Ryan rested his people for a couple more days before wanting to move them out. There were still traces of fever and infections in the old cuts and sores that needed treatment. Mildred had the medications, she just needed the time to apply them. By the same token, the companions paid for their keep by helping to hunt for the slim pickings that could be found in the swamp. Ryan was mindful of the fact that the settlement dwellers were letting them stay because of Jak, and that they were using valuable supplies. There was little enough food in the settlement at the best of times, without it being used on five people who wouldn’t fight.
Marissa was unhappy at their staying, but Jak convinced her. The other elders understood Ryan’s position—even those who didn’t agree with him—but the hotheaded Marissa was in no mood to listen to reason until Jak managed to turn her around.
It made for an uneasy truce.
But it did give the companions a chance to see what the settlement had to offer in the way of fighting forces, and exactly what Jak had to work with. Prior to that, they had seen only a few of the swamp warriors out in the field, hunting and running sec patrols. Now it seemed that the entire ville was galvanized to action.
Almost immediately after his decision to stay, Jak had faced the mass of settlement folk who were waiting for word from their elders. At the behest of Beausoleil, who wanted his people to know exactly what they faced, Ryan spoke first. He outlined everything he had told the elders in the hut, and explained why he couldn’t commit his people to the fight. Behind him, the other companions were ready for the tension to break into a firefight. In many ways, they wouldn’t have blamed the swamp dwellers for this.
And yet the atmosphere wasn’t as they expected. Many of the dwellers had their own skepticisms about the chances of taking on Dr. Jean, and their fears were confirmed by what the one-eyed man told them. But despite this, they were fired up by Jak’s words. Never one to demonstrate with speech, Jak simply told them it could be done, and he, for one, would rather buy the farm trying than walk away.
This faith—the faith that they could win, the faith that he could mold them into a force that would be capable of overcoming the odds and taking the enemy to the wire—was enough to fire even the most skeptical. All those who were fit enough—and not too young or too old to be of some use—were willing to undergo combat training to prepare themselves. Those who couldn’t fight would be the backup, gathering what weapons there were, venturing onto trade routes to either trade for or steal weapons, perhaps even taking on some of the sec parties. Enthusiasm outstripped practicality, and it took some time for the euphoric atmosphere to descend from the heights to a more practical level once more.
“I don’t get it. They were real down when we arrived, and now they think they can take on the whole Deathlands,” J.B. muttered.
“Morale, my dear John Barrymore,” Doc whispered by way of reply. “There is nothing like hope to fire the human spirit. Better to live one day as a lion than a thousand years as a lamb…or something like that, I forget exactly,” he stated.
“Doc, the meaning…?” J.B. asked, trying to figure out the sense of the old man’s words.
Doc smiled. “It means better to die free than live a slave, or in fear,” he said simply.
J.B. thought about this. “Yeah. If this was our fight, I guess I could see that…”
And so the preparations began.
“Y’KNOW, IT’S GONNA TAKE a hell of a lot more than this to get past the kind of armory that sec force has got,” J.B. said, shaking his head as he surveyed the paltry stock of arms and ammo that the swamp dwellers had amassed.
Jak, by the Armorer’s side, tried to keep his disappointment hidden. The settlement had very little in the way of hardware. They had handblasters, a few rifles, two SMGs, a couple of shotguns, and some of the old blunderbuss-style weapons Marissa, LaRue and Prideaux had used when the friends had first encountered them.
“Most hunting done with snare and knife,” Jak commented shortly. “Guess no real need for blasters this deep.”
“Yeah, that figures, but this…” J.B. shook his head once more. “Jak, you’re gonna have to go out and get hold of some more blasters somehow.”
“Can loot from sec as we go—if take it in series of surprise attacks, then take out small parties and get their weapons,” the albino mused.
