TEXT: BattleCorps
  DJINN OF DESPAIR
  Kevin Killiany
  Chapter Seven
  
  BattleCorps
  Djinn of Despair • Page 
  Pirate outpost, northeast of Chevalier Base 
  Despair, Ender’s Cluster 
  Lyran Alliance 
  29 October 3057
  “I’m bringing you up on charges,” Caradine said.
  “I’ll testify for the prosecution,” Lex answered.
  “I am not joking, Leftenant.”
  Caradine was sitting up, leaning forward in the infirmary bed 
  while Nick pressed a stethoscope to her back. Her eyes were cir-
  cled but clear and her color, where she wasn’t bruised, was good. 
  The tubes were gone. 
  Except for his attempt to brush her spiked hair flat, Nick had also 
  done a professional job of washing Caradine up and dressing her 
  wounds before waking her.
  Lex wished she’d had the time for the same treatment. Even 
  without Nick’s help, a shower would have been good. She was 
  tired with a fatigue two hours’ sleep had barely dented and grimy 
  from mucking out the cockpit of her Nightsky. 
  She and Caradine—particularly Caradine—had not been tidy 
  passengers.
  Rigging the single-couch cockpit for three passengers had re-
  quired a bit of ingenuity, but she was pretty satisfied with her 
  handiwork. With a knife, adhesive strips, and room to work she’d 
  been able to fit sheets of padding to every surface. Not the last 
  word in comfort, but enough to cut down on blood-splattering 
  injuries. If Caradine stayed folded in the equipment bay and Nick 
  curled around the base of the command couch, they should just 
  fit. 
  She had only to splice a third vest to the cooling system.
  “Look,” she said, making the effort to sound calm. “We can still 
  pull this off and do some good.”
  Caradine did not look convinced, but she didn’t retort, either. 
  “I know everything I did wrong, and I know how wrong I did it,” 
  Lex said, trying to sound crisply professional, and aware she came 
  across weary and defensive. “But if I hadn’t screwed the regs we 
  
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  Djinn of Despair • Page 
  wouldn’t know how big things are here—and there is something 
  very big in the mountains.” 
  She pulled a case of data crystals from the pouch that had car-
  ried Caradine’s pistol. The weapon, cleaned and holstered, was 
  atop the folded cooling vest at the foot of the bed. 
  “I’ve downloaded everything that was in their computers and 
  holomap,” Lex said. “Most of it’s encrypted, but we can get it to 
  people who can read it.”
  “You didn’t screw the regs, you screwed the mission,” Caradine 
  said. “It’s just your dumb luck the operational situation outgrew 
  your orders. And my dumb luck you were willing to screw every-
  thing else to save my ass.”
  Lex blinked.
  “You’re good,” Nick announced, pulling the stethoscope from his 
  ears. “Full recovery’s a long way off, but I’m pretty sure the real 
  medicos will confirm all you need is time. Just don’t push it.”
  “I need to go to the head,” Chevalier said.
  Lex glared at the scientist, still tied to the chair and table.
  “You just went.” 
  “Get old and grow a prostate,” the prisoner snapped. “You’ll go 
  every five minutes, too.”
  “He might have a point,” Nick said. “We’d better load a field com-
  mode in the truck.”
  “About that...”
  v v v
  Lex’s plan for the three to evacuate in her evaporated the instant 
  Caradine stepped into the ’Mech hangar.
  “There’s another ’Mech!”
  “Most of a Thorn,” Lex agreed. “I don’t think it’s much of a threat.”
  “ A Thorn does ninety-plus kph over broken ground,” Caradine’s 
  tone was incredulous. “And it’s a Star League design—which 
  means a jump seat for ride-alongs in the cockpit.
  
