He was just unconscious, Lindy chanted to herself. Chanted silently, because as they slipped between the trees she feared to make any sound, as if the terrifying apparition behind them might follow.
She wasn’t sure which apparition was more terrifying: the alien ship—terrifying lights from the sky—or the sudden appearance of the disembodied nanotechnology—terrifying ghost of her not-dead lover.
Please don’t be dead. I can’t bear that again. She put her head down and rode as if her life and his depended on it.
The horse’s hooves were also silent on the fallen needles, and the beast wasn’t breathing hard despite the double burden, high speed, and twisting track. Was the horse an alien too?
Head down. Ride.
Delta’s not-dead weight dragged at her biceps and shoulder. She wouldn’t be able to hold him much longer, despite her promise. But she gritted her teeth and rode on. Not sure where to go—not to the Fallen A which would be too obvious, nor to her house which would be second most obvious—she rode toward the wildest back forty of her land. Even the wiliest cows avoided the wilderness of rocky outcroppings and bogs that had allegedly once been the retreat of outlaws with nowhere else to go.
Most of the time, they hadn’t come out again.
Sounded perfect at the moment.
The horse huffed out a disbelieving breath and balked at the first touch of icy quagmire on her hooves.
“Just a little farther,” Lindy soothed. “We just have to get to higher ground.”
Which would only put them closer to the lethal stars.
She kept one wary eye on the sky as they wended through the marsh. The horse caught on quickly, only stepping where the snow hadn’t melted into the black water. There were just enough hillocks of grassy support to get them to the other side where sandstone gave way to limestone.
And there Lindy lost her grip.
Swearing, she slid off the horse with Delta, rather than drop him on his head. He was still limp, dead to the world.
Not dead, she reminded herself.
She cradled him away from the cold ground, too numb to care about the chill seeping through her heavy trousers. She’d donned her heaviest gear before riding out to confront him, knowing she needed the layers of protection from the elements. And from him.
She would never have guessed she’d end up on a midnight run from space invaders.
A high-pitched laugh squeezed from her, startling the horse, who backed away a step.
Lindy snatched for the trailing reins. Only thing worse than being hounded into these badlands, would be getting trapped without a hope of a way out. She looped the thin leather around her wrist; not exactly safe but she couldn’t afford to let go.
Not of the horse, not of Delta either. She pulled off one glove and touched his cheek. The metallic markings under his skin, that she’d thought was an elaborate tattoo, were invisible now. “Delta? Wake up. Please. If blowing your nanites meant killing yourself, I’m going to…” She swallowed. “I’m going to cry.”
She trailed her fingertips down to the crook of his jaw. Even though she’d just taken off the glove, her hand was freezing. Actually, her whole body was freezing. The adrenaline was wearing off, she knew. She had to get Delta back on the horse before the shakes hit her.
Holding her breath, she waited until she found his thready pulse under her fingers. The stale breath burst from her in a cloud.
Too much like that ghost he’d left behind.
Ah shit. There were the shakes she’d been waiting for.
The helpless tremors in her muscles kept her grounded, but she didn’t want to get up anyway. She clung to Delta; he was too busy being not-dead to comfort her, but his presence alone was enough to gradually ease her terror.
The badlands were quiet, the stars above back to their usual innocent twinkling. If…when he woke, they’d figure out their next steps together.
To her surprise—it should’ve been shock, but that seemed burned out of her for tonight—the horse edged around behind her, not pulling at the reins, and sank slowly to its knees. With a finesse she would’ve thought impossible for such a big animal, it curved itself around her back, half windbreak, half heat source, all welcome.
She looked over her shoulder uncertainly. “Uh. Thank you.”
The horse craned its neck over its dinner-plate sized hooves to breathe across her lap, ruffling Delta’s copper-brown hair. He didn’t move. Another, harder breath elicited no more response, and the horse blew out a disgruntled raspberry.
“I know, right?” Lindy said to the horse. “So lazy.”
How could he be an alien? He looked human. He felt human. Even now that she knew—and believed—she couldn’t see it or feel it.
Except that part where he left a ghost of himself behind to foil an E.T. abduction.
Where could she take him that he’d be hidden? How could she warn his brothers? Would her college girls be okay without her?
Okay, that last part she could answer. When she’d told them earlier that she was driving over to check out the fence repairs Delta had told them about, they’d all winked at her and hooted like a bunch of damn owls. If she didn’t come home tonight, they’d think nothing of it and probably drink all her cider.
Which only left her with how to save Delta.
He’d apologized for asking her to save him. Maybe this was all a very elaborate ruse to get her to… To what? What did saving him mean?
“Can’t you wake up?” she whispered. “Maybe just…blink once? A flash of silver is all I’d need.”
“He’s shut down.”
The voice out of the darkness made her startle. But she couldn’t even work up a gasp. And the horse didn’t twitch.
For some reason, that calmed her a bit. Although it said a lot about her night that she was taking cues from a peculiarly conscious cow pony.