J.B. blew out his cheeks in an expression of exasperation. “That’s a slim chance, no matter how well you get these people trained. You’re talking about making no ripples until you’ve taken out a series of sec, and then using their own blasters—ones that your people have had no chance to learn to use.”
“You think of anything better?” Jak asked him bluntly. “How deep this place? How far from trade routes?”
“Wish I could think of something else, but there isn’t, is there?” J.B. said quietly.
The Armorer dropped to his haunches and examined the blasters. The handblasters consisted of a number of Smith & Wesson .38 Police Specials, some 9 mm Walthers, a couple of Glocks, and some even older Colt .44’s—Peacemakers, which J.B. suspected had been looted from a museum. The store of ammo to go with these was erratic, with some of them having no more than fifty or sixty rounds apiece.
The rifles were old Lee Enfield .303s and Sharps—again, looted from some kind of museum. There was nothing more contemporary than this. The SMGs were a couple of Uzis, and half a dozen H&K MP-5s. Again, the ammo for these amounted to very little when doled out among the individual blasters. There were two Smith & Wesson M-4000s, like the one favored by the Armorer, but again there was little ammo for a long-term firefight. The five old blunderbuss-style blasters were like nothing he’d seen before—parts of them were identifiable as being from the original blasters, but new stocks had been added to some, and the trigger mechanisms had been repaired with wire over the years. If they didn’t explode in the faces of whoever used them, it was a plus by his reckoning. There was plentiful shot for these, but their condition was a grave cause for concern.
“Jak, there’s no way—even if we work on these—that they’re gonna be up to taking the ville on their own. Mebbe you need to rethink what you’re really hitting.”
“What?”
“Yeah… I mean, Dr. Jean has a stronghold on that ville, right? He controls the people with either drugs, hypnosis or old tech…mebbe all three. But that’s why they follow him. Not ’cause they really believe in him, or they’re in fear of him.”
“So mebbe…if take out Jean, there is no other enemy?”
J.B. nodded slowly. “Could be the only way unless you get a miracle of some kind and a wagful of hardware lands on your damn head.”
WHILE JAK MULLED OVER the possibility of forming such a plan, he was faced with the task of shaping the settlement dwellers into a fighting force. For some of them, such as LaRue and Prideaux, this was easier than for others. Those in the settlement who had been hunting already had the skills needed for a guerrilla attack, and they had accuracy with a blaster and ability with a knife. Their problems were related to their attitude. As for the others, it was a conundrum for the albino hunter. To improve their blaster skills, he would need to use precious ammo, yet without some kind of practice, they would be unreliable in a firefight. Asking the likes of Prideaux, who regularly used a blaster, where the settlement got their ammo, was of little use. It did nothing other than bring the man’s resentment and antipathy to the fore.
“Listen, Lauren, we’ve always had to make the ammo last for a long time. You think we get many traders in these parts? Sometimes we get ships washed up on the edge of the bayou—same way you got here—and sometimes we can mebbe trade or raid a stray wag. But there ain’t no regular port of call around here, and we’ve always had to scrimp and save, and be careful. You think that’s gonna change now, just ’cause you want us all to go out in a blaze of glory?”
“So that’ll be a no, then,” Krysty remarked to Ryan as they overheard the exchange.
“Dammit, Jak’s taken on more than you could wish on your worst enemy,” Ryan replied.
“So you want us to stay, help out?”
Ryan sighed. “All it does is make me sure it was the right decision for the group—doesn’t mean that I don’t feel for Jak, though.”
The albino would have been unconcerned if he had caught this. He had other things to worry about. Training the settlement dwellers in unarmed combat, and the art of using knives, wasn’t without its own problems. Some of the people were used to fighting, and others weren’t. And those that had scores to settle used the practice sessions to try to even these instead of working to the common good. As Jak found out as soon as the second day.
