Peace in an Age of Metal and Men (11 page)

As the scarlet sun kissed the western horizon, I closed the solar panel in my arm. The battery wasn’t charged up enough, but it would have to do. I leaned back against the
wrong way
sign outside of the Swallow Hill dead zone. Josephine’s floating tank loomed back in the ruins next to the black asphalt of the ancient road. My skidder and Zane’s car sat next to it, barely squeezing into the secluded area.

“It won’t hurt,” Zane said.

“It’ll probably sting a little,” Abi said. She punched me in the shoulder, then winced as if it hurt her hand. “You can handle it, though.”

“You sure this needs to be done?” I asked.

Zane looked annoyed at the question, which wasn’t surprising since it was probably the twentieth time I’d asked it. “Yes. It’s the only way to collect enough information to put an end to this.”

Abi smirked at me. “It’s not a big deal. It’s only one side, so you’ll still be able to see everything all normal-like.”

I looked at her. “Why are you here?”

She bit her lip. “Auntie said I could—”

“She didn’t, did she?”

“Implied that I could help.” Abi held up a can of spray paint. “Nothing dangerous, see?” With that, she darted away, moving down to the edge of the dead zone.

The coin sat in my palm, its little tendril wriggling. I couldn’t believe what I was going to do, but Ben was right. There was a choice. That made all the difference. Zane’s earpiece was an upgrade, but it was a minor one. It would come out when I wanted it to—if I wanted it to—and the information it gathered could be critical. Zane wasn’t going to be able to track down who was behind Swallow Hill until he was able to upload some data from the actual town.

“It’s harmless.” Zane tapped his own ear. “Everyone has one these days, and this one is proven technology. Nothing crazy about it.”

“Doesn’t look harmless.”

“Neither do you.” Zane smiled at me with his quirky grin. “Just stick it in your ear.”

I stuck it in my ear. Nothing happened.

“It’s backwards.”

I pulled the device out and looked at it. The flattened metal looked benign enough, but the wire sticking out of one side was intimidating. I flipped it around and stuck it in my ear, wire side in.

The tendril wiggled and probed around, tickling me as it searched out my inner ear. The metal coin pressed itself in firmly, shaping itself as it fit closer and closer.

Then there was pain. A sharp pop rang in my ear, followed by a rushing sound of fluid. Twin needles dug deep into my skull under the earpiece. I clawed at it, trying to pull it loose, but it wouldn’t budge. It was buried too deep. The needles turned to snakes, streaming under my skin. One dug down to my jaw and one to my right eye. Each feathered out in a wave of tiny pricks. My right eye went blind.

Gasping, I blinked and stared at the ground. I was on my hands and knees, though I didn’t remember dropping. The pain eased into a throbbing warmth, then to nothing. Each breath rushed like a tornado through my head. Vision returned to my eye.

“Well, it might sting a little,” Zane said.

“They’re late.” Tucker was behind us. His voice boomed through my skull.

I twisted around, wrenching my bad ribs. Tucker was standing there in black fatigues with two rifles strapped to his back and a bandoleer of grenades dangling across his belly. He tossed a black backpack to the ground. There was no evidence that he had arrived in a vehicle. He seemed to have appeared from nowhere.

“They’ll be here,” I said. My own voice felt like it was piercing holes in my right eardrum. I stood up and faced Tucker, but the quick movement made me nauseated. The world seemed to spin and my right eye dodged in and out of focus.

Zane put a hand on my shoulder. “Give it a minute, J.D.”

“If they don’t show, then I ain’t going.” Tucker spat on the ground. “We had a deal.”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Abi approaching. The image in my right eye zoomed in on her face, flickered her name on the display, and performed all manner of irritating distractions. No wonder nobody ever paid attention when people spoke.

Tucker lowered his voice to a growl. “Maybe you’re wasting my time, J.D. Maybe I’ll just get paid by pushing over your money man.”

My jaw clenched so hard it hurt.

“Maybe I’ll take that heap of spare parts your girl brought and see what it’s worth on the open market.”

“Hey!” Abi stepped up next to us. “That’s not yours to take.”

Tucker gave her a wolfish grin. “Looks like salvage to me.”

Abi’s jaw worked. Apparently unable to find sufficient words, she threw an empty paint can at his head. He ducked to avoid it.

“I missed this, old boy,” he said to me amid guffaws. “You’ve made some great friends, partner.”

Abi narrowed her eyes at him.

