Chapter Twenty

 

Despite Morgan's lament over a lack of good help, the sec men in the holding pens knew their jobs. Ryan's blaster and panga were both taken at the front desk, and he was carefully patted down in a full-body search, where the thin knife hidden at the base of his back was also revealed and taken until his visit was over.

 

"For your own safety," the alert sec man said.

 

"Prisoner gets hold of a weapon, might use it on you first. It happens."

 

Ryan felt naked after being relieved of his weapons before being allowed in to see Dean, but there was no other way to gain access. He was taken to a screened room divided in halves by a thick woven mesh similar to fencing he'd seen around outdoor sec areas. On the other side of the visiting room, a door opened and a pale Dean walked out, alone and unescorted.

 

Ryan pressed close to the wire and realized he could see and touch Dean, but only though the half-inch hole of the strong metallic material. What was obviously a one-way mirror dominated a side wall. Ryan suspected the sec man who had admitted him into this visitor's center was keeping watch from behind the glass.

 

"Knew you two were going to get into trouble the minute I laid eyes on you last night," Ryan said gently, his mouth turning upward at the sides as he fought back a relieved smile. "They treating you okay?"

 

"Extra special," Dean said. "Jak, too. Hot food. Clean bunk. No creeps or pervs. Nicest cell I ever been stuck in, far as cells go."

 

Morgan had been honest about that much of the forced bargain anyway, Ryan thought to himself.

 

Ryan gestured to the chairs, one per side, and father and son sat down facing each other.

 

"Quiet in here," Ryan observed.

 

"Not in the cells. Some drunk keeps singing all about moons hitting eyes and big pizza pies."

 

"Every place like this has got a drunk, Dean."

 

"I guess."

 

"You want to tell me what happened?" Ryan asked. "Take it slow and don't leave anything out."

 

"Not much to tell," Dean said. "We were in the vid arcade, watching some guys play a game"

 

 

 

HAVING WATCHED the same two boys play Mortal Kombat for about a half hour, Dean decided to wade in for a try first chance he got. The opportunity came when the game finally became vacant after a particularly enthusiastic Dex had run out of the needed tokens and left with Brack to find more.

 

"Want to take me on, Jak?" Dean asked as they stepped up to the machine.

 

"No contest. Hand-to-hand. Beat you good," Jak said confidently.

 

"Not if you don't know the right moves. Got to punch these button, move these levers. And you don't know shit about comps," Dean bragged.

 

"Like you do."

 

"Like I do, yeah."

 

"Back Florida, pressed wrong button, screwed everything up. Ryan pissed good," Jak retorted, referring to a past mat-trans jump where Dean had decided to apply his magic touch to one of the gateway's operating system's keyboards and had sent the stressed comp banks and hardware into a series of fiery shutdowns. Ryan had been furious, picking Dean up with both hands and slamming him down butt first on a table for a conversation that still made the boy feel guilty.

 

"I still know enough to beat you at this," Dean said insistently.

 

"Take best shot," Jak replied.

 

Each of the boys put their tokens in the twin vid slots and was offered a menu of choices of fighters from which to make a selection.

 

"There's a girl on here, Jak."

 

"You pick her," the albino retorted. "I'll try go easy on girl."

 

Before they could do so, however, the two players who had been dominating the machine for most of the night came over.

 

"You guys took our vid game," Dex accused.

 

"Not yours." Jak replied. "Ours."

 

"See, you newbies, you don't understand," Brack said slowly. "Certain games are off-limits when the arcade champions are in the house, and guess what, Spooky? I'm here, and that's my vid game you're standing in front of."

 

The larger of the two moved to push Jak aside. The albino effortlessly sidestepped the attempt, grabbing on to the outstretched arm and tossing the attacker over his shoulder. The teen who had been thrown flew helplessly into the heavy plastic-and-metal side of another of the game consoles, hitting it ass first. His breath exploded out of him with a grunt of pain.

 

Dex quickly scrambled to his feet, his cap now off, his hair tumbling into his eyes. In his right had he held a knife, four-inch blade with a short bone handle. It wasn't a predark weapon, but one manufactured from the remains. Black electrical tape was wrapped around the handle to help hold the steel of the cutting edge in place.

 

"Come on, you creepy little shit! You want a piece of me?"

 

Jak brightened. "Knife fight. Okay. Bored comps."

 

"Hold up, Jak," Dean said. "This is stupid. If he wants the game, let him have it. Dad will be triple pissed if we get into trouble."

 

"Your dad, not mine. Too late, Dean," Jak replied. "Watch back."

