“Hoppers,” I said. Ducted-fan hovercraft, the cheapest aircraft out here, easy to build from fabricated parts if you had the money and the need.
“It could be the Emergency Services Patrol,” Vicky said.
And she was right, it could be. We’d called them before we’d let the house. The ESP was small, a volunteer outfit paid for by the townspeople and the settlements, someone you could call if you had a medical emergency you couldn’t handle with what you had on the farm, or a fire, or some other major problem. And a crashed shuttle qualified as a major problem.
But Gamma Junction was a half-hour flight away, and that wasn’t counting how long it would take to get the people together, which always seemed to take longer than it should. There hadn’t been time.
“Let’s get outside,” I told them, making my way to the hole in the fuselage, not looking back to see if they’d listened because I knew they would. “Fast.”
I stifled a cough from the smoke drifting up off the burning grass, squeezing my eyes shut against the acrid sting. When I opened them, I realized it was dark, that the sun had gone below the horizon while we’d been inside the corpse of the shuttle. The darkness made the running lights of the two hoppers stand out in the night sky, outshining the rising moons. I’d had a vague idea that we could get to the rover and get out before they saw us, but it was already too late for that. They were circling the clearing, the wind from their twin fans twisting the clouds of smoke into artistic whorls, glowing a preternatural white in their landing lights.
“Oh, shit,” Clines said. “What now?” He glanced furtively at the rover. “There a rifle in the truck?”
“Be chill,” I said, my voice so much calmer than I should have felt. “You saw nothing, you say nothing. Let me do all the talking.”
I should have been panicking, should have been running, even though it wouldn’t have done any good, should have been curled up on the ground screaming, given the way I’d been reacting lately to anything that reminded me of the war. I did none of those, though I couldn’t have said why. I just stood there and watched the hoppers land, hands at my side, concentrating on being as innocent as possible, on letting innocence and ignorance waft off me like a perfume.
The hoppers touched down within a few meters of each other, their canopies swinging open before the landing struts settled into the rich, turned earth. The men and women who clambered out of the aircraft were familiar. I’d seen their like in Gamma Junction, as well as inside the shuttle. They were off-worlders, spacers, rough-edged and wild-eyed, every one of them visibly armed, some with just holstered handguns, others with carbines slung over their shoulder.
Vicky didn’t come to my side to meet them, instead separating herself by ten meters, off at an angle to my position. She was, as always, using her head, thinking tactically. Clines on the other hand….
“Dave,” I said softly, reminding him of something he should have learned in basic training, “ten meters separation.”
He grunted as if I’d hit him, but stepped away, almost staggering, his eyes glued on the spacers heading our way.
Smugglers, I corrected myself. Gun runners.
“What are you doing on our shuttle?”
It was hard to pinpoint who had said it at first, the way they were all bunched up and veiled by flickering shadows from the fitful remnants of the grassfires. But then one of them stepped forward, aiming himself at me, though why he figured I was in charge, I wasn’t sure. He was a tall man, rangy and long-limbed, lacking any of the showy facial tattooing or flashy jewelry of his fellows, his clothes utilitarian work fatigues except for the crimson-tinted leather jacket he wore almost like it was a badge of office. The gun holstered at his right hip looked just as pragmatic and utilitarian as his clothes, the grip worn and wrapped in rigging tape. His gloved right hand rested on it and the snarl on his scarred, bearded face told me he wanted to use it.
“We’re not currently on your shuttle,” I pointed out. “We went to check for survivors. There is one, by the way, but he’s in bad shape. Bad concussion, compound fracture of his left arm, maybe stuff we couldn’t see. I splinted his arm and put on a pressure bandage, but he needs a real medical center or an auto-doc, if you have one.”
He said nothing for a moment, his ice blue eyes locked on mine, scanning me like a lidar projector, as if he was searching me for signs of deception.
“Gregor,” he said, inclining his head to the right, speaking to one of his people. “Take Sasha and the medical kit and check it out.”
Two of their number separated from the rest and jogged toward the downed aerospacecraft without hesitation. This guy, I knew, was the leader, and not one who any of them questioned. Good leadership for them was possibly bad for us.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“This is my farm,” Clines said and I bit down on a curse. I’d told him to keep his mouth shut, but I suppose that had been too much to hope for. Instead, he sounded outraged, full of righteous indignation, fists planted on his hips. “I don’t begrudge that your ship had engine problems and had no choice in the matter, but you ain’t got no call to be landing your hoppers here without my leave and waving guns around.”
“You’re that guy Clines,” the bearded man judged, the corner of his mouth curling up. “I heard about you.”
“You heard what about me?” Clines demanded, taking a step forward. “Who said it? That asshole Hellnick?”
One of the spacers raised the muzzle of their carbine. It looked, I thought, like a slug shooter, not a pulse gun. No surprise there. Pulse guns weren’t incredibly complicated, but they were expensive and almost impossible to fabricate out in the sticks. It wasn’t a Gauss rifle, either. Too light and compact. It was something older, easier to make. Probably a Gyroc carbine. Simple, easy to use, easy to make. Fired spin-stabilized, unguided rockets most of the time. You could get guided ones, but then your weapon would have to be linked to a Heads-Up Display in a helmet visor or a set of goggles, and none of these goons were wearing either one. Still accurate enough to blow a fist-sized hole through Clines chest at this range, guidance or no.
“Dave,” I said, the word softly spoken and yet still packed full of all the frustration the man was engendering in my gut. “Shut up.”
“Better listen to the man, farmer,” the bearded one advised. “He’s clearly the smarter of the two of you.” He eyed Vicky sidelong. “Though she may be the smartest. She hasn’t said a word.”
“There’s always that possibility,” I agreed. “What’s your name, mister?”
Not that I really cared, but keeping the man talking seemed the better alternative than encouraging a situation where the only response left was shooting us.
“Mister, huh?” The bearded man snorted a laugh. “Not too many calling me ‘mister’ anything in quite a while. You can just call me Captain Eld.”
“Well, Captain, we only came here because we thought someone might need help. If your people have that taken care of, we can just leave the rest to you. I’m sure you’ll have a lot of work to do transporting your shuttle out of here.”
“I told you my name,” Eld said, cocking an eyebrow toward me. “Seems like it would only be good manners to return the favor.”