“Tuck was in the war,” I explained. “He’s not quite right.”

“I don’t trust him,” Abi muttered so quiet I could barely hear it, even with my newly enhanced ear.

“Well,” I said. “You probably shouldn’t. But Tuck and I were in the war together. There’s a common bond. Ain’t that right, Tuck?”

Tuck held his belly and laughed a little more. “You remember the spider? Aw, hell, that’s what it’s all about, right?”

“Spider?” Zane asked.

“Yeah.” Tucker gestured at Bessie. “‘Bout that big. Mean sonoffa bitch.”

Abi said something, but I couldn’t hear what.

“Twin rattlers on top,” said Tucker. “Rattlers, you know, the big guns?”

Zane’s brow furrowed.

“You get the idea. Anyway, thing was coming in—”

“Excuse me,” Abi spoke up.

“Thing come in blazing, and everyone was running from it because, hell, you don’t mess with those things. Someone builds a spider for war, they likely mean business, you know?”

“Yup,” I said.

“So, J.D. here saw it coming and—”

“Hey!” Abi stepped up and waved a hand right in front of Tucker’s face. He blinked and looked down at her. She seemed to shrink into herself a little, but pointed at a screen on her wrist. “They’re here.”

Then they were. Two roaring vehicles, just bigger than my skidder, came bounding over a rise a short distance away. They were wheeled vehicles, antiques gone out of style long before my day. These were nothing like the flimsy flyers of modern times. Full combustion was an extravagant luxury and had been for years, ever since cheap antigrav. These were fancy six-wheeled transports that would have been considered status symbols to a certain class of middle-aged man. These were recreational vehicles that rode much like motorcycles, but with more stability. There was no armor on the two six-wheeled vehicles. They weren’t machines of war, but they were what we needed. Low-tech and fast.

Legs rode atop one of the six-wheelers, and Rosa brought the other. They both landed hard, sending sparks behind them as metal struck the road. When they were only twenty meters away, they slammed on the brakes and skidded to a stop in front of us. Legs bounded off, rolled, and stood in front of me seconds before the last trace of the sun dipped below the western horizon.

“Sunset!” He grinned like an idiot.

“Where’s the rest of it?” I had to shout over the noise of the roaring engines.

Rosa slid off her ride and popped open a storage compartment. I nodded to Tucker, who put on his handsomest, slimiest smile and sidled up next to the woman to inspect the goods.

In the distance, another vehicle was only a dot on the horizon.

“That’s my ticket home,” said Legs. “Now you just remember, grab ‘n’ go. All right?”

“That the strategy they’re using these days?”

“Worked for our game, right?”

“Son,” I said. “That was a shit strategy for that game.”

“But it worked.”

“We won. Doesn’t mean it was a good plan.”

He scrunched up his face like he was thinking. “They say no plan survives contact with the enemy, don’t they?”

I nodded.

“Then you might as well start with a shit plan.”

Tucker gave a cry of excitement. He pulled a dozen orange canisters from the six-wheeler and grinned like an idiot. “Incendiaries,” he said. “My favorite!” He attached the grenades to his belt in a neat row.

Zane’s lip curled up in an expression of mild disgust. He shook his head and offered Legs a thin data stick. “Payment.”

“Thank you much.”

“It’s ten thousand stars plus a little extra for your silence.”

Legs smiled. “They’ve been trying to buy that for ages. Turns out I don’t have any left and it’d take the Milky Way to buy it if I did.”

Rosa rolled her eyes, grabbed Legs by the ear, and dragged him away. The two walked over the same rise from which they’d arrived and soon the flying vehicle dipped down, presumably to pick them up.

As Zane turned to leave, he stopped and leaned close, whispering in my ear. “If you find the tech that’s causing this, get it. Don’t let Tucker pick it up and don’t just blow it to smithereens. We need it to stop what’s coming next.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but he had already moved past and was whistling Dixie on the way to his car.

Abi said, “J.D.?”

“Abi.”

“You know you don’t need to do this, right?”

My aches all weighed down on me. “Well, I was just about to say the same thing to you.”

“You could tell the sheriff if there’s something wrong going on over there. Why do you need to take care of it yourself?”

“You don’t need to be here,” I said. “Zane’s my getaway driver. You’re really not needed.”

Silence wrapped itself all around us as the sky slowly dimmed. Zane and Tucker organized the contents of the six-wheelers, arranging things so Tucker would be able to get what he needed quickly.

