Mildred grasped the meaning behind the Armorer’s words and gave the briefest gesture of agreement. Independently, Doc and Dean had come to the same conclusion.
“We can’t let that happen,” the youngster whispered to Doc.
The old man cradled his LeMat and said with mock sadness, “Ah, but these old weapons, and indeed the old men using them, can be a trifle erratic at times.”
RYAN CHECKED his wrist chron and stole a glance at Alien. The Raw baron was stone-faced, any emotion he may feel about going into a firefight tightly reined in. By his side were Jak and Blake. The small, wizened sec man seemed to grow in stature as he felt the time for battle come near; he was breathing slowly and deeply, his eyes faraway and focused on what was to come.
Looking around, Ryan could see that the rest of the sec men were also readying themselves in their own way.
Beside him, Krysty was hunkered down, her Smith & Wesson blaster clenched in her hand, her fingers coiled around the barrel and through the trigger guard with a deceptive languor.
The flame-haired beauty turned to him. “Not now, but later…then we need to worry,” she mouthed.
Ryan nodded, then checked his chron again. It was time. They had been following at a distance, observing the mutie raiding party. Two of the muties had fallen by the wayside already—one of the Sunchildren and a stickie,—chilled by the random blaster shots from the hyped-up muties. Given a long enough approach to Raw, they could probably do a very good job of chilling themselves.
But there wasn’t the distance. And now the time was up, and Harvey’s men should also be ready. Ryan looked at Downey. The silver-maned sec man caught Ryan’s eye and nodded.
“It’s time,” he said simply, throwing the comment over his shoulder. “Let’s go get them.”
And it began. Ryan sprang forward, the taut muscles on his thighs and the strong, powerful calf muscles propelling him forward in an explosive burst. He brought J.B.’s M-4000 across his chest, keeping a firm hold as he broke cover. Downey was beside him, moving over the ground as though he were hovering above it, snapping back the Sharps and chambering the first round ready for a mutie.
They broke cover in two waves, spread across a distance of only a few yards. Jak had moved through the ranks from his position beside the baron, the Python .357 in one fist, a leaf-bladed knife in the other. Blake was almost level with him, the small man showing a surprising turn of speed, the slim and elegant lines of his 9 mm Walther PPK seeming huge in his small hand. He trusted Jak totally, there having sprung between them an unspoken bond—the bond of two men who knew their job and were masters of their art.
Among the other sec men breaking cover was Jake, the huge bearlike man who dwarfed the Heckler & Koch he grasped, swinging it around as soon as he broke cover and had sighted the rear of the mutie party. He roared as his finger tightened on the trigger, loosing his anger and adrenaline in one blast.
First chill, however, went to Jak. A stickie at the rear of the party turned and lunged toward the ambush party. Not wasting a shot at this point, Jak’s knife flashed through the space between them and connected with the stickie, slicing through the jellylike, pale flesh at the creature’s throat and producing streams of thin, watery blood that ran down the creature’s neck and chest.
The stickie stopped in midstride, confusion and pain written across its features, the blank eyes and sharp, needlelike teeth identifying it as a mutie even before its mottled, irradiated skin could be properly seen. He tried to scream, but a thin, pained keening was all that emerged, followed by a gurgle as it drowned on its own blood, falling forward as consciousness slipped away.
By the time the stickie hit the carpet of creepers across the forest floor, the majority of the ambush party had passed it and were in the middle of a firefight.
Downey and Ryan were side by side, the sec man snapping off shots from the Sharps that took out confused muties as they attempted to turn to face their attackers without careening into each other. Ryan targeted a densely packed area of mutie flesh with the M-4000 to cause the maximum impact.