“Look out!” he cried as a thick fluid, lemon-yellow in the light of the kliegs, gushed out and splattered onto the floor.
“Kill the fucker!” shouted a passing slave. “Gut him!”
Others stopped their carts. They, too, began to shout encouragement.
This was something worth watching.
J.B. reached down and pushed the helmet’s release button, then he screwed the helmet off the battlesuit’s collar. Then he knee-dropped on the back of the guy’s head, driving his face into the bottom of the cart. After two knee-drops, the trooper went dead limp.
“He’s out,” J.B. said.
“Get him onto the floor,” Ryan said.
When they had the guard on his back, they started unbuckling the battlesuit. They removed the torso plates first, then arms and gauntlets, and finally the crotch panel and leg attachments. Under his armor, the trooper wore gray underwear with an Omnico logo. The companions tore it off, then tore up his underwear.
Mildred pointed out the angry rash across trooper’s lower back and down his right leg.
“Try not to touch it,” she warned the others. “Could be some land of off-world scuzzies.”
After they tied and gagged him with strips of his own clothing, they dumped the trooper back in the cart and shoved it to the side.
The spectator slaves moved in around the sledge. They took turns leaning in and punching or spitting on the defenseless guard.
“That rash could be contagious,” Mildred told Ryan as he reached for the armor. “Could be something living in that battlesuit.”
“The least of my worries,” he said, buckling on the torso plates.
Ryan had trouble getting on the gauntlets and boots because of his manacles. It was a very tight fit, especially over his ankles, but with help he managed it. He was careful with the crotch panel, which still dripped a feeble trickle of fuel.
“How does it feel?” J.B. asked him when he stood.
“It’s a lot lighter than it looks.” He rotated his arms. “Flexes good, too. I got a full range of movement.”
Doc handed Ryan the helmet, and the Armorer helped him screw it on.
“Can you see out of it?” Mildred said.
“Kind of,” Ryan said. She couldn’t hear him. Without power, the voice amplification didn’t work. Neither did the oxygen pump. There was no air in the suit. And the visor began to fog over from his breath. He unscrewed the helmet at once.
“The suit’s ventilation system is shut down,” he said. “Lend me your ax, J.B.”
Ryan laid the helmet on the floor and with powerful blows of the ax, punched a series of ragged holes in its back, just above the join with the battlesuit collar.
“There,” he said. “That should do it.”
“A no-tech solution,” J.B. stated with a grin. “Pure Deathlands.”
Ryan picked up the trooper’s laser rifle. Although it looked bulky, it was light and quick in his hands. The bullpup design came up fast to his shoulder, and its balance was nose forward and sweet. Gabhart and his crew had shown them how to read the charge-indicator LCD. The indicator read full. Enough power to saw through a hundred yards of igneous rock.
“Where did the cart with the trooper go?” Mildred said.
The sledge wasn’t where they’d left it.
It was nowhere to be seen.
“The other slaves must’ve taken him into the mine when we had our backs turned,” J.B. said. “By now he’s dead meat.”
There was nothing for the companions to do but wait around the fork for the mutie albino to show up.
“I wonder what Jak did to get the other trooper to chase after him?” Dean said.
“Whatever it was, it sure worked,” Ryan said.
“Must’ve pissed him off, large,” J.B. agreed.
“There’s no denying the fact,” Doc concluded, “our young Jak is a most enterprising fellow.”
Chapter Eighteen
As Jak walked down the tunnel, he didn’t have a clue what he was going to do. He didn’t have a clue until he saw the ore sledge coming his way, up the right fork, on other side of the klieg lights.
It was full of big blocks of glass.
Nonmetallic glass.
Something twinkled in the blood-red seas of his eyes. A smile twisted his pale lips and he laughed out loud. Why hadn’t he thought of that before? Why hadn’t any of the others thought of it?