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Authors: James Axler

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Chapter Twenty-Seven

“Till!” Cody Turnbull shouted. “Hold on!” Though he couldn’t see a reason on Earth why the eager young officer
should
hold on.

Tillman Owens began to swing up his handblaster.

Two shots roared out. The flashes came from Cody’s right. As the young officer spun down, still clutching his blaster, Cody spun to see Lieutenant Peters standing with a look of satisfaction on his flamboyantly mustached face, and a line of blue smoke drooling upward from the muzzle of his handblaster.

“What have we done?” Cody could only ask weakly.

Phineas McCormac rolled into amiably ambling motion. He tugged at the derringer in Jessie Rae’s hand. She clung to it a moment, then let go.

“Convenient,” the baron and nominal colonel said conversationally as he walked toward the fallen lieutenant. Owens was lying on his chest with his face turned to his right and a look of horror still in his wide-open eyes. A pool of blood spread around him.

Grunting with effort, McCormac hunkered down at Owens’s left side. His left hand was down by his hip, fingers up. Gently McCormac pressed the derringer into his palm and folded his unresisting fingers over its small curved grip.

“Here’s how it happened, you see,” he said, placing his hands on his thighs to aid in the considerable project of heaving his bulk back aloft. “Maddened by his general’s inactivity, the gallant young Lieutenant Owens snapped. He assassinated Baron Al with a hideout blaster, then tried to shoot his way clear before being felled by the heroic Lieutenant Peters.”

He turned a sanctimonious smile to Cody Turnbull, who had begun to tremble with reaction.

“Or should I say,
Captain
Peters?” the fat baron said. “How can you do anything less for the avenger of our noble, if toward the end tragically misguided, commander in chief, General Turnbull.”

Jessie Rae moved to stand smiling beside the presumptively promoted Peters. He slid his left arm around her narrow waist. She rested her golden head on his shoulder.

Outrage erupted from Turnbull. “What’s going on here? This is outrageous. I can’t—”

“And then again,” McCormac said with a shrug, “we can always revise history again. On the fly, as it were.”

He turned, holding a slim Colt blaster in his hand. The weapon was leveled at Turnbull’s lean gut.

“In the new version,” McCormac said, still smoothly smiling, “Colonel Turnbull becomes the cowardly assassin of his beloved commanding officer, and young Owens the hero who died trying to stop him. Does that version of events appeal to you more, Colonel?”

Cody turned an accusing glare on the true object of his wrath. “You mean you’d go along with replacing me again,” he told Jessie Rae, “the way you replaced me with
him?

“Oh, I didn’t replace you with anybody, Cody honey,” Jessie Rae said. “Randy’s been my man all along.”

“Then what about your promise—” Cody stopped dead. He realized there was no way he could finish that sentence.

She laughed. It was venomous music.

“You’re being offered a sweetheart of a deal, Cody Turnbull,” she said. “Swallow your pride and your principles—if you still pretend to have any—and accept a role as figurehead commander in chief of the Alliance Army. Or—” she shrugged “—be dead. It seems a pretty straightforward choice to me, but then again I’m only a woman. Weak-willed and simpleminded.”

It was as if Cody deflated. His shoulders sagged forward. The military starch left his spine. His bony chin sunk toward his collarbone.

This is how it feels,
he thought,
to have all your pride drain out of you at once.

He sighed. Then straightening, he pulled back his shoulders and raised his head.

“What are my first orders to be, then, since I gather you’re the ruling junta?”

Asaro looked to McCormac. The portly colonel nodded in turn to Jessie Rae.

“What that fat fool Al should have ordered long ago. The whole army up and on the march.”

Cody nodded. “To bring the Protectors to battle and destroy them.”

Her laugh was shrill. “Of course not. That can wait! The treasure first, you fool.

“Once it’s in our hands, we’ll have no trouble crushing Kylie and his pathetic Grand Army—then conquering the whole wretched Association. And maybe just getting rid of that bitch sister of mine once and for all.”

* * *

S
HOTS
MOANED
OVER
Ryan’s head. He held his SIG-Sauer up, gritting his teeth against the agony pounding in his wounded shoulder. He was a decent shot left-handed, not the ace he was with the right, and the P-226’s 9 mm projectiles didn’t have much punch at longer ranges.

He saw another rider go down, without the accompanying noise of a shot from his side, now spread out and spread-eagled in the grass. The new kid’s steady, all right, he thought with approval.

The Uplander cavalry—sec men—were pretty hard-core. They’d taken losses bad enough to send most units running for cover. But still they came on, whooping, shooting and waving their big curved swords in the milky dawn light.

