Sins of Honor Page 2

  Mildred started to explain, then clearly changed her mind. This wasn’t the time, nor the place. “Muties that drink blood,” she said simply.

  “That’s a pire, all right.” The giant snorted, then abruptly pointed at himself. “The name’s Angstrom, Franklin Angstrom, King of the Granite Empire.”

  That statement took the companions back.

  “King...not baron?” Jak asked suspiciously.

  “Barons only rule villes,” Angstrom said with a toothy grin. “But I rule every baron west of the Lantic Ocean.”

  “Impressive,” Ryan said diplomatically. “The name’s Cawdor, Ryan Cawdor. Now, about that buck I shot—”

  “Shitfire, you outlanders got a lot of blasters,” a burly sec man interrupted. “Got any brass for them?”

  In reply, J.B. aimed the Uzi into the sky and triggered a short burst. The spent brass casings arched away to fall on an outcropping and musically bounced off into the creek.

  “Mebbe that’s all the brass they got, my liege,” a bald sec woman said, staring at the Uzi in open lust.

  Without comment, Doc raised and fired the LeMat. The thundering boom of the .44 echoed across the clearing, to repeat endlessly into the snow-covered foothills.

  “Okay, you’re full of brass and meaner than a shithouse rat on jolt,” Angstrom said with a chuckle. “But it also don’t look like you’ve been eating too regular lately.”

  “Lean keeps a man sharp,” Ryan lied.

  “At least they’re not wearing green,” a sec man said to Angstrom.

  Just for a moment, Ryan wondered what that meant, then dismissed it. Green was probably just the color of the uniform for some enemy ville. “Now, I shot the buck, but we aced the flapjack together, so...split the meat?”

  “Half ain’t enough to make soup for my crew,” Angstrom scoffed with a wave of the hand. “And I should get all of the meat since my shot chilled the mutie. Once it touches something, only a triple-damn gleeb would eat any part of it.”

  “Poison?”

  Angstrom made a face. “Nyah, its little hairy things, sort like roots. They go deep fast. If they get inside you, they feed on your guts. Lead in the head is a mercy after that.”

  “Sounds bad.”

  “Feels worse.”

  “Probably so,” Ryan said, the cold wind ruffling his hair. “Could have aced it myself.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “It has been a while since we last ate, so I’ll tell you what,” Ryan said, reaching into a pocket. “We’ll buy half of the buck from you for brass.”

  Pulling out his hand he opened it to show the other a fistful of .22 cartridges. As the Granite sec men murmured among themselves, Ryan gauged their reactions. Angstrom was a trained negotiator, but his crew wasn’t, and they were becoming unduly excited at the sight of the live ammunition. Not greedy, but apprehensive. Brass bothered them? Ryan thought. Curious.

  “Don’t use brass in our flintlocks,” Angstrom countered smoothly. “But you can have all of the buck for one of them rapid-fires.”

  There was no change in the big man’s stance, but Ryan instantly knew this was a trick. Was he stalling until more of his men arrived or—

  Just then there came a subtle movement in the laurel bushes edging the clearing, and something metallic glinted in the weak sunlight.

  “Ambush!” J.B. shouted, firing the Uzi. The bushes violently shook from the passage of the 9 mm Parabellum rounds, and a sec man stumbled into view, red blood pumping from a dozen wounds.

  “Son of a mutie whore...chill ’em!” Angstrom bellowed, swinging up the Thompson. “Chill them all!”

  Chapter Two

  Chaos erupted as everybody cut loose with a weapon, the combined racket of the assorted pistols, revolvers, zip gun, machine pistols, smooth-bore muskets, shotguns, and longblasters, briefly building into a roar of stentorian power. Ricochets went everywhere, the earth churned, and the surrounding trees shook violently from the passage of so much hot lead through the colorful leaves and dark green nettles.

  A moment later a dark gray cloud of gunsmoke billowed across the battlefield, and everybody used the brief respite to find protective cover. The notable exception was the assorted horses of the Granite sec men. Obviously trained for combat, the powerful animals stayed exactly where they were, neither running nor flinching, even when two of the horses fell with hot rivers of red life pumping from hideous wounds in their muscular necks.