 

Jak took off his brown-and-green camouflage jacket and pulled his own sharpened blade, switching it swiftly from the right hand to the left. He kept his luminous red orbs focused on his challenger, watching his foe's eyes. Jak had been in enough hand-to-hand brawls to know to never watch the other's man knife, you always watched the other man's eyes.

 

Unfortunately, before the brawl could really get under way, Brack decided to stack the odds in his buddy's favor by taking out the small .22-caliber handblaster that Jak had spied earlier. The younger boy had slunk to the back of the gathered group watching the fight and was now aiming the pistol at the back of Jak's skull.

 

Most of the teen onlookers were viewing Jak and Dex warily circle each other, reacting verbally when's Jak's knife bit first, cutting a red slit across his opponent's stomach. The blustering arcade guard was already on the horn, summoning a mall sec team to break up the fight.

 

The only one keenly watching Brack's progress was Dean. The other member of the arcade-machine-hogging duo was now boldly preparing to shoot the blaster.

 

Dean was too far away to prevent the chilling without responding with the same kind of force about to be unleashed on his friend, so he pulled his own blaster and shot first.

 

The first salvo from the Browning went high, racing like a fleeing man into the screen of a colorful vid game. The bullet shattered the exterior protective shield, going into the true vid screen and entering the very guts of the amusement comp's brain. Sparks flew, from both the point of entry and from the jury-rigged wall socket the arcade game was plugged into. Modified to handle four games on a single outlet, the aperture erupted into flames.

 

For an instant only the four games on the same circuit were affected. Then every piece of electronic gadgetry in the arcade was shorted out one by one, and the room plunged into near darkness.

 

Brack fired the .22 blindly at the same instant Dean squeezed off a second shot of his own, catching the boy in the throat. A fine red mist sprayed out from the exit wound. The bullet Brack had shot went wild, hitting the disputed Mortal Kombat game in the coin box.

 

Seeing in the dimness with eyes like a cat, Jak swung out an open palm and caught the second knife-wielding teen in front of him across the face once, twice. The slaps sounded like the cracks of a ringmaster's whip. Immediately the boy's eyes lost their mock killer sheen and started to glaze over in dismay. He started to cry and Jak pressed his attack, back-handing the boy with his knuckles for a third blow to the face.

 

"Drop knife," Jak said matter-of-factly. "Or I'll gut from balls to nose."

 

The boy did so.

 

"Now, drop your blade, boy, or I drop you," a new voice said.

 

Dean was no longer serving as Jak's backup. As the albino turned to slowly face the speaker, he found his friend was standing with his hands in the air. A trio of Freedom Mall sec men with long blasters was waiting for Jak's next move.

 

Jak opened his hand, and the knife fell to the carpeted floor.

 

He could see Dean being relieved of his Browning Hi-Power.

 

"Guess this means we lose our memberships, huh?" Dean said.

 

 

 

"LOOKS LIKE we're working for you now," Ryan said to Rollins.

 

All of Ryan's inner circle, except for Dean, were standing before the seated black sec leader.

 

"Glad to have you on board," Rollins replied, his face an unreadable mask. "I got the word from Mr. Morgan. I understand you two worked out a deal."

 

"If you want to call it that."

 

"You want sec jackets? Armor?" the leader of the security force asked.

 

"Not really. We're not going to be strolling around busting local problems at gaudies or hassling cart vendors," Ryan told him. "We're here to help you with any stickie attacks and to mebbe assist in the training of your greener men."

 

"Well, that would probably be two-thirds of my current squad."

 

"How big a crew are you running, honestly?" the one-eyed man asked.

 

"That's on a need-to-know basis."

 

"Don't give me that crap. You want my help, I need to know." Ryan gestured to the others around him. "We all do."

 

Rollins stood. "Let's talk while we move. I'll show you the armory and the training areas."

 

As the group followed the big sec man, he picked up where he'd left off in the conversation. "There are twenty full-time sec men and ten reserve. Usually we work active sec details on the exterior of the mall, and the surrounding areas in and around Freedom's perimeter during daylight. Day exterior shifts run twelve hours, from eight in the morning to eight at night."

 

"What about inside?" Krysty asked.

 

"Different kind of sec man. We're more of a presence in here to remind our guests to behave. Day patrols on the mall interior are on a light duty roster. Most of our hard labor comes after dark, both on the inside after people start drinking and the outside when the muties get restless. More often than not, people on the inside of Freedom have no clue there's a problem outdoors, and that's the way we want to keep it."

