Junkyard Read online

  “It was your method,” Scipio pointed out.

  Fortunately, Junkyard grew tired of the game before McCall reached him and had to attempt to haul a one-hundred-and-fifty-pound dog away from its target. He trotted past her and to the pile of clothing he’d peed on the day before. He lifted his leg and gave it the same treatment. For a long time.

  What he’d been so antsy about slowly dawned on McCall. He set his leg down, took a few steps, and plopped down on his side.

  She dropped her face into her palm, aware, from the soft thump, of Scipio jumping down beside her.

  “I don’t think he’s going to show us to the stolen syrup,” she said.

  “No.”

  “All right. We’ll look anyway. You take that side, and I’ll take that side.” She pointed, determined to feel optimistic and not daunted by the acreage the big junkyard spanned. “Assume the syrup isn’t in anything resembling its original drums but that it is transportable.”

  Scipio plucked a brown strand of fur off the front of his suit. “Yes, Captain.”

  Darkness fell and the air grew damp and misty as McCall walked through the twisting aisles of the junkyard, the stacks in danger of toppling at the first stiff breeze. In some places, they already had, forcing her to climb over wreckage to continue on. She paused to open containers, everything from jugs of drain cleaner to dented beer kegs. Few were full, and those that were did not smell of syrup.

  She tossed a jug of window cleaner aside, telling herself to think bigger. A thousand tons of maple syrup were missing. If all that liquid was stored here, it would have to be in something large. A water tank? She shined the flashlight from her netdisc around, and it glinted off a rusty metal cistern comprising the top half of a nearby junk stack. It looked like something that would store a few thousand gallons of water. She picked a route up the mountainous stack toward it, though she had a feeling it would have crushed the junk underneath it if it were full.

  Her earstar chimed softly.

  “Yes?”

  “I am reporting in for an hourly check, Captain,” Scipio said. “I have searched approximately twenty-three percent of the junkyard and discovered nothing useful yet.”

  “Same here.” She had no idea what percentage she’d explored, but it had to be close to half of the half she’d claimed for herself.

  “My loafers have been sampled three times by the dog.”

  “Er, sampled?” McCall peered into the darkness below. She hadn’t seen Junkyard for a while but had assumed he’d grown bored of following her and wandered off to whatever nook he had claimed for his den.

  “Licked.”

  “Ah. That shouldn’t damage anything.”

  “Leather is not waterproof, Captain,” Scipio said primly. “If it doesn’t dry quickly enough, it can start to rot.”

  McCall bit back a sarcastic comment. She already felt guilty that she’d been ordering Scipio around earlier, especially since it had been to do something that could have resulted in damage to him. And after they’d made it over the fence, Scipio could have used his strength and agility to knock the dog away, instead of allowing Junkyard to chase him up a pile of tires, but he hadn’t.

  “I don’t think his tongue is likely to be that wet, but I’ll buy you a new pair if he damages them. I appreciate you helping me with him.”

  She reached the water tank and rapped her knuckles against it. It clanged hollowly. Another dead end.

  “You are my employer,” Scipio said. “It is my duty to do as you ask.”

  McCall grimaced, thinking of the way Dunham had ordered Louis around—while berating him. She had never liked being an employee, and she hadn’t become Scipio’s employer because she wanted to order someone around. She had only taken him on because he’d asked for a job. She was far more comfortable treating everyone as equals.

  “Look, it’s not the imperial fleet.” From her elevated perch, McCall shined her flashlight around on the junk below. “You don’t have to follow orders. If you think something is stupid, feel free to argue.”

  “This assignment was my idea, and you do not want to be here. I do not wish to further inconvenience you.”

  She didn’t agree with the idea that he might inconvenience her, but she said, “You’re a good man, Scipio.”

  “I am an android, not a man.”

  She opened her mouth to reply, but the beam from her flashlight dulled on a drab gray tarp spread on an open patch of ground. An oddly open patch. Aside from the main aisle through the compound, there hadn’t been any paths or gaps large enough for ground vehicles to drive into. It would have taken a crane with a long arm to reach any of the piles to remove something. Or an aircraft or spaceship hefting junk from above.

