Outlaws: Assignment Darklanding Read online

  He made his coffee and went to the narrow porch that required him to stick his toes over the edge just to sit comfortably in the rocking chair made from fiberglass piping and metal slats. The first sip was too hot. He blew on it. In an effort to kill time and wait for it to cool, he stared out across the floor of Transport Canyon before the debris cloud once again settled.

  “Did you hear the wind last night, Maximus?”

  Maximus bobbed his head and snorted.

  “You like the wind?”

  Maximus rolled his eyes and looked away.

  Thad took a sip of his coffee and stared into a mirage just at the edge of his vision. It almost looked like two airships coming low and fast under the cloud of A19 and surface dust.

  He slowly, but very intentionally, moved his tablet to his ear to use it as a radio. “Fry to Jotham, this is a priority message.”

  No response.

  “I say again, Fry to Jotham, please respond.”

  He wanted to curse and realized it was the first time he had such frustration with the Unglok. When he gave his deputy permission to handle a personal matter, he had clearly stated they needed to stay in radio contact for updates. At the time, he had been thinking Mast would be afraid to ask for extra time that he or his family needed. Now, things had changed.

  Thaddeus stood and reached under his coat to feel the butt of his blaster. Taking a sip of his coffee with his left hand, he used his right hand to look for his extra charging magazines. The weapon had been more than sufficient thus far in Darklanding, but now he was longing for armor, air support, and his squad. Not a mirage, the mere fact that such airships existed changed everything.

  He couldn’t determine their model, or if they were military surplus or some type of privately produced ship, but they looked fast and heavy at the same time. It was difficult to describe how he recognized a vehicle was armored, but he knew these black, winged vessels were not freighters.

  Maximus stood and walked to the steps leading down from the tiny porch, staring intently. The creature, whatever it was, didn’t sniff or snort or any of his usual nonsense. Staring directly at the distant vehicle seemed sufficient.

  Thaddeus looked up and down the street, and soon spotted not only Ryan and Amanda, but some of the missing townsfolk. There were nine of them, and they were running.

  “We’ve got to get to the bunker and lock ourselves in before they realize we’re here,” Ryan shouted.

  Thad didn’t like that idea. Locking himself inside with no way to maneuver and no avenue of escape tortured his tactical senses. He shook his head. “They’ll know I’m here at least,” he said, nodding toward his ship at the end of the street.

  He sat down and allowed his fireman’s coat to fall away from his blaster. He put his feet up on the rail and sipped his coffee as the ships rushed madly forward. The closer they came, the more ominous they looked.

  Both airships were ground support vessels, designed to deploy a squad of troops each while covering them with heavy blaster and rocket fire if needed. From this distance, he couldn’t tell if they had numbers or not, but doubted it. On the nose of each ship was a sloppily painted white skull.

  Before he knew it, the airships were ripping across the main street, circling his ship, then landing on each side of his battered old junker.

  The first ship to hit the ground, dropped a ramp, and a squad of twelve soldiers, humanoid in shape, rushed out and surrounded the ship. One of them stuck a breaching charge on the door and blew it open. They swarmed inside.

  “I wish they hadn’t done that,” Thad said.

  Maximus farted.

  Each of the ships were equipped with telescopic sensors and other things he probably couldn’t see. He watched the main hub on the bottom and turret top of the airship that had not deployed troops. What looked like a black glass eye swiveled several times, then stopped, facing him.

  He continued to drink his coffee.

  Just shy of two minutes later, the squad emerged from his ship and reformed. A figure that had to be the squad leader gave hand signals, and they rushed down the street toward him.

  He finished the last of his coffee and rose to his feet, continuing to hold the cup as they surrounded him. A pair of the armored individuals ran out of sight, probably going to the back of the little dwelling he had slept in last night. That was a nice touch, he thought.

  “Can I help you gentlemen?” Thad said. “Looks like one of you needs to head back to Darklanding to apply for air traffic permits. And weapons permits, but I can handle approval or denial of those requests right here.”

