Remember Tomorrow (11 page)

Xander laughed, short and explosive. “You old bastard, always trying to wind me up.”

“What d’you mean, ‘trying’?” the old man replied. “Anyway, I’m here now.” He stopped short when he saw J.B. He examined him with a quizzical eye. “So this is him, is it?” he queried softly.

“Could be,” Xander replied in equally soft tones. “Let’s see what he’s got.”

J.B. was angered by the way they talked about him as though he were a pack horse, as though he wasn’t even there. But he kept it caged up. There was nothing he could do at this stage except keep calm and see what they expected of him.

Budd beckoned to the Armorer. “This way,” he said simply.

Casting a glance at Xander, Grant and their accompanying sec men, J.B. followed the old man as he opened the double doors leading into one side of the building.

J.B. let out a low whistle. It was the only sign he gave of being impressed, but it was enough. And there was certainly something to be impressed by. This was the main blaster armory for the ville, presumably to arm the sec force. There were crates of AK-47s—confirming J.B.’s suspicions—and also racks of SMGs, mostly Uzi and Heckler & Kochs, as well as a variety of automatic and semiautomatic pistols, old revolvers that were both Colt and Smith & Wesson of twentieth-or even nineteenth-century vintage. There were crates of ammo for all of them and there were even quantities of less-common weapons, such as Thompson SMGs—J.B. could recall learning somewhere that these had an early twentieth-century vogue—and derringer pistols of an earlier vintage. There was also a small crate of Vortak precision pistols, which ran on a gas system and struck some kind of memory in the Armorer that he couldn’t pin down.

J.B. walked around, naming each blaster as he handled it, checking the condition and rooting through the ammo.

“What else you got?” he asked. He’d figured it out. If he was this J. B. Dix guy they assumed him to be, then he would know all this shit. And to his surprise, he did. Seeing the weapons triggered memories and familiar feelings, and he found that he knew about everything he saw. Dark night, mebbe he actually was who they said.

Budd led J.B. from the room and across the hall. While Xander and Grant watched, J.B. checked the heavier antipersonnel and antitank rocket launchers, mortars and bazookas that Xander’s Armorer had amassed. He figured that this old guy Budd knew his business, as they were a good selection and were well-maintained. There was enough ordnance here to knock out a ville twice the size of Duma.

And the old man wasn’t finished yet. He led J.B. up to the second story. Up here were supplies of plas ex, old gelignite kept in stabilizing conditions and grens of all kinds: shrapnel, concussion and gas. J.B. detailed all their effects, now aware that he was being tested in some way. It came back to him easily.

He and Budd walked back down to the hall, where Xander and Grant were waiting.

“Tell you something,” the old man said, before Xander even had a chance to ask, “if he isn’t the man your father used to speak of, then he sure as hell has spent a long time learning how to copy him. The looks fit and he told me a couple of things about some of these blasters that even I didn’t know.”

“So you are J. B. Dix,” Xander said simply.

“Guess I must be, if you all reckon. Still can’t remember much about what happened to me before a few days back, but then again I didn’t know I remembered that much about ordnance until I was faced with it. So I guess I’ll say, yeah, I am.”

Xander nodded slowly. “Okay, but if you are J. B. Dix, you and Ryan Cawdor—the one-eyed man—were virtually joined at the hip. When you left Trader, you were both together. He’d be as much of an asset to me as you are.”

J.B. wasn’t sure he liked the sound of that, but knew he was in no position to call the shots. “Look,” he said slowly, “I don’t know when I last saw this Ryan Cawdor. In fact, I don’t remember him at all right now. I may have been with him when this happened or I may not have seen him for years. Hell, he could have bought the farm, for all I know.” He shrugged. “It’s not my problem, is it?”

Xander eyed him, trying to work out if he was holding back. “Listen,” the baron said finally, “I’ll cut you a deal. I cut deals, that’s what I do. They’re hard, but I always abide by them. And I expect the other side to do the same, right?”

J.B. nodded.