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  Djinn of Despair • Page 
  “That’s not a threat, that’s my—and the doctor’s—ride home.”
  Lex looked at the smaller woman. She was clear-eyed and on her 
  feet, but holding Nick’s arm to steady herself. Merely walking the 
  few dozen meters from the infirmary had taxed her.
  “You can’t pilot a ’Mech,” Lex said flatly.
  “Not in combat, no,” Caradine agreed. “But we’re just walking 
  home. And I’m going to have the doctor here with me.”
  Lex hesitated.
  “Get my neurohelmet,” Caradine said. “If I can climb into the 
  Thorn under my own power and override the lockouts, we have 
  two ’Mechs. If I can’t, we go with your plan.”
  Not wasting time with words. Lex scrambled up the ladders to 
  her own ’Mech’s cockpit and retrieved Caradine’s neurohelmet. 
  She resisted the temptation to drop it on the woman and carried 
  the helmet’s sack slung over her shoulder as she slid down the 
  ladder rails.
   Caradine seemed to gain strength just from holding her helmet. 
  She strode over to the Thorn with more energy than Lex expected 
  and stuck her head in the open service hatch in its ankle assem-
  bly.
  “Everything’s fine,” she reported. “Tech seals in place, diodes 
  green. Somebody just forgot to close the door.”
  Lex didn’t say what she thought about the reliability of a good-
  to-go seal from a technician who didn’t bother to close access 
  hatches. She cast a glance at Nick, but he was watching the way 
  Caradine moved as she dogged the hatch and started up the lad-
  der.
  “She’s pushing it,” he said.
  Lex didn’t bother to answer.
  “If she gets that thing going, you could get Chevalier out of the 
  bathroom,” Nick said. “Carry him back to Chevalier in your ma-
  chine.”
  Lex nodded. 
  On the assumption his people in the storage room were stay-
  ing quiet because they believed their leader was in the hands of a 
  
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  Djinn of Despair • Page 
  wanton killer, she’d tethered Chevalier to the plumbing rather than 
  locking him with the others. But there was no denying he was a 
  source of intel they needed to have. If Caradine’s plan worked, she 
  would carry the hog-tied scientist in her Nightsky’s equipment 
  bay. 
  Not that she expected Caradine to get the Thorn moving.
  “Think he’ll explain what’s going on?” she asked Nick, then al-
  most kicked herself.
  If Nick rode with Caradine, it would be several dangerous hours 
  before they had another chance to speak face to face and she was 
  wasting the opportunity on shop talk. 
  Though she honestly couldn’t think of what else she might have 
  said.
  For a moment she considered suggesting Nick ride in her   and 
  let Caradine carry their prisoner. But there was no denying her 
  lancemate was the one most likely to need a doctor on board.
  “I think he’ll keep his mouth shut,” Nick said, oblivious to her 
  thoughts. “At least, they didn’t have any of those holovid drama 
  moments where the bad guys sit around discussing their plans in 
  front of the prisoner just before he escapes. 
  “Or gets rescued,” he corrected, grinning at her. 
  The old grin, Lex noted. The pre-Lex-blowing-the-brains-out-of-
  the-pirate grin. Good sign.
  “However, I’m pretty sure this is his grandfather’s operation,” 
  Nick added, looking back at the Thorn. Caradine was inside with 
  the hatch shut. “I infer from events that he didn’t know anything 
  was here until after he got his own base going. Otherwise, he 
  wouldn’t have located it so near the original evaluation site.”
  “That’s what this is.”
  “I think so,” Nick agreed. “Except it seems way too small. Maybe 
  an outlying research lab?”
  Spreading resources on a hostile world made little sense to 
  Lex, but she dismissed the notion. Scientific exploration required 
  something very nearly the opposite of the military mindset.
  A grinding noise rose from the Thorn. Light and whispery, it 
  quickly rose to the ultrasonic.
  
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  Djinn of Despair • Page 
  “Gyro’s dusty but working,” Lex said. 
  “You mean she’s got that thing going?”
  “She’s got basic start-up controls,” Lex explained. “Techs do that 
  just to move hardware around the hangar. Full control without 
  codes is going to take a while.”
   If ever.
  “At any rate, I think grand-père Chevalier found something on 
  Despair worth exploiting,” Nick said. “And didn’t want to share it 
  with the government that bankrolled him.”
  The Thorn groaned, its knees flexing slightly.
  “Motor controls are good,” Caradine’s amplified voice echoed.
  The vapor lock over the ’Mech entrance seemed to answer, a 
  heavy plastic sheet popping in a sudden gust of foul wind.
  Lex tensed, hand dropping to her service laser. A gust of foul 
  fumes confirmed there was nothing but wind was coming through 
  the tunnel.
  Caradine continued testing controls, putting the Thorn through 
  what looked like limbering up exercises.
  “The gyro is really unhappy about that missing arm,” her ampli-
  fied voice announced. “Center of mass is off. Compensating.”
  The Thorn’s head rotated left a few dozen degrees, then right. 
  The scrape of unlubricated bearings was audible, but not alarm-
  ing. There were ’Mechs listed as active on the Florida roster that 
  sounded as bad.
  The medium laser beneath the canopy swung farther than the 
  head and with proper silence. 
  Lex judged the weapons angle of fire covered nearly one hun-
  dred and eighty degrees left to right. Depression and elevation 
  seemed about ninety degrees. A well thought out mount.
  “Weapons control good,” Caradine stated the obvious, her voice 
  satisfied. “No operational lock-outs.”
  Which fits technicians too lazy to close a service hatch.
  “Any idea what he found?” Lex asked Nick, resigned to a few 
  more minutes of shop talk. 
  
