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  It was Ed, the quietest of all the workers, who may have been the most dangerous. He singled out Krysty for attack, and as she rose and turned away from Bronson, she found herself encircled by the muscled arms of the workman, which closed around her in the grip of a crushing bear hug. She felt the breath being squeezed from her, and her ribs start to protest and creak as he tightened the grip.

  Breathing in, and pulling in her muscles as much as she dared, she wriggled her arms to free them, and brought her hands together on either side of his head with a clap that resounded down his ear canals, making his eardrums rupture with the combination of force and pressure. Ed roared in pain and let loose his grip, doubling over so that it seemed for a ridiculous second as though he were crying on her shoulder. But only until she stepped back, jerked his head up with one hand, and took him out with a knuckle punch between his shocked and staring eyes.

  With their opponents now wiped out, the companions paused for breath. Jak stood up from the now unconscious Rysh, breathing heavily but steadily as he calmed himself.

  "Well," Crow said quietly, finally looking around, "that was most impressive. Baron Silas will be interested."

  "Why didn't you try to stop it?" Ryan asked.

  Crow shrugged. "What could I do?" he said before turning back to face front, impassive and silent.

  Ryan and J.B. exchanged glances before hauling the unconscious bodies to the front of the wag, joined by the others taking a workman each. Krysty examined Bronson's wound before Mildred joined her to apply to a dressing. The sec man was thankful, especially when Mildred gave him a painkiller from the small supply she had stored from the redoubt med bay.

  "Whoo," Tex drawled finally, his first words for some time and the first thing he had dared to utter, "looks like you got it all cleaned up just in time. Here comes Salvation…"

  At which the companions looked from the blaster ports to get their first view of Salvation, home of Baron Silas Hunter.

  From first look, they could tell it was going to be an interesting time.

  Chapter Eight

  As the wags rolled into Salvation, the companions crowded around the blaster ports, trying to get a better view of their destination. The workers were still at the front end of the wag, barely beginning to regain consciousness, so Ryan and his people felt safe turning their backs on them for a few seconds.

  The blacktop had taken them through the remains of an oil-town suburb, with deserted and derelict buildings that reflected the residential nature of their old use. There were low-level apartment blocks, houses and rows of shops dotted with the occasional strip mall. All had been deserted since the days of skydark, and gave no indication of what was to come.

  For, as the blacktop gave way to an old concrete road and Tex took them on a winding route past the most damaged parts of the old ville, they began to see signs of fortifications. The buildings had been obviously burned and demolished in more recent times, the rubble used to make rudimentary towers from which observation posts could be established. The outer ones were empty, but there were signs of life from those that began to occur more and more frequently as they approached the heart of the ville.

  There were also sounds of manual labor-—the breaking and hammering of construction, and the rattle and hum of generators. A babble of voices occasionally cut through the constant level of noise. And then, finally, they came to the gates of Salvation.

  A wall of rubble had been carefully constructed to provide a walkway on the top and recesses for observation posts, and as far as each group could see from either side of the wag's blaster port slits, the wall traveled on for at least a mile. Ryan guessed that it continued around the whole of the reconstituted ville, hemming it in and protecting it from intruders and, conversely, also keeping the inhabitants safely within view.

  "There more than one road in?" Ryan asked Crow, not expecting the taciturn Native American to answer.

  "One at each compass point, all like this," the giant replied. "Before you ask, no other exits."

  "I think mebbe we'd already figured that one," Ryan murmured. "Baron Silas is a very cautious man."

  "Around these parts you don't get to stay baron unless you are," Crow said.

  "Same as anywhere," Ryan observed.

  Mildred interrupted Ryan's train of thought with a low whistle. "Man, he may be cautious, but he likes people to know who's boss," she said. "Look at that."

  "I'm looking, but I'm not sure I believe what I'm seeing," J.B. countered.

  For the full grandeur of the gates dividing the wall of Salvation was now fully apparent. The giant structure stood over thirty feet. It was made from pieces of scrap metal that had been smelted and beaten into grotesque and Gothic designs, so that the upward-thrusting poles that had been honed at the top into spikes were joined by wreaths and curlicues of spiked and hollylike wire that kept the gate see-through and yet completely impassable. The two gates were joined in the middle by a simple locking system that was accessible only from the inside due to a protective and decorative plate several feet across that was divided in the center.

  But it was at the top that the ego of Baron Silas Hunter became obvious. Over the top of the gates stood an arch that joined one side of the wall to the other, and sat independent of the gates themselves. The arch was composed of two bars, with carefully beaten-out metal lettering between. It said simply Welcome To Salvation. In itself not a particularly egotistical message. However, on top of the arch stood a statue made of bronzed metal, the polishing of which showed that it had not been standing for many years. The statue was of a tall, thin man in a long coat and cowboy boots. He had a drawn, haggard face with an iron-cast jaw that wasn't softened by the beard that had been cast beneath. Even in the statue, there was something about the hooded eyes that made a person wary, shielded as they were by a Stetson hat.

  "Baron Silas likes folks to know who he is when they arrive," Crow said, observing the companions' silence on seeing the statue.

