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I feel her shift behind me, snug tighter, her arms contracting around my waist. Dammit, it feels good. Josie is already complicating things. Women always do. That’s why I’ve steered clear of her kind for a few years now. The saloon girls she hissed and spat about don’t take my fancy. Not because they take any man with gold between their legs, but because most of them these days are Imperium spies.
It’s not illegal to sell your body in the Imperium. It’s not illegal to sell anything. Property rights are the only rights left — and that’s why they hate men like me. I liberate all their hard-taxed earnings and distribute it among the sorts of people who don’t produce a damn thing.
Josie sure feels good back there though. Warm and kind of snuggly, though I’m sure that’s because she doesn’t want to come off this horse again. I don’t know how I’m going to keep her around. I don’t know if I even should. Might be the smartest thing to drop her off at the nearest mail post and keep riding, but I know I’m not going to do that. She has the feeling of something permanent behind me. There’s some things in life, once they happen, they ain’t ever being undone. Losing my arm was one of those things. I think meeting Josie is another.
Paris coasts up alongside me at an easy lope, catching me in thoughts no rough man of my kind should ever have.
“I think we’ve caught a bird or two,” he says, gesturing to the sky. “Get yer viewers out.”
I pull a pair of augmented binoculars out of my saddle pack and direct them toward the quadrant of sky he’s pointing at. Paris is a good man to have around. Most of the time the surveillance birds can’t be seen with the naked eye, but Paris has a fancy implant behind his right eye, and it has some useful applications, like spying those little specks up so high most people’d never think they were being watched.
“Shoot ‘em down.”
I’m not one for technology. Or at least, I wasn’t until I got my arm ripped off and found it was near bloody impossible to ride and shoot at the same time with only one hand. A well trained horse can ride off leg aids, but horses aren’t lasting long these days, and I don’t have the months and years it takes to train a horse every time some Imperium bastard blasts a mare out from under me.
“They’re out of range,” he says. “But they’re watching. Could feel them beady eyes on me since before we got the girl off the tracks.”
Behind me, Josie spits. I don’t know if that’s an expression of contempt, or if she has dust in her mouth. Could be either, and as tight lipped as she is, I’d put money on her refusing to tell me the reason. Girl won’t say a thing about herself. Sooner or later though, I’m going to get the truth out of her.
Right now, we’ve got bigger problems. The Imperium doesn’t need to kill me if they know where I am. They can keep an eye on me and take me out when they feel like it, and I don’t like that one bit. Every bird we get rid of is another one they have to manufacture and replace, and I know the war isn’t going well for them. There’s too many colonies rebelling, fighting back, demanding independence and freedom — and being shot to shit as a result.
Patch is one step shy of a dustbowl, but I like it. Most colonies are built up cities. Patch doesn’t have a single town with more than ten thousand people in it. Plenty of homesteaders, dozens of small towns, all the space in the world, well, all the space in this world. This is a planet where an outlaw can make himself a living alongside law abiding folk — or at least, it used to be.
I like the horses around here, too. The mutation that makes them carnivorous is hugely useful, though they’re prone to cannibalism if they get too hungry. But that’s true of any of us, I guess.
“Boys! Get the bird cannons out!” Paris shouts the order to the others.
I dismount, bringing the girl with me. She watches me with wide, wary eyes. I get the feeling she’s making plans to either start or get into trouble, but I’m not standing for neither. I’ve got a dozen unruly outlaws in line, and she’s not going to be any different.
“Git back here,” I growl as she tries to reach for the horse’s bridle. If she swings her butt up onto that saddle, it’ll be the last I see of her, I’m sure of it. She’s jumpy as hell. I can practically feel her vibrating as I keep her steady, my hand on her collar.