 

"How does the night shift break down?" J.B. asked as all of them stepped into former mall loading dock that had been taken over with targets, tumbling mats and exercise equipment. A few sealed wooden cases of weapons could be seen in a corner, locked up in a fenced-in area. Some of Rollins's regular sec squad were working out.

 

"If you work days, the shift is longer 'cause there's lower stress. Work nights, you can go from eight to four in the morning, or from midnight to eight. There's some overlap. That's on purpose since it falls at the same time we tend to have the most problems. Stickie activity usually hits between midnight and 200 a.m., although they've been known to come earlier and try again later."

 

Ryan leaned against a rack of barbells. "Okay, here's the way we're going to do this," he said. "We'll all stay on the night shift with patrolling and training. I don't give a rip for day duty if the action always comes after sunset. Give us a few days to get acclimated, meet your men and we'll try playing school. J.B. here can talk hardware. I'm on tactics with J.B. Jak over there might not look like much, but he's the finest hand-to-hand fighter I've ever known. All of us have been involved in close-combat fights with stickies before and survived, so it's not impossible. Stickies might be scary to some, but they're also triple stupe. Usually you can outsmart them."

 

"What's standard armament for your sec men?" J.B. asked.

 

"M-16 long blasters. M-16 A-2s to be exact."

 

"Chambered to take 5.56 mm rounds?"

 

"Right."

 

The M-16 was the traditional weapon of the smart sec man or hired mercies. The effective range of the now classic Army blaster was just under 350 yards. The weapon could be fired in four modes on single shot, semiauto, automatic or full cycle. Capable of firing close to a thousand rounds of ammunition per minute, keeping an M-16 on full cycle would empty a full 30-round magazine in under two seconds.

 

"Got a few extras of the M-16 if you want them, but there's not much ammo. We're lacking in that department. Haven't gotten a new supply in months."

 

"Which explains why the blaster-and-ammo store we went to earlier had been closed," Ryan said.

 

"We had to confiscate his stores. The man was paid, of course."

 

"Of course."

 

"Been meaning to ask you, Dr. Wyethwhy do you keep carrying around a target pistol? We could fix you up with an autoblaster with no problem," Rollins remarked.

 

Mildred hefted the ZKR 551 6-shot Czech revolver and sighted an imaginary target as she replied, "I've always been a believer in staying with what you know, and I know this revolver. Know how it feels, know how it shoots. I can draw, aim and fire without even thinking and hit my target time and time again with this blaster. Switch to something new, even with an increased bullet capacity, and by the time I learn it as well as I know this gun, I'd probably be dead."

 

"I see. Very well, the"

 

Mildred wasn't finished. "I like simplicity. The double-action revolver is a self-loading design, allowing the operator to cock the hammer and rotate the cylinder simultaneously, and then release the hammer with one trigger pull. Or if I choose, I can thumb-cock this baby like an old single-action revolver. And I always know how many bullets I have. With an auto, you have to count."

 

"Not if you have enough clips."

 

"Outside, extra ammo isn't usually an option. A revolver is easy to operate. The ammo in the chamber is clearly visible and never, ever misfires. If a shell jams, you just keep pulling the trigger and rotate the cylinder to the next shell. If you keep trying to blast away with an automatic, you have to stop, eject and remove the dud by hand," she said as she replaced the blaster in her holster.

 

"Give me a good automatic any day," Rollins told her.

 

"To each his own. Like I said, the extra shots don't mean much in that kind of situation. My pistol has a smooth trigger action, again adding to accuracy. And in a pinch, I can fire a variety of bullet loads, even though this one's been chambered to take a Smith amp; Wesson .38-caliber round. Try doing that with a 5.56 mm auto."

 

"You make it sound damn near perfect. Although that hand cannon is bulky and takes much longer to reload compared to an automatic. Autoloaders help, but you still lose seconds opening up the chamber, lining up the bullets and closing shop. And we both know the velocity falls short of an autopistol. High muzzle velocity will always provide the maximum penetration."

 

"Why, Mr. Rollins, perhaps you know more about guns than you're letting on." Mildred said with a smile.

 

Rollins returned the grin. "Could be."

 

"What have you got stockpiled?" J.B. interrupted, an uncharacteristic twinge of jealousy making him speak up.

 

"Not as much as I'd like. We did have more, but a lot of the good stuff has been used previously. Mr. Morgan had more blasters and ammo on order from a baron upstate who was open to trading, but they never arrived."

 

"Hope the stickies didn't end up attacking a convoy and getting the damn things."

 

"You and me both."