“And that it’s going to be heavily protected and a bastard to get into,” J.B. said softly.
“Right. Hard fuckers,” Jak murmured. “We need be triple red or chilled.”
Ryan nodded. “True enough. But we need to know as much about their history as possible. Knowing where they come from and how they think will give us an advantage. If we can get into their heads just a little bit, it’ll be an advantage when we’re on their territory. Otherwise we’re totally blind, and that can only be a bad thing.”
“I agree with you there, lover,” Krysty said. Her hair, although flowing and not tight to her head, still twitched a little as she spoke. “This isn’t going to be easy. I don’t like those laser blasters. They’re not easy to fight against. We’ve been lucky so far because of numbers. But we don’t know how many of them there are down there.”
“You’re right,” J.B. agreed. “The laser blasters could be good weapons if they were in the right hands. So far the people who’ve been using them haven’t been good fighters. That’s been our luck. That could change. Besides, if they have those, what the hell else do they have waiting for us?”
“It will be interesting to find out,” Doc commented wryly. “At least between us we should have an idea of how the settlement is laid out, seeing as it seems to be a replica of the Pentagon.”
“Have we?” Mildred said. “Shit, Doc, I lived through all that, but I don’t think I could tell you what it looked like apart from the fact it had five sides!”
“Good job I try to read those old papers we find once in a while,” Ryan said. “‘Cause I’ve read a few things about it.”
“It’s not the settlement that worries me,” J.B. muttered darkly, “or their weaponry. It’s ours. Too many small-caliber handblasters, and the laser blasters we’ve got. Margia’s too keen to use them.”
J.B.’S WORDS WERE prophetic, as the blond armorer produced one of the captured blasters next morning, as camp was being drawn. She interrupted a brief target practice to test the weapon.
Examining the blaster from all angles, the blonde noticed that J.B. had come to watch.
“You know how to work these?” she asked him.
J.B. shook his head. “The only ones we ever found were broke. And hell, watching the way the Illuminated Ones fucked up with them, I’d guess that they’re not that great.”
Margia smiled, and for a second resembled her sister as one side of her mouth rose in the lopsided grin that the sour armorer was less inclined to favor than her warrior sister. “Mebbe you just couldn’t work it out anyway, sweetie,” she said. “Just mebbe I can do it better. Wouldn’t that be something, if I could outdo the great J.B. Dix?”
He refused to rise to the bait, even though he was aware that all the Gate warriors gathered there were watching for his reaction. “Mebbe you can make it fire out here. Does that mean it’s reliable in a firefight?”
“We’ll have to see,” Margia said. “Okay, let’s do it.”
She stepped up to the line drawn for the target shoot and raised the rifle to her shoulder. Fumbling a switch on the side, she squeezed the trigger and released a recoilless blast of light that scorched through the target, raising a gasp of interest from the assembled warriors.
“Pretty fucking good, even though I do say so myself.” She smiled at J.B. “Guess mebbe I can just do this shit better than you, honey.”
Although the slur annoyed the Armorer, he was more concerned by the fact that Margia would now be certain to use the laser blasters in combat when he was sure that they were unreliable. It was the one thing he dreaded.
J.B. turned and walked away without a word, aware that there was nothing he could do. If he went to Gloria, then it would mean a possible rift at a crucial time. And even if he told Ryan, then there was nothing much that the one-eyed warrior could do.
It was an additional problem that they didn’t need as they entered such dangerous territory.