To shoot a man dead was an easy thing. To shoot a Company Man dead was a beast of an entirely different nature. A pain in the ass, mostly. Musculature reinforcement was the most common modification on the market, rendering bullets more bothersome than deadly. It took seven direct hits to tear a hole in woven titanium spider mesh. A task for which Dobson had neither the patience nor the ammunition. Fortunately, like any suit of armor, weakness existed for those who knew where to look, ripe for exploitation.

  Easier said than done, given the way Dobson’s blasted visuals kept blinking in and out at random.

  She smacked the side of her head to jumpstart the shift from standard vision to mech mode. The outline of the closest man melded into the background as her vision focused solely on his cybernetic machinery. The man’s internal hardware lit, flickering bright blue against the surrounding black, providing Dobson with a convenient anatomical mapping of his augmented armor.

  The telltale patchwork shimmer of spider mesh implants revealed the interwoven curvature of man’s musculature system. Unlike his skull, which pulsed solid blue—indicative of protective headplates. The bare bones model, naturally. All durability with little functionality. Dobson tutted her disapproval. Rookies always went all-in on weaponry, throwing away an entire year’s worth of pay for the newest forearm cannon, often at the expense of the smaller, yet equally vital systems. The man’s ears, for example, were entirely unmodded. All the protective skull plating in the universe meant jack squat if it couldn’t prevent a bullet from lodging through your sound hole.

  Dobson’s finger nestled against the trigger and squeezed.

  The shot cracked across the bleary darkness. The man collapsed, dead before the first echo reverberated along the cliffs in the distance.

  Dobson shot the second Company Man through the eye. The third goon faltered, confused, and then ran back towards the company train. The first shot shattered his knee impact stabilizer—an off-market brand notorious for having a faulty hinge joint. The man collapsed under his own weight, twisting in the air as he fell. His scream was cut short by the bullet that entered his mouth and ricocheted off his rear skull plate into the brain.

  Misty uttered a low whistle of approval as she rocked back on her heels, arms folded across her midsection, casually. “See, pumpkin? Never doubted you for a second.”

  Dobson lowered the pistol and sighed. “That makes one of us.”

  “No sense in letting doubt occupy your mind, Dobsy. The plan’s already in motion now. We best skedaddle.” Misty sauntered to the rear exit and paused, as if suddenly remembering the train car was flipped on its head. Her gaze lifted, and she glared disapprovingly at the door handle positioned several inconvenient inches higher than normal. Dobson suspected it wasn’t the height that bothered Misty. Given the overall condition of the train, she was probably more concerned with whether or not the door would slide off its hinges with the first strong tug.

  Finally, after several seconds of intense thought, Misty shrugged her thin shoulders and gripped the handle with both hand and pincer alike. She tugged, but the door remained shut, wedged tight within the bent doorframe.

  “Son of a biscuit farmer.” Misty repositioned her stance. Squaring her shoulders, she placed her left boot against the wall and heaved for all she was worth.

  The door, as expected, remained shut.

  Dobson strode over to assist. Misty dutifully shuffled out of the way, massaging the strained muscles in her left arm, grumbling something about being disarmed by the law.

  Wordlessly, Dobson reached up and slid the dead bolt from the locked into the unlocked position. She did so while maintaining direct eye contact, allowing her downturned mouth to communicate the words she did not wish to speak.

  Misty’s ears burned red in embarrassment when the buckled door creaked open with a single tug. “Whoopsie daisy.”

  Dobson had hoped that her expression would be enough to communicate her feelings on the matter, but, alas, Misty’s nervous smile remained unchanged. Grudgingly, Dobson delivered her misgivings in a calm, orderly fashion. “I find it alarming that someone who can derail a train with her mind is so easily thwarted by a basic bolt lock.”

  The redness bled from Misty’s ears and flushed across her freckled nose and cheeks. “For lamb’s sake, Dobsy! Cut me some slack. I’m winging this by the seat of my pants here.”

  “I find that equally as alarming,” Dobson said.