Abi broke the silence with barely a whisper. “I want to help those people.”

“So do I.” I put an arm around her shoulder and she leaned into it. “Hell, I want to help all of them. That’s not how this world works, though.”

“Then why are you doing anything?”

“Can’t help it.” I sighed and faced the girl. “I’ve got buttons that can be pushed and they’ve been pushed. I pretend like there’s a choice, but there not. Not really. This has got to be done and it’s got to be done now.”

Abi’s brow hardened in determination.

“Look,” I said, “what you pulled with Tucker earlier, that’s not a good idea.”

“I can handle myself.”

“I’m sure you can.” I nodded to Tucker, who had stripped off his sweat-soaked shirt. “But so can he.”

She stepped back. “Quit it, J.D.”

I gave her a questioning look.

“Quit patronizing me. You treat me like a little kid and I’m not. I’ve been through plenty of shit to know what I’m doing.”

“It’s not—”

“I’m more than you think,” she said. “I can shoot. I can handle a knife. I’ll do whatever it takes. Do you think Aunt Jo would have let me out of her junkyard if I wasn’t ready?”

“Did she?” I asked. “Let you out?”

“She wouldn’t come herself.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“I’m ready.”

“There’s ready for life and then there’s ready for this.”

Tucker slammed the compartment lid. “Go time!”

I mounted the second six-wheeler and tipped my hat at Abi. “Get back home.”

She didn’t say a word and I didn’t listen. My gaze locked with Zane’s and he smiled his crooked smile. He held his hat against his chest and the red sky framed hair that was quite a bit messier than I ever thought a city boy’s hair could get.

With a twist of the accelerator, the six-wheelers blasted through the no-fly zone at the edge of Swallow Hill’s disturbance without so much as a sputter. The artificial eye in my head flickered and my ear buzzed, but soon we were cruising at unsafe speeds down a broken and twisted road.

Nobody expects antiques to show up in combat. The six-wheelers were antiques, once owned by wealthy hotshots trying to impress everyone with their ancient tech. They were noisy, smelly, loud, and uncomfortable. Despite that, there was no way the defenses outside of Swallow Hill would expect them.

Just after sunset is a tough time for tech. Targeting systems have trouble picking out movement in the dim light. The heat signatures of bodies tend to blend into the background of the still-hot earth. Despite all our noise and smoke, we managed to slip past the perimeter defenses. Those ancient turret towers blinked eerily in the cooling eve, but they didn’t attack.

Not everything ignored us.

The first shot from town pierced the front left tire of my six-wheeler. The crack of the shot echoed off the hills behind the town, fading like the dying light of day.

The vehicle fumbled, swerved. I managed to regain control. Signaling with one hand, I ordered Tucker to start his circle early. I was fifty meters ahead of him and we’d planned it so I’d draw fire while he made his approach.

I hit the gas, twisting the accelerator hard and trying to maintain control as the vehicle lurched forward. Something smelled like burning tar, and black smoke belched out of the back of the vehicle.

Another shot whizzed by, foiled by a last-second swerve. I tucked my head down and moved the vehicle to the side of the road. My vision doubled. I closed my modified eye.

The bank was in sight, looming at the edge of town. There were a few people in the street, but nobody close to that sturdy structure. That was good. We’d have a shot at taking care of things before the area got too busy.

The old man in the overalls standing on top of the bank tracked my movement. So that old bastard was guarding the town. I swerved again, then back. Vertigo washed over me. My six-wheeler lurched into the ditch. The uneven ground would make me harder to hit.

A crack of another shot, and the engine in front of me was belching black, oily smoke. Blinded, I wrestled the machine, trying to keep it on course. I closed my eyes tight and ducked below the smoke as best I could. The engine squelched and screamed, but still somehow kept running.

It wouldn’t hold much longer. I blinked through the tears and smoke, but still got nothing but a blur. I twisted the accelerator all the way up again, reached back and grabbed my pack from the storage compartment, and jumped.

My metal arm hit first, taking the brunt of the impact.

Not all of it. I skidded along my elbow and the side of my leg. When I’d slowed down enough, I rolled and stopped in a crouch. My pistol was still in my holster, but it’d be useless at this distance, so I left it there. Far to the right I could see Tucker still on his six-wheeler, bounding across the rugged dirt. Hopefully my distraction would work.

