“Yeah, might work,” the gunner said grudgingly. “But the wind could shift to our side of the wall and”
“Obey!” Tongamorlena raged, brandishing the spent pepper box.
The gunner saluted and limped away, shouting orders. He only got a few yards before a .50 cal cut the man in two.
Bellowing in anger, Tongamorlena aimed and pulled the trigger on the pepper box before remembering it was empty. Scorch! It was the only weapon they had that was harming the sec men, and it took half an hour to reload! With a hundred of these, Kinnison’s troops would be feeding the fish by now. But there were only about twenty in the whole ville, and each had been used already.
Furious, the officer tossed the useless blaster away, and grabbed a flintlock and ammo bag from a headless man. As much as the officer hated to admit such a thing, it was starting to appear that they were going to lose this battle. Best be prepared for street fighting. Although with Baron Withers’s fortress gone, he had no idea where the pirates could retreat to for a last stand. Maybe the slave quarters, or the armory? No, that was also gone.
Going to the edge of the wall, Tongamorlena whistled for attention. “Barricade the door!” he shouted.
“Aye, aye, sir!” the overseer yelled, then turned to crack a knotted bullwhip at his workers. “You heard the man! Get moving!”
Shoulders hunched against the expected lash of the bullwhip, the line of chained slaves began hoisting wreckage from the collapsed houses and piling it against the door to reinforce the portal.
But they had only a few pieces in place when somebody on the wall shouted a warning and a strident explosion ripped the massive doors off the weakened hinges. The ton of metal fell to the cobblestones, smashing the slaves and the overseer into crimson pulp. A Firebird flew through the black and gray clouds to strike a pair of cannons set behind a sandbag wall. The rocket hit a man and detonated, the blast setting off the bags of black powder. The resulting explosion sent the cannons in every direction.
A Hummer rolled into view through the breach in the wall, its .50-caliber blaster steadily firing to finish the task. The military wag bumped over the horizontal door and the human remains trapped underneath, ending their cries of pain.
“No prisoners!” Mitchum screamed, driving the Hummer through a crowd of startled pirates, the armored fenders smashing the bodies aside.
The long barrels of flintlocks extended from the open windows of nearby buildings, and miniballs slammed into the wags, bouncing harmlessly off the body armor. The .50 calibers spoke, the heavy slugs chewing a path of destruction along the facade of the buildings, and the sniper ceased.
“Find me the outlanders!” Glassman shouted, shooting a wounded man in the back as he ran away.
“Ace everybody else!” Mitchum corrected, pulling out his blaster and pointing it at the captain. This was the perfect chance to permanently settle the matter of who was in charge.
But Glassman had been expecting the sec man to try a judas strike, and already had his blaster out. The two men fired in unison, the smoky discharges of the black-powder weapons temporarily masking the results of the conflict.
WHEN THE ALARM BELL stopped ringing, Ensign Raynor feared the worst and got ready, laying out a line of clips from his predark blaster for easy access.
Even before the sec men arrived, he had been standing alone to guard the rear gate of HomePort. Only made sense. It was twenty miles to Deadman’s Cliff, and nobody had ever been known to get more than halfway there before getting aced.
A movement in the bushes caught his attention, and Raynor blindly fired his weapon. The motion ceased, but that meant nothing and he stayed alert. The Hunters were tricky. Only the guard of the western gate was allowed to carry a bolt-action blaster, and never had to account for how much ammo he used on a shift. Baron Withers encouraged random shots to try to put some fear into the horrid muties. They were the reason the wall around the ville had been built in the first place. Sure, the Hunters normally stayed in the trees and merely watched the norms, but occasionally they ventured close and stole a horse, sometimes a whole family.