Great Sky River Read Free

jumpin' at spooks,— Ledroff got in, then fell silent.
    Killeen wished Cap’n Fanny had come on full comm line and cut off Ledroff. A mere disapproving click of her tongue would have
     shut him up.
    The Family skimmed low, using savvy earned through hard years. Wheeling left, they seeped down among the knobby, domed buildings
     of the manufacturing complex.
    Factory mechs wrenched to a stop as the Family skipped light and fast through their workyards. Then the blocky, awkward-looking
     machines hunkered down, withdrawing their extensors into marred aluminum shells. Such mechs had no other defense mechanisms,
     so the Family gave the slope-nosed, turtlelike forms no notice.
    Still, the humans had to be fast. They knew if they stayed here long these slow-thinking drudges would send out a call. Lancers
     would come. Or worse.
    Killeen pondered for a moment the possibility that the thing trailing them was a lone Lancer, summoned by a minor pillage
     the Family had made a few days before. He checked the faint, flickering tracers behind.
    No, nothing like a Lancer. Something smaller, certainly. It gave off hardly any image at all. Still…
    “Yea!” he called. Tapping his right temple twice with a forefinger, he sent his scan topo map to the entire Family. “We’re
     bunching up!”
    With muttered irritation they spread out, dissolving their moving beeswarm triangle. They formed the traditional concentric
     rings, ragged because the Family numbered a mere 278 now. And some of them were achingly slow—gimpy, or old, or wounded from
     past scrapes and fights and blunders.
    Fanny saw the problem and called, —Show the wind our heels!—
    The old saying worked. They began to run faster now, a keen unspoken fear at their backs.
    He sent the latest topo to Fanny. It showed a muddle of bluewhite tracers behind them.
    Fanny sent, —Where’s it?—
    Killeen admitted, “Dunno. Looks to be some kinda screen.”
    —Deliberate confusion?—
    “Don’t think so. But…”
    —Situation like this, your topo’s no good for figurin’ size. Go by speed. No ’facturing mech moves quick as a Marauder.—
    “This one’s slow, then fast.”
    —Must be a Marauder.—
    “Think we should stand ’n' wait for it?”
    He felt her assessing regard like a cool wedge in his sensorium.
    —What
you
think?—
    “Well… it might just be reconning us.”
    —Could be.—
    She was giving nothing away. “So’d be best if we keep on, make like we don’t see it.”
    —Long’s we can keep track of it, sure.—
    Killeen wondered what Fanny meant by that, but he didn’t want to ask, not with Ledroff listening. He said guardedly, “It keeps
     jumpin' round.”
    —Might be some new mechtech.—
    So?
he thought.
How do we respond?
He kept his voice flat and assured, though, as he said, “I figure we don’t give away that we see it. If it’s just checkin'
     its ’quipment, it’ll go away.”
    —And come back when we’re sleepin',— she said flatly.
    “So? Our watch’ll pick it up. But if we take a shot at it now, when we can’t see it so good, maybe it gets away. Next time
     it comes back with better mechtech. So then we don’t pick it up and it skrags us.”
    Fanny didn’t answer for a long moment and Killeen wondered if he had made a fool of himself. She had coached him in the crafts
     and he always felt inadequate compared with her sure, almost casual grasp of Family lore. She could be a stern Cap’n, a shrewd
     tactician, firm and fast. And when they had fought or fled, and again gathered around nightfires to tell their tales, she
     could be warm and grandmotherly. Killeen would do anything to avoid disappointing her. But he had to know what to do, and
     she was giving him no easy answers.
    —Yeasay. That’s best, long as this’s a reg’lar Marauder.—
    Killeen felt a burst of pride at her approval. But a note of concern in her voice made him ask, “What if it’s not?”
    —Then we run. Hard.—
    They were out of the