The plan was brilliant, simple and brutal. It had worked for years and would have for a lot more.
Then those damn outlanders came riding into town and blew the temple, cracking open some sort of a preDark pip large enough to drive a truck into! Now the entire ville was flooded, the houses and buildings and barracks made of sun dried adobe brick were literally dissolving under the never ending rain from the gushing water column in the center of the ville. Most of the people had already fled into the desert, but the ocean of water was right behind them, pouring like a river through the gaping hole in the ville wall, and spreading out across the Great Salt in every direction. Rivulets of trickling water were becoming shallow creeks, and several nearby depressions had filled into small ponds. Hawk had no idea when the torrent rising from the temple would stop, mebbe never. Mebbe the predark river was connected to some freshwater sea and would continue pouring into the Great Salt until it was an inland ocean again the way the wrinkles said it had once been in ancient times, millions of years before skydark.
Tripping over something unseen below the muddy surface, Hawk almost dropped his bundle and tightened his hold on the heavy bag. The clouded water was filled with loose floating items from the disintegrating ville—straw, wooden spoons, some bits and pieces of predark plastic and a lot of drowned scorpions. The little bodies bobbed about like veggies in a soup, and it broke the man’s heart to see so many of his beloved servants lifeless in the swirling muck.
Then he saw a large black scorpion perched precariously on a dead child. With a shout of delight, he scooped up the tiny desert dweller and it instantly stung him, the barbed tail struck deep into his hand. Hawk grunted at the pain and put the creature on a shoulder for safekeeping. The scorpion dug in its legs and grabbed his shirt collar in self preservation.
Ever since he was a child, Hawk knew he was different from most folks, maybe a mutie of some kind, because he was completely immune to most poisons. He used this ability to make others fear him by always carrying around a lethal black scorpion, the giants of the desert who were five times bigger than their little red cousins. More than once that had saved his life, and it was how he became the sec boss in Rockpoint. People were terrified of a man who got stung a dozen times and it didn’t even faze him. As always, fear meant power, and now that the baron had fled, he had been their first choice to be the new baron.
It was a bitter victory, though, since soon there would be nothing to rule. Not here anyway, but he would find another ville, and with the bundle in his arms and his few remaining sec men, Hawk would rule as baron yet! Then someday he would find former Baron Gaza and chill the man with a knife, twisting it slowly in his guts until he begged for death, then twist some more.
With a groan, another building tilted sideways, and Hawk splashed hurriedly out of the way as the gaudy house fell apart, the crashing wall forming a wave that pushed the sec boss helplessly along until he slammed into the base of the keep. The impact knocked the breath from the man, and a sharp stabbing pain pierced through his shoulder, the bandaged wound in his chest suddenly leaking red blood.
Struggling to stay erect, Hawk lurched away from the keep, still holding on to the heavy bag. Made of predark brick and cinder blocks, not dried mud, the keep was the only structure still standing undamaged. It also used to be the home of the baron and was armed with a 25 mm cannon in perfect working condition. Not even the Trader in his armored war wags wanted to face the Scorpion’s Sting, as Hawk liked to call the gun. It tracked fast and could chew through any mobile armor, treads or tires. Once a war wag was motionless, it could be easily covered with loose tree branches, or anything else that burned, and set on fire. The crew would cook alive if they stayed, or be shot the moment they crawled outside. Either way meant death.