Xander continued. “I want Duma to be the biggest ville in these lands. I get the best convoys through here and we have good things, make a lot of jack. That’s good for me and it’s good for everyone here. And that’s also good for me, right? The happier everyone is, the easier it is to be baron and the less I have some chickenshit after my ass. But to keep that steady, I need the best sec force and the best armory. Budd is good, but he’s getting old and this is a big place. It takes more than one to run it and I want you to take over from him, run it with him till he chills—” the baron didn’t see, or ignored, the expression of anger and outrage on the old man’s face “—then run it yourself with your own, hand-picked underlings. It’s good jack, but you do it right or I’ll have you hung out to dry.”

J.B. paused. It was an offer he couldn’t turn down. It sounded good and he knew he wasn’t likely to fuck up and bring down Xander’s wrath on himself. But he still had an underlying feeling that he’d like to have seen more of Duma before blindly accepting. All he knew was the secure block, the armory and what Grant and Xander had told him. How much of that was true?

Shit, what else could he do?

“Okay, I’ll take it.”

Ryan Cawdor felt the slug burn as it ripped through the scant protection offered by his jacket and shirt. The burn was like ice, cold and numbing rather than hot as the metal pierced the upper layers of skin. It was only in that split second after, when the nerve endings were severed by the brutal trajectory, that he felt the pain begin to bite.

It hurt. But his adrenaline was pumping hard and the one-eyed warrior was focused on staying alive. There would be time to worry about the wound to his upper arm later…or else it would be too late to care, as he would have been chilled in battle. All that mattered now was forging forward, driving the enemy back. He didn’t even feel the blood as it trickled down his sleeve, soaking the cloth and dripping onto the hand that clutched the Sig Sauer, slippery in his palm.

Instead, Ryan yelled defiance and kept firing, running forward, driving the enemy back.

The companions had no idea who had been able to gain entry to the redoubt or where they had come from. They only knew that in their weariness and their grieving for the lost J.B., they had allowed themselves to be run like rats in a maze, pushed into this corner where they had nothing to do except come out fighting or curl up and wait to be chilled.

No way that was going to happen.

The barricade they had built for themselves in the redoubt office was flimsy and wouldn’t last long against any kind of concerted attack. They knew that they had enemies on either side of the doorway, waiting for them to put their heads above the battlements and pick them off.

Or mebbe—just mebbe—whoever had run them to ground here wanted to keep them alive. Otherwise why not pick them off when they were exposed in the corridor? Why pen them in if not as a prelude to an offer of surrender?

If there was to be any hesitancy about chilling them, then it gave them a slender advantage. Because they didn’t care who bought the farm if they got in the way.

Without J.B., the companions had little in the way of spare ammo apart from what they carried with them and no plas ex or grens of their own to augment their blasters. They would have to blast their way out rather then prepare the way by using explosives. They could sit and wait, but how long would that give them? They had few supplies and they couldn’t afford to rest. Time was a precious commodity at best; now, it was at a premium.

Tactics were simple because there was no alternative. They had to do the unexpected. Instead of sitting there and waiting for the end, they had to come out firing. The hope was to take the enemy off guard, to hit them when they were least expecting it.

It was a risky stratagem, to say the least, but the only one that was open to the companions.

Knowing that there were groups of the enemy on each side of the doorway and that they were shooting occasionally into the room, the companions timed the frequency of the shots. They were desultory, designed to pin down rather than to damage. There was at least half a minute between each shot. In this enclosed and confined space, a half minute was a long time.

To the right of the door, the enemy group would be back up against the closed sec door. The companions hadn’t heard it open, so it made that group a sitting target with nowhere to run. To the left, the enemy would be able to flee up the corridor and around the dogleg bend. This made the group on the right the more dangerous, backed into a corner and literally fighting for their lives.

Ryan whispered his plans to the others, Jak chipping in ideas. It was simple in essence and relied on speed and the ability to keep going, even if caught by blasterfire. The first they could guarantee, the second was down to the fates.

The only thing to do would be to break cover between the containing fire laid down by the enemy. They would then have a few seconds to make the space between the barricade and the doorway, coming out firing. Ryan would opt for his Sig Sauer, as this was a battle for handblasters.

