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James Axler - Outlanders - Doom Dynasty participated in and the bloodshed he
had seen, had no stomach for what lay in store for the few surviving
Magistrates.
But there was no stopping it, not unless he cared to pit himself and his
friends against the prisoners and the Tigers of Heaven. He only hoped Grant
and Brig-id could protect Pollard long enough so he could wring some
information out of him.
After a couple of minutes of searching, Kane found a fire escape and climbed
down to the courtyard. His companions were uninjured, although Grant suffered
various bruises. The same could not be said for the
Tigers. Kiyomasa grimly informed him that Jozure was dead, killed by none
other than Pollard. Ibichi had a gunshot wound to his leg, which would impede
their travel back to Port Morninglight.
He did not seem impressed when Kane told him he and his samurai had gotten off
lucky compared to the
Magistrates. Only a few remained essentially unhurt.
Several of the wounded would die of their injuries before dawn. Their former
prisoners were in no rush to put them out of their misery. In fact, they
preferred to prolong it. They would make sure the killers of their friends and
family felt every second of agony before they died.
If not for Grant and Brigid, the people of Port Morninglight would have
dragged Pollard down into the swimming pool to be tortured. They had joyfully
transformed their holding pen to a torture pit, using knives given to them by
the Tigers.
Brigid and Grant kneeled protectively on either side of Pollard, with Kiyomasa
and Shizuka hovering just within the reach of their katanas
. Kiyomasa's posture in particular put Kane in mind of a ravening tiger,
straining at a leash. He glimpsed Domi standing at the rim of the pool,
apparently taking a keen clin-ical interest in the bloody proceedings going on
be-low.
Pollard was conscious, but just barely. Despite the measure of protection
provided by his armor, many bones in his body had been broken and he suffered
from internal injuries. His ugly face was white and glistening with sweat. He
panted through gaping, dry lips. Brigid tipped a canteen over his mouth,
mois-tening his lips.
When Kane leaned over him, his eyelids fluttered and he wheezed, "Unlucky
bastard to the last."
Kane took off his helmet and squatted beside him.
"That's probably the truest thing you've ever said, Polly."
Pollard managed a grin, his lips peeling back over red-filmed teeth. "I
wouldn't be in your boots& not when the baron gets hold of you."
"Now that you've brought him up," Grant said, "why did he order you into Baron
Snakefish's terri-tory?"
Pollard cast his gaze toward him. "How'd you know about that? Preservationist
spies in the divi-sion?"
Decades before, when Lakesh concocted his un-derground resistance movement to
oppose the barons, he wove the myth of the Preservationist menace, pre-senting
a false trail made by a nonexistent enemy for the barons to pursue and fear.
He created the Pres-ervationists to be straw adversaries, allegedly an
un-derground movement whose members pledged to de-liver the hidden history of
the world to a humanity in bondage.
Even Kane had been surprised to learn the Preser-vationists were a
fabrication, so he didn't bother try-ing to explain it to Pollard. "Yeah,
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that's right. Pres-ervationist spies. Why are you taking prisoners here?
Where are you taking them? Cobaltville?"
Pollard tried to shake his head and produced the dry crunching of fractured
neck vertebrae. He squeezed his eyes shut, his face screwing up in an attempt
to control the pain. "Hurt too much to think& give me
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James Axler - Outlanders - Doom Dynasty something& "
Kiyomasa uttered a scornful snort at Pollard's ad-mission. Although they had
left the medical kit be-hind in the riverbed, part of the standard complement
of Mag equipment were items to practice field med-icine.
Grant unsnapped a pouch on his belt and took from it a small squeeze
hypodermic. It contained a pain reliever and metabolic stabilizer developed by
the medics at the Mag Division. He undid the seals on
Pollard's left gauntlet, tugged it off and injected the ampoule's liquid
contents into the vein of the man's upper wrist.
All of them saw the string of digits written in blue ink on his flesh, though
a couple of the numbers were blurred due to perspiration. Eyes narrowing,
Brigid pulled up the sleeve of his Kevlar undergarment so she could see the
entire sequence. "What are those numbers?"
Pollard coughed, a rattling hack. He turned his head and spit a glob of bright
pink, frothy saliva on the flagstones. None of them said anything, but they
knew by the color of the sputum the man's lungs were punctured.
"What do you think those numbers are, whore?" he husked out, curling his lips
in a contemptuous sneer.
Kane's eyes flashed in anger, and he reflexively drew back his hand to cuff
Pollard's face. Although her lips were compressed, Brigid shook her head at
him and he checked the movement. She leaned closer to
Pollard's sweat-pebbled face and stated confi-dently, "I think they're the
destination-lock codes for a gateway."
Pollard's piggish eyes widened in surprise, a silent affirmation her opinion
was correct.
"But," she went on crisply, "they don't corre-spond to the unit in
Cobaltville, the one in the Admin
Monolith on the baron's level." Two lines of con-centration appeared on either
side of her nose bridge.
Her lips moved slightly as she impressed the numer-ical sequence into her
eidetic memory. She added, "In fact, they're not the destination-access codes
to any of the units we've ever used."
The last was directed more toward Grant and Kane than Pollard. Neither man
doubted her declaration, since she had proved time and again her power of
total and accurate recall was infallible.
"So, Polly," Kane said, "when you returned to the redoubt with the prisoners,
you weren't going to transport back to Cobaltville?"
A smile tugged at the corners of Pollard's mouth. The drug coursing through
his bloodstream not only masked the pain but produced a temporary euphoria.
"We were," he said dreamily. "Not the slaggers.
Gonna send them someplace else. With them num-bers."
"Why are they written on your arm?" Grant de-manded.
"So's I'd remember 'em, why else?"
"Yeah," Kane muttered. "Why else?"
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