Mildred and Krysty made sure that they had gathered the remains of the self-heats and tucked them into their backpacks.
They were ready, if still relaxed. Now to check out the armory.
As with everything else in the redoubt, it was ridiculously easy to find. And there was no sec lock on the door, which was easily opened.
“Dark night,” J.B. growled. “I knew it was too damned good to be true.”
The Armorer and Ryan walked into the room that had once housed the armory. It was empty, apart from one open crate, which contained several rifles.
“Something’s better than nothing,” Ryan commented, removing one of the rifles from the crate and handing it to J.B.
“Guess I was mebbe expecting too much,” J.B. replied, pushing his fedora back from his forehead and taking the rifle with his other hand. “But what’s this?”
“I was kind of hoping you could tell me that, partner,” the one-eyed warrior replied as he, too, examined one of the rifles.
They were of a fairly conventional shape, although the lines of the barrel and stock seemed to almost blur as they molded into one. The blaster was of some alloy with which they were both unfamiliar, and had a large, round red sight on the top, which was non-detachable. There was a crystal in a cage at the end of the barrel, instead of an opening, and there was no way of inserting ammo.
“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Ryan questioned.
J.B. put the rifle down and carefully wiped his spectacles. “Yep, guess so. Mebbe some kind of laser tech. Who knows how that kind of shit works? Never come across enough of it to figure that out. So if these were left here because they’re defective…”
“Then we leave them because they’re just deadweight to us.”
The Armorer nodded. “One way to find out.”
Ryan nodded agreement. Making sure that the armory was clear apart from themselves, they tried each rifle, toying with the settings. None would fire; most wouldn’t even fire up the digital displays that came up in the red sight. Those that did had low power readings and error messages that made little sense without a trained tech or a manual.
J.B. threw the last one to the floor in disgust—a disgust measured by his treatment of something he would usually cherish.
“Knew it was too good,” he repeated.
“Guess we better just watch that it’s as bad as it gets,” Ryan said quietly.
He and J.B. returned to the others. There was no need to explain, as they had gathered the results.
“So we head out?” Mildred asked.
Ryan assented. “Recce on the way to see if we can pick up anything of interest.”
They began to walk the corridors that led toward the elevators, emergency stairwells and upward ramps that would take them to the surface. The corridors were dingy, with just enough light to see in front, but not enough to stop the corner of vision from being obscured by shadow. They passed through several sec doors that were permanently open.
“Hey, has anyone noticed something weird?” Dean asked suddenly as they passed through yet another open door.
“How would you define weird?” Doc queried.
“Well, because all these doors are open I wouldn’t swear to it being the same all the way through, but I’ve looked at the last couple of sec panels, and they haven’t got numbers scratched on them.”
Ryan frowned. It was something and nothing. Pre-dark sec men sometimes scratched the sec-code numbers onto the scratch plates on the reverse side of the sec door, in case they forgot the number sequence.
“So you think what?” he asked his son.
Dean shrugged. “Don’t know. Guess mebbe this wasn’t a regular military place. Whoever was stationed here, was here all the time, and wasn’t likely to forget.”
“And why all open?” Jak added. “Not usual.”
Ryan shook his head. “No, this isn’t an ordinary redoubt. What—”
He looked round sharply, guided by an instinct that told him Krysty had stopped behind him. She was staring at a closed door, and the hair around her nape had formed tendrils that hugged her neck.
“Mebbe we’ll find an answer in there,” she said. “It feels bad, but not like danger…just residual bad feeling.”