The Gunfighter and The Gear-Head Read Online Free PDF Page B

just that they started developing earlier.” Gieo
drew out the Slark time line in the dust. “When our scientists
wiped out their mother ship and effectively caged them with the
bear that is humanity, we all leveled out. The best and the
brightest on both sides were killed, all the technology was dropped
to the same archaic point on both sides, and now it’s just a
question of who is going to recover faster.” Gieo swiped her hand
through the dust cutting both the shorter human line even shorter,
but also the Slark line to match. “We’re physically bigger,
stronger, and tougher, but we can’t win based solely on that. We
need to win the arms race and that means flying.”
     
    A slow dawning overcame Fiona—Gieo was likely
the smartest person she’d ever met, and was probably the smartest
person left alive. This realization carried with it a strange,
inherent preciousness to Gieo’s life that Fiona found herself more
than a little territorial and protective of. If the pilot was
right, and humanity couldn’t brutalize their way to victory as Zeke
claimed, the world needed her more than a thousand Tombstones.
     
    “Let’s say that’s an accurate assessment, and
I’m not conceding it is, won’t the Slark be developing their own
aircraft?”
     
    “Exactly! Our technologies flip-flopped,
which gives them the advantage,” Gieo said. “They have the oil
fields of California. They’re running internal combustion while
we’re plunking along with repurposed Slark tech. Eventually we’re
going to run out of their fuel, since we have no idea how they made
it, and they’ll still have all the fossil fuels they need to crush
us. Slark fuel and engines are better, but finite, and we don’t
have the infrastructure to return to the fossil fuels we used to
use. When all our cars grind to a halt, it won’t matter that the
Slark crawlers get four miles to the gallon, they’ll be the only
thing running.”
     
    “So we’re screwed?”
     
    “Hardly,” Gieo said. “We can’t figure out how
to make more Slark fuel, but we can switch to solar, bio-diesel,
and steam, which is exactly what I plan on doing to Mitch’s truck.
I’m going to tear out the Slark engine and replace it with the
boiler from my dirigible. It’s been running on used fryer oil at an
incredibly inefficient pace. I think I can fix that.”
     
    “Is Mitch aware you’re planning on doing
this?”
     
    “Aware? He volunteered his truck for the
experiment!”
     
    “Zeke won’t like it; you’re chipping away at
his stranglehold on the town.”
     
    “Maybe Zeke doesn’t need to keep his
stranglehold much longer.”
     
    A second, colder realization followed, and
Fiona knew, with dread certainty, she would have to kill people to
keep Gieo alive. The inevitability didn’t actually sound all that
bad; she hoped the pilot would ultimately be worth it though.
     
    The sun was beginning to set when they
arrived at the crash site. Fiona was a little disappointed the
Slark hadn’t sent a second recon team. She could always use the
easy heads as she’d fully decided to reject Zeke’s proposition.
Tracking down the boiler, which Gieo explained jettisoned from the
aircraft on impact, as it was designed to, rather than explode and
blow up the entire crash site, took close to an hour, but
eventually they found the hulking black tank. Mitch’s truck, which
apparently had served as a classic car hauler in a former life,
easily winched the boiler up onto the flatbed where it was secured
with heavy chains. Back at the primary crash site, Fiona kicked her
way through the discarded piles of tech in the sand, unsure of what
might be valuable and what was junk.
     
    A clanking of metallic legs, not unlike a
Slark crawler, drew her attention to the large boulder the crashed
dirigible was listing against. Her gun was instantly in her hand
with the hammer thumbed back. She couldn’t smell anything out of
place, but the sound of Slark crawler legs was