  Rolling into a crouch, J.B. came up with the Uzi chattering, the hammering stream of 9 mm Parabellum rounds stitching a line of death across the opposing sec men. Several of them toppled to the ground clutching red bellies.

  Popping back into view from behind a tree stump, Ryan aimed and fired the Steyr in a single move. Caught in the act of shoving a fresh magazine into the heavy Thompson, the snarling Angstrom rocked backward as a small hole appeared in his forehead. Then the back of his head exploded in a horrid geyser of bones and brains and blood.

  “That...that one-eyed bastard aced the king,” a sec woman gasped, the soft words cutting through the din as if they were nuclear-powered.

  “Ain’t possible!” a sec man yelled from inside a laurel bush, the barrel of his flintlock extending high into the smoky air.

  “Look for yourself, gleeb!” another sec woman replied, using a fist to cock back the massive hammer on her flintlock.

  “Ace ’em!” a blond sec man shouted at the top of his lungs, spittle flying into the cold air.

  Instantly the firefight erupted with renewed vigor, the discharges and ricochets now peppered with guttural snarls that conveyed a deeper hatred than mere vulgarities ever could.

  Peeking over the frozen bank of the icy creek, Krysty and Jak expertly laid down suppressive fire, while Ricky emptied an entire magazine from the softly chugging DeLisle.

  Briefly popping up from the frozen creek, Mildred squeezed off two shots from her ZKR target pistol. The .38 rounds precisely hit a sec man in the hip and temple. The double blow turned him around just as his shotgun boomed. Several voices rose in pain and shock from the spray of bent nails and gravel, then a flurry of flintlocks cut loose and the wounded sec man died on the spot.

  “Veni, vidi, vici!” Doc snarled, partially hidden behind a broken cinder-block wall.

  Firing a fast three times, his LeMat boomed louder than thunder, and a flintlock visibly bent before flying out of the grasp of a startled sec man, his fingers bending backward at impossible angles during the process.

  Snarling a curse, an old sec man stepped into view from the gray cloud, a blood-spattered Thompson cradled in his arms. Bracing for a recoil, he triggered the big weapon and the classic L-shaped flames jutted from the end of the muzzle and the exhaust vent on top.

  As the hammering string of .45 rounds chewed a path of destruction across the clearing, J.B. answered back with the Uzi. The chattering machine pistol sent a hail of 9 mm rounds through the Granite sec man who fell with most of his face gone. Still firing, the Thompson did a cartwheel through the air, killing a horse and wounding several sec men. Bouncing off an oak tree, the weapon landed in a patch of snow, the flakes hissing as they came in contact with the hot metal.

  Screaming in pain, a sec man staggered out of the huckleberry bushes, his face and chest obscured by a pulsating translucent mass. With every beat, the feeding flapjack turned slightly darker in color, while the struggling man trapped inside the mutie became noticeably weaker and more pale.

  “Shitfire, a pire’s got Billy!” the bald sec woman yelled, swinging her weapon in a new direction and pulling the trigger.

  The big iron hammer snapped forward, a chunk of flint scraping along the metal strike plate and issuing a bright spray of yellow-white sparks. Those ignited the black powder in the flashpan, and the longblaster thunderously boomed, a lance
of flame extending out the barrel for almost a full yard.

  A hundred feet away, Billy jerked as the .75 soft-lead miniball slammed into his chest and exploded out of his back, carrying along a horrid spray of bones and guts.

  Even though already dead, the bedraggled sec man kept walking while the ravenous flapjack continued draining the nutrient-rich blood. Tripping over an exposed root, the body fell, and the pulsating mutie immediately peeled itself off the corpse to start undulating across the frosty earth toward the nearest sec men.

  Just for a second, the firefight paused as the Granite sec force and the companions turned in unison to unleash a maelstrom at the deadly creature. Torn into pieces by the wild fusillade, the flapjack was scattered across the snowy field, every piece twitching with monstrous life.

  Pulling out the empty magazine from his longblaster, Ryan pocketed it for reloading later, then yanked a fresh magazine from the bandolier under his jacket. Shoving it into the Scout, he worked the arming lever to chamber the first round. The battle was going in their favor. But there were a lot more of the Granite troops than the companions, and how this would end was anybody’s guess at the moment. Time to parley.

