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Rat blinked to clear his vision and tried to remember what had happened. It took a few seconds but then he recalled his last memory being of a rather large fist heading toward his face. That unpleasant recollection was enough to prompt him to take a furtive look around. Even though his surroundings wavered before his vision Rat saw three nasty looking men gathered at the base of Independence. One was shaking a fist up at Boy and the other two were laughing. A second later and all three jumped back, dodging what looked like some of the odds and ends they’d had stored in the airship’s hull.
Sounds of splashing caught Rat’s attention. He turned and saw a more pleasant sight than the revolting men now hanging back from Independence. At the lake’s edge stood four very dirty but beautiful women, each trying to wash off the dirt that covered them from head to toe. Not wanting to be caught staring, he closed his eyes the moment one of them looked in his direction. He remained as still as possible and waited a moment or two before reopening them.
Clearly the figures he’d seen being dragged along, the women’s clothes were in tatters and they all looked exhausted. Even though they were strung together like a herd of horses, they were working like a well-organized team to clean up and quench their thirsts. They were also whispering now the men weren’t paying them any mind. Rat hoped it meant they were coming up with a good escape plan, preferably one that helped him get safely back aboard Independence.
Rat closed his eyes again when he heard the men approaching, and to steady his nerves, he held his breath.
“Do you think he’s dead?” a man’s voice said.
Rat stifled a cry of pain when he was kicked in the stomach. Air whooshed out of his lungs, but the years of being kicked and punched by his father had taught him how to take such treatment without reacting. If he had cried or screamed when his father had beaten him, it would only have given the man more pleasure and so prolonged the abuse.
“Fool. Stop kicking him. If he’s not already dead, he will be by the time you’re done.”
Rat struggled not to throw up the apple he had eaten before heading off ship.
“He ain’t dead.”
Rat tried to believe that these men didn’t really want him dead, but for some reason doubted they would keep him alive if they were ever to get aboard Independence. His one hope rested on the fact that they hadn’t killed the women yet. But why kidnap them in the first place, and where were they being taken? It didn’t make sense to travel across country without food or provisions. They must have come upon the women un-expectantly, like they had with him. They certainly hadn’t looked smart enough to plan and carry out a kidnapping.
But then how smart did that make him? He had been caught himself, after all. The worst thing about it all was that Rat now remembered how Boy had done his best to keep him informed of the group’s approach. Unfortunately, since the water tanks had been almost completely drained, it had taken much longer to refill them than Rat had anticipated. It also hadn’t helped that he had badly miscalculated how quickly he could get the water hoses back onboard.
And as fate would have it, as Molly had pulled up the last one, the group had walked in. All Rat could think to do was greet them with a warm smile and a wave—the last thing he remembered before the fist.
If Rat ever got out of this mess, Boy was never going to let him forget that it was his fault they had been taken off-guard. The one thing Harmony had always drilled into his head was that he was supposed to protected his family and home above everything else. His one consolation was that, if everything went horribly wrong, Molly and Boy both knew how to get Independence back into the air and would be able to find their own way home. In the end, all that mattered was that they were safe aboard Independence and that there was no way the men could get to them.
“If that piece of scrap metal throws one more thing at me, I’m going to rip his ugly head off,” one of the men now growled.
Coarse laughter and expletives ripped through the air.
Then one of them said, “Why don’t you throw them back at him? Quit bellyaching and do something useful for once.”
“Do you think I’ve not tried. The damn ship’s too tall, or that metal bastard’s head would already have been knocked off. Just wait until I get to him. He’ll wish he’d never messed with me.”
Quite unexpectedly, another kick landed in the middle of Rat’s gut, but again he didn’t react.
“He’ll never regain consciousness if you keep kicking him. We need him to get us aboard. I’m starving. We ain’t had nothing to eat in three days.”
There was a general round of grumbling before one of them said, “Let’s go take another look around. There’s got to be a way of getting onboard.”
