Last Stand of the DNA Cowboys (20 page)

The Minstrel Boy squared his shoulders as the Colt bucked in his hand. The old feeling was back. They were standing tall again, reckless and dangerous gods. They did not give a damn. Bullets hummed past them and beams flashed, but the bad guys could not touch them. They had the aura, the big, old three-way aura that would not let them be touched, just like in the old days. Two more of Buzznoose's men went down, and the others took to their heels. Reave kept walking and firing. He picked off one more before he and the Minstrel Boy lowered their weapons.

Reave pushed back his plumed hat and cracked a broad grin. 'Damn me, but that feels a whole lot better.'

The Minstrel Boy spun his pistol and dropped it into its holster. 'Damn me, but it does.'

Reave glanced wolfishly at Billy. 'That was some con you ran back there, Billy boy. You had him going with that prefect of Garth shit. I didn't know you had it in you anymore.'

Billy shrugged. In fact, he was desperately tired, but he refused to let anyone know that. 'Hell, it's easy running a con. You don't have to be yourself. You're anyone but yourself. That's what makes it easy.'

As Billy said the words, the abyss yawned in front of him and the squirreling came back with a vengeance, but he did not go down. The other two were beside him, and the bonding held him in place. The old triad could still do the business.

While Renatta watched with a look of bemused confusion, the three of them broke into peals of loud laughter that was well off the edge of sanity.

— Pressdra Vishnstria

The Human Comedy, Volume 15:

You 're Dead and I'm Not

CHAPTER TEN

THERE WAS SOMEONE BEATING ON THE DOOR. THE MINSTREL
Boy struggled out of an ocean of deep sleep and dreams that were filled with unfocused rushing. The beating on the door continued. He was suddenly very awake. His hand was under the pillow, snakelike, closing around the Colt. He deliberately kept his voice slurred and blurred. 'Who is it? What do you want?'

'Will you please open this door — right now!'

Goddamn it to hell. It was official. The Minstrel Boy threw back the covers. Had that bastard Buzznoose lodged a complaint? He swung his legs over the side of the bed with a groan. Officialdom was beating on the door again.

'Open this door or we'll break it down.'

The Minstrel Boy stood up, fighting off what had the makings of a blinding headache. 'Okay, okay, I'm coming, I'm coming. Don't go nuts.'

The suite was a disaster area. Some hours earlier it had seen the final throes of a very bizarre celebration of Renatta de Luxe's regained freedom, so bizarre, in fact, that he still could not really believe a lot of what had happened. It had started with Renatta demanding, after a few drinks, to know why they had not rescued at least two of the duplicates that the slaver had made of her. 'Then you could have had one of me each.' That had produced the obvious comment that one of her was quite enough. From then on, through the rest of the night, things had escalated as Renatta had determinedly sought to prove that one of her was indeed quite enough for all three of them. The affair had culminated with the ingestion of a gourmet pyschedelic with the fanciful name Infamy. That had been followed by a prolonged bout of erotic contortions that spanned most of the spectrum of what could be achieved by three men and one woman acting in harmony. It appeared to be a new phase or at least a new interlude in the already complicated relationship between Renatta and the DNA Cowboys. As far as the Minstrel Boy was concerned, it was a development that only deepened the mystery of what exactly it was she wanted from them.

Fresh pounding on the door brought him forcibly back to the present.

'Give me a break, will you?'

The Minstrel Boy placed the gun out of sight but within easy reach; then he unlocked and opened the door. Three militiamen and a purple-robed bureaucrat were standing there. The militiamen were armed with lightweight bolt throwers and looked hair-trigger nervous. The Minstrel Boy was certain that they were there to arrest him.

'What do you want? I was sleeping.'

The bureaucrat looked past him at the wreckage of the suite with disapprovingly pursed lips. 'Are you the one who goes by the name of Billy Oblivion?'

'No.'

The bureaucrat frowned. 'Are you the one they call the Minstrel Boy?'

'Do you have a warrant?'

