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  “Maybe,” Krysty agreed hesitantly. “I heard her in my mind back in the cave. That’s how I knew to come here.”

  “She asked for help?” Ryan said suspiciously.

  “Not in actual words, no.” Krysty smiled ruefully. “It was more like a feeling of desperate need.”

  Grunting in reply, Ryan tossed her the flute, and Krysty tucked it into a pocket for safekeeping.

  “All right, let’s get my patient off this exposed butte and back into our cave,” Mildred directed, rising stiffly. “I want to get some hot broth in her as soon as…What the hell?” With a jerk, the woman kicked away a snake that had been circling around her boots—a water moccasin.

  The deadly snake went sailing to land a few yards away, but immediately went straight back.

  “Don’t let bite!” Jak cried, and threw a knife. Rising for a strike, the snake was beheaded and dropped limply to the ground.

  But even as it died, several additional snakes came out of the reeds, hissing angrily. Most were harmless black snakes, but mixed among them were several larger varieties that shook rattles or brandished long fangs that glistened with venom. The astonished albino simply could not believe it. Snakes never attacked in groups! How was this possible?

  Swinging up their blasters, the companions shot down the first wave of poisonous snakes, ignoring their nonlethal cousins. But more of the creatures kept coming up the dune, completely cutting off any possible route to the mainland. Maintaining a steady barrage, the companions aced the deadly reptiles, while the harmless black snakes circled their boots, to converge on the unconscious woman. Hissing constantly, the black snakes crawled over the woman, trying to get between her and the companions.

  “Dark night, they’re here for her!” J.B. said, swinging around the scattergun. “She wasn’t calling you, but summoning an army!” Every boom of the shotgun announced the demise of a score of snakes, but more were coming out of the lake in an endless swarm.

  “But she asleep!” Jak snarled, blowing the guts out of another water moccasin.

  “Tell them that!” Krysty retorted, shooting in a two-hand grip.

  As the snakes crawled over the aced coldhearts, they paused to savage the warm bodies, biting the aced men repeatedly in the face, hands and throat, often carrying away tiny morsels of raw flesh.

  “Fireblast!” Ryan cursed, firing his blaster nonstop. Cut off from the mainland, the companions were trapped, neatly boxed on the crest of the sloping dune. The grass was alive with tiny eyes full of hate. Then another wave of snakes washed onto the shore, heading for the dune.

  “Mildred, wake her up, or blow her brains out!” Ryan commanded, dropping a spent magazine to hastily reload.

  Dropping to her knees, Mildred slapped the woman twice. “Wake up!” she shouted, then grabbed her by the shoulders and shook hard. “We’re friends! The coldhearts are aced! Call off your snakes!” There was no response.

  “It’s no use,” Mildred declared. “She’s too far out of it for me to ever rouse in time.”

  “Sister, help me.” Krysty spoke calmly, putting every ounce of her strength into the heartfelt plea.

  There was a pause, and then the woman fluttered her lids, but nothing more.

  However, the physician took heart at the reaction, small as it was, and shifted her aim to fire the Check ZKR right alongside the ear of the blonde, the roar of the concussion actually riffling her hair.

  Abruptly jerking awake, Liana looked around in confusion at the companions shooting snakes, then she saw Doc hacking at the swarm of reptiles, the gory blade rising and falling. It was the tall man who had aced the leader of the Hillies!

  Instantly understanding what was happening, Liana weakly tried to summon the strength needed for a song, but the pain in her head swelled in response, and she fell once more into a pool of deep black that seemed to have no bottom.

  ROLLING TO THE EDGE of the battle station, the last guardian droid paused, then decided to go no farther. It would stay with the ship.

  The military programming inside the core CPU reacted strongly to that, but buried under the millions of lines of code coursing through the memory banks, the ancient, original command of self-preservation surged to overwhelm the hastily written dictates of the U.S. Navy High Command.

  Trundling back into the battered corridor, the guardian proceeded toward the elevator. Pursuit had failed to apprehend the invaders. Now it would assume a passive role and wait….

