Hunters Run Page 0,8

his van to Manuel Griego's salvage yard in Nuevo Janeiro. The van needed some work before it could head out into the world, and Ramon wanted it done now.

Griego's yard squatted at the edge of the city. The hulking frames of old vans and canopy fliers and personal shuttles littered the wide acres. In the hangar, it was equal parts junk shop and clean room. Power cells hung from the rafters, glowing with the eerie light that all Turu technology seemed to carry with it. A nuclear generator the size of a small apartment ran along one wall, humming to itself. Storage units were stacked floor to ceiling; tanks of rare gas and undifferentiated nanoslurry mixed in with half-bald tires and oily drive trains. Half the things in the shop would cost more than a year's wages just to make use of; half were hardly worth the effort to throw out. Old Griego himself was hammering away on a lift tube as Ramon set his van down on the pad.

"Hey, ese," Griego called out when Ramon popped the doors and came down to the working floor. "Long time. Where you been keeping yourself ?"

Ramon shrugged.

"I got a power drop in my back lift tubes," he said.

Griego frowned, put down his hammer, and wiped greasy hands

on greasy pants.

"Put on the diagnostic," he said. "Let's take a look."

Of all the men in Diegotown and Nuevo Janeiro - or possibly on

this world - Ramon liked old Griego best, which was to say he only hated him a little. Griego was an expert on all things vehicular, a post-contact Marxist, and, so far as Ramon could make out, totally free of moral judgments. It took them little more than an hour to find where the lift tube's chipset had lost coherence, replace the card, and start the system's extensive self-check. As the van stuttered and chuffed to itself, Griego lumbered to one of the gray storage tanks, keyed in a security code, and opened a refrigeration panel to reveal a case of local black beer. He hauled out two bottles, snapping the caps free with a flick of his thick, callused fingers. Ramon took the one that was held out to him, squatted with his back against a drum of spent lubricant, and drank. The beer was thick and yeasty, sediment in the bottom like a spoonful of mud.

"Pretty good, eh?" Griego said and drank a quarter of his own at a pull.

"Not bad," Ramon said.

"So you're heading out?"

"This is going to be the big one," Ramon said. "This time I'm coming back a rich man. You wait. You'll see."

"You better hope not," Griego said. "Too much money kills men like you and me. God meant us to be poor, or He wouldn't have made us so mean."

Ramon grinned. "God meant you to be mean, Manuel. He just didn't want me taking any shit from anybody." A quick vision of the European, mouth gaping open, blood gushing out over tombstone teeth, came to him, and he frowned.

Griego was shaking his head. "The same thing again, eh? This time's the one, just like every other time you been out." He grinned. "You know how many times I heard you say that?"

"Yep," Ramon said. "This time's different, just like always."

"Go with God, then," Griego said. His grin faded. "Everyone's been scrambling. Trying to get things finished. Aliens caught everyone with their pants around their knees, coming early like this. Funny, though. I don't see a whole lot of people heading out right now. Pretty much everyone's coming in for the ships - except you."

Ramon sneered, but he felt the constant fear in his breast tighten a notch.

"What? They're going to give half a shit about a prospector like me? What's there for me if I stay?"

"Didn't say you should," Griego said. "Just said there's not many people going out right now."

I look suspicious, Ramon thought. I look like I'm running from something. He'll tell the police, and then I'm fucked. He clamped his hand around the bottle so hard his knuckles ached.

"It's Elena," Ramon said, hoping the half lie would be convincing enough.

"Ah," Griego said, nodding sagely. "I thought it must be something like that."

"She kicked me out again," Ramon said, trying to sound hangdog despite the relief washing through him. "We had a fight about the parade. It got a little out of hand is all."

"She know you're taking off?"

"I don't think she cares," Ramon said.

"Right now, maybe she doesn't. But you fly out of