“But you aren’t after him?”

  “I’d like to get hold of him and talk some sense into him. I don’t like killing anybody, but he insisted on dueling me.” Hayden put his hand to his chest. “He nearly killed me. I have a scar from where the bullet hit close to my heart.”

  “He almost killed you, and you don’t want him dead?” Klev asked, obviously struggling to understand the sentiment.

  “That’s right. Like Fairy said, he’s not a bad guy. Not by nature. But I knew his dad. I knew the crowd he was exposed to. They made him into what he thinks he is, but he doesn’t have to stay that way.” Hayden motioned to the canvas the trike was hidden under. “The Custodians believe the trike is their property. It’s not safe to move it out in the open, at least not right now. I recommend you hide it somewhere else and forget it exists for a while.”

  “We will,” Jojo said.

  “I’ve got to keep moving. If you’re interested in a more permanent home, keep following the highway southeast until you get to Houston. Ask for Ruger or Sergeant Brink. Tell them the Sheriff sent you and he expects you to be treated well.”

  “A home?” Jojo said, her voice excited. “Is it safe there?”

  “Safer than most places,” Hayden replied. “I can see you on to New Eden from there once I’m finished up with the Custodians, if that’s what you want.”

  “What about you?” Fairy asked. “What about Marcus?”

  “I’m going to find the folks who took him. If I catch up to him, maybe he’ll listen to reason next time. If not.” Hayden shrugged. “I can’t make any promises.”

  “Thank you, Sheriff,” Klev said. “For saving us from them. And for the directions.” He looked from Jojo to Fairy. “I think we should take his advice and go to Houston.”

  “Yeah, me too,” Jojo said.

  Fairy bit her bottom lip, looking from them back to Hayden. Then she shook her head. “No. You two can go on without me. Sheriff, I’m coming with you.”

  Hayden shook his head. “I can’t let you do that. You’re just a kid.”

  “Give me a break,” Fairy replied. “I’ve been out on my own for four years now. I can take care of myself. Besides that, if you do find Marcus, maybe if he sees me with you he’ll be more open to listening. I don’t want you to have to kill him.”

  “Love,” Klev said, teasing her.

  “Shut up!” she growled back. “Come on, Sheriff. Marcus almost killed you. What if we could get him on your side? What if we could get him to help you?”

  Hayden didn’t like the idea of putting her directly into the line of fire. He also didn’t have a strong argument against her point of view. In Arcadia, Lincoln had established the right for people to make their own decisions as to whether or not to help him in his fight against tyranny, and thanks to Lincoln, he still agreed with that viewpoint. Besides, it was clear Fairy cared about Marcus.

  “Please?” she added.

  Hayden nodded. “Okay. But you need to do what I tell you when I tell you. No arguments.”

  “I will. I promise.”

  He looked at Jojo and Klev. “What about you two?”

  Jojo turned to Fairy. “We love you, but this is crazy. You’re going to get yourself killed.”

  “Maybe. But I spent the last four years wandering around looking for a purpose. This is it.”

  “I don’t want to die that way,” Klev said. “I want to go to Houston.”

  “Me too,” Jojo agreed.

  “I understand,” Fairy said. She stepped forward, embracing Jojo and then Klev. “I’ll meet back up with you there.”

  “Be safe, Fairy,” Jojo said.

  “I can’t promise that. But I’ll do my best.” She turned to Hayden. “I’m ready.”

  Hayden nodded. “Jojo, Klev, help yourselves to their gear, but don’t linger here too long. Stay off the main road if you can avoid it, and keep an eye out for aircraft.”

  “We will, Sheriff,” Jojo said.

  “Fairy, let’s go.”

  16

  Hayden

  Hayden led Fairy out of the granary and through the abandoned town—about a hundred meters—to where the Custodians had left the APC. They had underestimated their quarry, expecting an easy time with the three young scavvies and finding more than they bargained for. As a result, they had left the APC unattended, and like Hayden had thought, didn’t seem to have called for backup.

  It was an honest mistake, considering their training and overall firepower.