  Both J.B. and Ryan glanced at the Native American sharply, but he kept his head turned away from them, seemingly impassive.

  "If I did not know better than to say so, I could readily assume that there was a touch of sarcasm in that statement," Doc murmured.

  Crow stayed silent while Tex leaned out of the wag's side window. "Hey, Lenny, let me back in, you bastard!" he yelled.

  An obscene reply, half-lost on the morning breeze and the sound of work within the ville, came down from the observation post, followed a few minutes later by the man Ryan took to be Lenny. He unlocked the gates and pulled one side open, taking his time to open the other.

  "Yeah, very funny," Tex drawled. "Let's see how the baron likes you screwin' me around when I got some booty he wants to see."

  Lenny's reply was as obscene and incomprehensible as before, but the attention of Ryan and his people was taken by the terms Tex had used.

  "Is that how we're seen?" Krysty asked Crow. "We're some kind of commodity or jack to be used for trade?"

  "Not my choice of words," Crow replied, "but everyone is that to some extent. Especially when they work for Baron Silas. And you do."

  "That remains to be seen," Ryan muttered.

  "It does?" Crow countered.

  Tex put the wag into gear and drove through the portals of Salvation, and into the heart of the ville, followed by the two wags holding the construction materials. They soon lost these wags, as they turned off to head for wherever Baron Silas had his work supplies sequestered. The wag driven by Tex, however, kept heading for the center of the ville.

  It slowed considerably as it began to hit the heaving mass of humanity that was crammed into the relatively small area that was the ville of Salvation. In an undertone, to avoid being overheard by Tex or— most particularly—Crow, J.B. and Ryan discussed the ville as they could see it so far.

  "Way I figure it, old Silas couldn't devote too much time or manpower to building the wall around the ville to begin with, so they had to make the ville just
the size of a few old blocks," the Armorer stated. "That'd account for the fact that the wall is so strong—"

  "Otherwise," Ryan concluded, "they would have been wide open to attack while they were constructing it. So as the ville's got richer, and Baron Silas has got more and more people coming in to take up living and working here, then it's got more and more crowded."

  "Guess he'll use some of the jack from the oil well to enlarge his barony," J.B. mused.

  "Got to get the fireblasted thing working first," Ryan reminded the Armorer.

  While they discussed this is undertones, the others kept watching the ville of Salvation go by. It was obviously to the center of the old oil town, and many of the towers that were used in predark days for offices had been pressed into operation as residential. The upper levels hadn't stood up to the ravages of time, and were left empty and derelict. But some kind of maintenance had to have been observed, for the lower levels showed signs of occupation as dwellings. At a level closer to the street, the old shops of the oil town were used for trading and holding markets where goods were bartered or sold. The old bars had been pressed into use as gaudy houses, and there were some that were used as homes by the residents.

  Progress through the streets became slower and slower as the crowds grew more and more dense, spilling off the old sidewalks and onto the streets, obstructing the little traffic that passed.

  "Doc, have you noticed something?" Dean queried,

  "I have, my young friend, noticed many things," Doc retorted. "To which, in particular, do you refer?"

  Dean ignored the slight condescension in the older man's tone, and continued. "It's just that, for somewhere that's supposed to have its own fuel well and refinery, we're the only wag that I've seen since we lost the construction wags."

  "Too packed for wags," Jak observed. "Waste fuel. Keep wags for outside gates."

  Doc nodded sagely. "I think that friend Jak may be right. Think about how much fuel we're wasting right now. By the three Kennedys, this is more packed than Washington on Thanksgiving Day with a free turkey."

  Jak and Dean both looked at Doc, puzzled.

  He observed them, smiled sadly to himself. "A small joke, gentlemen. It would have been mildly amusing once."

  Tex kept hitting the horn, the sound blaring harshly at passersby and obstructions to traffic that did little more than turn and curse him.

  "Shit," he spit, "this little jam'll take us all day to get through."

  "Is there no other route?" Ryan asked. It was a seemingly stupid, but leading question, and elicited the information he wanted from the unaware wag driver.

  "It'll all be the same," Tex replied. "See, we don't really have wags in the walls anymore 'cause there ain't the room. Since Baron Silas found that the well still had some oil down in bottom, and he figured out how to get the refinery going, then there ain't been much except people coming from all over to swell up the ville. Some of them come of their own accord, but a lot come from nearby villes 'cause of the deals that Baron Silas done gone and done with them all. Guess as how it's brought a whole load of trade and jack in besides the well, which is nice for guys like me 'cause a lot of these new folk are card players, 'specially the merchants, only they ain't as good card players as me. That right, ain't it, Crow?" he added, glancing at the giant Native American.

  "Shot the feck up," Crow countered with soft menace.

  But the rambling monologue had revealed exactly what Ryan needed to know. He looked out of the blaster port again. People walked in the streets because there were stalls laden with goods on the old sidewalks. The traffic in the roads comprised more than just pedestrians: there were bicycles weaving in and out, and men and women pushing barrows laden with different goods that were either for sale or were in the process of being delivered from one dwelling to another. The crash of people spelled success for the ville. Each person had jack, and each person represented some piece of trade that either had gone on, or was about to.

