Storm Breakers by James Axler Page A

your best, she was a pretty ace boss. It was belatedly occurring to him that she had stepped up to save his bacon when she didn’t have to.
    “Thanks,” he said again.
    “Heard you the first time. What the nuke were you even arguing with them about that for? They’re the armorer’s crew.”
    “But I’m an armorer, dammit! I’m good, Rance! You know it!”
    As if reluctantly, she nodded. “You’re good with your hands and you got a touch with mechanicals. I’ll give you that. You’re even a halfway-decent kid, if you can learn to use a little judgment before your attitude gets you chilled—and mebbe people around you. Which would not please Trader at all. Reckon you might get your shot at showing your stuff as a weaponsmith.”
    He stood up straighter despite the aches.
    “But not for a spell. And not until you show you can keep your shit together. Before you go and do anything else, you gotta show you can ace the job you got. So shake the dust off your rad-blasted heels, youngster. We got a tore-down engine waitin’ on us, and those parts ain’t gonna wash themselves!”

Chapter Eleven
    A gnarled misshapen blob of shadow lurched up and over the wood rail at Ryan.
    He met it with a left boot to the face. Or, at least, the head. It toppled backward to crash through the thin scrim of ice with a big splash.
    A gunshot shattered the crisp evening air from close by. Ryan was already hauling out his big-bladed panga. Flash decision, it seemed a lot more useful in the present circumstances than his 9 mm SIG-Sauer handblaster.
    Apparently their guide thought so, too. She dropped the lever-action carbine to hang on its short sling across her saddle pommel and whipped out her saber as she spurred her mount forward.
    As she charged forward, Ryan’s blade hissed free as another shape lurched onto the bridge from beneath the rail to his right. He caught the forward-thrust muzzle with an upward swing. He felt a slightly rubbery impact. Then the head snapped back, flinging a long trail of blood, black in the gathering gloom.
    It confirmed his initial impression of a mouth full of huge curved teeth like a great white shark’s.
    The bulky, hunched shapes surged up on both sides, along with an evil croaking mutter of malice. A pair blocked the exit from the bridge to the wagon-rutted road, shadowy shapes, at least man-size in heft, but seeming short because of the hunched-over way in which they carried their big heads in front of their barrel chests. They raised wicked-taloned hands to rake the approaching horse and rider.
    The bay mare squealed in what Ryan took for terror. Instead of shying back from the terrible living mutie blockade, though, she sprang forward. Her hooves struck the stooped shoulders of both crouching shadows and knocked them spinning.
    Ryan shouted, “Krysty! Mildred! Follow me!” and charged after their guide.
    There were more of the humanoid frog muties waiting on the far side. Ryan slashed wildly with his panga, left and right, just trying to carve a path for his companions.
    He scored no solid hits. The hopping, shambling monsters’ rubbery skin wasn’t easy to cut. And their sloped skulls were apparently thick and tended to send the broad blade glancing away. But the creatures gave way before him and the solid mass of his panicking, eye-rolling mount.
    In a moment he was on the open snow-covered ground on the far bank. About fifty yards farther on the road went into a tunnel of mostly deciduous trees, bare but for snow. The mixed woods closed into the riverbank about the same distance away upstream and down.
    While Ryan, though a seasoned horseman, wasn’t experienced at mounted combat, clearly Alysa was. She had cleared a space of frogs in the middle of the clearing. Her horse was spinning in place, biting and lashing out with its rear heels, while its rider laid about not just with her sword—its curved blade flinging plumes of blood, inky in the twilight—but the barrel of her Marlin