Orla Wren's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Orla Wren needed one more bounty to buy the homestead, and her scanner had just gone blind. The rogue harvester machine had scorched a line of pines ahead, black burns at chest height on every trunk. She followed the burns for a mile. Then the timber thickened, the trunks crowded close, and the glowing screen on her chest went gray. The trail was gone. So was the coin that would finally buy her a roof of her own. She crouched and pressed a palm to a scorched trunk. Still warm. The machine was close. But her scanner only read heat in open air, and here the packed pines swallowed every signal. She smacked the casing. The screen flickered, then died again. Three years of hunting had bought her this dented outpost shack she slept in and little else. She would not lose this one to a broken tool. A fat groundhog watched her from a rotted stump. A stub of cigar hung from its mouth, smoke curling up. It did not run. It blinked at her, slow, like it had seen fools chase machines before. "Laugh all you want," Orla said. The groundhog turned its head toward a gap in the trees. Orla followed its look. Through the gap stood a tree so vast it made the pines around it look like weeds. Its trunk was wider than her shack. Its branches spread over the whole clearing, and vines wrapped its bark. Above that huge crown, the air was open. Clear sky. No timber to block a signal. Orla understood. Down here the pines killed her scanner. Up there, nothing would. She ran for the giant tree. The bark was thick and knotted, easy to grip. She climbed, boots wedged in the vines, duster snagging on stubs. Her arms burned by the time she reached the lowest great branch. She unclipped the scanner and held it high over her head, into the open air above the canopy. The screen woke. A bright dot pulsed to the north, moving slow. She had the harvester. She marked the heading, clipped the scanner back to her chest, and grinned. Then the dot stopped. A second dot flared beside it. Then a third. Then six more, spreading wide across the screen. Orla's grin fell. She had been tracking one rogue machine. The tall air showed her the truth the timber had hidden. It was not one machine. It was a whole pack, and they were not scattered. They were gathering. She steadied herself on the branch and watched the dots pull toward each other. One bounty had just become nine. Nine machines between her and the coin for her homestead. Below, the groundhog puffed its cigar and waddled off into the dark, as if it wanted no part of what came next.