Jenna laughed, harsh and cold. “Of course not, you cretin. I set it going, and then turn it off on the failsafe when my idiot husband and the one-eyed fool have acquiesced to us. For fuck’s sake, you don’t think I’d be doing this if I couldn’t stop it?”
“Yeah? How can I be so sure you even know how to get it going properly?”
“You know I can. You know I have the learning. After all, if you really thought I couldn’t set it running, you wouldn’t be shitting yourself right now, would you?”
Harvey didn’t answer. She was right.
Jenna turned her attention away from her lover and fully to the nuke. The old comp circuits were still in operation, and using codes she had learned from books and papers taken by her forefathers from the redoubt, she punched in a series of commands that told her that the nuke was armed and ready. She set the timer and punched in a sec code so that only she could turn it off. It was a sec code set by the original programmer of the missile from the redoubt, and was a name the like of which she didn’t recognize, but had memorized earlier.
“There.” She smiled, standing back from the gaily colored instrument of destruction. “That’s done.”
“Good,” Harvey breathed. “Can we get the fuck out of here now?”
“Of course we can. We’ve got another little battle to win. I wonder how your people are doing right now?” she asked, shrugging the Uzi off her shoulder and flicking the safety catch, switching the firing mechanism to short bursts.
“Only one way to find out. Let’s get the hell back,” Harvey muttered, leading them away from the nuke and back toward the center of the ville.
IN THE CENTER, the battle had reached stalemate. Those sec men and ville dwellers who had sided with Alien were blocking the route to the armory. Although they outnumbered the opposition, they had fewer sec men on their side, and so had fewer blasters, which evened things up.
The battle had died down to a war of attrition, with both sides adopting a siege mentality. The occasional shot was fired, the occasional seized object thrown over the hastily erected barricades. But there was a general tense silence.
Into which arrived Blake, Downey, Jak and Dean, with Alien close behind them.
Rankine was one of the few sec men who had aligned himself with the baron, and he had assumed command for want of anyone else. However, he was at a loss how to break the deadlock, and the relief on his face was evident when Blake and Jak picked their way through the line to arrive at the front of the barricade.
“Thank fuck you’re here,” he said gladly.
“Where are the rest of you?” he added, speaking to Jak.
“After Harvey. Never mind. Get this finished,” the albino said shortly. “Alien not happy.”
“Yeah, his heart ain’t in it,” Blake chipped in, speaking softly. The other ville dwellers on the barricade had spotted their baron, and the atmosphere had noticeably lifted at the sight of the big man. “Listen, we need to act before it becomes obvious and has a bad effect. What’s the score?”
Rankine filled them in on the details, and Blake listened carefully. “Okay,” he began when Rankine finished, “the first thing is to get people armed. Have you raided the armory yet? No, obviously not,” he said, spotting the furrowed brow on his fellow sec man. “Get some people back there. Meanwhile, I think we need to do some scouting. How much hardware do we have right now?”
Rankine made a quick head count. “We got eight sec here, so eight blasters—nine including me.”
Dean had made his way forward with Downey. Blake turned to him.
“Whaddaya say, kid? Covering fire from the marksman here and a few of the boys while you, me and Jak make a little scouting foray?”
Dean took a look over the barricade. The lines had been drawn in the main stretch of the tunnel at the center of the ville, with a distance of two hundred yards between the two barricades. Not a lot of room to play with, but with plenty of cover in the shape of empty units and overturned barrows.