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well aware that the forces they knew they could rely on themselves were to
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Axler,_James_-_Deathlands_56_-_Sunchild be split in two by Harvey's division
of sec forces.
"Hey, Cyclops! You and the blaster boy stop yakking. We've got work to do,"
Harvey snapped at them.
Ryan's face set, hiding his anger. Harvey's ability to use his tongue harshly
at the wrong moments would get him into serious trouble one day& but not today.
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Not when there was a larger enemy.
THE MUTIE raiding party was making no attempt to disguise its progress, and
Ryan was able to hear them from some distance. He was in an ambush party that
included himself, Krysty, Jak and the baron. Downey, the silver-haired and
snake-hipped sec man with the Sharps, was in charge, although he was suitably
deferential to his baron. Alien had confessed to being no fighting man, and he
was proving that by being more of an obstruction than a help, his bulk
becoming easily snagged on the sharp spines running down the stems of some
plants and tripping over tree roots hidden in the creepers that moved
alarmingly around his heavy-footed tread.
There were nine other sec men in the party, and Blake was one of them. The
wizened and dark sec man dropped back to help the baron straggle through the
undergrowth. Jak fell back in line to assist the sec man.
"I hate to say this, Baron," Blake whispered, "but are you sure you're doing
the right thing coming with us? I mean "
"I'm your leader, and that means in times of trouble, as well as peace," Alien
said hoarsely.
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"Baron not much good if chilled," Jak commented pithily.
"Time to worry about that later," Downey whispered over his shoulder. "We're
getting closer."
It was superfluous for him to mention that. The sound of the mutie raiding
party was now loud, and its direction easy to trace. As Harvey had surmised,
they were heading straight through the only viable path that led through the
forest, beaten down by several generations of travelers to and from the sites
of the underground ville's entrances. They were now trampling the undergrowth
flat, the Sunchildren chanting and loosing shots into the air with no thought
of stealth. Other, clumsy and high-pitched voices were mixed in with the
chanting, arrhythmic and confused. These were unmistakably the stickies,
carried along by the
Sunchildren, hyped up to a fever pitch of destruction.
"How many of the fuckers?" one of the sec men asked.
"Can't see from here," Downey commented. "We need to get nearer if we can."
"Let me see," Jak whispered, moving forward. "Better chance on own."
Downey nodded consent, and Jak was gone, vanishing into the undergrowth in
front of the group with barely a ripple of foliage, as though he had never
been there.
The chanting grew painfully loud as Jak skipped across the creepers, dodging
the raised tree roots and climbing up one of the stunted trees in order to
raise himself higher, hoping to gain a better perspective.
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He could see them, but not clearly enough. Leaping from one bough to another,
he traversed three more trees before he could get a clear view of them.
He suppressed the urge to whistle. There were fifteen Sunchildren that he
could count, plus twenty-eight maybe thirty stickies. It was hard to be
accurate as they moved about in a milling, frenzied crowd.
This meant that the total sec force was outnumbered by more than two to one.
Scanning the mutie party once more, Jak guessed that they had maybe a dozen
blasters among them.
He was about to skip back into the forest from his position when something on
the far side of the cleared path caught his eye. He showed himself a little
more as he identified the waving branches as the movements of Dean, on the
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other side.
The youngster had obviously had the same idea as Jak.
Their eyes met across the roof of foliage. Jak signaled ten to Dean,
indicating that they should both attack after ten minutes tracking the party.
Dean nodded, then was gone. Jak grinned, teeth drawn back in a predatory
smile, then returned to his group.
"Well?" Downey asked as Jak came into view. When the albino had explained the
position, he added, "Okay, we'll trail them and then go for it. If we take [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]