Ryan and Jak would make the initial break. They were faster than any of the others and Ryan felt compelled to lead by example. Jak would veer to the right of the doorway, taking out the enemy backed against the sec door, while Ryan sought to drive back those who could escape up the corridor. Doc would be third out, using the shot chamber of the LeMat to deal with the group gathered by the sec door, while Mildred and Krysty would join Ryan. If not for the fact that his erratic pace couldn’t be relied upon, Doc would have been in the vanguard with Ryan. There would be no time for the enemy to tap in the sec-door code and at such close quarters the spread of the shot would be just enough to ensure maximum damage to the group, no matter how many it constituted.

Plan set, it was left only to count down to action. When they were primed, Ryan and Jak waited for a shot from the doorway, then counted to five together. Their eyes met, and they launched themselves from behind the barricade.

It took six or seven seconds to reach the door from the barricade. Enough time for another shot to be loosed from the doorway, catching the one-eyed warrior on the inside of the arm, and enough time for an anxious shout to be given from the startled shooter.

A sudden barrage of shots echoed loudly in the corridor, the space within the enclosed room suddenly alive with hot lead and steel as the slugs whined in the air. Ryan and Jak ignored them and attained the doorway. It was too narrow for both to jump through at once, and Jak was there with an edge of speed. He propelled himself through, firing from his Colt Python as he jackknifed in the air, unthinking of any danger. He saw one man’s startled face as the powerful blaster ripped a hole in his chest cavity, the bone splinters spreading through his internal organs, joining the waves of pressure caused by the slug pulping his insides. He was chilled long before he fell.

As Jak took the airspace, Ryan opted for the floor. Throwing himself across the concrete, ignoring the jarring pain in his shoulder as he hit, ignoring even more the friction that ripped his clothes and took off the top layer of skin as he slid sideways. He remained focused, the adrenaline pumping through him seeming to slow down time, allowing him to think clearly and concisely, picking his targets.

There were four men and one woman, all with rifles. They had been sent to snipe and contain, obviously. They weren’t close-quarters fighters. Two of them stood openmouthed, momentarily frozen in shock by the sudden appearance of the two companions. Two of them had already begun to turn tail and run. But the woman raised her rifle, pulling back the bolt on the ancient blaster, ready to drill another—perhaps more lethal—hole in Ryan.

She was first. Had to be. Ryan sighted her with the Sig Sauer, aiming high to get her chest or face. A gut shot wouldn’t stop her firing, whereas the chest or face would take her out immediately. But bumping across the corridor floor, there was no guarantee that the shot would be true. He had to rely on his instincts and just hope. He squeezed the trigger rapidly, feeling the recoil of the blaster drive his already aching shoulder into the concrete just a little harder.

His instinct was true as was his aim. As she raised the rifle to her right eye to sight in, a neat red hole was drilled in the center of her forehead, causing her to look surprised. She dropped the rifle before crumpling neatly to the floor.

Ryan saw this as he skidded into the far wall of the corridor, cursing as the impact on his already damaged shoulder temporarily numbed his fingers, causing the Sig Sauer to slip and leaving him temporarily defenseless.

He had no need to worry. Mildred and Krysty were already out into the corridor, Mildred snapping off shots from her Czech-made ZKR that took down the two runners, catching one in the lower back and the other in the right thigh. Meanwhile, Krysty let loose with her Smith & Wesson, picking off two startled marksmen who were slowly starting to react and raise their rifles. Too slowly. One was driven off his feet by a short-range shot that hit him in the chest, while the other found that the pain of having his groin and lower abdomen pierced by a .38 caliber shell was too distracting to allow him to sight and fire. He screamed in a high-pitched, wailing tone as the rifle clattered to the floor and he sank to his knees, his hands clutching uselessly, trying to staunch the flow of blood.

Neither woman gave much thought to guarding their backs. They knew they didn’t have to worry.

Jak had taken out one of the enemy, but that left others. And the manner in which the albino cannoned against the far wall meant that he was momentarily out of the game. He was, in theory, defenseless: but only in theory, for he knew that Doc would be on his tail, cleaning up after the initial assault.

