Ryan saw them running down the row of dead wags. They didn’t slow; they didn’t turn. The air was split by a loud boom. Backlit by blooming orange fire, the four small figures disintegrated along with a row of ruined vehicles.
With hot shrapnel pelting down all around them, Ryan turned to Nara and snarled, “Give me a fucking blaster.”
The blonde put her free hand on her backup side arm, but didn’t pull it from her coat pocket. It was a defensive move on her part, to keep him from grabbing it for himself. To drive home her point, she leveled the longblaster’s muzzle at his chest.
“Put your weapons down,” a deep voice growled from behind them. “We’ve got you surrounded.”
Ryan dropped down and put his cheek to the pavement, looking under the chassis of the wag they were hiding behind. Past the wheels, on the other side, he could see black boots and black-armored shin guards. “You want to get your ass cooked?” the deep voice said. “I’m not going to ask you again.” Nara carefully set her weapons on the concrete. “If you’d let me,” Ryan told her angrily, “I would have made a fight of it.”
“Then I guess we’re lucky you’re not the one in charge.”
“Stand up,” came the command, “hands in the air.”
Ryan did so; Nara rose beside him. Leaning on the hoods and over the roofs of vehicles, black ski-masked figures ringed them with blasters. Ryan counted eleven. Though they wore hoods and body armor, he could tell that two of them were women by the size of their bare arms and their general builds. The armor was battle-scarred, mismatched and in some cases incomplete.
Almost at once, a long metal-armored four-by-four vehicle screeched to a stop in front of them. Like the assortment of body armor, it looked as if it had seen plenty of action. It had a wedge of thick, blast-proof glass for a front windshield and rectangular side windows. Two of the hooded men jumped forward and jerked the side doors open.
“Okay, Jurascik. You and Mr. Wonderful get into the van.”
The ski-masked speaker was barrel-chested, with huge biceps and forearms. Stun, frag and flash grens dangled from the straps of his combat harness. Along with the grens was a wicked-looking, ten-inch killing dagger, which hung in a ballistic nylon clip sheath just below his shoulder, with the rubber-clad handle pointing down. He carried a beat-up tribarrel, which he used to underscore his request. “In!” he said.
Ryan got a good look at the dark eyes behind the mask. No fear there. No anger, either. They were all business.
A mercenary.
After he and Nara piled into the van, they were immediately shoved toward the middle bench seat. He slid in first, all the way to the wall, which had a window, but no door. The only doors were at the side and rear of the wag. Three of the masked mercies climbed into the seat behind them; the rest took the seats in front. The wag was moving before the side doors slammed shut.
“How come he knows your name?” Ryan asked Nara as the van rapidly picked up speed. She didn’t respond.
“And what’s with this Mr. Wonderful crap?” Something hard poked him in the back of the head. He half turned. It was the rainbow-discolored flash-hider of a triblaster. “Look up there,” said the mercie sitting directly behind him. The hooded man used the weapon to point out a series of widely spaced, eight-by-eight-foot video screens suspended from the concrete ceiling and hanging down over the traffic lanes. Most of the screens were dark and out of service; a few were lit up in full color.
“Eat FIVES, they’re Beefie-tastic!” one of them proclaimed. Under the flashing words, a man and woman, naked to the waist, ecstatically munched sandwiches in a love-tangled bed.
“We call them tell-yous,” the mercie behind him said “Because they tell you what to want.”
As the van zoomed past, the laughing couple on the screen pulled the sheet over their heads. The next billboard said All Good News, All the Time. Your 24-hour Joy Source. Channel 128.