A Fistful of Trouble (Outlaws of the Galaxy Book 2), Paul Tomlinson [bts books to read .txt] 📗

split open. The bullet continued downwards and exploded in its chest. Another was hit in the back of the neck, almost severing its head, and again there was an explosion inside its torso.

As the last three robots turned in unison to target Harmony, I felt Danny stir beside me.

“Stay down,” I said.

Harmony came in so slowly I was worried she’d fall out of the sky. She dropped lower. I could see her in the cockpit, could make out her red hair. She was deliberately targeting the last of the robots. She wanted this to be her final run. She didn’t fire until she saw the reds of their eyes.

The shots tore the last three robots apart. They shook liked rag dolls in the jaws of a dog before they finally collapsed on the ground.

There was a huge cheer from the slope behind us.

Danny and I crawled out from under the Trekker. We both scanned the battlefield to make sure all of the M-9000s were down. Nothing moved.

The crowd on the slope consisted of the Colonel’s people and many of the people from the town. They had all come out of hiding to witness the end of the battle. Casey gave me a friendly salute. Deke was grinning like his side had won. And I saw the Mayor of Cicada City standing with his arm around his wife. Patricia Brennan gave me a little wave and a smile.

The freighter came around again. Everyone ducked. Harmony doing her victory lap and it seemed that she was finally getting to grips with the controls. I saw her wave as she passed by and then the freighter turned and headed east.

“Is she going?” Danny asked. “Maybe she doesn’t know how to land it.”

“She’s stealing it,” I said.

The silhouette of the freighter grew smaller and smaller against the sky. I guess she hated goodbyes.

“Well, that’s a relief,” I said. I was feeling anything but relieved. It wasn’t just the twenty-thousand dollars I was going to miss.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw some pieces of debris off to the right of the burned-out house start moving. I picked up the cannon, thinking it might be a stray robot. A manhole cover flipped open and a dirty face emerged. Seeing the cannon pointed at him, the Colonel raised his hands meekly.

“Don’t shoot!” He crawled out of the hole. His trousers were wet and black with mud and the dirty braid was hanging off his jacket like spilled spaghetti. People up on the slope laughed and pointed. Patricia Brennan’s face was the only one that showed even a hint of sympathy.

Sheriff Galton walked towards the bedraggled former villain. “Colonel Galton, I’m afraid I am going to have to place you under arrest for the possession and misuse of restricted military hardware.”

My guess was that Pattie Brennan would visit the Colonel in jail. I hoped he could find it in himself to accept her as a friend.

I used the satellite link in the Trekker to make an interstat call, using the camera on Danny’s screen.

“You survived,” Agent Rodriguez said. To my surprise, she didn’t sound disappointed.

“I almost bought it in a friendly-fire incident,” I said, “but it turned out all right in the end.”

“We received a message from the Generals,” she said. “They’ve asked if you could recover the M-9000s undamaged.”

I turned the screen and slowly panned the camera across the battlefield, lingering over a robot head, a smoking torso, and one or two other recognisable fragments. I think that was the first time I ever heard Connie Rodriguez have a good belly laugh.

“Quincy,” she said when the camera was back on my face, “if I could grant you amnesty for that, I would.”

“I always aim to please,” I said. “You know that.”

“Our Interceptor was damaged during their engagement with the smugglers,” she said, deftly changing the subject. “We made the arrests. But the ship isn’t able to make planet-fall.”

“You mean I get more than an eleven-hour head start?”

“I think you’ve earned it. But you’re still going to have to keep moving – we got confirmation that O’Keefe has arrived on Saphira.”

“Thanks for the heads-up.”

“Be careful.” She broke the connection

“The big blue robot is going to need quite a bit of work,” I said. “I was hoping I might trade him for one of your other ones.”

“Put Floyd in a different body?” Danny asked.

“You know?”

“I don’t know anything,” he said. Then he winked. “Are you really going to leave this thing here?”

I looked down at the fire-damaged robot. I had thought I might be sorry to see it go. Floyd had occupied this robot for all the time that I had known him. But having seen what Colonel Hodge had done with it, I was actually glad to be rid of it. “You should fix him up and keep him around. In case the Colonel or anyone else comes up with another evil genius plan. And in the meantime, he can help your father on the farm – make amends for what he did to the maize crop.”

“Are you going to leave me the cannon as well?” Danny grinned.

“That’s up to Floyd, but I did see him eyeing up one of those new rifles the Colonel’s robots had.”

Chapter Thirty-Six

“You look different,” I said. “Did you change your hair.”

“I lost a little weight,” Floyd said.

He was still bigger than me, but his body was a more standard metallic grey and it had a head that matched. Floyd claimed to have no opinion either way, and perhaps I was projecting my own feelings onto him, but I sensed that he was relieved to be in a different body.

“I was expecting someone taller,” I said.

“I thought it would be better if I could sit inside the Trekker,” he said.

“Does that mean you won’t be doing that thing with your head anymore?”

“You mean this thing?” He turned his head until it was facing backwards.

“How about I take it and shove it up your ass?” I said.

“Were you talking