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  “You mean like the EMP grenades not quite living up to Pardot’s description?” Stampede smiled.

  “We’ll end up getting run back into the river with nowhere to go.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking too.”

  “You know what the good thing is?”

  “What?”

  “We swim better than the ’Chine.”

  If the river were navigable, that was; otherwise, they’d drown. Hella decided not to mention that because she knew Stampede was already aware of it.

  They checked their gear and off-loaded everything that wasn’t necessary. Water went into a small waterhole left from the rains that was deep enough to conceal them submerged, followed by their rations. Stampede marked the nearby tree with a small trail flag, a bit of off-green twine they could pick up easily because they were used to looking for it. The Coyle River provided plenty of fresh water, and they could go hungry for the night.

  The hardest part was leaving Daisy. The mountain boomer fretted and bawled when Hella tied her to a small tree and told her to stay. Neither the leash nor the tree was strong enough to hold Daisy when she decided to leave, but she’d been trained well enough to be patient for a few hours. After that she’d get hungry and free herself as she’d done in the past.

  Leaving the big lizard was hard. Hella didn’t like leaving Daisy on her own. To everyone else in the Redblight who didn’t know her, and to some who did, she was a monster … or a source of food.

  Stampede clapped Hella on the shoulder. “The sooner we go, Red, the sooner we get back.”

  Hella nodded, ran her long gun across her back, and headed south at Stampede’s side.

  CHAPTER 17

  Full dark was only minutes away when Hella and Stampede topped the final rise in front of the Coyle River. Occasional gunshots still echoed through the trees, but the pacing had slowed down a lot. When Hella had first heard them, they’d been fast, and they’d been silenced almost equally as fast.

  The last remnants of sunset glinted off the hard, dark water that whooshed through the small valley at the bottom of the hill. Whitewater runs across the surface told how dangerous the current was. The river had swollen over the banks at least two or three feet. Through her binocs, Hella spotted the tops of trees and brush.

  Wroth’s Ferry sat on the north side of the river. Two stories tall, providing protection for passengers on the first floor and comfortable machine gun nests for the security guards, the armor-plated ferry jumped and jerked as the rushing water slammed against the sides. Four thick cables connected two poles on the south side and two poles on the north side. A fifth cable ran through the windlass that pulled the ferry back and forth across the river.

  The Wroth family had built the ferry more than a hundred years before. Since then, they’d charged people for cargo carried across the river and made a decent profit. All of the charges were for convenience, not to cut a passenger’s throat. There were other places to cross the Coyle River, east and west of the falls, but none as safe.

  Only a few crossings could be made in shallow water, and the nearest one was seventeen klicks away. With the rainy season on the Redblight, that wouldn’t be safe either. Travelers had to stay on one side of the Coyle River or the other, or they had to pay the Wroth family for passage.

  Hella swept her binocs across the riverbank and spotted a half dozen men and women lying dead in the mud and the water. “The ’Chine killed the Wroths.”

  “The Wroths have been killed before.” Stampede spoke matter-of-factly, but he kept his telescope trained on the ferry as well. Stampede used a telescope because they’d never found a pair of binocs that would fit him. He lost something on depth perception, but the telescope served him well enough. “Nobody’s ever killed all of them, and I suspect that all of them weren’t killed tonight.”

  Hella felt sorry for the family. She knew them well enough to greet a few of them by name. They were honest and hardworking men and women who had managed to find a way to thrive in the Redblight.

  And Stampede was right. The Wroths had been murdered a few times, but the murderers had never gotten away with it. Scouts along the trade routes had killed the murderers when they knew who had done it. Or a few years passed and the next generation of Wroths came along and evened the score.

  But the ’Chine weren’t common murderers.

  “This is our fault.” The guilt over the carnage stung Hella. She tried not to see the dead faces and hoped that she didn’t know all—or any—of the Wroths who had been killed. “We chased the ’Chine here.”

  “The ’Chine were coming here whether we chased them or not. Focus on what we need to do.” Stampede counted softly to himself. “How many ’Chine do you see?”

  Hella studied the figures trying to get the ferry into the water. “Thirty-two.”

  “I count thirty-four, but I might have counted a couple of them twice.”

  That was easy to do. Even though the mechmen tended to be somewhat unique in the way they were made, their sheer alienness made them look alike. With the water raging the way it was, the ’Chine struggled to get the ferry into the river. Normally the Coyle was only and one hundred twenty meters across, but with the river swollen, it was closer to one hundred fifty meters.

  “Do you see Pardot’s cargo?”

  Hella shifted her binocs again, sweeping the ferry’s deck. “No. They must have already put it inside. The sled is there by the high dock.”

  The ferry had three sets of docks for different levels of the river. The third one, the highest, sat back farthest from the river’s edge. At least it was supposed to. The third dock stood in the water, and the floor was several centimeters below the raging current.

  “Are we going to go down there and hope the EMPs knock out the ’Chine?” Hella sincerely hoped not, but she couldn’t imagine another way of mounting the assault.

  “I’d rather come up with a plan we can survive, Red.”

  “Me too but if we don’t think of something quick, they’re going to be across the river. We can follow in the ferry, but they can push us back to the Coyle if things go badly.”

