Sooner Dead (Gamma World) - Mel Odom [55]
“I’ve found a trail.” Hella squatted and eyed the line of tracks under a layer of loose sand. “Whoever took the meteorite tried to cover their sign.”
“But you have it.”
“I have it.” Hella stood and went back for Daisy. She tied the big lizard’s reins to the saddle pommel and commanded her to follow. They weren’t going to be invisible that way, but Daisy would alert her to other presences if she missed it while tracking the covered impressions.
“I’m coming to you.”
Hella relaxed at that. Having Daisy to watch over her was helpful, and even Riley’s people in hardshells would at least provide primary targets, but she was most comfortable with Stampede at her back.
The twin trails led down into the wilderness. After the first two hundred meters, the people who had taken the meteorite hadn’t bothered to sweep their tracks. Trailing them became easier. Hella could almost jog and track at the same time.
“Some kind of sled?” Riley paced Stampede, both of them to the left of Daisy.
Stampede kept his head moving, tracking motion all around them. Shadows danced constantly across the ground, and the moving grasses made spotting anyone lying in wait along the impromptu trail difficult.
Hella pushed her fear aside and concentrated on her tracking skills. That was one area where her abilities transcended Stampede’s.
“Yeah. A sled.” Stampede kept his voice low.
“Why didn’t they use a vehicle?”
“Because the ’Chine don’t frequent trade camps and they’re too mobile to set up stills to make their own fuel.”
“They’re primitives?”
Stampede snorted derisively. “Not like anything you’ve ever seen before.”
“Then what are they?”
“Machine people. ’Chines.”
Riley glanced at Hella. “You mean with nanobots?”
“No. I mean cyborgs. The way the story goes, there was a group of military survivors here or in Texas that tried to hide out after the collider self-destructed. They remained in lockdown for a few generations, till all their stockpiles were gone, before coming back out into the world. By that time they were inbred and physically deformed. They fixed what they could with military prosthetics. One of the military detachments was a medical unit working on next-gen bionics and neural mapping. So maybe things turned out better than they would have otherwise. But the way things turned out was pretty horrifying.”
“How?”
“Intellectually the ’Chine aren’t the brightest people these days. Worst case scenario, they’re barely above animal intelligence. Every now and again, a genius shows up, a genetic joker in the deck, and keeps the ’Chine together. They’ve got baseline survival code hardwired into their nervous systems—kind of an auxiliary brain. They call it ApZero.”
“Application Zero?”
“Don’t know. You don’t get much of a chance for discussion with the ’Chine. If they catch you, they eat you.”
“Cannibals?” Riley’s face inside the open face shield pinched.
“Not the way they see it. They don’t eat anyone else who is a ’Chine. People that aren’t one of them are fair game.” Stampede shrugged and adjusted his rifle. “They’re brutal and they’re mean, and if they’ve got the meteorite, we’re going to have a hard time getting it back.” He looked at Riley. “My question is this: Why would the ’Chine want whatever landed back there? They only value salvage. Vehicles. Devices. Electronic as well as fuel powered. Your meteorite had to fit somewhere in that.”
“Not my meteorite.” Riley glanced away from Stampede and shook his head. “And I’m not the one you can be asking questions like that of.”
“Pardot’s not going to give us any straight answers.”
Riley remained closemouthed.
“Then tell me this: Is what we’re after dangerous?”
“It hasn’t killed the ’Chine yet, has it?”
The trail led over rocky ground and didn’t follow a trade route or path. The going got tougher for the land vehicles. Riley had even given up on his ATV and let one of his security men shepherd it for him.
“We’re getting ahead of the group.” Riley paused at the top of a rise beside Hella and Stampede and pointed back behind them. The rest of the expedition was almost