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  Djinn of Despair • Page 
  “No,” Nick answered. “Or—” 
  He paused, frowning.
  “Based on a couple of gripes, not a full explanation,” he quali-
  fied, “I think it might have something to do with a huge herd of 
  tonners.”
  “Huge herd of tonners?” 
  “Covers kilometers, if the complaints were accurate,” Nick said. 
  “Managing it evidently involves endless hauling, huge piles of ton-
  ner crap and millions of scavengers.”
  Lex felt a chill rise in her chest. She’d been half right and mostly 
  wrong. The red zone on the plain was dangerous, but not for the 
  reasons she’d thought. And pirate reinforcements were a half day 
  closer than she’d thought.
  She glanced to the chronometer on the wall and wasted a half 
  second realizing it was broken. She looked at her wristwatch.
  “If they’ve got assaults or heavies, we’ve got three hours,” she 
  said aloud. “Anything faster and two. Or one.”
  “What?”
  “Cowboys riding herd on the tonners,” she explained. “They 
  can’t use anything but ’Mechs.”
  “Wouldn’t they use some kind of industrials?”
  “Laser scarred tonners,” Lex cut him off, already heading for the 
  door. “Help me get Chevalier secured in my ’Mech. Then get in 
  Caradine’s.
  “We need to lose ourselves in the woods before more pirates get 
  here.”
  
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  Djinn of Despair • Page 
  Excerpt: 
  Transcript #1027
   
   
  NetTalk with Tommy Thomavitch
   
   
  Special Guest Dr. Xavier Wortman, 
   
   
  Professor of Xenobiology, emeritus, NAIS and 
   
   
  Chief of Evaluations,
   
   
  Lyran Bureau of Controlled Substances
   
   
  Syndicated Alarion Talk Entertainment
   
   
  copyright protected, September 3057
  Tommy Thomavitch: Go ahead, caller, you’re on the wave.
  Caller 2437: Yeah. Hi, Tom. Just want to say I always listen to your 
  show.
  TT: That’s great, caller. Do you have a question?
  C2437: Yeah. I wanted to ask the professor about this MindMASC. I 
  keep hearing it breaks down in liquids, which makes it hard to analyze. 
  How come? And aren’t there other ways to analyze? And if it breaks 
  down so fast, how come it makes people crazy?
  TT: That’s three questions, caller.
  C2437: Ha, ha. Yeah. Sorry.
  Dr. Xavier Wortman: Don’t be. Those are all very good questions. As 
  you have pointed out, and others have pointed out as well, MindMASC 
  does not make a lot of sense logically. A compound that breaks down 
  into inert constituents almost instantly in water, yet has such a profound 
  impact on the human nervous system when ingested is—on the face of 
  it—nonsense. Quite frankly, it’s bad chemistry.
  TT: Well, now you’ve got me, Doctor Wortman. How does this bad 
  chemistry do what it does?
  Dr. W: To be honest, a great deal of the bad chemistry was on the 
  part of the investigators. A major breakthrough was the discovery that 
  the way the complex molecule broke down was dramatically affected 
  by heat. In other words, at below about thirty-three degrees—which is 
  where initial tests were conducted—the chain breaks into inert chemi-
  cals.
  TT: Which is why pushers always have a bucket of water handy.
  Dr W: Exactly. However, at temperatures between about thirty-five and 
  roughly fifty, the chemical chain breaks differently, yielding a complete-
  ly different group of chemicals. Above fifty and there is a third—also 
  inert—group of chemicals produced.
  TT: And you’re saying that middle group is the active one; what causes 
  all the bizarre effects. Isn’t that still chemical voodoo?
  
