“As long as they’re yours and mine, I don’t care,” she said, smoothing a loose piece of hair off his face. “But thank you for telling me. I don’t know though, those nanobots might come in handy for a kid, if they’re anything like I was, up to all sorts of idiocy and danger. I was maybe a bit feral,” she confessed. ”Did a lot of dumb things, embarrassing to think back on. I think that’s part of why my parents insisted on sending me to real school in town.”
“I like talking about the future, about a family in a positive vein,” he said. “I’m sure you were a great kid.”
Her face fell and she took a deep breath. “Yeah, kinda crazy to be thinking about kids right now, when the whole planet is overrun with the infected. But someday…”
Cody kissed her eyebrow, rubbed noses and then planted a sweet caress on her lips. “We need a dream to work toward so you hold onto those thoughts.”
Chapter Ten
He’d made pancakes and Tamsyn cooked eggs and bacon she’d brought in her saddlebags in the tiny portable stasis keeper. She’d also brought enough real coffee for one generous cup each so Cody was content as he finished breakfast. They’d made love twice more during the long night and otherwise spent the hours curled up together sleeping. After midnight the wind had begun to howl around the eaves of the small cabin and he hoped the horses were all right in their less sturdy barn. He’d gone out to check on them once the sun came up.
Now he pulled the feed from his drones to the forefront of his brain and projected the holo onto the breakfast table between their plates. “Much as I’d like to stay in bed today with you, the captain sent me up here to work and he’s going to expect us to show up on schedule tomorrow night. So here’s the herd I’ve been told so much about.”
Tamsyn leaned closer. “There’s the lead bull,” she said, pointing with her butter knife. “His name is Fury and we want to stay away from him at all costs. He’s a fantastic stud, great DNA lines, sired any number of amazing calves, but he’s got a temper and he protects his herd. He’s the prize of the ranch.”
Curious, Cody had one of his tiny drones go closer and focus in on the beast. “Big. Look at those horns—wow. How many head of cattle would you say there are?”
“Two to three hundred, depending how many calves were born and survived,” she said. “We’d hoped to scale up in the next few years. Fury has a couple of sons who would make good herd leaders but those plans will have to be set aside. Unless it happens on its own of course.”
“What do you mean?”
“Since we’re going to be allowing the herd to go feral and won’t be culling for sale, eventually Fury will drive out younger males. Until of course one comes along who can challenge him. It’s a rough life in nature.” Tamsyn considered the holo of the herd. “And when a younger male is driven out, he’ll do his best to take a few cows with him, to start his own herd. If a predator doesn’t get him first.”
“I’m glad I’m not a cow,” Cody said. “Sounds like a rough life unless you’re as big as old Fury there.”
Oh good, there’s the bell cow.” Tamsyn pointed at a brown and white spotted cow, followed by a gawky calf. Enlarging the holo, Cody could see she was indeed wearing a collar with a bell.
“Old tradition,” Tamsyn explained. “Bossy’s the dominant female and the whole herd will follow her. So after we get the fences down, we’ll want to nudge her, figuratively speaking, to roam toward the now open range.”
“Fences first,” Cody said. “I get it. How far are we from the boundary?”
“A couple of hours of riding. You’re right, we should get started. I’m falling into the rhythm of a cattle drive and we don’t have the luxury of time. We used to stay up here a week, once a year, taking care of all the tasks.” She rose to clear the table and Cody followed her into the kitchen area, taking his own plate and mug. They made quick work of the dishes together. The cabin was a mix of old-fashioned and modern features. He could see how it had grown over time and the generations of Wendovers coming and going. The whole saga fascinated him, coming from a rootless existence, with no relatives and no known family history..
Half an hour later they were riding away from the cabin, giving the herd a wide berth and heading south, toward a portion of the plateau which had slumped over the millennia, making a natural ramp for the herd to follow to access the other pastures. Cody was sore in a few spots from yesterday’s long ride but the nanobots kicked into a higher mode and began attacking the sites of inflammation.
He relished the open countryside and the fresh clean air. Ranch life was unexpectedly appealing to him, at least with Tamsyn by his side. He wondered what conditions would be like when they reached the veterans’ acres claim which was to be home for himself and the other soldiers. Not as beautiful as it was here, he imagined. Of course ranching was only meant to be their cover story although the team would have had to do enough of a job at it to convince people the men were serious. Now it would actually be their lives’ purpose, once the whole question of the Western Flu and infected had been settled and reported on. No one was ever leaving this planet—he didn’t kid himself. The Sectors was no nonsense and no mercy on colonies which had mysterious deadly outbreaks. Total interstellar quarantine, with a cordon of robo ships to enforce it. The government didn’t want an infection to get out into the starlanes and run rampant across the civilization.
Too bad for the individuals trapped on the affected planets. The Sectors might send a few shipments of relief goods, if there was any form of government able to accept them. Cody suspected if his team survived whatever lay ahead, Jeff might be able to coax their government contact to help. But all that remained to be seen.
“Daydreaming?” Tamsyn asked, doubling back to ride next to him.
“Thinking about the future again,” he agreed, choosing not to mention it was the bleak aspects of interstellar quarantine he’d been musing over.
“Fenceline is ahead there, by those trees,” she said. “Ready to work?”
“Point me in the right direction.”
He tethered Mercury in the small grove of trees next to Blaze, slid on his borrowed workman’s gloves and took the toolkit Tamsyn dug out of his saddlebag. They walked closer to the force fence, its buzzing like a horde of insects in the quiet air.
“We have to turn off these junction boxes, “ she said, pointing at a small rectangular shape nearly covered in the ubiquitous brush. “Make sure they can’t come on again by themselves, which this model is prone to do. Replacing them was high on my list of chores before. Let me disconnect this one and then we can split up to do the rest.”
Cody stood aside as she bathed the box in a ray from her stunner first. “High likelihood of snakes,” she explained. Sure enough a heavy body uncoiled and fell next to the box. She used a fallen branch to lift the reptile away and set it on a nearby rock. Then she opened the tool kit and selected what she needed to open the box, removing the fasteners one by one. The circuitry inside appeared basic to Cody and his guess was correct as to which bits she was going to sever.
“Now this is the final cut,” she said. “There’s a technique to cutting this one off.”
He leaned over her shoulder, taking the opportunity to nuzzle her ear and kiss her cheek.
Tamsyn smiled but scolded, “Pay attention now, don’t want to ruin a megacredit unit we probably can’t replace nowadays anyway. We might need to turn these back on someday.”
