“We fighting on our own, Downey?” the one-eyed warrior heard from beside him, interrupted by random burst of fire from an Uzi. It was a familiar sound, but an unfamiliar pattern, and Ryan guessed that it had been a long time since Alien had regularly used a blaster. And if they made it back alive, Harvey may have a few uncomfortable moments.
“That’s a good question, Baron,” the sec man replied, his tone still laid-back. “I’d sure as shit like to know the answer to that myself.”
FROM THEIR COVER, the second ambush party saw Ryan and Downey emerge, saw Jak claim first blood, saw the heaving mass of muties turn to face the sec force.
“It’ll be a massacre,” breathed one of the sec men. “It must be four-to-one out there.”
“Wait,” Harvey said softly, a hard edge to his tone.
“No way,” the Armorer muttered, readying the Uzi. From the corner of his eye, he saw that Mildred had already sighted one mutie from this range, possibly at the edge of target range, but her practiced eye gauged that it was just close enough for her to get a lethal shot. The Czech-made ZKR was a good blaster, with the high degree of accuracy demanded by its previous life as a competition weapon.
“Go, Millie,” the Armorer breathed as his thin and wire-strong limbs shot him forward and out of the undergrowth. He heard Harvey curse at the same moment as the crack of Mildred’s blaster resounded in his ears.
J.B. broke cover about fifty yards to the left of the other sec ambush party. He raised the Uzi and cut loose, the 9 mm rounds tearing at the exposed flesh of the Sunchildren and the stickies.
J.B. didn’t know if the rest of the sec force had followed him, or if he faced the muties alone on this flank. Perhaps not quite alone. The roar of the ancient LeMat sounded near him, first once and then a second time in quick succession as Doc unleashed ball and shot, dispensing death and agony into another group of muties. The sound was followed swiftly by the crack of Dean’s Browning Hi-Power as he picked off the most dangerous of the mutie party from this angle—those who were quick enough to turn and had avoided the rain of death from J.B. and Doc.
The Armorer sensed rather than saw Mildred appear from the foliage, adopting the same technique as Dean. They had the advantage of surprise on their side, which gave them the time to pick their targets as the slow-witted stickies and the confused Sunchildren had to adjust to the fact that they were being attacked from two directions.
More blasterfire rent the air as Harvey, now unable to hold back his men, led the rest of the ambush party into the fray.
Both ambush parties were attacking the muties from closer quarters now, and while handblasters were essential, it would have been madness to use the M-4000 and the LeMat at such close range. The risk of chilling their own forces would have been too great. So Doc produced his swordstick, the silver lion’s head grasped tight while the razor-sharp blade carved through the masses.
Ryan unsheathed the panga on his thigh, and used it as though the mass of mutie flesh were just so much foliage that needed chopping out of the way, hacking through limbs and torsos that blurred so much that it was only the bright robes of the Sunchildren and the hideous suckered and splayed fingers of the stickies that told them apart.
On the other side of the rapidly thinning mutie war party, J.B. had his Tekna knife in hand, thrusting with a cold and calculating precision, thinking not of the lives he was taking, but only the ones he was preserving back at Raw.
In the middle of the throng, Jak’s white hair whirled around his head Like a whip as, dervishlike, he dealt death in close combat with the leaf-bladed knives, a flick of the wrist carving swathes through the war party, the Python safely holstered to enable him to ply his deadly trade.
Despite their greater numbers, and the fact that they were to some degree armed, the muties were unable to make their numbers count. Those surviving Sunchildren, including Sunchild himself, beat an early retreat, leaving the unarmed stickies to take the brunt of the attack. But not before Sunchild had imparted a chilling message.