  McCall looked skyward, but nothing but clouds filled the night sky. Few ships came out this way, and she couldn’t remember hearing any aircraft engines either.

  “I’m going to look at something,” she told Scipio, not that it was necessary. They had both been looking at things for hours.

  As she scrambled down from the stack and headed toward the tarp, she noted oversized tires and rusted engines placed around it to hold down the edges. Even though it lay flat on the ground and there wasn’t room for much to lay under it, she couldn’t help but think she might have found something.

  She tugged at a tractor tire and grimaced at the weight. “I may need your help, Scipio. Can you track me by my earstar?”

  “Certainly.”

  As she walked onto the tarp, intending to see if one of the engine parts would be easier to move, her foot landed on uneven ground. Pain shot up her leg when she turned her ankle. Gasping, she stumbled back off the tarp and glared at it as the pain faded. She stepped more carefully as she moved back onto it and found a ditch or something like it underneath. She set her netdisc down and used both hands, grunting and straining to haul the engine part off the tarp. A protrusion got stuck in the ditch, and she swore as she strained to tug it out.

  “I am here, Captain,” came Scipio’s voice from the side. “Do you wish me to lift that for you?”

  “No, I’m enjoying getting a workout.”

  “Very well.”

  “That was sarcasm, Scipio.” She let go and waved him to the engine and the tire. “Please move these things off the tarp.”

  “Certainly. Please guard my loafers as I do so.”

  She noticed Junkyard standing behind him in the dark. He wagged his tail when she looked at him.

  “Dogs appear to find them irresistible,” Scipio added, hoisting the engine overhead as if it weighed a pound.

  “A feature the manufacturer probably didn’t think to add to the sales brochure.” McCall watched Junkyard, whose focus did seem to be on Scipio’s feet. The loafers’ tassels flopped interestingly as he walked.

  “Were such a feature mentioned, I believed it would deter prospective buyers.” Scipio hefted the engine toward a pile.

  It landed with a loud crunch.

  McCall winced at the noise and glanced toward the warehouse. She didn’t know if any of the security guards had remained tonight or if Louis was working—gaming—late. She couldn’t see the building from their spot on the far side of the junkyard and hoped the sound wouldn’t travel. Whoever had arranged this tarp—and whatever lay beneath it—likely worked in that building. And wouldn’t want them investigating it, she had no doubt.

  As Scipio pushed or threw off the last of the junk pinning down the tarp, McCall tugged up a corner, shifting around so she could pull it back. The “ditch” she’d stepped into was the edge of a hole almost entirely filled by a tank. A huge tank.

  Anticipation fluttered in her belly like moths dancing with a lamp. Could they have found it?

  “A water tank,” Scipio observed.

  “How much do you want to bet there’s something else inside. Does that have enough capacity for all the missing maple syrup?”

  “Judging by what I can see of the tank’s width and with a guess to its height, I judge it
could hold six thousand gallons of water.”

  “How many tons is that?”

  “Approximately 23.304 tons of water. I do not have the liquid weight of maple syrup in my database to give you a more accurate conversion.”

  “Hm, so there would need to be eight more tanks like this stashed around the junkyard if this is where the syrup is being stored.” McCall thought that might be a possibility. They had yet to search the whole place, and others could be more cleverly concealed. “Do you see an opening in the top anywhere so we can check inside?”

  McCall ran her flashlight over the surface. A heavy metal ring was affixed to the top. She assumed someone had used a crane to lower the tank after cutting out the hole with some other digging machine. There weren’t any piles of dirt nearby, so it must have been removed.

  It would have taken specialized equipment to do all this over the course of a few nights. She would have to find the local machinery rental agencies and see if she could wrangle access to their records.

  “There.” Scipio hopped onto the dusty blue tank, stepped over the large ring, and walked toward a screw cap.

