Free Rites of Passage by Eric Brown Page B

broken leg; able-bodied, he would undoubtedly have attacked us.
    Danny said, “Calm down. We told no one. Listen to me – we don’t have a radio, okay? How could we have contacted her if we don’t possess a damned radio? And anyway, why the hell would we tell her we’d picked you up?”
    Skull let go of his crutch to gesture beyond the truck. “So how come she’s found me?”
    I moved into the lounge and sat down, watching Skull. Danny joined me, gesturing Skull to a seat opposite. Glaring at us, he stumped across the lounge and sat down. Kat and Edvard joined us.
    Danny said, reasonably, “Are you sure it’s the same mob?”
    “How many hovercraft you think are out there?” Skull snorted. “And you think I wouldn’t recognise the queen bitch herself?”
    Kat said, “It’s a coincidence. They saw us from a distance. They needed water.”
    Skull shook his head. “Some coincidence! Do you know how big this desert is? The chances of two tiny vehicles meeting like this...”
    Edvard said, “We didn’t contact them, Skull. So it has to be coincidence, no? What other explanation is there?”
    “The plane,” Danny said. “You took it from them, right? What about this: that she had it tagged with some kind of tracking device? It’d make sense, a valuable piece of kit like that.”
    Skull held his head in his hands and sobbed.
    I said, “What have you got to fear?”
    He looked up, staring through his tears. “She’s evil. They all are. I ran out on her because I didn’t like what she was doing. She won’t rest till I’m dead. And now she’s found you, she won’t stop at just killing me.”
    “You make her sound like a monster,” I said.
    He nodded. “Oh, she is. She might have traded solar arrays now, but she’ll be scheming to get them back – and more. Right now they’ll be working out how to kill us and take the truck.”
    Danny shook his head. “I don’t think so. There’s only six of them – and we’re well armed. The truck’s armoured. We can defend ourselves.”
    Skull brayed a laugh. “Six! Is that what she told you? She’s lying. There were a dozen of the bastards with her when I left.”
    I looked across at Danny, who said, “Like I said, we can look after ourselves.”
    “Okay, but the best defence is distance. Let’s get the hell away from her before she attacks us, okay?”
    Danny considered. We had agreed with Samara that we would travel south together; it would be hard to shake her, especially if Skull was correct and she had come for him.
    Danny nodded and said to Kat, “Okay, start us up. Let’s move on.”
    Kat and Edvard moved to the cab. Skull nodded, gratefully. “Thank Christ,” was all he said before hiking himself upright on his crutches and hobbling back to his berth. I watched him go, wondering what his reaction might be when he discovered that Samara was following us.
    I sat with Danny. The silence was broken by the drone of the engine as Kat kicked the truck into life.
    I said, “What do you think?”
    Danny rubbed his beard. “I think we trust no-one but ourselves, Pierre. We keep Samara at arm’s length, and as for Skull...”
    “Yes?”
    “As Edvard said yesterday, I don’t trust him as far as I can spit.”
    ~
    I moved to the rear of the truck and sat before an observation screen, staring out across the sea-bed. Through the sandy spindrift of our wake I made out the scintillating shape of the hovercraft. It was perhaps half a kilometre behind us, and keeping pace.
    For the next couple of hours before sunset, my thoughts slipped between Skull’s warning and fantasies involving Samara. I interpreted the way she looked at me as indicating desire on her part, and told myself that her henchmen were less than prime physical specimens.
    The sun went down, replaced by the deep blue of night shot through with the raging flares of magnetic storms. Kat brought the truck to a standstill and Edvard fixed a meal.
    The hovercraft slowed and came alongside,