Firefly--The Ghost Machine by James Lovegrove

Author:James Lovegrove
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Titan

The Cobb house was barricaded, the windows boarded up, pieces of heavy furniture ready beside the doors to be shoved into place when necessary. The larder had been stocked, enough food and fresh water to keep body and soul together for a month. Jayne, Matty, and their mother were all set for a siege.

For a while, it did not come.

They kept watch in shifts, from the widow’s walk that capped the roof. Perched up in that vantage point, like an eagle in its roost, you had a clear view for miles around. No creature larger than a gopher could approach without you seeing.

When he wasn’t on lookout duty, Jayne got on his mother’s sourcebox and scanned the Cortex for information about the gang of rustlers. From snippets here and there, he gathered that they had been plaguing this region of Sycorax for nigh on half a year now. They were known as the Beavertail Gang, and their numbers were estimated at anything between a dozen and forty, depending on which news outlet you consulted.

Their leader was a woman called Ottoline Beavertail. Only one picture of her existed, a grainy shot of a gaunt, formidable-looking middle-aged lady with close-cropped gray hair and a patch over one eye. She owned a spread over in Bitter Hampton, which was just about the driest, least fertile piece of land imaginable, a hellscape of salt pan, slot canyon, and granite bluff. Raising cattle there was a struggle at the best of times, and lately a drought had taken ahold, alleviated only by torrential downpours of rain that caused flashflooding, property damage, and generally more problems than it solved. By all accounts, Ottoline Beavertail had seen a quarter of her herd succumb to fatal dehydration. Added to that, the remaining livestock had contracted redspot, a respiratory disease with a nine-inten mortality rate. She had obviously come to the conclusion that the only logical way to replace her lost cows was to steal other people’s.

Her gang consisted of various local guns-for-hire, a couple of farmers who’d suffered significant livestock depletion like her, and a passel of malcontents just glad of the opportunity to raise some hell. It was a mixed bag, which she held together through a combination of sheer force of will and being meaner than any of them.

There wasn’t a hope in hell of law enforcement getting involved in the affair. The nearest sheriff’s office was in Grover City, half a continent away. As for the Feds, Sycorax was one of those unproductive Border worlds that the Alliance considered beneath its notice. The Feds couldn’t have given two hoots what went on there. It was up to civilians to deal with the Beavertail Gang, and so far, in and around Wilmington, and elsewhere, there had been precious little appetite for tangling with them. Some had tried and had come to grief.

None of them, mind you, was the Cobb family.

At least Jayne had a slightly clearer idea now what he, Matty, and their mother were up against.

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