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Four

  Soft voices murmured to each other in conversation. There was the scent of pine in the air, and the crackle of a campfire. The smell of cooking snake meat was mixed with the aroma of something else…something new, and deliciously powerful…then there came a guttural laugh….

  With a violent lurch, Liana awoke to find herself inside a small cave. Five strangers, two of them women, were sitting around a low campfire, laughing and talking, their hands full of plates piled with food or steaming plastic cups. A wide assortment of weapons that she could not identify hung off their belts, along with some odd knives, the glass blades having a strange blue tint, almost as if lake water had been solidified hard as rock. Bizarre. Even more strange, the women also carried weapons and were not chained in any manner that Liana could see, and were talking directly to the men as if they were equals and not slaves. Perhaps these were sec men from Northpoint. That was the only ville on the world with a female baron. In most other places women were merely sluts, only good for cooking and cleaning, birthing and bedding.

  That gave her some hope, then a dull pain throbbed in her head and the memories of the fight came rushing back. These were the outlanders who had saved her from the Hillies. Then she scowled. Saved her for what, was the question. She had heard tales of people who actually ate other people as if they were animals. And there were terrible legends about the mainlanders who did even worse things, ghastly, ungodly things, especially to pretty young girls. Even a mutie like me, she thought.

  With her heart pounding, Liana looked around for the tall man with silver hair, but he was nowhere to be seen, and her fledgling hopes and dreams collapsed like a felled tree. Obviously, he had sold her to these others.

  Trying not to make any noise, Liana eased a hand down her body and was startled to discover that she was fully dressed. The unseen garments were as soft as the clothing of a baron, and there was something on her feet even more comfortable than a pair of deerskin moccasins. She wanted to see, but did not dare to attract any attention.

  Surreptitiously, the woman examined between her legs, but there was no pain or soreness, not even dried blood. Clearly, she had not been taken while unconscious. That sent a wave of cold through her guts. It could only mean they were going to bring her back undamaged to Baron Griffin for the reward. Dear goddess no, anything, she prayed, but that.

  Desperately, Liana looked about for some way out of the cave, but the only opening was past the five coldhearts, and partially blocked by a large boulder and an odd arrangement of torn bushes lashed together into a crude curtain. Was that done to keep out the night flyers who lived in caves? How very clever!

  “Ah, I see you are finally awake,” Mildred said, stirring the contents of a simmering pot with a green stick. “I was hoping that the smell of food would bring you around. Hunger is one of the most powerful of the primordial triggers.”

  Hunkering lower into the fur blankets, Liana said nothing, having no idea what the majority of those words meant.

  “How is your head? Feeling any better?”

  Ever so slowly, Liana nodded.

  “Hope you don’t mind, but we took all the snakes,” Ryan said, stuffing a forkful of blackened meat into his mouth. “Didn’t want food going to waste.”

  “Fresh snake.” Jak grinned happily. “Been long time. One of my favs.”

  “Want some food, or coffee?” J.B. asked, proffering a cup. “It’s not coffee-sub, either, but the real stuff from a predark tin.” That wasn’t exactly
correct, but the Armorer was guessing that the woman would probably think an MRE food pack was magic. Or worse, evil. Lots of folks these days still held tech, any tech aside from blasters, in extremely low esteem.

  Unsure of what to do, Liana waited, and then finally shook her head. She had no idea what “coughy” was, but the smell was so good she assumed it had to be some sort of a drug, like jolt or wolfweed.

  Turning away from the cheery fire, a tall woman with long red hair smiled in a friendly manner, and Liana found herself instinctively responding in turn.

  “I’ve never met a singer before,” Krysty said. “That is a mighty valuable talent.”

  “No, please, don’t ace me!” Liana cried in terror. “I’m not a mutie. I’m not! I found those snakes. Honest!” From sheer force of habit, she reached up to touch her face and found that her hair had been combed to the sides. These newcomers could see her eyes. They knew the truth.

  The terror on her face was plain for everybody to see, and the companions could easily guess the reasons why. There had to be a rad crater in the area, and for decades children had been born horribly malformed. Over time, any deviation from the norm would be unclean, maybe even blasphemous, and more than sufficient justification for being aced on the spot, even newborn babes.

