Unknown - The_Growing_589064

“Major,” Koda says, stepping out from among the parked Jeeps. “You’re the commander here?” It is not really a question, only a confirmation. She keeps her eyes on his face, not his gun. If he is going to shoot, she will see it in his eyes.

“Calton,” he says. “Ted Calton. Who the hell are you?” He ignores Jem, now being helped to his feet and led away by his brother.

“Dakota Rivers.” For a split second his eyes widen; then the steel is back. “You’ve heard of me.”

“We’ve heard what happened on the Cheyenne,” he acknowledges. “That was good work.”

Koda makes a show of looking around her, her finger still light on the trigger of her weapon. “I don’t see any droids here.”

“And you won’t. We’ve destroyed every one we’ve found.”

“Good work,” she echoes. “Want to do some more of it?”

“We do more of it every day.” Calton moves forward, standing on the highest step. “We protect the people and the land around Minot.”

“For a price?”

“For a price.” Something that is almost a smile touches his mouth. “We can’t patrol and farm, too. The civilians are grateful.”

Koda raises her voice to carry to the barn and the men still hovering in the door there. “The droids and their allies are massing around Offut and to the west. We expect them to try to take out Ellsworth, again. If they get through us, they’ll roll over you. We have a common interest.”

“Not necessarily. If you stop them, they won’t bother us. If you don’t stop them—well, we don’t have what they want, now do we? No high-powered cyberwonks here.”

Cold runs over Dakota’s skin. But of course they know Kirsten is at Ellsworth; the same tales that brought her own name north would have brought Kirsten’s and Maggie’s. Blind Harry’s ballad is sung here, too, for all she knows. “You have lives,” she says evenly. “And you have weapons. If those civilians include women, the droids have a use for them, too.”

“Breedstock?” Calton snorts. “We’ve heard those stories. What the hell would a droid want with human pussy?”

“More humans. We don’t know why, yet.” She raises her voice. “You men! You want your wives and girlfriends, your sisters, shipped off to be bred by the kind of scum the droids keep alive to do their work? We killed the rapists at Mandan when we bombed the droid factory. We just executed a second batch at Ellsworth. How many have you caught?”

A murmur ripples through the knots of men, and a scowl appears on Calton’s face. He glances quickly about the perimeter of the farm buildings; he has to assume that she has men in place to cover her. “We deal with anyone who threatens us. Anyone. Got that?”

Koda grins at him, and again she feels the heat course through her blood. “That B-52 back in the field yours? We have reason to think the enemy may have air power. Got anything to protect you from high-altitude fighters?”

Calton gestures with his gun. “Go back to your people. Tell ‘em no deal. We stay here and protect what we’ve got.”

“You men!” Koda shouts. “What do you think about that? Are you going to sit here on your butts and miss the chance to get your world back? Or are you coming south with me?”

“I’m going.” One trooper, a bit older than most of the others, steps out of the ring of men. Another follows, then three more.

The roar of Calton’s gun splits the night. “The hell you are! Get back in your quarters, all of you! This is my command! As for you—” He lowers the pistol he has fired into the air to aim at Koda. “Get the hell out. While you can.”

Carefully Koda raises the gunstrap over her head and lays the AK aside. It seems to her that she hears the breath of every man around her, harsh and rushing like winter wind. She smells their sweat, the fear in some, arousal in others. The flesh of Calton’s face lies lightly on the bone, so that she can almost see through it to the white skull beneath. See his death. “I’ll fight you for them,” she says.

“What?” Fear flickers in his eyes, is gone.

“I’ll fight you for your command. You win, you keep your men. I win, they go with me.” Her words fall into silence.

“Fight you?” Calton glances at his pistol. “How?”

For answer, Koda bends and draws the knife from her boot-top. The light catches its ten-inch blade, runs along it like quicksilver. “Like this.”

He is trapped, and knows it. His eyes widen, then narrow again. He cannot afford hesitation. “All right,” he says. Setting the pistol on a windowsill behind him, he draws the knife from his own belt. “Don’t expect me to go easy on you because you’re a woman, though.”

Dakota laughs, tossing her blade end for end and catching it again. The men shift to form a ring around them in the open space between the farmhouse and the parked vehicles. Someone brings a kerosene lamp to set at the perimeter of the circle, then another. Their light throws Calton’s shadow and her own huge on the ground, distorted, creatures with impossibly long legs and arms sprouting from attenuated bodies. Slowly they circle each other, Koda keeping her eyes on Calton’s face. His blade glints in her peripheral vision, shines like a beacon to her heightened vision.

He feints, cutting low for the belly, and Koda steps lightly out of his reach, spinning wide to her left. He turns with her, but too slowly, and she whips toward him, her blade opening a gash on his upper arm. His blood runs black in the dim light.

Voices come to her on the wind of her passing, but she does not heed them. “Surrender,” she says.

For answer he attempts to close with her again, this time coming on straight at her. She blocks his upward stab with a sweep of her left arm, whirling again out of his reach. Her wrist is cold and wet, but the cut is shallow. It stings, barely perceptible. The blood from Caltons cut, though, falls on the earth in dark spurts. She need only avoid injury, wear him down.

He knows it, too. Fear flickers across his face, is gone. With a yell, he comes in low and fast, butting at her with his head while his knife goes for the tendons in her left leg. She rolls with the blow, planting a foot in his gut to carry him up and over, to land hard on his back behind her. Koda scrambles to her feet, stepping hard on the wrist of his knife hand with the heel of her boot. His fingers open, and she kicks the blade away.

Behind her a cheer starts up, to be abruptly broken off as Calton grabs at her ankle, turning it hard to bring her down with him. She falls halfway across his body, rolls as he surges off his back to pin her, reaching for her throat with both hands. His fingers close around her neck, bearing on her windpipe and the great veins in her neck. Pressing down and back, seeking the leverage that will break her neck, his grip tightens as she gasps for breath, her chest grown suddenly tight. Calton’s face is a grinning skull mask above her. A shadow passes over her eyes, and she brings her knife up between their straining bodies, finds the soft spot just beneath the join of the rib cage. She thrusts straight up, the blade grating on bone, then making easy passage through the soft tissue of liver and lung, cutting upward. For a moment Calton remains above her, his hands tightening convulsively about her throat, bringing on the darkness. Then he collapses across her, blood running from his mouth in a black torrent, and is dead.

Silence holds her. Then she pushes Calton off her to stagger to her feet. His blood stains her hands, her face, her shirt, dark and wet in the dim light.

Then the sound begins, softly at first, the men chanting her name. “Koda. Koda.” The murmur becomes a shout, swells, grows to a roar. “Koda! Ko-da! Ko-da!”