Under Dark Sky Law (18 page)

She narrowed her eyes at him, looking him up
and down with a new appreciation of just how dangerous he might
really be. He smiled as he watched her processing the information.
“Don’t worry, even I wouldn’t be so foolish to try and mess with
the likes of Xero, injured or not,” he said.

“Good choice. I’m hurting, but I assure you,
that just makes me even more dangerous,” she said.

They both nodded their agreement.

“Good. At least we understand each other,”
she said and extended a hand. “Partners until we get out of this
mess.”

He thrust out his hand and they gave each
other a good shake. The dirty, worn leather of his gloves scraped
against her palm. “Partners,” he said. In the pits shaking hands
was just about as serious as signing a contract in blood, meaning
there was a good chance they could trust each other, at least for
the moment.

She walked passed him and got closer to the
group of survivors that had all fallen into the sand while they’d
been talking. There were at least twenty of them, many of which
were choking and gasping, or were so far gone that they were only
wheezing softly and giving weak coughs as they sucked in too much
sand.

Xero raised her laser and quickly shot half
of them in the head, spraying the remaining survivors with sloppy
chunks of brain and skull. The few that were strong enough to
scream did so but couldn’t get enough air into their lungs to make
anything more than barely audible cries.

She felt something cold against her leg, and
a second later electricity sparked through her body, bringing her
to her knees. It wasn’t enough to kill her, but it was enough to
make her swear and need a few seconds to recover. Looking up, she
saw Radar’s figure looming over her, his metal staff poking into
her leg.

“What the fuck,” she said and scrambled to
her feet, aiming the laser at his head.

“That was uncalled for,” he said. She
eyeballed him and the metal staff that looked like it was actually
a chunk of plumbing pipe. There were threads on either end of it,
but no other sign of more electronics that would explain where the
electric shock had come from.

“If you’re going to make a decision like
that, I’d appreciate it if you discussed it with me first before
acting,” he said.

He had something of a point, as they had just
shaken on being partners. “Sorry, I’m just not used to having to
get permission for anything. I’m used to being the boss-lady,” she
aid.

“I understand. For the duration of this
mission, I think we should reach a consensus before making any
major tactical movements,” he said.

“How in the hell did you do that,” she said,
her eyes still searching for where in the hell the electric charge
had come from.

He dug the pipe into the ground and put a
hand on his hip. “There’s more to me than meets the eye. I’ll
explain later, but for the moment just know that I’m an engineer by
trade. I’m good at putting things together,” he said.

She widened her eyes. She wouldn’t have
minded stripping him down to see just what he had under that coat.
“I’ll strip search you later,” she said and winked. He laughed.

“Anyway, sorry about killing your buddies,
but you know they had no chance of surviving. They were too far
gone. They would only be suffering and holding us back. I’ve
watched too many dome dwellers slowly suffocate to death in the
pits, and it’s not a pretty way to go. This was more merciful. You
know I’m right,” she said.

He got a faraway look in his eyes, and he
cast his gaze downward, a real sadness falling over his features.
“You’re right,” he said and moved his eyes back over the remaining
ten survivors. “I think there’s still hope for the rest of these
people if we can get them to Gila Bend in time,” he said.

They were rough looking, but from her
experience if they’d survived this long and were still breathing
like they were, there was a chance for them to recover if they
could make it to a more oxygenated environment before the dawn rose
on a new day.

“Well, I’m not exactly thrilled about the
idea of spending the night out in the dead zone, so if you’ve got
another idea, I’m all ears,” she said.

He smiled and patted the dark leather
satchel. “I think I can arrange something,” he said.

CHAPTER 14

She didn’t believe in magic, but this guy
seemed like he was just a few rungs below being something
completely mystical. From his bag he had extracted an array of
ropes, a small motor, and what looked like a selection of small
grappling hooks. After spending thirty minutes tinkering with the
set up, she had helped him attach the ropes at various points on
the crawler.

