Stepping over the twitching bodies, Ryan checked the room they had come from and saw it was an armory. Big wooden barrels of black powder filled the room, wall racks held dozens of flintlock rifles and a barrel was jammed full of Navy cutlasses. The cannies had to have eaten a lot of pirates. Good for them. Ryan smiled as he noticed a couple of Firebirds on display, the lacquered tubes resting on wooden pegs jutting from the wall for fast access. He debated taking one, but the risk of their being booby-trapped was far too great. It’s what he would have done, and he always had to consider what the enemy could do, not what they might. However, the flintlocks should be safe.
“Everybody grab a blaster and ammo,” Ryan said, taking a pistol and tucking it into his belt. There was a post covered with short pegs, plump ammo pouches hanging conveniently near the door. Whoever the cannie quartermaster was, he knew his stuff.
“Flintlocks?” Jak said, arching an eyebrow.
“Take spares for Doc, and the others also,” he added.
“Camou. Gotcha,” J.B. said, his face brightening in understanding, and he shoved several hand-cannons into his munitions bag. Next he added a coiled length of dried grass as a fuse. Then he spied the S&W M-4000 shotgun on a table. Reclaiming his alley-sweeper, J.B. checked the weapon to make sure it was okay, then draped it over a shoulder. Back in business.
The sec men eagerly armed themselves, passing over a few of the flintlocks to take others. Mitchum tested the black powder by licking some from a palm, and nodded in approval. Trained hands loaded their weapons in amazing speed, and the group exited the armory with longblasters in their hands, and two handcannons tucked into every belt.
J.B. was the last to leave the room, and he spent a few moments breaking the lock on the door. Then he jammed a copper knife blade into the jamb and snapped off the handle.
“Wouldn’t open that easily,” he smirked, tossing the handle away.
“How long?” Ryan asked.
“Roughly minutes. It’s not my fuse, so I can’t know for sure. Might be eight, could be twelve.”
“Fair enough. Everybody, double time!” Ryan shouted, and took off at a run.
The group hustled through the zigzagging corridors, encountering no resistance until reaching the last intersection. Two cannies were dragging away the pile of dead dogs on a bamboo litter. The men dropped the animals and hastily ran away at the sight of the heavily armed party. Ruthlessly, the prisoners gunned down the cannies from behind, and spit on the corpses as they hurried by.
Reaching the collapsed section of the warren, Ryan paused at the right turn and signaled it was all-clear to Doc.
“Lady Ann, we meet once more.” The scholar smiled, then looked over the sec men. They were as rough and tumble a group as he had ever seen. “Your entourage, I assume?”
“Six minutes and counting,” J.B. said brusquely, patting his munitions bag.
Doc said nothing, but his eyes went wide, and he started up the mound of loose dirt. Reaching the surface, Doc unlimbered the M-16 and stood guard while the others clambered out of the blast crater. Exiting the tunnel, the group quickly got away from the depression in the ground as the rim was soft and crumbled easily under their boots and bare feet.
“This way!” Mitchum cried, waving a blaster and heading for the water pool.
“Forget it! Follow me,” Ryan countered, and started up the inclined ramp at a full sprint.
In ragged formation, the group charged past the pungi-stick wall, and braked to a halt upon reaching level ground. Masked by moon shadows, Krysty and Mildred were waiting there with blasters drawn. Dean was nowhere in sight.
“Hello, Adam,” Mildred said, her blaster out, but not quite pointing in the direction of the sec men.
“Hey, Claire,” Ryan responded, and the women relaxed.
Mitchum arched an eyebrow at the exchange and said nothing. But it was patently obvious they were exchanging some kind of a code. Who exactly were these outlanders?
“Nice to see you again, lover,” Krysty said, resting the barrel of the Steyr on a shapely shoulder.