Down by the lake, in front of the land-built huts of the settlement, was a patch of land that the albino had decided would be useful as a practice ground. He gathered groups, ten at a time, to attempt to instruct them in what was needed for the fight ahead. Demonstrating holds that would cut blood and air supplies to their enemies when approached from behind, he used other settlement dwellers as “victims,” then paired off the remainder, according to what he perceived as their ability and experience, changing the pairings as he observed their skills and capacities. His notion was to bring together a front-line force from within the settlement that he could use as a guerrilla troop in the plan that was beginning to form in his mind.
But that sometimes meant that those with deep-seated antipathies went up against each other. Such was the situation when he paired Marissa and Prideaux in knife combat.
Knives were something that the settlement had in abundance. Sometimes their origins were unidentifiable, but they were sharp enough to do the job.
And as Marissa and Prideaux began to circle each other, it became apparent that despite the nature of the session, there was to be no quarter given.
“So, princess, you gonna show off your skills in front of your new man, are you?” he taunted her, feinting as he hoped to distract her attention.
“Have to do lot better than that, little man,” she said, thrusting at him. He parried her easily and tripped her. She rolled as she fell, away from the arc of his blade that sliced the air around her dark mane.
“Bitch—you never gave me a chance, and now you and that stupe white asshole of yours are gonna get us all chilled,” he hissed at her, whirling to parry an overhand strike, kicking out at her and landing a foot in the middle of her stomach. She grunted as the air was forced from her body, her diaphragm contracting under the force of the blow. She doubled up as he came in to strike with an underhand blow, but caught enough of a sight of him to realize his intent.
Throwing herself backward, gasping air back into her lungs, forcing herself to breathe, she flipped and landed awkwardly, stumbling to one side. But it was enough, as his upward thrust into thin air had unbalanced him and he stumbled as he tried to halt his momentum and stay his forward movement…a movement that would bring him directly in line with her knife hand.
“You don’t believe in us, you can never be one of us,” she gritted, making ready to place a blow between shoulders, aiming for the juncture of his throat and chest cavity. His stance was completely open and there was nothing he could do to prevent her from chilling him.
Jak stepped in. Moving with the preternatural speed he had developed over years of hunting, he came between the two of them, forcing Prideaux to one side so that he stumbled and fell harmlessly. His left arm shot up in a straight-arm blow that pushed Marissa’s hand to one side, the force of the blow numbing her fingers and making her drop the blade. His right hand, bunched into a fist, hit her with a sharp jab at the point of the jaw. She crumpled to the ground, unconscious.
Jak whirled to where Prideaux was just regaining his balance. The ponytailed man looked confused. He had thought he was about to buy the farm, and hadn’t expected Jak to save him. Moreover, he hadn’t expected the albino to treat Marissa in such a fashion.
“Look, all are same now,” Jak yelled, as much to the assembled crowd as to Prideaux. “No one better than others. All in this together. All stand or fall together. All the same,” he reiterated, fixing his stare on the confused Prideaux. Then, before the man had a chance to work out what was happening, Jak hit him with an uppercut that took him off his feet, depositing him on the ground with a thud.
“We all learn from this, or we try to fight each other instead of Jean?” he asked the assembled throng, scanning their faces for signs of dissent. He could see some sullen expressions that bespoke of unease, but there was no audible dissent.
“Okay, now we learn, okay?”
There was no indication that the settlement dwellers were now anything other than rapt, ready to prepare for combat. But just maybe they were too scared to face down Jak Lauren. Maybe they still weren’t convinced.
And if they weren’t convinced of their own power, how could they fight effectively?
ON THE MORNING of the third day, it was time for the five companions to move on.
“You could always stay a little longer,” Beausoleil said as they gathered to go. “With the training for the raid going down, we’re short of hunters. Someone has to bring in the food.”
“Yeah, but we eat as much as we catch—mebbe more,” Ryan replied with a smile, “so it doesn’t really figure.”
“Mebbe not,” the old man agreed. “But mebbe I was figurin’ you could come in useful around here. Face it, we need all the help we can get. Young Lauren’s good, but he can’t do it all alone.”