  “Oh calm down, we know that you are not a mutie,” Mildred said soothingly in her best doctor-to-patient manner. Lifting the stick from the pot of stew, she took a lick, then added some pepper.

  The casual nature of the statement took the blonde by surprise. “You…do?” she whispered.

  “Shitfire, think me mutie just ’cause my skin?” Jak asked with a laugh, taking a sip from his cup.

  “No, of course not, master,” Liana replied hastily, bowing her head in respect.

  “Cut that drek out right now,” Ryan snapped irritably, furrowing his brow. “Nobody here is a baron or a sec man. We’re just folk, same as you.”

  Liana started to speak, but nothing would come out. Did…did they really consider her a norm?

  “Dear God, girl, do people think you are a mutie be cause you are Oriental?” Mildred admonished curtly, laying aside the plate to fill another.

  Utterly confused, Liana said nothing.

  “Your eyes,” the physician explained patiently. “Do folks believe you are a mutie because of how your eyes are shaped, and the color of your skin?”

  A long moment paused in tense silence.

  “Yes,” Liana said in a very small voice, almost bursting into tears.

  “Horse shit,” Jak drawled, draining the cup. “Double horse shit! Just part Japanese, or Chinese, or something. Seen hundreds like you. Nothing special.”

  “Really?” she asked, hope thick in her voice.

  “Sure.” Which was only a partial lie. He had seen a lot of folks with Asian blood in their veins, but only a handful of them also with blond hair.

  Astonishing herself, Liana managed to screwed up the courage to ask, “Where did you see them, sir?”

  Ignoring the honorific, Jak refilled his cup. “All over the Deathlands,” he said honestly. “Front Royal, Two-Son ville, Hammertown, Norleans, IronHat, near the Washington Hole…” He grinned. “Would tell how many, but can’t count high.”

  She seemed relieved at the news, then excited. “I don’t know any of those villes,” Liana said, trying to control her emotions. “Where on the world are they?”

  The odd turn of phrase caught Ryan’s attention. On the world, not in the world. He was starting to get a crazy idea about this place, but it couldn’t be confirmed until the dawn when J.B. could check their location on his sextant.

  Wiping her mouth clean on a handkerchief, Krysty accepted a second plate of snake stew from Mildred, then added some salt and dug in with gusto.

  Astonished, Liana could only gasp at the wanton display of wealth. Metal, now salt. And there was so much, they mixed it into food! Not even the barons were that rich. Just who were these people?

  “So, what ville are you from?” Ryan asked, watching her reactions carefully. So, salt was valuable stuff, eh?

  “I was born in the wildwoods,” Liana said, the words spoken far too quickly. “Never even seen the inside of a ville.”

  “Yeah, me, too,” Ryan lied in return. “By the way, don’t you want your stuff?”

  “Stuff?”

  “There on your right.”

  Looking down, Liana gasped. Lying on a clean piece of white cloth was her beloved flute, as well as a sheathed knife, a crossbow and a quiver of arrows.

  “Your share of stuff from acing the coldhearts,” Ryan said gruffly, returning to his interrupted dinner. “You’re not a slave, or our new slut, or any damn thing else. If you want to leave, there’s the door.”

  “We won’t stop you,” Krysty added. “You have my word on that, little sister.”

  Completely flummoxed by the incredible offer, Liana couldn’t think of what to do next. Ryan and Krysty exchanged a fast smile. Yeah, they both had thought so. The woman probably had never owned a thing in her life aside from that flute, plus the clothes on her back, and maybe not even them. The companions would need a local guide to show them what baron could be trusted, where the rad pits and stickie nests were hidden, and so on, and this was the easiest way to get the woman on their side. It was a bargaining tactic Ryan had learned from his days with the Trader long ago. Give the other person everything they wanted, but ask for nothing in return, and they would bend themselves over double trying to repay you with info. It would be a matter of honor.

