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

others that she had spotted me. I released the brake and pressed down on the ‘go’ pedal. We were off!

I had no idea how fast an M-9000 combat droid could run. If it was quicker than the Trekker, this was going to be a really short chase.

Chapter Thirty-Two

I was racing across the desert with an army chasing me. Colonel Hodge’s ground car was one of those armoured all-wheel-drive things that look like a cross between a military vehicle and a limousine. The thick armour plating and bullet-proof glass made them popular with military dictators and drug lords. This one was a spotless and gleaming army green colour. I wasn’t close enough to it to see if it had little presidential flags fluttering on the front wings.

Following the limo were three identical shiny black 4x4s that were standard issue for mercenaries and then after that came the vehicles with a bit more personality. There was a battered old pick-up truck with ‘Deke’s Guns & Ammo’ painted on the door, which was unexpected – I hadn’t really had him pegged as an entrepreneur. A couple of rusty dune buggies welded together from heavy-duty iron tubing bounced along on truck tyres, each holding two or three of the Colonel’s stooges, and coming up behind them was a heavily-modified compact car that had three-foot-long spikes all over it.

The heaviest trucks brought up the rear. A six-wheel armoured personnel carrier and a half-track military vehicle with a big machine gun on the back. I’m guessing the proper tanks were still on back-order.

Easily keeping pace with the cars and trucks were the twenty-four M-9000s, marching in formation with their rifles held to their chests. It looked like they had been divided into two squads – green and orange. There was no sign of the one with the red stripe down its face, but it was probably sitting in the Colonel’s car. It would receive the same level of protection as a human general.

A couple of dirt bikes were serving as scout vehicles, riding out in front of the others. I would need to keep an eye on these as they could easily overtake the Trekker.

Floyd was sitting on the back of the Trekker watching the enemy. At least his head wasn’t turned around the wrong way. He was currently missing both his hands and forearms. On the right he had the cannon, primed and ready to fire, and on the left was a machine gun with a long curved clip sticking out of the bottom of it. Spare clips sat in a box next to him.

Driving out into the open desert where there was little or no cover was risky. But I needed to lead the posse to somewhere that had few recognisable landmarks so that the Colonel wouldn’t realise where we were leading them. I wasn’t taking them far, but I was taking the long way around.

“Casey is driving Colonel Hodge’s car,” Floyd said.

I’d asked him to scan the vehicles and locate the henchman because I was worried he might join the pursuit in the freighter-slash-gunship and that would have put my whole plan in jeopardy. The Colonel must have decided that his ground forces were enough to stop us.

They were tearing after me in V-formation with the Colonel’s vehicle at the pointed end and four lines of M-9000s marching at double-speed between the ends of the V. The dirt bikes were riding ahead of them, crossing from left to right occasionally. It looked like an outing of one of those Gator War re-enactment societies.

I’d never attracted a crowd this big before. A dozen vehicles and two-dozen heavily armed robot soldiers. The most I’d tackled before this was a handful of local law enforcement officers or a lone ACID agent. I was way out of my depth. I felt a real need to stop and squat in the bushes, but I didn’t want to die with my pants around my ankles. I clenched my butt cheeks and kept going.

The two dirt bikes were approaching on either side. Their speed and agility made them an obvious threat and I didn’t want them getting ahead of us. I heard the chatter of Floyd’s machine gun and saw spurts of dust fly up close to the wheels of the motorbikes. He had instructions not to hit anyone, but the riders didn’t know that. Unnerved by the shots, the rider on the left wobbled and then his bike slid sideways under him. The other rider dropped back and went to check he was okay. Hopefully, they’d keep their distance for a while now.

I was trying to get across the open desert as quickly as I could, heading for the hills. And I wanted to have as much space between me and them as possible because I didn’t want them to see what we were doing when we reached the first outcropping of rocks. I wasn’t worried about them losing sight of me because they were following the signal of the tracking device they’d hidden inside Floyd. Or they thought they were. We’d taken the little disc out of Floyd’s casing and an exact duplicate of the signal was now being sent out by Mozzie, one of my drones. The drone was currently resting on the passenger seat, but he wouldn’t be there much longer.

“Brace yourself,” Floyd warned.

That meant he was going to fire the cannon. I glanced in the wing-mirror and saw why. The car with the spikes was coming up rapidly on our right. It was lighter and faster than most of the other vehicles. Floyd pointed the cannon and fired, aiming for the ground a little ahead of the hedgehog-car. As the sand erupted in front of him, the driver turned the wheel sharply and the top-heavy car listed badly. He fought to right it but it ended up on its side, the spines digging into the dirt and slowing it to a stop. I saw the driver get out and he looked to be shouting