“And he can’t do it with us,” Ryan stated firmly. “There’s no changing that.”
Nonetheless, the others caught the note in his voice, it was a note of regret that it should end like this, that they should have to walk away from Jak.
The albino caught it, too. He came out to see them off, with Marissa in his wake. Never one for goodbyes, he stood apart from the group as they gathered their baggage for the haul ahead. J.B. had taken a reading with his minisextant, and they had worked out the direction of the redoubt. Perhaps it would be in the hands of Dr. Jean and his sec, perhaps not. If it proved to be impregnable, they would just strike on past it until they found the next ville on their route.
“Jak, been a long time. We’re going to miss you,” Ryan said, fixing the albino with his single, ice-blue orb.
“Miss you—but know why you go,” Jak replied simply.
The companions struck out for the heart of the swamp. LaRue would go with them part of the way, to guide them to nearest clear-cut path that would put them on course.
Doc could feel tears of sadness and nostalgia well up as they left the albino behind. No one looked back except the old man. The others kept their eyes fixed on the path ahead, not trusting themselves, and knowing that Jak wouldn’t want it any other way. But Doc cast a glance over his shoulder. Jak stood watching them as they melted into the foliage, his scarred white face as inscrutable as ever. Marissa stood by his side. Despite having someone so near, Doc had never seen Jak look so alone.
A single tear trickled slowly down his cheek. In truth, he couldn’t tell if it was for leaving Jak behind or for himself, as if this incident had brought home to him the losses they had suffered as a group over the years, and going back farther, the losses that he had suffered over a life that had spanned centuries.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Another one bites the dust. From the earth we come and to the earth we return, and in between is naught but suffering…
Doc looked away, eyes now fixed firmly ahead.
LARUE LED THEM out of the maze of paths that linked the settlement to the main tracks leading through the swamp. It was a long and arduous haul, with the bald man setting a fast pace. No one wanted to speak; there were mixed emotions among the companions. All agreed with Ryan’s decision on an intellectual level, and yet all of them—even the one-eyed man himself—felt that in some way they were letting Jak down by leaving in this manner.
There was nothing about LaRue’s bearing that suggested that he felt any differently. As the swamp dweller detailed to guide them, he set a fearsome pace, hacking his way through thick undergrowth and crossing treacherous stretches of quicksand without a chance of the companions following his footsteps with anything other than blind faith. It was obvious that he wanted to get this task out of the way as soon as possible, and get back to the settlement.
Eventually, after several hours without a break, they reached a plateau where the land stretched ahead in a winding, natural path. LaRue stopped dead and turned to them.
“This is as far as I go. You know your direction from here, and you’re back on the trails that you were using before we found you.”
“Thanks. Thought we weren’t gonna get that far, the pace you were setting,” Ryan commented.
LaRue sniffed. “Yeah, well, figure the sooner get rid of you and get back to training, the better.”
“You that keen to go and fight?” Krysty asked, sensing that the man wanted to say more, but would need prompting.
LaRue fixed her with a penetrating stare and tugged at his beard. “Y’mean, am I keen to buy the farm? No, I like living, even if it is hard. It’s better than the other way. But I figure if we got any kind of a chance, then it needs all the fighters like me and Prideaux and Rissa to pull together, ’cause little Whitey ain’t had much chance to pull us together, and if you wanna know what I really think, he ain’t got much to work with. Some of us can fight, and others farm and hunt, and others ain’t really up to much. We can stick together ’cause we ain’t got jackshit but each other. Only now we all got to fight, and some don’t want to and some can’t. If you’d helped us, things would have been better.”
“You think we’re taking the easy way out?” Krysty asked.
