Recycled (17 page)

"I hear something," Stasha warned.

Dylan threw his branch onto the ruts in hopes of obscuring at least part of the trail, and then ran up into hiding, successfully reaching the tree line and Stasha just as first a civilian vehicle and then an armored troop carrier went roaring past. They had brought out the big guns, and no doubt the high tech shit. So even though these stupid bastards rolled right past the obvious damage, it couldn't be long till they found their trail now.

"Come on, we've got to get moving." Dylan grabbed Stasha's arm and started dragging her along back towards the vehicle."God, I hate all this outdoors shit. Look at the glop sticking to my boots, and my hands are covered in
shmutz
 . . ."

"Do you trust her?" Stasha asked in a small voice. Dylan didn't stop.

"Who?" he asked.

"Drewcila Qwah, my sister. Do you trust her?"

"Of course I do. Drew's a good friend, a loyal friend . . . mostly. So she slept with your boyfriend. Big f'in deal. You act like she did it to hurt your feelings, and she didn't. It probably didn't even occur to her that you'd care. She did it to try to get control of Zarco. Salvagers . . . Well, we just don't live by the same stupid rules that the rest of you do. And Drewcila, well she's the Queen of the Salvagers, ain't she?"

They had reached the vehicle. Arcadia got out and walked over to him.

"Well?"

"We've left a trail a blind monkey could follow, and they've sent out armored transports to look for us. We'll have to get moving."

Arcadia nodded, stuck her head into the air and sniffed, turning as she did so."I smell civilization this way." She pointed, then reached in the open vehicle door and dragged Drewcila, who was mumbling incoherently and limp as a rag, out of the car, and promptly dropped her. Drew's head hit the car door.

"Ow!" She rubbed at her head.

"Oh, baby . . . I'm so sorry," Arcadia said as she and Dylan lifted her up off the ground.

"Key-rist! It's like she has no bones in her body," Dylan whispered to Arcadia, who nodded.

Facto got out of the vehicle and started talking."We'll have to make some sort of carrying . . ."

Arcadia easily tossed the limp, mumbling woman over her shoulder and then started all but running in the direction she had pointed earlier.

Dylan motioned with his head that they should follow her, saying with a smile."Valtarian lizard people are very strong . . . and fast. We'll have to run to keep up." He grabbed Stasha's hand."I'll help you."

They were only able to catch up with Arcadia because she stopped to sniff the air again.

Dylan was out of breath and had a stitch in his side, so he knew the others had to be near to the dropping point.

"Arcadia . . . do you think you could slow down a little?"

"Drewcila . . . she's running a fever. It's almost dark. The temperature will drop . . ."

"How can you be sure she's running a fever?" Facto asked, not seeing how anything so alien could know anything about a Barion's physical condition.

For answer Arcadia swiveled so that Drew was even with Facto.

"I have a butt, you have a butt, we all have a butt. This is my butt, and I'll do what I like with it," Drewcila said, and then started laughing hysterically.

"Because she's been talking out of her head like that for over twenty minutes," Arcadia answered, turning back around to glare at Facto as if it was somehow his fault.

"Maybe we should stop and try to make a camp for the night. Build a fire," Facto suggested.

"You mean stay out here in . . . all this nature?" Dylan asked, pulling a face.

"Yes, it won't be comfortable, but . . ."

"No! Absolutely not! Are you mad!" Dylan yelled.

"He may be right, Dylan, we are probably still an hour away from the civilization I smelled, and who knows but that it might be hostile territory," Arcadia said thoughtfully."I grow very tired, and I can see that the rest of you aren't doing any better."

"We could make some sort of stretcher to carry Drew and help you," Dylan insisted."If you would just slow down we could make it."

"But even then there is no guarantee of help," Facto said."It would be better to get some rest and tackle it first thing in the morning when there is light, and we are rested."

"Arcadia can see in the dark," Dylan was now in a near panic."How much rest can we possibly get out here in the middle of nowhere with God only knows what sort of murderous animals and . . . and plants."

"We'll be fine Dylan, help me lay Drew down," Arcadia ordered. He did so reluctantly.

"We're laying her on the cold ground. That couldn't be good for her fever," Dylan insisted. Arcadia just smiled at him, knowing exactly why he was protesting. She rose to her feet and patted his shoulder in a comforting way.

"Don't worry. I wouldn't let anything happen to you, little brother."

Dylan nodded his head, resigned to spending yet another night in the great outdoors. The courtyard grounds had been bad enough, but out here there were no walls. Nothing but woods and trees and . . . other stuff, and it was all that other stuff that he wasn't quite sure of.

He was in hell.

Arcadia took off her jacket and lay it over Drew, then grabbed Dylan."Come on. Let's go get some wood."

Dylan nodded, resigned.

When they were out of ear shot of the others he said, "All right, I didn't want to say this in front of the chick, but," he continued in a whine, "I'm cold, I'm hungry, I'm thirsty, and I just want to have a nice hot bath, crawl into a warm bed with her ladyship, get my groove on, and get some real sleep."

"Help me get some wood, and I'll see what I can do about finding some water and getting some food."

Dylan groaned, "Oh, I don't even want to know what that means."

The wood was still damp, and even with Arcadia's wonderful camping skills and the help of a laser, it took them a good hour to get a real fire going. During this time Drewcila's fever had broken, and she had started to sweat again, so she pulled Arcadia's jacket around her and moved closer to the fire. Even if she had her senses back, she obviously still didn't feel like talking.