“Now, this is the pain in the ass. We need to
dig down to one of the anchors that kept the crawler from being
totally blown away,” he said. “If we can’t get to it, it’s going to
be really hard for my little winch machine here to have the
leverage to pull this thing up.”

He had determined that the second crawler had
sustained too much damage in the crash to be readily fixable
without significant effort, and he said the tiny engine would
probably only have enough of a charge to pull one of them out of
the sand, so they were focusing their efforts on the one Xero had
been driving originally. She was skeptical that anything so small
could possibly generate the forces needed to pull up the huge
crawler, but she was willing to give anything a shot at that point.
They started digging into the sand, using their respective sticks
to try and dig as far down as they could. It took well over an
hour, and Xero’s wounds were screaming in pain from all of the
movement, but at last they heard a resonating clunk as his pipe
struck the solid metal of the crawler’s anchor. She collapsed into
the sand in relief.

“You can take a load off,” he said. “It won’t
do any good to have you go out of commission too.”

“Thanks,” she said, not moving from the sand,
even though the gritty surface was irritating her already abused
skin.

From her place on the ground, she watched in
awe as he finished setting up the array of ropes and pulleys and
fired up the engine. It made a soft whirring as it started pulling
the enormous machine from its place in the sand. She scrambled to
her feet and backed away, just in case the thing overcorrected and
tried to roll back her way. Radar seemed convinced that it
wouldn’t, but she didn’t feel like taking a chance. Being crushed
by a steel tank wasn’t high on her list of preferred ways to
die.

“I’ll be a son of a bitch,” she said as the
crawler thumped back into an upright position, vibrating the ground
underneath her. Sand licked her ankles from the movement. Radar was
grinning with his hands on his hips.

“What did I tell ya? Good as new. There’s
almost no situation you can’t build yourself out of,” he said,
clearly proud of his little contraption.

“I’ll remember not to doubt you next time,”
she said.

With the crawler upright and out of the sand
trap, they were able to open the doors to the supply hull the rest
of the way and gain access to its contents. There was a lot of
miscellaneous crap that wouldn’t do them any good, but there was
more water, food, some clothing, some medicals supplies, and other
things that would be useful.

“Hey, there’s a bunch of albuterol and
atropine back here,” she said. “I can shoot your guys up with a
little cocktail that will make them feel like shit, but should help
keep them a little more oxygenated until we can get them back into
a dome.” He clearly cared about the survivors for reasons she
couldn’t really understand, and it seemed the least she could do to
pay him back for getting the crawler out of the sand.

“You have medical training?” he said, his
eyes twinkling with a glimmer of hope.

“I’m actually a psychiatrist, but yeah I went
to medical school, so I have some idea about what I’m doing,” she
said.

“That’s wonderful. I would really appreciate
it,” he said.

A little Alphamine would really help perk
them up too, but it wasn’t that kind of a run, and she didn’t have
anything like that on her. At least she would also be able tend to
her own wounds a little bit better. There were some analgesics in
the medical supplies, and the generalized burn that kept pestering
her skin might make her cave to actually taking some. She couldn’t
think clearly with pain plaguing her every movement anyway.

It took some time, but they got everything
ready to go. She put on a more appropriate set of mission
clothing—there wasn’t another waterproof suit, but there were at
least some spare military field uniforms in desert camo patterns
and some combat boots that were a damned sight easier to work in
than the loose toga that kept getting caught on things and had left
her standing naked in front of Radar more than once. He hadn’t
seemed to mind too much.

The sun was sinking, but she could still see
the black cloud that was the remains of Yuma shimmering in the
distance. It was still on fire. She shuddered thinking of what kind
of explosives would have been necessary to make that happen. Radar
gathered the survivors before the last light of the day went out
and crammed them into the supply hull of the crawler. There was at
least some minimal filtration in the cargo holds just to prevent
corrosion of any sensitive materials, and they would have an easier
time breathing back there once they got the crawler started again.
After shooting everyone up with a rescue cocktail and making sure
none of them died in the process, she gathered a toolkit of water,
food, and additional medical supplies to bring up the cabin with
her.

