Читать книгу Remember Tomorrow - James Axler - Страница 7

Strange and haunting visions filled Ryan Cawdor’s head. Trader loomed large, laughing at him, spittle running down his chin, eyes wild and fiery, calling him all kinds of a stupe for getting them into this position. Then Trader mutated into his dead brother Harvey, who was dripping blood and falling over as Ryan pummeled him with blows, screaming, “You as well?” Ryan’s twisted nephew Jabez laughed in the background before coming forward with a long sword grasped in his hands. Ryan was astounded to find that he had no weapons with which to defend himself.

Jabez yelled triumphantly, charging toward him, swinging the blade. Was that Dean in the background saying “It’ll soon be over, Dad”?

With a rebel yell, Jabez brought the blade down onto Ryan…

The one-eyed man sat bolt upright, yelling into the darkness. There were several things that made him aware it had been nothing but a nightmare: it was now dark and cold when moments ago it had been warm; he ached all over, feeling as though he had taken a trip down whitewater rapids without a boat; all the blood he could feel on his body was now dried, cracking on his skin as he moved; his head felt as though someone had been using it as a hammer.

Then it hit him. He was sitting upright, but not in a cave under tons of rock. He was breathing and still alive, and although it was dark all around him, as his eyes adjusted he could see that it was actually the dark of a moonless night, a few stars visible through a cloudy sky. It was also fireblasted cold, as he was suddenly aware of his breath misting in front of him.

Tentatively, testing for any breaks or sprains as he got to his feet and disentangled himself from the few rocks and the mounds of soil that were covering him, Ryan rose and took a long look around, trying to get his bearings. In this darkness, in a landscape that had been ground down into featureless blandness over the decades, it was a thankless task. Even though his eye had now adjusted to the gloom, he could see nothing that would mark out the territory as anything familiar.

As he looked around, he found it hard to work out how, exactly, he had ended up at this point. He could remember trying to dig out Mildred and J.B., and then some kind of quake in the caves. Somehow they had been caught on an earth-movement like a wave, thrown out of the cave system when it crested at the surface. At least, he had. What about the others?

Moving slowly, still testing the range of movement he had, sharp pains reminding him of the violence his body had encountered, Ryan began to look around. He was moving more easily with each step; aching limbs that were cramped as much as bruised started to respond; his circulation pumped stronger as he exerted himself.

Ryan tried to keep down the anxiety that was rising within him. As he circled the debris, he began to feel that he was alone and that the others were lost to him. The thought that fate could have separated them after all they had fought against was something too cruel to contemplate.

He heard a groan. Whirling, trying to locate where it emanated from, he saw a pile of rocks and debris begin to move, accompanied by more moans. Moving as swiftly as his still pain-deadened and cramping limbs would let him, Ryan half ran, half dragged himself to where the moans and movement were. Falling to his knees, he began to dig around the source of the moaning. He scooped away piles of earth and small stones, picking out larger lumps of rock. He had no idea who was underneath, or what part of them he was uncovering, until a foot came into view—a foot shod in a cowboy boot that glittered, even in this fallow light, at the toe.

“Krysty,” he whispered, relief flooding him. He burrowed frantically, uncovering her prone body. She moved against him as he reached her torso, feebly batting at him with weak arms, as though trying to ward off an attacker. It was simple to deflect these movements and keep uncovering her.

By the time he was able to take hold of her, she was semiconscious, muttering to herself. As Ryan tried to lift her free, he stumbled, his legs and arms giving way under the weight. It was all he could do not to drop back onto the rocks. Sweat spangling his brow and running in rivulets down his face, he braced himself, taking the faltering steps necessary to bring them beyond the area of rock debris.

As he placed her on softer earth, she opened her eyes. But they were still unseeing and she mumbled incoherently.

“Wait, wait here,” Ryan said hoarsely, the effort of uncovering and then carrying her having drained him. “I’m going to look for the others.”

Leaving her, he stumbled back toward the area of debris. Now, as the sun began to rise and cast the first pallid glow across the land, he could see that they had been forced out through the mouth of a pothole that was almost flat to the earth. It was a little like the one they had dived into when the storm had hit, and Ryan scanned the area, hoping that he would be able to recognize the landscape now there was some light.

It still seemed alien and unidentifiable.

No matter. The important thing now was to try to find the others—if they had been as lucky as Krysty and himself. He didn’t feel lucky as pain lanced through him, and his head felt as though it had swollen to several times its normal size. But at least he was alive. What of the others?

