Mildred’s first move after clearing her head from the aftereffects of the jump was to join Ryan and Krysty over Doc’s slumped body.
“You know that one day this is going to be once too often for the old fool,” she commented as she thumbed back Doc’s flickering eyelid to get a better look at his wildly rolling eye. She felt his sweat-plastered forehead. “Not too much of a temperature, though,” she said, almost to herself. Rummaging in the pockets of her jacket, she produced a battered stethoscope that had been salvaged from the ruined medical bay of a previous redoubt. She opened Doc’s shirt, roaming the end of the stethoscope across his chest until she picked up his heart rate. It was fluttering and irregular, but even as she listened it began to settle into a more regular rhythm.
“Hell, I think the old buzzard might even last this one out,” she said to the others, a smile flickering at the corners of her mouth.
“Mebbe he’ll even outlive Jak—well, at this rate it seems likely,” Dean commented wryly as he glanced over his shoulder to where Jak Lauren had risen to his knees before retching and puking a thin string of bile onto the chamber floor.
Jak looked tiny swathed in his multipatched camou jacket, and cut a pathetic figure as he coughed and spit out the last of the vomit, spasms jolting his body. But this impression was belied by the fact that the teenager—an albino from the swamps of the bayou whose pale face was covered in the scars of innumerable battles—was a born hunter and fighter, his slight frame almost entirely consisting of wiry muscle stretched over his skeleton.
Despite the vast reserves of strength that he held within his wiry frame, Jak was the member of the group who was hit hardest by the mat-trans jumps, always taking the longest to recover, his senses reeling and his body racked by pain.
“Right now be glad see Doc last longer.” Jak coughed in between gulping down breaths of air, his red eyes beginning to focus on the rest of the group. “Feel like already long chilled,” he added with a rare grin.
As Jak pulled himself to his feet, and Dean and Mildred helped a dazed and confused Doc to his feet,
Ryan, J.B. and Krysty moved across to the chamber door. This particular chamber had teal-blue arma-glass walls; most of the chambers they had encountered, whatever the color of the armaglass, had been opaque. And although that was a good thing because it meant that they couldn’t be observed from the outside, it also meant that exiting from each chamber and into the redoubt was fraught with the possibility of being open to an attack they couldn’t predict.
Ryan paused by the door and looked at Krysty. Her Titian mane was flowing free, not curling close to her head.
“Feels good to me, lover,” she said simply.
Ryan spared her a smile, his single eye sparkling. “Mebbe I’d gathered that,” he replied, indicating her free-flowing tresses.
“So take it yellow but still alert?” the Armorer interjected. It was a question, as Ryan was the undisputed leader—there had to be one in any group if they were to survive—but J.B. was as experienced as his old friend, and just needed the one-eyed warrior to confirm what he suspected he was thinking.
Ryan nodded. “Check the others. Are we ready?”
He looked over the rest of his people. Dean was now alert and ready for action, while Doc was recovering rapidly, attended by Mildred.
The younger Cawdor nodded assent at his readiness. Mildred muttered a swift yes before looking at Doc, who also nodded assent, leaning heavily on his lion’s-head sword stick but looking stronger with each passing second. Already he had the unwieldy but effective LeMat pistol sitting easily against the heel of his hand.
That just left Jak. The albino was resilient and strong, and he had already moved over to where Ryan, Krysty and J.B. were poised by the chamber door, his .357 Magnum Colt Python already in his hand.
“Ready,” he said shortly.
Ryan nodded and reached out for the handle on the interior of the door. It was a simple handle, seemingly too simple a lock mechanism for something that would seal a doorway against the outside world while matter transfer took place within.