Arcadia knelt beside Drew and whispered something to her. Drew forced a smile and nodded, so she must be feeling better. Arcadia rose and went into the woods—no doubt to hunt. She came back with her blaster holster filled with water and some small fur-bearing creature impaled on one of the spikes of her tail. She handed the water to Drew first. She drank half of it and handed it to Dylan. Dylan looked at the water reluctantly. It was dirty looking, and he imagined Arcadia had gotten it from some mud puddle. Still, he knew all about the effects of dehydration, so he swallowed hard and took a drink. It didn't taste too bad, a little gritty but all and all palatable. Before he realized what he was doing he had greedily drunk the whole thing.

"Oops!" he said, looking with guilt at Stasha and Facto who were glaring at him.

"It's all right, there's more where that came from," Arcadia promised. She was using her knife to skin and gut the animal, something which none of the others seemed to be up to watching, much less doing. When she was done she put the animal on a stick and held it over the fire, telling Dylan "Hold it here, any closer and it will burn on the outside without cooking in the middle. Any further away and it will never get done. Turn it every few minutes."

Dylan nodded, taking the stick as he handed her his holster to fill as well. He sat down next to Drew.

"So, how you feeling?"

"Mostly stupid," Drew answered in a whisper."I had no idea it would make me this sick. And how could I not have known that eating poison was probably going to make me sick? I guess I really do believe that I'm something more than Barion. At least it looks like the water's going to stay down. Maybe if I can eat something and get it to stay down I'll start to feel humanoid again."

Dylan realized something then."Being out here . . . it doesn't bother you at all?"

"Honey, compared to other places I've been, this is a fucking picnic. Hell, Van Gar and I used to do this sort of thing just for fun."

"What happened with Van?" Dylan asked carefully.

"If I told you, you wouldn't believe me. Suffice it to say he thinks a little too much like my rather uptight little sister over there."

Van Gar paced the deck of the bridge, making a face as he looked around at all the gaudy decorations Pard Jar had encrusted on the ship. Drewcila wouldn't be pleased. Filth and garbage was one thing, bad taste quite another.

He'd had time to check on Drewcila's plummeting stocks and the reasons for them. In the last few hours, with communications restored to Barious, he had been able to learn all of what was going on. Drewcila was in trouble, and the time of his redemption might very well be at hand.

He grinned happily, for now he was a very wealthy man in his own right, with something to trade. So he took half of his crew with him, and sent the other half off with Pard Jar and a half dozen of Pard Jar's ships to the "home planet," where they would retrieve the others and leave Pard Jar there with whatever idiots still wanted to follow him. Forcing Pard Jar to live on the planet he'd told so many others was so wonderful seemed to them all to be a perfect and altogether fitting punishment.

Now Van Gar just needed to make some sort of plan. Problem was that he just really wasn't a plan man. Drewcila was the big game player, she was the one looked at all the data and came up with the answers. Van Gar just occasionally came up with a missing piece that helped put the big picture together.

If only he could have contacted Drew, but everything he had tried had failed dramatically. After he learned that she'd killed Zarco and escaped from the palace, he figured she'd head for Hepron Station. But while he'd managed to reach a member of her crew there, and had learned that she had plans to meet them there, they weren't able to tell him where she might be or what sort of condition she might be in. Rumors were that she'd been poisoned or drugged, and since she had been accused of killing the king, the entire military had been called out to search for her. In fact, Hepron Station was swarming with police and military, so he and her people obviously weren't the only ones who expected Drewcila to put in an appearance there.

Still . . ."Unless she just can't get there for some reason, Drewcila will head for Hepron Station," he mumbled to himself.

"What's that, Van Gar?" Shreta asked.

"Navigator, plot a course for the planet Barious, Hepron Station," Van Gar ordered.

"I thought we were going to go in search of a homeland for our people?" Shreta said with a frown.

Van turned to her and forced a smile."And that's what we're doing. We'll kill two birds and only get stoned once." He made a face, knowing he didn't exactly have that right."We need land, and I've got an in with the Barion queen, remember?"

Dylan couldn't bring himself to eat the roast beast on a stick, and he noticed that neither could Stasha. That left Arcadia, Facto and Drew to eat it on their own, which they did. Drew was obviously well on the way to recovery, because she was keeping it all down. Dylan was more than a little surprised to see that Facto actually knew something about surviving in the great outdoors, and seemed to be rather enjoying their little adventure.

"My life used to be rather quiet and uninteresting," Stasha said with a sigh as he sat down beside her.

"I can't tell whether you're disappointed or relieved," Dylan said with a smile.

"It's just an observation. Look at her . . ." she slung her head towards Drewcila."Everyone falls at her feet. And I don't mean because she's queen. She has a presence now that she never had before. Though she was always strong willed, and—I'll admit it now, even if Zarco never will—manipulative. We are of the same blood, we look so much alike that I have for years, with very little effort on the part of makeup, passed myself off as her when the need arose. Yet she and I are nothing alike. All men fall under her spell, and I could not hold the love of even one. What is so special about her?"

Dylan shrugged and smiled."She's Drewcila Qwah."

"What sort of an answer is that?" Stasha asked angrily."She's not really Drewcila Qwah. Drewcila Qwah is just a made up person . . ."

"Aren't we all just 'made-up people'? Aren't we handed an identity at birth that we then feel compelled to fit into? She's Drewcila Qwah, whether that identity was made up for her or not. She became the role, just like I became mine, and you became yours. We all waste our whole lives trying to become what we think we're supposed to be. What makes Drewcila so powerful and so attractive is that she knows exactly who she is. She isn't trying to be anyone, she just is. She lives in the moment. How many people actually do that?"