He began to plan a methodical search, using the light to finally ascertain the extent of the debris thrown up from the pothole. It extended in a radius of several hundred yards and, looking to where he had dragged himself out and where he had found Krysty, he could see that they had been flung some ways. The question was, where would the others have been thrown?

As the area lightened with the rising sun and he was able to get a clear view, Ryan felt both positive and depressed at the same time. Krysty and himself were alive, so chances were that the others also survived. The area proscribed by the arc of debris gave him a definite area in which to make a search. That was the positive part. By the same token, it would soon start to get hot, making searching hard. Krysty was still laid out and he wasn’t exactly triple fit right now. And why hadn’t the others made any sound to indicate they were still alive? Mebbe they were somewhere in the debris…but mebbe they’d bought the farm along the way.

He heard movement behind him and turned slowly to see Krysty hobbling toward him. Which was just as well, as his slow turn was supposed to have been quick, but his protesting muscles and tendons were failing to respond to his demands.

“Hey,” she said in a small voice almost as bruised as her body, “found anyone else yet?”

He shook his head. “Where to start?” he added, gesturing at the debris.

“Two pairs of hands are better than one, right? I’ll start over there—” she gestured a few hundred yards away “—and you start here. We’ll work around until we reach the other’s start point. Okay?”

“Good as any other plan.” He shrugged, watching her limp toward the point where she wanted to start digging, and realizing that she’d chosen a far-flung point to give her the time to psyche herself up for the search, pushing her tired and aching body as she walked.

Letting her go, Ryan bent his back toward his own task.

With two of them, the task seemed that much easier, despite the increment of heat that would make it impossible in a few hours. Heads down, not wanting to waste time looking up unless they heard a shout from the other, they both went about their task.

It was slow and tedious, but it did yield a result. Ryan heard Krysty call, her voice small but triumphant. He couldn’t make out the words, but he looked up to find her waving at him, gesturing urgently to the rubble at her feet.

Ryan began to move toward her, stumbling over the debris, his aching legs not as feeble as before, but still not carrying him as fast as he would wish. He careered over the rocks and soil until he reached the point where Krysty was now down on her haunches, slowly but purposefully moving earth and rock. Ryan could hear Krysty mumbling and he could hear another voice trying to answer, moaning in pain.

Falling to his knees, the one-eyed man began to dig around the voice, around the area where Krysty was already burrowing. Ignoring the sun beating down on his back, he moved earth, stone and rock until a form became discernible.

Within five minutes, Krysty and Ryan had managed to uncover Mildred. She was coated in a layer of dust and her clothes were ripped, with some signs of bleeding on her left leg, but otherwise it seemed to be shock more than anything that was keeping her down. They gave her water and she choked some of it down. Looking around with unfocused eyes, she tried to take in what had happened, squinting against the bright light, unable to discern at first that it was Ryan and Krysty who had uncovered her.

Stumbling between them, they carried her free of the debris and left her, imploring her to rest up as they resumed their search. But it was too much for Mildred to see them return to their digging while she was simply lying there. Forcing herself to her feet, she staggered over and joined Krysty as soon as she was able to keep her balance.

The sun moved farther into the sky, the Arkansas dust bowl getting hotter and more oppressive. All three of them sweated heavily, the salts in their dehydrated muscles cramping as they sifted their way through the rubble, working out from the center and clockwise. Finding Mildred so quickly had been an incredible stroke of luck, and one not readily repeated. It was a hard slog.

They had been digging for almost two hours, by the progress of the sun, when they made their next discovery. Or, rather, when they became aware of something stirring….

Mildred heard it first. Unable to waste breath on speaking, she tugged at Krysty’s arm. The titian-haired beauty ceased her own excavations as Mildred indicated where she had heard the noise. In the sudden silence, Krysty was able to divine that the noise was coming from only a short way away. It sounded like someone trying to burrow their way out. The two women exchanged glances, then made their way over to the source of the sound.

Coming upon the site, they could see that there was someone beneath the rubble who was struggling for release.

“Ryan!” Krysty yelled, her voice cracking from dehydration and tiredness. “Over here!”

Ryan looked up to see Krysty and Mildred standing over a pile of rubble that seemed to be moving of its own accord. He rushed across the rubble, his limbs stronger, feeling renewed with each step now that they had found another one of their company.

Krysty and Mildred were digging when Ryan arrived, moving rubble from on top of the moving body, desperately trying to free it. They scrabbled away the soil and rocks until a mane of white hair became visible, followed by a white, scarred face that was bruised and covered in blood and dust.

