“It was. We sank a butcher’s hook into the samurai, tied it to the saddle of a horse and whipped the beast until it galloped off a ravine. Hell of an explosion.”
“Hell of a fight. How did that happen?” the baron asked, gesturing at his broken blaster.
“I found one of our sec men wearing their black, figured he must be the traitor and decided to convince him what a bad idea it had been to rat us out,” Charles said. With an effort of will, he forced his fingers apart and the weapon dropped to the ground with a clatter. “Take my word on it. The matter is settled.”
“Good,” the baron said, handing him the reloaded M-16 hybrid. “Here. Can’t walk around naked, and I’ve still got my Webley.”
The sec chief nodded his thanks and took the blaster, resting the hot barrel on his shoulder. “Thirty?” he asked, shaking the machine gun as if he could gauge the amount of ammo left by the noise it made.
Wiping the sweat off her face, Susan almost smiled. The sec man never missed a trick. Even a weapon from his own baron was suspect.
“Yes, the clip is fully loadedthirty live rounds.”
“Good.” He surveyed the cornfield around them. “Did we get them all?”
“Yes and no,” the baron replied, a terrible sadness welling within her chest. “We stopped their charge, but a handful escaped to the south.”
“Bad news for somebody else.”
“Not our problem.
“Too true.”
In the distance, wounded men staggered through the battlefield, helping others to their feet and taking blasters from the hands of those who couldn’t use them anymore.
“What about the leader?”
Susan gestured and walked through the litter of corpses until she reached a blackened crater in the ground. The pit was twenty feet deep and over thirty wide. Nothing was at the bottom but some tiny scraps of debris.
“That him?” Charles asked.
She nodded. “Davis in the high tower got him with the sniper rifle just as he was going to launch another rocket from the RPG. He lost his grip, and the weapon discharged straight down at the ground.”
The baron glanced at the smashed barricade that blocked the main road to BullRun ville. The timbers and concrete were scattered like broken toys from the devastating rounds of the predark bazooka. Plus, gouts were missing in the granite block walls of the fortress where the rockets had struck but failed to penetrate. Sophisticated blasters designed to chill predark tanks were pretty useless against the tons of heavy stonework.
“Blew the hell out of our troops, though,” Charles commented as if reading her mind.
“Fucking samurai bastard was clever,” she muttered. “Too damn clever.”
“Not anymore.” The sec chief glanced at the high tower jutting from the ville, partially hidden by the trees. “That’s a hell of a shot.”
“You were smart to risk half of our .50-caliber ammo so he could practice and learn how to use that huge-ass rifle properly.”
“Called a Barrett. She’s a bitch to control, but the best sniper rifle there is. Steyr is good, Weatherby even better, but neither of them have the range and power of a Barrett Light Fifty.”
“How do you know so much about blasters, anyway? Always wanted to ask.”
“Don’t,” he replied wearily. “It’s really not important.”
Just then a soft moan came from somewhere near, and both of them quickly spread out until they located the source. Sprawled on the ground was a legless man, his black robes torn asunder, exposing a bulky leather vest wrapped around his chest. Dark blood was pooled around his waist and trickled from the corner of his mouth.
Charles leveled his rifle and fired a single round into the twitching man, who jerked at the impact and went still.
Susan men hawked and spit on the enemy. “He wrapped their bodies in wet leather and let it dry good and tight, so even if we belly shoot them, their guts don’t fall out and they can still fight. They’re dead, but could still fight.”
“Heard he gave them some drink before battles to make them brave.”
“Drugs to kill the pain of a wound?”