He shouldered the pulse rifle again. It made him think about J.B. and how much he’d love getting his hands on something like this, which made him wonder for the hundredth time if his companions had made it to safety, and if he was ever going to see them again. One thing he was pretty sure ofthey wouldn’t be coming over here to rescue him. He had to assume he was on his own. And whenever the opportunity to get away appeared, if it appeared, he had to be prepared to make the most of it. In the meantime, he had to soak up the information he needed to get back to Deathlands. For starters that meant learning how to operate the strange weapon he was holding.
He glanced up at Damm, who smiled at him.
There was nothing sneaky in back of the eyes.
No bastard-evil intentions hidden behind a grinning mask.
Ryan knew he’d probably have to chill the scar-faced mercie, and possibly Nara, too, if he wanted to escape. He didn’t have a problem with that, but there was nothing personal in it.
Ryan smiled back. He decided to keep asking questions until the mercie stopped answering them. “How many shots is that mag good for?”
“You mean the power cell,” Damm said. “It’ll fire continuously, sustained beam, for fifteen minutes without a replacement. That’s a lot of single shots and bursts, by the way.”
Then the merc held his hand out. The meaning was obvious.
Ryan gave the rifle back to him.
Damm passed it and the power cell back to the woman merc, then he said, “As I understand the early reports, you’ve got no standing armies worth shit on the other side, no operational aircraft, no laser-proof fortifications. Bombed yourselves back into the Stone Age, more or less.”
“More or less.”
Damm looked mighty pleased. “Then it should be no sweat for fourteen combat vets and a couple of APCs to take over a nice chunk of your world,” he said. He turned to Jurascik and said, “Nothing over here to hold a candle to us. Just like old times, Nara.
What do you say? We could easily make it fifteen vets.”
From her seat beside Ryan on the crates, the blonde shrugged.
“At least think about it, Captain. The smart move would be for you to put in with us. You might as well act like you were part of the triple cross all along. It’s the only way you’re ever going to get a return trip to Shadow World, now. If you think Mitsuki’s going to reward you after this, you’re kidding yourself. Even if everything works out and they get Mr. Wonderful back, they don’t reward screwups. They fry screwups.”
“That’s already occurred to me, Damm. And I’ve been meaning to thank you for getting me killed, you greedy fucking asshole.”
“Hey, I’m just trying to take care of my own crew,” he countered. “It’s a safe bet nobody else will. Would you have done it any different if you’d been in my shoes?”
“Yeah, I’d have found a hideout that smelled better,” she said. “Under the plastic, there’s green shit all over the sides of your van. I’ve been passing the time watching it grow.”
Ryan saw the creeping spread of bacteria on the van’s tires, wheel wells, the places where it had splattered up during their passage.
“As long as we can keep it off the engine’s air intakes, it doesn’t matter,” Damm said. “It isn’t growing inside the passenger compartment yet.”
“What is this Consumer War you’re always talking about?” Ryan said.
“Rebellion,” Nara said. “We don’t dignify the campaign by calling it a war.”
“Why’s that?”
“The term ‘war’ implies two sides of roughly comparable strength,” Nara said. “Maybe even some kind of code of conduct.”
“The trouble started not long after the Globals linked up to form FIVE,” Damm told him. “They decided they weren’t getting the max return out of their marketing programs, that relying solely on advertising pressure from the tell-yous was a big mistake. So they dropped the Mr. Nice Guy routine. They started setting quotas and telling people exactly what they had to consume, when and how much. Of course, that was back when there were still things to buy, even if it was mostly crap.