“Jak!” Ryan exclaimed, pulling the youth clear of the debris.

“Shit, thought was buying farm,” Jak muttered, coming to his feet. Despite the fact that he had been unconscious for some time and covered in rocks, the albino’s remarkable powers of recovery showed themselves as he shook himself. Despite the fact that he was aching all over, he still held himself upright and seemed less affected by their strange journey than those who had been moving around for some time.

“What happened? Where Doc and J.B.?” Jak asked tentatively, moving all his limbs, testing his muscles. Ryan filled him in briefly on both what he knew and what he had supposed.

“Start looking for others,” Jak said simply when Ryan had finished.

The albino joined Ryan on the far side of the ruins, while Krysty and Mildred resumed looking around the area where Jak had stirred.

The search continued for some time, with no further success. The sun grew high, the heat beat down and the search became harder because of the conditions, because of their weariness, and because it seemed to be so fruitless. The area of debris that was unturned grew smaller, and still no sign of anyone.

“Here!” Jak yelled suddenly. He beckoned the others toward him. Ryan was closest and as the others struggled toward Jak, Ryan could see something poking up from the rubble where the albino was standing. As he got nearer, he could see that it was the end of a black cane.

Doc’s sword stick.

As Ryan reached the spot, Jak was already on his knees, clearing away the debris on the body. Ryan fell to his knees when he was close enough and started to move the rubble, shifting soil and rocks methodically. When Mildred and Krysty reached them, they, too, fell to their knees and began to dig.

Doc wasn’t moving under the rubble—come to that, they had no way of knowing if he was actually under there or if it was merely his sword stick.

Clearing the rubble around the end of the stick, Mildred heaved a sigh of relief when she found that Doc’s fist was wrapped stubbornly around the silver lion’s-head. More rubble found his arm uncovered, while Jak had managed to unearth his head and shoulders. It took some time to clear all of the debris from around and over him, but eventually Doc was completely clear.

Mildred examined him as thoroughly as she could. He was breathing shallowly but regularly, and there seemed to be no bones broken. But he was unconscious. Opting to move him clear of the area, Ryan and Jak took him between them and carried him clear of the area. The movement stirred him and he began to speak…almost inaudibly, with no real coherence.

“…when shall we three meet…parting is such sweet—such sweet what, do I wonder? My dear, you look so sweet tonight…. I thought I would never see you again, sweet Lori…. Or is it Emily? Did either of you really exist, I wonder, or were you little more than the fevered imagining of those sweet, immortal moments before death finally claims its own? Can it be immortal if measured against death, I wonder? Ah, what a dilemma for any philosopher…a problem so simple a five-year-old could solve it. Someone, pray go and get me a five-year-old child before it drives me mad.”

Ryan was glad when they were able to put Doc down on the flat earth and he was able to return, with Jak, to the rubble and his search for J.B. Mildred and Krysty remained with Doc, trying to nurse him back to full consciousness.

“Ryan, think Doc okay?” Jak asked as they returned to their search.

Ryan shrugged. “Mebbe.”

Jak looked at Ryan’s grim visage, the fire in his ice-blue eye, and he knew that Ryan wouldn’t rest until the Armorer was found: Jak agreed with that, but was also worried about how long they could keep going out in this heat, with little in the way of water and supplies.

Jak looked up to the sky, squinting at the sun. “Past noon—soon be too hot work. Dust bowl keeps heat. No good to J.B. if wipe us out.”

Ryan drew a deep breath. “Yeah, you’re right. We’ll take the next two hundred yards, roughly, of debris, then rest up for a while. We’ll also need to work out what water and food we’ve got, see how long we can do this, though if we’re lucky we won’t have to hang around too long.”

“Yeah, mebbe,” Jak mused, noting that there was a note of doubt in the big man’s voice. Like Jak, Ryan was wondering if they would be able to find J.B. And like Jak, he was loathe to voice this doubt.

So they kept digging….

By the end of the day, as the darkness fell, there had still been no signs of the missing Armorer. There was still a vast area of uncovered debris to be raked, but they were sore and weary, muscles and bones protesting at the strain. Doc had been resting, his breathing still shallow and difficult from his problems prior to the cave-in, but the others had all bent their backs to the task. Using whatever scrub they could find, they built a fire and sat silently around it, eating from self-heats without once complaining about the taste. There was a gloomy, depressed aura around them.

“Think find him?” Jak said after a long silence, voicing the thought that the others had dared not.

