As fast as and as agile as Jak was, it wasn’t the kind of game he could keep on winning.
Clad in the stolen battlesuit, Ryan moved away from the interior wall, waving his arms at the kneeling trooper. He had no EM protection because the suit was out of fuel. If the guy saw through the disguise, he was a goner.
The trooper stopping firing.
Ryan grabbed Jak by the shoulder as he rushed past, using the lighter man’s speed to twist him around and down. As the trooper trotted toward him, Ryan absorbed a flurry of punches and kicks from the albino. The battlesuit soaked up most, but not all of the impacts. Especially the kicks. They made Ryan feel like a pebble being shaken inside a tin can.
“It’s me, dammit!” he growled, pinning Jak to the floor with a knee in the small of his back. The effort of the struggle was making him puff, which in turn was making his visor fog up. He needed more airholes.
“You’re not online,” the trooper said as he stepped up to Ryan. His amplified voice boomed in the tunnel. “Something’s wrong with your battlesuit. A malfunction in the com link.”
Ryan pointed a gauntleted thumb at his crotch.
“You’re out of fuel?” the trooper said.
Ryan didn’t have to gesture an affirmative. J.B., Dean, Doc and Mildred rushed around the fork of the tunnel and gang-tackled the trooper, knocking him off his feet and crashing him helmet first against the wall. Before he could recover, they had hold of his arms and legs and were dragging him to the floor. Once he was facedown, they sat on him to make sure he stayed that way.
The draining of the battlesuit’s fuel went even more smoothly the second time. J.B. jammed the bone blade under the armor plate and gave a savage twist. As the fuel gushed out onto the floor, Mildred unlocked the helmet and she and Doc screwed it off.
Fresh air and the reek of nuke fuel brought the trooper to his senses. He started to struggle. His cries for help echoed down the shaft.
Such cries were routine.
And they were never answered by guards.
Taking a measured swing, Doc rapped the man on the side of the head with the flat end of his ax.
The yelling and the struggling stopped.
“Come on, let’s get this guy out of his armor,” Ryan said, helping Jak to his feet.
They dragged the limp trooper across the floor, out of the puddle of nuke fuel, and began unbuckling his battlesuit.
“Looks like a pretty good fit for J.B.,” Mildred said, holding up the front torso section.
Other slaves passing by stopped to stare at what was going on. Some of them were smiling, while others looked concerned. And with reason. There could always be mass reprisals for acts of rebellion.
The companions again used strips of the trooper’s underclothes to tie and gag him.
“He’s got the rash, too,” Dean said. “It’s all over his legs.”
“Nasty looking,” J.B. commented.
“See all the little pustules,” Mildred said. “He’s got a staph infection working.”
“Perhaps the hygiene of our otherworld opponents leaves something to be desired,” Doc said.
“The staph is secondary,” Mildred stated. “Opportunistic. It moved into the lesions that were already there.”
“What are you going to do with him?” said one of the slaves standing around. He pointed at the trooper, who was once again wide awake, but now unable to move, and naked.
“Why?” Ryan said.
The slave glanced at the gaunt, grim-faced men beside him. “We’ve got something we want to show that guard. Mebbe we could borrow him for a little while?”
The trooper looked plenty scared. His mouth moved behind the gag, but no words came out.
“You can take him,” Ryan told the men, “but whatever you do, don’t let him get loose.”
“Nah, we won’t even untie him,” the slave said. “You don’t have to worry about that.”
A couple of the slaves pushed over an empty cart and then four of them lifted the bound trooper inside. A crowd of eight or nine then shoved the sledge toward the gloom at the end of the tunnel. An equal number of slaves stayed behind, unwilling to participate in whatever demonstration the others had in mind.