Radar had brushed most of the glass out of
where they would be sitting, and was systematically taking apart
the front of the dashboard trying to repair the radio.

“I’ve got the wiring fixed, but the mechanism
got soaked in the storm. It should work again once it’s dried out
again, but that will take some time,” he said. “It would be nice to
let someone in the flats know what our situation is.”

“Ah, that’s right. Gila Bend’s dome is
defunct,” she said. It had been awhile since she’d had to go out
that way for any runs. Back in the day Gila Bend had been a nice
small dome, another crossroads like Yuma, but its population had
been too small to justify the resources needed to keep it running.
Officials had decided that keeping Yuma open as a border transition
would be a wiser decision. It had been a recent development
however, and she wondered what kind of condition the flats were in
out there. With any luck it still had some of its infrastructure
intact. After such a rough week, she wasn’t looking forward to
dealing with the kind of slums they had in most of the flats.

“Yeah, been dead for a couple of years now,”
he said. “But it should have enough oxygenation left to keep these
guys alive, at least until communications are restored and we can
figure out a way for them to get back into a proper dome.”

He was far more optimistic about it than she
was, but there was no point in dashing his hopes. Knowing how
slowly the government worked, it could be weeks before any sort of
rescue mission was put together, and in her opinion they would be
long dead before that, even in a partially controlled dome
atmosphere. They weren’t adapted to be living in that kind of harsh
environment. Darwin could be a total pain in the ass.

They took a few minutes to drink some water
and scarf some of the emergency rations and water that she’d dug
out of the cargo. The dry protein bar tasted just about as good to
her as the fancy food she’d had at The Niagara and at Xed’s place,
and they made small grunts of pleasure as they slugged down the
tasteless food. Nothing like a disaster to make you enjoy life’s
small pleasures.

The last sun rays of day were gone, and she
switched on the cabin’s overhead lights. The light cover had been
cracked at some point in time, but thankfully the bulb was still
intact so that she could see well enough to sift through the
medical supplies that she’d brought with her.

“If you don’t mind, I can drive. I know the
way to Gila Bend, and that way we can get on the road while you
take care of your injuries,” he said.

She raised an eyebrow at him. “You sure you
can handle this thing?” she said.

He laughed. “I can rebuild one of these
things from the ground up. I’m pretty sure I can drive one,” he
said.

She shrugged. “Point taken. Alright. I can
take over if you get in over your head or something,” she said and
shot him a look that said she was joking. It’s not like he could do
any worse than the assholes that had crashed into her crawler in
the first place.

He peered into the medical kit and fired up
the crawler. “You know, you should give yourself some of that
morphine. It will give you a chance to relax and heal. Use a small
enough dose and you should be clear before we reach Gila Bend,” he
said after seeing a vial of it mixed in with the bandages and
syringes.

She stared at him and cocked her head to the
side. She’d been contemplating the same thing, but after so many
fuckups this week, she was rather reluctant to just give the helm
over to some mercenary stranger she’d just met hours before.

“Look, if we’d wanted to kill each other, we
could have had chances hours ago,” he said. “There’s nothing either
of us could gain from it at this point. We’re both businessmen, uh,
women…business people, that is. Shooting your partner before the
payoff is just sloppy business.”

He had a point. They were both useful to the
other in terms of survival. She knew these deserts like the back of
her hand and had connections with people in most of the nearby
settlements, and her reputation as a vicious fighter was well known
across the region. If they ran into trouble, he’d want her on his
side. He had already more than proved his worth to the point where
she was wondering if there was any way she might convince him to
join the Grease Weasels. Much as she didn’t like thinking about it,
if things didn’t start going better, she was going to have two
openings to fill in the near future.