Outpost by W. Michael Gear

Author:W. Michael Gear
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: DAW
Published: 2018-02-20T05:00:00+00:00

37

For three days now, Trish and Step had piloted the aircar westward from Port Authority. Each morning at dawn they were in the air. Trish insisted. Step had been willing in the beginning. But he’d worried that she pushed the batteries to the limit, refusing to let them return until dusk. At the end of the second day, he’d told her, “One more day, Trish. That’s all.”

Six days! That’s how long Talina and the marine had been missing. The growing sense of despair in Trish’s gut was like a yawning wound.

And it wasn’t like she and Step hadn’t looked. They had crisscrossed the route Tal would have taken up Mainway Canyon, searched the crags and depths for wreckage, and then through Best Pass and down the Grand River to the Briggs homestead.

At the wheel, she’d avoided the forest where it spread over the wide plain until last. Mostly because if Tal had gone down in it, chances were good that she was dead.

“Trish?” Step said as they worked a series of transects across the forest south of the river.

“Yeah.” She was leaning out, looking down at the green mass of leaves that rose in mounded lumps. It gave the forest top a soft, almost inviting look. Hard to believe that in places, the ground lay another three hundred feet below.

“If she went down here, you know there’d be nothing to see. By now the branches would have mended, healed any damage her aircar would have caused.”

“Maybe.”

“You’re not thinking, girl.” Step resettled his muscular body, binoculars hanging from one hand as he stared over the side. “I really hate this. Now is not the time for us to have a battery problem.”

“It’s Talina. You know, just as well as I do, that if it was the other way around, she’d be looking.”

Step shot her an evaluative glance. “Yeah, I know. But that’s forest down there. Not even Talina . . .”

He stopped when she raised a threatening hand. Out of habit, she noted that they were down to twenty-seven percent in the battery. Worse, the sun was slanting in the west. How long did they have?

“She’s pretty special, I’ll agree,” Step told her. “And you’ve done the best you could. But Trish, the last thing Tal would want was anyone losing their lives on her account.”

“I know.”

“Not that much light left.” Step indicated the west.

“When Dad died, Tal pretty much took me under her wing. Damn it, Step. Sometimes you owe people more than you can tell them. Me? But for Talina, who the hell knows. I might be turning tricks at Betty’s just to keep my belly full. Looking back, I wasn’t in any better position than Angelina was.”

He leaned out, using the binoculars to scan a hole in the tree cover. “Angelina was always out for a good time. You had that serious streak. Talina knew. We all did. And once you started following her around, she’d have cracked your skull if you hadn’t lived up to your potential.”

“I always wanted to be like her.

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