  “Hey, Blondie!” Ryan shouted, studying the billowing cloud for any movement. “You’ve lost a lot of men and horses! Why not leave...while ya still can!”

  “Frag that drek!” the fat sec man bellowed, stepping out from behind a pine tree and firing a homemade shotgun. The double roar echoed across the hills and forest.

  Aiming for the man’s voice, Ryan stroked the trigger of the Steyr. The longblaster coughed, and there came the telltale slap of lead hitting flesh.

  “Nuking outlanders got Duncan!” a sec woman called from behind a dead horse.

  Calmly shooting again, Ryan saw the top of her head part, jagged pieces of her white skull flying away amid the gory pink residue of her brain.

  “Lucia!” a tall sec man gasped, starting toward the twitching body.

  Tracking the running fellow for a moment, Ryan fired and took him out with a well placed shot to the heart. The sec man wobbled like a drunken puppet, then abruptly sat and collapsed.

  “Everybody shut the frag up!” an unseen man bellowed from within the shadowed interior of the forest.

  Breaking cover, a pair of sec men on horseback charged out of the forest to quickly head away from the fighting.

  Bracing his longblaster on a rock, Ricky opened fire, the gently coughing DeLisle chilling one man and wounding the other. At the same moment both J.B. and Ryan spun in the opposite direction to see a dozen sec men sprint out of the distant hedges to hit the frosty ground and start crawling toward the frozen creek.

  Grimly knowing they would be safely behind the cover of the snowy bank in only seconds, Ryan fired the Steyr as fast as he could work the bolt, hitting any visible part of the scurrying sec men. Boot heel, elbow, hat, backpack, ass...it made no difference. One at a time, each sec man cried out from surprise, or pain, and briefly rose into view. It was the last thing they ever did.

  “How is the ammunition?” Doc asked, thumbing fresh rounds into the nine-shot LeMat revolver. “I’m almost out.”

  “Same here,” Mildred growled, pausing as a miniball hummed by overhead. “Maybe we should start running, and just let them have the meat!”

  “No chance!” Jak drawled, firing his weapon. The blaster boomed and rode up slightly from the force of the Magnum round. Inside a rustling mulberry bush, a woman screamed, then went silent.

  “Well, I do have a couple of smoke bombs...” J.B. said, easing the last 12-gauge cartridge from the shoulder strap of his M-4000.

  “Get them,” Ryan ordered. He was starving, and the companions would spend the rest of the day running away from the angry sec men, but then they could go hunting again tomorrow. Hungry and alive was always better than cold and dead.

  “Wait! I sense...something...” Krysty whispered, her hair going preternaturally still.

  Just then, there came an odd sort of a humming whistle from the forest, and a split second later, something small came flying out of the forest to arch high into the cold sky.

  “Petards!” Ryan cursed, raising the Steyr to aim toward the homemade bomb. A length of rope dangled from the steel pipe, the whistling sound obviously made when a sec man twirled the bomb overhead to build speed. But why was Krysty getting such a sense of danger from a simple pipe bomb?

  “Not like,” Jak snarled, closing his blaster with a jerk of the wrist.

  As the incoming projectile reached the arch of its trajectory, Ryan fired once, and the pipe promptly exploded. However, instead of the expected black powder detonation, a powerful fireball of gargantuan size filled the entire sky and a split second later the companions were brutally hammered to the ground by the triphammer shock wave of military-grade, C-4 plas ex.

  * * ** * *

  IN SLUGGISH STAGES Ryan slowly awoke to total darkness. He ached all over as if he’d been trampled by a herd of wild horses, and his temples throbbed from a nukestorm of a headache.

  Just then a cool breeze touched his empty socket, and Ryan realized that his eyepatch had to have simply shifted from the sheer force of the concussion, which also explained why it was difficult to breathe, and every inch of his body felt sore.

  A small part of his mind marveled over the fact that the companions had managed to survive the aftereffects of such a powerful detonation at all. As a small boy, his father had once said that C-4 was to black powder what water was to shine. Smart words.

