. There’s no way you make it that far without a fight and someone bigger and badder taking your prizes. Together, we got seven. Enough to make other kludges wary.”

There it was, the offer they’d been hoping for. No one could refuse the potential reward that turning Calli and Aluna over to Strand might bring.

“How many warriors do you have?” Dash asked.

“Warriors?” Odd grunted. “Don’t hear that word much. At present, we have no slayers. But don’t think that makes us weak. No, we got hidden skills. Right, Pocket? Hidden skills.”

Pocket smiled. The boy wore a cloth shirt with blue sleeves and leather vest. Hoku couldn’t see any other tech mods besides his horns. But his name was Pocket. Maybe he had weapons hidden in his skin.

“No slayers at all?” Hoku said.

“Well, we have Odd here,” Mags said. “He can bash skulls as good as any other sword-brain. Looks the part more than you two.”

“What are you good at, then?” Hoku asked. “What are we getting besides one Gizmo who looks dangerous?”

“Best medtek in the zone,” Mags said, raising her chin. “No infections since I joined the kludge, and I aim to keep it that way.”

Of course
, Hoku thought. Upgraders probably needed healers more than any of the splinter tribes. And their healers had to know tech, flesh, and how they worked together, too.

“And Odd here is lucky,” Pocket said. “Finds us good caches. Knows when we need to hide. Never lets us go hungry.”

So they were tech hunters, this kludge. Rollin said a lot of Upgraders survived by scavenging old tech — using metal detectors and old bits of map to find ancient cities, then digging up what they could. She said that sometimes kludges would meet and form temporary towns. They traded food for tech or upgrading services, shared news, fell in love, or even swapped members. The towns lasted days or weeks or even a month or two, then they broke down and each kludge went off on its own again. Unlike the LegendaryTek splinters, Upgraders were nomads.

Then there were the kind of tech hunters who did horrible things.

“Do you take your tech from living things?” Hoku asked, afraid of the answer. He’d seen the damage other Upgraders had done on the Humans and the Deepfell near the City of Shifting Tides.

“No,” Pocket said easily. “We got tools for finding and digging. Safe tools. Squirrel keeps them whirring, good as new.”

“We traded our last stash of shiny in the horse city. Kept some of the choicer bits for bribes and trading along the way,” Odd said. “Make better time to the army without dragging sacks of metal behind us.”

“Not all of us wanted to join the army, mind you,” Mags said, glaring at Odd. “Some of us just yell louder than the rest. But even I can’t spit on a turn of luck as good as this one.” She nodded toward Calli and Aluna.

“Seven is lucky,” Odd said. “A good sign. Maybe with seven, Karl Strand will give us what we want and let us live. Better chance of that than if you go with just two.”

Hoku grabbed another stick of meat from the tiny pile by the fire. “Seven it is. But we go straight to Strand, fast as we can. No scavenging along the way.”

Odd scratched his head, making his red hair bob back and forth. “Not like I know where the man is. Not exactly,” he said. “Ask as we go. Best we can do.”

Hoku shared a look with Dash. So much for their brilliant plan. Not even the Upgraders knew how to find their leader. Still, traveling with Odd’s kludge gave them a better chance than they had by traveling alone.

“Eat up,” Odd said. “Tomorrow we head north.”

A
LUNA SAT NEXT TO
CALLI
, her back against a rock, and watched Hoku and Dash pretending to be Upgraders. Odd and the others had welcomed them quickly. Maybe too quickly. Were they just excited about the possibility of a big reward from Karl Strand, or was there something else going on?

“We need to take turns keeping watch,” she whispered to Calli.

Calli pressed her lips together. “I was thinking the same thing. I don’t want to wake up and find my throat slit. Not that I’d wake up if it was, but you know what I mean.”

“You sleep first,” Aluna said. “I’m not sure I can anyway.” Her mind felt like a whirlpool, all other thoughts sucked into the swirl of their mission. “I hope I haven’t led us all to our deaths.”

Calli leaned over, shuffled her wings out of the way, and rested her shoulder against Aluna’s. “We followed you willingly. Whatever happens, the decision belongs to all of us now.”

Aluna stared down at her hands and toyed with the fake bindings. “How does your mother handle this? She’s led warriors into battle. She’s watched them die because of her orders. How does she live with herself?”

Calli was quiet so long that Aluna wondered if she’d fallen asleep. Finally, Calli said, “I don’t know. I just hope I figure it out before it’s my turn.” A moment later, her breathing slowed and her head drifted to the side.

Aluna settled against the rock and studied the Upgraders. They sat around their fire about a dozen meters from the stone where she and Calli were anchored. Far enough away that she couldn’t hear what they were saying unless they raised their voices, but close enough for them to keep an eye on their prisoners.

