I didn’t think there was much chance that my scratches would show among all those left by the maintenance bots and tool heads over the years, but I kept my mouth shut. Some things are worth fighting over and some aren’t.
The screen came free with relative ease. We made an arbitrary decision to divide our supplies into three equal portions, making sure there was a weapon in each-this against the possibility that one or both of us lost our weapons but remained at liberty. And, since the heavily armed poppers had contributed a total of five guns to our arsenal, that left each of us with a backup plus enough ammo to fight a small war-something I hoped we wouldn’t have to do.
So, having placed a duffel bag and the pressure suits inside the air vent, and having reinstalled the screen, we followed the bulkhead towards the starboard side of the ship. Since we were located near the barge’s stern, and knowing there was a great deal of space between us and the bow, it seemed logical to suppose that the popper or poppers were camped towards the entry lock or beyond. I had assumed that we’d climb up through one of the access tubes, recross the sky bridge, and retrace our steps from there. I even said as much. Sasha put me straight.
“Sure, Max, it could work, but tell me this: A popper escaped, right?” Well, where did he go? If he crossed the bridge, we’d have seen him.”
I frowned. She was right. The bridge was completely exposed, so we would have seen him. “How ‘bout the forest? Maybe he’s hiding in the bushes.”
“Anything’s possible,” Sasha said patiently, “but he’s wounded, and that makes it likely that he’ll head home. Wherever that is.”
Thoughts piled into each other as they tried to find a way through my head. The popper had headed home, the popper lived up towards the bow, the popper didn’t use the sky bridge, ergo, the popper knew of another way to get there. Brilliant, huh? But Sasha was way ahead of me. “The way I figure it, we should make another stash, work our way around the forest, and find his escape route. The rest will be simple.”
The rest would be simple? Tracking a professional killer to his lair would be simple? Was Sasha out of her mind? I looked her way, half expecting a sardonic smile, a hint of irony, but no, she was completely serious. I felt confused, very confused, and my head started to hurt. I wanted Sasha to be smart, wanted her to assume control, but couldn’t quite let go. In spite of the fact that Sasha thought circles around me, and was more competent than any girl her age had a right to be, she lacked experience. A sometimes fatal flaw. I fought the headache and prepared to assert myself when and if we found the popper’s escape route. We had just dropped a duffel bag containing a gun, ammo, and a third of our food into a large junction box when Joy pointed towards the other side of the bay, and gave the alarm. “Look!”
We looked, and saw what appeared to be a black dot quartering the area where the battle had occurred. Sasha kept her voice flat and unemotional. “The bastard has a spy cam.”
“Yeah.” I said grimly. “Or took control of a maintenance cam.”
She gave me a look, the kind reserved for occasions when I’m a pain in the ass, and gestured towards the grating. “Come on, let’s get the cover on.” I hurried to help. The grating clanged as it dropped into place.
“Look!” Joy said for the second time. “It heard! And it’s coming our way!”
We looked. The spy cam had heard and was coming our way. My reaction was to hide and hope for the best. Sasha had other plans. She pointed towards the deck. “Lie down! Pretend you’re dead!”
The order went against all my instincts, all my desires, but she gave it with such certainty that I obeyed. The deck was cold and the lights were bright. I closed my eyes. Black blotches floated on an ocean of red. I heard a whirring noise, air caressed my face, and the scene grew darker.
I felt the spy cam hover over me, or thought I did, and wondered what Sasha would do. The answer came as the darts thumped into the spy eye’s metal housing, servos whined as it tried to get away, and the whole thing landed on my unprotected stomach. Air whooshed out of my lungs, my eyes flew open, and my arms wrapped themselves around the still-struggling machine.
I was eyeball to lens with the blasted thing when Sasha drove a twelve-inch commando knife into the camera’s cylindrical torso. The weapon had been liberated from one of the poppers, and the combination of the saw-toothed back edge and the high-tensile stainless-steel blade proved more than equal to the task. It passed through the housing, punctured a vital part, and ended the machine’s life. The robo-cam jerked a couple of times and lay dead in my arms.
Or so I thought until a voice came out of it. A voice identical to the one that had addressed us before. “Thank you. There is nothing so boring as an easy hunt. I shall relish the days ahead.”
And with that the machine discharged whatever electrical power it had left directly into my body. I awoke to the smell of burned chest hair. Two faces were looking down at me. One large and one small. Both looked concerned. Sasha was worried. “Max? Are you okay?”
I lied. “Never better. How long was I out?”
“Twenty or thirty seconds.”
“Good. Let’s get the hell out of here before the sonofabitch sends reinforcements.”
An unspoken consensus carried us out into the forest. If the popper could send one maintenance cam, he could probably send more, and the canopy would provide at least a modicum of protection. I waited until we were a good fifty yards out before I allowed Sasha to break out the first aid kit and rub goo on my chest. It continued to hurt after she was done, but not quite as much. I sealed my shirt and we moved on. I was dizzy, sick to my stomach, and determined to hide it.
I wished there was something we could do about the clouds of metallic insects that rose in front of us. circled like windblown foil, and resettled when we had passed. They were like miniature spies, checking on our movements, and reporting them to anyone with the patience to watch. Our only hope lay in the fact that it would take the popper some time to treat his wounds and locate another surveillance cam. Or so we hoped.
The bushes were laid out in rows to facilitate the movement of various robots, and it wasn’t long before we started to encounter them. They came in all sorts of shapes and sizes, ranging from box-shaped contraptions that we called “leaf suckers,” to snakelike machines that slithered through the canopy and trimmed unwanted foilage.
I watched them carefully at first, afraid the popper would use them to spy on us, but, outside of sluggish attempts to move out of our way, the robots continued their work. But that could change, so I continued to keep an eye on them. The whole thing became monotonous after a while. Trees, robots, trees, and more robots, with no sign of the popper or his trail. Then it rained, a fine, penetrating mist that seemed part of the air around us. It coated the leaves, soaked our clothes, and slicked the deck. Joy loved the water the same way she loved everything else. Oblivious to our discomfort, she giggled and did cartwheels up the path.
The mist turned into a steady rain, and I found the blood shortly thereafter. Little brown dots of it, fuzzy around the edges, and dry prior to the rain. The drops came slantwise out of the forest, and a broken branch marked the point where the popper’s path had intersected our own.