Desert solitaire part 2

[Chip]

and meet with misfortune on the desert? Kroll knew there were sucker horses out there on the flats , maybe one of them had caught the driver in it’s front legs and simply sucked the liquid out of his body, and scraped  him to a pile of bones with its toothy radula swallowing down the nutritious mush. Kroll was glad he had his biorupter handy, the sucker horses were large and thus few, but they were out there. Kroll stood in front of the pickups nose and peered into the windscreen. It afforded a good view of an old jacket laying on the floor, but there was something else.  Something was under the jacket. Kroll could see that the jacket was laid with the edges outward and waded up in such as way as  perhaps to mask the fact that there was indeed something under it. There wasn’t much way to hid anything in a forward control pickup with a windshield that came clear to the floor. The sun lit the interior brightly and you could see every detail. Kroll began to realize why the truck was there. This was meant for the zone troopers to find. It wasn’t a truck it  was a booby trap. The Jacket no doubt contained a  bomb. Kroll bet the doors weren’t even locked, as soon as someone pulled on the latch the whole thing would either explode or be engulfed in a disintegrating field of some sort. Kroll looked in the window again at the jacket and was overcome with sadistic giggles at the thought of someone opening the door, the shocked look, bit’s of flesh flying, he giggled even moor unable to stop himself. Had anyone important been around he would have forced himself not to have the laughing come over him but it was hard when it happened.  Kroll wiped tears from his face and went around to inspect the truck some more. He got to the bed walked around it found a control panel right behind the driver’s door and brushed some dirt off that had accumulated with rain. It had a small screen and some touch controls. Kroll pressed one of the little moss green squares on the brown panel, the tail  gate lowered, he pressed another and it raised, There were two others, one with an arrow pointing up and one with an arrow pointing down. Suddenly it struck Kroll, “of course” the truck was a dump bed he pressed the up square and the bed silently raised , a few loose tools falling back against the tail gate. Kroll was now looking at the back of the cab.  A flat metal surface greeted him with a square panel in the middle  just above the trucks chassis. Kroll examined it. It was some sort of access to the cab for something, but how to get it open? There were no fasteners so it had to be magnetic. Kroll grasped an orange knob in the middle of the panel and twisted left than right, the knob had no grip on it for twisting so he pushed on it, nothing. Kroll pulled on the knob but again, nothing. Frustrated now he pulled harder, the knob gave and the panel came loose from the truck. Kroll cold now see inside the cab between the seats. He crawled half way in and studied the jacket. He pulled up on it gently and there under it was the device he expected. A black rectangle with one green light on the end, Kroll crawled back out of the truck and dug in his back pack for his scanner. He pulled the little device out and crawled back inside. He flicked through the menu on the touch screen scrolling past hyperspace positioning system, cyber wave browser, communication, data storage, video player, his sound files containing all his music, interrogation recordings sneak recordings he had made of women while sleeping with them. There it was tech diagnostic program. He opened the program and held the scanner over the bomb as the computer analyzed it. It wasn’t an explosive it was a destabilization pulse weapon. If it pulsed the molecules of everything within 500 yards or so would simply fly apart. Kroll examined the inner workings. He couldn’t move the device as that would set it off. If he had opened a door the same thing would have happened. Kroll studied the transparency video of the device. He could see the quantum pulse coil and a switch but he couldn’t get at the switch as it was in the box. Kroll had to kill the power source. He begin scanning and saw no zero point chip in the device or singularity or any power storage device. He switched views and the screen showed a picture of energy fields in the aria. The truck was full of them, as he expected, than he saw a crackling thread going into the device, it was drawing its power from the truck. Kroll let out a frusterated huff, and crawled back out the opening. He had to remove the trucks power supply. Probably a singularity located under the cab. He walked around the truck with the scanner. There under the cab just behind the middle of the bumper he could see the image of the trucks torque rod and the glow of the power source. He crawled under and saw a long green box with a detachable section in the front. The back half would contain the spinning torque rod that drove the differential and the front would be the power supply. There was a door and a recessed latch which Kroll fought with for a while before he got it open. Inside was a smaller version of the orange knob on the cabin access. Kroll pulled hard on the knob and it popped out, the box fell into his hands. Kroll squirmed out from under the pickup with the box and began hiking, he had to carry it far enough that the device could no longer draw power from it. Kroll hiked about a hundred yards and sat the box down.  Back at the truck his scanner indicated the pulse bomb was dead Kroll took it and began prying the black box open. He did not want this thing going off even far out in the desert, he just was not sure of it’s range. The cove sprung off and Kroll pulled out the coil. He had to destroy it but if he used his biorupter he could end up feeding power to it and setting it off. Kroll took the coil over to a rock and set it down, he hefted another rock up and threw it down hard on the coil flattening it. Satisfied he went to fetch the power source.