  “You are sheriff?” a deep voice from the leader’s helmet asked. “Sheriff you sheriff.”

  Thad didn’t think the voice was real, and if it was, it wasn’t human or Unglok. Few non-human races came this far out. Thad’s money was on a voice synthesizer in the helmet.

  “That’s me. Sheriff Thaddeus Fry, at your service. So long as you do everything I say and don’t give me any trouble.”

  The leader looked at his squad, possibly checking their positions, maybe stalling for time. “Go back Darklanding, Fry Sheriff.”

  “Oh, now that’s pathetic. Can you be a little less melodramatic? I mean, the voice synthesizer is a nice touch, but I can tell you are human. So lose the helmet and tell me what you’re doing out here,” Thad said. “Without the fake accent, if it’s all the same to you.”

  Wind blew red dust and reflective A19 gas down the street. A weathervane and a brace of meteorological instruments spun on the science trailer. Most were out of balance and noisy.

  The leader removed his helmet without looking at the others, confirming what Thad thought. This man actually was in charge, not a body double. Tall and as human as they came, his tight blond beard matched his hair. Slightly sunburnt, his startling green eyes looked full of energy while his body was calloused and crisscrossed with scars.

  “The last sheriff was a lot smarter than you,” the man said.

  “How could you know? I am pretty damn smart,” Thad said.

  “He was my brother.”

  Thad rolled his eyes—resisting the urge to check and see if his dog-thing companion was doing the same thing. He really needed to learn more about his predecessor and why he was blown up. “Did he have a great sense of humor like you?”

  The green-eyed, blond-haired warrior stared in silence and seemed as welcome to conversation as did his dusty, well-used armor.

  Thad shook his head and looked down at Maximus, but his trusty companion was gone.

  “Your pig went into the storm. Must have a death wish,” the man said. “Do you beat the animal? It seems damaged…mentally.”

  “You have a name?” Thad asked.

  “Not for you.”

  “This is going to be a difficult relationship,” Thad said. “Eventually, I’ll have your DNA and fingerprints when I book you. I think it would be better for everyone if you would just introduce yourself and tell your crew to stand down.”

  “Go back to Darklanding, Sheriff Fry. SagCon won’t miss half the ore and exotics that has already been spilled over the canyon. These innocent townsfolk will get most of it because they know the area. We will, however, have our share.”

  “We’ll see,” Thad said.

  The leader of the raiders pulled on his helmet and gave hand signals to his men. They went house to house kicking open doors and searching inside. Thad, outnumbered twenty-four to one, made another cup of coffee and watched.

  When they left, he marked their direction of travel. “Maximus!” Thad called into the growing wind.

  The dog-pig-thing didn’t answer.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: Maximus

  Neither humans nor Ungloks were smart. They said one thing and did the opposite. Worst of all, they went down into the canyon where dangerous things hunted during night storms.

  He plodded away from the town, never looking away from his path because he knew where he was going. As soon as he realized the young human—a girl,
he thought—was alone in the canyon, he went to find her.

  The sun was high, so it wasn’t nighttime. There was no storm, but there was the dust cloud that shouldn’t be there. He could not decide if it was a storm or something else. The Thad-human treated the ground cloud differently than he treated storms and nighttime. It did not seem as though he could smell the foulness of the cloud that was neither a cloud nor dust. Not completely.

  Perhaps humans and Ungloks were smarter than Maximus. They could explain such things. But they still said one thing and did the opposite. Or hurt their own people. Or ate when there was no need.

  Maximus also believed they held their bodily functions in check for too long. Why wait to pass gas? Life was too short, even though the two legs lived much longer than Maximus would.

  He plodded into the disgusting ground-cloud wondering what the humans meant when they said dog or pig or any of their other words. How did they make such interesting sounds and understand the sounds of their kind?