From the supply bag I pulled out a pair of fist-sized steel cubes. When I smacked the button on top of each of them, they unfolded into man-sized robots, much like the ones Legs had back at the Cinco Armas compound. Only, these were flimsier and unarmed. As they rose, a holographic image flickered to life, making the things look like gun-toting, hollering cowboys. I slapped the two bots on the back, setting them trotting forward and made my way around, circling closer to the bank at the edge of town under cover of rocks and brush.

Another shot echoed, making a crater of my six-wheeler. The explosion set the bots staggering backward and my ears ringing.

It was going to be bad news if that turret fired even one shot at old Tuck. His payload was considerably more volatile than mine had been. I looked back at my two decoy bots.

One of them was missing a head; the other was walking around in a tight circle like it thought it could bite off its own ear.

I swore.

Standing, I took off my hat and waved it in the air. “Hey!” My voice was harsh from the smoke, but I still had a good volume. “Remember me?” My sore feet took me forward, around the jagged, smoking hole that used to be my six-wheeler.

The man took aim and fired. The shot went wide.

“Shit!” I put my hat back on and broke into a run.

Tuck swung wide and ran into some rough ground. He dropped into a ditch, out of sight. The old man focused on me.

I dove for cover. Another shot rang out. Then I noticed. It was just like those bots that Legs had me fighting. The old man didn’t just fire as quickly as he could. He fired every six seconds. Exactly.

One, two. I leapt out of cover and sprinted for the next cover. It wasn’t far. Three, four. I dove. Five, six.

Crack
. A shot rang out.

One, two. Running hard, my heart racing. Tucker’s six-wheeler jumped out of the ditch, only to dip back down below on the other side of a rise. Three, four, five.

Dive.

Six.
Crack
.

Gasping for breath, I sprinted again. One, two, three, four. I wasn’t going to make it. Five, six.

Crack
. My arm clanged and I spun. Stumbled. Fell. Wind knocked out of me.

One, two. Gasping for air. Three, four. A football-sized stone right in front of my face. Five.

I snatched the stone up in my giant hand and threw it as hard as I could.

Six.

Wham!
The stone hit the old man. He toppled and fell in a heap.

He didn’t move. Tuck and I met at the bank and I checked the old man’s vitals. Dead. Shit.

“Shoot anyone who comes around that corner,” Tuck said.

“What?” I grabbed his shoulder. “No, Tuck. I’m not shooting anyone.”

“They’ll have heard the shots.”

I shook my head. “I don’t think they have.”

Tucker didn’t seem affected at all by the old man’s death. He popped open the storage compartment on his six-wheeler and snatched up two spray cans. “Foam door,” he said with a little giggle of glee. He sprayed the wall with a sticky yellow foam that immediately started eating into the stone surface.

“Acid?” I said. “I thought you were an explosives man.”

He grinned. “Explosives are nice if you don’t have the good stuff. And this ain’t acid.”

The stuff hissed away at the wall. It’d already cleared a few centimeters, and some bare metal was starting to show. Tucker applied another layer as inert sludge sluiced down and mixed into the dirt. While we waited for it to work, I took out my glow cube and did a forensics scan on the old man. The way he had moved had been odd, almost robotic. Maybe a scan would tell me why.

“Looks like acid,” I said to Tuck.

“It ain’t acid. It’s nanomachines, like that shit you got running around in your blood.” His whisper was getting louder.

Peeking around the corner, I got a good look at the townspeople. Had they heard the gunshots? There was a couple sitting on the bench, but when I saw them another wave of vertigo hit and I staggered back.

“J.D.!” A female voice hailed me from around the corner. Shit. Someone had seen me. I recognized the voice. It was Trish, my old deputy and the current sheriff. “You get your ass out here pronto or there’s going to be a reckoning.”

Tucker’s eyes got wide. He shook his two cans and applied another layer of the foam door. It was nearly a forearm’s length in, so it had to be close. “Stall her,” he said. “I’ll get in and grab the goods.”

“Don’t grab,” I whispered, remembering that Zane wanted to get his hands on the tech. “Just wreck it.”

He shook his head. “You know what that’s worth?”

Trish hollered, “J.D., you got ten seconds!”

“It ain’t worth nothin’ if you’re dead, Tuck. And we need to disable it.”

“I’ll hack fast.”

I grabbed a fistful of his fatigues and got my face close to his. “Blow it up, Tuck. That’s an order.”

“Five seconds!”

Tucker’s face got red. “You ain’t my boss, J.D. Shove off.”