Doc had been physically more frail than usual since the rockfall in the tunnels had caused him respiratory problems, and the subsequent search for J.B. had given him little time to recover. He was an old man in many ways and needed more time for recovery than the others. That was something circumstances had refused to allow him. But Doc had something else, an inner strength that was greater than many realized. The physical and psychological traumas he had experienced in his life could only have been borne by someone who had vast reserves of inner steel. It was something that he drew on now, when it was most needed.

Pushing his limbs even though they ached, even though his lungs felt they were about to explode and his blood pressure seemed set to pump his lifeblood so hard that it would burst through his skin, Doc was on the tail of Ryan and Jak like a terrier after a rabbit. He was totally focused on his task and nothing would deflect him from it.

As Jak sailed through the air, taking the enemy by surprise and taking out one of them, Doc was at his heels. The old man crossed the floor in seconds and stepped out into the corridor, wheeling round to face the sec door and bracing himself as he did so. There was a matter of yards between himself and the four people gathered by the barrier. One of them had been hit by Jak’s shot and was collapsing into a heap of blood and ruptured flesh on the floor. The other three were stunned. Then one of them—a woman dressed in rags—whirled to tap a code into the sec door. Who knew what lay on the other side—more marksmen or just a means of escape?

It didn’t matter. They could not be allowed to trigger the sec door or to recover enough to fire on Jak, who was now sliding down the far corridor wall, already rolling to come up in a combat stance.

Doc leveled the LeMat, shifting his aim so that it was on a line bisecting the two stunned marksmen and the moving woman.

The shot charge from the ancient percussion pistol was so loud within the confined space as to almost create a cone of silence as the sound spread out. Smoke filled the air, catching on the breath and searing the lungs.

The three marksmen had no chance. The shot spread out over a couple of yards, lethal pellets of hot metal propelled at enormous force, flaying at anything soft that may be in its path. Something soft such as human flesh.

The three enemy marksmen were cut down before they had a chance to react, the pellets puckering at their skin before tearing into flesh and shattering bone, gouging into eyes and causing the balls to pop, spilling mucous liquid down faces already smeared in gore.

It was over in a second. By the time Jak was in combat stance, ready to fire again, the three remaining enemy were neutralized with extreme prejudice.

Both Doc and Jak took this in within a fraction of a second and turned to face the retreating enemy on the other side.

The two runners cut down by Mildred were still alive. The man with the thigh wound was dragging himself toward the dogleg, while the man hit in the spine was mewing pitifully on the concrete floor, trying to pull himself forward. It would almost have been kinder to chill him with a second shot, but Mildred and Krysty were occupied by another problem.

Now that all the companions were out in the corridor, there was little cover for them—a few tunnel buttresses to cover behind, but that was all—and they were open to attack.

Around the bend of the corridor, enemy shooters were beginning to fire. Any thoughts they may have had about trying to take the companions alive were now dismissed as they saw their compatriots cut down. And they had more than ancient rifles with which to fight.

The snipers had been sent in purely to contain. These fighters had no such restraints. There was more than one, perhaps as many as half a dozen; it was impossible to tell. All that was known for sure was that they were armed with SMGs and were using them to strike back. The harsh, guttural chatter of a Heckler & Koch MP-5 was punctuated by the high-pitched chop of an Uzi. Bullets hit the walls and ceiling of the corridor. Chips of concrete and little clouds of dust were flung out by the impacts, ricocheting around the companions. The enemy blasters were firing blind, but there was a very good chance, with that volume of fire, that they would score some decisive hits.

“Cover, don’t return unless you get a good sight,” Ryan yelled, diving for the scant cover of a tunnel buttress, ignoring the protest of his skinned and aching shoulder and the burning in his arm. He wiped the blood from his palm, slicking it down the leg of his pants. His hand was still slippery, so he holstered the Sig Sauer and unslung the Steyr from his good shoulder. He sighted on the bend, hoping to get a good look at the enemy.

If they were anything like the ones they had chilled, the enemy were an inbred-looking bunch, ugly bastards with an attitude to match, but not too quick on the uptake. Scant consolation when they had rapid-fire SMGs as blasters, unknown amounts of ammo and better cover. The companions had made some progress, but not enough. In fact, they may have done nothing more than dig themselves a deeper hole.