A smile twisted across his face. “Mebbe…mebbe it ain’t so easy to leave Whitey behind after so long. Fighting together gets you kinda close, so I ain’t gonna say. See, me ‘n’ Prideaux don’t like each other, but I know I’ll always back the fucker in a firefight ’cause it’s bigger than us. Mebbe it ain’t so easy for you—” he shook his head sadly “—but, y’know, we coulda done with you along for the ride.”
“Not our fight,” Ryan said simply. “And we’ve got our own way to go.”
LaRue sniffed. “Yeah, well, you know your way from here, so that’s all I care about. I gotta go. Mebbe see you one day on that place where fighters go when they buy the farm.”
The bald man turned on his heel and struck back into the undergrowth, being swallowed up by the foliage and leaving the companions standing by the open track. They stayed still and silent for some moments.
“Think he’s right?” Mildred asked finally, if only to break the silence.
“Mebbe he is,” Ryan mused. “Wasn’t a right or wrong in this.” He looked up at the sky, noting the position of the sun. “Got a few hours before the darkness falls. Let’s try to make some progress…”
They set out in the direction of the redoubt, which was still a two-day trek, by their reckonings. If they could make some headway on the distance by nightfall, then they could set up camp out of the way of any main paths, hopefully avoiding the sec patrols from Lafayette. In the meantime, they had to keep an eye out for swampies in search of food.
Avoiding the places where the muties could hide themselves with ease, they made a swift progress. And yet an air of depression hung over them. Without Jak, they felt incomplete. Leaving him had been one of the toughest decisions they had made.
As the sun began to fall and the twilight turned the swamp into a land of shadows, they deviated from the open spaces to find a dry, secluded place into which to set up camp. They carried with them nothing but the self-heats and some water they had taken from the wells in the settlement. There was so little food in the rebel ville that they would have felt wrong taking any of it, even if it did condemn them to the chem-soaked gruel until they could hunt once more.
The camp was well-hidden as night came, and they settled in to rest for the night, with a rotating watch. Ryan took first watch, with Mildred relieving him after a couple of hours. As used as they were to sleeping for short periods, the medic found herself coming awake in the darkness almost on cue. She looked at her wrist chron, the light from the moon penetrating the cloud cover just enough to show that she was only a few minutes away from her shift.
She shook the sleep from her muzzy head and rose slowly, creeping through the undergrowth to where Ryan had established a watch post.
He turned as he heard her making her way toward him. She was quiet, but he was still able to pick her out. As he became visible in the gloom, she could see that he was indicating that she be quieter.
Her brow furrowed. Beyond the one-eyed man she could hear some movement. She went triple-red as she drew nearer, taking each step carefully. As she reached Ryan, he gestured with an inclination of the head that she look beyond, but with caution. Now that she was close, she could hear more movement beyond the sentry post.
Ryan had chosen to make his post behind a group of swamp plants that gave off a noxious odor, and were clumped so thickly that they suggested they extended back for a depth of several feet. In fact, the shallow-rooted plants extended in a horse-shoe shape, needing muddy soil to root and finding a rock shelf barring their progress. It was perfect for Ryan to use as cover.
As Mildred joined him, she could see a group of three sec men on patrol. In a cluster, they moved as though on an assigned route from which they never deviated. Dressed in the orange-and-purple dyed camou that signified Dr. Jean’s men, two of them carried AK47s, while the third had an Uzi. All carried their blasters with the barrels down, and all were wearing infrared goggles. They turned their heads as though on strings, moving almost exactly in unison. They were well-programmed machines, but seemed to have no independent senses.
Mildred and Ryan exchanged glances. The sec men were making no attempt to do anything other than follow this route. They had to do this every night, exactly the same.
Exactly.
If they were this inflexible, then they should be easy to slip past. Maybe Jak should know this. Maybe it would be possible. What was it J.B. had said? The people were so brainwashed by Dr. Jean that they couldn’t adjust to sudden changes, to sudden explosions of action. And Ryan had seen the arrogance of the oppressor at work. So unused to opposition that there were gaping holes in the defenses that had never been tested, both physically and psychologically.
