Hunters Run Page 0,118

roof of Elena's apartment by himself, and watched the ships go. When the last light of their drives had faded from the deep blue sky, Ramon flipped them off. Fucking pendejos!

Elena kicked him out about the time of the first snow, but even that was strange. The way it used to be, he would have done something, she would have got pissed, and they'd have ended throwing punches and plates. Instead, one morning Elena looked at him, shook her head, and told him it was time for him to go before he did something stupid. It had been like that ever since she'd saved his ass with the police. They still fought, they still yelled, but when it was something important, it was just a statement. The beans are cold. That shirt's not clean. It's time for you to go before you do something stupid. The plan Ramon had been working on was as close to ready as it was ever going to be, and the call of the open sky was getting louder in his heart every day. She was right. He needed to get out for a while. And then, when the city and the people and the lingering threat of the Enye were out of his system, he would need to come back.

Griego had been a hardass about the whole thing, pressing Ramon about why he didn't have better insurance on his last van. Pointing out that Ramon was asking him to trust equipment to a crazy fuck who'd gone out last time with a perfectly good machine and come back naked and three-quarters dead with nothing to show for it. The negotiation had gone on over cans of Griego's beer until they were both drunk off their asses and singing old songs. In the morning, they both remembered they'd made an agreement, but the contract they'd drawn up was half gibberish. It had their signatures on it, though, so Griego had agreed to loan Ramon a van on the understanding that the rental fee would be half of any income that resulted from the run plus depreciation on the van. He was fucking Ramon over, but Ramon didn't care. He wasn't making shit off this run anyway. This was just the first part of the plan. Getting rich came later.

The moons were both out, Big Girl high in the sky while Little Girl was just starting to peek over the horizon. Their cool blue light allowed glimpses of the terrain below. The Oceano Tetrico was black as coffee in the darkness, but Ramon knew that the daylight, when it came, would reveal water a deep, lush green. Winter was growing time in the ocean, just the reverse of the land. Something to do with oxygenation levels, but what it meant to him was an endless plain of tiny green waves, the bite of winter air, and the scent of salt and turning tides. He conjured it all now, constructing the world in his mind. His belly had lost that sick feeling since he'd left Diegotown. His mind felt calmer, slower, less like a dog caged in a kennel. It was moments like this that made the difference. The van chimed, and he turned his attention back to the next of the near-infinite small manual corrections flying the thing required.

In a real van and not this half-dead lump of tin, he would have gone on to the Sierra Hueso in a single jump, but he knew that if he left the panel and tried to bed down, his distrust of the van would keep him awake anyway. Near midnight, he overflew Fiddler's Jump, aimed the van east to the unlogged forests, and circled until he found a little clearing to set down in. The snow was deep enough that it would have been hard work to get the door open, had he intended to go out. But inside the small box, its heating system online and keeping the air warm, it felt like being wrapped in a good wool blanket on a cold night. He curled up on his cot and fell asleep wondering what the difference was between blackmail and extortion.

The plan, once it had finally coalesced, was a simple one. Maneck and its people had been squatting hidden on this planet since long before the colony had begun. They'd chosen the place to hide their hive. They might even have other hives scattered around the planet. He would offer them the trade - share the