“Shut the fuck up! Where the fuck were you when we needed you? We thought you’d got chilled in that bar and went on to make the recce, and all the while you were in danger of fucking things up for us and for Papa Joe by getting yourselves caught by Baron Al’s sec—”
“The sec couldn’t catch a stump-legged mutie running backward in a sandstorm,” Ayesha spit in disgust. “They’re shit, and they know it. Lazy mothers, all of them. Day I can’t get past them is the day I deserve to buy the farm,” she added.
Lonnie, stopped in midtirade by this outburst, stared at Ayesha speechlessly for a moment, then burst into peals of laughter.
“Shit,” he said finally, “you sure don’t sound like there’s much love lost between you and your ville.”
“A ville and a baron who’d sell his own daughter down the river?” she replied bitterly. “What d’you reckon?”
“Mebbe she’s got a point there,” Mik said. “Anyway, it’s too late to worry about it now. We’ve got three choices—chill the bitch, take her with us or figure she’s telling the truth.”
Dean watched Danny out of the corner of his eye. The bespectacled youth stiffened at the mention of chilling Ayesha, and Dean figured that this could be a problem. If it came to a choice between the group and the girl, Dean had no doubts where Danny’s loyalties would lie, and the last thing Dean wanted was to see him chilled at this stage.
“She’s telling the truth,” Dean said with a flat, even tone.
“How d’you know?” Mik questioned, his small, beady eyes narrowing to points in his sharp face.
“I don’t,” Dean answered. “But then again, I don’t know that she’s lying, either. She could have turned us over to the sec, and she didn’t have to bring us back here.”
“It’s a fair point,” Tilly said. “I reckon we should go with this one—it’ll make things a little easier when we attack, having one less wag to knock out. Kinda evens the odds a bit.”
“Which is no bad thing,” Doc interjected. “So I suggest, if I may be so bold as to address our group leader, that we wrap this up and hit the trail. Time is tight, as I believe the saying goes…went.”
Lonnie frowned. “You are one crazy old bastard, but there was some sense in there somewhere.” He directed his attention to the girl. “Seems everyone wants to believe you, kid. And I guess I should go along with that. Triple fuckin’ stupe of Danny to bring you here, but that’s done. You go and get yourself and your girls ready, if you can trust them—”
“Only the ones I tell,” Ayesha interrupted. “Most of them would be shit, but there’s a few of us, and that’s all it needs. The others will just be glad to be saved.”
“Okay. We need to hit the road, so you get back and get ready.”
Ayesha nodded, then turned to Danny. “Guess this is it,” she said simply. The teenager nodded dumbly, too choked on conflicting emotions to really speak. “Mebbe I’ll see you in a while, if we both get out of this without being chilled. And mebbe you can teach me something about the old tech, okay?”
She left before Danny had a chance to answer, heading back to the edge to the covering rocks, the Thompson still slung across a narrow shoulder. She didn’t look back. Surveying the empty area across the desert between the outcrop and the edge of the ville, she stared up at the sun to judge where the sec patrol would be on their bikes. Nodding to herself as she worked out that she had the time to traverse the distance safely before they came around again, she began to walk out into the searing desert heat of the middle of the day. Slow at first, and then building to a trot to cover the distance as quickly as possible, she still didn’t look back, preferring to concentrate her attention on the expanse of ground ahead, focused on her task, a small cloud of dust raised by the velvet pumps as she sped across the dry, sandy soil.