LITMIR.BIZ

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circumference. Beyond that, and the bank of lights, it was hard to see anything. They could be in a ville, or they could be in the middle of nowhere at a randomly chosen rendezvous. Until any of them had any idea of their location, it was best just to play along, a decision that none of them needed to consult to make.

      None except Doc. The old man was last to his feet, staring around him in awe and wonder, as though seeing the world for the first time. Which, perhaps, in some ways he was. Mildred, casting him a glance as she was hustled by, wouldn’t have been surprised if he had a slight concussion from the constant banging of his head. Certainly, his dazed expression did nothing to dispel that notion.

      The old man was the last to be hustled out of the wag and onto the hard ground. The others had stood idly as the sec men struggled with him—his balance seemed genuinely impaired and he had trouble keeping his feet—trying to scout their position without being obtrusive.

      As they became used to the arc lights, the darkness beyond began to slowly coalesce into a series of shapes and shadows. They weren’t in the middle of nowhere—this was a ville. It was quiet, and now that the noise of the wag engine had ceased, they could hear in the background the familiar noises of people going about their business. It was late evening, almost dark. An overcast sky let little light from the moon seep through. Chem clouds hid a near full moon, and only the very occasional shaft of moonlight pierced the oppressive darkness.

      The companions were, at a guess, on the edge of the ville. The sounds drifted only from two directions, the others yielding nothing but silence. Was this a compound of some kind where they were to be kept prisoner?

      They would find out soon enough. For now, at least Doc’s bewilderment had given them the time to take some kind of stock.

      “Line them up and step back, lads. We want to see what we’ve got here.”

      Now they could see the man behind the voice. It was surprising. He had the voice of a big man: barrelchested and tall. Yet the man who addressed the Hawknose sec force in such booming tones was actually a short, squat man with a mop of curly gray hair and a straggling beard, almost dwarfed by the battered Kalashnikov he cradled in his arms. Yet despite his lack of physical stature, he had a presence that told he was in charge of the sec men who flanked him, each man standing taller and broader. They looked like a hand-picked team designed to deter any arguments. As they stood, in a parallel arc to the lights that were at their rear, it certainly seemed as though they were having the desired effect on the Hawknose team, who stood back toward their wag a little defensively.

      The small, squat sec man stepped forward, squinting at the six bound people now arrayed in front of him as though examining them closely.

      “Yeah, they look like it to me.” He stepped back and said over his shoulder, “You reckon as much, boys?”

      There was a general muttering of agreement.

      Mildred, looking at them, wondered if this was because they really were in agreement, or as part of some process to soften up the men clustered by the wag. To make them more amenable to whatever may come next.

      Meanwhile, the squat sec man snapped his fingers, and two of the men bent down, reaching behind them. They each withdrew three sacks, which they tossed into the center of the dirt patch, so that they landed at the feet of the companions with a clinking that betrayed the contents.

      Solid jack.

      “Yep,” he continued without missing a beat, “I reckon these are the dudes that Crabbe has been looking for. Stupe, really, all those missions he sent us out on, and the bastards roll up down the way apiece without us even having to do anything. Valiant did good, and so did you.”

      “Then why have you only thrown in six sacks?” asked the pompous Hawknose sec man. Even if he wasn’t the senior, he had taken it upon himself to be spokesman. Like the others, he was lean of face and grim of demeanor. His face gave nothing away, like his compatriots, though none of the six betrayed by them would have betted that the others weren’t secretly relieved that they weren’t the ones on the firing line should his opposite number not like his tone.

      The squat sec man sniffed heavily, growled in the throat, then spit out a phlegm ball that landed with a dull splat by one of the sacks.

      “It’s like this. They look right. That’s good. We got—” and he pointed to each in turn as he reeled them off “—Brian Mordor, the one-eyed leader. Jock and Snowy, the old guy and the albino. One’s crazy as a mutie coot. The other’s a shit-hot hunter and real dangerous. Had my way, I’d shackle the little bastard at all times. Can’t trust them… Krysty, the mutie with the weird strength. Gonna have to watch her, boys. Millicent, the one who’s a healer. Don’t let that fool you, boys. Heard she can fight like a man. Kinda looks like one, to my eyes. Krysty looks more my type, though I hear she’s Brian’s woman. And then we got J. T. Edson, the blaster man. They say there ain’t shit he don’t know about weapons. Useful guy.”

      “You know a lot about us,” Ryan said slowly. “We don’t know shit about you. Want to tell us?” He kept the irony out of his voice. The man seemed to know something about them, but with a strange twist. Like that old game Chinese Whispers that Krysty had told him about, where information was passed on from person to person, half heard. He wondered what else they would know, but yet not know.

      The squat sec man sniffed and spit again.

      That’s one hell of a sinus infection the guy’s got, Mildred thought, but held her peace.

      “Listen, Brian, I ain’t got nothing against you personally, see, but unless you shut up I’m gonna have to bust you in the jaw. My baron wants you, and he’s got you. But that don’t mean that a little accident don’t happen between here and him getting to see you, especially if you can’t keep your yap shut. You don’t talk unless you’re asked something, you see?”

      Ryan bristled at being spoken to in such a fashion. He could see the smug looks on the faces of the surrounding sec men, and he was seized by a desire to wipe it from their faces. But his hands and feet were still bound, and he had no weapons. He gritted his teeth so hard that his jaw cramped as he fought down his temper. Although he knew he shouldn’t rise to the bait, there was something about the squat man that irritated him—an assumption of superiority based on nothing more than the fact that he held a blaster.

      And something about the way that sec man looked at him. As though he was sizing him up.

      Just what did Baron Crabbe want from them? Want enough to have been searching for them, and to have collated information that seemed to be almost but not quite right? That was a cause for concern. Did he want something that they would be unable to give because they had never had it? Any further rumination, taking his mind off his anger as it did, was interrupted by the further supercilious tones of the sec man who had escorted them this far.

      “Are you going to argue with Ryan—” he pronounced the name with emphasis “—or are you going to tell me why you’re not paying up in full?”

      “I was in the middle of telling you when one-eye here interrupted me,” the sec man snarled, raising his blaster and checking it pointedly. Behind him, the other guards moved menacingly. “Thing is, Brian and his boys—and girls, if you’ll excuse me,” he directed at Krysty, “have got a little task that Crabbe wants them to undertake for him. Now, much as he appreciates the fact that Valiant sniffed them out, and that you’ve brought them here, he feels that it would be a little remiss of him to pay in full before they’ve undertaken that task. After all, they look right, but if they ain’t, then that’s a lot of jack to throw away. Y’see?”

      “But we’ve brought them here in good faith—” the sec man began.

      “Ain’t saying nothing against you or Valiant,” the squat man interrupted. “How many times? Shit, get the point. You keep the half no matter what. Turns out that we all made a mistake, then that’s it. If these’re the right guys, then you get the second half of the payment. Look at it my way—you already called out Brian as Ryan. That don’t inspire me, you know what I’m saying?”

      The

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