  Hesitantly, Liana reached out to touch the items, then looked at the companions as if asking permission. They artfully paid her no attention whatsoever, and the woman hurriedly dragged everything out of sight under the furs.

  “By the way, the name is J. B. Dix,” the Armorer said, putting aside his plate.

  Liana started to reply with the name she had used all of her life in Anchor ville, the hated Victoria, the family name supposedly a dark secret. But something deep inside made her feel that would be wrong, and she yielded to the urge. “I’m Liana,” she replied.

  “No last name?” Jak asked.

  “Me? I’m no baron,” Liana scoffed.

  Warming his hands to the fire, Ryan stored that info away. Never use a last name here. Already, the woman was paying for all the brass they had used chilling the coldhearts.

  In short order, introductions were exchanged as the woman strapped on her new weapons. The crossbow was as familiar as air to the woman, but the knife…gods of the atom, she had never seen bone this hard and sharp. It shone bright like winter ice.

  “Well, it’s time for me to go stand guard duty,” J.B. said, slinging the scattergun and taking one last sip of coffee. “See you in a couple of hours.”

  Going to the entrance, he pushed aside the curtain of thorny bushes and eased into the night.

  “There is still plenty of food,” Mildred offered once more, taking a seat on a rock, her coat folded on top as a cushion. “Mostly, it is just snake, but we also have some rice mixed with canned veggies.”

  Eagerly scooting closer to the fire, Liana accepted a plate, marveling over the strange material it was made from until the smell of the stew hit her, then she dug in with gusto using her fingers. Tactfully, the others said nothing about the nearby fork and spoon.

  “Goof!” Liana mumbled happily, barely able to speak from the sheer volume of food stuffed into her mouth.

  Allowing the starving woman to eat in peace for a while, Krysty then started the conversation going in the direction she wanted. As her mother always said, give a little, get a lot.

  “Well, Liana, I’m very impressed with your ability,” Krysty said, resting an elbow on her knee to lean forward. “Have you always been able to summon snakes?”

  Blinking, the woman swallowed. “Sure. I’ve always been a singer.”

  “Can you summon anything else?” Mildred inquired, adding some powdered milk to the predark coffee.

  “Only ever nee
ded snakes,” Liana answered simply.

  Fair enough, Krysty supposed. Those were a handy source of meat and leather. “What about the fog? When does it clear?”

  Licking her hand clean, Liana seemed confused by that question. “Fog?” she asked hesitantly.

  The lack of a reply caught Krysty off guard. “The…you know, the stuff out there that looks like smoke.”

  “You mean, the air?” Liana said with a frown.

  Annoyed, Ryan scowled. Fireblast! If the locals didn’t even have a word for the fog, then it probably never went away. There had to be a rad crater, or a volcano, in the vicinity boiling a section of the ocean into steam, creating a permanent shroud over the land. That was bad news. Without a clear view of the sun, J.B. would never be able to find out exactly where they were this time.

  Just then, there was a rustle from the entrance and Doc entered, sliding the massive LeMat into a holster.

  “Do I smell coffee?” he said as a greeting. He saw Liana and smiled widely, displaying his oddly perfect teeth. “Ah, I see that our guest has finally left the land of Nod! Welcome back, dear lady, I trust you are comfortable?”

  “Fine, yes, no damage,” Liana said in a rush, feeling oddly naked, even though she was fully dressed. The tall outlander affected her in the most disturbing way. He was very handsome, almost striking, and while the silver hair made him appear to be a wrinklie, this close she could see that was wrong. The tall man car ried himself with the assurance of a seasoned sec man. But there was something in his face that she could not readily define.

  “Doc, say hello to Liana,” Mildred said with a mischievous grin. “Miss Liana, may I present Dr. Theophilus Algernon Tanner.”

  “Charmed, dear lady,” Doc said, giving a courtly bow.

  Looking into his smiling eyes, Liana saw something that she had only known from her father, something she scarcely even had a word for—kindness. Somehow, the woman felt sure that this was a man who would never harm her, no matter what.

  “I saw what you did to those coldhearts,” Liana blurted, blushing slightly. “For some of the fight, anyway.”