LITMIR.BIZ

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handing them over to K.T. Here was where the smaller man’s temper and fire came in useful: the crew reps, stunned and shocked, perhaps still a little high from the brew in their veins, had him yelling in their faces, slapping them hard to make them pay attention.

      Their orders were simple: go and collect the crews from your wags—you would know better than anyone else where they were. Get them out of the bars and the gaudys. No matter if they were on top of a slut or halfway down a glass. Back here within a half hour.

      “Better do it, boys. It’s for the best,” Lou added mildly when K.T. had finished his tirade.

      It was a routine that Mildred, watching at the time with Ryan, had described as “good-cop-bad-cop,” explaining at Ryan’s puzzled expression about the psychology of the soft and hard.

      “That?” Ryan had asked with mild surprise. “That’s nothing new. Never heard that expression, though. And never seen it done quite like this.”

      Yet such was the regard with which the crews held Toms, for all his oddities, that the crew reps were gone as soon as Lou’s mild words faded on the breeze, only to return a short while later with their crewmen in tow.

      Ryan had doubted that the necessary maintenance and repairs could be made to ready the convoy in time. Half the crewmen were being held up by their fellows, and their level of tiredness, drunkenness and ability to concentrate on the task in hand was—to say the least—dubious.

      And yet, harried and driven by the two sec lieutenants, each moving to the crews that he knew would respond best to his particular manner, it wasn’t long before the crews were beginning to look like the brew and lust had been riven from their blood. Goaded by the sec men and each other, they were soon fit enough to start the task in hand.

      For the next eighteen hours straight they had worked, before resting prior to departure. Ryan and his people had been acting as sec and outriders for most of their short time with the convoy. Toms had told Ryan, as they stood on the melting pavement of the highway on which he had found them, that he knew from stories that Ryan and J.B. were survivors of the infamous Trader’s convoy. Since then, stories had circulated about their abilities to fight their way out of a tight corner. So their main purpose in being recruited was to provide additional and experienced sec to augment the force on a convoy that was swelling to the point of being unwieldy.

      For the most part, this is what they had done. But now that they were about to leave Arcady sooner than originally intended, they had to earn their jack. They had been promised money and supplies on leaving the convoy, if that was what they preferred. They had also been assured a job as long as they wanted one. The benefits for this were obvious: Toms, while not generous, was an employer who believed that his crews would respond well to being well rewarded. Food was plentiful. Basic meds were stocked. Water was always well tanked. And there was jack for gambling, gaudys and brew when they hit a ville.

      But in return, Toms demanded that his crews be ready to respond at an instant. They had to work hard, and turn their hand to anything that would assist the greater whole. So it was that Ryan and his people found themselves pressed into tasks that were alien to their usual way of working.

      Yet the manner in which K.T. and Lou had managed the crews after the initial hard-taken tack had been revelatory. Despite the mouth that still could outcurse anyone across the breadth of the land, K.T. had been encouraging rather than scourging, and Lou had used his immense strength to facilitate speed on some tasks that would otherwise have been delayed by the need to find spare manpower for lifting.

      Now, as Ryan and Krysty sat in the eighth wag with the sec lieutenant, and he said little or nothing as his protruding bug eyes scanned the horizon before flicking back to the instruments on the dash of the wag, checking the wag jockey’s progress, it was as though the stresses of the last day or so had never occurred.

      “Taken this stretch of road before?” Ryan asked, wondering why the sec man seemed so intent on the surrounding territory. If what Toms had told them was correct, then Arcady was a regular on their route.

      K.T. shook his head. “Shit, no. Trader tells us at the last minute that it’s another route out of the asswipe fucker of a ville. Usually take the road heading nor’ nor’ east, which is an old highway that’s been resurfaced in part. Smooth as a gaudy’s pussy after a close shave. Sweet, easy route. This pissing road leads who knows where.”

      “Jackson Spire, presumably,” Krysty murmured. It passed through her mind that it was odd that this ville should be their destination, full of trading promise, when K.T. seemed never to have heard of it before. Her hair curled slightly.

      “Yeah, probably does. ’Scepting that we’ve never been to that bastard pesthole ville before. Some ass-end-of-beyond piece of shit that ain’t got two turds to rub together, let alone serious trade.”

      “Then why would it now?” Ryan questioned. K.T. shrugged. “Why the fuck should I know? Mebbe they got lucky and found some old stockpile on their doorstep while they were fucking each other and their pigs in the dirt. Mebbe they got some blasters and robbed some stupe ass convoy that wasn’t looking. Or mebbe Arcadian is setting them up in some way.”

      “Setting them up? For what?” K.T. shrugged. “I don’t mean like the asshole wants to make ’em take a fall for something. But mebbe he wants to see if they can make something of themselves if they get a helping hand, or whether they’ll just piss it away like shithead scum.”

      “That’s magnanimous of him,” Krysty murmured. “Kind of good,” she added as she noted the puzzled look K.T. shot her. K.T. sighed. “Weird fucker, that Arcadian. Me and Lou never really get much of a chance to be around when him and Toms are together, and I can’t say as I’m too pissed off about that. There’s just something about him that really puts the shits up me.”

      His attention was taken by a patch of undergrowth on their left, and he peered toward it, cursing furiously under his breath as he tried to define if the rustling movement within it was a harmless animal, a possible predator or stickies waiting to attack.

      While that occupied him, Ryan and Krysty exchanged looks. Such was the bond that had built between the two of them over the years they had been traveling that they could almost tell what the other was thinking.

      If Arcadian had some motive for sending Toms to Jackson Spire, then they would be wise to be triple red. Maybe the baron was nothing more than a dabbler in trying to expand his empire than K.T. had half suggested. But maybe he had some motive that was as yet unfathomable, involving the convoy as much as—if not more than—the people of the ville.

      The eighth wag of the convoy was an old military vehicle that had, at one time, been used as troop transport. Bench seats still filled the first half of its length before giving way to an area that had been cleared at the rear of the vehicle. Here were two mounted Brens, ancient but reliable, that covered both sides of the road. Currently they were manned by two of the wag crew. Ryan and Krysty were due to relieve them in an hour. Meantime, they tried to rest, knowing how uncomfortable the metal bucket seats of the Bren mountings could become. But it was far from easy, as Toms was a great believer in utilizing space to the max: cartons and wooden crates were piled precariously around them, barely contained by webbing. These were crew supplies, and were carried in sec wags to keep them separate from trade cargo. It was a reasonable system, except that it took no account of crew comfort during rest periods.

      “Asshole trees,” K.T. cursed, louder than his previous mumblings. “Makes the land hard to read. You don’t read the land, you don’t know what’s gonna jump out at you.”

      Which was precisely why Ryan and Krysty were themselves cursing at that moment. They were trying to get rested so that they could stay triple red, yet thinking that the only thing that was going to leap out at them on benches like these were their own kidneys.

      It was going to be a long ride, despite the distance.

      “DO YOU USUALLY follow this route?” J. B. Dix asked mildly, taking a look through the periscope attachment that had been welded into the roof of the rear wag. It was a fine piece of work, salvaged from who knew where

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