Holding the LAPA at the ready, he dropped to his knees behind a fallen tree, steadying his breathing, wiping rain from his forehead. If he'd grabbed one of the laser rifles with the night-sights he'd have been in better shape.
He knelt and waited. The Trader said that a man who cried over spilled milk got blinded by his tears.
By now Krysty would be back at the camp. The fire would have been stamped out and most of the party would be inside War Wag One, manning the entrances and gun-ports. There would be four outside, covering each compass point, watching for the attackers, ready to give him covering fire. If he made it back.
Fifty-five gifts of instant leaden mortality for the group of hostiles coming toward him with three extra sticks inside his coat, ready to slot in.
If they were muties with dark sight, he would be in the greatest danger. Then it wouldn't matter much if they were armed with flintlock muskets; he'd still be in a load of trouble. That thought made him tuck the weighted white silk scarf out of sight under the coat. He hunched and waited.
The lightning hit a tree less than a hundred paces away from him. He flinched, closing his eye against the instant blindness. The brutal thunder enveloped him, numbing his senses. He licked his lips, tasting the harsh, metallic flavor of ozone. If the attackers had been close enough, they could have taken him like a light-dazed rabbit.
"Scorch it to hell!" he cursed. Rubbing furiously at his right eye, seeing only a crimson mist, he blinked again and again. His head was lowered against the driving rain as he desperately fought to clear his vision.
He peered cautiously around the bole of the tumbled tree.
And saw them.
"Six. Seven," he muttered. All wearing the black waterproof slickers favored by the sec men from Mocsin. Hooded. High black boots. Oddly, not one of them was carrying a weapon at the ready, though he could make out rifles slung across the shoulders of some of them. It looked as if two of them were wounded, leaning on the arms of others.
They seemed more like refugees than a raiding party.
Either way, Ryan was going to wipe them from the face of this place of nukeshit and soul death called Earth. He set the LAPA on automatic and readied himself, bracing for the kick of the gun. At a range now of less than forty paces, he could take them all out in one savage raking burst of fire.
More thunder and lightning issued from a swirling sky that now glowed red in the west. Ryan waited, picking the moment when all of the enemy would be out in the open at once.
At thirty paces the sec men stopped and the leading figure turned around, pointing toward where Ryan waited. He tensed, even though he knew they couldn't possibly make him out in that weather and light. The pointman turned back, throwing off the shiny black hood. Another slash of silver lightning showed Ryan the face. And the hair.
Green hair.
"Hunaker! Hun, over here!"
The woman stared through the rain, mouth sagging with surprise. "Ryan? Ryan, you old bastard! Ryan!"
She ran toward him, then stopped and stared at him, and to their mutual embarrassment, she began to weep.
Chapter Twelve
Dawn was about an hour away.
The rain had stopped and the electrical storm had passed, grumbling its way to the south of them, leaving a quiet night. All the new arrivals had been fed and found bunks in the war wag.
Only J. B. Dix remained awake, talking to Ryan, telling him what had finally gone down in Mocsin. Around them, in the slumbering forest, the sentries still patrolled. They would all be on the move by first light.
J.B.'s report was characteristically terse.
"Convoy blew, knocked us all to hell and back. Sam an' Hun was laid out colder than a ten-year winter. I got my shoulder bruised some. Figured it was broke, but it's not. Girls came around and we got out. Koll found the old man, Doc. Gotten scrambled brains, Ryan. I don't know about him at all." J.B. stopped and shook his head, the glowing embers of the dying fire glinting off the steel-rimmed glasses. In the half light, his face looked more sallow and pinched than ever.
"Where d'you pick up Charlie and the guy they was huntin'? Kurt? He looks near dead, Kurt."
"Him and the Trader both. I looked in on him. Can't be more than days now, Ryan."
"Yeah."
"Fishmouth Charlie and Kurt was on the edge of Mocsin. She was near carrying him. We stopped with them to draw breath. Kurt was mumbling about when he was a blaster with McCandless up in the Darks. Claimed he knew the way to find the fogs. Said there was a big, big secret up there. A Redoubt, he called it. Figured we'd bring him. We liberated these clothes from some of Strasser's killers. There's been a small fight. Few bodies around."
Ryan guessed from J.B.'s taciturn description that it had probably been a desperate battle, but there was no point in pressing J.B. for that kind of detail. It was the results that mattered to the weapons master, not how they were obtained.
"I figured you'd gone this way," Dix continued. "Strasser's bound to come after us. He went ape-crazy. Saw him twice but I couldn't get a clear shot at him. I think our bombs fired the whole town. A rising wind did the rest. I looked back and Mocsin was most gone."
"You made good time," Ryan said. "Another few hours and we'd have been gone and in the hills. You'd never have caught us."
"Rock and a hard place, my boy," Dix said cheerlessly. "Managed to beg a couple of buggies from some sec men who didn't need them anymore. Ran out of gas three, four hours ago. Been on foot since then. Had to be the Darks."
"Yeah," Ryan replied with a nod. "It's the Darks."
They sat in silence for some minutes. J.B. had retrieved one of his favorite thin cheroots from his locker in War Wag One and reclined on the cool earth, gazing into the smoldering coals of the fire.
Ryan broke the silence. "Strasser will guess it's the Darks."
"He can't have much of a force left," Dix muttered. "Either he catches us real soon, or he doesn't catch us at all."
"I'll rouse everyone. They can catch up on missing sleep over next day or so, if we keep out of trouble. I'll get 'em out and start the show."
The sky was noticeably lighter to the south and east, but it was streaked with dark, oily smoke that showed up against the red tinge of dawn. Something big was burning out of control. That would be Mocsin.
Behind him, Ryan heard the familiar noises of the war wag coming to life. Everyone knew his task and his place. Inside the vehicle there would be little talk, beyond the routine checks of switches and contacts. It was something that J.B. had introduced to the Trader, stressing the importance of everyone knowing not only his own duties, but the jobs of at least two other members of the crew. And time and again that insistence had saved all their lives.
Standing outside the vehicle, Ryan knew precisely where they were all positioned and what they would be doing. Ches in the driver's seat, eyes ranging over the dials, automatically checking fuel, pressures and temperatures. O'Mara in the MG blister, dry-firing the piece, making sure of the ammunition. Even Loz would be busy, stacking away all the pots and pans, seeing that in the heat of a fight there would be no cooking knives or cleavers flying around inside the armored cabin.
And the Trader?
Normally he would be at the helm, here and everywhere. A gruff question perhaps, and a firm hand on a shoulder. His eyes flicking all about, giving a word of praise or a word of criticism. But now he was lying on his bunk, asleep from the drugs Krysty had given him. It was the first time in all the years that Ryan had known him that the Trader had agreed to take any medication. Which said a lot about his condition.
The out-ranging guards had fallen back from their perimeter and had been joined by a man and woman from the war wag. Each of them stood watch at a corner of the huge combat vehicle, scanning the blank walls of the forest all around them.