Free Desert Kings by James Axler Page A

coil. “See, that’s the focusing mechanism. I’ve seen something similar inside a CAT scanner.”
    “Not las, but mag gun?” Jak asked quizzically.
    “Yep.”
    “So what was the light?”
    “That was from a halogen bulb.” J.B. grunted, tilting back his fedora. “Nothing more than a souped-up flashlight, probably just there to help aim the magnetic.”
    “Aim the magnet, sir?” Doc repeated slowly, chewing over the information. “Are you saying this is some sort of scrambling device? Mayhap a kind of antirobot gun?”
    “Could be, yeah. What else would a focused beam of magnetics harm? A comp, mebbe, or a—”
    “Cyborg,” Ryan interrupted in a hard voice. “This wasn’t set here by Delphi to guard the blasters. Somebody else put it here to wait for him.”
    “A cyborg chiller,” Jak whispered, impressed and uneasy at the same time. Then he eagerly added, “Still work? We use now.”
    “No, it’s busted to drek.” Mildred sighed, standing and dusting off her hands. “The circuit boards are fried, the ribbon cables melted, the focusing ring warped…” She dismissed the device with a hand wave. “The only way we could use this to hurt Delphi now is if we dropped it on his head from a great height.”
    “This means that most likely Delphi has not been here in a long while,” Krysty added, ruminating out loud. “Weeks, mebbe, or even months.”
    “It also means that somebody else wants Delphi aced,” J.B. stated. “Which is fine by me. The enemy of my enemy, and all that, eh, Doc?”
    “True words, John Barrymore,” the silver-haired man intoned. “Although, I have usually found that the ‘enemy of my enemy’ axiom loses all coherent meaning after the aforementioned protagonist is finally eating dirt. Then all bets are off.”
    “Fair enough,” Ryan said savagely, working the bolt on a Kalashnikov. Then his stomach softly grumbled. “Come on, let’s finish the recce of this redoubt. The sooner we know it’s safe, the sooner we can have some chow.” In an effort to save their stomachs, the companions had deliberately not eaten before doing the jump. It seemed to work, but now they were paying the price.
    “I hear that,” J.B. added eagerly, heading for the exit. “I’m not quite hungry enough for Millie’s boot soup, but will be soon.”
    “Well, it kept us alive, that’s for sure,” Mildred shot back proudly. “Although it must have been a month before I finally got the taste out of my mouth. It made hospital food seem absolutely delicious in comparison.”
    “Indeed, madam, the flavor combination was rather reminiscent of the haute cuisine of Hades,” Doc observed, glancing sideways and trying to hide a smile. “Although to be honest, it was truly the finest boot soup that I have ever had!”
    “Aw, shut up, ya old coot,” Mildred shot back, pleased and annoyed at the same time.
    Reaching the exit, the companions paused to check over their weapons before proceeding down the long hallway. Jak was the last to leave and closed the armory door behind them. Even though the machine was smashed to drek, he didn’t trust droids and felt better with a good foot of steel between them.
    “Wait a minute, I may have something,” Krysty said, rummaging in her bearskin coat pockets to finally pull out a handful of jerky. She offered it around and everybody took some. “Been saving it for a while,” she said. “But it should still be good.”
    It took some determined chewing before the dried meat yielded any flavor, but as the reconstituted juices trickled down their throats, the hunger pains in their bellies eased.
    Slightly refreshed, the group reached the elevators at the end of the corridor, but instead took the stairs. They had been hesitant about using the elevator before as the noise would announce their presence to the whole redoubt. Well, the blaster fight had already accomplished that. But the cage was a deathtrap if they got ambushed. The stairs at least gave them some