Ryan grabbed the fallen revolver and quickly opened the door, bumping into Andy Arkadin, who had been running along the corridor.
“What’s happening in there?” the sec chief panted. He was holding a small-caliber blaster in his right hand, down along the thigh.
“Both the sluts are dead,” Trader said, appearing behind Ryan. “All your men.”
“Don’t shoot me. You know where your blasters are. With the baron. Take them and go. Won’t stop you. Take them and get out of here.”
Ryan nodded, pushing past Arkadin.
Trader also nodded, shooting the man once through the throat, following Ryan along the hallway.
“Didn’t have to do that, Trader.”
His feral smile brought back a hundred bloody memories. “Didn’t have to do anything.”
“WHAT’S UP?”
J.B. ignored Abe’s question, as he tugged the rusting doors open. “Just get her started. Ryan and Trader could be in need of some transport in the next few minutes.”
The land wag turned over easily, coughing into life, filling the garage with exhaust fumes. Abe was at the wheel, his blaster on the seat at his side. The Armorer stood on the step, holding the Uzi, the scattergun across his back.
“Where we goin’?” Abe shouted.
“Around the front, I guess. Park in sight of the main doors. Keep her running. Watch and wait.”
“There goin’ to be shooting?”
J.B. nodded, jamming his hat farther down on his head. “Guess so.”
THERE WAS A FIREFIGHT at the top of the main staircase. A bullet peeled a neat strip of white wood off the balustrade close to Ryan’s right elbow, and he returned the favor, shooting the crouching sec man through the top of the left shoulder, knocking him flat on his back.
“This blaster’s shit,” he said to Trader.
“So’s mine. Still, should have our own back in a minute or so. Which way?”
“Left at the bottom.”
A group of servants burst through the main doors, holding axes and garden tools, retreating as soon as Trader put a couple of rounds in their direction.
“They chilled the little girls!” someone bellowed. “Go and get them!”
Another voice, from farther down the lobby, shouted, “You want them, you get them!”
Ryan and Trader had paused for a moment, sizing up the extent of the opposition.
Behind them they could now hear the distant roar of flames, and the building shuddered. “Feels like the whole place might go over the edge,” Ryan said.
“Yeah. Best we get out first.”
Trader led the way slowly down the stairs, waving the blaster threateningly at anyone who appeared. No more shots were fired at them.
Just as they reached the first-floor level, Baron Torrance lurched into sight.
He held a gnawed chicken leg and a chipped tumbler of red wine in his left hand, sloshing it over the floor as he staggered toward the two outlanders.
“Smell smoke,” he said pettishly, as though it were part of an unpleasant trick engineered at his expense.
There was a paper-mache carnival mask in his other hand, a cockerel’s head, with bright scarlet comb and curved golden beak. The paint was scarred and chipped.
“Come for our blasters, Baron,” Ryan said.
“Who the fuck’re you?” Recognition dawned. “Outlanders goin’ to marry my little girls.” He sniggered. “Husbands.”
“Yeah,” Trader said. “Only trouble is, it seems like we’re widowers and not husbands.”
“Didn’t need to tell him that,” Ryan chided. “Makes it harder.”
“Who cares? Lot of times you find that hardest is realty easiest, Ryan.”
Torrance had placed his piece of chicken and glass of wine on a long table in the hallway. He pulled the mask on over his head. “What’re you saying?” he asked.
The smoke was thickening. Ryan was aware that the cavernous lobby of Hightower was rapidly becoming deserted. Once it became obvious that a ship was doomed to sink, the rats wouldn’t want to hang around.
“Let’s get the blasters and hit the trail, Trader.”
The bizarre figure with the cockerel’s head moved to block their path. Torrance’s voice was muffled and weak, barely audible. “You said about widowers. What’s that mean?”
“Nothing,” Ryan said.
“Tell me.”
“We don’t have time.” Trader leveled his blaster and shot the baron once through the upper part of the mask, between the decorated eyeholes.