  It was also a fatal mistake.

  “This thing is way better than the trike,” Fairy said as they approached the APC. “Armored. Big enough for all three of us if we find Marcus. And it can carry plenty of salvage.”

  “Except it runs on diesel fuel that won’t get you more than a few hundred kilometers without a top-up,” Hayden replied. “The trike has its own reactor on board. Unlimited range.”

  Fairy made a face. “What’s a kilometer?”

  “A unit of measurement. You probably use imperial instead of metric. One kilometer is a little over a half-mile.”

  “Oh. What’s metric? Is that a Sheriff thing?”

  Hayden smiled. “Different upbringing, is all. There are two different systems in the world. You learned one. I learned the other.”

  “Which one is better?”

  “Metric is more consistent. Imperial is more arbitrary. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter all that much as long as the person you’re describing the measurements to understands your meaning.” He reached the hatch to the APC and tapped on the small control panel. It flashed red. Locked. He tapped on it again near the corner so it would display the manual override and then entered the master code. The APC was USSF made, which meant the code worked to open the hatch.

  “After you,” Hayden said.

  Fairy rushed into the APC, looking around. A bench seat on either side of the chassis. Storage both above the seats and at the front between the cargo area and the cab. She immediately began opening all the cargo spaces, finding most of them empty. Hayden closed the hatch and went to the front of the APC, dropping into the driver’s seat in the center of the cab. The wrap-around display was in direct line of sight on the dashboard behind the steering wheel, a bulletproof transparency allowing him to see to the front and sides of the vehicle. He spotted the trike as it cruised slowly out of the granary, the car it had been towing no longer roped to it. Klev and Jojo rode in tandem, Jojo searching the area for him and Fairy. When she didn’t see them, they quickly sped away.

  Hayden tapped the dashboard, entering the master code again to activate the APC. He had a familiarity with the interface and navigated quickly through it, pleased to find the comm channel was still set for the Osprey.

  “Vazquez, this is Duke. Do you copy?” he said, activating it.

  “Sheriff?” Vazquez replied. “I copy. You’re in the APC?” She sounded surprised.

  “Pozz. Sorry, Vazquez, but your team is down a squad.”

  “It was a fair fight,” she replied, though her voice betrayed her disappointment that Martinez and his Custodians had failed to kill him.

  “What’s your status?”

  “We’re in position up the road, like you instructed.”

  “Copy that. I’m on my way to meet you. Any indication the Fort knows what’s going on out here?”

  “Negative. Thomas has a gun to my head to keep me from blowing your cover too soon, traitorous shit that he is.” She paused. “Whatever. You’re still screwed the moment we reach the base.”

  “Keep that attitude,” Hayden replied. “Duke out.”

  He disconnected the comm, smirking in response to Vazquez’s upset. He admired her confidence in her people, even if he didn’t agree with the expected outcome. At least Thomas had a more reasonable head on his shoulders. Maybe he had been a Custodian, but he could see the forest for the trees. He understood whatever his group was up to with that alien rock, it was bad for everyone on Earth and most likely Proxima, and that made it bad for him too.

  “Who were you talking to?” Fairy asked, moving up behind him.

  Hayden glanced over his shoulder. She had found a plasma rifle somewhere, and had it slung over her shoulder.

  “My pilot in the Osprey,” he replied. “She’s waiting a bit north of here to pick us up.”

  “We aren’t keeping this thing?”

  “Remember what I said about range?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You ever shoot a plasma rifle before?” Hayden asked.

  Fairy shook her head. “No. Is that what this is? I was wondering about the knob.”

  “Pozz. I’ll give you the basics once we’re airborne again. Jojo and Klev are already clear; they took off for Houston on the trike.”

  “That’s good. I don’t want them to get hurt. They aren’t the same kind of survivor as you and me.”

  “Oh?” Hayden replied, raising an eyebrow from the way she lumped them together.

  “Fighters, I mean,” she explained. “Warriors. They try hard and they mean well, but they’re a little soft when it comes to doing what needs to be done, if you know what I mean.”

