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"Wherever that rock that came down last night ended up."

  A troubled expression appeared on DaBen's features. "You'll want to be careful over in that part of the mountains, then, my friend. I saw that rock come down. Looked like it landed in 'Chine territory."

  "That's what I thought too. I hope we're both wrong." Stampede clapped the man on the shoulder, "Neither mischief nor murder, fellow traveler. May your ways only find mercy and mother's milk on the trade roads."

  "I wish the same for you and yours, scout." DaBen called the children to him then got them situated on the pack animal amid the rolls of food and water. He talked to them, already telling them stories as he led them back toward Blossom Heat. The two little girls waved to Daisy.

  Riley joined Hella. "What is the 'Chine territory?"

  Hella pulled herself up onto Daisy back and took up the reins. "A bad place to be. Let's hope he's wrong."

  CHAPTER 14

  As they closed on the impact area, Hella surveyed the damage. The meteorite had come close enough to the ground on its trajectory to set the tops of trees on fire. Several of them had burned and blackened leaves and branches at the top.

  She guided Daisy from the trade road and headed down toward the burn scar that ran in a straight line. The damage was only twenty meters across and grew steadily smaller.

  "Whatever it was cooled as it went through the trees." Hella ducked under a low-hanging branch. "Not completely but the damage is lessening."

  "Left plenty of sign for anyone that wanted to follow it." Stampede sounded grouchy.

  Hella knew part of her partner's mood came from not being able to do more for DaBen and the three orphans the old man had taken on. If they reached Blossom Heat, Faust would take care of them. But Stampede and Hella wouldn't know how that turned out for a long time. That was part of life on the road. So many events and incidents remained unknowable.

  "Don't tell me Pardot isn't the only one convinced that we're going to find this thing in one piece." Hella guided Daisy around a thick tree where embers spilled down from coals still burning in the upper branches. Once she was away from the spill area, she took off her boonie hat and knocked the embers off the brim.

  "You seen any fragments yet, Red?"

  Hella didn't think she had. "Might not know them if we did see them."

  "Out here? With all this rain? With all that heat?" Stampede snorted irritably. "We'd have found something. Since we haven't found fragments, that means this thing has held together."

  "Did you see it come out of a ripple?"

  "No."

  "Could be a satellite. Those things still fall now and again." Hella guided Daisy to a parallel position beside the burn trail. They were into the wilderness again, and the going was slower despite Pardot's wishes.

  "Just got a head's up from Riley."

  Two ATV motors revved behind Hella and briefly startled Daisy as two riders quickly caught up and passed them.

  Hella grimaced in understanding and took a fresh grip on her rifle. "Pardot wanted to send his own scouts on ahead."

  "Yeah."

  "I guess he doesn't care much about his scouts."

  "Riley wasn't happy about doing it."

  Hella took a little comfort from that. At least Riley was getting trainable.

  An hour farther on, the destruction got worse. The path narrowed to ten meters, and the trees were broken and burned to within five meters from the ground. A little later the burn area chopped the tree stumps down to a little more than two meters.

  By that time, Hella could see the impact area over the tops of the ruined trees.

  The meteorite had slammed into a hillside and scattered red dirt in all directions. The surrounding landscape appeared covered in a cayenne coating. The impact had blown over the trees in all directions. Some of them lay uprooted and scorched. Closer in to the impact site, black ash mixed in with the red dirt. The stink of wood smoke and charred flesh thickened the air. The breeze followed the burn scar and blew fast enough to raise dust devils and ruffle the leaves.

  "Do you see it?" Hella took a fresh grip on her rifle.

  "Yeah. You seen any sign of Riley's scouts?"

  Hella glanced at the width of the burn scar. Less than a minute later, she spotted the thick tire treads from the ATVs. The vehicles had run in single-file formation, one set of tracks running right over the top of the first set of tracks.

  Stupid. They should have stayed spread out. Less chance of being surprised by the same person or group.

  "I found tracks but I don't see any of the guards."

  "I wouldn't think they'd have left the impact area."

