Mebbe they want to run us dry and then take us out to use for the disease, he thought. He shuddered, all the more determined to beat the Illuminated Ones.
He reached the last of the bars and gaudies. The task accomplished, he returned to his post next to the Gate queen.
“Okay?” she asked.
“All set.” He checked his wrist chron. “We go in three and a half minutes…”
Chapter Seven
“Now,” Ryan Cawdor said under his breath as his wrist chron clocked up the fifth minute. Along the main drag, the firing from the bars and gaudies ceased, a sudden silence reigning along the road.
He counted under his breath, giving his wrist chron the barest of glances as he watched the two Illuminated wags sit in the middle of the street, dark and oppressive in their silence. By his reckoning, the longer the ceasefire continued, the more jumpy the fighters inside the wags would be getting—and the more likely to make mistakes. From past experience, he knew that the Illuminated Ones weren’t fighters, and could imagine that the silence was playing heavily on their nerves inside the wags. They would have no idea what was gong on.
He kept counting…
As soon as firing had ceased, the Gate warriors with laser blasters had relinquished some to the companions. Of the remainder, some had detached themselves from the bars and gaudies and headed out the back way, moving swiftly on each side of the drag toward its northern end. As they did this, the companions also moved out—Mildred and Doc moving slower because of their symptoms, Jak’s speed as yet unimpaired— and headed toward the alleyways at the southern end of the drag. Ryan was the exception; he planned to stay until the last, launch the attack and then retreat to join his people.
Those Gate warriors who still had laser blasters positioned themselves so that they could get a clear shot at the wags from the windows and doors of the gaudies, the barrels of the laser blasters—with their distinctive rounded snouts housing the laser jewel— being held back until time was up.
At each end of the main drag, looking across the roadway from the facing alleys, the groups of Gate warriors and companions faced each other, gesturing their recognition and checking their counting off of the time until the first offensive.
Ryan kept counting through clenched teeth, his attention fixed on the two wags in front of him. He didn’t look across at Gloria, but knew that the Gate queen would be likewise absorbed in her task.
The count was over. Ryan reached the limit he had set, gave his wrist chron the briefest of checks and nodded almost imperceptibly to himself. There had been more than enough time for the two offensive groups to reach each end of the main drag, and more than enough time for the Illuminated Ones cocooned inside the wags to lose whatever nerve they may have.
Ryan raised his Steyr and took aim at the underside of one of the wags. The laser blaster he had been given was still on his shoulder. Time enough for that when he had raced to the end of the drag. The Steyr was to be the signal shot.
He gently pressured his index finger, depressing the trigger until the rifle kicked back and unloaded the first shell of the attack. In the silence of the late afternoon, with the tension that hung heavy in the air, the shot seemed to echo around the room, around the drag, around the ville. There was a whine as it ricocheted off the metal protectors that covered the tires of the Illuminated wag, but this was lost in the melee of sound that suddenly engulfed the bar in which he stood. Not just that bar. From every bar and gaudy along the drag came a volley of conventional blaster shots and the hum and heat of laser blasterfire.
Ryan drew back from the window and headed toward the rear of the bar, running to join his companions for what he hoped to be the next stage of the offensive. Gloria turned briefly to him as he moved.