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J.B. pulled Mildred close to him, loving her long into the night until they were both spent.
JAK GOT THE MOST comfortable chair he could find and brought it out into the hall. After positioning it in front of the only open doorway to the second floor, he sat down and had a peach.
Down the hall he could hear Doc snoring like someone’s grandfather and wondered how Dean was able to sleep with so much noise.
He looked at his wrist chron. Just another hour to go before he could wake J.B. and get some rest himself.
The soft noises continued to resound along the hallway.
One hour was going to seem more like two.
SEC CHIEF GRUNWOLD pulled back the frame of the door so the rest of his sec men could enter the hotel without a sound. They tread lightly over the broken glass strewed about the lobby, their boots making slight crunching sounds as they walked.
“Fillinger,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper.
“Sir.”
“Do a recce of the hotel, find out where they are and report back to me.”
Fillinger was gone without a word, treading silently down the first-floor hallway on his way to the stairs.
“I want at least one man on each of the stairwells, and two outside on either side of the hotel. I don’t want these outlanders slipping away.”
The sec men scattered, each filling one of the posts Grundwold had outlined. The sec chief remained in the lobby by the front desk, using it as a makeshift command center.
Five minutes after he’d been sent away, Fillinger returned, only slightly out of breath. “They’re on the second floor. They’ve got a sentry posted in the hallway in front of the only unlocked door to the floor. The other entrances have all been locked, so my guess is the rest of them are getting some sleep, taking turns on watch through the night.”
“Good work.”
“Do you have a plan?” Fillinger asked.
“Not yet,” Grundwold said. “Give them some time to fall asleep, and for the sedatives to kick in. Meanwhile, I’m sure I’ll be able to figure something out.”
Chapter Eight
An hour later, Jak Lauren was having trouble keeping his eyes open. During his entire time on watch, he hadn’t heard a sound other than Doc’s snoring—which had mercifully toned down as the time traveler fell into a deeper sleep—and he’d found it hard to remain awake and alert.
But now that he’d finished his watch, he was eager to be relieved so he could crawl into bed for some much needed sleep. According to the rotation they’d used of late, J.B. followed Jak. J.B. would be followed by Mildred, then came Doc, Dean, Krysty and Ryan. Jak could have waited for J.B. to come and relieve him, but with a mat-trans jump and a long trek on foot there was no reason why anyone would be getting up from a sound sleep on his or her own.
Jak got up from his chair and went into Mildred and J.B.’s room. They were together on the same bed and fully dressed, J.B. on the right side, closer to the door. Jak nudged the Armorer’s shoulder in an attempt to wake him.
J.B. didn’t stir.
Jak tried again, this time nudging the man a little bit harder.
Still nothing.
Jak took firm hold of J.B.’s shoulder and arm and gave him a firm shake, as well as tapping him on the side of the head with a finger. That seemed to do the trick, because in an instant J.B.’s eyes were open and his hand was under the mattress reaching for his Tekna. In less than a second he had it raised and pointed at Jak. But even though his eyes were open, the sleep wasn’t quite gone from his mind. If Jak’s white hair and ruby-red eyes hadn’t been so distinctive, J.B. just might have run the teenager through with his blade.
“Your turn take watch,” Jak said, his right hand on J.B.’s wrist just to make sure he didn’t slip with the knife.
J.B. sighed, opened and closed his eyes several times and tried to bring himself to wakefulness. It wasn’t easy. He’d been awakened in similar circumstances many times before, but he’d never had so much trouble rousing himself. “I’ll be right there,” J.B. said.
“Good,” Jak replied, leaving the room. “Tired. Need sleep.”
J.B. closed his eyes again, but immediately opened them, knowing that if he allowed himself to drift off, he’d never get up. He sat up on the edge of the bed rubbing his hands vigorously over his face.
“Is everything all right, John?” Mildred asked, awakened by J.B.’s movements.
“Tired is all.”
“Do you want me to take your turn?”
“No, I’ll be fine.”
“Call me early for my shift if you need to,” Mildred muttered, sliding back into sleep.
“Sure.” J.B. laced up his boots, then grabbed his spectacles and fedora off the nightstand and put them on. He decided to take his scattergun with him. It would cover the entire hallway with a single shot, and the noise would surely awaken the rest of the friends from even the deepest sleep.
“See you in an hour and a half,” J.B. whispered, giving Mildred a kiss on the cheek.
Mildred smiled as if lost in a dream.