  A distant rumble grew audible, and McCall frowned in the direction it seemed to come from. The woods beyond the back fence. Just a few minutes ago, she had been thinking about how she hadn’t heard any airplanes or spacecraft flying overhead while they had been here.

  She bounced from foot to foot as Scipio unscrewed the cap and she envisioned them being paid handsomely—their ten percent of the syrup—for something buried in the ground only a couple hundred yards from the warehouse.

  He bent over the opening. “My olfactory sensors detect a sweet odor identical to that in the drum that Mr. Dunham showed us yesterday.”

  “Yes.” McCall clenched a fist and ran across the top of the tank to join him. She wanted to use her own olfactory sensors.

  Scipio lifted his head and looked toward the woods. “I also detect an aircraft heading in this direction.”

  “It’s probably flying over on its way somewhere else.” McCall didn’t have to get her nose too close to the opening to smell the distinctive maple-syrup scent.

  “I do not believe this is an established flight route. I have not observed other aircraft traversing over this location.”

  “Screw that back on, please.” She pointed to the cap he held and couldn’t help but glance skyward as she stepped back. Nothing was visible against the clouds yet. “I’ll comm Dunham. Wait, maybe I better comm the manager. Tate. We still don’t know who took the syrup in the first place, and if it was Dunham, and he finds out we’ve discovered his hiding spot, he might arrange an accident for us.”

  She hopped off the tank and pulled up the roster Dunham had provided her so she could get the manager’s comm code. The sound of engines grew louder, and she spotted lights in the night sky.

  “That is either a helicopter or an air hammer,” Scipio reported. “We are hearing the sound of its rotary blades. Shall I cover up the tank?”

  McCall wanted to say there was no need because the helicopter couldn’t possibly be there for it, but the aircraft was flying straight toward the junkyard. And it was getting close.

  “Yes, please.”

  She helped Scipio tug the tarp back over the tank, but before they had fully hidden it, the helicopter lowered and flew closer, coming over the junkyard fence.

  “Hide,” she whispered, reminded that they were trespassing, whether the dog wanted them there or not.

  She ran into an aisle and pressed herself against a stack of scrap robot parts. Scipio sprang into a nook near the tarp. She thought the shadows would hide them sufficiently, but the helicopter turned on bright search beams that flooded the junkyard with light. She could clearly see Scipio across the way.

  The helicopter flew closer, and the wind from the blades tried to tear her hair from its ponytail.

  “Can you hear me, Captain?” Scipio asked over the comm link. His voice was barely audible over the whipping blades.

  “Yes.” She forced herself to speak normally instead of whispering. Whoever was in the helicopter wouldn’t hear them over the craft’s noise.

  “I believe we were noticed investigating the junkyard, and someone was ordered to come and remove any tanks on the premises tonight so we would not find them.”

  Since the helicopter hovered directly over the tarp, its lights blinding McCall, she couldn’t argue.

  A soft clank sounded, something hitting a junk pile near her, and she jumped. It was a huge metal hook on a chain, and as it swung about, she realized that removing this tank was exactly what the pilot had in mind.

  “Damn it, we just found it,” she blurted. “Scipio, do you think you’re strong enough to—”

  A figure leaped out of the helicopter from thirty feet in the air, and she gasped. What the hells?

  A man whirled toward her. No, an android. His pale skin wasn’t quite real, and when his eyes locked on to her, they were silver. She might be in the shadows, but he knew she was there. The helicopter operator must have checked for life signs. Scipio wouldn’t have registered, but she—

  The android ran straight at her.

  “Shit,” she blurted and grabbed for something to use to defend herself.

  Scipio had a stun gun, but it would be useless on an android. As she snatched a giant metal wrench from a pile, she feared it would also be useless. She didn’t have the strength or speed to harm an android, but she jerked it up in front of her, determined to try.

  Scipio raced over and leaped onto the android’s back when it was less than three feet from her. She scrambled deeper into the aisle as he wrenched her attacker from his path. Thunderous barking sounded over the roar of the blades. Junkyard sprang into the fray, jaws snapping.

