Chapter 21

"We need to move. We'll load the mule with whatever we can lay our hands on and get the hell away from here." Bob handed the silenced pistol, and four spare magazines, to Kat and slung the rifle over his shoulder. He pocketed the rest of Vega's gear and led the way to the mule.

It only took a few minutes to drive the mule directly over the ridge to the camp, Kat at the wheel and Bob riding passenger with the rifle across his lap. A couple minutes more and they had everything they could find loaded on the back. Kat driving again, they headed straight back towards the town, avoiding the back side of the ridge where Vega's co-conspirators were probably waiting. This time, across his lap, Bob carried a heavier weapon, designed for squad support and fire suppression. He looked like he was hoping for a chance to use it.

They stayed in the forest and circled the town, continuing on the far side. Kat tried to stick to harder ground and the occasional stream bed, in order to minimize any tracks they would leave behind. The daily rain showers that afternoon helped to wipe out what tracks they did make.

They were traveling through some pretty rough terrain and that raised another concern in Kat's mind. The power cells for the mule weren't going to last forever. Without a power station to plug the vehicle in to, they were going to have to rely on the solar cells or abandon the vehicle all-together. Kat wasn't sure how long they had left, but if it made it another 36 hours, she would be surprised.

Kat drove until the sun was almost down. They wanted to find a good spot to camp, before it got completely dark. Somewhere with overhead cover and near to a water source. By the time they found a good spot, it was fully dark and the stars were out again.

There was only a single tent, the spare from the old camp, but since they would be trading watch shifts, it wouldn't be an issue. As tired as Kat was, it wouldn't have been an issue anyway.

When the tent was set up, Bob emptied his various pockets onto a tarp and set up a small, dim lamp. From the pockets of the man he had dragged from the cab of the mule, they had a wallet with no Ident disc, a credit wafer and a torn sheet of flimsy plastic with a brief description of them both, and the serial number of the mule, written on it in a blocky, almost child-like scrawl. Bob had also recovered a pair of cheap knives, an almost as cheap handgun and the homemade sap that Kat had taken from the man on her side of the mule.

The gear from Alex Vega's pockets were a little more telling. He had a small case that contained a pair of syringes. They were not labeled so there was no way of knowing what the clear fluid inside was. There was a small, palm sized scrambler of the type used to block communications over a limited area. Next was a thumb-sized tazer device, used to stun rather than injure or kill, an opponent. Last was a pocket sized, wafer thin data pad.

When Kat activated the pad, the screen displayed a message telling the user to submit to a biometric scan. It was locked and only accessible by Alex Vega. If she could get to back to the techs at the Citadel, she was sure they could break the encryption, but it was useless to her now. Shrugging, she stuffed it into a small pack anyway; loathe to give up whatever secrets it may hold.

She pulled the radio that Bob had taken from Vega, out of her cargo pocket and turned it on. There was a brief burst of white noise and then the signal cleared and the radio went silent. By now, the Vega's backup team would have found the body and discovered that the camp had been ransacked. If they had any sense at all, they would know that Vega's weapons and gear, including the radio, had been taken. She hadn't really expected to pick up any transmissions, but she had to try.

They also worked to sort through the jumble of gear they had tossed into the rear of the Mule. There had not been time to pack neatly so they had tossed in anything that was not tied down. Things could have been much worse. They had departed the ship with enough supplies to support a week-long stay for five adults. The remaining food and water would last the two of them three weeks. Longer, if they cut down the rations to one meal a day. They had recovered three of the sub-compact machine pistols, one of the rifles, the machine gun and all of the explosives along with enough ammo to get the job done.

There was a water purifier system, a fully-stocked medical kit that was capable of stabilizing a severely wounded person and would allow the users to do just about anything except for surgery. They had a set of six radios that were good for about fifty kilometers if the users were in 'line-of-sight' and a good supply of power cells for those. They also had lights. Tiny lights that emitted a choice of standard, red and infrared beams, perfect for a sneak and peak. Small, handheld lights and even larger flood lights.

Last and certainly not least, they had night vision goggles with a rudimentary infrared capability that would be invaluable for working or moving around at night.

All things considered, they were well supplied.

Kat would have traded it all, at that moment, for a working Comm unit that would allow her to reach the ship that was supposed to be in orbit.

As they ate, Kat explained what she had found in her data search at Mabel's. They agreed that it would be madness to turn back now. Going back to the port was suicide so it seemed that the only option left was the 400 kilometer journey east, to see if they could learn more about the crashed flier. The town of Champlace might boast a transmitter powerful enough to contact their ship or, at least, link up with the orbital FTL transmitter.

The trip should have taken ten to twelve hours, depending on how rugged the terrain turned out to be, but they had barely gone ninety minutes when they reached the gorge.

Kat pulled the mule to a stop and looked out over the chasm in front of them. It was two to three kilometers wide and looked almost a kilometer deep. Climbing out of the mule and standing on the edge, she could look down and see wispy clouds floating by below her. Deep in the gorge, in the one place in sight were the sun penetrated deep enough to illuminate the bottom, she could see what looked like a winding ribbon of a river. She pulled up the map she had used to find Champlace the first time and zoomed in, scrolling through the terrain between there and the Port. Nothing. It seemed the mining companies had skimped on the cartography portion of the survey, more intent on mapping the mineral deposits.