'Why should I have a warrant? I'm here to serve a Notice of Demand.'

'What in hell is a Notice of Demand?'

'A Notice of Demand for Contracted Services.'

'What does that mean?'

'Are you the Minstrel Boy?'

The Minstrel Boy was suddenly impatient with all the fencing. 'Yeah, yeah, that's me. Now, tell me what's going on.'

'By the powers that are vested in me by the Ruling Elite of the city of Krystaleit I formally serve notice that your contractual services are demanded herewith.'

'And what does all that mean?'

'The city's defense forces have gone to readiness. You are under contract as a master warrior, and you will report to your unit within the next twenty-four hours.'

'I don't have a unit. All I have is a contract.'

The bureaucrat looked worried. 'You should have been assigned a unit when you entered contracts.'

'I wasn't assigned a damn thing.'

The bureaucrat took an ornate ivory showdata from his sleeve. What he saw did not appear to please him. 'You're right, there's no assigned unit filed on your chart.'

The Minstrel Boy started to close the door. 'So let me know when you sort it out.'

'I'll have to do that. You should still hold yourself in readiness, though.'

'I will, don't worry.'

'Can you tell me where I can find Billy Oblivion?'

'I've never heard of him.'

The Minstrel Boy leaned against the closed door. Even with the reprieve of an administrative screw up, it was very bad news. The defense forces being put on readiness had to tie in with what Reave had heard from his old raiding partner, the one he had met in the toilet of the Victory Café. Someone in the city government must have received warning of the approach of the overwhelming force of raiders.

The Minstrel Boy knew that he had to talk to Billy and Reave straightaway. The last thing they needed was to become involved in a war, particularly a war in which they were on what was sure to be the losing side. Once again he quickly cleaned himself and dressed. He could not remember when he had last enjoyed the luxury of idling over breakfast. Twenty minutes saw the three of them, plus an exhausted-looking Renatta, gathered in Reave's suite.

Billy tackled the problem head on.

'If you ask me, I think it's high time to desert.'

Reave wasn't so sure.

'We'll never make a reputation by running away.'

The Mistrel Boy laughed.

'We always did before.'

Despite the jokes and despite an afterglow of devil-may-care that lingered from the minor victory of the street fight, they knew that their predicament was serious. It took Reave to voice what everyone else was thinking.

'There's no two ways about it. We're going to have to sneak away from this fight. If Baptiste and the other warlords really do have over seven thousand troops in the field, plus a fifth column inside the city, the defense forces are going to be
creamed. I certainly don't intend to be creamed along with them. This is definitely not our fight.'

Sneaking away required no strategy or finesse. They simply packed the belongings they wanted to take with them, checked out of the Leader Hotel, and started off in a direction that would take them to the platforms leading to the nothings. As they walked, it became all too clear that Krystaleit had gone on military alert. The whole tone of the city had changed. It was somber. The lights seemed dimmer, and there was a tension in the air as though the very structures themselves were waiting for the coming of a terrifying unknown. Everywhere there were people on the move. Squads of militia, in their forage caps and drab gray uniforms, bolt throwers slung over their shoulders, marched through the streets and rode the ribbon escalators up and down. Hastily mustered civilians drilled in the open spaces They had no uniforms, and each man and woman was decked out in his or her own idea of what a fighting yeoman should wear. For the most part, the outfits, heavy on plumes and swirling capes, were hopelessly impractical for actual combat. The only things that identified them as an even marginally unified military force were the blue scarves they wore around their necks, the rifles and electroguns they carried, and the bandoliers; of spare bolts and power slugs across their chests. Someone in authority appeared to have taken it into his head to equip one section of the militia with bronze body armor and crested helmets. As far as Reave could tell, the armor was foil-thin and quite useless for anything but ceremonial display.

'One whiff of a heat ray and that shit will burn on their backs.'

Reave continued to shake his head at each example of defensive preparation that they passed.