  Anger hovered over Misty’s curled upper lip for several seconds before the shape of her mouth softened. “Sometimes that’s just how it is, pumpkin,” she said with a sigh. “Look at you and me. If we’d been foolproof, Gritstone wouldn’t have gotten the jump on us. We could have been retired on some backwater planet right now. But we’re not. We missed the signs, and now we’re here. I might be a bit reckless for your taste, but all the careful planning in the universe didn’t keep you from getting caught up by the law, now did it?”

  Dobson’s teeth clenched at the mention of their former employer. Misty seemed to take secret pleasure in reminding her that she’d been double-crossed by Gritstone as often as possible.

  “I’m playing the cards I’ve been dealt, is all,” Misty said softly.

  It was a fair point, Dobson conceded. Not one she was willing to admit out loud, however, and thus, she said nothing.

  Misty sensed it anyway. She cracked a brimming smile and nudged Dobson with her elbow playfully. “Lucky for me, I’ve been dealt an ace, eh? Now, let’s go hijack ourselves a ride out of here.”

  Grinning like a mad fool, Misty ducked through the open door and disappeared into the dull red beyond.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Dobson’s size made exiting significantly more cumbersome. Cursing under her breath, she wedged her titanium bulk through the narrow opening sideways, allowing her broad shoulders to pass through before the rest of her followed. Once free, Dobson dropped down onto the scorched red dirt below in a cloud of dust and ash. She remained crouched low to the ground, scanning the surrounding landscape for movement.

  Piles of burning shrapnel dotted the area around the tracks. Smoke blanketed the air, refracting the dull red glow of the light tower. The only movement came from Misty, who scampered over to the nearest gunman and promptly relieved him of his leather duster. She moved on to the man’s serum supply next. Plucking the knife from his belt, she used the tip to pry open his access ports and then plucked vials of blue biomechatronic serum from each chamber until his cache was empty.

  Misty plugged two vials into herself before dumping the rest into her pockets. Her face softened around the edges as the chemical cocktail surged through her system, flushing the figurative cobwebs from her long-dormant circuitry. “The fog,” she said, biting her lower lip. “It’s lifting. I can actually think on full cylinders again, Dobsy.”

  Rolling up her sleeves, Dobson accepted four vials of serum from Misty and loaded them into her system, two in each arm. The blue biomechatronic serum went by many names: tronic, serum, borg juice. It didn’t matter what you called it. In the end, it was the one element that unified every cyborg in the universe. Every augmented body required a steady supply of serum to fuel their machinery. Without it, the strain of powering mechanized parts would quickly overheat the body, poisoning the organic flesh until the major organs shut down, one after another. As far as slow deaths went, it was about as unpleasant as you could get. A slow rot from the inside.

  The cold rush of serum surged through Dobson’s vein. It was like soothing an unreachable itch. She breathed a sigh of relief, watching as Misty scavenged anything worth taking from the bodies. She deposited her keepsakes in a growing pile near the middle, most of which consisted of guns and extra ammunition.

  Misty winked at Dobson as she staggered past, arms laden with a comically oversized rifle. “Don’t fret, pumpkin. I intend to share.”

  Dobson eyes the pile skeptically. “We’re not going to be able to carry all of this.”

  “Says who?”

  “We’ll take the essentials and saddlebag anything else worth keeping.” Dobson crouched down and began disassembling the stockpile, pocketing only the select pieces she wanted from each firearm.

  “Excuse me for not being up on my terminology, but what in tarnation does that mean?” Misty’s furrowed brow deepened as she watched Dobson work. “And why are you taking the guns apart? They work much better in one piece, you know!”

  “These parts” — Dobson opened her massive palm to show Misty the scope in her hand — “are interchangeable. It makes no sense to keep the entire rifle when the piece I want can be modified onto something else. We strip what we want and leave the rest. No dead weight.”

  Judging from Misty’s expression, the explanation landed. That, or she decided she didn’t care enough to protest further. With a shrug, she strutted over to the final fallen gunslinger, calling over her shoulder, “That particular choice of words is gonna come back to bite you, just you wait.”

  Misty stood over the third gunman with both hand and pincer alike resting on her hips. Her hair fell over her face in a cascade of dirty blonde ripples as she leaned closer, studying the body. Whatever Misty saw, she must have liked, because her lips pulled back into a predatory smile. “Perfect.”

