KILL SHOT

6 Part 2 Reynal and the drone

Through a finger-wide crack, a hint of grayish-green steel glinted. He shifted the rubble aside, and a hinged box came into view. Pushing slabs of rock out of the way, he made enough room to lift the box by its handle, and carry it out of the larder. Thing had to weigh twenty-five kilos. The top was locked. He dug for the key in his pocket. It fit exactly.

Inside was a package wrapped tightly in oilskin and bearing two symbols. One he didn't recognize. The other he knew, and it set his heart pounding. It was a crude sketch, a section of two stacked gears. Teach owned more than one item with the mark of the Jackal Republic's mechanical engineers, and Darj's treasured wrench bore the same.

"Mechs." He bit off the words. The key didn't want to come out, so he lowered the lid. It closed with a metallic snap. This time when he turned the key, the lock clicked twice, and only then released the key. A dual locking mechanism, he realized, carting the box to his sled.

As he covered it with one of his blankets and tucked it under the food in the cargo bed, three thoughts became clear: this was what he'd been sent to fetch, and this was what the men from the zeppelin had blasted their way through the hut to find.

The third thought was the most disturbing. Having the item in his possession now made him a target. And not just any target, but one of Cerebus. Like his mother had once been. He'd rather deal with the wolves.

Shit. He shouldn't have opened the box. No telling if the act had sent out some kind of signal. The zeppelin's sensors could've picked up the broadcast, maybe even from the contents, while the lid was open. The airship could be on its way back even now.

Rey glanced briefly at the scattered bits of burned flesh in front of the hut. There would be no burial. And the traveler's family would never know what had happened. He gave a heavy sigh at the thought, but there was nothing to be done.

Stepping onto the sled's foot boards, he put Timba and Loba in motion with a sharply worded, "Hike!" He resisted giving the dogs their head. Getting away from the traveler's hut and into the confines of the canyon safely was more important than getting out fast.

Knowing that didn't make the battle between his head and his flight instinct easier. He wasn't going to be able to breathe normally again until he was behind closed doors.

Behind locked doors.

Then again, locks didn't offer much in the way of protection when it came to blast guns. And what he'd seen had him looking over his shoulder, wary. He had to make sure he wasn't being followed. Nerves, again, he told himself. That's all it was. This valley was rarely traveled.

He shook off the uneasiness, laughing under his breath, glad his brothers weren't here to see him shaking like a kidlet. He'd been doing this too long—they'd all been doing this too long—to let a single fright mess him up. His had been a big fright, sure, but he knew to learn from it, not dwell on it, not let it win.

Still, he looked over his shoulder one last time, taking in what was left of the hut as he made the turn out of the canyon and... Shit! He wasn't imagining things at all! Perched at the head of the valley was one of the zeppelin's scout drones. Nearly the size of his sled, it sat on a rocky ledge, motionless, pointed straight at the hut, seeming to peer down.

The airship might have passed over without spotting him, but he wasn't going to be so lucky with this automated aircraft. Darj loved all things tech and said the drones were set up somehow to notice movement below. Wolves, dogs, humans... the machines recorded everything they saw.

What Darj didn't know was if they relayed the information to the zeppelin in real time, or if, when they landed, the security force that handled them accessed what they'd seen. If that was the case, Rey was in less immediate danger. But he was still in danger.