THE OUTLANDERS obviously knew what they were doing, Grundwold thought. While their choice of spending the night on the second floor of the old hotel at first seemed unwise, a closer look revealed that they had taken up a fairly secure defensive position. There was only one way onto the second floor, but many ways off. A new sentry was watching the entrance, and he’d pulled his chair into one of the room doorways so that it was impossible to take him out with the first shot. At best, a sec man would have to open the stairwell door and rush the hallway, giving the sentry at least an even chance at getting off a shot before he was chilled. That would surely awaken the rest of them, and then all hell would break loose.
When that happened, the women could easily get caught in the firestorm. The baron wouldn’t like that at all. He wouldn’t care if only one of his sec men came back from Falls, as long as he had the two women with him. After all, a single stud could service dozens of women; it was the women who got heavy and delivered the goods.
As an experienced sec chief with plenty of loyal men under his command, Grundwold knew he couldn’t commit all his men to a firefight in the hopes of capturing just two women. But in this situation, what else could he do?
He looked through the glass of the doorway at the open end of the hallway. The short wiry man with glasses and a hat looked to be having trouble staying awake. That was likely thanks to the sedatives in the pears. It was just the sort of advantage Grundwold had been hoping for. If nothing else, they could sneak into the hallway, slit the sentry’s throat and then take out the rest of the outlanders as they slept, until they had captured the women or chilled all of the men.
“Kauderer,” Grundwold whispered.
“Sir!” the sec man responded.
“Go around and join Fillinger at the door at the other end of this hallway.”
“Then what?” Kauderer asked.
“We wait for this stupe in the hat to fall fast asleep, and then we start chillin’.”
The sec man smiled. “Yes, sir!”
KRYSTY STIRRED beneath the sheets. She could feel something was wrong. She reached over to check on Ryan. Her lover was there, warm and resting comfortably in a deep, peaceful sleep. She wondered if she should wake him and let him know what she was feeling, but decided it wasn’t strong enough to sound the alarm just yet. She’d have a look around, and if she noticed anything unusual, she could wake Ryan.
Slipping out of bed, Krysty was struck by the coolness of the night air. She dressed hastily, slipped on her bearskin coat, then picked up her Smith & Wesson and left the room.
The hall was quiet. J.B. was on watch down the hall, which was some twenty-five yards away. He was sitting on a chair in a doorway to one of the rooms and facing the open door to the stairwell. She’d check in with him later, but first she needed to check out the stairs at this end of the hallway. Something told her that whatever was sending her the danger signals was located at this end of the building.
She looked through the glass in the locked door, peering first down the stairs and then up them. No one was there, but still her feeling of unease persisted. She opened the door and took a single step into the stairwell to get a better look.
Suddenly a hand was on her wrist, and another on her mouth. She was yanked into the stairway, her Smith & Wesson torn from her grasp as she was thrown onto the concrete landing.
The door almost closed behind her, but was kept open by a clip from somebody’s blaster.
“We weren’t expecting you,” a sec man whispered. “But we’re glad you could make it.”
The second sec man plastered a large piece of silver tape over her mouth, and they both worked to tie her hands behind her back with a strong piece of nylon cord.
“And not even a scratch,” the first sec man said.
The second one laughed. “The baron will be pleased.”
GRUNWOLD COULDN’T believe his luck. As he’d watched through the glass of the door, one of the two outlander women wandered out of her room, opened the door at the far end of the hallway and was caught on the other side by Fillinger and Kauderer.
And best of all, she’d opened the door and now they were free to enter the second floor away from the end of the hallway being watched by the guard.
“Canady and Edson stay here,” Grundwold barked hoarsely. “The rest of you come with me.”
He headed down the stairs, padding softly on the steps so as to avoid causing any noise that might alert the sleeping outlanders. When he reached the other end of the second-floor hallway, Fillinger and Kauderer were just finishing tying up the redheaded woman. They had replaced the clip in the doorway with a knife that had been wedged into the door frame. It kept the door open and unlocked and was in no danger of being kicked loose.
“Good work!” Grundwold said. “Do you know which room she came out of?”
“Second one on the left,” Fillinger answered.
Grundwold turned to face the rest of the sec men who were lined up on the stairs. “Two of you take her to the tower and wait for us there. If I’m not there in one hour, take her back to the farm and make your report to the baron.”
Two sec men grabbed Krysty by the arms and led her away.
“And don’t mess with her,” Grundwold called down the stairwell. “I want her handed over to the baron in good condition.”
He turned to the sec men directly behind him. “Follow me,” he told Lewis. “The rest of you cover the hallway. If the outlanders discover us, I don’t want any of them coming down the hall. All right, let’s go.”
Grundwold stepped back from the door, and a sec man opened it for him. He and Lewis padded into the hallway, moving quickly toward the second door on the left. They kept a close watch on the man guarding the far door, but he didn’t stir.
They stopped just outside the door to the room, and Grundwold peered through the doorway. There was a man on the bed, asleep. They would chill him and move onto the next room in search of the other woman.
