Hunter and I came out onto the surface again, surprised at how bright the moonlight was. Danny was a little way away, balancing his rifle on his knee. He made a ‘come on’ gesture to us. I closed the door behind us. It was a tomb, and I wanted to respect the dead, even if McBride hadn’t.
I bent my head down to my chest to speak into my radio, as we walked back to the buggy. “Raven, this is Longline, come in, over.”
“Longline, this is Raven. Good to hear from you, we were getting worried, over.”
“We’re all fine. How are you, over?”
“Bored, but the girls are doing a great job keeping the mutants away. Veraa’s a very good shot. Over.”
Veraa came on the line. “Raven, this is Hawkeye-Actual, I copy your traffic. Thank you, over.”
I laughed. “Hawkeye, Longline. Veraa, did Crash teach you to say that? Over.”
“That’s affirmative, Longline, over.”
“Very cute, Hawkeye. Raven, we’ve located the bunker, found nothing of value to salvage. Vig left a coded message for us, telling us to look for a cache to our north. On our way there now. Standby for further details as they become available. Longline, Out.”
Hunter had waited until I finished speaking before he started the engine. He drove alongside me as I counted my strides. A compass mounted on the dashboard kept us on the right track. At around a hundred and ninety-five, it was clear that I was going to walk straight into the gnarled, rotting shell of a long-dead tree standing out on its own, away from the forest. As I got closer and shone my light at it, I saw something scratched into the bark.
31-13
I didn’t need to fetch my notepad to decode that. I’d seen that number hundreds of times, often cut into trees or painted onto the corner of a building.
“This is it.”
Hunter cut the engine, and Danny jumped out of the tray with a shovel in his hand. He tossed it to me, and I started digging directly below the number. About a foot down, I hit plastic. I tossed the shovel aside and dug with my hands. Near the buggy, Hunter fired twice.
“Some mutants coming out for a look,” he warned. “We’d best not hang about.”
“Going as fast as I can,” I grunted, trying to haul the ration cube out. Finally, it popped free of the earth, and I ran with it and the shovel. “Got it! Hunter, Danny, we’re Oscar Mike.”
We jumped into the buggy, and Hunter started the engine. A mutant loped toward his side of the buggy; I literally grabbed Hunter by the head and pulled him sideways up against my chest, raised my rifle in one hand, and fired twice. The mutant crashed to the ground and lay still. I lifted my rifle off Hunter’s back and sat him upright again. Still laughing, he dropped the handbrake and hit the throttle, leaving the swarming mutants behind. We were heading downhill, deeper into the valley.
“Uh, guys,” said Danny, “the ship’s back that way.”
“Yeah, and so are a thousand blood-crazed mutants,” replied Hunter, wrestling with the wheel as we dodged around boulders and bounced down the mountain.
Through the binoculars I saw a gravel trail at the bottom of the valley, which led off to the north… and looked like it curved back around the mountain. “Hunter, two o’clock, six hundred metres. Gravel trail, probably left behind by the terraforming crews. Looks like it goes back around this mountain.”
“Roger.”
Danny let rip with the eighty-calibre, and several shell casings landed in my lap, which meant he was firing to the left of the vehicle. I looked left and saw a swarm of mutants pouring along the valley floor like a wave. “Djann. Danny, don’t bother with the Eighty. There’s too many of them. We just gotta outrun them.”
“Well, I do have a bunker-buster. Should I use that?”
I looked back into the tray. “Yeah, go for it. Aim for the very front row. Maybe it’ll scare them off a bit.”
“Hee-hee, I love these things.”
“That man worries me,” said Hunter.
“In-laws,” I said. Hunter laughed.
I looked up and saw Danny balancing the missile launcher on his shoulder. The flood of mutants was about two hundred metres away. The gravel trail was a hundred metres away. “Hang on, Danny. Wait until we’re on the trail and they’re right behind us. You’ll get a steadier shot then.”
He lowered the launcher slightly. “Just say when, boss.”
I thought about that. Boss? I’d never formally taken charge of this ragtag group, including those on the Raven. Even Vaughn was waiting on my orders, which was out of character for him—the term ‘loose cannons’ is probably a good description of him and his crew. At any rate, as far as this little sortie went, it was obvious that I was the one calling the shots… but leading a group like these mercenaries, with no rank structure and no formal affiliations, was a little strange… Still, as long as they were happy to follow my orders, there was nothing—
“Can I light ‘em up yet?”
Life on the Fringes 