Chapter Forty-Nine - Intimidating as All Hells

“Need a hand?”

I stared up at the hand the elf had extended down. He wasn’t smiling or anything, but somehow I just knew he was amused. “I feel like shit that’s been rolled over,” I said.

“You look it,” he replied easily. His hand twitched, and with a sigh, I reached up and used him to pull myself up to my feet.

The adrenaline was coursing out of me, like a cold chill in my gut, and with it I could feel my hands and legs wanting to shake. I tightened my fists and hardened my jaw.

“Caroline might still need help. Will you be okay?”

I nodded once, then turned and started looking around for my revolver. It had to be somewhere... I spotted the gun laying on some gravel a few paces off and stomped over to it.

My face hurt, my forearm where I’d blocked one punch too many was sore, and my chest was going to be a mess of bruises. Could barely bend over to pick up my gun, and when my hat started to slip off and I slapped my hand up onto my head to keep it in place, it sent a twinge of pain across my everything.

“Gods be damned,” I muttered as I stood back up with a wince.

I felt twenty years older.

Then I glanced over at the goblin shaman, splattered and bleeding on the ground and very much dead.

At least I could bask in the knowledge that I’d come out of it better than that bastard.

Glancing around, I searched for any leftover goblins, but I was all alone out in the open, the goblin mech very dead a few paces over and the ground littered with dead goblins.

I started slapping the sand out of my revolver before dropping the spent cartridges in a pocket and replacing them.

Not a bad day’s work when it came to goblin killing.

I heard shuffling and stomping. Something pounded in my head; a headache just waiting to hatch.

Sighing, I slid the last fresh round into my revolver and snapped it shut before half-turning towards the noise.

It was the sheriff—him, his two little deputies and three other clueless looking fidiots. “You missed it,” I said.

The sheriff and his pals paused, some staring up at the mech behind me with wide eyes, others taking in all the bodies.

“We heard there was trouble,” the sheriff said.

“Plenty of that going around,” I said. I slid my revolver into its sheath and reached into my coat. I pulled out my flask, then glared.

It was pissing whiskey all over, a lead ball squeezed into one corner warping the metal. At least it was on the top corner. Hadn’t even felt that one.

I unscrewed the cap, took a few pulls, then tossed the flask aside. It was finished. “You folk here to do anything more than gawk?” I asked.

The sheriff glared. “Boys, start looting.”

“I don’t recall,” I said, loud and sharp enough that it gave the deputies and their pals pause. “Giving you folk permission to go rooting around my things.”

“Your things?” the sheriff asked.

“Yep. As far as I recall, when you make something dead, its junk’s yours.”

One of them, a younger looking punk, arrogance all over his whiskerless face, snorted. “This isn’t the wastes,” he said.

“Could have fooled me,” I said.

Whiskerless laughed. “Yeah, maybe. Now run off, girl.”

I shifted my coat back.

The sheriff tensed, and one of the fidiots behind him too. Smart. Two out of six was something, at least.

“You guys can’t be serious,” Whiskerless said. “She’s just one girl.”

“I’ll have you know, I’m a fine and respectable woman,” I said.

“There’s just one of you,” Whiskerless said.

“There was just one of me when these idiots showed up too.” I spat to the side, the gob landing on the back of a goblin missing part of its head.

The sheriff eyed me, then the mech, his eyes shifted over to the shaman off to the side, then back. “Anything you can tell us about this lot?” he asked.

“Here for the core storage,” I said, a thumb flicking to point out the building. My arm twinged, but I kept the pain off my face by turning it into a grimace. “Looks like someone told them to take it out.”

“Gods, that would’ve been a mess,” the sheriff said.

I hummed. “No worries, I’m good with messes.”

I saw the sheriff’s throat bob. “Right,” he said, drawing the word out. “You’re going to be looting this lot?”

“I wasted a few rounds,” I said. “Figure I ought to be paid back for them.”

“What are you, a mercenary?” Whiskerless asked. He made it sound like an insult.

“A bounty hunter.”

“That’s worse,” he spat.

“I still have six,” I said.

“What?”

“Six rounds.” I grinned. “Want to keep insulting my profession, boy? I’ve been knocked around a bit. It’ll be fair for you, fresh as you look.”

Whiskerless went red, then pale as he noticed his buddies and the sheriff backing away from him. His fists opened and closed. Impotent rage flashed by his features, then he stepped back and looked down. “No,” he said.

“That’s ‘no, ma’am.’ Your ma never teach you to respect a lady?”

“No, ma’am,” he said.

I twitched my coat forward and let my shoulders relax a little. Suddenly, the air felt a lot lighter. I eyed the sheriff. “The mech’s mine, by right of me being the one to take it down.”

“How’d you manage that?” he asked.

“I had a knife,” I said.

“Had?” one of them muttered.

I nodded over to the shaman pilot. “I lent it to that big one there. He was the pilot. Shaman, some weird magic that stopped bullets.”

“Right, right,” the sheriff said. “The mech’s yours, of course. And the goblins and their things,” he said. “We’ll be needing to look at the storage.”

“Have at it,” I said. “Did you see Shane? Fellow in a mech?”

“Yeah, he’s a couple of corners down. Got caught up in a fight with a goblin mech... smaller than that one,” the sheriff said.

“Mmhmm,” I replied. “Fair enough.”

We all looked over when the thump-and-hiss of a mech walking over started coming from one of the buildings nearby.

Caroline and Sally stomped out of the hangar I’d had her taking cover in. The mech was covered in the remains of a couple of goblins, and Clin was walking right next to it. He eyed up the situation, then started walking faster.

“About time you got here,” I said.

“Sorry, we were held up,” he replied.

Caroline’s walking looked rough, but with the dead goblins on her mech and the dozens of scars from ricochets, someone might think the mech was damaged, rather than piloted by someone like Caroline.

“Glad you decided to show up,” I said. “Sheriff here’s looking to check out the storage shed. We need to loot all these goblins, but fortunately, we’ve got some of these young lads to help us along.”

Whiskerless’ head snapped up, but he didn’t protest any.

The sheriff nodded and pointed his boys around, and soon enough the lot of them were sorting out the bodies, dragging them to one spot where they could cook under the sun and tossing all their guns and such over onto one big pile.

Clin watched as one of them tugged a knife out and started poking at one of the goblins in the chest. “You alright?” he asked.

“Fine,” I lied.

“Alright,” he said. I don’t think I fooled him one whit. “Caroline’s shaken up, I think, but she’s physically fine. I think that if we’re done here, we might want to go back to the scrap-yard. You look like you need a rest. And maybe a doctor.”

I huffed, but he was probably right. I didn’t reckon I had any broken bones, but I wasn’t in tip-top shape. “That might not be the worst idea you’ve come up with,” I said.

He hesitated, then placed a hand on my shoulder. “Come on, you don’t need to make yourself look so tough.”

I barked a laugh, which of course hurt my ribs. “And now you are as wrong as you’ve ever been.

He shook his head. “Want me to help you walk?”

“No, but...” I licked lips barely wetted by a bit of whiskey. “Can you fetch my rifle? And my knife?”

“I can do that,” he said. “We’ll need to figure out what to do with all of our, ah, loot.”

“Caroline can help, I think. She’s got some wagons and I figure she’s the one to ask to move that old rust bucket mech.”

“I’ll see how she feels about it,” he replied. His grip tightened. “You did well, you know? You probably saved a lot of people today.”

I shifted, eyes moving away from the elf. “Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, we did alright.”

***