  “Have you killed a lot of people?”

  “Four. And they all deserved it. They all hurt me or mine first, or tried to. We have to protect our family, right?”

  “Pozz,” Hayden agreed, a familiar pit in his stomach. “Grab onto the back of the seat or go settle in the back.”

  He gave Fairy a few seconds to make her decision. When she dug her hands into the cushioning of his seat, he put the APC in gear and pressed down on the accelerator, sending it forward. A quick u-turn around a building and he brought the heavy machine back up and onto the roadway.

  “Awesome,” she said.

  Hayden accelerated, the APC’s engine rumbling as he retraced the vehicle’s route northwest. He activated the sensor projection, a holographic map of the surrounding terrain appearing to his right. It picked up the heat of the Osprey a few klicks ahead, parked a short distance from the highway.

  They reached the craft a few minutes later, the APC rolling to a stop beneath a copse of trees beside the Osprey. Hayden turned the machine off and let Fairy lead him to the hold. He paused at one of the lockers she had opened, retrieving a fresh fuel cell for the rifle.

  “Here,” he said, handing it to her. “Reload for the gun.”

  “Thanks,” she replied.

  He opened the hatch and jumped onto the grass. The side hatch of the Osprey was open. Both Thomas and Vazquez waited there. The former had his gun trained on the latter, though she didn’t seem as if she were about to do any harm.

  “Picking up strays?” Vazquez asked as Hayden and Fairy approached.

  “Thomas, Maya, this is Fairy. Fairy, Thomas and Maya.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Fairy said.

  “Fairy?” Vazquez said. “Is that a real name?”

  “It’s short for Fehrizad,” Fairy replied. “Cool ride.”

  Vazquez smirked. “It’s a good thing you already have a babysitter, Sheriff.”

  Hayden glanced at Fairy. Her eyes burned at the pilot, but she didn’t snap back. The restraint impressed him. “Fairy already disabled one of your people,” he said to the pilot. “I wouldn’t be so flippant.”

  Vazquez eyed Fairy doubtfully. “With your help, maybe.”

  “She helped me, not the other way around.”

  “What do you mean her people?” Fairy asked.

  “She’s with the folks who were chasing you,” Hayden explained.

  “But she’s your pilot.”

  “It’s funny how things work out sometimes.” He met Vazquez’s gaze. “We’re burning daylight.”

  She nodded, turning and disappearing back into the Osprey with Thomas following close behind.

  “You have weird friends, Sheriff,” Fairy said.

  Hayden laughed. “We’re making it work. Come on, I’ll introduce you to Zorro.”

  “Zorro? Is he friendlier than Vazquez?”

  “Much.” He climbed into the aircraft before reaching back to help Fairy board. She took his hand without hesitation, letting him pull her up.

  Her eyes widened, a smile spreading across her face when she saw Zorro. “Is that?”

  “Pozz,” Hayden said.

  She went over to the horse, who lowered his head toward her. “Does he bite?” she asked.

  “Only if he thinks you’re a bad guy,” Hayden replied. She reached out to stroke his mane and he turned his head, leaning it against her head and shoulder and nickering. “He likes you.”

  “I like him too,” Fairy said, giving Zorro a little more attention. “I can’t believe I’m going to fly in this thing with the Sheriff,” she said to Zorro. “The actual Sheriff. And his awesome horse. This might turn out to be the best day of my life.” She turned back to Hayden. “So, where are we going, anyway?”

  17

  Marcus

  It was a strange feeling, returning to Sanisco. So much had changed in the years since Marcus had left the city. It was more than the fact that the trife were gone or that his father was dead. It was more than his own personal journey through those years, up to and beyond his imprisonment. The planet wasn’t the same. The universe wasn’t the same.

  And this Sanisco didn’t look anything like the city he remembered.

  Captain Rogers circled the downtown area of Sanisco once before landing the Osprey in a clearing near a pair of trucks Marcus recognized from the convoy he had joined with Jade. He didn’t know where the rest of the trucks had gone. He hadn’t spotted them from the air. But it seemed these two were present to transport arrivals from the landing area into the city.

