Future Reborn Box Set by Daniel Pierce

Author:Daniel Pierce [Pierce, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-09-16T06:00:00+00:00

10

The sun was high when Andi came to me, holding her tablet and frowning.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Power. A second reactor, to be exact. I have a site, and we have the need. It’s time,” she said.

“Tell me where.” I leaned against a stump. We were near the firepit, and around us activity was reaching a daily peak, when everyone was tired but looking forward to the end of work.

“Here.” She pointed to her tablet, where she’d drawn a map of our settlement, and then a larger map that showed the Cache and every water source we had found in the past month. To the east, there was an expanse of land that had two water sites, no massive gullies, and room to grow.

“It’s perfect. One problem.”

“Security?” she asked, looking up.

“Yes. It almost requires a second population from the beginning to insure that we don’t invite disaster. Losing a reactor is one thing. Losing people is another. I don’t know enough about the area to say there isn’t a rogue tribe over the hill, so to speak.”

She smiled, and I knew she was one step ahead of me. “I have a solution to that little issue.”

“I’m all ears.”

“The Vampires,” she said.

“Huh.” I thought about it and knew she was right. “What’s their max altitude?” They were glorified gliders, but light and powerful enough to get us aloft. As to their range, I had no idea. We were holding them back for a rainy day, like the mustang and the weapons cache.

The sky was clear, but it may as well have been raining.

“A thousand meters without a mask. Three thousand with, and I have something that will kick our recon range up drastically. A Condor,” she said.

“The drone? How can it—oh. Mount and launch from the Vampire?”

“Yep. It gives us an eye in the sky up at seven thousand meters, minimum. Maybe eight if we catch a current.” Andi’s eyes glittered with the possibility of using tech that could give us actual security. We had an enormous number of items at our disposal, but no way to keep them safe in The Oasis. High altitude recon could change that. We would know who our neighbors were—if we had any at all.

I stood away from the tree, brushing bark from my hands. “How soon can we leave?”

Andi whistled, high and shrill. Natif came running with her go-bag. “I’m already packed.”

We said our goodbyes and left in a truck, determined to arrive at the Cache before dark. Given the predators in and around the site, it was in our best interest to be fast.

We hauled ass.

Following the highway remains, we struck east and then north, making excellent time and seeing nothing more menacing than a gathering of blood chickens that had brought down some kind of steer, its body opened up to the failing light of day as we swept past at forty klicks an hour. Before dusk could get serious, we saw the Cache grove and silos, their familiar shape rising as we sped up the path that had once been a hunting trail for marauding scorpions.

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