  A sand dune that had grown during a night storm had claimed a motorized buggy. Only one wheel and part of the frame was visible. Maximus sniffed around it and did not detect the human girl called Ruby. She had many names, including skinny bitch, tight-ass rich girl, and prima-donna. Maximus, who knew many things he could not explain without his own words, did not know what any of those human sound patterns meant. He heard them a lot and that was all.

  He continued, never looking sideways or changing his course. Perhaps he smelled the girl, or heard her, or something else. None of it mattered. All that was important to Maximus was that he had no doubt of his destination.

  As night fell, he came across the girl. She had tied herself to a rock formation.

  Maximus thought that was a good idea and wished he could tie knots or use tools like the humans and Ungloks. The girl wouldn’t wake up, so he licked his snout and pushed it against her mouth and eyes.

  That always worked.

  She didn’t even flinch.

  Maximus farted several times. He snorted and made a sound between a bark and a howl. The effort hurt his throat so he resorted to pushing his wet nose against her again and again as he snort-barked.

  * * *

  Ruby coughed and gagged without knowing why. “Maximus? Stop that!”

  Maximus backed up and stared at her.

  “Don’t you fart, you disgusting animal,” she said, voice hoarse and dry.

  Maximus lay down and put his bucket head between his feet.

  Her canteen was empty and her body trembled from the cold nights spent without shelter. Wind-born grit had blasted her face raw. She remembered trying to eat sand.

  Maximus watched her tremble and shake for a time. She was poking at scrapes on her knees and elbows when the animal stood and walked into the thinning mist.

  She followed.

  CHAPTER TWELVE: Evasion

  “Don’t move, dog,” Ruby said.

  Maximus stopped without looking around. His attention seemed focused on his destination without concern for the airship that had passed over them twice.

  Ruby moved toward a clump of rocks without any hope of finding concealment. All she wanted was not to be in the last place the crew of the ship might have seen her. Maximus stood like a statue facing a direction she thought was east toward Darklanding.

  The airship came again, this time so low that she saw the glow of its engines as they flared for landing in the area the dog-pig had revived her.

  “Stay,” she said.

  Maximus dropped to the ground and stared at his objective.

  She heard him snort as she crept toward the strange ship. The distance was greater than she expected but not as much as she feared. Before long, she was lying on a dune watching a squad of armed men wearing outdated combat armor. They searched all the way back to the abandoned dune buggy.

  She couldn’t see what was slowing them up. Each time the mist shifted, she thought she saw them standing in a guard formation with their leader almost out of view from her vantage point.

  “The dune buggy is stolen,” a familiar voice said at the edge of her vision.

  She looked over her shoulder and saw the sheriff’s dog lying like a pile of rocks where she had left him.

  “I told you to go back to Darklanding. Let the local scavengers do their thing. Let us do ours,” one of the mercenary types said.

  “Can’t do that,” Sheriff Fry said. “Someone has to pay restitution for this buggy. It’s a total loss. I suspect she might have stolen my dog as well.”

  “Dog?” the mercenary leader said. “That isn’t a dog. You insult dogs by calling it a dog.”

  The rest of what they said was covered by the sound of four new airships sweeping toward the mag-train derailment. Ruby only saw bits and pieces. She recognized the white skulls painted on the fronts of each ship.

  * * *

  Thad played it cool. Maximus and Ruby were nearby—had to be from the condition of the abandoned buggy and the campsite he’d found earlier. He thought he could feel Maximus complaining.

  Where are you, you stupid mutt?

  He waited for the new ships to disappear into Transport Canyon without commenting on them. That didn’t change the dread he felt inside, but this was like playing poker close to the vest. “What are you looking for? None of you are miners or freight haulers.”

  “We’re the security team,” the leader said.

  Thad stared him down. “All right. I’ll mark this and head back to my ship. Not sure the Company Man will pay this much overtime anyway. I have to warn you that she’s likely to be upset when I tell her you’re here.”

  The man didn’t respond.

