Counterattack by Sigmund Brouwer

before Nate had given me a pair of blue pants. He called them jeans. I also wore a T-shirt and a sweater.
    I let Nate help me out of the sleeping bag into my wheelchair, impressed all over again at how powerful he was.
    Nate went back to the fire, then handed me a green bowl filled with brown liquid. I wasn’t familiar with the smooth hard material. Plastic?
    He grinned at the puzzlement on my face. “Turtle soup. Remember? Slurp it right from the shell.”
    I nodded and took a taste. A strange texture and rather drippy. But not bad. Nate’s version of Earth food was much better than the nute tubes on Mars.
    Nate noticed Ashley had awakened as well. He handed her a bowl. She ate it from her sleeping bag.
    â€œHmmm,” she said, after a slurp.
    â€œFinish it quick and get ready to go,” he told her. “The sooner we leave, the sooner we arrive.”
    â€œWhere?” I asked. The sky was getting brighter, and I shivered in my sleeping bag in the predawn cold. Already the sounds of birds filled the air. As if they were happy to be alive. I couldn’t blame them. Earth was fascinating.
    â€œIt’s no coincidence that I chose this route away from the base,” Nate put in. “It was the direction that put us closest to the interstate. I’ve got a friend who handles a mag-strip truck on the north-south route. He usually brings me supplies once every two weeks, and I meet him at a truck stop on the highway on the outer limits of the Everglades. After my excommander showed up the other day, I called this friend and set up a meeting with him for today. Just in case I needed to get away from this area quickly.”
    No coincidence? It seemed like too much of a coincidence. I was immediately suspicious. “How did you know you’d need him?”
    Nate smiled grimly. “When I was running operations, I always set up a fallback plan in case anything went wrong. The way it looks now, not only is my ex-commander going to be looking for me after not showing up with you two, but so are the Combat Force people we escaped yesterday. To me, this definitely qualifies as something going wrong.”

    A little under two hours later, Nate let the swamp boat glide to a stop at the edge of some trees.
    As the motor died, I heard a strange whooshing rumble on the other side of the trees. The thick green underbrush did not let me see more than 10 feet ahead, so I couldn’t tell what was making the noise.
    â€œHe’ll have parked his trailer as close to the path as possible,” Nate said as he jumped from the boat and tied the rope to a tree. “That’s how he does it when he delivers my supplies. So I’ll make a couple of trips. I’ll bring up our equipment first, then come back for you guys.”
    â€œUm, sure,” I said. We didn’t have much choice except to trust him. The alternative was to try to move by ourselves, which would be next to impossible. For two reasons. One, I was in my wheelchair, which could not roll through swampland. And two, Ashley and I didn’t really know where we were going. Yet.
    Nate jumped back on the swamp boat and rolled each robot forward. He jumped off the boat and reached up for the upper body of the first titanium robot. He tilted it forward across his shoulder.
    â€œAt least these things are light enough to carry. But they’re going to be a pain to travel with,” he said. “I have a feeling they’re the reason I was offered so much money for you. Sure you don’t want to tell me about them?”
    I shook my head. As did Ashley.
    â€œRemember,” I said. Ashley and I had talked with him earlier about our money cards and the unlimited funds. We weren’t in danger that he’d steal them from us, because he didn’t have the identity prints to use them. “When you get us where we need to go, you will get your million.”
    He grinned. “I remember. Of course, you still