To Ryan’s right, J.B. got up on one knee. He hosed the approaching riders with quick bursts from his Uzi. One horse reared, screaming, and fell. Another fell forward, tumbling into a flailing of limbs. The rider screamed in turn as his mount’s weight crushed him. The beast itself heaved violently and lay still. It had broken its neck.

That was too much at last for the Uplander forces. They now outnumbered their quarry scarcely, if at all. They turned their horses’ heads around and rode for camp as fast as the animals could run.

Silence fell heavy over the dewy grass. Slowly, Ryan lowered his blaster.

His friends began to rise like phantoms from the grass. Awkwardly Ryan thrust his blaster back in its holster. J.B. joined him, his stubby machine pistol slung and bouncing against his hip. He stretched down a hand. Gratefully, Ryan gripped his forearm and hauled him to his feet.

Ryan swayed. J.B. caught him by the arm and without comment helped steady him until he nodded.

The others were standing with weapons lowered but ready to swing into action should trouble abruptly return. Ricky Morales kept turning left and right, surveying the carnage in blank-eyed wonder.

“Twenty of them,” he said. “Twenty men. On horses. And we won.”

“If we survive, we win,” J.B. said. “That’s pretty much the whole story, right there.”

“But none of us are even wounded,” the boy said.

Ryan frowned. He was too messed up from the wound he’d suffered in the showdown in the gaudy.

“That true?” he demanded. “Everybody fit to fight?”

Everybody was. Jak had a bruised face but shook his head when asked if he needed help.

“Jak,” Ryan said, “start rounding up the horses.”

Jak nodded and moved off.

“We’re good at what we do,” Krysty told Ricky. “And we work well together.”

She looked over at Ryan critically. “You need to sit and let Mildred take care of you.”

Even though he’d just gotten up, Ryan was glad to sit down again. He was still a bit light in the head and loose in the joints.

Mildred bustled up. Krysty helped her remove Ryan’s coat and open his shirt. The bandages beneath had come loose, and Ryan’s side ran with blood.

“We’d better find this redoubt soon,” Mildred said, cleaning the wound with a fresh rag form her pack and water from a canteen. “This is going to come close to using up our bandages, if nothing else.”

“Best move on soon,” J.B. said, standing watch nearby, looking in the direction of the Uplander camp. “Those boys might come back with some buddies.”

Ryan nodded, then raised his right arm slightly to allow Mildred to wrap a fresh turn of bandage around his shoulder and chest. It hurt, but he was still alive to feel it, which was most of what counted.

“So what now, Ryan?” Mildred asked as she cut the bandage with her knife.

Ryan chuckled, then winced. “Well, we’re sure not going back for our pay.”

Like the Armorer, Krysty was standing guard as Mildred worked on Ryan. “Would Baron Al really put a price on our heads after what we’ve done for him?”

“You know as well as I do how far a body can rely on a baron’s gratitude,” Ryan said. “Which is as far as you can throw a war wag. Usually. I agree about Al, though. I doubt he had anything to do with this.”

“Okay, let me help you get your shirt on,” Mildred said. “And I sensed there was a ‘but’ in there.”

“Somebody sure as nuke shit offered those men a bounty for our hides,” Ryan said. “Fact they were sec men doesn’t strike me as a good sign. I’d say that means either somebody’s replaced Al, or somebody pretty high up feels strong enough to make a play like this on his own hook. Which in turn suggests it’s only a matter of time until Al’s replaced for sure.”

“Surely not so soon after he won the battle for them?” Mildred said. “And probably the war?”

“Politics,” Ryan said. “Especially in alliances of barons like the two sides are made up of, everybody’s always got one eye skinned for his own interests. Or even his own ego. I’d say somebody calculates Al’s just about used up his usefulness. And a lot of important people may worry Al’s gotten too big for his britches. Too powerful with the grunts and the peasant types.”

Mildred shook her head. “Back in my day,” she said, “we hoped humankind would evolve out of that sort of petty behavior by this time.”

“One might argue human behavior has followed a retrograde path,” Doc said sadly. “Although I suspect the truth to be, we act much as we have always acted since coming down from the trees. Although humankind’s present circumstances do conduce to an added degree of ruthlessness.”

Feeling stronger, Ryan pulled his shirt the rest of the way on after Mildred helped feed his right arm into a sleeve. It was bloody on the right side but he’d live with that. He stood up by himself. She refastened the sling that had come loose from his arm during the fight, and stayed slung about his neck.

Jak came back riding his horse and herding their other mounts. Ricky was with him. He had his DeLisle slung and a dazed look on his young face.

“Right,” Ryan said. “Time to move.”

“Where to?” Krysty asked.

