There was a moment’s silence. For J. B. Dix to make such a long speech was rare, but in the circumstances he had articulated the thoughts of everyone on the subject.
“Shit, I ain’t happy about this, but I guess J.B.’s right,” Mildred said eventually.
Ryan nodded. “Then we do it.”
They all assented, albeit reluctantly in some cases.
Ryan strode to the double doors and flung them open. Baron Silas was waiting outside, leaning against the wall with his Stetson hat pulled down over his eyes. “I knew you’d agree,” he said before Ryan had a chance to speak.
Chapter Ten
Baron Silas Hunter led the companions down through the levels of the building until they reached the basement. Each floor, from what they could glimpse on their way down, was stuffed full of pre-dark treasures, both in terms of furniture and art. Certainly, Doc and Mildred, whose existence in the days before skydark gave them a better knowledge of such things, got the impression that Silas Hunter, for all his seeming bluff approach, had a side that relished the finer things of the predark age. And even though these items had little value in the new age compared to essentials like fuel, food and water, those whose business was to trade still knew of select markets that would pay good jack for such things.
All of which added up to an expensive habit that Baron Silas had to feed. It was no wonder that he was keen to stamp out the sabotage to his well and refinery.
“Notice how all the sec men here are kept out of the way,” J.B. muttered to Ryan as they descended the staircase from the ground floor to the lower level, and then through a less ostentatious room to a smaller, plainer stair that led to the basement.
“Yeah,” the one-eyed man grunted, “unless I’d seen those sec men earlier, I’d wonder if he had any at all.”
“So where does he keep them, and how do they know when they’re wanted?” the Armorer queried.
No sooner had the question died on his lips than the answer became apparent. The baron opened a small door that sat at the foot of the staircase, which wasn’t entirely lit by artificial light as they had descended below ground level. The old light fittings of the house down here were powered by a generator that ran through the light ring circuit with a gentle pulse, causing the slightest flicker of the light. It cast a sinister shadow over the baron’s features as he turned and smiled his peculiarly humorless grimace at them.
“Welcome to my nerve center,” he said before opening the door and ushering them in.
They entered with Ryan and J.B. in front, followed by Krysty, Jak, Mildred, Doc and Dean bringing up the rear. As Dean entered the room, with Baron Silas behind him, closing the door, he let out a whistle that was long and low.
“Hot pipe! This is some setup!”
For the room, with two doors leading off at the far end, seemed to run the length of the building, and housed the sec for the baronial palace. Twelve armed sec men, all heavily muscled, milled about the room. Some were talking among themselves, two were ready at each door to move on command and the rest were either stationed at, or observing casually, the bank of monitors that ran along the wall.
“Like most of these old predark places, this must’ve been used as some kind of local sec building,” Baron Silas began, “and I picked this as my dwelling and nerve center because of that. It’s built to be almost impregnable, and once I got the metalwork in place, it was virtually impossible to get in without being seen. Which brings me to this…” He moved in front of the monitor systems, the screens of which all had a slight shimmer that ran in sync with the pulsing light and, presumably, the pulsing of the generator. “This,” he continued, “is my secret weapon when I’m here. This makes the place about as safe as you can get. All of this was in place when I took over the building. Lord alone knows what they did here before the nukecaust, but it must have been pretty damn important, and they must’ve liked to spy on whoever was here, ’cause when I first saw this I wondered where the hell the cameras for these were. Shit, some of them are so well hidden in the rooms that it took me hours to find them, even trying to work it out from what I could see. ‘Cause first thing I did was get a generator fired up and get some good ol’ boys in here to take a look at what we had. It’s a good system, and we’re fucked if it ever breaks down ’cause no one hereabouts has ever come across one like it. But it works…”