You can train a horse to handle a lot of things, except robots, I thought sadly, my head bouncing off another rock. What had possessed me to try to ride one?

“Get back here, you coward!”

Oh, right. The guys with the arm cannons and the sunny dispositions. Of course, my brilliant escape plan hadn’t accounted for the horse bolting and flipping the saddle, leaving me hanging upside-down and eroding to death. Worse, it was a male horse.

I heard the whine of a pulse rifle and then a shout. This happened a few more times until suddenly I felt someone grab the horse’s reins and pull it to a halt.

A large pair of hover boots stomped into view, attached to a pair of muscular thighs, which in turn were connected to the rest of the shapely Calliope Cervantes.

“Callie,” I said. “Long time no see.”

“Edison,” she said, leaning on her rifle. “Hard-headed as always.”

Then the horse tranquilizer kicked in, and I discovered that the only thing worse than being under a runaway horse is being under a sleeping one.