A Fistful of Trouble (Outlaws of the Galaxy Book 2) Paul Tomlinson (reading strategies book .TXT) 📖

feel sorry for him but just couldn’t summon up enough sympathy. Maybe it was the adrenaline still rushing through my system.

“Where’s Floyd?” I asked.

“Who?” He looked confused.

“Where’s my robot? The big blue one.”

“I sold him. Back in Cicada City.”

“Really?” I felt the first twinge of something. It might have been sympathy.

“Who did you sell it to?” Harmony asked.

Happy looked up at her. His expression said that this was a stupid question. “Colonel Hodge.”

“Of course you did,” I said. I turned and started walking.

“Aren’t you going to give me a ride back to town?” Happy called after me.

I stopped and turned. “There are two possible answers to that question,” I said. “You have a fifty-fifty chance of guessing the right one. What’s your answer going to be?”

“Er... No?” Happy said.

“We have a winner!” I turned and headed towards the Trekker.

“You’re not going to let him leave me here, are you?” Happy asked Harmony. “I might have a concussion.”

“You need a brain for that,” I called over my shoulder.

Harmony tried to persuade me to take him with us. After twenty minutes, I relented. A little. I let her call someone to come and pick him up. She gave him enough for taxi fare to the nearest town. It was probably my money she was giving him, so the humanitarian gesture was partly mine.

“What now?” Harmony asked when we were back on the road.

“I need a new windshield,” I said. “And then I’m going to get Floyd.”

Chapter Twenty

“The scene of the crime,” I said.

Harmony shifted uncomfortably. This was the cave where she had tricked Floyd and removed his head. It was now our temporary hideout. The cave mouth was wide enough to drive the Trekker inside. It sat there now, complete with its shiny new windshield. Harmony and I were sitting outside in the sun waiting for Danny. She had sent him a message and he was on his way.

We didn’t feel we could just drive back down Cicada City’s main street, given that I was an escaped criminal and had been chased by the sheriff’s posse when I made a run for it. Damaging police vehicles had most likely been added to my list of crimes.

A dried-up stream bed ran in front of the cave and Harmony was tossing small pebbles into a spot that had once held a shallow pool of water. I was poking the dried and cracked ground with a stick.

The sound of a dislodged pebble made us both reach for our guns – but it was Danny walking along the stream bed up towards us. We had been expecting him to come from the direction of town, but he must have come a different way.

“Hey,” he said, “sorry I’m late. I was over at my parent’s place.”

“How are they doing?” I asked.

“They’re okay,” he said. He didn’t look me in the eye when he said this and it was obvious there was something wrong.

“What is it?” Harmony asked.

“I was just... I was helping them pack up their things,” Danny said.

“They’re leaving?” Harmony said. “Why?”

“The Colonel’s men set fire to his crop,” Danny said, his voice thick in his throat. A mixture of anger and impotence choking him. “A field of maize gone in not much more than an hour. We’ve got nothing left.”

He cast a sideways glance at me when he said this. There was more to it than he was saying.

“Danny, I’m sorry,” Harmony said.

“I’m going with them,” he said. “I have to. I’ve left the robots helping them to load up Dad’s truck. We’ll sell them to raise enough for a new stake. Start over somewhere away from here.”

“Did they use my robot to set the fire?” I asked.

Danny didn’t want to answer that, but his eyes told me everything I needed to know. In my head, I saw an image of Floyd wielding a flame-thrower.

“It’s not his fault,” Danny said. “He just did what they told him to do. He’s only a robot.”

I wished that was true. Colonel Hodge was using the big blue robot to terrorise the local farmers. And Floyd, the artificial sentience was trapped inside, unable to do anything.

“No, it’s my fault,” I said. “I brought him here.”

“You can’t blame yourself,” Harmony said.

“I came back for Floyd,” I told Danny. “When I have him, we’ll make this right. We’ll stop the Colonel.”

“You should just go,” Danny said, looking from me to Harmony. “Both of you. The town’s finished. And you’ll never get to Floyd. The Colonel’s place is a fortress.”

“Harmony and me have some experience getting into heavily-guarded places,” I said.

“You must be really attached to that robot,” Danny said.

“It’s not just about Floyd. Colonel Hodge has got to be stopped. I’ve asked some people I know to come and help out.”

Harmony was as surprised by this as Danny. I hadn’t yet told her about my interstat call to Agent Rodriguez.

“Is that why the sheriff wants to talk to you?” Danny asked.

I laughed. “No, the sheriff wants a word with me about the fact that I broke out of jail.”

Danny shook his head. “It’s not that. He told me that didn’t matter anymore. He said that if you got in touch with me, I was to ask you to meet with him. He said you could pick the time and place – and he would come alone.”

“It’s a trap!” Harmony said.

“I don’t think so,” Danny said.

“You didn’t tell him we had come back, did you?” Harmony asked. Technically she was now also a fugitive from the law.

“Of course not,” Danny said.

I walked away from them, kicking a pebble the size of a tennis ball as I went. If the sheriff was waiving all charges, that meant something more important had come up. He must have learned something about whatever the Colonel was planning.

“I’ll meet him,” I said. “Tell him to be here at the cave at four o’clock.”

“Quincy!” Harmony protested.

“You don’t have to be here. I’ll tell him you’re long gone.”

“I’ll go and find the sheriff,” Danny said.

Harmony and I watched