There wasn’t much to the place. A squat little block house nestled in a great gash of rock with a snake run out back and a single rusting wellhead above a dry wash streaked yellow with sassolite. Farther up the bluff, hidden among the catthorn, were three small cairns clustered around a shrine to Washton the Father.

He had ridden north from Sassalo towards the alkali flats at Dry Falls before turning east into the foothills of the Great Eastern Rocks. The humpback died on the second day and he said the words over the body before cutting long strips off the carcass and smoking them on a small fire of greasewood. He hated to leave the saddle but it might not make a difference now.

He cut a rough trail, holing up for days at a time in scoops among the rocks to watch for trackers but none appeared being more trouble than he was worth to try and take him now he was in the Rocks. At least as far a SecHed Admin might figure it. Unless the Rangers had taken interest.

He spent two days hunkered down in the rocks before coming down into the dry holler, then a little after noon on the third day he followed the switchback trail down from the shrine leaving his pack on the ridge and lugging only his faraday bag and his rifle.

He didn’t see her until he was halfway down the scarp. Back of the house, near the edge of the wash, she had a Big Brown up on the snake-gallows and was walking around it in circles, red to the elbows, shucking down the skin two-handed in a long bloody sleeve that hung in the dust. Working with both hands she sawed down the belly and threw the innards in great handfuls into the wash where a pack of dipshits was gathered pecking and tearing at the head. By the time he had reached the house she was already cutting away the meat from the backbone, hacking it off in rough chunks with the flensing knife and tossing them into the waiting wheelbarrow.

She heard him drop the bag and turned, not startled but holding the knife low out away from her body just the same. He stopped halfway in the yard still holding his rifle. They stood unmoving for several minutes before she seemed to register her own reflection in his helmet’s sunvisor. Gathering up an old dust cloak she she began to wipe the blood from her arms.

“They told me you was dead.”

For the first time in months a smile split open his cracked lips.

“Not hardly.”

It felt no larger than a pebble but it struck with a force that sent stars shooting across Xipu’s vision, shattering his running cadence and throwing him sideways onto the desert rock. He immediately scrambled to his feet, throwing himself from side to side to scan the horizon, his two hearts hammering his abdomen. Crouched low he turned small circles searching for the threat and seeing nothing but the rainbow colors of rock and sand.

It had been a small thing but small things could kill out in the Wastes. It might have been a zip pellet, he thought, or a sling stone. The Mantecs of this sector were know to use them and it was a common enough occurrence for those vermin to try and take a lone radiosaur. He cursed himself for acting as absent minded as a two-run fool. He had let the rhythm of the survey run lull him into a stupor, thinking too soon on this last leg of the sleep and comfort waiting at Badwater Station. It was only after a minute passed with no second shot came that Xipu finally slowed his defensive circling and heard the tiny intermittent scraping of frantic steel on rock.

It was no more than the size of a ripened grape and at first Xipu had difficulty in locating it among the iridescent sands he had churned up in his haste but eventually the sound and the glint of sunlight off that hateful cybernetic body led him to the spot. Even though Xipu had known at once what it must be, still his nostrils flared wide and the nictitating membranes that covered his eyes fluttered in fear as he saw the small metal insect that jerked and buzzed on the sand.

Swarm.

Xipu’s talons flashed out on instinct, slashing down, but the monster was too small and he succeeded only in casting it away. Coming up again, Xipu frantically raised his haunch and smashed his foot down to crush the drone against the rock. Again and again he brought his full weight down on the thing, trusting in strength and weight to smash the power out of it and each time the rise of his claws showed the flickering minilights and steel exoframe still intact. Falling to his knees Xipu cast about himself until he gripped a flat piece of sand blown pumice. Scrabbling back through the dust he brought the sharp edge of the wind scraped rock squarely down onto the struggling drone. Three times Xipu struck before the drone went silent and he was again surrounded by nothing but the sounds of the wind across the Waste.

Xipu knew he must flee. Encountering only a single drone meant he must be on the very edge of the Swarm’s territory. But where there was one there were many. Crouched low he set out West, casting terrified glances to each side, at any minute expecting to hear to the terrible droning of the swarm. His talons bit into the sand, the webbing on his feet throwing it behind him, building speed, conserving nothing, his legs hammering like a machine flying across the Waste. With each meter his equilibrium returned. The drone had broken a wing. He had destroyed it before it could report! Fifty meters, seventy, a  kilometer! He would clear the Swarm’s range and be safe. Home! He was Xipu, Map Runner to the Second Surveyor Clan of the Science Castes and no radiosaur could run as well.

So glorious was the feeling that Xipu did not feel the first drone attach. He sensed only a strange shifting in his gyrotheodolite as if it had been seated badly in the harness, then a resistance on his retroreflector as if someone had been plucking at his sleeve. The blood hammering in his skull still muffled the humming of the tiny saws and the snap of the cutting lasers.

Some days later the section survey master of Badwater Station moved a chit on his board from active to missing. And no more was ever heard of Xipu Runner, of the Second Surveyor Clan of the Science Castes.