A Big Shiny Blue Marble Ch. 52

I've spent a large part of my life making you rich. I got nothing more than a little food out of it but I did find out one thing; that place was never supposed to be for somebody like me. I talked to everybody I could and you know what I found out, Nancy? I'm sure I couldn't have spoken to every single other prisoner, but they all told me that that quarry was designated especially for people who had committed murder. Everyone there told me they were there for killing somebody.

Well I've never killed anybody, but somehow I was approached by this quarry to fight for them for reduced time -- which was a lie. For what I did, I shouldn't have been eligible to go because I shouldn't have gotten ten years hard time for what I did.

But I did, and then I found out after three years into this that one of the hub had asked to have my sentence turned hard -- so that I could be approached. Do you know who that might have been, Nancy? Any one of your friends back there who might have wanted to twist the justice system so that she could make a little money on a new fighter? I remember you from that day, you know. I know that you were there."

Nancy's eyes were wide as she lay on the floor of the bouncing, rattling wagon looking up at a very patient man with plenty of reasons to want to cause her harm.

Samantha rode close to the wagon. "Bad news," she said, "There are about fifty guards after us. We might be able to handle them, but it might not go well, is what they're telling me. And I think they wouldn't mind it if Nancy doesn't make it."

"They'll probably try to kill me before the smoke clears," Nancy said quietly.

"Why would they want to do that?" Samantha asked.

Nancy shrugged, "Because if it were me back there and there was somebody else from the hub here instead of me, that's what I'd want to happen."

Ewan snorted, "And you consider yourself better than the ones inside? I've never killed anyone. For all of this horseshit, I'll never get a fair hearing now. Wherever they send me, I'll be treated like I was a murderer." He raised the muzzle of the weapon, "As soon as it hits the fan, I'm gonna give up this game and play for keeps. And if I gotta live like I'm a killer, well then I guess I'm gonna want to deserve the punishment -- instead of what I got for coming home to help my mother."

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The lid of the crate only put up a token amount of resistance before it gave up the fight with a tortured squeal and lay next to the shipping crate. Billy lowered the crowbar and looked over at Randi, "Remind me again why we need this?"

Randi smiled as she straightened up from dragging two full cases of ammunition over, "I know you've never met her, but one day, I'll introduce you to my friend Copper. She's the one who gave me the idea to drive around in one of these things -- since she's got one herself. But hers is way different, Billy.

This one can handle a lot of things, but one thing that it's light on is overhead attacks. Copper's Bradley can handle that all by itself -- almost, but I -- we don't have much of anything for that, so that's why we needed the extra bits and this gun here. Ever used one?"

"Uh, no," Billy laughed as he carefully set the eighty pound gun into its mount, "but I like it already. The more I get used to your little piggy here, the better I like it, but I've been having the same thoughts, I guess. There's not much defense against flying demons the way it was without this thing."

"Well, don't get to liking it too much," Randi laughed, "I think I'd rather have you driving, since you're a lot better at it than I am. I get all flustered and busy and I'm much better at gunning."

They finished getting everything stowed and after getting the fuel rig filled, they were on their way home.

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There was a narrow draw up ahead with a right turn at the end of it and everyone slowed to a stop as they approached the turn. The wagon was pulled ahead and sat in the shade of some trees behind a few boulders as the riders rode up a little and dismounted to tie up their horses out of sight on the far side of the slope while Sam and the roadmen hid behind some cover and waited.

It wasn't more than a minute and a half when the first of the pursuing riders rode down the draw. This was a more or less classic trap and ambush and the quarry's guards rode straight into it. The springing of the trap was up to Ewan and he waited to see how many were following him. There were twenty in the killing ground when he fired from a more or less head-on position while the roadmen shot from the side and in a few seconds there were none living to chase after them anymore, though they all knew that there was a second wave somewhere back down that road.

The horses were scattered and the bodies dragged into the undergrowth before they mounted up and rode on.

"Feel better now that you've killed somebody?" Nancy asked in a sarcastic and mocking tone.

Ewan thought about it for a moment and then he nodded. "Yup," he said somewhat grimly.

They rode on, the landscape placing them in a position to be seen by their pursuers every now and then. Every time, the guards opened fire as soon as they caught sight of their objective.

