Collette rested the hot barrel of her blaster against a cheek, savoring the brief sting of pain. “Yeah,” she replied. “Stop using it to defend ourselves from simple muties.”
“Sec Chief Hogan, have the men prepare to leave the base,” Sheffield said abruptly. “It’s impossible to stay here anymore.”
The use of her last name startled the woman, and it took her a moment to react. “Keep the hammer lifted, Baron,” she said soothingly. “We can’t leave. The recce teams haven’t found another dish yet. Soon enough we’ll leave this rad pit and start taking over the East Coast baronies one by one. And then all of them!”
“Fuck it,” the baron puffed, watching the men dispatch the assortment of animals on the ground with grisly thumps. “We have to leave, or the next wave of muties will get us for sure. We can seize some small ville, and stay there until finding another dish. But we leave in the morning. That’s an order.”
“Sir, the slaves are dead,” a lieutenant said hesitantly, “and the men are completely exhausted.”
“I don’t fucking care!” the baron roared, casting away the cig. “Feed them jolt, use a whip, but we leave tomorrow at dawn!”
The officer saluted. “Yes, my lord.”
Sheffield merely grunted in reply, his mind on the closing storm clouds overhead and circling muties above.
IN SPACE, the Kite resumed control over its comps once more and began a diagnostic check. Floating peacefully in orbit, the machine began once more to store the trickle of electricity from its great solar wings in giant accumulators, patiently waiting for its next order.
Chapter Fifteen
“Wait!” Mildred cried, rushing into the control room.
The companions turned as a group, pulling blasters from their clothing and cocking back hammers.
“Something wrong?” Ryan asked bluntly. Squinting, the one-eyed warrior tried to look past the physician to see if she was being chased by anything.
“Wewe’re out of time,” the physician said breathlessly. “I” She paused to swallow. “I decided to check the outside, using the periscope, just to keep track of how it was going.”
“Ash storm still raging, madam?” Doc asked, holstering the LeMat.
Mildred frowned. “God, I wish it was. The valley outside is flat rock. I think there was an acid rain, and it mixed with the ash making a kind of concrete.”
“So?” Dean asked, unconcerned.
“Fireblast,” Ryan growled, thumbing the safety back on the SIG-Sauer. “Sheffield and his troops will be moving soon. Have to.”
“No cover for the ville,” Krysty said in understanding. “It’s in plain sight now.”
“Worse,” J.B. stated grimly. “They’ll soon be running out of food.”
Rubbing a fist into his palm, Ryan nodded. “Silas must have left behind a stockpile of supplies, but even the blues need farmers and hunters for most of their food.”
“Nothing will grow out there,” Mildred said. “And there’s not a leaf of grass for the local animals to eat.”
“Eat each other,” Jak said. “Then the blues.”
“The more muties attack,” Dean said, chewing a lip, “the more they’ll be alert and ready for trouble. It’s going to make it triple hard for us to nightcreep them now.”
“And now we’re racing against the clock,” Doc rumbled pensively. “Sheffield will know all of this better than us, and could move the computers and his troops to another location any hour of the day or night.”
“They move, and we lose our back door into their base!”
“Exactly.”
“Shit!”
“So we hit them tonight,” Ryan ordered. “Trader always used to say, folks were at their weakest just before a move.”
“Sheffield will be low on wall guards because he’ll have to send out scouts,” Krysty agreed. “And a lot of their ammo will be packed away for the journey where they can’t reach it fast.”
Glancing at the mat-trans door, Ryan didn’t speak for a moment as he mentally reviewed their meager collection of armament.
“Okay, this is the last jump,” he stated. “Tonight, we use the tunnel to reach the quarry and hit the blues.”
“But not at midnight,” Dean piped in. ‘”Cause that’s when most folks attack. We wait another hour, and then go in. Never do the expected.”
Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124