Chapter 2

As she walked along the gravel trail Sandra’s backpack was a comforting weight pressing down on her shoulders. She took a deep breath of the clean back-country air. It smelled like wildflowers and damp earth. There wasn’t a trace of the mechanical odours from the town behind her. It was good to finally be out in the wilderness again.

The terrain around her was lightly wooded, with mature hardwood trees creating a broken canopy, green with summer leaves. Long yellow grass, sticking up between the trees, swayed in a light breeze. Patches of random color interspersed the grass. They were summer flowers, spread in natural drifts where the wind took the seeds. There were purple blossoms mixed in with blues and reds. Bees and other insects buzzed around the flowers. A warning call sounded from a bird in the trees as a large sabre hound bounded through the grass.

The hound’s name was Hammerfall. She was a long-haired dog, with a mottled gray coat. Her coloring wasn’t even enough to be called spotted, but she wasn’t a single shade either. Her tongue lolled out between serrated teeth as she careened through the grass, happily investigating new smells along the trail. Hammerfall kept coming back to Sandra so that she could have her ears ruffle or to receive a scratch under the chin. Her long wagging tail showed that she was a happy dog, enjoying life. A collar around her neck matched the wristband on Sandra’s arm. Hammerfall was a collar pet, and she belonged to Sandra. With a canine grin she trotted up the trail to sniff at her fellow hound.

The second hound was light brown in color, with black saddle markings and a black muzzle. Her name was Cerberus. The red line of a leash led from Cerberus’ collar to Liam’s wrist. He was keeping her close, rather than letting her run like Sandra was allowing with Hammerfall.

Liam was a big guy. He filled out his pants and tight T-shirt quite nicely from Sandra’s point of view. He had shoulder length hair and a smooth face, without any stubble. Hiking boots and a wide brimmed hat rounded out his clothing. He glanced over at her and flashed a smile. Damn, he was a pretty man. He wouldn’t normally be her type, but he’d won her over.

Liam was wearing two large pouches on his belt, similar to her own. They were trainer pouches, the characteristic gear of a licensed trainer. The truth was that he wasn’t just a collar pet trainer. In one of his pouches, there was a purple metal device that matched her hair. It was a capture device that was chosen just for her. She was a part-time collar girl now, and while she was wearing the collar, he was her master.

“Okay, what did you leave out?” Liam asked.

“What?” she asked, failing to understand the question.

“Back at the temple yesterday, when we were talking to priestess Josephine about retrieving Brandon Zimmerman’s body. You left something out. What was it?” he asked.

“What makes you think...” she started.

“No offence, but you don’t have a good poker face. What didn’t you tell her?” he interrupted.

“Damn, that’s annoying,” she replied, “Okay, tradition is that a trainer’s possessions are brought back during a retrieval. We don’t take from the dead.”

“Yeah, that’s just common decency.”

“There’s one exception,” Sandra explained, “A trainer’s collar pets become the property of the trainer who retrieves the body.”

“That’s ... why?” he asked.

“It’s an encouragement to retrieve dead trainers, and otherwise the pets might go to someone who isn’t a trainer. You know, like the next of kin. That would be awkward from a legal standpoint if the next of kin wasn’t licensed.”

“Okay ... so Zimmerman had a good collar pet?” Liam asked.

“A razor lynx,” Sandra replied. Liam whistled in appreciation.

“Those are rare. Why keep it a secret from the priestess?”

“I don’t trust her,” she replied, “Priestesses scheme, its part of their religion.”

A breeze gusted through the foliage. Ripples of color flashed as the flowers twisted and swayed. The gravel trail turned off to the East, following the edge of the rolling hills. As a group, they left the main trail, following a half-overgrown dirt track instead. The track led into the hills in the direction of a mountain. There was nobody else in sight. Sandra took another deep breath, reveling in the untamed beauty of the landscape.

“It’s really peaceful out here,” Liam commented.

His words tweaked her memory. A lesson from an instructor, years ago. She reached down to the holster on her thigh and pulled out her plasma pistol.

“Woah! What are you doing?” Liam asked taking a step away from her.

“Oh relax,” she replied, “When it’s peaceful and quiet is when you should prepare, because there’s no time during a fight.”

“Ummm, okay?”

“This is a Bernadette mark four nitrogen plasma pistol,” Sandra explained. Liam shrugged with a confused expression on his face.

“Bernadettes have a user id feature. You need to be registered on the gun before you can use it,” she explained. He continued to look confused.

“I want to register you now, so that if you need it in an emergency then you can use it,” she finished.

“Oh, okay,” he replied, finally understanding her intent, “But I don’t know much about guns.”

Sandra pressed a series of small buttons on the top of the weapon. It beeped, telling her it was ready. Stepping over to Liam, she carefully pressed his hand into the pistol grip. It took several seconds, but it eventually beeped a second time, confirming he was registered on the weapon. He held the pistol loosely, aimed downward. With a gentle hand she redirected the point of aim away from his feet.

“Okay, here’s a quick run down,” she explained, “The pistol uses a radio-frequency torch in order to excite nitrogen gas into a plasma. The magnetic bottle forms the plasma into a toroid and projects it directly away from the torch. This model has a twenty-millisecond delay between pulling the trigger and projection, so stay on target until you feel the backblast.”

The expression of confusion made a return on his face. She wasn’t sure where she lost him, so she pressed on with her explanation.

“The battery is here,” she said, showing where it was inside the grip, “It’s only good for nine shots. The nitrogen canister is in the back, overhanging your wrist. It will be good for around twenty shots, give or take.”

“Ummm, those numbers don’t match up,” he commented.

“Which is why Bernadettes aren’t overly popular weapons,” she replied, “One of the few advantages is that the nitrogen canister can be refilled using a portable compressor. I’ll be able to keep recharging my canisters and batteries indefinitely. Over the long term, I have infinite ammunition.”

There was a large boulder near the side of the trail. It was several tonnes of stone and had likely been there since the last ice age. With a hand on Liam’s shoulder, she turned him so that he was facing towards it. She adjusted how he was standing until it was a close approximation of a shooting stance. The boulder was about twenty meters away.

“The toroid is only good for about fifty meters,” she said, “Beyond that, you’re hitting the target with a warm breeze.”

“What’s a toroid?” he asked, trying to line up the sights with one eye closed.

“It’s like a smoke ring, a donut shape. The first-generation plasma weapons shot toroids of plasma. In the newer weapons the magnetic bottle forms a teardrop shape, but the name stuck, so we still call a shot from a plasma weapon a toroid,” she explained.

The distinctive sound of a capacitor discharging rang out as a blindingly bright teardrop of bluish-violet color whipped out of the plasma pistol in the direction of the boulder. It missed high, fading and dispersing in the distance. She stood patiently and let him try again. His second shot grazed the top of the boulder, leaving a streak of blackened rock.

“We better not need you to do any shooting,” she said with a grin.

“Yeah, you think you can do better?” he asked, offering her the pistol.

Noticeably, he managed to keep the business end of the weapon aimed at the rock as he passed it over. It was surprisingly correct form for a beginner. Between the grin on his face, and the tone of his voice, it was obvious that he knew she could outshoot him.

Taking the pistol, she aimed it at the boulder. The familiar backblast of hot air made her hair dance as she put a shot dead center into the oversized rock. She pressed the trigger twice more, hitting roughly the same spot with each of her shots. A blackened hole the size of her fist dripped a molten mixture of liquid minerals.