Danny shrugged, his story over.
“So you wanna get even with that scumbag Baron Al?” Dean said.
Danny nodded. “Guess we all do, but yeah.”
“Have to see what we can do, right, you guys?” Dean added, addressing Jak and Doc.
“Fight is fight,” Jak said noncommittally.
They were rounding the base of the mountain, coming around to the direction in which they had first faced, and the direction in which their objective lay. Now the mission was about to begin.
Lonnie turned to them as they reached the last point of shadow, with only the blazing heat of the day ahead. “Cut the crap,” he said simply. “We need to preserve our strength and breath for this.”
“Yeah, and that means you especially,” Mik added, giving Danny a beady-eyed stare. “You talk far too much, kid.”
BACK IN THE REDOUBT, Correll was dividing the remaining people into groups to take turns at training, target practice and maintenance of equipment.
One thing that all the companions had noted in their brief time at the redoubt was that the only Hellbenders to carry blasters had been those that had formed the defensive party that had met them a few levels down. The rest of the redoubt dwellers were unarmed.
Ryan raised the matter with Correll, who told him, “We don’t have to among ourselves. Fate has brought us all together for a reason, and when you’re united in that purpose, then there’s no need for blasters. Sure, the sec that met you have their blasters still—it’s a precaution till we get to know you, especially as we didn’t ask for yours.”
“Why not?” Ryan asked.
To which Correll shrugged. “You wanted to keep blasting, you wouldn’t have agreed to a truce down on the lower level. It’s fate.”
The one-eyed man was, in truth, a little baffled by the reasoning of the Hellbenders’ leader, but decided the best course of action was to say nothing. When both parties could benefit from the action on Charity and Summerfield, it didn’t make sense to rock the boat.
Krysty and Mildred were among the first to be sent to target practice, while Ryan was deputed to be on the first training party, honing reflexes and fitness in the gym section of the old redoubt. J.B., as he’d suspected, was sent along to assist Jenny at the armory, making sure that blasters were oiled, cleaned and supplied with spare clips and belts of ammo for those who would be assigned them, and that all grens were primed and ready for action.
But as soon as he arrived at the armory, he knew he was going to have problems. The Native American woman had just dispatched the recce party, and so was still in the quartermaster’s stores when the Armorer arrived at the empty room. He punched the sec code into the panel, and as the door swept back with a low hiss, he echoed this with a low whistle at the sight within.
Stepping into the dim room, he turned to the panel on the wall beside the interior sec door switch, and lighted the room.
Like all redoubt armories, it was large warehouse of a room, with a low ceiling but a deep set, going back some twenty-five feet into the rock. The walls were lined with racks on which were boxes of rifles, pistols and ammunition, boxes of grens and plas-ex, and racks in which rifles and machine pistols with extensions were stored upright.
There were Uzis, Heckler & Kochs, Steyrs, Smith & Wesson M-4000s, and a couple of antitank rifles and bazookas that were stored upright to one side of the armory.
J.B. stepped farther into the room and examined the markings on the sides of the boxes. There was also a variety of Smith & Wesson and Glock handblasters, as well as the relevant ammo. The plas-ex was of the expected variety, and the grens came in both shrapnel, stun and gas varieties, giving the attack party an extensive choice of weaponry from which to arm themselves.
J.B. had very rarely seen a redoubt—even the one that had been inhabited by the descendants of the original soldiery where they had encountered the Rat King comp— in which the armory had been so beautifully maintained. The air conditioning system, which in most redoubts had an automatic dust removal filter, had obviously been kept in working order, and whoever had been put in charge of the armory here had been true to their job in keeping the weapons on view oiled and maintained. He opened a couple of the cases at random, and under the oilskin cloths that protected the different blasters he found that time had been put into keeping the weapons in combat-ready condition.