Free Liberty (Flash Gold, #5) by Lindsay Buroker Page B

would have to get closer to
do anything with it.
    Two more shots burst from
its barrels, skimming over the top of her log. It kept clanking
inexorably toward her. If she could roll close to it, might she be
able to loosen a few bolts and gain access to its innards? The
problem was that it kept moving—it could probably trample her with
those legs.
    Another shot fired, this
one from somewhere behind the creature. A bullet clanged off the
metal carapace, not doing any apparent damage. Cedar had appeared,
crouching with his six-shooter at the corner of the cabin. He was
favoring one leg—he must have run into some trouble of his own that
had delayed him.
    “Are you all right?” Kali
called.
    “Yes, but I’m not the one
it’s shooting at.”
    The spider legs kept
moving toward Kali’s log, but the body spun as if on a turntable,
and for a moment, the twin gun barrels pointed toward the cabin,
toward
Cedar
. It fired at him, and he leaped back around
the corner, using the building for cover.
    “You are now,” Kali
barked.
    She jumped up, thinking
of racing forward and jumping onto the creature while it was
distracted. Maybe she could cling on and disable it from above. But
the body spun back toward her too soon. She leaped behind the
nearest tree as more bullets fired.
    “I noticed,” Cedar yelled
back.
    The spruce Kali found
herself behind had numerous branches thrusting out from all levels
of the trunk. She stuck her wrench in her mouth and scrambled up
the tree, using those branches like a ladder. She hoped she was
right about the construct, that it couldn’t tilt those gun barrels
up or down.
    It fired again, but she
had already climbed above the level of the bullets. They thudded
into the spruce, well below her legs.
    Kali paused when she
reached about eight feet. She could barely see the creature through
the needled branches, but that didn’t keep her from taunting
it.
    “Come and get me if you
can.” She needed it to get much closer before she could jump down
onto it.
    “Are you supposed to
taunt the security spiders?” Cedar called. He had climbed onto the
roof of the cabin, and old shingles broke and littered the ground
as he moved around, finding a position from which to fire.
    “I want it to get
closer.”
    “Sounds suicidal.” He
lined up a shot and fired twice, once toward the vent pipe and once
toward a seam in the carapace.
    He must be aiming for
what he thought might be vital targets, but Kali suspected he was
wasting his bullets. He didn’t have any to waste. She knew; she’d
grabbed the single box of revolver ammunition from his room and
stuffed it into his pack.
    “I told you I wasn’t a
typical girl.”
    The carapace rotated once
again, but the spider did not fire toward the cabin. Maybe it knew
it couldn’t reach Cedar at his present height. If so, the
intelligence the thing possessed disturbed Kali.
    “Come and get me,” she
told it again. Another five feet, and she could risk jumping down
onto it.
    The spider sidled closer.
She crawled out on a stout branch, now wishing she had chosen a
less densely limbed tree to climb. Needles clawed at her hair and
poked her face. She had to break twigs and smaller branches before
she found a spot from which she might jump.
    Unfortunately, the
construct did not come to the base of her tree as she had hoped.
Instead it ambled to the log where she had hidden earlier. Its two
front legs rose, planting themselves on the top of the log, and the
back legs bent, lowering the spider’s big metal body. It took Kali
a moment to realize what it was doing. She cursed as the tilt of
the body changed, and the muzzles of those gun barrels lifted,
pointing up the tree toward her.
    There wasn’t any time to
hesitate. Kali leaped from her perch.
    The spider fired, bullets
cutting through the branches where she had been. She didn’t quite
make it to the construct with her leap, landing in front of it, but
she sprang forward before the gun barrels could fire