“Very good,” Miles told her. And he proceeded to reveal the actual operation.
Rhea smiled. “Ah. That’s good. Very good.”
“With proper rationing and recycling, one run could last a week,” Miles added.
“But they won’t fall for the same trick twice…” Will said.
“No, but that’s a week more than we have now,” Rhea said. “I say we do it.”
A day later found Rhea seated on the passenger side of a rig while Will sat in the driver’s seat. Horatio perched between them. They drove across the barren rock of the Outlands at a good clip; the super-gimbaled shock absorbers prevented her from being tossed about by every small bump in the terrain.
The three of them wore camo fatigues that had some stealth properties, the foremost being thermal masking, which would hide their infrared signatures in the dark. The second property was the black and gray “rock digital” pattern stamped onto the surface, which would blend them in with their surroundings during broad daylight.
Outside, two other tankers followed along a fair distance to the left and right—semis hauling long, cylindrical metal tanks on beds. The top portions had been stained with special paint to fool the visual and thermal bands of the satellites in orbit into believing the semis carried passenger vehicles meant for resale. A car carrier convoy, as Miles said.
Between the semis were smaller, autonomous pickup trucks sporting rocket launchers or laser turrets bolted to the beds—technicals, in military speak. That knowledge bubbled into her consciousness from her past life, as such thoughts sometimes did, the moments associated with them long forgotten.
She thought of the two memories she had recalled so far. The first had her standing in a vaulted chamber with archways in the walls branching off into different corridors. She guessed the chamber was located in the parliament area of Aradne, since that was where the memory had come, triggered by the sight of a similar chamber.
In the recollection, she answered to a clean-shaven, square-jawed individual with a bald head and a stern expression. An aristocrat, she thought. A man who called her Dagger.
Do not fail me in this task, my Dagger.
The second memory involved fighting on some distant moon or planet. Well, fighting was perhaps too generous a word, as the combat was completely one-sided—a slaughter really, with her wielding the butcher’s ax. Certainly, her opponents tried to kill her, but she weaved between them with incredible ease, employing a strange energy weapon to perforate the fabric of their spacesuits and expose them to the deadly environment of the planet, if not killing them outright with the initial strike.
She wasn’t quite sure what to make of either memory, but she had been some kind of warrior or assassin in her past life, that much seemed certain. That made her feel strange, because she didn’t think of herself as a warrior or assassin. Killing seemed so foreign to her when she thought about it outside battle, but as soon as the energy rifles started going off, a strange lust came over her, a yearning to be part of the action. She forgot about her own safety and simply lived in the moment, existing only to kill bioweapons. Or in the case of The Scorpion, cyborgs.
I killed Anderson, too, she reminded herself.
She smiled sadly at that, wishing she had started scanning her followers for mind-jacking chips sooner. Oh well. There was nothing she could do about it now. She wouldn’t beat herself up over it. She couldn’t.
The men were scanned twice a day now, so hopefully a mishap like that wouldn’t happen again. Still, when she found this Veil, she’d have to make certain he paid in full for what he’d done.
Rhea scanned the rocky terrain of the Outlands that surrounded the convoy. She watched for bioweapons, or signs of Aradne security forces. According to the crowdsourced hotspot data, bioweapon activity was relatively high in the area, with several pods of Tasins recently sighted. If the scouts spotted any, she planned to change course immediately, hopefully before the bioweapons noticed them. If the convoy was spotted, there was a good chance the vehicles would outrun the creatures: Tasins could only keep up their top speed for a very short time, while these semis could operate at one hundred and twenty klicks an hour for a good amount of time, even when hauling the trailers. Eventually the vehicles would have to slow down to let the solar cells recharge, of course, but by then the Tasins would be long gone behind them.
She glanced at the ground, which rolled past in a blur. The terrain was another factor that would limit the convoy’s top speed, but so far, the plains remained relatively flat, if rocky. If it became too bumpy, however, that could definitely impact how fast the semis moved.
She gazed overhead, where a squad of drones followed along. Most of them were armed in some form or another. Well, except for Gizmo, who assumed a pure scouting role. The drones would warn the convoy of approaching bioweapons well before anyone on the ground could sight the creatures. That, and the approach of any security forces.
“You know, it’s really tempting to take over the wheel,” Will said, his hands on the aforementioned steering wheel. All self-driving vehicles had overrides to allow human, cyborg, or robot drivers to take over, as part of the built-in safety mechanisms. “I hate letting a machine control what I could just as easily steer myself.”
“I didn’t know you drove,” Rhea said.
He glanced at her and smiled. “I’ve salvaged entire vehicles before, don’t you worry. And when there’s an urgent need to transport said vehicles out of the Outlands, you learn to drive pretty quick.”
She smiled. “I’ll bet.”
“You wish you could drive, don’t you?” He winked at her.
“Nope.” She didn’t really care if he did the driving, or the machine. Either suited her. After all, in the military, the commanding officer rarely took direct control of a vehicle. Why do I know