“Three, two—”

I stepped around the corner, pistol holstered, but my fingertips brushed the handle.

There stood Sheriff Contrisha Chin in the dying light of dusk. She was a slender woman, but stood with a steady authority that made my words stick in my throat. Her long duster swayed gently in the night breeze and her fitted leather vest looked far too perfect to be the proper gear of a working person. It was hard to tell how much of her was still flesh and bone, but her slender mechanical fingers rested comfortably on the custom-formed handle of a sidearm.

“Hands up,” Trish said. The sound of her voice felt like broken glass in my spine. It was an irritating combination of privilege and pitch. “I don’t know what your deal is here, J.D., but it’s done.”

I didn’t put my hands up.

She drew her weapon.

Mine was up just as fast.

Our eyes met and seconds ticked.

“Drop the weapon,” she said. Her voice, though full of authority, had a quiver in it.

“Drop yours, Sheriff.”

Long seconds passed. The timbre of drunken singing came from the saloon and in the distance I could hear the desert coming to life with owls and the things that run from them. Behind me, around the corner, I heard a long creak of metal bending. Tucker was inside, I figured. So in a few seconds, there ought to be an explosion.

“You won’t shoot,” I said.

She blinked.

“Neither will I, though.” I lowered my weapon. “This isn’t what you think. There’s something going on here that…”

Behind her, in the yellow light cast from the window of the tavern, a man sat in a rocking chair. I had to blink a few times to understand what was happening, but once it clicked, I holstered my weapon.

Two images of the man hit my brain at the same time. In fact, the town itself—what I could see of it—seemed to have a dual nature. My left eye picked up what it always had. There wasn’t any fancy augmentation and it hadn’t been hijacked by Zane’s tech. The right eye saw something entirely different.

To the right eye, the town was beautiful. Buildings had immaculate façades, with fresh paint and clean brick. The signs were bright and polished. The bank fit in this view of the world. It wasn’t out of place because both the architecture and the cleanliness of it blended perfectly with the building next door. The man in the chair was well dressed, with a crisp suit coat and a black top hat.

I holstered my weapon and held my hands in the air. “Don’t trust your eyes, Trish.”

Trish scowled something fierce and my mistake hit me. She couldn’t hear what I was saying any better than she could see what was going on. She might be hearing something completely different or she might not be hearing anything at all. Was that how it worked? Or did everyone hear and see the same lies?

Trish dropped her weapon and closed the gap between the two of us faster than I could blink twice. Her fist shot at my face—

I deflected the blow with my metal hand. The metal-on-metal clang rang out in the empty street.

She was too fast. Her leg had come down behind my foot so when I tried to step back I stumbled.

Instead of dropping, I rolled away, coming up with a backhand swing of my huge left hand.

I missed, but took her balance. When I followed up with a right, she took it hard in the stomach. It didn’t faze her one bit.

Damn, that hurt.

Two gunshots sounded from inside the bank.

The vision in my right eye flared. For a moment the eye was blinded. Everything went white as a sheet, then black as night. It was followed by a staggering headache that only got better when I covered that eye.

Tucker revved the engine on his six-wheeler.

Trish was staggering back away from the bank. My right eye was recovering, so hers must be too. The image coming back was normal, no longer the false overlay I’d seen before. She would get the real thing too, which was good; she would figure out what was happening. I ran straight for Tucker’s six-wheeler.

Only, he didn’t wait for me. By the time I got around the corner, he was fifty meters away.

My shoulders slumped. Mission was accomplished, but I’d been abandoned.

The gaping hole in the bank was right there next to me. I stepped inside, careful not to touch the edges of the hole where the wall was still being eaten away. A light flickered in the blackness of the bank, illuminating like lightning the grisly scene inside. The smell of burned rubber and blood hit me as I stepped into the building.

The vault door had been opened without damage or force. The massive black metal door hung loosely on its hinges. Inside the vault, a snake pit of wires haphazardly covered everything. Color was washed out by a flickering light, but the walls glistened wetly.

The thing in the center of that room had once been a girl. She had been shot in the head and the heart, but it was hard to believe that she’d even been alive at the time of the shooting. So much of her was missing. Her arms, legs, and half of her torso had been completely replaced with writhing wires. Her hairless head was missing half of its skull, with the back half replaced with lobstered steel and bundled conduits. There was a short console just in front of her. In it was a cube-shaped slot, the same size of my glow cube. The slot was empty.