As the two men trotted past the monitoring room, Mildred’s head poked out, calling them back.
“Hey, guys!” They joined Mildred in the monitoring room, where Ricky was just fixing his shirt over the bandage that Mildred had affixed around his belly and ribs. J.B. touched Mildred’s face briefly, leaving what he wanted to say unvoiced.
“What happened?” Ricky asked, looking from Ryan to J.B.
“Bomb went off,” Ryan said, “ruining the mat-trans.”
“Damn,” Ricky cursed.
J.B. made a show of looking at the youth’s bloody shirt. “How are you feeling? You okay, kid?” he asked.
Ricky shrugged. “De nada. I’ve had worse in Nuestra Señora.”
He was bluffing, J.B. knew. That musket shell had scored blood and had to have hurt like hell, but the kid was proud and he didn’t like to show weakness in front of the companions.
“I only heard one explosion,” Mildred was saying as she put her extra bandage in her medical satchel.
Ryan nodded. “We were lucky,” he agreed. “There were no other bombs. A military base like this could’ve been stuffed full of ordnance that might have been rigged remotely to go off when the bomb went off.”
“You said the mat-trans was wrecked,” Mildred said, phrasing it like a question.
“Yeah, for now anyway,” J.B. confirmed. “We might be able to do something with it, given time, but we’d be better off finding another mat-trans if we need one.”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” Mildred said, “but, assuming it does, how far would we have to go?”
J.B. shrugged. “Till we know where we are, I won’t have clue one, Millie,” he said.
“Then I guess we’d better start figuring out where we are,” Mildred said, and Ryan agreed.
Checking that Ricky was okay to move—he was—Ryan led the way back out into the corridor and the foursome headed toward the outside door.
* * *
DOCLOOKEDSURREPTITIOUSLYat the five angelic women who accompanied them as he, Krysty and Jak were led back through the redoubt they had just exited. Each of these women was young with flawless skin. Doc guessed not one of them was over twenty-one. The blonde led the way confidently, and she seemed to know which paths to take. Doc guessed that she was leading them to the mat-trans chamber to survey the damage that the bomb had wrought, and he wondered if Ryan and the others had survived the blast.
“So,” Doc began uncertainly, “Melissa, is it? You seem to know your way around this...facility.”
The blonde looked at Doc after a moment, confusion turning to understanding as she realized that he was addressing her. She smiled then, indulging him. “It’s not Melissa,” she said, “and yes, we’ve been here many times before.”
“Ah,” Doc said. “Please accept my apologies, I thought I heard your companions call you Melissa. I must have become muddled.”
“They did,” the blonde replied as she led them down a stairwell with concrete steps and reinforced-glass banisters dividing each level. “But that’s not my name, it’s a designation. We’re all Melissas.”
“I see,” Doc said, though he didn’t.
“I’m Phyllida. This is Linda, Nancy, Charm and Adele,” she said, indicating the others.
“All pretty names,” Doc said. “So you say you have been in here on other occasions?” Doc added, raising his voice a little in the hope Ryan would hear—if he was still here.
The Melissa called Phyllida looked back at him and smiled, her teeth white and flawless, much like Doc’s own. “The mat-trans you came in was damaged a long time ago in the quake,” she explained. “We’ve been examining its workings, trying to repair it.”
“Our engineers,” the dark-skinned Melissa, who was called Adele, elaborated.
“We noticed some quake damage when we came in,” Krysty said from within the huddle.
“The unit’s only been operational—what?—two days,” the brunette called Linda said.
“Not even that long,” Phyllida said. “They were still testing it yesterday evening.”
“Then it seems we arrived bang on time,” Doc said, wincing at his rather unfortunate choice of words. “Forgive the unintentional pun.”
“Yes, you—”
“Nobody make a sudden move!” Ryan said, stepping from the cover of an open doorway with his SIG Sauer raised in a two-handed grip. “Hands in the air.”
J.B. and Mildred stepped out of the shadows behind Ryan, their own weapons raised to target the group of robed women. Behind them both, Ricky waited in the shadow of the doorway, his De Lisle carbine clutched in both hands, the pain of his patched flank making him stand a little hunched over.
The Melissas tensed, moving automatically back so that they were close to the concrete walls.
Doc found himself front and center of the sudden negotiation.
“What’s the state of play, Doc?” Ryan growled, his weapon fixed on blond-haired Phyllida where she stood behind the old man.
Doc took a deep, steadying breath, his hands surreptitiously twisting the silver lion’s-head grip of his swordstick to release the blade within. “These people are unarmed, Ryan,” he stated, “and they have shown no inclination to harm us. It is my understanding that their sole interest is in the mat-trans, which they have been working on for some time.”
“Did they plant the bomb?” J.B. asked, running the shotgun over the group in warning.
“No,” Doc explained. “I am led to understand that they opposed the individual who did that, and that they had hoped to stop it.”
He turned to Phyllida. “Is this correct?”
Phyllida nodded. “Yes. You didn’t mention that there were more of you,” she said.
Doc raised his eyebrows. “You did not ask.”
Phyllida looked from Doc to Ryan and the others who had their drawn blasters pointed at them. “Your friend is quite correct,” she said at last. “We won’t hurt you.”
“My name is Phyllida,” the blond-haired woman continued. “We of the Trai have a strict ‘no blasters’ policy, and we would be grateful if you would adhere to that while on our property.”
She waited while Ryan watched her, his lone eye scanning carefully over her companions as he weighed them up. Finally he said, “And your people are unarmed?”
“Precisely so,” Phyllida confirmed.
Ryan searched Doc’s face for some sign of deceit and saw none. It paid to be cautious in the Deathlands, but a standoff had to be resolved, one way or the other, and Ricky couldn’t keep fighting without recovering. Slowly, Ryan brought his SIG Sauer down and holstered it, and his people did the same. Ryan knew just what J.B. was thinking as the Armorer slung his shotgun—it was the same thing that they were all thinking. Can these people be trusted?
“I’m Ryan,” the one-eyed man said, though he made no move to meet Phyllida.
Instead she came to him, her pure-white robes fluttering behind her like mist, one delicate, pale hand outstretched in greeting. “Pleased to meet you, Ryan.”
Ryan took the woman’s hand. Her grip was firm, stronger than he would expect for her build. He released her hand after a moment.
“I