Which, of course, was their very intention,
Harvey stopped dead, staring at her, and then without another word took the Uzi from its wall mounting, grabbed spare ammo from the carefully labeled and stored boxes and tossed it to Jenna.
When he ignored her, she repeated her question. But this time, suspicions aroused that something was very much amiss and that she’d have no choice but to get involved, she left the RPK and reached slowly and stealthily for her own personal blaster, the Springfield Loaded 1911 that she kept secured in the waistband of her old camou pants. They were faded and patched, but she kept them because of the special loop she had sewn into the back. Stitched time and again until it held the Springfield perfectly balanced, it made her pants almost a second skin, and she didn’t feel comfortable unless she could feel the Cocobolo grip’s texture nesting against the base of her spine.
Her finger snaked around the lightweight match trigger while the palm of her hand flattened against the high hand grip. The flat mainspring housing meant that the blaster nestled into her plump body just about as unobtrusively as it was possible to get, and she was careful to move with a slow and easy motion, so it would appear just as though she were scratching an itch.
Harvey looked at her. “Donna, don’t do this,” he said slowly and evenly.
“Do what, Harv? And don’t fuck with my blasters. They ain’t cleaned yet, not all of them.”
Harvey smiled despite himself. He had always thought her dedication to the hardware was a little weird, and mebbe she was only pissed at him for messing with it.
In which case he wouldn’t have to chill her.
“Listen to me, Donna,” he said softly. “The time has come to decide which side you’re on.”
Her finger was still on the trigger, the grip still nestled into her palm, but she stayed any movement.
“Side, Harv? What sides do you mean? We’re one people, right?”
“No, Donna, it ain’t that simple anymore. That damned Cyclops, he’s got Alien all confused and wantin’ to go against how we’ve always been. If we don’t stand up for what we believe, then we’re sure as shit gonna be under the one-eyed bastard’s thumb. We won’t be us anymore. Is that what you want? Or do you want to fight with us?”
The chief armorer narrowed her eyes, trying hard to assimilate all that Harvey had said. Was that what the meeting had been about? But if so, then why would Ryan Cawdor’s people want to take control and change things? She thought about their aid in the battle against Samtvogel, and more importantly she thought of J.B. Dix. Mebbe it was just the way the man seemed to be like her with weapons, but she figured that he was good people. It didn’t figure…
Donna delayed just that little too long for Jenna’s liking. The dark mutie snapped the safety on her blaster, the click sounding loud against the faint background noise that was beginning to permeate the tunnels. Her raven eyes glittered hatred.
“She doesn’t believe you, Harvey, and we can’t afford to waste time.”
She raised the Uzi as though to fire.
It all happened in the same second. Suddenly, intuitively aware of the situation as her instincts broke through her confused thinking, aware only of the Uzi pointed at her, Donna drew the Springfield, snapping off a shot as her hand whipped around her body.
“No!” Harvey yelled, both at the chief armorer and at Jenna. He flung out an arm, snatching the Uzi from Jenna’s grasp before she had a chance to pressure the trigger, and simultaneously pushing her from the path of the slug, which bit into the wall of the armory, raising a small cloud of dust.
The crack of the Springfield was echoed a fraction of a second later by the roar of the sec chiefs Colt Magnum Carry, as the snub-nosed blaster spit its .357 load at the seated woman. Drawn as he moved, and aimed low, the slug ripped into Donna’s chest cavity and upper abdomen, spreading fatal damage as the slug tore cartilage and splintered bone, ripping bands of muscle and splattering layers of fat, scoring through major organs and causing massive internal hemorrhaging.