Kate frowned at the choice of words. Shells, not rounds or bullets. Damn, that was real trouble. The armor plating on the war wags was as thick as they could make it without slowing the vehicles and eating excess fuel. They were tough, but not indestructible. A functioning 25 mm cannon could tear open the war wags like a rusty tin can.
“Now, Gaza has the big wag, but Hawk has the twenty-five, is that it?” she demanded. “You sure?”
“Ya got my word,” Red Jack stated.
The Trader had half expected that, and had to accept his oath. If you give your word, it was meaningless unless you also accepted the word of others. At least, to a point.
“Any chance they could join forces?”
“No way!” an old man in the crowd snarled. “Just before leaving, Gaza shot Hawk, and that sorta made Hawk mad.”
“Damn well think so,” Roberto said from the doorway. “Okay, food is coming. Line up by the other wag and you’ll each get a meal and canteen of water.”
“After that,” the first man asked hopefully.
“After that,” Kate repeated, “you leave.”
As the hungry people tramped over to get an MRE pack and hot water from a steaming kettle, Trader kept turning the news over and over in her head. Hawk, Gaza and Ryan in Core country. What a shitstorm this was becoming.
“Imagine Gaza with that 25 mm cannon,” Roberto drawled, walking closer, then standing alongside the woman. “Shitfire, Chief, that would change everything. Mebbe we should leave. There’s nothing holding us here. No treaties, or blood kin at risk.”
“You want to go?” Kate asked.
The big man barked a laugh. “Fuck no. I say we take Gaza down once and forever. End it here and now.”
“Agreed,” Kate said, removing the Stetson to brush back her hair and then replacing the wide brim hat. “Okay, after they’re fed, we’ll head out.”
“Which way? Toward Rockpoint?”
“Straight for the nuke cloud,” she said grimly, watching the sunlight play on the rippling salt water lake. “If they’re anywhere out there, that is where we will find them.”
“The only good point was that Gaza and Hawk would never join forces.”
“Yeah, thank God for that.”
Chapter Eleven
With its antennae quivering in battle frenzy, the sec hunter droid paused in the middle of the littered street, battered and damaged, but nowhere near chilled.
“Head to the left!” Ryan shouted, waving toward the right with his handcannon.
Trying to be as quiet as possible, the companions obeyed, and the machine started going in the other direction, then stopped and spun fast. But by then, the companions had gained valuable yards of safety.
Moving carefully over the corpses on the sidewalk, Ryan noted the actions of the droid in grim satisfaction. Blind, but not deaf, eh? The man thought as much. Okay, he could use that.
Using hand signals, Ryan had Jak throw a knife and smash the windshield of a distant car. As the machine rushed over to the noise, the companions crept through the windowless front of a large liquor store. Ryan would have preferred a paint store, or gas station, but this was the only useful place in sight.
Soon discovering the trick, the sec hunter returned to exactly the same spot it had been standing with machine precision, then started doing a circular recce pattern through the vehicles. As the droid swung past the store, Ryan fired once, hitting it from behind. Immediately, the machine rushed inside with its remaining buzz saw slashing the air.
Firing again, Ryan busted a magnum of champagne on the counter, the popping cork and gush of bubbling wine masking their movements in the store. Then Ryan and J.B. both threw a case of whiskey at the droid. But it heard the clinking bottles coming its way and slashed the box open in midair, shattering the contents and drenching itself completely.
Now the rest started bombarding the machine with bottle after bottle of pungent alcohol. Going behind the counter, Mildred and Dean toppled over a tall display rack to crash a hundred bottles of vodka and rum onto the confused droid. Deafened by the noise, the machine attacked wildly, only managing to shatter more bottles and increase the volume of booze on the floor.