She was unwilling to call out for help, for fear of drawing an attack her way. Burdened as she was, she knew she’d make an easy target.
Mildred had carried Krysty across a quarter-mile of ruination when the redhead let out a soft groan. When she continued to complain on every step, it was clear she was coming around. Mildred carefully set her down behind a toppled light post.
“Come on, Krysty, snap out of it,” she said, gripping her shoulders in both hands and giving them a shake. “Open your eyes.”
When the woman did so, Mildred examined her pupils again and found them nearly back to normal.
“Releasing a big burst of power like that,” Krysty said, “made me weak as a kitten.”
“It nearly did more to you than that,” Mildred replied. “So it was you who walloped me like that? I thought I’d been run down by a truck.”
“The lane was mined. Didn’t see it until it was too late. I just reacted, I guess. Sorry, Mildred.”
“You don’t have to apologize for saving my life. We’ve got to move, now. Can you walk by yourself?”
“I think so.”
THEY CAUGHT UP with the others behind a heap of boulders at the foot of the ridge, near the spot where they’d made their descent.
“Until Dean looked back and saw you coming,” J.B. told them, “we thought you were dead.” He held a bloody handkerchief to the side of his face.
“Nearly were,” Krysty said.
“We never even got a shot off,” Mildred confessed. “Did you do any damage?”
“Don’t know for sure,” J.B. answered, as he let Mildred take a look at the slash high on his cheek. “We didn’t stick around to tally up the score. But I think we must’ve hit something vital or they’d already be on top of us.”
“Either that,” Doc said, as he completed the laborious reloading of his revolver’s cylinder, “or our best efforts made no impression on them at all, and they simply cannot be bothered hunting down such insignificant annoyances.”
“Well, one thing’s for sure. We can’t tell beans from down here,” J.B. said. “Got to climb back up the ridge if we want to recce. Better hurry up before it gets too dark to see.”
By the time they regained the summit and were back in position overlooking the main street, the visibility had dropped in a big way. A world of vibrant color had been reduced to harsh black and shades of gray. By the light of the stars and a three-quarter moon, they could just make out shadowy figures moving in the darkness around the rocket and gantry. The black-armored strangers apparently could do their work by the available light, and they did so in silence.
When J.B. had seen enough, he signaled for a retreat from the edge of the cliff. Back behind the ridge-top pinnacles, with the others gathered around him, he said, “They could just be prepping the missile for launch. No way to tell whether we hit it, or if we did, if we hurt it any.”
“Back to square one, then,” Mildred said.
“Square zero,” J.B. corrected her. “We’ve got no options left. We just proved that we can’t blackmail them into giving us Ryan back. We can’t hurt them, but they can chill us whenever the mood strikes. Because they won’t give ground down there, we can’t force our way close to where that hole appeared and try to go in after Ryan. It doesn’t look good for him.”
“There’s got to be a way,” Krysty said. “My Gaia power worked against those bastards’ machines. Mebbe I could use it to take them out, too.”
“You’ve already used yourself up,” Mildred reminded her. “You try that again, and all you’ll succeed in doing is killing yourself. And that won’t help Ryan out of the trouble he’s in.”
From the deep shadows of the canyon below, two engines started up. One, they all recognized. It belonged to the black aircraft.
“We might be on the verge of some trouble, ourselves,” J.B. stated.
Chapter Eighteen
Major Oswaldo Lujan slithered over mounded heaps of bacterial slunk, and under the trailing edge of a massive slime curtain that hung suspended from a ceiling lost in pendulous greenery. For Lujan, the oppressive environment and the biohazard battlesuit he wore brought back memories of his early years as a soldier. Not unpleasant memories, either. Though he had been trained for infantry combat in the Slime Zone, he’d never gotten a chance to use the skills. The Consumer Rebellion, which was the only war he had ever served in, had been quashed long before it could move onto this slick horror of a battlefield.