Grundwold entered the room, went around to the far side of the bed and leveled his blaster on the back of the man’s head. On the other side of the bed, Lewis drew his switchblade, pressed the silver button at the top of the handle and the knife snicked open.
The man on the bed suddenly stirred, and in a single quick and fluid motion, he had a huge knife in his hand and was slashing it across Lewis’s belly. The sharp edge of the monster blade cut through the sec man’s jacket and abdomen, spilling blood and entrails onto the hotel-room floor.
Lewis stood there with wide eyes as his hands reached down in an attempt to keep his guts from sliding out of his body.
Grundwold leaped onto the bed, grabbed the prone man’s arm with one hand and jammed the barrel of his Persuader up under the man’s ear with the other. “I’ve got sec men all over the hall. If you make another move, or make a sound, I’ll chill you and the rest of your friends where they sleep.”
The man’s body tensed, as if he were going to try something despite the warning. “We’ve already got the redhead. If you want to see her alive, you’ll do what I say.”
That seemed to convince the man that putting up a fight wasn’t a good idea.
The man slowly got off the bed.
“You can get dressed, but I’ll chill you and your friends in a heartbeat if you try anything.”
The one-eyed man nodded, seeming to accept his fate, or perhaps realizing that fighting back at the moment would be futile. Whatever the reason, he cooperated with them and began putting on his pants and boots. When Ryan was dressed, Grundwold picked up the man’s knife and blaster and led him out of the room, then down to the end of the hallway where a half-dozen sec men were waiting. As soon as they were in the stairwell, the door closed behind them and the sec men who’d been waiting on the stairs began tying the one-eyed man’s hands behind his back.
“Tie his legs, too,” Grundwold ordered. “Give him enough slack to walk, but not to run.”
“Where’s Lewis?” one of the sec men asked.
Grundwold shook his head.
The sec man, a friend of Lewis, stepped forward and threw a hard punch into the prisoner’s stomach. Ryan doubled over slightly, but recovered quickly. The sec man threw a second punch, fully catching the one-eyed man’s jaw. His head snapped left from the force of the blow, but he showed no signs of pain or fear.
Grundwold swung his arm in an arc and caught the sec man with the butt of his blaster before he could throw another punch. “Take it downstairs, before you wake up the rest of them,” Grundwold hissed. “We’ve still got one more breeder to catch.”
The sec man unclenched his fist and grabbed Ryan by the arm, pulling him hard down the stairs. The rope between the prisoner’s legs caused him to stumble, then fall down a whole flight of stairs.
The sec men picked him up by the arms, then dragged him the rest of the way down the stairs and out of the hotel.
“Fillinger!” Grundwold said. “Come with me.”
Grundwold and Fillinger reentered the hallway and began searching rooms for the other outlanders. Grundwold checked the third room on the left and found it empty. He looked back along the hall where Fillinger had just finished searching the second room on the right.
Fillinger shook his head. The room was empty.
Grundwold waited in the doorway of the room he’d just searched, his lovingly maintained Persuader 500 trained at the man guarding the far door, who still hadn’t moved.
Fillinger opened the door to the third room on the right, directly across from where Grundwold was providing cover. He had the door halfway open when he stopped in his tracks and looked over at Grundwold and jabbed his thumb in the direction of the room.
Someone was sleeping in there.
Grundwold kept the Persuader trained on the guard as he moved across the hallway to join Fillinger. Then they entered the room together, with Grundwold again moving to the far side of the bed. When they were in place, Fillinger lowered the barrel of his remade longblaster onto the head of the sleeping outlander while Grundwold reached down to pull back the sheet covering the sleeper’s head.
It was truly Grundwold’s lucky day. Sleeping on the bed was the other breeder.
“Make a sound and you’re chilled,” Grundwold whispered in her ear.
She opened her mouth to let out a scream, and Fillinger pressed the blue-steel tip of his blaster even harder against the side of her head.
She closed her mouth and held her tongue.
“If you want to try your luck, you should have gone to the casino next door. We don’t play games,” Grundwold said. “Put on your boots. You’re going on a little trip.”
Flashing him a murderous look, but without making another sound, Mildred put on her boots.
Although she was fully clothed, Grundwold enjoyed the view of the breeder’s full, voluptuous figure, but didn’t allow the sight to make him careless. “We’ll take your blaster, thanks,” Grundwold said, picking up the target revolver from the table and tucking it into the waistband of his pants.
Grundwold and Fillinger each took hold of one of the woman’s arms and led her to the door. There was something about the look on the woman’s face that Grundwold didn’t like. She seemed to still want to fight back, and there was a good chance she might do something stupe like try to warn the others.