  He attached a locating device to the half-buried vehicle and headed back to Raven’s Haven. A pair of the mercenary raiders followed him for a while, then returned to their ship.

  “Ruby Miranda, if you’re out there, come to the sound of my voice. Transport Canyon is a dangerous place.” He didn’t think she would listen even if she was near enough to hear him. Maximus was definitely ignoring him.

  “I figured out part of what they’re after and I have to go back. Show yourself. I can take you back to Darklanding. Might even be food and a bath for you.”

  No response.

  He jogged toward Raven’s Haven and hoped he was wrong this time.

  Thad did not have any training as an investigator. Sometimes it was a good thing. He had read fiction during long deployments and security blackouts. As he jogged towards the town, he remembered thinking that cop instinct had to be a myth. At the time, he had just been looking to entertain himself and had let it go.

  Now his own bullshit detector had gone off when the mercenary leader claimed to be nothing more than security. What were the facts? First of all, these men had obviously caused the train derailment. Thad didn’t know how or why. There would be time later to work out the logistics of their operation.

  What he knew was that they didn’t have a way to scoop up all of the valuable minerals and exotic ores from the floor of Transport Canyon. Ryan and Amanda were already attempting this. Thad had a feeling they wouldn’t be keeping their loot very long.

  The mercenaries of Transport Canyon were going to make the townsfolk do all the heavy lifting. That wasn’t his revelation, however.

  Frontier types were stubborn and self-sufficient to a fault. Thaddeus Fry had seen bad things during war. He knew there was always one thing that would motivate a reluctant ally or intimidate a stalwart enemy.

  The welfare of their children.

  Thaddeus muttered curses under his breath as he stood where the town should be. A19 had descended all the way to the ground. During the prior days of his canyon adventure, it had always been more fluid—shifted by an almost pleasant breeze during the day and slammed around the harsh landscape by night storms. During this most inconvenient moment, a lack of wind allowed the slightly metallic vapor to fill the low-lying areas and render the town invisible.

  He put both hands on
his hips and looked at his boots. He counted to three, then looked up and around. Wait for it, he thought.

  There was no reason for climate change during his pursuit of Ruby and Max. Yet after what seemed an eternity, a cool breeze touched his face. He held himself motionless as though attempting to catch a rare butterfly on an alien planet.

  The cloud of A19 parted, revealing one of the prefabricated structures. As he watched in frustration, Ryan and Amanda hustled a large group of children from the bunker and toward his ship as the attack on the town began.

  “Don’t steal my ship!” He started running.

  Instincts remembered from his military days fired up his nervous system. He dove to the ground even as he heard the black airship’s engines roaring overhead. Red sand blasted his face, filling his nostrils and getting into his mouth as he covered his ears.

  He sprang to his feet the moment the airship was past him. Sprinting toward the unfolding scene, he knew he was going to be too late. He also thought he might be about to get his ass kicked.

  Children ran in every direction. Ryan was lying flat on his back near Thad’s ship, blood seeping from one ear. The thrusters of the raiders’ airship churned the mist into a manmade storm of confusion. Thad held his left hand up to shield his eyes as he squinted into the chaos.

  Blaster fire boomed. Lights flashed in the haze. A piece of shrapnel spun through the air, screeching like a bandsaw. He ducked his head and moved forward in a tactical crouch.

  “I told you to go back to Darklanding, Sheriff. I guess you’ll have to walk,” shouted a voice.

  Thad pivoted and fired without thinking. A blaster bolt striking body armor wasn’t a sound easily forgotten. He moved a split-second before several of the mercenary commandos returned fire.

  He knew without seeing that he had struck the target, but self-congratulation wasn’t his priority at the moment. Finding cover and planning his next move dominated his thoughts as he charged toward the corner of a squat, prefabricated structure.

  A19 mist began to clear for no reason that made sense to him except that it would be just his luck to lose concealment. An image of finding himself surrounded by heavily armed and armored commandos flashed into his mind.