The Travels of Scout Shannon Books 1-3

Chapter 2

2

Despite the heat of the sun, the four of them seemed frozen in time. Scout held her slingshot raised high, one foot on the ground and the other still on a pedal, prepared to start rolling down the hill and let inertia take her out into the cover of the prairie grasses. The woman was still half in the tall grasses at the edge of the runnel, long shirt dancing in breezes that Scout didn’t feel. Shadow was trembling all over in nervous excitement, sheer joy at finding something to bark at that even Girl had to respect was potentially a legitimate threat. Girl had checked her forward momentum at the sudden appearance of the woman, forelegs braced and back legs nearly sitting in a patch of crabgrass.

Scout tasted the salt of her own sweat running from her forehead to pool at the corner of her mouth. She was going to need another drink soon, a drink and a rest out of the sun’s glare. Another drop slipped down, burning at the edge of her eye, but she didn’t dare lower the slingshot for even the split second it would take to wipe that sweat away. Her vision blurred, but the woman’s lenses flared so brightly she was still confident of her aim.

The first of the daytime insects started its scratchy song and others joined in until a droning chorus built around them, screeching louder and louder before fading back into a silence that was broken by Shadow’s resumed barking, yipping over and over as he bounced, crouched, and bounced again.

Scout didn’t answer, just kept her slingshot trained on the woman. The woman shrugged and bent forward, hands extended for the dogs to smell. Shadow recoiled, still barking, but Girl found the gesture entirely too frightening and ran back up the hill to cower beside Scout’s leg.

Scout cursed under her breath. The hellhound illusion was completely shattered now.

The woman murmured something to Shadow, leaving her hand extended until he finally crept closer and gave her a sniff. Then he sat down and let her pet him.

“Traitor,” Scout said. “She didn’t even bribe you with food.”

“I’m not looking for trouble,” the woman said. “I was hoping you’d just pass by and we could both go our separate ways.”

“What are you doing out here?” Scout asked, still not lowering her weapon.

“None of your business,” the woman said amiably. “And you?”

“The same,” Scout shot back.

“No reason we can’t both get back to it, then,” the woman said. Shadow was jumping to get her attention, higher and higher in those rat-terrier bounds he had. She laughed and caught him in both hands at the apex of yet another leap, keeping him still as she scratched his ears.

Scout pulled the stone back further in the slingshot as she whistled a high, brief note. Shadow pulled away from the woman’s grasp and ran to Scout’s side to sit at rigid attention, not even breaking when Girl swiped at him with one clumsy paw. He had lapsed badly, but he remembered his training now.

“I’m not looking to hurt you,” the woman said, less amiable now. “You can put your weapon away.”

“I don’t think so,” Scout said, keeping careful aim. Her forearm was beginning to ache but not yet tremble.

The woman sighed and reached behind her own back. She brought out a laser pistol but let it dangle from one fingertip, just showing it to her, not threatening her with it.

“You might as well, kid,” the woman said, spinning the pistol around her finger, catching it, spinning it the other way. Scout kept the stone pulled back. The woman spun the pistol up in the air, caught it, then slipped it back out of sight behind her back and raised both of her palms to Scout. “Come on, be reasonable.”

Scout fought back a slight trembling of her arm. She couldn’t tell, not being able to see the woman’s eyes, but she was sure the woman had seen. The corner of her mouth was pulling up ever so slightly. Scout released her held breath with a whoosh and lowered the slingshot. But she kept it in one hand, the stone in the other.

She wasn’t going to be as fast as that woman with her pistol even with everything ready in her hands. Having watched that woman spinning a pistol around she almost doubted she could release the stone from the firing position faster than the stranger could draw and shoot. Even if she got a shot off, the woman would just dodge out of the stone’s path.

The woman stepped closer and something in the way she moved said she was even more ready for sudden action than Shadow was in his full muscle-clenching alert mode. She looked like something more than human, or other than, and Scout didn’t think it would be possible to overestimate what she could do.

Scout fetched her bottle and sucked another few drops into her mouth. She probably should just collect her dogs and go, but leaving without knowing what this woman was up to would drive her mad. No one came to these hills except her and the rebels. Everyone else traveling between the two cities took the ferry around the point. Scout made a nice enough living moving things over land that people wanted delivered without questions from officials or intrusive inspections. She knew what she did was not technically legal, although she was very good at playing dumb when caught. And it’d been years since she’d been caught.

This woman had nothing sizable on her. She could be delivering a message, as Scout sometimes did, but she doubted that was what she was doing. No one dressed so finely delivered messages.