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  Djinn of Despair • Page 
  Dr.W: With the biology of hundreds of worlds documented and many 
  hundreds more only slightly understood, chemistry that defies the clas-
  sical model is not all that unusual. Nature finds ways to do things that 
  were never imagined when the fundamental taxonomy of chemistry was 
  devised. This foundation is still solid—in fact it is an accurate predictive 
  and analytical tool in almost all situations—but there are still the rare 
  instances that defy its neat order.
  TT: And you’re saying MindMASC is one of those instances. What do 
  we know about it?
  Dr. W: Much of what we know is inferential. It is a naturally occurring 
  chemical, very like an enzyme or hormone...
  TT: Aren’t those two completely different things?
  Dr. W: That depends on which world’s biology you’re talking about.
  TT: Ha, ha. Got me there. But, wait a minute... Enzymes and hormones? 
  MindMASC comes from some sort of animal?
  Dr. W: Almost certainly. And given the narrow range of temperatures 
  in which it’s reactive, it is produced by a warm blooded animal—most 
  likely a mammal. It affects neural reactions because it’s designed to im-
  pact the nervous system.
  TT: Intelligently designed?
  Dr. W: Ha, ha. Formed by chance, then, to perform a very specific task. 
  Accelerate the nervous system instantly and dramatically. The fact that 
  it has such an immediate—and very short-term—effect indicates this ac-
  celeration is dangerous even to the organism which produces it.
  C2437: Does that make sense?
  Dr. W: Certainly. When you are terrified or in danger, your own adrenal 
  gland dumps chemicals into your system which drive your heart rate 
  to near tachycardia, suppress your pain receptors, and trigger a host of 
  other changes that would kill you if maintained for any length of time. 
  MindMASC—which was aptly named, indicating whoever is distributing 
  this substance understands its effect—performs the same function, but 
  at a vastly more potent level. 
  TT: What sort of animal would need something like that in its system?
  Dr. W: From the evidence it’s fairly clear that we are talking about a 
  sloth-like mammal. Perhaps similar to a primate, since the chemical 
  has such an effect on humans. Normally this animal would lead a slow 
  and placid life—again imagine the Terran sloth, which can take hours to 
  climb from one branch to another. However, there must be some situa-
  tion, most likely a fast-moving predator, which requires the sloth to think 
  and move very quickly and decisively—whether to run or fight—in order 
  to survive.
  
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  TT: So the science investigators are looking to worlds with populations 
  of sloth-like mammals as the source of MindMASC?
  Dr.W: Yes. Especially worlds where these animals have not been thor-
  oughly studied. And more especially worlds where there is evidence 
  the population of these sloths is on the decline. Now that we know what 
  we’re looking for, it’s only a matter of time before we find and eliminate 
  the source of MindMASC.
  
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  Jungle 
  North-northeast of Chevalier Base 
  Despair, Ender’s Cluster 
  Lyran Alliance 
  29 October 3057
  “Expect our geo locator bearings to be off,” Lex said, study-
  ing the flat image copy of the pirate topo map on her secondary 
  screen. “But check out the pass in the hills west and south of 
  us.”
  “I see it,” Caradine said. Her voice was faint. With the domes 
  they’d fled only a kilometer behind and they were keeping their ra-
  dios on trickle power until they were out of the bowl valley. “You’re 
  suggesting we follow the ridge line southwest, then cut straight 
  through the jungle to Chevalier?”
  “They’ll expect us to run directly away from them into the 
  swamps or cut as straight a line as we can to base,” Lex said. 
  “This way we double back inside their search area and still make 
  our way back. It adds a couple of hours, but they’re not likely to 
  look our way.”
  “Double back right into their teeth is more like it,” Caradine said. 
  “And what good does that maneuvering do if they just head straight 
  to Chevalier and throw up a perimeter to keep us out?”
  Lex twisted in her seat, trying to glance back into the equipment 
  cubby. 
  When he’d realized they meant to take him back to Chevalier Base, 
  Chevalier had become violent—kicking, cursing, and scratching in 
  his effort to get away. Faced with four hours of the scientist curs-
  ing and kicking the back of her command couch, Lex had grabbed 
  the most potent sedative she recognized in the infirmary’s stores 
  and doubled the safe dosage.
  Now Chevalier, possible source of useful information, was snor-
  ing noisily behind her.
  Lex wished the infirmary had stocked truth serum. Pirates in the 
  holovids always had some on hand.
  “I don’t think they have the resources for that,” she said at last. 
  “Herding tonners must be labor intensive. And they were shy of 
  