Ryan looked across at the young man, the fire catching a reflection in his good eye, seeming to emphasize his mood. “We’ve got to. Can’t stop trying,” was all he said.

They mounted a watch through the night, taking it in turns to guard while the others caught some much-needed rest. Sleep came easily, as their bodies tried to recover from the rigors of the day. It was hard to rouse each other at the turn of the watch. But the violence of the earth movement had scared away any predators and there were no signs of the mutie dog pack that had caused them so many problems. Even the snufflings and shufflings of the small mammals that tried to eke a living out of this inhospitable terrain were few and far between.

Morning came, but the rising of the sun offered no release from their mood. Acknowledging how exhausted they all were, and that going full-tilt would benefit no one, Ryan organized a rota where they would divide up the remaining area. They would search in pairs, one on while the other rested. He excluded Doc, much to the old man’s initial annoyance. Although Doc’s breathing had improved, a turn in the sun would likely cause the old man severe problems as searching through of the rubble only stirred up more dust and dirt in the air.

And so the search continued. Grim, bitter, monotonous and depressing. The sun rose higher in the sky, burned down on their backs as they searched. There was no real shade, only that which they could construct with their coats and a few sticks taken from the surrounding scrub. The air was stifling. They were dehydrated, barely keeping their water levels up, striving to conserve the water they had left. On his off-time, Jak tried to search for any water holes that may be around for the wildlife. There had to be some sources of water for them to live in this harsh environment. But he drew a blank. Whatever source they had for their water was deep in the burrows, down where the water table existed, coming nowhere near the surface.

By the fall of the day, they were all beginning to give up hope. There was only a small area of the debris that hadn’t been combed; they had little in the way of supplies; and another day or two under the harsh Arkansas sun would fry them.

“We can’t stop,” Ryan said simply. “He’s got to be here somewhere. We were all pitched out here, so he must have been, too. We just haven’t found him.”

“But what are the chances of finding him alive now?” Mildred asked. “God alone knows I don’t want to think about this, Ryan, you know that. But it’s been two days. If he’s been buried and unconscious that long, under this sun….” She shrugged.

“We can’t give up now,” Ryan muttered tersely.

“I’m not saying we do. Just that we need to face the fact that we might not find him. And if we carry on looking too long, we’ll buy the farm ourselves,” Mildred countered.

Ryan’s face was grim. “You think I don’t know that? One more day, going through the last of the rocks. If he’s chilled, then we give him a decent burial, right?”

None could argue with that statement.

With the rising sun the next morning, they began again. Working once more in shifts, they searched the last area of debris. It was empty.

“Fireblast! What the fuck happened to him?” Ryan seethed with impotent rage. “He can’t have just vanished. Mebbe…mebbe he was thrown beyond us.”

“How could that have happened?” Krysty queried. “For Gaia’s sake, Ryan, look around you. Where else could he have been? There is nowhere else.”

Ryan slowly turned 360 degrees. Beyond the circumference of the debris there was nothing except flat dust bowl earth. Nowhere that the Armorer could be hidden, chilled or alive. The flat, dusty landscape seemed to mock him with its bland openness, hiding nothing and revealing nothing about where J.B. had gone.

“We’re here. All of us,” Ryan reiterated. “We got thrown out. J.B. must have been, too. He can’t have been left in there.”

“Ryan,” Krysty said softly, “it was a maze down there. It’s incredible that we all ended up in the same place. We could have been swept down any number of tunnels that didn’t immediately cave in. J.B. might still be down there.”

“I can’t leave it at that,” Ryan said with an irritated shake of his head. “We’ve got to search around here, just mebbe…I dunno, just mebbe…”

They divided into two parties, Doc joining Mildred and Jak, and they started to search the immediate area, moving out in a spiral to cover as much ground as possible.

It was a short, bitter search, fraught with frustration. All the while they walked under the burning sun, they knew it was useless. But it was something they had to do. They couldn’t rest until at least the token had been made. No matter how exhausted, no matter how dehydrated.

No matter how hopeless.

Eventually, they could search no more. They were low on supplies and water and they had to move on. Ryan acknowledged this when they came back together.

“J.B.’s gone,” he said simply. “Bought the farm. I guess we have to say that, now. We could stick around and keep looking, but where? As far as I can see, this fireblasted flatland is giving us nothing. It’s kept him down there, in a rock grave.”

No one else spoke. There was nothing to say. Ryan continued.