  Hella didn't either.

  Only a few minutes later, Hella reined in at ground zero. She stared into the deep crater in the hillside and wondered what had struck. She didn't know because whatever had hit was no longer there.

  Four of Riley's security guards arrived on their ATVs. They stayed encased in the hardshells and kept weapons ready to hand.

  "It's gone?" Stampede sounded a little irritated even though she knew he'd been expecting that.

  "Yeah."

  "Someone took it."

  "Unless it got up and walked off on its own. Tell Riley to pull his men back while I take a look around. They're ruining whatever sign might be left. If someone took whatever it was that landed here, there has to be a trail." Hella slid down off Daisy and dropped the reins to the ground. She left the rifle in its scabbard on the saddle. She was in close quarters and would rather depend on her own weapons.

  One of the security guards' face shields popped open. He looked tense. "Where is it?"

  "You should ask Dr. Trammell. She's the precog. Now get back and let me look around."

  "I'm not going to—" The man stopped talking, listened for a moment, then turned back to his teammates. Together, they all moved back.

  Hella ignored them and concentrated on the area. Land told a story. It was like a blank page, and anything that happened there, whether from a person or animal or climate condition, left the story written on the landscape.

  The crater was roughly three meters wide, an ellipse that lay almost horizontal on the axis. It was almost that deep as well. Under the thin layer of red dirt, the stones making up the Buckled Mountains had cracked and crumbled. Millions of years earlier, an ocean had formed over the Redblight and left behind a layer of limestone and sandstone. The ground held the footprints well because most of the recent rainfall had drained through the karst. The soluble bedrock was composed mostly of limestone and allowed quick drainage into the aquifer below. The natural spring water fed a nearby lake.

  Closer inspection revealed metallic smears against the coarse rock. But it was a metal construct that was strong enough to keep from burning up as it hurtled across the atmosphere.

  A lot of footprints crisscrossed the ground. Many of them showed bare feet, not shod ones. That immediately made Hella more tense when she thought about the 'Chine. It looked like them. The 'Chine weren't known for the stylish way they dressed.

  Moving out from the empty ground zero site, Hella continued circling the area, picking up transient bits and pieces from recent travelers as well as older ones. She found a horseshoe nail, brass casings that she immediately picked up for salvage, and coals from fires where someone had camped there.

  "Hella." Stampede didn't sound antsy, but Hella knew Pardot was probably giving him an earful.

  "I've found a trail." Hella squatted and eyed the line of tracks under a layer of loose sand. "Whoever took the meteorite tried to cover their sign."

  "But you have it."

  "I have it." Hella stood and went back for Daisy. She tied the big lizard's reins to the saddle pommel and commanded her to follow. They weren't going to be invisible that way, but Daisy would alert her to other presences if she missed it while tracking the covered impressions.

  "I'm coming to you."

  Hella relaxed at that. Having Daisy to watch over her was helpful, and even Riley's people in hardsh
ells would at least provide primary targets, but she was most comfortable with Stampede at her back.

  The twin trails led down into the wilderness. After the first two hundred meters, the people who had taken the meteorite hadn't bothered to sweep their tracks. Trailing them became easier. Hella could almost jog and track at the same time.

  "Some kind of sled?" Riley paced Stampede, both of them to the left of Daisy.

  Stampede kept his head moving, tracking motion all around them. Shadows danced constantly across the ground, and the moving grasses made spotting anyone lying in wait along the impromptu trail difficult.

  Hella pushed her fear aside and concentrated on her tracking skills. That was one area where her abilities transcended Stampede's.

  "Yeah. A sled." Stampede kept his voice low.

  "Why didn't they use a vehicle?"

  "Because the 'Chine don't frequent trade camps and they're too mobile to set up stills to make their own fuel."

  "They're primitives?"

  Stampede snorted derisively. "Not like anything you've ever seen before."

  "Then what are they?"

  "Machine people. 'Chines."

  Riley glanced at Hella. "You mean with nanobots?"