Jumping down from one of the rocky outcroppings came the drifter. Another alien, she realized now. Delta’s brother.
“Cosmos,” she said. “What are you doing here?”
“Cosmo,” he corrected. “I saw the lights. How did you know to come here?”
“Was running away from the lights.”
They stared at each other.
He broke first, lowering his gaze to Delta. “What did you do to him?”
“We were attacked.” She hissed out a breath. “By a spaceship.”
Quickly, she explained. Or told him what happened anyway; she doubted she could ever explain it without all the cider in the world plus a few internet memes.
He didn’t reply for a moment then finally grunted, “Idiot.”
She glared at him. “Excuse me for not being better prepped for an alien invasion.”
He grunted again. “I meant the Delta, expelling his nanites. But you should’ve been prepared. Since I warned you.”
“You told me to set him free. I was going to do that when your friends showed up.”
Cosmo shrugged. “Doesn’t matter now. They’re here. They want to reclaim us and there’s nothing you can do.”
She narrowed her eyes. “We stopped them once already.”
For another brooding moment he was silent. “That’s…not wrong.” He marched toward her. “Come on then.”
“What?” She tightened her grip on Delta. “Where?”
“To my refuge.”
“This is my land.”
A flash of bone-white in the darkness. She realized he was smiling. “Then you should know it, every part of it, the good and the badlands.”
Which is how she found herself following an alien across her country, another alien slung over the back of her horse.
Weirder things had happened in these badlands, she was sure, but no one had lived to tell about it.
Cosmo led them through the twist of a shallow sandstone canyon…and disappeared. She actually sighed. Really? Could this night get any—
His hand popped out of the rock, waving. She stepped closer and realized the sandstone covered a limestone crack.
A cave. She led the horse and Delta deeper, wishing she’d been able to grab her gear from the ATV. She’d had a canteen, some food, a light.
Except she suddenly realized she could see. A glowing line, exactly like a strand from the circuitry pattern in Delta’s skin, traced unnaturally straight through the bulbous, flowing shapes of the limestone. She’d been in caves before, but she’d never known about this one on her own property.
To think she’d been so freaked out about aliens when she didn’t even know the own back of her hand.
The path was never too low or narrow to let Cosmo through, so it was plenty wide for the horse even with Delta potato-sacking over the saddle. But when the way widened into a chamber worn by the small rivulet that still trickled over the rocks with a pearly gleam, she balked.
“Here,” she said. “No farther.”
Cosmo looked over his shoulder, then nodded. “The water is potable for organics,” he said. “I have nothing else for comfort.”
“Not much of a refuge,” she snarked.
“But I haven’t had to enslave myself to avoid reclamation.”
She stared hard at him, knowing that was a diss at Delta. “Not yet anyway.”
He jerked his chin back. “You don’t fight nice.”
She thought that might be his version of a compliment.
Without his help, she eased Delta to the ground. Probably the saddle was softer, but the mare deserved a break after that horrible run. Lindy removed the saddle, used it as a pillow for Delta, and rubbed down the mare with the saddle pad, checking each leg and hoof carefully.
“You’re a solid old gal, aren’t you?” she whispered. “Thank you again for carrying us.”
Cosmo snorted. “That’s a horse, not a yurk. She can’t talk.”
Lindy stared into the large, dark eye closest to her. A hint of silver glinted back. “Yeah. I know.” She swiveled back to Delta and knelt to arrange the pad under him. It was some protection from the clammy stone. “Can you help him?”
Cosmo stared down at his brother. “Should I?”
Grinding her teeth, she came to her feet in a rush, wanting to punch something so bad. Okay, wanting to punch Cosmo. “He’s your brother.” She hesitated. “Or the machine equivalent.”
“And you think machines care what happens?”
“You obviously do. Or you wouldn’t be hiding like a damn coward down here.”
With a speed she couldn’t follow consciously, he closed the distance between them, his shit-kicker boots up against her pointed cowboy toes. “I do what’s necessary to stay alive.”
“Me too.” She didn’t drop her gaze. “And also to keep Delta alive, and the girls at the ranch. So I guess we’re not that different after all.”
If the abrupt gunmetal gleam in his eyes was anything to go by, apparently comparing Earther girls to a cybernetic warrior was something of an insult to him.
So she had to admit she was relieved for a couple reasons when a hand clamped over his massive shoulder and Delta stood up behind him.
Delta’s normally rugged, tanned visage was pale and haggard. But his hand on his brother shoulder didn’t shake. “You need to take a step back, Omega.”
Cosmo clearly hadn’t been startled at his brother’s abrupt revival, but his eyes widened a little at the calm words. “You just blew your nanite cloud. You don’t have the power to enforce that command.”
“You don’t know what an imprinted shroud will do for his keyholder,” Delta said quietly. “Reckon you ought not to challenge me on this.”
Obligingly, Cosmo retreated, but his eyes narrowed again as Delta rounded him to join Lindy. “Without your nanites, you’re useless.”
