James Axler - Desolation Crossing

“You bet it is,” the trader said quickly in a placating manner. “Hell, it’d be impolite to ask you aboard without showing you. Stand down,” he added, holding his ear, obviously directing this into the headset, “we’re coming back. Everything is cool.”

The trader turned, beckoning them to follow. Eula stood back, still cradling the 7.62 mm blaster that looked too large for her. Her impassive face still gave nothing away. She was no threat at present—the manner in which Krysty’s sentient hair flowed free only reinforced this impression—but she would still need to be watched.

The friends paused. The idea of having her, with that blaster, at their backs was not something that anyone would consider ideal. Subtly, Ryan indicated they should go with it. Jak caught Ryan’s eye, and as they fell in behind the trader, the albino teen adopted the unusual position of taking up the rear of the party. Many places in his patched camou jacket concealed his leaf-bladed throwing knives. Reputation may have told how quick the albino youth could be, but experience was the only way to really know the swiftness with which he could move. As he passed Eula, he knew he could move quicker than she could should the need arise.

As they traveled the short distance between their original position and the armored wag, they were able to see more clearly the extent of the convoy. There were four other wags. Two of them were large trailers, closed in on all sides. These were obviously the old refrigeration units. The cabs attached to them had been reinforced with mesh where any glass was visible, armor plating covering the remainder. The old paintwork along the sides of both cabs and wags was pitted and scarred where it was still visible. Camou had been painted over most of the rest. There were also a number of scores and scorch marks that made the friends wonder once more about how they had been “acquired.”

These wags had only blasterports in the cabs. Although they would be hard to damage in themselves, their length and lack of slits made them vulnerable to blind-spot attack. That was probably why they sat in the middle of the convoy, flanked by two wags that carried the rest of the cargo. These were armored, with blasterports and slits. They had been converted, and both Ryan and J.B. could only admire the work that had gone into them. They looked to be solid vehicles, but they weren’t big. If the cabs on the refrigerated wags could hold two people, these only held three or four, tops. Maximum of twelve crew.

The armored wag out front was more impressive. Again, it wasn’t just the size, although it was a heavy-duty predark military wag, dark and heavy in color, albeit a little chipped and faded by combat. It was squat, with tires at front and a caterpillar track at the rear. It had bubble-mounted machine blasters, ob slits, shielded surveillance tech and two large mounted cannon. It could do some serious damage to anything that dared to go up against it.

“How much of the tech in that still work?” J.B. asked.

Eula answered. “Most of the surveillance tech, some of the weapons systems. Much of it was fixable, but it’s a little erratic.”

J.B. looked over his shoulder. “You don’t find that a problem?” he questioned, remembering how Trader had stripped much of the comp work out of War Wag One, preferring total reliability at the expense of some tech.

She shrugged. “It hasn’t failed yet.”

“But what about the tech that needed satellite shit? That can’t be working,” he added.

“I said some, not all,” she snapped, taking it as though it was personal criticism.

By this time they had reached the armored wag, and the trader was running a loving hand over it.

“Hasn’t seen me wrong yet,” he said quietly. “This is it, guys. The convoy. Used to be two motorbikes, but they got wasted in our little, uh, contretemps,” he said, trying to brush past the matter.

“What?” Jak asked.

“An old word, dear boy, not English. I believe he is referring to the firefight he mentioned earlier,” Doc said softly.

“Should fuckin’ say so,” Jak murmured.

“How many people you carry?” Ryan asked. He had noted a look of anger flash across the trader’s face, and he wanted to move things on.

“This takes five people. A full complement of sec, drivers, workers comes to seventeen on a trip.”

“Yeah, and how many you carrying now?” Ryan pressed.

The trader grimaced. “That’s the thing. We lost eight in the firefight.”

“You lost half your people, and you don’t think that was a little careless?” Mildred questioned, unable to contain herself.

“Two went at the back. The bike riders are always the first to cop it,” the trader mused, seeming to ponder her question deeply. “We did salvage the bikes, though,” he added with some pride. “As for the other six…We had a direct hit on one wag that took out three people, two straight away and one after a day. The wags are good and strong, but it was the concussion of the blast that did it for them. Stupe thing is that they were chilled by their own weapons going off in the wag. Pathetic. Two sec bought the farm trying to protect the refrigerators. You can see those bastards are blind, and they had to get out of the cabs. I think we learned something from that. And they did. Just a shame it was too late.”

He paused, seemingly lost in thought.

“And the last one?” Doc prompted. “So far you have mentioned only five casualties.”

The trader shook his head, pensive. “Penn. Best quartermaster I’ve ever had. Just a little too protective of his post, that was all. He saw a group of coldhearts from the other convoy trying to bust into one of the wags and saw red. He was traveling with us, and was out of there before anyone had a chance to stop him. He was shouting at them to stop, firing off without aiming, and they just picked him off. One shot. Bang. Took the poor stupe bastard’s head off. Swear his body kept running for a yard before he went down.”

If Ryan hadn’t believed a word the man had said before this, then now he certainly had no faith. The story was crap. Just like the rest of it. No one who served time on a convoy would be so stupe. Just as no one who had served time would get chilled by their own weapons when their wag got hit. Why were they drawn when they were inside, and unnecessary?

Whatever had really happened, it hadn’t been what the trader wanted them to believe.

For so many reasons, it seemed like a triple stupe thing to do, but for so many other reasons, it was their only option. Ryan found himself saying, “Okay, we’ll join you. But if we’re gonna work together, what do we call you?”

A number of things sprung to mind, but the trader’s answer was, “LaGuerre. Armand LaGuerre.” He stuck out his hand. “But you can call me ‘boss.’ No, only kidding,” he added hurriedly, on seeing the stony looks that elicited.

Saying nothing more, Ryan took his hand, then looked at his people with an expression that communicated his own reservations were as deep as theirs.

At least they had transport out of here.

Say what you like about LaGuerre, Mildred mused, he’s not as big a fool as you’d take him for. He didn’t survive as a trader by being stupid, and if—as they suspected—the firefight that had deprived him of nearly half his crew had less to do with being attacked than with being the attacker, then he wasn’t the complete idiot he seemed. No, it seemed to her that he had a certain cunning, a certain base instinct that could kick in and override the tendency to let his mouth run away with him. A garrulous yet cunning fool. It was a combination that was volatile, and could only end one way.

The question was, when?