Storm Breakers by James Axler

sour light that warmed his skin slightly. He saw it through eyelids puffed next thing to closed.
    “Here, now, Rance, you got no call to do that,” a nasal man’s voice whined.
    “Yeah, I do,” she said. “I told you pricks to back off. You don’t listen, I’ll make you.”
    “Listen, bitch,” another male voice said. This one came from J.B.’s left side. “Where do you get off—”
    J.B. felt as much as heard the man to his left fall beside him. The man rocked side to side, bumping into him. It sounded as if the guy was moaning through his fingers.
    The others had stopped thundering on J.B., and he had gotten some of his composure back. Drawing a deep breath, he snapped to his feet. He flicked open a Spyderco lockback folder from his pocket with his right thumb.
    “All right, you coldheart rad-suckers!” he yelled. He couldn’t see much for the sweat and blood that promptly streamed into his eyes when he got upright. He waved the four-inch blade before him in what he hoped what a threatening manner. “I got you now. Who wants some?”
    “Shut the fuck up, Dix,” Rance said. “Fold your manhood back up and stuff it back in your pants, before I gave you a dose of my pacifier, here.”
    Blinking at her, he could make out the blurred, sort-of-feminine figure he’d come to recognize in the past few days. She was holding a long metal barlike thing in one hand and beating its shank against her open palm. Because he knew tools, he recognized the “pacifier” as one of the big open-end wrenches used to fasten external stores and armor plate on War Wag One and War Wag Two. It had to be two and a half, three feet long.
    “You chilled Earl!” the nasal voice said. It whined even more now.
    “Bullshit,” Rance said. “Just busted his jaw. He won’t die of that unless he’s triple-weak and not much good to begin with. That’s my assessment of him, anyway. As for Leon, he probably got off with a concussion. He doesn’t think double-good on his best of days, so after he stops wobbling and running into things he should be about as much use to you as he was before, Tully.”
    Grumbling, the members of the gang still on their feet hauled up the still-motionless Leon and Earl, who was sobbing through his hands now, having found it hurt too much to try to complain in words, and dragged or steered them away, as the case may be.
    “Thanks,” J.B. said.
    Having obeyed her order about the knife, he looked around for the glasses. Spotting them, he stooped by them. He grinned when he found out the lenses were intact, though the wire wings were twisted a bit out of true.
    “What in the name of glowing nuke shit made you get into it with that bunch?”
    “They started it!”
    “Don’t lie to me, Dix. I’ll make you regret it.”
    “Well—” He was fingering his own jaw gingerly. His probing tongue confirmed at least one tooth loosened in its socket, as he thought. But he reckoned it’d firm up in a couple days and he wouldn’t lose it, barring further misadventure. He had a certain amount of experience with that sort of thing, too.
    The ribs were going to make it feel as if somebody was stabbing him every time he breathed for a week or so. But he could live with that. He may’ve always been a runt, but he was tough.
    “I had to do it, Rance,” he blurted, his mind coming back to her question—and to the way her hazel eyes were fixed on him. “They said the 1911 sucked! Claimed the Glock was more reliable!”
    “I’m guessing you ain’t had experience with a wide variety of handblasters, Dix.”
    “I know all there is to know about the Colt 1911!”
    “In my experience, Glocks are more reliable than 1911s. And don’t go getting fresh with me or I’ll bust your jaw so I don’t have to put up with your bullshit for a spell.”
    “Yes, ma’am!” He had already learned his new boss didn’t bluff.
    He had also learned that if you did what she told you, and listened when she instructed you, and tried