  "No. I mean cyborgs. The way the story goes, there was a group of military survivors here or in Texas that tried to hide out after the collider self-destructed. They remained in lockdown for a few generations, till all their stockpiles were gone, before coming back out into the world. By that time they were inbred and physically deformed. They fixed what they could with military prosthetics. One of the military detachments was a medical unit working on next-gen bionics and neural mapping. So maybe things turned out better than they would have otherwise. But the way things turned out was pretty horrifying."

  "How?"

  "Intellectually the 'Chine aren't the brightest people these days. Worst case scenario, they're barely above animal intelligence. Every now and again, a genius shows up, a genetic joker in the deck, and keeps the 'Chine together. They've got baseline survival code hardwired into their nervous systems—kind of an auxiliary brain. They call it ApZero."

  "Application Zero?"

  "Don't know. You don't get much of a chance for discussion with the 'Chine. If they catch you, they eat you."

  "Cannibals?" Riley's face inside the open face shield pinched.

  "Not the way they see it. They don't eat anyone else who is a 'Chine. People that aren't one of them are fair game." Stampede shrugged and adjusted his rifle. "They're brutal and they're mean, and if they've got the meteorite, we're going to have a hard time getting it back." He looked at Riley. "My question is this: Why would the 'Chine want whatever landed back there? They only value salvage. Vehicles. Devices. Electronic as well as fuel powered. Your meteorite had to fit somewhere in that."

  "Not my meteorite." Riley glanced away from Stampede and shook his head. "And I'm not the one you can be asking questions like that of."

  "Pardot's not going to give us any straight answers."

  Riley remained closemouthed.

  "Then tell me this: Is what we're after dangerous?"

  "It hasn't killed the 'Chine yet, has it?"

  The trail led over rocky ground and didn't follow a trade route or path. The going got tougher for the land vehicles. Riley had even given up on his ATV and let one of his security men shepherd it for him.

  "We're getting ahead of the group." Riley paused at the top of a rise beside Hella and Stampede and pointed back behind them. The rest of the expedition was almost three hundred meters to the rear. Much of the time they were invisible, and only the continued grinding and groaning of the vehicles let Hella know they were there.

  "The trail's getting more fresh." Hella pointed at the parallel tracks cut through the soft loam. They were close enough that the exposed earth hadn't had time to dry out. When she put her finger into the earth, black and red granules stuck to her skin. "We're gaining."

  Stampede glanced around. "Because we're faster than they are? Or because we're getting close to where these things are currently calling home?"

  Due to their nomadic nature, the 'Chine didn't stay in any one area long, but they haunted the trade routes to seize goods and machines. Thankfully their numbers were limited by the fact that everyone—traders as well as brigands—hunted them to extinction along the trade roads when they could. The 'Chine were dangerous.

  Riley gazed down at the damp earth on Hella's finger. He didn't look happy. "We should wait."

  "If we wait for the expedition to catch up, we're letting the 'Chine get ahead again." Stampede sipped water from his canteen and replaced the cap. He gazed around at the sky. "It'll be getting dark in another couple hours. If we don't catch them before then, they'll get away."

  "Why? Won't they be stopping too?"

  "Maybe. They don't have to. 'Chine can walk for days. It's what makes them so hard to kill. With their eyesight, it doesn't matter if it's night or day. And if you follow them too far into the wilderness, use up too much of your ammunition and reserves, they'll dog you all the way back to safety. If you don't have enough to make it back, or if they have time, they'll kill you and pick your bones clean."

  "What do you think we should do?"

  "Let the caravan keep rolling for now while we forge on ahead. That way when we make camp, we'll know if the 'Chine are around"

  "All right."

  While Riley radioed back to his people, Hella took the lead again.

  Almost two hours later, when the sun was sinking into the west and had already gone into hiding behind the thick forest, the ground gave way under Hella's foot and she knew she'd stepped into a trap. She morphed her hands into weapons as she yanked her foot back. "Spider-hole!"