  The flyby had offered him only a glimpse, but it had been enough to get a sense of things. The tower where King had held court remained the tallest structure for miles around, capped by a pyramid shape beneath which Marcus had grown from boy to man. While the building bore a resemblance to his memories of it, like everything else it had changed dramatically in the years between then and now. During the original war, the building had been part of the USSF safe zone, off-limits to the firebombing and heavy artillery that had tried to hold the trife back beyond fortified perimeters. The original walls and the stacks of old cars that had augmented them were still visible from the air, but more recent fighting had seen the face of the tower burned, scuffed and scarred. Obvious internal explosions had blown out its windows, throwing debris across the streets. How much of it had come from the Sheriff’s intrusion into the city, when he had confronted and killed King? How much of it had come after?

  The landscape around the tower was his primary clue. Though he hadn’t gotten a clear look at the city during the passover he had spotted enough to make him question what had occurred in the years he’d been gone. The outer walls were still there, but some sections had huge gaps in them where something massive had crushed the vehicles stacked in front of them before smashing through both the original and reinforced walls. Whatever had blown through the barricades and then the walls in multiple places had done additional damage to the buildings around the breaches, where heavier debris created lanes of ruin leading straight for the tower.

  Some of those lanes made it all the way to the front steps of his former home, while others terminated early with unrecognizable dark blobs that looked melted on the asphalt streets. Marcus spotted military assets near a few of the shapes, the armored vehicles pulverized as if a giant hand had picked them up and crushed them like fragile toys.

  Another smaller lane ran through all of that, cleared of damage and debris. It snaked its way across the city from the tower, out to the clearing where the Osprey now sat down. Eager to get away from crazy Captain Rogers, Marcus unstrapped from the Osprey’s co-pilot seat.

  “Last stop, beautiful downtown Sansico,” the pilot said as Marcus stood. “Enjoy your stay, mate!”

  “Thanks for the ride,” Marcus replied. For all his desire to have someone to talk to, he had found trying to discuss anything with Rogers a waste of time and energy. No matter what topic he had brought forward, Rogers had turned it into something unrelated, usually with a connection to Earth history or himself. While Marcus wasn’t against a history lesson, he didn’t really care about the music, television shows or movies that were popular in the years leading up to the arrival of the trife. Nor did he care about any of the other events Rogers seemed enamored with, which were totally inconsequential to the planet’s current state. It had left him tuning out the pilot’s never-ending spew, growing silent and thoughtful while he prattled on without realizing Marcus had zoned him out.

  Marcus pointed through the forward window to a pair of Custodians waiting next to one of the trucks. “I assume they’re my ride to meet the Colonel?”

  “A-ffirmative,” Rogers replied. “It was good talking to you.”

  Marcus nodded, ducking out of the cockpit and crossing over to the side hatch. He struggled a little to get it open one-handed, slightly frustrated by the loss of his limb. Hopefully, that problem would be remedied soon enough.

  The two Custodians started forward when he emerged from the Osprey, walking across the grass and meeting him halfway.

  “Marcus,” the woman to his left said. “I’m Sergeant Apse. This is Corporal Vikram. We’ll be taking you on to the tower.”

  “To meet with the Colonel, right?” Marcus asked.

  “At some point, yes,” Apse replied. “I can’t be sure when, exactly. The Colonel is knee-deep in preparations.” She turned back toward the truck and started walking, leaving Marcus to catch up behind her.

  “Preparations for what?” he questioned, getting to her left flank.

  “How much do you know about what we’re doing here?”

  “Next to nothing.”

  “Then I don’t want to ruin the surprise. You should hear it all direct from the Colonel.”

  Of course. Marcus smirked. “Can I have a hint? I know about the big black rock you collected from Harvest. I was on the rig when it was taken.”

  Apse glanced over at him, eyes narrowing. “I thought you looked familiar. But you had two arms then, didn’t you? You killed two of my men.”