“Seems real weird having no body to bury, nothing to speak over, but I guess that shouldn’t stop me saying something. If he’s gone, then he deserves a send-off. I’ve known J.B. a long, long time. He seemed a strange kind of man when I first met him. I’d never met anyone who knew so much about the one thing and who was so intense about it. When I joined Trader, people talked about J.B. in a funny way. He didn’t have many enemies, but didn’t have many friends, either. He was a difficult man to get to know, but I did get to know him. And a better man I’ve yet to meet. Always at your back, always by your side. I’ll never meet anyone like him. That’s all….”

Ryan turned away. Strong emotions other than anger and fury were things that you didn’t let show. You couldn’t afford them, at least not outside of some kind of privacy. But losing J.B. was a time when he could let it show, just for a moment. Truth was, Ryan Cawdor had just lost a part of himself, a friend and an ally. And it pained him.

His back still to them, Ryan heard them all say something about the Armorer. Krysty and Jak were to the point: a good comrade lost. Mildred had a little more to say. J.B. had been the closest person to her since her revival from cryogenic suspension and to lose him was devastating. She whispered a few words, and then Doc had his turn. He, predictably, rambled on. He had good things to say, but a way of making them last forever. Ryan wanted to stop him, say they had to start moving on right now. But he owed the old man his right to say goodbye.

Finally, Doc petered out and Ryan turned to them.

“Okay. We’ve done what we had to do. Now we need to get the hell out of here. There’s nothing for us around here and it’s been a while, so I figure we should give this up as lost and head back to the redoubt. Mebbe we can jump to somewhere better than this.”

Mildred furrowed her brow, eyeing him up. “You sure about this, Ryan? We haven’t rested well since we were thrown out of the caves and we’re dehydrated. Are you sure we should jump?”

“The chances of finding a ville quickly are slim, Mildred,” Ryan replied. “And we can get some water at the redoubt. The water recycling was working okay a few day ago, right? We’ve jumped in worse states than this. It’s our best option.”

“You’re the boss,” Mildred replied cautiously. She wasn’t too sure of the wisdom involved. They had left the redoubt partly because they were worried about the air system, which cut out the alternative of resting up a night before jumping. How would Doc and Jak take a jump, given that they were the ones who suffered the most afterward?

Having said that, they had no idea how long it would take them to get to the nearest ville and it was obvious that Ryan was determined to leave the dust bowl behind. He had no intention of staying in the place that had claimed the life of his best friend. And she couldn’t, in all truth, disagree with that notion.

And so, taking their position from the time and placement of the sun, they struck out for the redoubt.

It was another grim day. The heat was oppressive. Each step seemed like an effort and in many ways it didn’t seem to matter if they ever reached their goal. They had lost one of their number and things would never be the same. Others had come and gone, but J.B. was different. And on a practical level, it meant that they had lost their ammo supplies, grens and plas ex. It didn’t matter right now, but it may wherever they landed.

The light was failing when they reached the area housing the redoubt. The fact that it had taken them so little time to reach the entrance was an indication of how far the earth wave in the tunnel had carried them.

It was quiet around the area and there was no sign of any life at all. It seemed somehow appropriate. Ryan found the hidden keypad, still recessed despite the rigors that had stripped the landscape, and tapped in the access code. The door groaned open.

They wearily entered the redoubt and made their way down the tunnel. There was nothing to make them keep alert. It was empty, just like when they arrived. Deserted for decades and likely to be deserted for an equal length of time once they were gone.

Which was why it struck Jak so hard. Something just out of the corner of his eye didn’t seem right. He looked again.

“Ryan, wait,” he said sharply. “Look.”

Ryan’s eye followed the direction Jak indicated. There, on the floor and partially up the wall, was a smear of blood with a small pool gathered beneath.

It was still wet.

“Shit! Someone else?” Ryan spun. There had been no sign of anyone approaching the redoubt from the outside and the smear was too fresh to have been left by the companions a few days before—even assuming that they had forgotten about it.

Ryan slipped the Steyr from his shoulder, gripping it in one hand while he drew the Sig Sauer and checked its status: fully loaded.

“Triple red, people,” he breathed. “We’ve got company.”

The others didn’t need telling. Already, they had blasters in hand and had snapped out of their torpor. It was a mystery how someone else came to be in the redoubt, but a mystery that was completely unimportant right now. All that mattered was locating the enemy before the enemy located them.

“Keep together—line out and stay hard,” Ryan whispered.

Stringing out in a line, with Jak taking J.B.’s usual point position, they began to make their way down into the lower levels of the redoubt. There was no sound to indicate where the intruders might be and no other signs of their presence. They cleared each room lining the corridor before progressing onward.

