once they arrived, but was now running out of power. Soon, there might not be enough to operate the mat-trans!
“Into the unit!” Krysty commanded, starting to run across the chamber. “Now! We jump right fucking now!”
Not wasting a second, the rest of the companions jammed into the small chamber and as Krysty squeezed in with them, Ryan hit the LD button.
Nothing happened.
Fireblast! he raged silently. They had to have been here too long! The Last Destination option lasted for only thirty minutes! The LD button was no longer active and couldn’t send them back to the Arizona redoubt they had just left.
With no other choice, Ryan hit the jump buttons hoping he’d randomly key a sequence that would take them somewhere. Almost instantly a new chill seeped into their living bones that had nothing to do with the vacuum of space. A swirling white mist rose from the solid floor and ceiling to fill the chamber, then lighting crackled in silent fury and the floor seemed to disappear as they all began falling into the artificial void that stretched from unit to unit across the planet, and beyond…
RISING STIFFLY from his throne, the old baron limped across the dais in front of the blockhouse.
The entire population of the ville filled the courtyard, as Baron Hugh Tregart hobbled down a short flight of stairs and headed for the pyre.
Reaching twice the height of a man, the stack of wood was bound together with strong rope that had been carefully dampened to prevent it from burning through too quickly and disturbing the pyre, and its sole occupant. Wrapped in stiff canvas, the body lay on top of the flammable mound, a few relics from childhood placed alongside the trophies of manhood. The hide of the first griz bear he had ever killed, his gunbelt. Only the precious blaster was missing.
Accepting a crackling torch from a sec man, the baron shuffled closer and blinked away some tears as he touched the pyre as if bestowing a benediction. Soaked with shine, oil, grease and even a few precious ounces of condensed fuel, the wood caught instantly, and the flames made a low roar as they spread over the pyre, meeting on the other side and then rising to the crest to engulf the still body of his son.
A dark plume of roiling smoke soon rose to hide the corpse of Edmund Tregart, and all across the courtyard people began to openly weep or to bow their heads and mutter prayers as the flames began to consume the young man.
“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” Baron Tregart said in a loud, clear voice, tossing the torch onto the growing bonfire. Tears were on his cheeks, but his face was as impassive as stone. Only the whiteness of his hand grasping the walking stick showed his inner emotions.
“It is done,” the baron said, turning to face the crowd of ville folk and sec men. “My son is gone. Now, bring forth the killers!”
There was a commotion at the rear of the crowd, and the people angrily parted to allow a group of grim sec men through with their two prisoners. Wrapped in chains, the captives were wearing only bloody rags, their exposed skin covered with red welts from endless whippings. One man had a badly broken nose, the other had an eye swollen shut and bulging with contained fluids.
The ville folk cursed at the prisoners as they passed, several spit at the men, and a few raised sharp pieces of stone to throw. But the sec men got in the way, and the stones were reluctantly dropped to the dusty yard.
In the background, armed guards walked along the top of the wall around Thunder ville, and while the men desperately wanted to watch the coming execution, they forced themselves to face outward. Funerals, weddings, births, any major event involving the baron was a good time for enemies to attack. The sec men clenched their fists in frustration and kept watch on the desert river outside the ville. The muddy waters of the Ohi helped to keep the ville alive, but the river also brought outlanders from the distant mountains, and those were always trouble.
Returning to his throne, Baron Tregart sat heavily and cast a furtive gaze at the chair alongside. His wife, Hannah, was dying of the black cough, and now this. For a moment the old man thought his heart would break from the weight of his sorrow, then he inhaled slow and sat upright. A baron could never show weakness to his people, his father had always warned. Nor grant favors to an enemy. If he followed those two rules, his ville would prosper.
But it had been a lie. Thunder ville was dying. Food was so scarce that the women couldn’t produce enough milk for their babies, and many of them “accidentally” dropped newborn infants on to stones to save the poor things from the endless days of painful starvation until sweet death finally set them free.
The crops were dying, and the stores of predark cans all gone. Many of his people were eating cactus from the desert, or the little green lizards that came out at night. One lad had even somehow caught a stingwing and eaten it alive. He died soon afterward, but the act itself had been incredible. Stingwings moved faster than arrows. That a starving child caught one alive was seen by many as an omen. The question was whether it was a good omen because he caught the food, or a bad one because he died afterward. Some had tried hunting, but any portable wildlife was too far outside the small ville for the starving, weak hunters to carry back. Even in pieces. And the scavs would have quickly devoured the carcass left behind.
A breeze shifted the smoke from the pyre and the baron flinched slightly from the smell of his burning son. Edmund had been on a scav run in the distance ruins, and miraculously found a cache of predark canned goods. The cans that bulged from internal pressure they didn’t touch, experience teaching them that those were deadly to eat for man, beast and mutie. But there had been many more in good condition, fifty cans of food! Fifty! A bounty beyond imagination.
The cans had all been mixed with clean water, and then boiled for the length of a new candle to kill any rust-formed poisons. When done, the contents would have made enough soup for the whole ville. In this time of famine it was a godsend, his son hailed as a savior by the famished people.
“Then you tried to steal some!” Baron Tregart roared, standing and shaking a fist at the trembling prisoner. “You stole soup and spilled the rest! All of it!”
“Mercy!” a thief cried, raising his bloody hands.
A sec man alongside the prisoner thrust down his longblaster, the wooden stock ramming into the man’s face, the bones audibly cracking. His chains rattling, the criminal fell to his knees, a thin arm thrown across his face as protection. Blood flowed down his cheek and dribbled onto his filthy clothing. The other thief burst into hysterical tears, a mad laughter mixing with the sobs into an unnerving noise.
“Make soup of them!” a thin woman screamed from the crowd. “Cook the fools over the young baron!”
Others in the crowd took up the cry, and Baron Tregart frowned until they raggedly ceased. Had they come to that at last? To eat their own dead to stay alive?
Once more, the baron stared in open hatred at the cringing thieves. He wasn’t a brutal ruler, and might have forgiven them taking the food, but they had clubbed a sec man to do it. The sec man on guard that night was his own son, standing in for a childhood friend who was too weak to be near the food, the smell of the cooking soup making him too dizzy to stand.
All through last night, Edmund had burned with fever, the ville healer doing what she could, but even her herbs and poultices had been consumed during the famine. His daughter had cut her wrist and tried to feed her dying brother some of her own blood to give him strength. But in his delirium, the man refused. By dawn, Edmund was dead.
The child had foretold of this, Baron Tregart remembered bitterly. Food would destroy
