as just another guy the size of a collossal statue, Grant was wearing a pair of wire-rimmed glasses and had traded his forearm-holstered Sin Eater for a belt-holstered Heckler & Koch MP-5 K. In a nearby wheelbarrow Grant had hidden both a Sin Eater and a compact Copperhead assault rifle, ready to be reached through a precut opening.
“Then who the fuck are you?” Lombard asked.
“I’m just a delivery boy,” Grant said. “Does she look like she hauls around crates full of this shit?”
Lombard glanced over to the slender but fit young woman. Brigid didn’t look like a delicate flower thanks to years of adventuring across the globe. Though it was obvious that she was in very good shape, Kane knew that there was a mentality among his fellow Magistrates to dismiss women as incapable because of their softer bodies. At first even he had trouble adapting to Brigid’s competence and capability as a fellow adventurer.
Kane also quietly admitted to himself the stomach-churning anger at Lombard’s sneering familiarity with Brigid Baptiste. Though she could take care of herself, having proved her inner strength across several years and every continent on the planet, Kane still possessed an instinctual protectiveness for the archivist.
Brigid shrunk from the renegade Magistrate, and Lombard chuckled.
“Still, it’s only one Mag bastard,” Lombard said aloud, as if to calm his companions.
“Well, I guess if they measure those guys by you…” Grant said, shrugging.
“Ruben, if this overmuscled cock head talks again, shoot him with his own gun,” Lombard snapped.
Grant looked down at the bandit Lombard had spoken to. Ruben, a young, tattooed punk wearing a leather vest, was a foot shorter than Grant. He gripped the machine pistol with whitened knuckles.
“Don’t shoot yourself with that thing, kid,” the big Cerberus warrior whispered to him.
Even without being close enough to see Grant’s face, Kane could tell that his partner was smiling. The mind games against the coldhearts were now in full effect.
Ruben glared at Grant. “I’m not simple, you damned big freak.”
“You could have fooled me,” Grant replied. “You keep pointing that muzzle at your friends, too, and your finger’s locked on that trigger. If it weren’t for the fact that you haven’t deactivated the safety on the gun, you’d have shot your partners twenty times over.”
Kane could see Ruben’s nearly comical double take as he glanced down at the machine pistol. The Cerberus rebel fought to restrain a snort of amused derision at the reaction. His partner’s mockery had struck another blow against the raider’s confidence.
Kane dragged the corpse of his ambusher into a ditch and submerged the body beneath two feet of shantytown sewage. He had relieved the dead man of his walkie-talkie, as well as the twin single-action revolvers that he’d worn. The radio would give Kane even more intelligence against the bandits. The handguns were typical of what the robbers had, a blend of pump shotguns, bolt-action rifles and old revolvers, which explained Ruben’s confusion over Grant’s more complicated HK. In the two centuries since skydark, technology was no longer uniformly equal, and maintenance-intensive devices such as automatic weapons were nowhere near as common as manually cycled firearms and tough old solid-state circuitry, which could be reconstructed from simple wire. The bandit radio was one such cobbled piece of technology, presumably a simple circuit board, some magnets and wire wrapped in a hard little case. Kane figured that if he ran out of ammunition, he could use the boxy walkie-talkie to smash open an enemy gunman’s skull and not even cause harm to the electronics within.
Kane thumbed back the hammer on one revolver, then cut loose with a terrified death cry. The revolver boomed, a cordite cloud filling the alley.
“Banyon! Banyon! Report!” the coldheart’s voice cut over the walkie-talkie and the Commtact in stereo. “Second team! On Banyon’s position now!”
Grant chuckled. “Good luck catching Kane.”
Lombard whirled toward Ruben. “I thought that I told you to shoot that loudmouth!”
“I can’t get the gun working,” Ruben complained.
“You really think that shooting me is going to affect a hard bastard like him?” Grant asked.
“You’re annoying me, shithead,” Lombard grunted. “I’ve heard of Kane, and he’s nothing special.”
“No. He’s only the most dangerous man ever to patrol the Tartarus Pits,” Brigid countered. “Who else would I hire to protect us?”
Lombard grimaced. “Listen, bitch, Kane might have been hot shit in the old days, but I know all of his—”
“Lombard!” a bandit interrupted, shouting into his radio to the left of Kane’s hiding place. “We found a puddle of blood.”
“Banyon’s body?” Lombard asked.
“Nothing,” came the reply.
Sandwiched between two makeshift huts, Kane observed the search party that had stumbled upon the crimson slick that was the last evidence of Banyon’s existence. Six marauders milled around, their eyes wide and fearful. Counting the five hanging around Lombard, watching Brigid, Grant and the doctors, that made a full dozen coldhearts, with a few more most likely still hanging back on perimeter security.
Sure enough, Kane’s observation skills proved correct as a radio message crackled over his captured unit. “We found another wheelbarrow full of supplies. No sign of any Mags, though.”
“Son of a bitch!” Lombard cursed. “Leave the meds for now. Find that fucking Mag before he turns everything to shit!”
“Where’d your bravado go?” Kane taunted softly into his radio, loud enough to transmit but not enough to betray his roost to the hunting bandits. From his vantage point, Kane could see the blood drain from Lombard’s face.
“Show yourself, Kane! Or we start killing your people! And we’ll make it slow!” Lombard snapped.
Kane decided to up the ante. “Go ahead. I already have the first half of my pay. I’m sure I could find a good buyer for the dread bandit Lombard’s severed head, too.”
Lombard dropped his radio as if it were a venomous snake, dancing back in fright. Nothing like striking a cruel, casual predator with the knowledge that he was nowhere near the top of the food chain. Where Lombard had set himself as a brutal ruler of the Tartarus Pits, the bandit now lived with the knowledge that an even bigger bastard was poised to snatch him and carve him apart for blood money.
“Pick up your damned comm, coward,” Kane growled.
The rumble of Kane’s threat attracted the attention of one of the brighter members of the marauders’ hunting party. The shotgun-toting thug stalked cautiously along the alley between rows of huts, looking for a clear view of Lombard. Kane heard the man’s approach. If it hadn’t been for Kane’s well-honed senses, the thief would have been stealthy. Instead, every footfall and kicked bit of debris locked Kane on to the approaching gunman like drumbeats.
Lombard tentatively reached for the radio. “Okay.”
Kane