But it was something else that made up their minds. As the sec trio passed so close to Ryan and Mildred that they could almost have reached out and touched them, in the silence of the swamp night they could hear the faint hiss and crackle of static, and the high, tinny murmur a voice that seemed to emanate from the heads of the trio. Looking closely, Mildred and Ryan could see that the headsets that held the infrared goggles to the heads of the trio also had earpieces attached that were plugged into the right ear of each man.
So Dr. Jean did have radio-transmitter old tech that was working. Ryan realized how lucky they had been on their recce mission to Lafayette.
As the trio receded into the swamps, Ryan beckoned Mildred to follow him, and he broke cover, moving quickly and silently back in the direction the sec patrol had come. Mildred followed, half guessing Ryan’s intent.
The one-eyed man gestured her off the path when he caught sight of the wag that had brought the patrol to this point. Mildred understood what he was seeking. As they approached, she could hear the whine of static and the distinct tones of a distorted human voice. The driver of the wag sat in the cab, an M-16 across his lap, looking blankly ahead through the infrared goggles, and listening to the voice on a small loudspeaker that was set in the wag’s dash.
“…glory of the great Dr. Jean. The next sacrifice to the old gods will be three nights from now, and those honored with the task of taking the lord’s blessings into the next realm will be those who are ranged against us in the swamps. The military detachments leave in two nights to round up these heathens who have rejected the glories of Jean. They will be blessed and sent into the next realm to realize their mistakes and bring Jean’s requests for glory to the gods. Dr. Jean wants you to redouble efforts and bring your own sacrifice to the shrine during this night and the next, so that the gods will look kindly upon our sec force.”
Ryan gestured to Mildred that they should pull back into cover. They retreated the way they had come, then took refuge in the cover of the noxious plants.
“That screws everything,” Ryan stated. “I know what I said before, but this is different. There’s no way that I can let these bastards pour into the swamp and take Jak’s people by surprise. There’s no way they’ve got the numbers to withstand it unless they’re warned. We’re going to have to go back, warn him, and stand and fight. We can’t let him face this alone.”
Mildred raised an eyebrow. “You think I’m not going to agree with you, Ryan? Hell, this is one time I’d gladly follow orders. Let’s get back to camp and the others. I don’t think even Doc’s going to mind being roused from his beauty sleep over this one.”
“SICK YOU FUCKERS. You want fight Jean or each other?” Jak yelled at the assembled force. “You want fight, okay, we go fight that fucker now, ready or not. Leave longer, then all do is kick fuck out each other.”
The albino hunter turned his back in disgust and walked off toward the shadows where the edge of the settlement bled into the swamps, and the light of the lamps grew dim.
Marissa cast flashing, dark eyes over the swamp dwellers who stood mute, frozen in astonishment at Jak’s outburst. It was the most they had heard him speak in the time he had been at the settlement. The normally taciturn fighter had been spurred into the outburst by yet more dissent among the ranks of the settlement rebels who were of the right age to fight.
“You stupe bastards,” Marissa hissed at them. “This is our chance to fight back against that scum Jean, and yet you want to fight among yourselves. Don’t you realize that fate sent Jak here, now, so that we could unite and do this? What about all your families who died or are now zombies under Jean’s control? Doesn’t that hurt you in here?” she asked, thumping her chest. “Doesn’t that chill you just to think about it? You want to end up like this or hiding like a stupe beaten dog in the middle of swamp, hoping that you don’t get caught, for the rest of your life?”
As if Jak’s outburst had not been enough, now Marissa’s equal explosion left them even more speechless. They all knew her history, which she hadn’t told Jak. Marissa’s brother and her husband, one chilled and the other now a sec man zombie, moving with those glasses that hide the dead eyes; her child, just a babe in arms, lost when West Lowellton fell to Jean’s advancing forces.