The Upgraders ate and laughed and passed a canteen around their circle. When it got to Hoku, he stood and offered a toast.

“To Karl Strand and the world he’s building!” His words sounded directly in her Kampii ears and sent shivers skittering across her skin in the cool night air.

Odd raised his cup and bellowed, “To the new king, bringing peace and shiny bits to us all!”

Some of the Upgraders cheered, but not all of them. Aluna could hear an argument rising in their voices and strained to make out their words. Mags stood suddenly and stomped away from the fire, the hem of her coat dragging in the dirt behind her. As she stalked passed Aluna, she mumbled, “Empty-headed idiots.”

Odd watched her go, then took another swig of his drink. “Don’t mind her,” he said, loud enough for Mags to hear him. “She hasn’t seen the blood and tumble, not outside her med training. Hasn’t got used to doing whatever it takes to keep the kludge safe.”

Aluna whispered quietly, so only Hoku could hear. “So they’re not all loyal to Karl Strand. We could use that.”

Hoku couldn’t respond, not with Odd passing him drinks and asking him questions, but she saw him nod once and reach for more food.

She stayed awake far into the night, wishing she were back among the Flame Heart or Shining Moon herds, where she could listen to the Equians weave their stories around a bonfire until morning. She even missed her spongy bed back in the City of Shifting Tides. The darkness here was empty, despite a sky full of stars. Critters and creepy-crawlies darted around the rocks and through the bushes, but the world still seemed too quiet. Too lonely.

Aluna awoke to find a hand tugging at the breathing shell embedded in her throat. She opened her eyes and saw stringy brown hair, a face smudged with dirt and sweat, and dark kelp-green eyes.

The Upgrader girl Squirrel.

Aluna grabbed for her but Squirrel jumped out of the way like a desert jackrabbit. The girl didn’t run, but stayed crouched three meters away, just beyond the length of the rope tying Aluna to the rock. Squirrel had a good eye. And good instincts.

“You can’t steal my necklace,” Aluna said to her. “No more than I could steal one of your feet.”

Squirrel — she looked about ten years old — stared down at the curved metal prongs attached under her knees. Her long hair fell around her face and clung to her cheek.

“You’re Squirrel,” Aluna said.

Squirrel looked up sharply and narrowed her eyes.

“I don’t bite,” Aluna continued calmly. “Not when you’re smart enough to stay out of my range.” The girl wore a bulging satchel over one shoulder and a thin blade strapped to her thigh. “Do you talk?” Aluna asked.

“No,” the girl answered.

Aluna stifled a smile. By her side, Calli started to stir. “You keep watch over everyone,” Aluna said to Squirrel. “You’re the eyes of the whole group.”

Squirrel didn’t answer. She seemed fascinated by Calli’s yawning and the way her feathers were twitching in the wind.

“I bet you see a lot,” Aluna said. “Have you ever been to Karl Strand’s base of operations? His lair?”

The girl narrowed her eyes again, then shook her head once.

“Too bad,” Aluna said. “You could have told us what to expect.”

“You’re better off in ignorance.” Mags walked toward them carrying two bowls. She handed the pasty white grub to Aluna and Calli and squatted down a few meters away from Squirrel. Not even Squirrel’s kludge got close to the girl.

“I’ve seen what Strand and his maggots can do, and it’s nothing I want a piece of,” Mags said. “I spend my whole life fixing things. Making things better. He claims to do the same thing, but all I see are broken bodies in his wake. Things I can’t even make sense of, let alone put back together.”

“But you’ve agreed to take us to Strand,” Calli said, wiping the sleep from her eyes with the back of her hand. “Why?”

Mags looked back at the camp, at the dusty lump that was Odd’s sleeping body still snoring by the fire. “Everyone’s got to survive. Right, Squirrel? We do what it takes. Whatever it takes.”

Squirrel’s small hand went to the hilt of her knife. Her mouth and brow pressed into grim lines. Her nose flared.

Mags smiled. “That’s right, girl. Never trust anyone. Not even me.”

“That’s no way to live,” Aluna said. “You have to trust your friends.”

“Is that what landed you here, all wrapped up like a present? Did you trust someone you shouldn’t have? How did that work out for you?” Mags asked. “No. I’ll take my way and saw off the arms of any Gizmo who tries to make me do something I don’t want to do.”

Squirrel seemed to quiver in agreement, her eyes shining bright through that veil of thin, dirty hair.

“Don’t count us out yet,” Aluna said.

Calli lifted her chin. “We’ve faced worse and come out on top.”

“Well, seeing as how it’s partly my job and Squirrel’s to make sure you stay tied up until we deliver you to Strand and his grunts, I’d say it’s over for both of you. Right, Squirrel?” Mags said. “We take our jobs seriously, and we need what Strand has to offer.”