The sec man scowled. The debris reached from floor to roof and looked as solid as the mountain it came from. There wasn’t even a breathing hole drilled in the walls, or a single crack to let air through, and that was bad.
“Start clearing it away,” he ordered. “We’ve got to get some air in there before he dies!”
“Yes, sir!” The slave placed the lantern into a niche, positioned to shine on the avalanche. “Will you be getting more guards?”
“What in hell for?”
“He has a blaster, sir. A big one. But it didn’t go off like regular one. It stuttered like an old man.”
“Machine gun,” the guard muttered, clutching his bolt-action rifle. He wanted the reward from the heirs of no duty for a year to the guard who found Ryan alive, but he had no intention of dying for a year of relaxing.
With a stabbing motion, he pointed at the cluster of slaves. “You, you and you, start digging. You and you, get more timber and shore up the roof! We don’t want another collapse. You, go get the duty sergeant and summon more guards. I’ll stay here.”
The slaves moved with unusual haste, but the sec man never noticed, already dreaming about a full year of sleeping late and bedding any female slave he wanted.
Ryan! Alive! It was a miracle.
FIVE HUNDRED YARDS away, a crowd of slaves was shouting and jumping about in wild excitement.
“Over here! Here!” a woman cried, a nearby group of slaves rolling hogshead barrels and dragging wooden boxes over to block the sagging door of a splintery barn. “We got him trapped inside!”
Sitting on a plow, sipping a cup of field coffee to stave off the nighttime cold, Sergeant Kissel gagged and spit out the brownish fluid. “Ryan?” the sergeant demanded. “You have Ryan?”
The slaves stood in front of him, dancing from foot to foot. “Found him in the silo! I want the reward!”
“I found him,” a young man countered rudely. “I want the reward.”
“Me!”
“I!”
Standing, the sergeant cuffed them both to the ground. “I’ll decide who found him after we got the bastard in chains! Understand?”
They whimpered acknowledgment as a shot rang out from the barn.
“Shitfire, he’s armed and that’s a .45,” Kissel cursed. A large-caliber slug like that would go straight through his flak jacket at close range. “Sentry! You there!”
In the distance, a guard pointed a questioning finger toward himself.
“Yes, you, you damn fool! Bring troops and alert the Citadel. We got Ryan boxed!”
The sec man’s face contorted with greed, and he took off at a frantic run.
Kissel checked the load in his blaster and worked the slide to chamber a round, then eased back the hammer into the firing position. “Frag Anders and the bike he rode in on,” Kissel growled. “I’ll make captain of the guards by midnight. And then it’s payback time.”
DEEP WITHIN the Stygian shadows of a filthy alleyway in the marketplace of Detail, David wrapped the eyepatch around Clifford’s head, while Kathy artfully arranged his wig of long black curly hair. It was the flank skin of a sheep, but from a distance, nobody should be able to tell. Charcoal lines made Clifford’s face appear older and heavily scarred. Dressed in repaired clothes from the guards’ laundry, the skinny man held a rifle of ancient manufacture that was so badly rusted most of the internal parts no longer existed. It was beyond unrepairable, but still looked deadly potent. But the S&W .38 revolver in his belt was fully functional, even if it only held three live rounds.
“Done,” Kathy said, knotting the black string used to hold the wig in place.
“Ready?” David asked.
Breathing deeply to charge his lungs with oxygen, Clifford nodded yes, then paused. “If…” He started again. “If anything happens, tell Troy I love him.”
In the darkness, David gripped his shoulder. “Of course, my friend, but you’ll be fine as long as you keep moving and stay on the route we mapped for you.
All over the city alarm bells sounded, causing enough noise to wake the dead.
“Hurry,” Kathy urged. “One of the Ryans has already been found. You must go now!”