  “ ’Chine function best on level ground.” Stampede put his telescope away. His voice was normal, as if he were discussing the weather.

  Hella’s stomach tightened because she knew that was when Stampede was at his most deadly and most risky. She also knew he wouldn’t risk their lives for Pardot and the expedition or even for the promised bonus. He’d liked and respected the Wroths. Whatever he was coming up with, most of it was about vengeance.

  “While they’re on the ferry’s deck, they’re going to be out of their element, more vulnerable. That’s when we’ll take them.”

  “How?”

  Stampede grinned and it wasn’t a pleasant sight at all. “You’re really not going to like this, Red.”

  Hella didn’t like it. She liked it even less when she belly crawled down the hill to the two poles set deep in the earth to anchor the ferry to the north side of the river. During the last five meters, she got soaked as she climbed across muddy ground and through the shallows.

  When she reached the first pole, the ’Chine were nearly all boarded. The ferry wrestled with the current, but it was holding steady enough. Hella still didn’t think it would survive the rapids in the middle.

  And you’re about to put it through even worse than that. Hella shut down her mind and didn’t think about that. She focused on looping plastic explosive around the anchor pole and inserting a remote-controlled detonator. Riley and his troops had a lot of firepower, and Stampede had borrowed liberally.

  The ’Chine started turning the windlass aboard the ferry and the vessel slid out into deeper, rougher waters. Shudders ran through the ferry, and the mechmen on her second deck held on tight. Many of them shifted and knocked into each other. Stampede was right about them being more vulnerable on the ferry.

  Hella hurried to the second pole and looped plastic explosive around it as well. At the same ti
me, Stampede broke cover and ran for the first pole. “Take your comm link out, Red.”

  That was the part that Hella hated most. She was used to Stampede being in her head all the time, privy to everything but her most private thoughts. Not having him there, not being able to hear him and talk to him whenever she wanted, unnerved her. Still, she made herself pluck the comm link bud from her ear and place it into the special container Riley had provided. She just had time to snap the container closed and store it inside her pants pocket when the ’Chine spotted Stampede and opened fire.

  “Throw!” Stampede drew back his arm.

  Hella fisted one of the EMP grenades and readied herself to throw. She estimated the distance to the ferry as twenty meters. The Wroths had driven their anchor points deep into land that wasn’t saturated with underground water from the river. She was within the effect radius. She threw and was dismayed to see that she’d overshot the ferry wide to the left.

  The EMP plopped into the water and disappeared at once.

  Stampede’s grenade sailed prettily and landed on top of the ferry’s open second deck. The ’Chine had hardly any time to react before the grenade blew up.

  Hella barely remembered to look away from the blast so she wouldn’t be night-blinded. After the initial explosion, she glanced back at the ferry in time to see a handful of mangled bodies blown free. They sank into the river without a trace.

  Then the second grenade detonated, creating a flash underwater and shooting a spume of spray into the air. Metallic pings sounded as the antipersonnel shot peppered the hull from the underside.

  Stunned, Hella ran her hands along her body, waiting to see if the electromagnetic pulse was going to do anything to her. She felt a momentary wave of dizziness, but that quickly passed. However, the buzz of the nanobots’ voices in the back of her head sounded louder than ever. Evidently they hadn’t liked what they’d been subjected to.

  Stampede had already leaped up onto the first cable on his side then grabbed the second, higher cable. He wrapped a length of chain they’d gotten from their gear around the cable and gripped both ends in one massive hand. Instantly the chain slid along the cable as Stampede’s weight fell forward along the downgrade of the support line. Sparks flew from the metal-on-metal contact. He gripped his rifle in his right fist and fired round after round as he shot forward.

  Scared of moving but more terrified of the thought of leaving Stampede on his own aboard the ferry, Hella draped her own chain over her cable and kicked off her own slide. The cable jumped and popped as the ferry continued fighting the current.

  Aboard the ferry, muzzle flashes on both decks revealed that the ’Chine hadn’t been completely taken down by the EMP grenades. But they had been affected because they weren’t moving very well and their aim was horrible. Still, with a fully automatic weapon, a gunner didn’t have to be good, just determined.

  Hella morphed her right hand into a weapon and fired, using red tracers for every third round to better target the ’Chine. Bullets cut the air around her, but the mechmen collapsed backward along the second deck as the withering fire took its toll.

  Stampede reached the ferry first. He let go and dropped, landing on both big hooves on the lower deck outside the enclosed passenger area. He kicked one of the ’Chine over the side then grabbed another and hurled it over as well.

  Hella came down beside him, greatly aware of the silence inside her head where Stampede’s voice used to be. She fired into the ’Chine and noticed that their movements were loose and disjointed. The EMPs had definitely had an effect. In fact, some of the mechmen lay on the deck, completely inert. The telltale green glow in their eyes was missing.

  Stampede pulled out another EMP, armed it, and shoved it through the window into the covered passenger area. He took up his rifle in both hands as bullets chopped into the ferry’s metal hide. He looked at Hella. “Blow the anchors!”