  She seized the dead gunman by the ankles and attempted to add him to her pile. It was like watching the litter runt try to scarf down a steak three times the size of its body. No matter how she tugged and pulled, Misty simply didn’t have the strength to drag the man’s heavily augmented body more than a few inches at a time.

  She glared over her shoulder at Dobson, her forehead slick with sweat. “A little help, maybe?”

  “With what exactly?”

  “Saddle bagging, Dobsy, what’s it look like? This one’s got some spare parts we could both use.”

  Dobson glanced around, suddenly unnerved by the openness. “Here?”

  “No dead weight. You said so yourself.” Misty flashed her a teasing grin. “Besides, it’s not like it’s any different from what you’re doing.”

  “It’s completely different! You don’t have the tools or proper lighting to dismantle a body. Not to mention the sanitation issues.” Dobson added before Misty could get another word in, “Which are numerous.”

  Misty chewed her lower lip and rocked back on her heels as she formulated a reply. Instead of something sensible, she countered Dobson’s with a simple question. “Have you got a clean lab hiding in your back pocket that I don’t know about?”

  Dobson frowned. “No.”

  “Well, there you have it.”

  “No,” she said again, more forcefully than before. Dobson’s stare settled on the shadowed settlement beyond the light tower. Seizing the company train was still too risky. Neither she nor Misty was at full strength yet, and they still didn’t know how many more Company Men were left. “Not here. We’ll hole up somewhere in the town and do this properly.”

  Their presence hadn’t been noticed yet, but it would only be a matter of time before the rest of the gang caught on. Dobson wanted to be somewhere more protected for when the real shootout started. Mind made up, she took what pieces she wanted from Misty’s pile, including the comically oversized rifle.

  “I wanted that one.” Misty pouted.

  “I left two others fully intact. Have your pick of those.”

  “But they’re not as big.”

  Dobson stepped over to the third body and plucked the hat from the dead gunslinger’s head. She placed it on her own, violating an untold number of moral codes. You could take a dead man’s gun and his boots, but his hat was sacred. Dobson, however, saw no reason to honor such formalities, considering what Misty intended to do with his body.

  A familiar shape protruded from the man’s breast pocket. The sight made Dobson’s heart flutter. She snagged the pen from his pocket as quick as a flash and hurriedly stowed it within her own. She may not have known what rhymed with orange yet, but when she found out, she would be prepared.

  Fighting to keep the excitement from her expression, Dobson bent and slung the dead gunslinger across her shoulder. He was heavy, but not unmanageable. “Are you ready?”

  Misty’s reply was cut short by the sudden groaned thump behind them. They whipped around together, rifles brandished. Dobson watched, taken aback, as Deputy Boyd crawled hand over hand out of the narrow doorway, lost his grip, and plummeted into the dirt below. Groaning, the stubborn deputy stirred, attempting to rise, before collapsing back into a broken pile.

  Dobson traded equally surprised looks with Misty. “I thought he was dead.”

  “I suppose we could take care of that pesky detail here and now,” Misty replied.

  Dobson blinked, and her vision shifted, revealing the reason for the deputy’s unexpected survival. The inside of his body lit pale blue, showcasing an impressive array of lightweight augmentation.

  Like the pistol, the deputy’s endoskeleton exceeded the pay range of an officer of the law. At least a clean one.

  Scan completed, Dobson approached Deputy Boyd’s crumpled body. She checked the pulse on his neck first, noting the rapid beat of his heart, before moving to his arm. Dobson slid his sleeve back, revealing a curiously blank forearm. Her vision shifted modes, one after another, like lenses on an eye screen, until one came into focus. The deputy’s formerly blank skin lit, displaying a colorful array of ink markings running from wrist to shoulder.

  Deputy Boyd lifted his head with a groan. For a moment, their eyes met, predator to predator, before the deputy’s strength gave out. He slumped back to the ground.

  “We keep him alive.” Dobson offered Misty a partial truth for her reasoning. “He’s the only one between us with a functioning comm system. We may need him to get a message out on our behalf.”

  “Oh, Dobson, you softie,” Misty scoffed, shouldering her rifle. “Alright. Hostage situation it is.”