  Salvation had become a rich ville very quickly. And maybe there was the problem: Baron Silas had a large number of people within a very small space, and no room to expand the ville. To deconstruct and then remake the walls around the old boundaries of Salvation would take time and manpower that couldn't be spared right now. Not with the vast amount of work that was taking place along the old blacktop linking the villes that were involved in the refinery reconstruction and giving them a route to the outside world, and not with the vast amount of work and manpower that was also being invested in the refinery that was the point of the alliance.

  The sec forces of Salvation had to be stretched to the breaking point coping with the extra people and the extra work. As with most villes, particularly larger ones, Ryan could see at a glance that all the inhabitants that passed him by were armed, blasters hanging easily from holsters or cradled in arms as they walked.

  So many people in such a small space. Tensions would be bound to arise. And if they did, they would be concentrated within the boundary walls, unable to diffuse outside.

  Although he felt uneasy about their being deprived of their own blasters, Ryan felt sure that they would soon regain them. The way in which Crow had been ordered to deliver them to Baron Silas, and the way in which he had allowed them to be tested in unarmed combat could only point to one thing…

  If they were to move on, then they had to first become part of Salvation's sec force.

  "THIS IS IT," Crow said simply as the wag pulled up.

  "As if I couldn't have guessed," Mildred observed, surveying the building in front of them. It was a large, ornate stone building that had probably stood since the founding of the old oil town from which the ville of Salvation had been forged. The white stone had become discolored with age and the old balustrades, cornices and carvings were now covered in a creeping vine of ironwork that spread tendrils of barbed and decorated dark metal across the front and sides of the building, as far as they could see. There were no breaks for the windows, the decoration also acting as a protective bar to any access other than through the ground level doors.

  The large stained-wood doors to the building were reached via a short flight of stone steps, impressively constructed with a tapering sweep to reach a pinnacle by the doors, the wide base of the steps marked at each corner by a plinth that had, at one time, housed statues that were of the same stone as the building. These had long since been replaced with statues in beaten metal that were obviously Baron Silas Hunter, as they were identical to that which stood on the arch over the gates to Salvation. If there was a similar arch at each entry, then there were four statues surrounding the ville, and now at least two within the walls.

  Baron Silas Hunter was obviously a man of some ego.

  "So we get to meet the great man at last," Ryan said to Crow as he stood in the back of the wag and stretched muscles cramped by too long a confinement after their explosive bout of action.

  "Yeah, as soon as we deal with these assholes," the foreman said, jerking a thumb at the still semiconscious workers in the back of the wag. "Wait there."

  "Nowhere else go," Jak mumbled in reply. But if the Native American heard him, he failed to respond as he dismounted from the vehicle and joined Tex in walking around to the rear doors. Inside, the companions heard the lock being sprung, and then the doors were flung open, admitting light into the back of the vehicle that caused the pile of beaten flesh to stir a little more. It also caused Bronson to awaken, the mild sedative and painkiller administered by Mildred having made his journey a little easier.

  "Help him out," Crow said, taking Bronson by one arm. Ryan took the other, and the sec man was so disoriented and such a deadweight from his injury that it took all their strength to get him from the wag. While they did this, the doors to the building opened and a squad of sec men came down the steps. Three of them—armed like all the others with Uzis—took over from Crow and Ryan, and Bronson was taken into the building.

  The companions climbed out of the wag and stood to one side un
der the eye of the sec squad. The seven-strong squad stayed silent, but kept their hands thoughtfully on their blasters.

  "Hell, they're okay," Tex drawled, observing this, "but you should see what they did to those good ol' boys in back." He chuckled, indicating where the workmen were beginning to surface, groaning in agony.

  "They're with me," Crow said dismissively of the companions, indicating them with a gesture. Then, turning, his attention to the wag, he pointed in. "Those stupes, on the other hand… Get them out and send them home. They'll get their jack when they're fit enough to come and get it on both feet."

  He left the sec squad to decant the still groggy workmen and send them to their homes to recover.

  While Tex moved around to the front of the wag in order to take it to the wag bay where all Baron Silas's vehicles would be stored, Crow began to mount the steps.

  "Follow me," he commanded without looking back.

  Ryan exchanged glances with his people, and fell into step behind the Native American after whispering, "Triple red," to the others, who all made small gestures of acknowledgment. Although they were unarmed, they could still be prepared to meet any danger as best they could, and without thinking they fell into formation, with Krysty and Dean followed by Doc and Mildred, J.B. bringing up the rear.

  But there was little sign of danger once they entered the building. The doors were closed behind them by two armed sec men, but once they were in, there was little sign of any overwhelming sec presence. Instead, they took in the ornate plush with which Baron Silas Hunter had decorated his baronial palace. Rich hangings and plundered paintings sat over a rag bag of antique furnitures plundered and traded from many points. And always the intertwining wire and smelted iron rails that ran in decorative yet secure form across every window and opening.