Progress for Doc and Mildred was easy…almost too easy, so much so that an attack from the rear was so unexpected as to almost catch them off guard.
Almost, but not quite. They advanced through the slaughterhouse that was the outer reaches of Samtvogel, stepping over the chilled corpses and the dying, none of whom were conscious or fit enough to put up any kind of fight. Doc cradled the LeMat and had the swordstick unsheathed, but to preserve ammo Mildred picked off the few muties that came within range with her ZKR. There were other pockets of attack who, like themselves, had arrived after the first wave of attack. The main body of fighting was in front, as it was up to the stragglers like themselves to mop up resistance.
It was only because the sounds of strife were in front, and had the echo of distance, that Doc could differentiate the sound of movement from behind them. He whirled with a speed that belied the care with which he had advanced.
Behind himself and Mildred was a group of five muties, three men and two women. Two of the men were wounded, one dragging a heavily bleeding leg, the other with an arm hanging limp and useless. But all five had the fire of battle in their eyes, and were brandishing blades of varying sizes. They were only a few yards away, and advancing rapidly.
Mildred began to turn, but Doc snapped at her, “Eyes front, Doctor. Leave this to me. I would like to feel useful to some degree.”
As he spoke, Doc raised the LeMat, and his last words were almost lost in the explosion of the percussion pistol.
The round caught the mutie with the injured arm full in the face. His head disappeared behind a spray of blood, flesh and bone. The woman to his left— perhaps his mate—screamed as she saw him disintegrate in front of her. It was a scream cut short by Doc’s next shot, which caught her throat, ripping out her larynx and almost severing her spinal column. The rest of the shots were evenly spread over the group, cutting them down and either mortally wounding or instantly chilling them.
“Onward, onward, Doctor,” Doc commanded.
“Yes, sir,” Mildred murmured.
JAK HAD BECOME a fighting machine once more. Like Jake, he was primed, honed and let loose on an enemy. But unlike the giant sec man, Jak still kept his entire wits about him. There was a coldness within the albino, as icy as the whiteness of his hair and skin, that enabled him to stay detached in the middle of battle.
The mutie Sunchildren around were no match for the fighting skills of the albino. Eschewing the .357 Magnum Colt Python in a close-fighting situation, he used the leaf-bladed knives to slash his way through the collected tribe, with only one objective in view. Harvey had wanted the ville trashed and scattered, but Alien wanted information, and had made a request of the albino he had noted as such a strong fighter.
“Over to the left, Jak,” Blake shouted from a few feet away. He still gripped the 9 mm Walther PPK he favored, but had let off few rounds, preferring to use the long, double-edged bayonet that was in his other fist, the honed blade almost as long as the small sec man’s forearm.
Jak moved gracefully and seamlessly away from his compatriot, and to the right of the nuke.
Three passing moves with the knives disposed of dull-witted guards, too slow to even move before their lifeblood pumped from severed arteries.
Sunchild raised a rusting sword and bellowed in rage and frustration at his crumbling empire. He brought the blade down toward Jak’s head, but the albino skipped around the blow, allowing the momentum to carry Sunchild forward…enough for Jak to chop at the exposed back of his neck, rendering him unconscious.
“Need alive…for now,” the albino muttered as the mutie leader hit the ground.
HARVEY WAS in trouble, and it was all the fault of his own arrogance.
The sec chief had led the charge down the sides of the valley, arriving on the earth-packed floor only shortly after Ryan had chilled his first Sunchild. Like the one-eyed warrior, he had cut a swath through the surprised muties by using his Colt Magnum Carry blaster sparingly, and mostly chilling his opponents with the knife he always carried with him. The old Emerson CQC-7 was a highly prized tactical folding knife, and the razor-sharp blade was maintained by the sec man in the same chisel-sharpened state as when he first acquired it from the armory. Somehow—and the facts were vague enough to be worrying to Raw’s baron if ever he heard them—the knife had found its way from a passing trader to the armory via the sec chief himself, with no questions asked or answers wanted.