James Axler – Gemini Rising

“Don’t know. But makes sense.”

“Never heard of such tactics before.”

“Brilliant, he was fucking brilliant”

“Thankfully, now he’s fucking dead.”

“Agreed, my lady. Any ideas of the damages?”

She gestured vaguely. “We lost over half our sec men, and almost all of our ammo. We couldn’t stop an attack by rabbits today. Take us at least a week to make more black powder for the cannons.”

Susan looked at the line of trees edging the field. Even though she knew exactly where the muzzle loaders were hidden, the baron still couldn’t easily detect the cannons. Each primitive weapon had been painstakingly salvaged from city parks, VFW halls and museums across the whole Shen valley. The iron barrels of the ancient weapons had been blocked with soft lead, which proved very easy to remove once the barrels were heated over a forge. Then the lead that poured out made cannon balls, and a high-school textbook had revealed the secret of how to make black powder from kitchen matches and their own night soil.

“We lost two cannons,” Susan said, squinting at the hole in the forest. Bloody splinters were scattered for yards around a flattened area of charred soil. “The crew overpacked the blasters, or the barrels were too old. Whatever. But the explosion killed more of us than the samurai ever did.”

“Just bad luck,” Charles stated grimly. “It was the cannons that stopped their charge. Their leader never even got close to the fortress. Thank God.”

“Yes, thank God.”

Another shot rang out in the field as the ville sec men found another Oriental warrior not quite dead enough to suit them.

The two started walking slowly toward the fortress. “Have the whitehairs and children sweep the field for any of our men still alive, and then establish a collection point where all of the recovered weapons and ammo can be gathered and inspected. We want to make sure each sec man has a working blaster and the correct rounds.”

“What about the swords?” he asked, stepping over the tangled corpses of a samurai and a sec man who had died chilling each other. “There’s going to be a lot of those.”

“I don’t know, Chatty. Pile them somewhere and we’ll decide later if we want to learn sword fighting or grind them down into knives.”

Blaster in hand, he gave a salute. “By your command, Baron.”

She returned the gesture. “You know,” she spoke in unaccustomed honesty, sheer exhaustion forcing the words out, “I really didn’t think we would survive today, much less win.”

“We had to be victorious,” Charles said, resting on the upturned M-16 as if it were a crutch. “I was in charge of ville defense, and I never lose. Didn’t I ever mention that?”

“Oh, shut up, asshole,” Susan said, and was astonished to find there was a chuckle in the words.

He grinned. “By your command, Baron.”

Suddenly, a man sprinted toward them from the fortress. The baron and her sec chief stood patiently, waiting for him to reach them. If he had the energy to run, there was no need for them to move.

“Your lordship.” The man snapped a crisp salute.

The baron returned it wearily. “What is the matter, Corporal?”

“Another attack?”

Susan barked a laugh. “And who would attack this time? There’s nobody left.”

“Front Royal, Baron,” the corporal replied. “We just got a report from some of the hill folk we trade with that Front Royal has over a hundred new sec men and crates of blasters. Autofiring blasters. Something called an AK-47.”

“AK-47,” Charles confirmed. “Black dust, crates of blasters, you say?”

“That’s the report, yes, sir.”

“What the hell is Cawdor doing?” the muscular blond woman mused. “Could Front Royal be preparing to attack?”

The sec chief frowned deeply. “A hundred new troops, plus those packs of wild dogs they usewho needs that kind of defense? No, he’s planning something, but what?”

“Chatty, we can’t hold off another attack,” the baron stated in bitter truth. “Front Royal could take us in a day. Mebbe we should cut a deal with them, buy us some time.”

“Or,” the sec chief suggested, “we could use that special person again.”