  McCall’s heart banged rapid-fire against her ribcage as she hefted the wrench, hoping to find a way to help. And hoping Junkyard wouldn’t tear into the two androids indiscriminately. Did he recognize Scipio as a friend yet? Could he even tell the difference between the two models?

  For a moment, the enemy android’s back was to her, and she sprang. She hammered the heavy wrench against his head. It seemed a cowardly move, but this wasn’t a human being, she reminded herself, and if he was a combat-specialist model, he would be able to beat Scipio in a fair fight.

  The android didn’t react to her blow, his head as hard as a slab of steel. He gripped Scipio’s arm and hurled him atop a stack of junk, then spun back toward McCall. By all three suns, why was the thing so focused on her?

  Junkyard lay on the ground, whining and shaking his head. Anger blasted her like magma erupting from a volcano. She ran at the android, swinging the wrench.

  Her foe grabbed it out of the air, as if were catching a ball, and tore it from her grip—and almost tore her arms out of their sockets at the same time.

  Junkyard sprang to his feet, snarled, and leaped for the back of the android’s neck. Since their enemy was focused on her, he didn’t notice the dog. Powerful fangs sank in, and Junkyard shook that neck as the weight of his body struck the android’s back.

  “Run, Captain,” Scipio called from the top of the stack. He’d found his footing again, and he crouched to spring. “He’s after you.”

  “I noticed,” McCall yelled, looking around for something deadlier than a wrench.

  Scipio jumped down and landed on the android. Junkyard still had a grip on their foe’s neck, and he growled like a rabid ghorettin from some children’s fable.

  A clank came from the tank, and lights moved, the helicopter shifting position. McCall couldn’t see much of it through the fight, but she realized what the pilot was doing.

  Cursing, she maneuvered around the battling androids and ran toward the tank. The helicopter operator had used the hook to move the tarp fully aside, and now he was lowering it toward that ring.

  McCall grabbed a can and threw it at the helicopter, then promptly felt foolish. Her makeshift projectile clanged uselessly off one of the landing skids.


  “I need some grenades,” she muttered.

  Bangs and thumps came from the fight, and a whine of pain sounded. Junkyard.

  Feeling helpless, McCall tapped her earstar and ordered it to comm Tate. Too bad she hadn’t spoken to the man before.

  The helicopter lowered, the hook nearing the ring. McCall snatched up the next closest object that had some heft. A rusty coil from who knew what. This time, she hurled her projectile at the hook as it neared the ring. Even though her aim was generally superior to her athletic skills, she barely clipped it. But it was just enough to disrupt the pilot’s attempt to hook the ring.

  “Hello?” a groggy voice asked. “Who is this?”

  “Your skip tracer, McCall Richter.” She yelled to ensure he would hear her over the noise. “I found your maple syrup, but someone’s stealing it again right now. It’s in the junkyard about to be hauled off.” She snatched up another piece of junk to throw as the hook angled toward the ring again. “Hurry and get law enforcement out here.”

  Belatedly, it occurred to her that she could comm the local law enforcement herself. Hopefully, they would overlook that she was trespassing in the junkyard since it was for a good reason….

  She chucked the piece of junk, but it sailed past the hook without clipping it.

  “Shit,” she swore again, missing Tate’s response.

  The hook slid through the ring, and the helicopter rose immediately. Dirt crumbled and fell from the rim of the hole as the tank rose, far larger than she had realized.

  “Get law enforcement out here now,” she ordered Tate. “They need a ship. There’s a helicopter taking the syrup, and I have no idea where—”

  Scipio ran out of the aisle and sprang into the air.

  He landed on the top of the tank as it cleared the hole. Without pausing, he leaped again, catching the chain and shimmying up it toward the helicopter. Something fell as he climbed—one of his shoes.

  McCall gaped, barely aware of Tate finishing with “…on my way,” and cutting the link.

  “Scipio!” she yelled as he reached the landing skid. Did the pilot know he was on there? How many people—or androids—were in the cabin of the helicopter? Was Scipio going to get himself blown away if he tried to get in?