Kroll bent over the box and almost had it when a bright energy beam punched  a molten black hole in the sand right in front of him. Kroll jumped back and started to run but another beam bored into the ground behind him. He looked up and then he finally saw her, Kroll was sure he recognized the woman in front of him but he wasn’t quite sure, it was two years ago, yes the young terrorist, Harding or Sterling or whatever his name was, he was involved with this girl. The android, surly she wasn’t still mad about that? Kroll was not surprised he couldn’t see her, she had probably been only yards away many times. She wore a skin tight unitard that even now was shifting color to match the desert around her. Only her head and hands would have been visible, it just wasn’t enough. Even her calf high boots and utility belt had the camouflage ability. Kroll had never seen this technology before but it did not surprise him, it was easy to do with simple technology.  Nova, so you joined the rebels than, we’ll get you eventually, when you join up with terrorists you are as good as dead. Nova laughed, that’s crap Kroll, I know rebels that are over a hundred years old but I never joined, I came out her to the desert to contemplate, to think. Nova had become a hermit? It didn’t make sense to Kroll but despite her pixyish looks she was not a human female no matter how much her people had obsessed about human culture and human psychology etc. Her passion for Sterling it was as intense as a human female would feel, but was it a little too intense, a little less intense? Kroll wasn’t sure but it was not human emotion. Of course Kroll would not call it that if it was off by one nanometer, such was his bigotry. He had driven by some of the androids in an open truck last year and hurled racial slurs.
So what do you want?  “Well” said Nova at first following you was just something to do, something to puzzle over. For instance what were you doing out here, and why on foot. Than you found that truck, well, that’s a nice truck, I want it for myself, that’s all. Kroll resisted the urge to make a smart sexual remark about Nova and the truck looking at the rounded end of her snipers rod. It’s my truck, I found it first. I know that Kroll and if it was any one else I could see that but it’s just you, Nuveen Kroll, liar, sadist, racist, torturer I could go on for an hour. Kroll looked at her astonished genuinely not getting her point. Yes, so? What’s that got to do with anything? What are you talking about? Nova was somewhat taken aback by this but then it didn’t surprise her, Kroll was basically a pirate and he lived and worked with same, never being exposed to any different for any length of time. She wasn’t sure if he was a sociopath or if the zone troopers, so brainwashed there members as to mimic sociopathy. Turn around Kroll, Nova snatched his biorupter from his belt and stuck it in a spare elastic loop on hers. Now walk back to the truck. When they arrived at the truck Kroll  turned to face her.  What are you going to do with the truck any way? You don’t need it you can just walk. I like the truck Kroll I can carry some stuff maybe. Some clothing or whatever else I find. Kroll swore to himself, she was going to leave him out in the desert, take his gun to. I need my gun, there are sucker horses! I know Kroll, I’ve been right up to them, even petted them, they have no fear of me and no interest. No food value you know. They can sense electromagnetic fields it gives them some idea what your made of.
Kroll knew he had to hike at least another five miles before he was far enough from the mess he had made but what if he actually did run in to a sucker horse. They could smell you for miles and their six long legs could outrun almost anything on the desert. He could go up a gaktalk tree if  he could avoid the thorns but how long would a sucker horse wait for him to come down? If he had to he could call in but would his people get to him before the sucker horse? Kroll heard the door of the truck slam and heard it’s tracks scraping on the sand as Nova pivoted it around in a tight circle to head west.  A blyach flew over , it must have ran out of water, if no rain came they broke loose from their  roots and their wings unfolded than they took off to fill their bulbious bodys with fresh water from the sea about 400 miles to the west, than they made their way back to the relative safety of the desert. If Kroll had found the thing on the ground he might have gotten some fruit off of it, sticky and sweet. Kroll cursed the creature as it flew over the disappearing pickup taking whatever fruit it bore with it.
     As night fell Kroll pulled his jacket out of his pack and lay in a sandy wash, pushing the sand around till it conformed to the shape of his body. He was soon fast asleep. Kroll was dreaming about something or other when he felt something warm and wet drip down the side of his face. Then he noticed the smell. A strange pleasant smell, he had never smelled it before but he had been told about it. The fur was aromatic and had a pleasant smell. He opened his eyes and realized he was staring right into the drooling muzzle of a sucker horse it’s round sucker mouth inches from his face! Kroll did not move hoping the creature wouldn’t notice him, his breathing was shallow and his body ridged. The creatures 6 beady eyes were fixed on him and it sniffed loudly. It raised on of it’s clawed front legs up and pawed him with the two short fingers, than, for whatever reason, it turned and galloped off into the  desert. Kroll let out a long sigh of relief. He no longer cared about he mess he made, he was probably far enough away that they would never find the wreck in this empty desert so far away from anything. He grabbed his transmitter and began calling to be picked up. Kroll was sitting on a large rock taking a drink of water when he spotted his ride coming. One trooper on a floating stick transport, he hoisted himself up behind her and put his hands around her waist as she spun the stick around and they shot off into the sky, back to safety, Kroll would live to see another day.