  Reaching up to put the eyepatch back into position, Ryan instantly felt an adrenaline surge at the discovery that his wrists were bound together with what felt like leather straps. Instantly he reached for the SIG-Sauer and wasn’t overly surprised to find that it was gone, along with the panga, and everything else. Fireblast! They were captives! How long had he been knocked unconscious?

  Jerking the patch back to where it belonged, Ryan blinked, then shifted position to study the area around him. A forest was to his left, and on the right side snowy ground extended to a campsite full of Granite sec men. A nimbus of reddish firelight was coming from a crackling fire—no, there were four fires—each of them roasting a haunch of what sure smelled like fresh elk.

  His mouth salivated at the delicious aroma, but Ryan ignored that to glance around for the other companions. Incredibly, they were only a few feet away, lying in a jumbled pile inside a crude cage made from tree branches bound together with coils of rope.

  Everybody was present with leather straps binding their hands and ankles. All of their clothing was in serious disarray, including his own, even the pockets turned inside out from a thorough search. Expecting the worst, Ryan steeled himself, but Krysty and Mildred still wore all their clothing, although both of their shirts were completely unbuttoned.

  That unsettling sight sent a visceral surge of blind rage through Ryan, and his heart wildly pounded as he strained with both arms to burst out of his leather bonds. But after a few minutes he was forced to relax and bitterly accept the fact that strength wasn’t going to get them free.

  Focusing on the cage, Ryan eyed the thing with dispassion. The work was excellent, simple, but looked very strong. There was no door, hatch or even a floor, just the wooden branches. They were helpless as fish in a bucket.

  The cage appeared to have been built around them, and it rested on top of a couple of freshly chopped logs. Ryan grunted at that. Those were obviously rails for dragging the cage behind a team of horses. He had no idea of their final destination, but he damn well knew it was going to end in their bloody deaths. However, it did indicate that the sec men weren’t going to ace them immediately. Bad move on their part.

  The trees rustled as the night wind changed direction, and suddenly Ryan could hear the sec men. They were complaining about digging graves for their aced friends, impatient for d
inner, and marveling over the incredible haul of jack they had just acquired—apparently all of it from the companions.

  “Six butane lighters!” a short sec man chortled, pouring the wealth from one hand into another. “And they all work! I’m gonna die from all the quim this will buy me at a gaudy house!”

  “And this telephone thing!” Another sec man laughed, extending the antique Navy telescope to its full length, only to slap it back down again. “Never seen nothing like it nowhere!”

  “It’s called a telescope, not a telephone,” corrected a tall blond man, extending a hand. “And give it here. That’s a gift for the queen.” There was a white rag tied around his head for a near miss, a rivulet of dried blood still on his cheek

  Oddly, Ryan saw that the blond man wasn’t carrying any of the weapons from the companions. There was a Remington shotgun slung across his back, and what had sure looked like a Glock 9 mm pistol holstered at his side. Both weapons were spotless, and shone with fresh oil. Ryan didn’t like that. The man cleaned his weapons before himself? That alone said the fellow was a professional coldheart, even if he was now wearing the livery of a ville sec man.

  “Well?” the blond man repeated impatiently.

  “Fair enough, Major,” the other man growled, tossing over the Navy telescope.

  The major made the catch with one hand.

  “As long as I gets to keep this here longblaster!” the sec man said as a question, patting the flintlock hung across his back. “Always did like Joe’s blaster better than mine.”

  “Sure. Everybody gets a taste,” the major replied, wrapping the telescope in a shirt before tucking it into a backpack.

  Just then, Doc softly groaned.

  Tilting his head, Ryan asked the man a silent question. Doc gave a tiny shrug in reply, then shifted his position to reveal the single leather strap tied around his wrists. In comparision, Ryan and the other companions were trussed like hogs waiting for the butcher, with multiple layers of windings.

  In spite of the dire situation, Ryan felt hope surge. The Granite sec men had just made a second mistake. Doc looked like a wrinklie, but that was just the side effect of the time jumps he’d been forced to endure at the hands of the whitecoats of Operation Chronos. If he could get free, there might be a slim chance the companions could come out of this alive.