It was only when they reached a junction that things went haywire.

Ryan was first across, checking the corridor on the left. He got no further than the junction before blasterfire exploded out of nowhere. His momentum was carrying him forward into the firing range and it took all his strength to reverse his center of balance and pull back, large-caliber rounds pitting the walls of the corridor.

Mildred returned fire with a few shots squeezed from her ZKR.

“Incoming,” Jak yelled, snapping off a couple of shells from his .357 Magnum Colt Python as rifle fire started to pepper them from behind.

“How the fuck—” Ryan began, before realizing he was wasting breath. How had they managed to get behind the companions when they had checked all the rooms along the way? The only way would have been if they used the air-con shafts, which meant that whoever they were up against had a working knowledge of the redoubt.

Those firing on them from behind were keeping well in cover and return fire was pointless. They couldn’t turn left or right, in case they walked into a hail of fire. Their only chance was to head straight across and reach the end of the corridor, where it doglegged to the right. It was about fifty yards and they’d have to do it in shifts.

Jak kept the rear covered, while Ryan and Doc took the first run. On a count of three they flung themselves across the junction, Ryan firing to his left with the Sig Sauer while Doc was ready to pepper any fire from the right with the shot chamber on his LeMat. There was none, but to take that corridor, which ran for over a hundred yards exposed, would have left them open to fire from the rear.

When Ryan and Doc were over, Mildred and Krysty followed, with Jak between them, moving backward rapidly.

Once across, Ryan headed rapidly for the dogleg while the others covered the rear from follow-up attacks. The one-eyed man skidded to a halt as the corridor turned and recced around the corner, using the Steyr to draw any fire before risking a glance.

It was clear. He beckoned to the others and they followed.

They ran down the dogleg to the next level of the redoubt, only to find that their way was blocked by a closed sec door.

“Fuck it, they must know the codes to get that down,” Ryan breathed. “This door was up when we left.”

“Who the hell are these people?” Mildred asked, not really expecting an answer.

“People who know what they’re doing, my good woman,” Doc murmured. “You do realize that, with a minimum of firing and without showing themselves at all, they’ve forced us into a corner. And too damned easily.”

“You’re right, Doc. We’ve been triple stupe and let them run the play,” Ryan agreed. “Minds too busy elsewhere to get it together.”

“No time for recriminations, lover,” Krysty told him. “We’ve got to get ourselves out of this before we have the luxury to do that.”

“Yeah, but how? We don’t know how many of them there are or where they’re coming from. We’ve got our backs to a wall that could lift at any moment and we can’t lift it unless we want to expose ourselves.”

Ryan thought fast. There were two rooms on this leg of the corridor, both open and empty. To put themselves in one would give them cover on three sides, but would also imprison them.

Right now, cover was important. Even though he had a suspicion that this was what the enemy—whoever it was—had been directing him to, he still indicated that they should enter one of the rooms.

Jak kept watch while they built a barricade. His instincts were sharp, and were needed more than ever.

“I don’t get it,” Krysty said as they worked, the imminent danger echoed in the way her hair clung to her head and shoulders. “Why didn’t they take us out when they had the chance? Why are they driving us into this?”

“Perhaps, my dear, they wish to take us alive,” Doc mused. “This would be the best way. Force us here and then sit it out until we cannot go on.”

“But why wouldn’t they figure we’d come out blasting? Don’t they think we’d risk buying the farm?”

Doc allowed himself a sad smile. “We might, but that doesn’t increase their risk, does it? If we get chilled, we get chilled. This is, however, their best way of taking us alive with a minimum risk to themselves.”

“They’re here,” Jak said simply, pulling back into cover.

The companions took cover, blasters ready. Shapes flitted past the doorway to take positions on the far side and the companions fired. The roar of blasterfire and the stench of cordite was broken only by the screams of those they hit. From around the door, fire rained in on them. The barricade began to crumble.

“Have to take them head on,” Ryan yelled. “Otherwise we’ll be chilled meat anyway.”

They reloaded, ignoring the hail of fire around them as it ripped at their makeshift barricade and pit the walls with gaping holes of gouged-out concrete. They readied themselves for the attack. It was an almost suicidal charge, but they didn’t have the stomach to sit it out and wait to buy the farm.

“Ready?” Ryan asked. He was answered by gestures of assent.

One way or the other, it looked as though they were ready to join J.B., wherever the hell he may be.