Sunspot by James Axler Page B

inducement.”
    “I won’t change my mind.”
    “Nonetheless….” Magus gestured at the landship, steel fingers beckoning impatiently.
    The side door opened again and the blond-dreadlocked henchman stepped out, carrying a beige fiberglass box in both arms. The box was a cube two-and-a-half-feet wide, deep and high. At one end was a steel-barred door. The baron had no experience with predark pet carriers, but he could see there was something good-size moving around inside.
    As the henchman approached, he saw the small pale fingers clutching at the bars, and behind the locked door, a small, familiar face.
    Haldane swung his scattergun up in two-handed grip, bracing himself for sustained rapid fire.
    His soldiers shouldered their assault rifles.
    Magus’s men reacted, raising their weapons, as well.
    It was a standoff, unwinnable by Haldane, and winnable only at great cost to Steel Eyes.
    “I think we can agree that the boy is in good health,” Magus said. “If you want to keep him that way, you and your men should lower your blasters. No way can you chill all of us before we chill him. You need to calm down, Baron. You need to think it through. The child is just a good faith guarantee, a deposit on the full amount. You pay me and you get your deposit back. You withhold payment and I will take him apart just to see what makes him tick.”

Chapter Eight
    For Krysty, the third straight day of march was by far the most difficult. There was an unfamiliar leadenness in her legs, and the inside of her head felt like it had been scoured with coarse sand. It wasn’t just the starvation rations, or the hard terrain, or breathing through a filthy handkerchief, or the distance they had covered. For two nights running, she and Jak had sat back-to-back with weapons drawn, unable to sleep a wink because of the threat the swampie bastards presented. Even now, every time they glanced over their shoulders at her, their faces bruised and battered, she could see it in their eyes.
    They wanted a chance to even the score.
    And more.
    Jak gently nudged her with an elbow, breaking her train of thought. He pointed to the left, to a hilltop to the east. A pair of dark riders had crested the rounded beige summit and were racing down the slope toward the front of the column.
    The albino pulled his bandanna off his face. “Scouts back,” he announced, showing muddy teeth.
    Somewhere out of sight up ahead, Malosh the Impaler called a halt to the advance.
    The long line of marchers stood in silence while the dust settled and the midday sun beat down on them relentlessly. Though they were stopped, no water barrels were opened, no dippers were passed around. The baron was hell-bent on conserving as much of the accumulated resources as possible. If he didn’t need to drink, nobody drank.
    The cannon fodder unit was standing behind them. Doc slouched about thirty feet away. Krysty watched him peel the long scarf from over his nose and mouth. He didn’t shake it out; he wadded it up in his hand while he gasped for air. Under the coating of dust, Doc didn’t look at all well. In his too long life the reluctant time traveler had suffered much, both emotionally and physically. The whitecoats’ cruel meddling had permanently damaged his brain, creating an intermittent short circuit, a debilitation triggered by stress, by a sound, a sight, a smell, or by Gaia knew what else. From long experience, Krysty knew how to read the signs in his gaunt face and in his body language. If Doc was indeed starting to withdraw into the morass of jumbled memories, of insensate anger, of incalculable loss, there was nothing she or anyone else could do to stop it.
    She couldn’t see past the carts and the backs of the horses to locate Ryan, J.B. or Mildred.
    The six companions were in a unique predicament. Though separated, they had all their weapons and ammo. They weren’t bound or hobbled. They were free to move within certain limits, even to regroup if they could