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

something after us. I don’t think it was ‘Nice shot!’ He pulled off his helmet hurled it angrily at the ground. It bounced up and hit him under the chin.

Seeing one of their team taken out of play, the others dropped back a little and this suited me fine. I could see the rocks and bushes up ahead which meant I would soon be protected by their cover. My dashboard screen was showing me the distance we had left to cover, but at this speed I was bouncing around too much to be able to read the figures – it was just reassuring to see them getting smaller. Three figures down to two and then to one. Floyd fired off another random cannon shot to remind the posse that we were still dangerous and to encourage them to slow down. I had to reduce speed because we were about to enter a gap between the outlying rocks, heading towards a narrow canyon.

I turned off the fake engine sound – I didn’t want it echoing off the rocks and deafening us. And the next part of the plan called for silent running. I followed the tracks in the sand that I’d left when I checked out this location before. I’d stared at satellite images for hours trying to locate this perfect spot. When I’d seen it up close, I wasn’t disappointed. There was a narrow canyon with steep rock walls on either side. It ran for almost half-a-mile and then opened out into a wider space with high rocks all around. Like a natural arena. A dead end. The perfect place for an ambush. Or to trap a fleeing fugitive.

“Ready, Mozzie?” I asked.

The little drone lifted himself up off the seat and hovered near the passenger side window. I lowered the glass so he could get out. He took the Colonel’s tracking signal with him.

I stopped the Trekker. I felt its suspension shift as Floyd climbed off the back. I reversed the Trekker into a narrow crack in the rock wall. It was barely wide enough to fit into, but I managed to avoid scratching the paintwork. Floyd dragged his foot through the sand, obliterating the tracks that would reveal our location, and then he uprooted a small tree and dragged it to cover the crack in the rock and conceal it completely. He stood in front of the Trekker, weapons ready. I hoped he wouldn’t need them.

Mozzie, meanwhile, was zipping down the little canyon towards the arena. I set the dashboard screen to display the video images he was broadcasting. The little drone’s twin, Gnat, was sitting on a rock looking out at the desert, broadcasting images of the army’s approach.

As you would expect, the Colonel was cautious when he reached the rocks, suspicious of a trap. He called a halt and all of the vehicles and droids bunched up behind him. He sent the two dirt bikes forward into the canyon. He obviously considered them the most expendable. He also sent a handful of the robots to climb up the rocks and check out the canyon from above.

Mozzie came to rest in the arena-like space, positioning himself out of sight on a little rocky ledge. He kept sending out the tracking signal and broadcasting the video images.

The two bikers entered the arena cautiously. Seeing no sign of the Trekker or the big blue robot, they rode in circles around the open space, one clockwise the other anti. Then they stopped and sent a message back to the Colonel. I guess they told him there was no ambush waiting and oh, by the way, the guy in the Trekker has disappeared.

The Colonel probably called them idiots and said that people don’t just disappear. The feed from Gnat showed the green limo roll forwards into the canyon. Most of the other vehicles and the robots then followed. One of the black 4x4s stayed behind to keep watch in case I tried to double back or sneak out of some hidden crack in the rock or something.

Vehicles and droids spilled out into the arena, quickly filling it. Up above them, the robots that had climbed to the top of the rocks looked down. If I’d been in the arena, they could have fired their rifles down at me.

Every set of human and robot eyes began looking around to see where I might be hidden. They were still receiving the signal from the tracking device so I should be there right in front of them. I saw a couple of people looking down at the ground, trying to see if I’d removed the tracking device and thrown it out. If I’d left it any longer, someone would have located the exact source of the signal and spotted Mozzie.

I had Mozzie cease transmitting the tracking signal and at the same moment, Gnat started broadcasting it. It would have looked like a slight blip on their tracker screen. Gnat took off at speed across the desert, staying low over the sand. It was his job to act as a decoy.

“He’s moving again!” someone told the Colonel. People and vehicles in the arena started moving again. The Colonel gave orders for everyone to turn around and head out the way they’d come.

There wasn’t a lot of free space in the arena and it took a lot of to-ing and fro-ing to make room for even one vehicle to turn around and head back down the narrow gap. With no one taking charge and co-ordinating the retreat, the situation soon became chaotic and tempers were frayed. Deep in my hiding place, I could hear raised voices and car horns. There was also the sound of an occasional low-speed impact. I watched the whole thing on the dashboard screen, the images sent from Mozzie’s vantage point. A precision-drilled professional fighting force these people were not. This gave me some hope that the rest of the plan might just work.

The dirt bikes got out first and raced off after