  Dizziness still swirled inside Hella’s head, and her guts churned. The nanobots’ frantic voices turned even more insistent, maybe even frantic. She grabbed for the detonator hanging around her neck, missed because her reflexes were off, and grabbed again. She wrapped her hand around the slim control rod, found the button, and slid a finger over it.

  The EMP grenade went off inside the passenger compartment, and the unaccustomed whirling sensation trebled inside Hella’s head. As a child, she’d never been sick. She’d been around people with fevers, some that had even killed a few of them, and they’d talked about the dizziness and nausea that had plagued them during those dangerous temperature spikes. She felt certain she was feeling what those people had been feeling.

  Before she knew it, she was on her knees, but she retained enough presence of mind to press the detonator button.

  On the north side of the river, two blinding flashes suddenly lit up around the anchor poles only a moment before the thunderous roar of the detonations reached Hella’s ears. Immediately the poles tipped over and the cables went slack, trailing in the water as the ferry bucked and twisted sideways as the current took it.

  A massive wave of cold water poured over the ferry’s low wall and deluged Hella. The sickness twisting like a gutted pig inside her head barely spared her any attention for the freezing temperature. Her arms and legs failed her, and her hands morphed back into hands without her willing them to.

  Off balance, she slid across the deck into a pile of partially functioning ’Chine. Her vision, something she’d always taken for granted, suddenly blurred. One of the ’Chine, Hella thought it was a young girl, which made the whole idea of the mechmen even more morbid, lashed out with a long knife attached to a third arm that sprang from her chest.

  Hella blocked her attacker’s wrist with her forearm and felt the blade slice her right jaw. Blood turned her skin warm, and she wondered how many nanobots were lost. Focusing, Hella turned her other hand into a weapon, shoved it into the knife wielder’s pallid face, and fired.

  Blood and brain bits blew out the back of the girl’s head. Hella’s next round destroyed the ApZero on her neck for good measure. After spasming for a second, the girl went slack.

  Panting for breath, still dazed, Hella forced herself to her feet. “Stampede. Stampede.” She put her hand to her ear then remembered the comm link was in her pocket. Wildly she glanced around and saw Stampede throwing another ’Chine over the side.

  The river ran unmercifully with the ferry like a dog with prey in its jaws. Caught in the current, the floating platform slid free of the cables. Hella watched the thick, metal strands whip through the air toward her, and she was barely able to go to ground an instant before one of them sliced the space where she’d been. It caught four of the ’Chine and ripped them into halves.

  Panicked, Hella looked over to Stampede, expecting him to have suffered the same fate. Instead he was on his back on the deck and firing up at mechmen on the second deck. His bullets drove them back, and there was little return fire because his adversaries were disoriented from the EMPs and the pitching deck as the ferry rode the furious river.

  Stampede rolled to his feet and changed magazines in the rifle. He thrust the muzzle into the passenger compartment and fired an incendiary rocket. A heartbeat later, smoke and flames belched from the interior of the ferry’s lower level.

  The ferry yawed again and nearly overturned. Hella barely had time to shift her hands back and grab hold of the railing. For a moment, as she watched a dozen of the ’Chine pour into the river, she thought the ferry would go on over. Miraculously it heeled back over and landed upright again. Hella’s arms felt as though they’d been torn from their sockets.

  As she gazed over the top of the railing surrounding the lower deck, she saw the world rushing by her. Trees and brush along the river banks became a blur then became a tangle as the ferry swapped ends again and again.

  “Get up.” Stampede growled in her ear and helped her to her feet.

  Morphing her hands back into weapons, Hella looked around and saw that they were th
e only ones left on the lower deck. Fire still burned inside the passenger compartment. Stampede charged up the stairs leading to the second deck. Still feeling nauseated, Hella followed.

  Only a few ’Chine remained topside. Evidently most of them had been lost overboard. A few lay inert on the deck, rolling in loose sprawls from one side of the deck to the other as the ferry rocked and rolled on the rushing river.

  Hella fired at one of the ’Chine that tried to aim an assault rifle. The large-caliber bullets stitched the creature from the left hip to the right shoulder and blew her over the side into the dark water.

  Stampede charged the remaining two ’Chine only to discover his weapon was empty. He swung the rifle like a club, catching one of his adversaries in the face and knocking it out of the ferry then grabbing the other one by its human arm and heaving it over the side.

  “Downstairs.”

  Hella read Stampede’s lips more than she heard him. The roar of the river drowned out all other sounds. She followed him, a little steadier on her feet but still struggling with her balance and the drenched metal deck.

  CHAPTER 18

  Three ’Chine popped out of the passenger compartment doorway at about the same time Stampede stepped from the stairs to the deck. He stomped his foot, and the deck quivered, causing the ferry to jerk like a fish at the end of a line in the river.

  The three mechmen went down in a tangle of arms and legs, and Stampede shot them to pieces at close range. Growling, he kicked the remains away from the door, paused at the edge, and peered inside.

  Falling into position on the other side of the door, Hella looked inside as well. She wondered if Pardot’s cargo had survived the incendiary blast then reasoned that anything that could crash to earth as a meteorite couldn’t be harmed by anything they could throw at it.