Last Stand of the DNA Cowboys

'We'd look pretty stupid if we lit out for some place a wholelot worse and the thing in the nothings turned out to be nothing more than a bunch of refugees.'

Blaisdell snorted. 'We'd look pretty stupid if it turned out to be a bunch of raiders, armed to the teeth and barking crazy, with only the seven of us to stand against them.'

The Minstrel Boy nodded. 'He's got a point there. My mother didn't raise no sitting duck.'

Up to that point Lister Stent had not spoken. He and Jet Ace had been standing on the sidelines while the others argued. Now he caught everyone's attention with a metallic clearing of his throat. 'I'm afraid that this whole conversation is quite academic.'

Everyone except Jet Ace looked at him in amazement.

'Say what?'

'We cannot leave Palanaque. We'd be in contractual breach.'

'So? Who's going to stop us?'

Stent raised a steel arm. The gesture was almost apologetic. 'Unfortunately I would.'

Reave raised an eyebrow. 'And what would you want to go and do that for?'

'I'd have no choice.'

Renatta was shaking her head. 'What are you talking about?'

Stent did his best to be calming. 'Perhaps I should explain something. I am a very powerful and dangerous weapon and virtually indestructible. Because of this, like all of my kind, I don't have the luxury of choice and emotion that is available to you unadapted humans. Because of my strength I have been conditioned from my birth and creation to absolute obedience to authority. It is reinforced by chemical blockers. If I disobey a legitimate order, I start to vomit. After that, I go into convulsions, and finally I die.'

Renatta did not look particularly concerned with Stent's problem. 'So you stay. We don't have no conditioning to keep us here.'

'I'm afraid it's not as simple as that. I have been ordered to stop any of you from deserting.'

Reave slowly let out his breath. 'And when was that order given?'

'Soon after we left Krystaleit.'

'So Showcross Gee screwed us.'

'He did indeed.'

Billy thrust his hands deep into his pockets. 'So what do we do now?'

Reave once again stared at the reflections on the surface of the pool. 'All we can do is wait and see what pops out of the nothings. Once we know what we're facing, we can make a decision.'

For the next five days Reave and the Minstrel Boy made regular trips to the communications center to monitor the blip on the detector screen. Although it was still moving very slowly, if the lizardbrain could be believed, it was definitely moving in their direction.

'Can you guess at an ETA on this thing?'

The Minstrel Boy did not look happy. 'It's real hard to tell, but I can't see whatever it is taking more than a week to get here.'

On the fifth day of monitoring the object in the nothings it became plain that even the Minstrel Boy's prediction of when the thing would make realityfall had been overcautious.

'There's no mistake now. The signals have been too consistent. We'll know all about this sucker in the next sixteen hours.'

'It'll be here?'

The Minstrel Boy nodded. The pale green glow of the screen in the otherwise darkened room cast sinister shadows across his face.

'It'll be here.'

Reave's voice was very quiet. 'Damn.'

The Minstrel Boy turned away from the bowl-shaped screen. The messengers were already on their way to inform the beloved Master and General Zeum.

'You worried?'

Reave shook his head. 'I don't know. Maybe we've been watching this thing for too long.'

'All we can do is wait and see.'

'That's the worst part.'

Reave looked around. The communications center looked even more like a tomb. Most of the staff members were standing in a group on the far side of the detector room watching the two of them nervously. They could easily have passed for mourners.

'So what do we do now? Hang around here and wait for whatever it is to arrive?'

'I don't see what else we can do. I'd like to be around when the thing hits. It's most probably a false alarm, but I figure we need as much time as we can get to start motivating.'

Reave did not seem particularly enthusiastic about waiting in the communication center for the object to arrive. 'Motivating?'

'Motivating our collective ass.'

'What about Stent?'

The Minstrel Boy pursed his lips. 'We're going to have to sneak past Stent.'

'We sure as hell can't go through him.'

'That's a fact.'

Reave slumped into a chair, resigned to the wait. 'Okay, so let it come.'

'It's going to. Don't worry about that.'

Palanaque had a single advantage. Its stasis field was shaped so that anyone or anything approaching it would be tunneled around and forced to enter only at a single point, the break in the mountains at the very end of the valley, the farthest point from the city. Although its passengers had not known it at the time, the R1009 had come in that way. The entry point was right beside the upland lake that was the source of what turned into a wide river by the time it flowed past the city and eventually ran out into the nothings over the spectacular waterfall at the lower end of the valley.

The instant General Zeum received the word, he was galvanized. His reaction might not have been inspired, but it was certainly swift. A detachment of 150 hoplites with spears and shields, attendant epsilons, a malfunctioning portable communicator, and supplies for two days were dispatched up the valley. The first leg of their journey was by gaily painted riverboat, the kind normally used to provide pleasure trips for the leisure caste. When they were close to the rapids below the lake, they would disembark and make the remainder of the journey on foot. Overall, the trip would take them some five hours. Once in place they would stand guard at the edge of the nothings and wait for whatever arrived. Reave and the Minstrel Boy had long since given up trying to advise Zeum, so they simply kept their own council and watched the screen.

The wait took on the feeling of a vigil. After a couple of hoursRenatta and Blaisdell arrived. They were both a little drunk, but they had brought an epsilon with them, carrying a basket containing food and a number of jugs of the raw local wine. They had their weapons with them, and they seemed to have come to stay for the duration. The epsilon had brought along Reave's pistols and the Minstrel Boy's knife belt and AK 5000 as well as SG portapacs.

'If the moment of truth's on its way, we ought to be ready for it,' Blaisdell explained.

Reave looked approvingly at the equipment and the wine. 'Good looking out. Where's Billy?'

'Oh, he's gone again. No one home there.'

'Fuck him, he's tailing back into his old ways.'

'He's picked a great time for it.'

'He always does. Where are the metal men?'

'They're out in the city someplace. They seemed to feel the need to move around.'

The Minstrel Boy broke the seal on the first jug of wine. The staff of the communication center looked a little askance at their pristine inner sanctum being turned into a party place, but they appeared too intimidated to say anything. The hours passed, and the mysterious blip crawled painfully slowly toward the merge point.

Renatta was the first one to grow angry at the waiting. 'This is like watching paint dry.'

'So don't watch it. Go on getting drunk.'

After eleven and a half hours the object entered Palanaque reality. There was a brief flash on the detector screen as it made the transition.

'This is it. They're here.'

Renatta stared a little wearily at the now-empty screen. 'Do you realize that they probably watched us come in just like this?'

Blaisdell laughed. 'They probably weren't drinking.'

'Maybe they should have been.'

Reave stood up and stretched. 'Let's hope these guys don't cause any more trouble than we did.'