"Are they gonna catch us?" the guard asked Sam a moment later.

"Daylight's the problem," Samantha said, "We're armed, they're armed, so it's a bit of a draw unless we can improve the odds a bit more. If it was nighttime, they'd already be dead, since we'd be hunting them."

Her words finished the train of thought which was running through D'Arcy's mind.

"Shane," D'Arcy called over, "This is just getting stupid. Help me slow them down."

It was at that point that the captive guard really noticed them. She'd seen and been close to D'Arcy when they were inside, but she knew that the way that she'd spoken had annoyed him. He didn't know it, but it was expected behavior for a quarry guard there. It had nothing to do with her own feelings on the subject of men or any sort of person; it was just part of what she had to do if she wanted to get the two silvers a day in pay.

D'Arcy was large and to her, he was attractive as anything, but even if he wasn't pissed at her, he looked to be a little too fierce to her in a few ways.

But all of that changed when she saw Shane sidle his horse over to where D'Arcy sat. She could see that they were brothers easily and her eye took in a lot of details in an instant. He looked so cool and calm as he sat on his horse discussing some sort of plan with his brother and she watched the steady and purposeful way that his fingers opened the loading door on his colt and began to empty the spent casings out as he rotated the cylinder of the pistol.

As she watched, he nodded a time or two to D'Arcy and then he pointed out a feature of the terrain which they'd just ridden through before he lowered his hand again and went on loading the pistol. The colt went into a holster strapped to his thigh and then he drew two more pistols, these a matched set of competition-grade semi-automatics in nine millimeter. To her, they looked even deadlier than the one that she'd been issued since the ones that he had were equipped with barrel weights which gave them a very blocky and businesslike outline. He thumbed the magazine eject buttons on them and their magazines dropped out to the ground before he slapped in full ones, cocking each pistol and setting the safety on it before he jammed it into one of a pair of holsters at his waist far above the one with the old Colt in it lower down.

D'Arcy carried a pistol and a long, double-barreled rifle in a large caliber. Shane always referred to it jokingly as D'Arcy's 'elephant gun'. It was slow, but then D'Arcy figured he had plenty of firepower in the group, so he handled the long shots whenever the need arose and the thing packed enough of a punch to likely drop a rhinoceros -- not that there were any around which needed it at the moment.

Finally, Shane pulled an ancient and scuffed-up M-14 rifle from a scabbard on his horse. Changing the magazine for a full one, that went back into the scabbard and Shane continued to listen to D'Arcy intently for another few moments. The ex-guard saw his head begin to turn in her direction and she tried to decide what his reaction to her might be if he turned his head far enough to see her.

She knew that she wasn't the prettiest girl in the world or anything, but just this one time, she really ached to be worth at least a little more than the sort of glances which D'Arcy gave her. But she'd been working her shitty job and it had been a long shift, not to mention that she'd gotten a little dirty crawling around in the steam looking for her gun so she knew that she was likely out of luck right off the hop. She really couldn't have said why it was important to her right then either. She had issues of her own and in her mind, she'd all but accepted that she'd never find somebody without some serious settling, though for the most part, she wasn't even looking and never had been.

To her surprise, Shane's gaze went right past her, since he was looking for details in the landscape and then he swept back, right past her again before the double-take. Which became a triple and quadruple-take right afterward and though she was startled that he'd look that much, she was able to keep her cool and nodded to him once very briefly.

"I'm a good shot," she said, "and I can help if you trust me."

Shane smirked a little, "And why would I want to trust you?"

She reached up and made a passing attempt at getting her hair out of her eyes, "Do you know what happens to guards who became hostages and don't die trying to get away?" she asked. "At best, in the larger places and jails, they ditch you quietly and you're out of a job. Way the hell out here, I'm not worth much more than a bullet now. I was serious when I asked to be taken along."

He looked as though he was toying with the idea for a moment, "Hey, grumpy-bitch," he grinned at the other woman in the wagon, "Izzat true, what she says?"

Nancy kicked the guard as hard as she could and her feelings on the subject were rather plain in her eyes, "Give me a gun," she snarled just before she spit in the guard's face, "You don't even have to untie my hands. Just give me a gun and I'll blow her away before I shoot Ewan."