After a round of peevish grumblings and a sudden flurry of activity, a following eerie silence dared Rat to open his eyes again. He was relieved to see the rag-tag heading back toward Independence. They were far too dangerous ever to be allowed to invade his home. What would they do if they got ahold of Boy and Molly? They’d be far too ignorant to appreciate that they were more than just robots. His two friends were more human than were most humans Rat had ever known.
He waited until he was certain the men wouldn’t notice him getting away and then crawled, as quickly as his bruised ribs would let him, through the tall grass and away from the airship. When he thought he had put enough distance between them, he rose and peered over the top of the grass. He needed to get to the other side of the airship without anyone seeing him, and as fast and as safely as he could. He was pretty sure the men would never discover the secret entrance he had built into the bottom of the hold. Tinker had helped him fit the boards together in such a way that its sealed arrangement looked no different to the rest of the hull.
He ducked down when he thought one of them had noticed he’d gone, but when he didn’t hear any alarm being called out, risked another hurried look. A large chunk of metal fell from the railing and bounced off one of the men’s head, clearly keeping them too preoccupied to notice his absence. Before long he had made his way unnoticed in a large arc around to the far side of Independence and popped up one last time to check his position. Crawling on his painful belly, he inched nearer the secret hatch through the long lush grass, an itching feeling steadily spreading from his head to his toes.
Then, before Rat could reach the airship, the itching became the least of his problems. He now had a sudden urge to sneeze. When he stopped to clamp his nostrils together, he heard yells and curses rip through the air. The airship was quite close by now and between him and the men, so Rat jumped up and ran to the hatch. He might have been able to open it with ease before, but now in a panic, he fumbled with it for several long moments before it finally popped open. Frozen in his relief, it took another string of rants to get Rat moving again. He jumped through the opening and this time quickly closed the hatch behind him.
“It’s about time.”
Rat turned and found Boy standing by the hatchway. “I would have been here sooner but I was busy getting the crap kicked out of me.”
Boy blinked. “I saw.”
“You could have helped.”
The tiny robot stared, but this time without blinking. “I threw a few things.”
Rat threw his hands up. “That was your big move? To throw a few things? Why didn’t you just bake them a pie or two? It would have worked just as well. I thought you had the pistol. Why didn’t you use it?”
“I’ve never shot anyone before. I couldn’t bring myself to do it, and what was your big move, then? To pretend to be dead?”
Rat snorted. “It worked, didn’t it? Why didn’t you just shoot into the air?”
Boy turned and headed toward the stairway. “That would have just wasted a good bullet. We only have three. We might actually need them one day. I came down as soon as I saw you escape. I figured you were headed this way. I told Molly to build up the air pressure so we could lift off as soon as you were back aboard.”
“We can’t leave.”
Boy turned and stared at Rat. “We can’t? Why? What are you waiting for? Those louts to figure out where the hidden hatch is?” The robot waved toward the rows of junk they had collected in the Forbidden Land. “Just let me go find something to fight them with before they get here.” But of course he didn’t move, only stared at Rat as he waited.
“Don’t be a silly ass.” Rat drew in a deep breath and crossed his arms. “We can’t go anywhere until we figure out how to save those women.”
“You’re kidding me, right?”
“No,” Rat said as he pulled a long blade of dried grass out of one of his braids and studied it. “We can’t just leave them here in the clutches of those terrible men.”
To get Boy on his side Rat was going to have to try a different tactic, so he added for good measure, “You know as well as I do that if Harmony or Griffin were here they would find a way to rescue them too.”
“Damn, and here I was, just a few minutes ago thinking we were all safe and on our way to Freedom.” After a long drawn out moment of staring a hole though Rat, Boy finally nodded. “Let’s go do something incredibly dangerous and stupid, why don’t we. We can’t all live forever.”
Rat laughed and headed toward the stairs. “That’s the spirit, but I don’t plan on dying.”
Boy called after him. “No one ever does.”