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  challenging a lance of mostly medium ’Mechs before they lost two 
  heavy hitters.”
  “They were only shy because they didn’t want to be noticed,” 
  Caradine said. “For all we know, they may be planning a massed 
  assault on Chevalier right now.”
  Which certainly tied in with Chevalier’s behavior, Lex conceded. The 
  man had been a model prisoner until he learned they intended to take 
  him back to the base—then he’d panicked. At the time Lex thought he 
  was afraid of being beyond his compatriots’ ability to rescue him. 
  But not wanting to be at ground zero of an assault would trigger 
  pretty much the same reaction.
  No matter how she looked at the tactical situation, getting back 
  to Chevalier Base—or at least getting close enough to apprise 
  Britto and Aldicott of the situation—was their highest priority.
  “A straight run back still puts us dead center of any pursuit pat-
  tern they mount,” Lex pointed out. “And we don’t know if they’re 
  fast enough to catch us.”
  It was Caradine’s turn to be quiet as she considered the same 
  map in her own cockpit.
  “If we’re going back into their teeth, we might as well go down 
  their throat,” she said at last. “Cut farther west, out of the hills and 
  onto the edge of the plain. On the flat we’ll double our speed, cut 
  an hour, hour and a half off our travel time.”
   And come real close to that red zone. How many tonners and 
  how many ‘Mechs?
  “Set the pace, Leftenant,” she said. “I’ve got your six.”
  “Good to know, Atreus,” Caradine said. “But I’m not going to fall 
  out.”
  “Never thought you would.”
  “Right,” Caradine stretched the word out as her   picked up speed. 
  “But be advised that if you drop, I’m leaving you. Getting this intel 
  to base has priority.”
  “Understood.”
  “And if I go down, you leave me,” Caradine added. “Same reason. 
  Britto, Aldicott and the ECPM need to know what’s out here.”
  
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  “Understood,” Lex repeated.
  Caradine snorted.
  “I’d feel better about that if you’d obeyed the last time I gave you 
  that order.” 
  Lex said nothing. 
  Behind her, Chevalier muttered in his sleep.
  “Ridge line ahead,” Caradine said a half hour later. “Radio silence 
  for duration.”
  A dozen paces behind her lancemate, Lex crested the ridge. 
  Dawn was coming—the sky behind them was an angry red, 
  fading to a muddy orange then grey ahead of them. Running on 
  passive sensors, not risking a signal that might alert the pirates, 
  Lex could make out nothing of the rolling plain that stretched to 
  the distant mountains. Through her canopy she saw fog and ferns. 
  No sign of tonners, no indication of BattleMechs. 
  But both were out there—uncounted, unseen and dangerous.
  
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  Hill valley, northwest of Chevalier Base 
  Despair, Ender’s Cluster 
  Lyran Alliance 
  29 October 3057
  “What the hell?”
  “What have you got, Jarhaal?” Sardella asked his point man.
  “Hang one.”
  With solid ground underfoot, they didn’t need the Florida  
  Hatchetman to lead. Sardella had put one of his own people out 
  front and set Aldicott to roving the hillsides above them. The 
  Highlanders were moving through a narrow valley that connected 
  the jungle region to a plain beyond.
  Sardella had determined their course after comparing notes 
  with the Pith—literally, as text continued to get through static that 
  frustrated voice transmission. The DropShip—now in geo-sync 
  orbit above—was reasonably sure a large metal reading in the 
  mountains beyond the narrow plain ahead of them included re-
  fined alloys. 
  Domes. Maybe armored.
  Not surprisingly, Aldicott had tried to appear useful by com-
  menting that the ’Mech Britto had sent him to follow had been 
  heading in a course that would have eventually brought it to this 
  very valley. If it hadn’t turned aside first, of course. He didn’t know 
  because Britto had called him back before he’d actually seen the 
  mysterious machine.
  Sardella wasn’t sure the observation was useful. It dovetailed 
  with what they suspected, but he didn’t know the Florida mili-
  tiaman well enough to determine whether that supported their 
  theory or just Aldicott’s ability to fit his facts to what he thought 
  they wanted to hear.
  “Lots of dinos up here,” Jarhaal reported. “Tonners, whatever 
  they call them. A wall of them. Headed this way.”
  “A wall?”
  “A herd,” Jarhaal sounded impressed. “Spreads as far as I can 
  see in both directions—which isn’t far in this fog—but we’re talk-
  
