“Well, you’re inside,” she said as he finished. “So where the hell is Gaza?”
“Aced?” Fat Pete demanded, a note of urgency in his tone.
Pouring more coffee, Ryan shook his head. “The best way I read it, he’s alive and down in the city. The APC was broken. Somebody ripped out some wires. He went down to find replacement parts.”
Blowing air out his nose, Fat Pete glanced at the metal wall separating them from the city below. “Good,” he said gruffly. “Then he’s aced already and we can leave.”
“Not yet,” Kate stated. “Baron Gaza is tougher than he looks and luckier than any ten escaped slaves. Fighting Gaza is like blacksmithing iron—the harder you hit it, the stronger it gets. Harder to chill than the original Trader.”
“Ain’t that the bastard truth,” Ryan growled in agreement.
“So how did you know him?” she asked. “The Trader, I mean.”
“We rode with the Trader for years,” Ryan said, indicating J.B. at the end of the table. “But we got caught in an ambush one day and the convoy was blown to hell. Sort of parted company after that.” Which was all a hell of a big lie, but as close as the man would come to describing the chain of events that led to the discovery of the redoubts.
Just then, the rig shook slightly as the diesel engines kicked on for a moment to charge the batteries.
Kate could see nothing in the big man’s scarred face, but she had a gut feeling he was holding some info back. She had encountered a lot of rumors in her search for the Trader, and the name of Ryan appeared often in the later years, but always as a staunch ally. Then she turned to study the wiry man with glasses and the hat. Yeah, so that had to be J.B. These were the men who stood by the Trader’s side in that bad day in Mocsin and then into the Darks. Sounded like her search was over at last.
“And he’s dead,” Kate said as a question.
Pushing away his empty bowl, J.B. wiped his face on a cloth. “Don’t know for sure,” the Armorer replied honestly. “Last time we saw him, he and a friend were making a stand between a rock and a hard place. There was nothing we could do to help. They could have fought clear, but we just don’t know.”
“Did you know the first Trader?” Dean asked. “The real one?”
“We’re all real traders,” the woman said with a bitter laugh. “Just some more than others, is all.
“And, yes,” she continued. “I met the man just once. When he came riding into my ville blowing lead in every direction. His sec men shouted his name as if it were a war chant. Aced every sec man there. Cleaned the place out.”
Ryan scowled deeply at that. The Trader looting a ville? Bullshit.
“Then he set all of the slaves free,” Kate went on, one hand stealing over to rub the scars on her wrist. “Left us all of the blasters, and even gave us some supplies and books, then went away. Took nothing but water, and we had plenty of that, so it was nothing to us.”
“He did that a lot,” Ryan said, leaning back in the bench. “The man had a bad itch about scratching slavers.”
“Me, too,” Kate said. After her release from the chains, the girl had fought hard to keep from going back into them as a gaudy slut in a brothel. But after a person had been to hell, no amount of whippings and beatings could make him or her go back. Soon she stole a blaster, then a horse and wagon and left on her own.
That was the beginning of her life as a trader. First acting as armed escort for pilgrims wanting to reach new lands, then exchanging goods for services, then goods for better goods. But always on the trail of the Trader to join with the man and work on freeing more slaves. A blaster and three live rounds bought her some info that proved to be all lies, but when she returned, a hot knife got her back the weapon and the truth.