  Before she'd had time to complete the warning, the ground erupted all around them and the 'Chine burst out of the hiding places. The half human-half cybernetic creatures attacked without a word. They kept in constant communication by their ApZeroes, and they functioned like a hive mind during joint operations. There was some speculation that the ApZero near-AI had hit an event horizon and become a functioning entity, but none of the 'Chine questioned had ever verified that.

  Hella threw her hands out in front of her and fired at the 'Chine clawing out of the hole at her side. The thing had once been a man. Or at least, it had been most of a man. Both flesh and blood legs had either been too deformed to remain or they'd never been there at all. The 'Chine sat on a flat surface with three metal legs with knees that articulated a full three hundred sixty degrees. A prosthesis ending in a flamethrower took the place of its right arm. Its right eye was a targeting sensor that glowed red in the fading light.

  Living in caves and a steady diet of human flesh had turned the 'Chine's skin color yellow. There was little muscle tone because the external servos that instantly reminded Hella of Pardot did most of the work. The cruel mouth, cupped by a metal brace under the jaw that tied into the one encircling its head, grinned. Saliva dripped down the malformed chin.

  A line of fire jetted from the flamethrower straight at Hella.

  CHAPTER 15

  Hella dodged to one side while furnace heat blasted into her and left her feeling as though she'd been parboiled. Her burst of .50-caliber bullets smashed into the 'Chine's face, turning it into an instant ruin of blood, flesh, and cybernetic garbage. Incredibly the mechanical humanoid swayed unsteadily then balanced on its legs. The meat body above it was dead, though. Hella had no doubt about that. But she was astonished to see the flamethrower start tracking her again.

  A woman, or at least something that had at one time been feminine, ran forward with two buzz saw arms extended. Before the creature covered half the distance to Hella, the thing exploded. Hella recognized the detonation of Stampede's rifle and knew he'd saved her. She stared at the monstrosity with the flamethrower, looking for the recognizable lump of its ApZero, finally spotting it on the dead thing's left shoulder. She fired again, taking more deliberate aim.

 
The bullets slammed through the thin flesh and ripped into the fist-sized cluster of cybernetic parts, scattering them in all directions in a spray of blood. To her left, Daisy reared back and brought both forepaws crashing down on another 'Chine. When she took her paws back, only bloody meat paste, mechanical parts, and hydraulic fluid remained. She reached down and caught another in her jaws then lifted it from its feet and slammed it against the nearest boulder. A leg and an arm fell off the lizard's opponent.

  "They've formed a hive mind." Hella jumped and rolled away as one of the 'Chine leveled an autopistol at her and opened up. Rounds cut the air and ripped into the earth where she'd been only a moment before. She came up on one knee, hands in front of her, willing her rounds to go as big as she could make them.

  The large-caliber bullets smashed into the face of a 'Chine armed, literally, with a rocket launcher and drove it four stuttering steps backward. The thing continued fighting against the damage until Hella's next round plowed through the ApZero and rendered it inert.

  Two 'Chine clawed at Riley, overpowering him with their strength but unable to penetrate the hardshell with their projectile weapons. Riley buttstroked one of them in the face with his rifle, twisting the creature's head around at least one hundred eighty degrees. The 'Chine stood transfixed, its eyes blank. Then a green glow relit the pupils, and it twisted its head the rest of the way around to face Riley again. It raised its left arm, which opened and exposed a long drill.

  Hella took aim and fired into the ApZero node that occupied a space to the right of its spine. The node shattered and the creature stumbled back before sinking down into a bloody heap.

  Fighting panic, Riley thrust his rifle barrel into the next 'Chine's open mouth and pulled the trigger. The bullets instantly killed the flesh-and-blood body, but the hive mind kept all systems operational till the following burst destroyed the ApZero.

  Daisy pounced on another prey, trapping it with one forepaw then grabbing its upper body in her jaws. She tore the creature in half with a spray of blood and amber hydraulic fluid. As she tossed the top half away, both mechanical arms struggled to bring the rifle in line to shoot her while flying through the air.