He swung up into the saddle and shrugged. “Away. Find a place to lie up and rest during the day, take stock when we’re in a bit better shape.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll live,” he said. “Been hurt worse, got less care. Don’t feel as sick as I was for a bit despite the fight. Some sleep’s what I need now.”

Mildred muttered her take on that but said nothing openly.

“One thing’s sure,” Ryan said as his friends began to circulate, quickly shaking down the chills for useful plunder. “We need to find the redoubt now, get stores replenished—if any are available there—and shake the dust of this whole little war off our boots.”

“Won’t be easy with two whole armies out looking for us,” Krysty said.

J.B. laughed. His companions all looked at him.

“Don’t forget,” he said, “however angry Baron Jed might be with us, and whoever’s after our hides in the Uplander camp, it’s not gonna be
us
they’re looking for.”

“The redoubt?” Krysty asked.

“The rumor’s out,” Ryan said. “We learned that back in the gaudy. The kind of supplies Old Pete made the place out to have could put whoever grabs it on top of the whole heap, regardless of how things stand now.”

“So fill me in,” Mildred said. “Doesn’t this mean we’re racing these two armies to find the redoubt? While making sure they don’t find us?”

“That’s one way of looking at it,” J.B. said. “Another is, why should we look when we got hundreds of people to do it for us?”

“But how can we possibly get into the redoubt if a whole army is holding it?” Mildred asked.

“It is unlikely to be an entire army that actually uncovers it,” Doc said. “They will send out small parties of scouts, unless I miss my guess.”

“That’s how I see it, too,” Ryan said. “What we need to do is wait until they find it, then move in while they ride back to get the rest of their crew.”

His horse was starting to bob its head and step nervously in place. “Mount up, folks. I think my horse may sense others coming. We may’ve worn out our welcome here.”

“I still can’t believe we got away so lightly,” Ricky said as he clambered, quickly if not gracefully, onto the back of his mare.

“Don’t get too many ideas, kid,” Ryan said. “The last easy day was yesterday. Let’s ride.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

“He still there?” Mildred asked.

Ryan lowered the navy longeyes from his face. “Yeah,” he said.

He made no move to pick up the Steyr Scout longblaster laid on the low knoll beside him. While it lacked the extreme range and accuracy of his last longblaster, it still gave reliable hits out to several hundred yards in the hands of a master marksman. Like Ryan Cawdor.

The problem was, their shadower knew that, and kept carefully just out of the range at which he judged Ryan would be willing to waste precious cartridges in hopes of a hit.

“One thing’s for sure,” Ryan muttered, glaring toward the distant figure sitting quite openly, silhouetted against a blue sky. “He wasn’t lying about knowing a lot about us. Too much.”

He had also managed to elude Jak when the long-haired albino youth—a master of stealth—had sought to sneak up on him, nor had he fallen for several of the cleverest explosive booby traps J.B., with the able assistance of his protégé Ricky, who had a gift for such things, had set for him.

“He is good,” Ryan said. “And that’s the bastard of the thing.”

“He’s smart and he’s sneaky, granted,” Mildred said. “That doesn’t mean he’s better than you, Ryan.”

Ryan shrugged and winced slightly at the pain that sent throbbing through his injured chest and shoulder. In the past few days of playing serial cat-and-mouse games—Ryan’s band stalking the search parties sent out by the Uplanders and the Protectors, Snake Eye stalking
them
—the infection that had initially dulled Ryan’s wits had faded.

“Don’t know,” he said. “He just about did for me back at that gaudy. And I can’t shake the feeling he deliberately cut me some slack.”

“One thing is certain,” Doc said, “he is not smarter and stronger and faster than all of us. As we shall demonstrate to him, in the fullness of time.”

“Why would he have held back with you, Ryan?” Mildred asked.

“He thinks we can do better finding the treasure than he can solo, just the way we reckon two whole armies can do a better job searching than us.”

Mildred shook her head. “I don’t understand how Baron Al could be so stupid, even if that asshole Jed is. Why on Earth are both sides restricting themselves to a single search party when they could have hundreds of men combing the countryside?”

Doc uttered a caw of laughter. “Never underestimate the power of baronial rapacity, dear lady,” he said. “Nor of baronial paranoia.”

“He’s right,” Ryan said. “Neither leader trusts his own men any farther than he can throw them. They’re each figuring they can keep closer tabs on a single search team than a bunch of them, so they’re holding back their armies as reserves, to storm in and grab the redoubt when its found—and keep the freelance looting to a minimum.”

He shook his head. “Which comes pretty close to convincing me Al’s out of the picture. Mebbe he’s really no less grabby than any other baron, but this kind of shortsightedness... I can’t see that from him, no way.”

“Does it matter?” Mildred asked.

Ryan frowned a moment, then shrugged.

