The two men set to work.
RYAN COULD SEE the sec men moving into position, blocking off the exits. Several armed with longblasters were also walking the upper level that ringed the cafeteria.
He knew he didn’t have much time.
“You,” he said, calling over to a bearded man in his thirties. “Come here.”
“You want to talk to me?”
“Yeah, you.” Ryan nodded. “Come here.”
GRUNWOLD WANTED to grab the outlander as soon as possible, but they couldn’t move in on him just yet. If they singled him out in the cafeteria, that would arouse the suspicion of the other slaves. The man was, after all, their new champion, and there was no reason for him to be taken away and chilled. Doing it now would incite a riot, and that was to be avoided at all costs.
But if they waited too long, the outlander might get out into the orchards where capturing him would be much more difficult. Once a breeder named Clarissa had hidden out in the orchards for two days before sneaking into the barn and stealing their best wag right out from under their noses. This outlander was far more resourceful and dangerous than the female breeder had been, and if he got loose within the compound Grunwold might lose several sec men before he was caught.
The sec chief kept his eye on the outlander while he gave the signal to his sec men to tighten up the circle around him. If all went well, they’d wait until the slaves had finished with breakfast and were on their way out to the orchards. Sec men would escort the one-eyed man out a door leading back into the main building, and once the door was closed they’d chill him with a single bullet to his brain.
After that it would be up to the baron to explain to the slaves why their hero was suddenly dead, something Grundwold was interested in hearing himself.
Just then a fight broke out in one corner of the cafeteria.
“I’m rutting with her tonight!” someone yelled.
“She’s mine,” came the response. “I claimed her first.”
Fights between slaves over rutting with breeders wasn’t unusual, but the timing of this one seemed peculiar to Grundwold. These things usually took place at the end of the day when slaves began pairing up for the night. Another thing that wasn’t right was how many other slaves seemed to have an interest in the outcome. At most a fight involved four men, but this one seemed to involve the entire side of the cafeteria. Men and breeders were piling onto one another, trying to strike their blows against the two that had started the fight.
The cafeteria was rapidly becoming a sea of jumbled bodies. The noise was growing louder, and the fight was beginning to move toward the doors.
Grunwold signaled for his men on the cafeteria floor to intervene.
Sec men moved in to break it up, but despite pulling bodies out of the fray, more were joining in. Several slaves were pushed away, falling through the exit doors that led outside. In moments streams of slaves were spilling out into the orchards, and the sec men on the floor still hadn’t gotten a handle on the fight.
The sec chief quickly scanned the cafeteria, looking for the one-eyed outlander. When the fight broke out, he’d been content to finish his breakfast as the fight stormed around him.
But now he was gone.
“Son of a gaudy slut!” the sec chief shouted.
The fight below was still going on.
Grunwold unslung his longblaster, pointed it into the middle of the jumble of bodies and pulled the trigger.
The crack of the blaster’s fire stopped the fighting.
Slaves moved back from the center of the scrap, leaving the young man who’d been caught by Grundwold’s bullet to fall to the floor in a bloody mess, half of his head blown off and splattered against the faces and bodies of those around him.
“The one-eyed outlander!” Grunwold yelled.
“Where’d he go?” a sec man asked.
The sec chief, seething in anger over the loss of the outlander, leveled his longblaster on the sec man who’d asked the question. He even toyed with the idea of pulling the trigger, but he put the weapon down, knowing he’d need every man on his force to find the man who surely had known they had intended to chill him. “He’s gone out the door, you triple-stupe bastard!”