Sliding through the fence, the companions reached the front door and Krysty listened carefully. She held up an open hand with splayed fingers, then closed it into a fist, next raising one, two, three fingers. Ryan gestured back and forth, and she replied by pointing two fingers to the left, one to the right.
Nodding in understanding, Ryan stepped closer to the door and eased out the half-clip in the SIG-Sauer, gently sliding in a fully loaded magazine.
DROPPING HIS SPOON into the bowl of stew, a blue shirt grabbed his blaster and snapped the bolt.
“What’s wrong?” asked his comrade, taking the corncob pipe from his mouth and exhaling a long stream of smoke at the ceiling.
“Heard a noise,” the corporal replied, rising from the table and heading for the door.
Sitting on a low stool, a private glanced up from stropping a knife. “Wasn’t me,” he said. “Mebbe it’s Collette finally coming back.”
“Bad for her if it is,” the sergeant puffed, crossing his arms. “Baron wants her dead now. Guess her special pussy ain’t so special as we heard, boys.”
“Fist, mouth, cunt, ass, it’s all the same to me,” the corporal snorted, then paused near the door, his hand almost touching the handle.
There was an odd smell in the air, and he sniffed. Grease. Smelled like axle grease from the wheelbear-ings of a wag. The private was spitting on the whetstone sharpening his new knife again. The sergeant smoked his pipe contentedly in the corner. Nobody here had been working on a wag today, so where was the smell coming from? Then he vaguely recalled Collette saying how axle grease made for a good stain if you were doing a nightcreep.
“Oh fuck!” he cried, and dived for the locking bolt. The door burst open, driving him backward. A big man stepped into the room, a sleek blaster at his side blowing silent flame.
The private grew a third black eye in his forehead and tumbled off the stool, the knife and whetstone flying into the air. The sergeant cursed and stood, trying to draw his own handcannon, when his nose disappeared and an arrow thumped into his chest. The grizzled veteran slammed against the wall, and still managed to draw his weapon when the big man fired his fancy blaster three more times, the impacts slapping the sergeant around and around until he collapsed in the corner on top of a bloodstained chair covered with chains.
Scrambling under the table for his blaster, the corporal grabbed the weapon and rolled, attempting to fire from a prone position. The longblaster spoke once, the slug ricocheting off the wall near a stocky woman who was entering the armory holding a crossbow. Shitfire, his weapon was still set on single fire! Desperately, he thumbed the selector to full-auto and he saw the woman cast the crossbow aside and draw a revolver with amazing speed. He swung the long-blaster toward her as she did the same. He saw her weapon spit fire first, then everything went black.
Suddenly, the interior door slammed open, and Ryan stitched the sec man standing there with a Ka-lashnikov. The body flew back into the room, and the companions followed.
Sheffield was at a gun rack with six other sec men, hastily loading blasters. Ryan and Krysty hosed the group with streams of bullets, bodies falling in every direction.
Only Sheffield still moved on the floor, clawing for the blaster at his hip. Ryan fired again, the floorboards splintering between his hand and the revolver.
“Thought you’d be wearing a bulletproof vest,” Ryan said, hauling the man up by his shut.
“Where’s the whitehair?” Krysty demanded, nudging the baron with her longblaster.
“Silas is dead,” Sheffield spit, twisting to get away. “One-eye here chilled him days ago.”
Ryan slapped the man across the face with his pistol, and teeth landed on the floor. “We got no time for horseshit,” he snapped, breathing into the baron’s face. “So speak fast or die. Where’s the albino being held captive? Long hair, lots of knives.”
“If you don’t know,” J.B. stated, walking into the room, cradling his Samp;W shotgun, “then you aren’t any good to us.”