“Reckon not,” he said. “Dead’s dead. All I care about is that none of us take the last train west anytime soon.”

He pulled back from the crest of the low rise to scan the countryside to north and south. He had Mildred and Doc to keep an eye out for patrols—in particular Uplander patrols, since the three of them were currently just a few miles west of the end of their lines.

As stupid as he thought both commanders were being for sending out only a single search team each, they weren’t equally stupid about everything. Since as far as Ryan knew they had no better idea than he and his friends did where the redoubt lay, it made decent sense to search the easier, safer zone first.

If the place happened to be hidden in the enemy’s region, well, that was one halfway sensible reason to keep the bulk of the armies together and ready to move out as one to grab and hold the objective.

“Ryan,” Mildred said as he scanned the flood plain to the south. “Something.”

He instantly swept his single gaze to the north. “What?” he asked.

“Jak and Krysty riding back like their hair’s on fire,” Mildred reported.

He caught dark specks, just moving down a shallow slope at least half a mile distant toward them. The two of them were making good time. A quick glance through the longeyes confirmed Mildred’s judgment.

“Stay sharp, people,” Ryan said. He swung the longeyes up to sweep the horizon behind them. “We still don’t know whether they found something, or if they’re riding flat-out because they got greencoats on their tails.”

“If they are pursued, it would seem by not many,” Doc said. “Inasmuch as they are leading them straight to us.”

“Yeah,” Ryan said. If it was the pursuit scenario, that could only mean their pursuers were few enough to give the three waiting an opportunity to empty their saddles from ambush. Had it been a good-sized patrol after them they would likely have tried to lead them far afield and then give them the slip, then sneak back and join their friends.

Mildred shifted to skulk behind a grassy lump that was probably a predark car or even truck grown over. Doc took the reins of their three horses and led them behind a screen of trees growing along a creek.

Ryan put the longeyes away. Taking up his Steyr Scout, he stretched himself prone on the grass to wait. He didn’t bother looking through the telescopic sight. He could cover more ground quicker with his one unaided eye. And if anybody was chasing after Krysty and Jak, they weren’t exactly going to be sneaky about it.

But no other riders appeared anywhere along the northern skyline. Still, Krysty and Jak pushed their mounts hard. Both horses were wide-eyed, lathered and blowing hard when the pair approached. Ryan stood up out of the grass as they got within fifty yards. He still kept a hold on his longblaster, and a keen eye skinned, in case anybody joined the party late.

“Not getting chased?” he called as Krysty turned her mare’s head and galloped toward him.

She reined the horse in a few feet away. “No,” she said. “We got something.”

“Where?”

“Abandoned ville mebbe five miles west and a little south. Pretty sizable place.”

“Can find redoubt easy,” Jak said, pulling his paint to a stop. “Find sentries, find place.”

“Which side, my friend?” Doc called, leading the horses back toward the group.

“Greencoats.”

“We weren’t able to ambush them the way we hoped. They took off at an angle away from us. There’re six of them, so we couldn’t likely take them if we’d been able to catch up with them.”

“Good call. How many left behind?”

“Start day, twelve riders,” Jak said.

“Whoo,” Doc said. “They must have found the mother lode indeed, to leave half their number behind.”

Ryan nodded briskly. “Ace.”

“Mebbe not quite so ace,” Mildred called.

“What do you mean, Mildred?” Krysty asked.

Mildred pointed to the west. The skyline lay empty. Unbroken, specifically, by the infuriating black blotch of horse and rider that had been there since the sun came up, a couple hours after Ryan had sent his two teams to shadow the search parties north and south.

“So our shadow appears to have deserted us.”

Ryan showed his teeth in a snarl.

“So the bastard learned all he needed to know. Fireblast!”

“Lover,” Krysty said, “I’m so sorry—”

He waved a hand to cut her off. “Not your fault,” he rasped. “No other way to play it.”

He went to take his horse’s reins from Doc.

“Jak,” he called, “go get J.B. and Ricky back from ghosting the Uplanders. The rest of us’ll join you outside the ville. Any decent cover there?”

“Hills west,” Jak said. “Go north and south.”

“Find us.”

Jak didn’t bother to answer. Instead he turned and nudged his horse into a gallop to the northwest.

“Well,” Ryan said, swinging into the saddle, “I’ve got good news as well as bad.”

“You mean good news other than finding a possible escape route from this debacle?” Doc asked.

“What good news do we have other than that?” Mildred asked suspiciously.

“Well,” Ryan said, “the good news is, I don’t think we’re going to have to take out six troopers to get to the mat-trans and get out.

“The bad news is, we’ll be going up against one man who’s worse.”

BOOK: No Man's Land
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