Ewan turned and smiled at Nancy for a moment and she smiled back.

Then he hit her again and sent her sprawling. When she picked herself up, she brought her hand to her face and felt the blood and the way that her lip was swelling rapidly.

"If you say one word now," he said, "I'll hit you hard enough to kill you."

She tried to spit in his face as well, but it took her too long because her damaged lips wouldn't respond quickly enough and she found herself on her face next to bag of horse feed.

D'Arcy's attention had been drawn by then and he smiled down at the ex-guard, "Hey, you mean what you said?"

She nodded, "Try me. And my name is Callie."

D'Arcy reached into the pocket of his long coat and drew out Nancy's pistol. While they were bringing Ewan out, he'd swung out the cylinder of that pistol and emptied the cartridges into his palm and pocketed them and the gun. He was certain that Callie hadn't seen it.

He looked at the fancy filigree work on the piece for a second, "You need to convince me that you're for real. Even if I give you a chance, you'll have a lot of guns at your back, so move slow so that nobody gets confused. Would you do what I tell you to do?"

Callie looked up through her long black hair and nodded with a thin smile, "Sure."

D'Arcy handed the gun to Shane, "You look like you're thinking of trusting somebody one time in your life. I dunno why, but I kind of like it on you. I'll leave it up to you."

Shane chuckled quietly as he looked back at the road, knowing that they couldn't waste much more time like this.

"I'm gonna give you this gun, Callie" he smiled, "You won't believe me, but even if you shoot me, you'd need every shot in it to hurt me much and by then, D'Arcy will save you -- so he can skin you alive later over a fire. So I'm giving you your chance. You want to play along with us and we get out of this, I'll do what I can to keep the law off you.

If that's what you want, then when I give this to you, I want you to shoot Snaggletooth there. Do you think you can do that for me?"

He watched Callie's dark eyes twinkle from behind her windblown hair as she nodded.

He handed the pistol over and Callie seized it so quickly that it was out of his hand almost before he knew it. She spun around and grabbed Nancy's hair, lifting her head up at what must have been a painful angle. The whole thing was done almost as one swift and fluid motion. Callie's hand slammed down into Nancy's hair, she yanked her head up, placed the muzzle of the pistol against the woman's forehead as her thumb drew back the hammer and she pulled the trigger as she looked straight into Nancy's shocked eyes.

There was a loud click and then Callie looked up and over her shoulder, "Hey, you said to shoot her. Either give me a full gun or tell me I gotta kill her with this even though it's empty. I'll do that if you want, but it's gonna take a lot longer that way, just sayin'."

She turned to look at Nancy, "If you spit again, I swear I'll staple your lips together."

D'Arcy reached down, "Here, Callie,"

She found six cartridges in her hand, so she loaded one and grabbed Nancy's hair again. As she pulled the woman's head up, Nancy began to whimper, all the fight gone out of her. Callie pulled back the hammer, but she found the twin barrels of D'Arcy's rifle under the pistol and pressing upward. She looked up.

"I admire your determination -- or your hatred -- whichever it is, but now I DON'T want you to shoot her."

Callie smiled up at them both, "I was in the army for a little while, they taught me that if you get no new orders, you're s'posed'ta keep doing what your last orders were."

The brothers looked at each other with raised eyebrows. D'Arcy didn't say anything, but Shane nodded, "Well, I kind of like her."

It was worth a quiet laugh from D'Arcy as he rode off a little way. "Ok, don't shoot her unless you're about to get captured, Callie, but I don't think that'll happen. Just sit tight and try not to draw any fire."

"What if she tries to call them or get their attention?" she asked.

"Well, I don't think she's that stupid, but if she tries to do that, THEN you can shoot her, ok?"

"Whatever you say, Boss." Callie smiled and looked at Shane. She beamed for just a second and then looked into Nancy's eyes, "Two minutes, and I get more job satisfaction than I did in two years with this rich asshole."

Something sounded a little odd to Shane then so he asked, "How rich, exactly?"

Callie looked over at him, "C'mon, use your head. She's worth tons, just by the way that she's dressed."

Shane looked hard, but drew a blank, "I don't see any more than a woman in work-style pants and a shaped blouse or whatever that is. What am I missing?"

