“Even better.” The Trader smiled, then whistled sharply and lifted a hand.
From the doorway of War Wag One, Roberto tossed over a holster containing a revolver. Kate made the catch and handed it to the young mother, whose eyes went wider at each passing moment of comprehension.
“Mine?” she asked in a whisper.
“Everybody goes armed in my convoy,” Kate said firmly. “Now, get your ass to the kitchen and start on dinner.” She left the sentence hanging.
“Matilda,” the young woman said, buckling the gun belt around her waist. “And this Avarm.”
The boy peeked out from behind his mother, then hid again.
“Welcome to the convoy,” Kate said, then gestured at the war wag with her chin. “Get on board. The kitchen is in the rear. Help yourself to anything you want. The cooks always eat first, or else they eat everything. Right?”
Matilda almost smiled. “You’ve done it yourself. I can tell.”
“Yeah, but not for a long time,” Kate agreed. “Roberto, they’re now in your charge. Find them bunks and some shoes for Avarm.”
“Check,” he said, and led the new recruits into the war wag and out of sight down the central corridor.
Noticing the bloodstains on the big rig, Kate pulled out the hand comm and hit the switch. “It’s me,” she said.
“Roger, Chief,” Eric replied with only a faint crackle. “I’m way ahead of you. Got the ears turned up to max. Any more bugs come our way, you’ll know it before they do.”
“Good man,” she said, and tucked the unit away. Now the rest of the crowd was staring at her with expressions of awe. To most of them, a radio was only a legend.
“Could we get some food, too, Trader?” another man in the group asked, shuffling in the dust and salt. “It’s been days since we last ate. Even longer since we had fresh water.”
Glancing at the acres of muddy land, Kate frowned at that, then remembered the water was flowing over salted sand. Even if it started fresh, that stuff wouldn’t be fit for a mutie to drink after ten yards.
“You didn’t say or do shit when he tried to get the drop on the Trader,” the guard announced from the doorway. “Now zip it, and speak when you are spoken to, outlander.”
The words hit harder than the presence of the deadly blaster. Outlanders. They were now wanderers, people without a ville. Outcasts were the natural prey of any coldheart with a blaster.
“Everybody will get a meal,” Kate said, releasing the bolt on her Ingram to ease their apprehensions some. “But nothing is free. I barter for a living.”
“What do you want?” the big one-eyed man asked bluntly.
“Information,” she said, crossing her arms. “That was a good punch. Why did you throw it?”
“He was a stinking priest!”
“Priest?”
“High priest, actually.”
Kate gestured for more. The man was eager to talk, his rage almost palpable, radiating like heat from a foundry.
“The name’s Red Jack,” he said, thumping his chest with a hard fist. “Used to be the bartender at the ville tavern. Ryan and some folks came into town— that much the priest said was true. Anyway, Gaza jacked one of Ryan’s people as a sacrifice to the Scorpion God.”
“And Ryan got him back,” Kate said. It wasn’t a question.
Red Jack grinned, displaying a gold tooth. “Damn straight he did, that’s a bullet in your blaster for sure. Blew the temple to hell, releasing this river of water. Son of a bitch Gaza had an ocean hidden away while telling folks he was squeezing it out by the drop. Made us obey or die, plain and simple. Used to say that blood made the water flow faster.”
Awkwardly, the bartender hid the mutilated hand behind his back. “If you broke his rules, sometimes, the payment was flesh,” he added with a grimace.
“So Gaza is aced?” Kate asked.
“Hell no. He escaped in a wag of some kind. Big thing, eight wheels, loaded with blasters and grens.”
Eight wheels, could be a LAV 25. “Any rockets?”
He frowned. “Nope. But Hawk stole the ville 25 mm, along with a shitload of shells.”