“Are you looking for the rebels?” Scout asked.

“Why, do you know where they are?” the woman asked, that slight quirk back to the corner of her mouth.

“No, no more than anyone else knows,” Scout said. “Everyone knows they’re in the hills.”

“Indeed, I had heard that,” the woman said. “But your local politics aren’t really my concern.”

“Local?” Scout repeated. “They are organizing to destroy the Space Farers. That’s global politics.”

“To be sure,” the woman said. “Local to this globe.”

Scout’s mind boggled. Where was this woman from?

“I can help you find the rebels,” Scout offered. There couldn’t be another reason for a stranger to be out this far from the cities. And she was so out of the ordinary surely someone would come out of hiding to confront them.

“You said you don’t know where they are,” the woman said.

“No, but I know where they’re not. That can shorten your search.”

“It’s kind of you to offer, but I’ve got this,” the woman said. “And again, not here for your little rebellion.”

“But you’re a Space Farer, aren’t you?” Scout’s eyes swept over the woman’s outfit another time. “You must be.”

“Everyone who isn’t a Planet Dweller is a Space Farer,” the woman said, not a question. Scout nodded but stopped as the woman shook her head with a sad smile. “No, there are many, many more people in the universe than fit in your two little groups.”

“But if you’re not from here, why are you here now?”

“I’m not the only one here not from here,” the woman said.

Scout frowned. Was she talking about Scout? Well, she wasn’t from the prairie, but the city she was from no longer existed, so it wasn’t so odd to find her where she wasn’t from, was it?

Or was she talking about someone else? Scout opened her mouth to speak when something on one of the woman’s belts beeped and she glanced down at it. She frowned and tapped it to make it stop beeping, then stepped up to the top of the ridge next to Scout on her bike. She changed the angle of her hat to block out the midmorning sun and looked down the path that wound through a steep channel snaking back and forth on the far side of the hill. Girl looked up at her, her tail thumping loudly in the dust.

“I need to get going, kid,” the woman said. “You’re heading back to the capital?”

“Maybe,” Scout said.

“Perhaps I’ll see you again before I head out, then. I’ll probably have some time to kill waiting for my ride to come pick me up. What’s your name?”

“Scout.”

“You messing with me, kid? That’s not a name, it’s an occupation,” the woman said, mouth quirking again.

“I don’t scout, I deliver. And Scout is my name.”

“Suit yourself, Scout.”

“And you?”

“You can call me Warrior,” the woman said, and Scout had no doubt that wasn’t remotely close to her real name. The woman turned the full glare of those mirrored lenses on Scout but Scout refused to play along.

“Warrior,” she repeated as if it were the most normal name in the world. “Pleased to meet you.”

“And your dogs?”

“That’s Shadow,” Scout said, still annoyed at Shadow’s betrayal.

“And this one?”

“Girl,” Scout admitted. “She’s not really mine.”

“She seems like yours,” Warrior said.

“Shadow is my dog. I trained him from a pup. My father helped before he . . . well. Shadow has been with me for six years now. Girl, she just turned up one day a month or so ago. Shadow and I were camping near a mining town and when we woke up she was just there, curled up with us like she was part of our family. Haven’t been able to get rid of her since, she just follows us everywhere. She’s not that bright, barely trainable. Not much point giving her a name. I’m sure she’s just going to wander off again at some point.”

“I see,” Warrior said. There was an undertone to her voice, like what she was agreeing to was not quite what Scout had said. Scout was about to call her out for being condescending when another one of Warrior’s belt gadgets started beeping urgently. Warrior pulled it off the belt and silenced it, frowning at the screen on the device.

Something else was beeping too, something in Scout’s saddlebags. She twisted on the bike seat to reach behind her. She only had one electronic device, one thing that would beep, and she always kept it in easy reach in a separate pouch sewn in the top band between the two bags.

Sometimes it went off for no reason, cheap piece of crap that it was, but Scout was certain this wasn’t one of those times. Not if Warrior’s had gone off too. Still she forced herself to swallow back the rising panic and look at the dial.

The needle was buried beyond the red zone. She had seen it flirt with the darker edge of the orange zone, but it never moved so far as to touch the red zone. Certainly never passed into it.

“Solar flare,” she said, her voice a dry croak.

“Coronal mass ejection. Or, as you say, solar flare,” Warrior agreed, putting the device back on her belt. “Well, kid—or, rather, Scout—time to run for our lives, yeah?”