Page 2 of Stalker
Easy money, Neely Albert thought as she sent her Class Two flyer upward vertically. Fly a cargo hold of ion rifles an hour and fifteen minutes south of Farringay, unload and fly back. It was probably not legal, but she was doing it anyway.
Payment for this run would give her enough money to move West out of overlord territory. Alexander Berke would be paid off for the repair of her flyer. She planned to leave after she got the hover plane from her father, but it needed a major overhaul.
Neely went to Berke for a loan, and he gave her two choices. She could either go back to work in the brothel or fly for him once the plane was repaired. Neely chose the latter. She was done whoring for Alexander Berke.
He had a nice racket for himself. By paying them a set rate for their services, Berke then charged them for everything so that they made only a pittance above their expenses. They were protected in his compound from the gangers in the city ruins, but they might as well be in prison.
It was a beautiful night for a flight. The sky was clear and filled with stars and a quarter moon. Neely loved being in the quiet serenity when it was like this. Her time in the air seemed to end too quickly as she neared the drop coordinates.
Berke had assured her that cyborg Colton Price was expecting her. She would land at the overlord’s compound, and he would take delivery.
Only when she slowed her approach to hover and land did someone start shooting and hitting her plane.
“Price! What the fuck?” she yelled into the com as she banked her flyer left and flew off to the west. The next thing she knew, two armed flyers were on her tail. She maxed out her speed and zigzagged as much as possible to avoid getting hit, but it didn’t work.
The engine took a hit, and her flyer was going down smoking. The emergency harness held her fast in the pilot seat as Neely slowed her descent as much as she could without engine power. Even then, she was pretty sure she was going to die. The ground was coming up way too fast.
The plane hit nose first, and airbags deployed. At least dead, Neely would have no more worries about the future, she thought just before everything went black.
Two flyers came their way only minutes after they sent Darken on his way, one in pursuit of the other. The cyborgs quickly determined that one was pursuing the other as the one behind was firing ahead. The flyer in front had a human pilot while the pursuer was a cyborg not on their internal net.
That meant he was a natural convert, a natural-born human converted to a cyborg to repair catastrophic war injuries. Not all of them were enemies, but many had gone rogue after the war and allied themselves with the Overlords.
They used their ion rifles to shoot down the pursuers, but not before the front flyer took a hit. Seeing that it was headed for a crash landing, Max and Stalker slung their rifles over their shoulders and ran for their sky cycles. The flyer had crashed a little over a mile away. The battered wreck was smoking when they landed about fifty yards away, and the two cyborgs ran to free the pilot. With airbags and a safety harness, he probably lived through the crash.
When the butterfly door wouldn’t open, Stalker punched out the window, and Max helped him rip the whole door off. The flyer’s engine compartment started to flame. There was no time for finesse. Stalker ripped the harness away from the pilot, pulled him out, slung him over his shoulder, and ran toward the cycles.
The flyer exploded, spewing engine parts and cargo out the back. A change in wind direction stoked the flames toward the cockpit. Stalker carried the pilot another fifty yards further from the wreck, signaling his sky cycle to follow. He knelt on the ground, cradling the pilot over his lap.
Carefully removing the pilot’s helmet, “A female,” he rasped in surprise. He glanced up at Max, then back at her. “Myfemale.”
Mentally shaking himself, Stalker started scanning her for injuries, thankful she was at least breathing. Apparently, the harness and airbag saved her life. However, the speed and the sudden stop caused bruises from the restraint on the outside, internal damage, and a significant concussion, but no brain bleed. Stalker reached for a bolus of nanites from a pouch on his belt. With her head cradled against his forearm, he uncapped it and squirted it up her nose.
“What do you think they wanted with her?” Max wondered.
“Maybe they thought she was with us.” Stalker turned his head as he caught a movement in his peripheral vision. “Someone’s coming… The cyborg convert….”
Max ran to his cycle and yanked his ion rifle from its sling. Raising it to his shoulder, he moved to a spot between his friend and the male approaching. When the cyborg came closer, Max demanded, “who are you, and what do you want?”
“Colton Price. I came to see that the pilot got out of the flyer after it crashed and to find out why he was flying over Overlord White’s compound.”
“The pilot is female… My female, and she is unconscious.”
“So, she was with you?”
Stalker wanted to say yes, but it was an outright lie. Manufactured cyborgs were incapable of direct lies. “I can’t tell you that. We were investigating a series of kidnappings in old Texas and New Mexico.”
Stalker surmised from Colton’s expression that the natural convert knew he was evading the question. As a war veteran, he would know that no manufactured cyborg could lie in answering a direct question. He would also know that Stalker would fight to the death forhisfemale.
“Since she was the pilot, she is not the person we were after,” said Colton cryptically. “Now, I have to go back and tell the boss why we lost a drone, and my flyer is wrecked. You and your female should probably make yourselves scarce. I’m sure we’ll meet again.” As he spoke, he turned and started walking away.
Chapter Two
Twenty minutes later, the pilot still hadn’t regained consciousness, but Stalker’s repeat scan told him her vitals were stable.
“Max, I’ve got this. You can be on your way. I’m just going to give her a little more time to regain consciousness, then we’ll be leaving.”
“If you are sure…. If anything deviates from your projection, call me on our net.”