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  ing a couple of hundred animals at least. Thermal image reads a 
  solid mass to full extent of its range. But in this soup....”
  He didn’t need to finish the sentence. With the metals, thermals 
  and static electricity of Despair’s air fuzzing their sensors, those 
  readings could mean anything.
  “Locals say they respond to physical displays,” Sardella said. “Any 
  chance you can wave your arms or something and turn them?”
  “Sir, I am backing up,” Jarhaal answered. “Even if the leaders 
  wanted to stop, I don’t think they could. They’re being crowded 
  from behind.”
  Sardella brought his own BattleMech to a halt. He was aware 
  of Twindle on his flank following suit. If the herd was as big as 
  Jarhaal estimated, the valley was too narrow for the beasts to turn 
  aside, either. Unless they were adept at climbing steep slopes.
  These aren’t cattle.
  “Ha!” Jarhaal shouted.
  “What?”
  “Seems I’m something to sneeze at after all,” Jarhaal laughed. 
  “Be aware their ball of flaming gas trick knocks sensors out for a 
  few seconds. No real damage.”
  Jarhaal’s Highlander appeared at the edge of Sardella’s screen, 
  though the heads up hadn’t assigned him an icon. The ambient 
  temperature rose sharply just beyond Jarhaal as his man moved 
  slowly toward him, but the sensors couldn’t see well enough to 
  determine what was causing the thermal.
  “That’s not right,” Aldicott cut in on the lance channel. “There’s 
  something wrong with this herd.”
  “What, Florida?”
  “I’m above the lead edge of the tonners,” Aldicott answered. 
  “There are greens, blues and browns packed together. Those are 
  different species. Blues wander around loose, but browns and 
  greens stay in family pods. They don’t mingle.”
  Sardella shook his head. He wasn’t going to bother explaining 
  to the militiaman that he’d seen cattle, raxx, gazelles and emus 
  grazing together all his life. There was nothing significant about 
  herbivores clumping together.
  
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  “Probably a migration of some sort,” he said aloud. “Are local 
  seasons changing?”
  “No idea,” admitted Aldicott. “But if the scientists had seen any-
  thing like this before, they would have mentioned it. Our job was 
  to keep these beasts away from the base.”
  “Well, this lot looks like they’re headed straight for the base,” 
  Jarhaal said. 
  Sardella wasn’t so sure. From the looks of the topo map, if the 
  herd followed the contours of the land, they’d pass just north of 
  Chevalier Base. Of course, they were dumb animals—they could 
  get it in their heads to go anywhere. 
  However, even if the herd did approach Chevalier, there was little 
  danger. The base was in open land. When the leaders got zapped 
  by the new perimeter defenses, the herd would just split to flow 
  around the obstacle like water around a rock.
  The animals were close enough for him to see, now. Aldicott was 
  right, it was a mixed bunch of beasts—many of them larger than 
  the Florida Hatchetman. None were the mass of a Highlander, of 
  course, though several of the knobby heads rose higher than his 
  cockpit. While the assault ’Mechs could no doubt push their way 
  through the oncoming mass of creatures, there was no reason to 
  expend the effort—or risk the damage.
  “High ground, north side,” he ordered. “Give them the valley 
  floor. Continue toward objective.”
  “This is not right,” Aldicott repeated.
  Sardella opened his mouth, then shut it again. 
  He’d seen herbivores of every stripe grazing side by side all his 
  life, true. But he had to agree the Florida jockey was on to some-
  thing. The only time diverse species moved as a group with such 
  purpose was when they wanted to get away from something. Like 
  predators or grass fires. Or cowboys.
   This isn’t a herd of animals. These are animals being herded.
  “Change of orders,” he said. “Twindle, Jarhaal, reverse and take 
  the hills on the south side of the valley. Could be hostiles are driv-
  ing these lizards ahead of them as cover.”
  “Birds,” Aldicott corrected mildly.
  
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  Djinn of Despair • Page 1
  Sardella ignored him.
  “Scan that herd for heavy metal,” he ordered. “We are looking 
  for cowboys.”
  
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