Vengeance Trail. James Axler

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      Chapter Seven

      J.B. carefully laid his black longblaster on the cinders and rose, hands spread and raised. “All right, boys. Everything’s easy. Just stay back off the trigger.”

      His two companions did likewise. It wasn’t as if they had much choice.

      “I hope we just did the right thing, John,” Mildred murmured from the side of her mouth. Any chance they had of slipping away in the confusion had evaporated.

      “All right, you three,” Banner commanded. “Down the embankment. Hands behinds your heads.”

      Half crouching, Jak shot the Armorer a questioning glance, as did Mildred. He shrugged, then slowly complied. The other two followed.

      “Walk over there by the brush,” Banner said. “Don’t turn around.”

      “Now, let’s not get way ahead of ourselves, here, Banner,”J.B. said over his shoulder. “We’re on your side.”

      “Penalty for civilians carrying blasters is death.”

      “But we fought the coldhearts for you,” Mildred said.

      “No exceptions.” The wind blew through an endless pause. “Sorry.”

      “Yeah, that makes everything just fine.”

      “Won’t die this way,” Jak snarled as they approached the scrub, barely bothering to keep his voice down.

      “Me, neither,” the Armorer said. “Slim chance is better’n none. When I count three, scatter like quail, children.”

      “Sergeant Banner!” It was another familiar voice. “What’s going on here?”

      “Firing party, Captain Helton, sir.” The sergeant sounded disgusted. Whether with the handsome young officer, with himself, or with the situation, J.B. couldn’t tell.

      “What are you talking about? These people fought for us.”

      “That’s what we’re trying to tell the man,” Mildred called. The three had stopped on the edge of the brush. The chance offered by the captain’s intercession seemed better than that of bolting. And anyway, the Armorer counted fast.

      “Regulations, sir,” Banner said.

      “That’s absurd!”

      “One,” J.B. said under his breath.

      “General order number twenty-three,” Banner said. “Prisoners caught in possession of weapons are to be executed immediately. No appeal, no exceptions. General’s a real stickler about that. You know that, sir.”

      “Two.”

      Helton’s face fell. “Well, if that’s the way it’s got to be…”

      J.B. flexed his legs slightly and opened his mouth to say “three.”

      Somebody new sang out, “Captain Helton, Sergeant Banner! Orders from the General.”

      “Don’t leave us in suspense, Corporal McKie,” Helton said.

      “General wants to see these three prisoners in his office at once, sir.”

      RYAN CAWDOR OPENED his eye.

      Blackness. Hintless of stars. Was he blind?

      If he was, it would be the capstone misery of a mighty pyramid of them. His whole body was a pulse of pain timed to the pounding of his heart. His head hurt as if it had been recently used as an anvil. He felt the mixed sensations of clammy heat, nausea, and being somehow unmoored from the world that indicated a fever raged in his body. And beneath it all there lay a vast aching void, a sense—a knowledge—of loss.

      He realized, then, that dim light was seeping into the lower edge of his field of vision. He expelled a long breath in relief and rolled his eye down. Dust-colored light, as if it were shining in through a tunnel mouth just out of sight around a curve. He lay on his back with his head propped on something yielding. His body was swaddled in what he guessed for blankets.

      He suddenly remembered. Wags appearing out of nowhere. Uniformed coldhearts with blasters. A great flickering muzzle-flash, pale yellow in the sun. A blow like a sledgehammer to the upper chest.

      Falling.