She tried to push herself up but could not.
A moment later Horatio and Will carried Chuck into view. They lowered him in front of Rhea, so that he was lying down across from her.
“Hey,” Chuck said.
Rhea was too horrified to answer. He had been shot up very badly. It was obvious he wasn’t going to survive.
She couldn’t help the tears that formed then. “Chuck. I’m sorry. I couldn’t protect you. I failed again.”
“No,” Chuck said, smiling. “You didn’t fail. You succeeded. You let me do my job. You let me die with dignity. This is what I wanted. To protect you. This is what I’ve always wanted. It’s been an honor. Thank you, for everything.”
“No,” she said, reaching out to cup his face in her palm. Her tears flowed freely. “The honor has been mine. Thank you.”
Chuck gave her one last weak smile, then closed his eyes forevermore.
Growling, she turned her head toward her attacker, who yet lay on the ground on the other side of her. Filled with renewed strength, she dragged her body toward him with her working hand.
Will went to her, and tried to help her up, but she shoved him away. “Don’t touch me!”
She reached her disabled adversary and began punching his face repeatedly. Dents appeared in that soft skin, and plasma erupted, but no actual blood.
Her attacker suddenly started laughing, which only made her pound his head all the harder.
She abruptly pulled her arm back, and was about to deploy the X2-59, when she heard Will’s voice.
“Don’t,” Will said. “Not until he answers a few questions.”
Her foe had stopped laughing then. His face was a pulp by that point, barely recognizable above the metal it was laid upon.
“You work for Veil?” Rhea said.
Her attacker chuckled through the gore. “Veil, no. I wouldn’t work for that bitch! I’m an independent.” Frothy liquid trickled from his mouth as he spoke.
“Who hired you?” she asked. “Or who posted the bounty on my head?”
The man seemed puzzled. “Don’t you know? Did you think that crossing him would have no repercussions?”
“Crossing who?” she said.
The man opened his mouth, but no words came. All that emerged was that pinkish plasma, backlit by the SUV headlamps.
“Crossing who?” she repeated.
From the way his head bobbed back and forth, she thought he was laughing, though no sound came. Finally, when he spoke again, his words sounded robotic, as if his voice synthesizer was malfunctioning.
“You’re going to die a horrible death, Warden,” the man said. “My only regret is that I won’t be around to see it. This is what I get for showing you mercy, I suppose.”
“Mercy?” Rhea said. “You call this mercy? Killing my closest friends and followers?”
She activated the X2-59, and the blade slammed into his metal skull.
17
Rhea gathered the men for a full post-battle report.
Two other members of the party had suffered severe injuries in the attack, thanks to the flyer ramming their SUVs, but thankfully no one else had died. The team couldn’t actually find that flyer, though they scanned all four horizons; Horatio speculated it had some kind of return-to-home program that executed once it lost contact with its owner. Will corroborated that via Gizmo—the drone had last spotted the vehicle heading away to the west, at speed.
Three of the SUVs were too badly damaged to continue. With the help of the Wardenites, Horatio and Will quickly salvaged a few of the more valuable parts from these vehicles, and then the group crowded into the remaining SUVs and set out for Rust Town once more.
The Wardenites had turned down the back seats in one of the vehicles, forming an expanded storage section for Rhea. They had laid her body flat on those seats, and Will joined her. Spread out beside him were the spare parts he needed to repair her, salvaged from the latest cyborg, the SUVs, and the earlier hunter killer. For example, he’d detached all four arms from the attacker, and they sat in a pile beside him. He was removing circuitry from one of those arms at that very moment. He wore the usual headlamp on his forehead to illuminate his work in the night.
In the middle seats in front of her, Horatio was squeezed in beside Renaldo and three other Wardenites.
Will set down his mini screwdriver and pulled the circuit from the arm. Then he turned his attention on her own arm. He frowned.
“Going to have to straighten these pieces before I can open your arm.” He retrieved his mallet and began hammering.
“I’m in your hands again, Salvager,” Rhea told Will as he worked.
He nodded absently.
“Seems like I always find myself damaged after every fight,” Rhea said. “I guess I should take a hint from the universe. I’m not meant for this kind of work.”
“Mmm,” he said, setting down the mallet. He pulled, and after a few tries, opened a panel in her arm. “No, I think it’s your calling.”
He used his mini screwdriver to remove a circuit from her arm. He showed it to her. It was broken almost in half. “This is why you can’t move your arm. Well, that and the servomotors.” He set aside the broken chip and retrieved the one he had taken from the cyborg’s arm. “What would you do without me?”
She smiled sadly. “I don’t know. Now that you bring it up… you’re always there to repair me, no matter how many times I mess up. I worry that someday, you won’t be.”
He gave her a comforting grin in return. Or tried to. “I’ll always be here for you.”
From his voice, she sensed that even he didn’t believe the lie.
She thought of Chuck, who was being conveyed in the storage area of one of the other vehicles. They were going to return his body to his parents. Rhea didn’t know how she was going to break the news to them.
“I miss him,” Renaldo said from the middle seats.
“We all do,” Rhea told him.
“He was the best of us,” the Wardenite said.
She
