“Troop, get back!” his mom screamed.
The object exploded, shattering the window and sending splinters of glass flying everywhere. Troop ducked down, but not before catching the sight of his father tumbling out of the building. The smoke cleared in a matter of seconds. With his ears still ringing, Troop assessed the situation.
Aside from several minor cuts, both he and his mother were unharmed. The detonation had completely demolished the window and knocked askew the desk though.
“What was he looking for?” Troop asked, speaking louder than usual since his hearing was still impaired.
“Just information.” His mom rushed over to her desk and pulled out its drawers, ignoring the shards of glass strewn all over the floor. “At least I think that was what he was searching for,” she added later. She let out a small sigh. “Good, he didn’t find the file.”
Troop didn’t ask what type of information his mom would possibly have that others would try to steal. The Company did a decent amount of underhand work.
Somebody knocked on the door. “Reinforcement squad.”
“Just a bit too late,” Troop muttered.
chapter nineteen
“He returned!” Chelsa’s shriek rang out the next morning.
“Who returned?” Kristi rubbed her crusted eyelids.
“Ghost.”
Kristi cracked open her eyes; Chelsa was hugging a very saturated Ghost. His fur dripped with melted snow and tiny icicles had formed on his whiskers.
“Can someone hand me a towel?” Chelsa asked.
Jaiden handed her one.
Chelsa vigorously rubbed Ghost. Once Ghost was dried to her satisfaction, she stood up beaming and said, “Ready to go get the droid-horses?”
The landscape outside was beautiful and serene. It was the crack of dawn and the tunes whistled by a symphony of mourning doves, larks and warblers filled the air.
“You need a name,” Kristi said to her recently acquired droid-horse. “Mist. I’m calling you Mist.”
Mist looked at her with an expression that read: Call me whatever you want and I couldn’t have cared less.
She tightened the girth one last time before walking Mist outside into the snowy wonderland. The virgin snow blanketed the world with a dazzling sparkle, completely unmarked except for the footprints made by Chelsa, Jaiden and Kristi on their way to the stable.
Kristi clambered atop Mist and waited for Jaiden and Chelsa to meet her outside. They steered the droid-horses towards the unplowed road. The horses released steam into the frigid air, plunging their way through two feet of snow. Ghost opted to perch on the back of Chelsa’s horse instead of toiling his way through the snow.
Two hours later, they reached a section of Route 56 that had been cleared of snow. Nevertheless, the horses only dared to take mincing steps, for patches of ice still appeared every so often on the road. No one else but the three of them was traveling on Route 56. Kristi supposed the hazardous driving conditions turned off a lot of people.
A stillness inhabited the air, reminding her of the calm before a storm hits. She shaded her eyes, observing the tumultuous sea of clouds behind them.
“Chelsa, can you check the weather on the electro-slate?” Kristi asked.
“Crud. There’s a weather alert for this area. Another snowstorm is blowing through.”
Jaiden took a look at the storm clouds as well. “They appear to be a mile away, give or take. Do you think we should make a dash for New Amsterdam?” New Amsterdam, the closest town from them, was ten miles away.
Kristi dared another peek back to the clouds and said, “The clouds are moving pretty fast. It’ll be a close race to see who reaches New Amsterdam first.”
“Let’s race for New Amsterdam,” Chelsa said. “I don’t want to spend the night in this storm.”
She clucked to her horse and drove it into a gallop. Jaiden and Kristi spurred their horses after Chelsa. The first two miles or so flew by, but the sky grew dark and ominous with each passing minute. Then the storm hit them. Snow swirled all around Kristi, confusing her sense of direction.
Kristi rocked back and forth in the saddle, doing her best to steer Mist around the bits of black ice. The heavy, stifling silence that suppressed the atmosphere wrapped around her like a cloak. She shifted in her seat and made sure Chelsa was still within sight.
“Can you run faster?” Kristi asked Mist.
She crouched low in the saddle. Chelsa began to inch further and further ahead of Kristi. Mist huffed out a breath then extended her strides. The warning light positioned on Mist’s shoulder flashed at an allegro tempo. Kristi checked to see if the other droid-horses were overheating as well. They both were. Jaiden turned his head towards Kristi and she pointed to the red, blinking light on Mist’s shoulder.
“Chelsa, slow down! The horses are going to malfunction,” Jaiden yelled into the wind that was starting to pick up.
Chelsa eased the pace a little, but only just a little. The warning light hovered between yellow and red. If they weren’t careful, they may very well end up in the middle of a blizzard with no working droid-horses and several miles away from the nearest civilization.
“How many more miles until we reach New Amsterdam?” Jaiden shouted. The howling wind stole his words from his lips as soon as he shouted them.
“What?” Chelsa asked.
“He asked how many more miles until we reach New Amsterdam,” Kristi hollered.
“Four miles.”
The storm began in earnest, sending searing waves of wind slicing through the air. An icy, dagger-like mixture of sleet and hail pelted anyone crazy enough to be outside in this kind of weather. Within minutes, Kristi was soaked to the bones and shivering violently. She cursed herself for not wearing her thermal sweatshirt and water-wicking jacket.
“We’re not going to be able to reach the town in time,” Jaiden shouted to Chelsa. “I say we stop and wait out the storm instead of plowing onwards. If we wait much longer, we won’t be able to set up the tent in the strong wind.”
“Alright. Let’s pull off the road and head towards that clump of willow trees ahead.” Chelsa turned her droid-horse and plunged through three feet of snow and into a hidden ditch eight feet deep.
Her horse struggled to paw its way out of the ditch, but its effort was in vain.
The roiling mass of black clouds hovered directly above them, and they felt the fury of the storm; the wind picked up speed and pounded ice chunks at them without mercy.
“Chelsa, tie the rope I’m going to throw to you around your horse,” Kristi yelled.
She edged Mist to the lip of the ditch. Then she fumbled about, searching for the ropes in her backpack with numb fingers. “Jaiden, get behind me.”
Jaiden didn’t hear her though, so she repeated louder, “Jaiden, get behind me!”
This time he caught her words and guided his droid-horse a few yards behind Mist. Kristi finally got ahold of the ropes and threw one end to Chelsa and passed the other end to Jaiden. She wrapped the rope around her wrist several times then said to Chelsa, “Did you secure the rope around your horse?”
Chelsa gave her a thumbs-up.
“We’re going to try to pull Chelsa and her horse out.” Kristi yelled over her shoulder to Jaiden.
She urged Mist to back away from the ditch. Mist’s shoulder quivered from exertion and strain. Kristi tugged on the rope, easing some of the burden off Mist and Chelsa’s horse slowly started to free itself from its frosty prison.
Chelsa patted her horse, giving it encouragement. The droid lunged up in a sudden burst of power and the upper half of its body became liberated. The droid-horse’s front legs scrabbled at the rim of the trench while its hind legs scrambled on thin air, trying to find footholds.