To my left, Mateo strode to the small containment pond. He dumped oil over the surface and backed away. Razor McBride and Big Dick McKracken ignited the fire. Sparks whooshed out. Diesel and toxic fluids flamed high, burning together. The two humans ran upwind for shelter. Mateo dropped down on his telescoping legs and activated camo. He looked like a rock.
The fire was meant to confuse the Dark Riders’ higherups. It was to make them ask the question: Why would it still be burning unless it had some kind of new of form energy that simply burned off and on forever. They wouldn’t be able to resist that.
The fumes could kill us, but we had all agreed. We needed the burn to galvanize them.
The moment Mateo was down, everyone else dove into trenches or ducked against rock faces. The ones close enough to the camp area raced there and opened auto-camouflaging ghillie cloth, hiding everything they could. It wasn’t much cover but it would do.
Last one down, I crawled on my belly under a narrow overhang, near my equipment, tension tightening my shoulders and legs.Fight or flight. The drone could be armed. There might be Marsies—micro drones that could go anywhere, see anything. They could be armed. Mini killer drones, to fight humans.
“My drones are down,” Jolene said, “but I’m locked on. My scanners specify one drone. Camera. No AI. Human directed via satellite. No IR or low-light scanning equipment.”
I relaxed against the stone face. If the drone had carried scanning equipment it would have picked up our heat siggies with infrared at the very least. My earth mover put off a lot of heat that I had hoped to hide between the cold rocks. Now I didn’t have to worry about detection.
Jolene informed us of its whereabouts. “The drone is flying a circuit around the mine’s perimeter.”
It was silent, its auto camo paintjob making it invisible.
“It has begun a spiral pattern,” Jolene said.
Minutes later she said, “It’s hovering over the ship rings, circling the pond. Not paying attention to anything that might be out of place.”
Later she said, “Drone is heading out, straight line. I am tracking to final location.”
“They took the bait,” I said.
“Ten four, front door,” she said.
“What?” I asked.
“That’s Southern trucker for Affirmative, Sugah,” she said. “I think.”
“Replica facsimile Bug signal sent,” CAIT said.
“Copy that,” I said. I didn’t want to talk to CAIT. I didn’t want CAIT to be a thing in my life. Or be a thing anywhere. But life, luck, and nanobots seldom let me have everything I wanted.Hell. They seldom let me haveanythingI wanted.
* * *
Two hours later, snow began to blow in on high winds. The storm, fickle as a man, was heading straight toward us. In half an hour, the snow had mounded up mid-calf high in places and was sticking to everything it touched. The roads were indistinguishable from the ditches and the mine cracks. Travel wasn’t just stupid, it could be deadly. We were snowed in and no way would the Gov. and military try to reach this godforsaken place in this weather. All this shit had been for nothing. It was freaking cold. And I was furious at myself for getting us stuck in this mess.
According to Jagger’s chrono, in four hours, we’d have twometersof snow.
While we were still trying to create weather-resistant quarters, Evelyn drove back down the mine road.
All by herself, she had made the decision that turning around gave her the best option for survival. She had performed a ten point turn with an empty trailer, no mean feat, when the storm approached. When the snow got too deep to see the roadbed, Evelyn had parked, walked ahead and then back, had then driven to the end of her safe route, and repeated the stop, walk, return, and drive procedure, all through a whiteout, drawing on my nanobots to keep her on course.
During the entire trip, the snow had filled in tracks and smoothed out the evidence of her presence, her movement. And she never drove off the road.
I hadn’t understood it, but I had felt her using me as a homing device. Now, she was curled up with a couple of nameless cats in our makeshift HQ, keeping her nine remaining fingers warm in front of the camp stove. Her eyes were blank, her head bowed. Everyone but Evelyn had a job to prepare for the Dark Riders or to prep to ride out the storm. I didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
Making sure I was properly gloved, I patted her on the shoulder and said, “You did fantastic, Evelyn. I’m proud of you.”
When she didn’t respond, I figured it was because I was a nobody in the world she had once inhabited, and she didn’t need my approval. Or that she needed more nanobots, which I wasn’t willing to give, or more Berger chips, which I didn’t have with me. I patted her again and stepped back into the storm.
I strode straight into Jagger’s broad chest. He caught me and backed me into our aluminum panel, silk-plaz, brick, and boulder HQ, out of the storm. Ignoring Evelyn, he handed me my riding helmet, which I took with a sheepish shrug.
“It’s going to get worse,” he said. “The storm,” he added when I looked back at Evelyn.
“I’m not sure how that’s even possible,” I said.
