Leading his party, J.B. signaled them to halt, as he was sure that he could hear the enemy approach.
“Why are we stopping?” questioned a separatist who had bridled at the Armorer taking the lead.
“So I can hear what’s going down,” J.B. whispered, adding, “and keep your voice down, for fuck’s sake. Don’t need to give away our position.”
The separatist took a step forward.
“What are you doing?” J.B. whispered.
“You may be frightened, pale one, but I am not,” the separatist replied. “And I take no orders from you.”
An astonished J.B. watched the man move openly through the wood, then signaled to his party. “Follow. We’ll have to cover him.”
Cutting a swath through the foliage, the separatist came across a group of outsiders as they tried to make their way stealthily through the woods. It was hard to know who was the more surprised at the sudden confrontation.
The separatist looked at the stunned war party. They consisted of a white man, two blacks and a Hispanic. Addressing the black men, he said, “But you are my brothers. Why should I make war with you? We can talk about this, can we not? I would rather—”
He was cut short by the startled exclamation of one of the blacks, who was the first to snap out of his stunned reverie.
“Nuckin’ hell! Take the freak down before he stops talking and starts firing!”
And as he spoke, the black opened fire with his Uzi, the slugs cutting the separatist almost in two with a neat line of fire across his abdomen. The sound of the blasterfire galvanized the others in the war party and they all began to open fire. Blasterfire was directed at the already chilling separatist, who was hit in the chest, head and stomach, his body reduced to a spray of blood, ribboned flesh and splintered bone, suspended in an upright position only by the momentum of the slugs that poured into him.
“Take them out, now!” J.B. yelled, swinging his Uzi around and firing through the chilled separatist as he swung an arc of hot metal across the gathered war party. The stunned Pilatans behind him snapped back to reality and took aim, also beginning to fire.
The offensive war party retreated rapidly into the woods, leaving behind two chilled—the white man and one of the blacks—and J.B. certain that at least one of the others had been hit and was losing blood.
“Let us pursue them,” snarled one of the Pilatans, now roused to anger and, like the others, realizing for the first time what combat could entail. But J.B. stayed him with an arm.
“No, let them go. It’s too easy for them to rig an ambush out here. Fall back.”
“Retreat? Like cowards?”
“No—like people using our brains,” J.B. replied. “We pull back and lure them into the open.”
With which, the Armorer started to track back toward the clearing where the Pilatan camp had been established.
As they reached the campsite, they found that more parties were following this course. Certainly, all the companions had encountered similar problems to his own, and the talk among the Pilatans was of other separatists who had met the same fate as the man in J.B.’s force. Their confusion was partly echoed by Markos, as he came over to where the companions had gathered.
“This is a completely alien situation to me,” he began without preamble. “We have lost several of our people, although we have made dents in their personnel to compensate. But my people cannot adjust to the idea that other blacks will fire on them. Surely we have solidarity that runs over any other consideration?”
“Keep that attitude up and there won’t be any Pilatans left to make a new home,” Mildred said harshly. “I’ve tried to tell you—it doesn’t matter what color you are out here, only that it’s your ville against the rest. Whatever it takes to survive. And you’re going to have to get used to shooting blacks as well as whites and Hispanics and whoever else. Got it?”
The Pilatan sec boss nodded shortly. “But I am out of my depth now.”
He turned to the one-eyed man. “Ryan, I would like you to take over the action. Then we may have a chance. I am not good enough—”