'This is worse than I imagined. These people don't have a clue. They're just playing at soldiers. Baptiste's going to walk all over them.'

The few small knots of hard-faced mercenaries they saw were a little more encouraging. Most sat cleaning their weapons and ignoring all attempts by officers of the militia to get them drilling or to indulge otherwise in the irrelevancies of military discipline. They, at least, seemed to grasp the seriousness of the threat they were facing, and they looked far from happy about it. Reave was also well aware that any number of them might
change sides the moment the raiders reached the outer limits of the city.

A team of sweating epsilons struggled to manhandle some incredibly ancient energy cannon onto a peoplemover. Reave strolled over to it and, while the others waited, ran a hand over the discolored and pitted steel. 'The Draan could have made this. It ought to be in a museum.'

The militia captain in charge warned him off. 'Either help us push the sucker or get the hell away from it.'

Reave walked away. 'I'm glad I'm not going to be here when they fire that monster. It'll probably vaporize everything for a mile around.'

The one thing that remained uncertain was transportation. They had no solid plans for a means to get away from Krystaleit and on to whatever their next port of call might be. It was the subject of conversation as they crossed the city.

'I suppose there's no con that we can run that might get us the tank back,' Reave mused.

Billy shook his head. 'I've been thinking about it. I can't come up with anything that isn't going to draw attention to the fact that we've got contracts on us.'

Reave grimaced. 'I guess we have to play it by ear and hope we can hitch ourselves a ride.'

Renatta was hung over, and her previous euphoria was rapidly disintegrating. 'And what happens if we can't?'

Billy and Reave both looked at the Minstrel Boy, who stopped in his tracks and vehemently shook his head. 'Not a chance in hell. Don't even think about it.'

Billy and Reave were among the few who knew about the Minstrel Boy's lizardbrain implant and his ability to find his way though the nothings with more accuracy than routinely medicated humans and even to set courses for far-distant points of reality when treated with the right drugs. They also knew how much pain the effort caused him.

The Minstrel Boy continued to shake his head. 'There is no way in the world that you are going to fill me up with cyclatrol and get me to lead you through the nothings.'

Renatta looked from one to the other of them. 'What's going on here? What's he getting so bent out of shape about?'

Reave gave her half a glance. 'Don't worry your pretty little head about it.'

Renatta snarled at him. 'Don't give me that shit. I want to know what's going on.'

Billy answered. 'The Minstrel Boy has an implant. If it came down to it, he could get us through the nothings.'

Renatta looked suspicious. 'I thought anyone could find their way through the nothings if they shot themselves full of enough cyclatrol.'

Billy shook his head. 'It's real hit-and-miss crazy even if you don't go mad first. I should know. I've tried it enough times.' He nodded at the Minstrel Boy. 'Him, he's different. He can really do it.'

The Minstrel Boy scowled. 'But I'm damned if I'm going to.'

Renatta faced the Minstrel Boy. 'What's your problem? Why won't you lead us through the nothings? You must have done it before.'

'Yeah, I've done it before. That's why I'm not going to do it again.'

'What's wrong with it?'

The Minstrel Boy looked at her coldly. 'You try it.'

'He's says it's traumatic.'

'Traumatic isn't the half of it. I don't think my sanity would take it.'

Reave temporarily put a stop to the conversation. 'Maybe the question won't arise.'

They reached the nearest of the tunnels that led to the exterior platforms and discovered that leaving the city would not be as simple as they had thought. The tunnel had been sealed and iron bulkheads had been swung into place like massive metal plugs. It would take a nukeling to move them, and even then the result would not be guaranteed. A sign informed them in the dour Gothic script of official Krystaleit that there were just two tunnels open to the platforms and the nothings and that even then, access both in and out was severely limited and subject to the approval of the defense forces.

Billy voiced everyone's misgiving.'This isn't looking good.'

Renatta looked frightened. 'Suppose they don't let us out?'

'Then I guess we stay. There's always a chance to desert once the actual fighting gets started.'

'That's hardly a consolation.'