I staggered back to the gate and picked up the handwritten note.
My back ached.
I was getting too old for this crap.
I looked around in all directions, slowly surveying the sparsely wooded landscape. Usually, the kind of whacko who did this stuff would want to hang out somewhere close to observe their handiwork in action.
I reached into my pocket and grabbed my sweeper, flipped it on and set it to search to the horizon in all directions.
Nothing.
If anyone was watching, they were doing so remotely.
I decided against taking my stroll for now. Locked the gate, got back in the truck, and popped my earbud back in.
“Autolink Black,” I said. After a few moments, the comm system connected us. Dominicus answered. “Yeah, Black, I need a favor. No, I don’t want you to help me dig the foundations. I have a piece of vellym I need analyzed.”
“What, you can’t answer my three calls, but when you need something from me, you -”
“Yeah, I come running. Someone hit me with a lifter mine, right inside my own property. And they left a note.”
“You should’ve listened to me. I told you, there’s a bunch of nice ground in Dome Two and Dome Three. Plenty of rugged property to settle down on for your golden years. But no, you had to –”
“Thanks. I’ll be there in a couple hours.”
I terminated the call and veered off the back road that led to my place and got back onto the main highway, setting the autodrive for Buzzville.
I pulled out the note and read it a couple more times. It was short, but it still contained clues. Whoever wrote it knew that I had bought that land. They knew I planned to retire there. And they knew I’d be there to get the message today. They knew how to get past the security panel at the gate. And they also had some reason for wanting to run me off. On top of all that, they seemed pretty sure of themselves.
Which meant they really wanted something on my land.
But they didn’t know who they were dealing with, since a stupid note and a lifter mine were just enough to annoy me, not make me run away scared like some Shepherd City bureaucrat.
Whatever they wanted had to be worth something, so I’d have to look into that.
Somehow, I knew this was just the beginning of a bad week.