She smiled at him and spoke in an explanatory tone, "She's wearing a fucking bodice, Shane. Do you know how much it costs to have one made and fitted? It would take me three months to be able to have one made for me -- and that's if I didn't waste any money on food."

"But you're wearing-"

Callie shook her head, "I'm wearing a leather breastplate. It's held on at the back by a pair of wide straps and it's uncomfortable as anything. Not the same. She gets to have her tits held by a bodice while the rest of us have to use a strip of cloth to hold our boobs. Really rich women have brassieres made. I'll be she's got a few of those too."

Shane smiled in as goofy a way as he could, "I'll have to think on all of this. I'm sure there's something of a lesson for me in there somewhere."

"That'll be good for a week and a half of deep thought from a man," Nancy said and Callie lowered her pistol slowly.

"Ewan?" she asked and he nodded.

Then he slapped Nancy again.

"I'm putting the gag back in," he said, "She keeps this up, I'll cut my hand on her teeth sooner or later. Probably get infected."

Back on the road, the first of the guards rode over the small rise and D'arcy whispered the name of his horse. The animal had been trained to recognize the cue and stood stone-still while D'Arcy sighted in and pulled one of the triggers. Three hundred yards away, a man fell out of his saddle.

The timing was about perfect, because in the time that D'Arcy had been aiming, the first guard had ridden a little nearer and a second had come after him. He was followed by two more, but they were just coming over the rise when the first man fell. They stopped and doubled back, leaving one man still out in plain sight. That man now felt terribly exposed and alone as he looked around, wondering where the shooter was. During that time, D'Arcy whispered the horse's name again.

As he turned his horse around slowly, the guard in the saddle felt as though all of the skin on his body was waiting for the arrival of a bullet from somewhere. He tried to look unconcerned but his fear was plainly evident. From D'Arcy's point of view, the man was disappearing behind the rise, but it didn't matter. Before the man was out of D'Arcy's sight he toppled from his horse to land in the dirt.

D'Arcy kept his motions to a minimum as he sat on his horse behind a pine tree reloading slowly, since he knew that all of the remaining guards in the party would be trying to catch a glimpse of him now. All the same, his motions were noticed and three men raised their weapons. Shane was hidden from view a lot closer and opened fire from behind a boulder, hitting all three.

As Shane slipped away, D'Arcy shot anyone who looked to be too interested in finding Shane, and so they covered each other and frustrated the men pursuing them.

The brothers met back at the wagon. "Let's try to get across Hampden's Ford while we've got a minute for it," Shane suggested and D'Arcy nodded. The next few minutes were covered at a breakneck pace, but they reached and were crossing the ford before the guards rediscovered their courage.

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"What the hell do you suppose all of that shooting's is about?" Randi said from their vantage point where they'd stopped for a minute as they watched the proceedings in the valley down below them.

"I dunno," Billy said as he lowered his binoculars and looked over, "but I'm kind of partial to the ones with the wagon. They're outgunned, but they seem to have a method for making the ones chasing them overextend themselves. Every now and then, they manage to pick off the ones chasing them one at a time. What do you want to do? I guess we could just sit here tight and block the road."

"I don't want to do that," Randi said, "I don't know the story, but I think I'm with you. Let's just pull off to the side so the wagon can get by. I'll load up the main gun and we'll find out soon enough, I guess. And wear your headset. Once things get busy, you'll never hear me without it."

As Billy moved the tank as she'd said, Randi loaded up a canister shot and placed another round on the floor nearby. She sighted on the road and they waited.

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Nancy thought about things as she tried to keep from being dislodged from the back of the wagon from all of the violent bumps and motions. She didn't know what her future held now, but at least Ewan hadn't tossed her out onto the road. She hoped that it wasn't just something which had slipped his mind in the excitement.

He sat as hunkered down as she supposed that a man like he was could get, ever watchful for a clear shot as they rattled along, escorted by the strangely silent roadmen, who seemed to be able to communicate among themselves perfectly well using only exchanged glances and the odd hand signal. From the occasional look that she'd gotten at any of them, they all appeared very similar -- eight tall and lean men with taciturn expressions as they thundered along looking over their shoulders whenever the roadway ahead gave them the chance at a few seconds.