Maybe she felt that she had a bigger ax to grind with Dr. Jean—to bury in his sick skull—than any of the others in the settlement. And maybe she was right. It had seemed to affect her much more deeply than the other survivors, who had accepted the vagaries of fate and had tried to just carry on living without thinking too deeply about what had happened to them.
As Marissa disappeared into the shadows in search of Jak, the crowd of rebels began to slowly emerge from their cocoon of shock, and move once more. Looking at one another, the ragtag army of men and women couldn’t for the life of them see what hope they had against Dr. Jean. Those who had been unwilling to fight, but had been pressed into training by the majority rule of the settlement, had always felt this hopelessness, and their constant harping on the matter had caused dissent and internal friction with those who had wanted to train, and believed that they could be wielded into a force that could penetrate the heart of the Lafayette ville. Fights had broken out when practice on combat moves had turned into genuine, no-holds-barred skirmishes. And now even those who had agreed the most vociferously with Marissa in backing Jak began to feel the black despair creep over them, defeated before they even started out.
“Shit, even l’il Lauren’s gonna have to pull something out of the bag to get this together,” Prideaux remarked to no one in particular, looking around him at the tired and beaten expressions on the faces of the rebel force.
In the shadows, Marissa had caught up to Jak, who was staring out over the dark water.
“Fuck ’em, babe. They don’t know what they can do till they try, and we ain’t got any other way but to go ahead and go for it.”
“Mebbe. If people not want fight, then what point?” he asked her quietly, turning so his piercing red eyes penetrated her own dark orbs.
“The only point is that we can’t go on like this—you or me. Or them, though mebbe they don’t know it.”
Jak was silent for some time. His gaze remained unwavering, and she found it impossible to work out what was going on in his head. Eventually he spoke. “If they want to fight each other, guess not give ’em a chance. Go now.”
Marissa was taken aback and found it hard to disguise her shock. “Now?”
“Yeah. Prepare tonight, move tomorrow. Not give ’em time to think about it, just do it.”
Fired up, the albino rose and began to move back toward the settlement, leaving a stunned Marissa momentarily frozen. Shaking herself, not believing that she was finally going to get the action she had craved for so long, she scurried after him.
When Jak reached the area at the edge of the settlement and the lake where the fighters had been training, the rebel group was beginning to disperse.
“Wait—back here,” Jak yelled. There was an edge to his voice that made the even the most antipathetic of them turn back.
He waited until they had gathered, and Marissa had caught up with him, before beginning.
“Want fight each other, waste time and energy and blood? Or want to fuck over Dr. Jean. We can do it if we hit hard and soon. Tomorrow.” He paused, letting the speed of his action sink in, listening to the mumblings of surprise from the rebels. He allowed himself a grin before continuing. “Only one way can do this. Don’t mount full-scale attack. Go straight for Jean. Chill him and take out the brain of the ville. Rest of it like a chicken with head cut off.”
Prideaux grinned. “Y’mean to say that if we can find a way to take out the boss man, then the rest of ’em won’t know what to do, and the whole thing’ll tumble down?”
Jak nodded. “Jean control ’em, tell ’em what to do. No one tells “em what to do, not know what to do.”
Prideaux nodded slowly, then turned to the rest of the rebels. “Y’know, that one might just work, if’n there’s a way to get to him.”
“Is—but have to move fast, and remember everything told,” Jak affirmed. He outlined his plan with as few words as possible. It was a simple idea, making advantage of their small numbers, and it began to win over even the most sckeptical of the rebels. By the time he had finished, the atmosphere around the lake had changed.
Jak grinned. “Get ready—move at sunup to be in position by tomorrow night.”
“Sounds good to me, and I never thought I’d say that to you,” Prideaux said, shaking his head and laughing.
Marissa looked at Jak, disbelievingly. It seemed so simple the way he put it. Maybe the fates were, for once, on her side.