“First I fix that arm properly,” she stated firmly and dragged Jak over to sit down on a cardboard box of dog food. “Off with the shirt.”
Removing his heavy jacket, Jak nodded in acceptance, and eased off his bloody shirt, the material sticking to him in several spots. In spite of her earlier work, Mildred was unhappy with the condition of the wound. The teenager had been using the arm, and the stitching had come loose. Fresh blood was seeping into the sandy bandages, and the wound was slightly red from infection. Damnation, and the dirty air of the store was only going to make that worse!
Quickly she checked his upper arms for any striation indicating blood poisoning, but thankfully there was none. Satisfied, she cleaned the wound with sterile water sold for contact lenses, then sewed it shut with actual sutures and washed it clean with pure alcohol. Drinking a bottle of mineral water, the teenager flinched at the contact but never said a word. Packing the wound with greasy antibiotics, Mildred tied off a military style field dressing and hung it over his neck once more. The antibiotics would be incredibly weak, if there was any life in them at all, but it was the best she had.
“Hey, not itch,” Jak said, flexing the arm and bunching the muscles. “Feels good.”
“I used some hydrocortisone,” the physician explained, packing the satchel again.
“Good stuff,” Jak said in frank appreciation. “Got more?”
“Two full tubes.”
Suddenly, a light fixture dropped from the ceiling to hit the terrazzo floor in a loud crash. As the companions turned, another object fell from a hole in the roof and hit with a metallic clang.
“Droid!” Ryan shouted, firing his blaster.
Smashing aside a display rack, the sec hunter droid came charging out of the darkness with spinning buzz saws attached to the ends of both ferruled arms.
Chapter Eight
Holding on to his spear, Alar ran with an easy grace along the crumbling edge of the huge sinkhole, the air thick with the smell of salt. A white fog was moving among the sand dunes, almost too heavy for the winds to shift. His eyes stung from the proximity, his throat constricted, and Alar constantly took a sip from the jinkaja bag hanging at his side.
At a restful distance behind the man was every warrior in the Core, their coverings rattling with knives and sickles. There had been no denying them on this holy vendetta. Kalr had been correct about the ancient ways, and he had been wrong. So terribly wrong. Death was the only way to protect the Core from the hated norms with their sterile minds. Alar had spared them out of the hope that the redheaded female would join the Core, and feed its line with the strength of her new blood. Her mind was great but undisciplined, chaotic, and useless as a weapon. But her children could have been giants, mindkillers of the old legends. It was his desire to improve the Core that had led to this disaster. No, it had been pride, foolish pride that he could control a bestial norm. The ultimate foolishness.
Stretching to his left were the endless buildings of the Source, the homeland where the Core had been born. Or created. Or awoken. The legends were vague on several details, and he knew in his heart that much was fantasy, word illusions to inspire the children of each generation. The truth was in the fact that the Core existed, and ruled the beasts by the power of their superior minds.
When the Core had first arrived, Ryan and the others were already in the heart of the holy land and then fired their longblasters, chilling a young warrior named Ghlat. Now every male and female of the Core had a smear of his blood on the face rags so that the outlanders would see it as they died screaming for mercy.
With a rumbling crash, another small section of the dome broke away from the edge of the cliff, and Alar halted to furiously watch the destruction. Tumbling end over end, the chunk of crystalline material fell onto a building and exploded into dust, shattering that area of the structure.