“Is that why you’re standing on the other side of the cave now?” Lindy smirked around Delta’s biceps.
“Lindy,” Delta murmured quellingly. When she only sniffed by way of apology, he turned to his brother. “The ship was running on a blank registration. But it had to be a reclamation team.”
Cosmo tilted his head. “Blank, not even falsified. They’re not trying to hide at all.”
“They came in hot from atmo,” Delta continued. “They knew where we were, and they thought this was going to be easy. The yurk’s stasis alarm must’ve been picked up somewhere by someone, and I’m guessing they anticipated a valuable retrieval of inactive shrouds conveniently packaged for resale.”
Cosmo nodded. “We have to go.”
Delta raked one hand over his head. At some point in the wild night, he’d lost his hat. Or maybe it had dissolved along with his nanites, another part of him peeling away. “We’ll get back to the Fallen A and—”
“No. We’re leaving here, forever.”
When Delta didn’t immediately reply, Lindy’s pulse rattled in her veins. “I thought you were a much-feared cyborg army. You’re just going to run away?”
Cosmo stared at her. “I guess you were right about us being more alike than I thought.”
Delta widened his stance. Not so much to challenge his brother, Lindy thought, as to hold himself upright. “We’re not leaving. This is our home. We’ve made a life here.”
Cosmo stared down at him from his greater height. “We’re CWBOIs. By transgalactic common law we don’t qualify as alive, and our missions usually destroy other people’s homes.”
Lindy touched Delta’s back. “Now you can fight for yourselves.”
He looked down at her, an expression she couldn’t quite identify softening his gray eyes. She’d thought he was just a big, simple rancher, but there were secrets to him she didn’t know. And not just the alien thing.
“I’ll make this right, I promise,” he said.
“Reckon you ought not to make promises you can’t keep,” Cosmo grumbled.
Biting her lip, Lindy let her hand fall away. “Promises are like barbed wire. You string ‘em tight, hope you don’t get crucified on them later.”
When the two aliens just stared at her, she huffed. “You know how it is.”
After a moment, they nodded.
Cosmo gestured toward deeper into the cavern. “I’ve been collecting and repairing some wreckage from the ship. Might need it.”
When Delta fell into step behind him, Lindy hesitated and then tagged along. If Delta trusted—sort of—his outlaw brother, she supposed she’d have to do the same. From a slightly greater distance, and wishing she had her Remington…
She stumbled over nothing as they passed into an even larger chamber and she saw what the rifle would’ve been up against. Maybe just as well she’d left hers behind.
Delta sucked in a breath. “Mach and I noticed some salvage missing from the maintenance shed, but… You rebuilt the ship’s cannon?”
“I knew this day would come.” Cosmo stalked around the weapon, which was bigger than three of the Shire mare but wide-mouthed and serrated on one end like a lamprey’s ugly mouth. How did a thing look so alien and yet also be obviously a tool of death? “Unfortunately, without a proper power source, it’s about as useless as you are without your nanites. But I modified a working blaster out of several ruined ones.” He touched a smaller gun—relatively smaller; it still looked too heavy for her to lift. “It won’t bring down a ship, but if they set foot or hoof or pseudopod on this dirt, I will kill them.”
Lindy stopped listening to him. While posturing was fine and dandy, they needed a solution. “That ship only came after you, Delta. If they captured your little robots, is there any chance that will be enough for them?”
He shook his head. “The nanites essentially die without me. I’m regenerating a new cloud from my marrow, but it will take time. The ship will be searching, hoping to grab me while I’m”—he peered at his brother—“useless.”
She wandered between what felt very much like the random piles of old equipment that accumulated around every farm. Except this stuff was all…weird and unidentifiable. “Is there something here that could change your signal? Make you harder to find?”
“This cavern is veiled,” Cosmo said. “One of my other recoveries from the crash.”
“I’m not making this my new home,” Delta said. “And if the reclamation team lands, the veil scrambling their sensors won’t matter.”
“Hence the blaster,” Lindy muttered.
Cosmo nodded at her approvingly. “If the ship is fixed on the Delta, our clearest strategy is staking you out as bait. When they come down to collect you, we kill them all, steal their ship, and—”
“No,” Lindy snapped. “You’re not setting him up to be abducted by aliens.”
“He is an alien,” Cosmo pointed out.
She sputtered. “Yeah, but…” And didn’t really have anything else she wanted to say aloud. But what?
Delta averted his gaze. “If that is the clearest strategy—”
“It’s not.” As she swung around to confront them, she thumped her hand against a chest-high pyramid with blinky lights. The peak of the pyramid looked like glass, with a swirling smoky gas within, but the sound of her whack was metallic. No wonder the whole Egypt/alien rumor had gotten started. “We have to…” She stared down at the pyramid. For a heartbeat, her fingers splayed across the metal-glass, then she jerked back as the smoke cleared for one more heartbeat. “What…what is that?”
Cosmo peered past her. “Don’t you know what a baby looks like?”