Something happened the moment that Dr. Jean finally bought the farm. The companions, now clustered together in the center of the platform, between the two slabs from which they had plucked Jak and Marissa, could feel it. The atmosphere within the ville had changed. The baron may have used old tech and jolt to instil the hypnotic suggestion into his people, but it was himself that that they followed, his personality that controlled them. And they had just seen him chilled before their very eyes.
They had no leader. They had no lead. All they had was an uncontrollable bloodlust that had to be sated at any cost. So they began to turn on one another. Attention that had been focused on the platform was now turned on themselves. Day-to-day disagreements and rivalries now took on a much greater significance than heretofore. Instead of training their blasters on the platform and trying to take out those who had caused the downfall of the baron, they instead turned their blasters on one another. The square turned into a heaving mass of people indulging in a firefight and in hand-to-hand combat. At such close range, there were plenty of casualties from blasterfire, and it was beginning to look as though the walled ville would wipe itself out in an act of self-destruction.
The companions were stunned for a second by the sudden transformation in the crowd as soon as it was released from the grip of Dr. Jean. Unable to believe that they were no longer under attack themselves, they were transfixed by the carnage that was taking place before them, their own presence seemingly forgotten.
“Ryan, look,” Jak yelled, throwing a wobbling arm in the direction of the old courthouse lobby. More sec men were making their way from the rear toward the sets of double doors, primed to repeat the attack that had seen the first wave wiped out.
“Fuck this,” J.B. muttered, taking a gren from his munitions bag, pulling the pin and tossing the gren underhand into the lobby of the building. He signaled to the others to take cover, which they did by using the slabs on which the sacrifices were to have been made. The gren went off inside the building with a dull roar, almost drowned by the firefight that was taking part to their rear. The hot metal fragments from the detonating grenade decimated the sec force within, and a few of the fragments were flung clear of the doors and out over the platform. The woman who had been their unwilling guide to the ceremony, and who had stood rooted to the spot, unable to take in what was occurring around her, fell victim to one of these. The fragment hit her in the left eye as she watched openmouthed at the destruction within the building. It penetrated cleanly into the eyeball, frying the viscous fluid of the eyeball and cutting right through muscle tissue into the soft brain beyond. She slumped to the floor of the platform, still unable to comprehend the destruction around her, even as the life was extinguished from her body.
Coming out from cover, the five companions headed for the lobby, ignoring the carnage behind them. As long as the ville dwellers were intent on chilling one another, it meant that they weren’t paying any attention to the companions or Jak and Marissa. Mildred and J.B. held back to cover the two jolt-addled ex-sacrificies as they staggered across the platform toward the ruined lobby.
“Shit, think you’ll be okay moving?” the Armorer asked Jak, yelling to make himself heard over the sound of a firefight.
“Yeah, just as long as we not run too far,” Jak replied with a wry grin. He could feel strength returning to him with every step as the adrenaline pumping around his system and sheer willpower fought off the effects of the drug; but Marissa wasn’t doing as well. Perhaps because of her smaller frame, perhaps because she wasn’t as strong, she was still weak on her feet, her eyes still pinpricked pupils and wide irises, staring in confusion at what was happening around her. She tried to run and halfstumbled, as though her limbs were lagging behind her brain. Mildred took her arm.
“You go, Jak. I’ll take her,” she said to the albino. In truth, he was glad to hear that, as he was still some way short of being up to speed himself, without having to carry Marissa along with him.
The group entered the lobby of the building. The shrine and the heavy masonry in front of the building acted as a shield for the noise in the square, and they seemed to be in an almost unnatural calm. The lobby was littered with bloodied corpses, some still barely alive and moaning, others long since having been chilled. The walls were damaged and blackened by the blast, and the floor and bodies were covered with debris from the explosion: brick, masonry, plaster, wood.
“Dammit, where do we go from here?” J.B. asked.
“I don’t know,” Ryan mused, “but at least that gren bought us some time.”
The Armorer was gratified, feeling that this time his use of the gren had been justified. At the back of his mind had been the concern that—like back in the ville when he’d attacked the sec force besieging the rebels—he might have made matters worse.
But this wouldn’t get them out of the walled ville. That had to be their number-one priority.
“Fireblast, I wish we knew the layout of this damn place a little better,” Ryan ground out. “Feels really weird, as well.”
Krysty shook her head. As a doomie, she could feel this more than any of them. “It is different…all that old tech shit is still pumping out those noises, and the jolt is still working, but there’s no Dr. Jean to direct what they’re feeling. Now they just want to chill.”
“Let us look upon the brighter side of this,” Doc said.
“There’s a brighter side?” Mildred questioned.
Doc laughed. “Of course there is, my dear Doctor. At least they are not after us, for a start. If we attract fire, it is only because we happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time—”
“You know, somehow I don’t find that very reassuring, Doc,” Mildred interrupted wryly.
“Perhaps, my dear Doctor, if you stopped trying to be humorous and let me finish, we may get somewhere. I realize that cheap jokes are your reaction to stress, but I fear we do not have the time for them right now. As I was saying,” he continued, leaving Mildred openmouthed, “we are not a target as such. So may I suggest we adopt a policy of trying to keep to the shadows? Rather than rush, and make ourselves noticeable, would it not perhaps be better if we kept to the margins and let these people blast seven shades of hell from each other, moving only when we can be sure that we shall not be noticed?”
Ryan looked levelly at Doc. “You know what, Doc? That’s a damn fine idea.”
Forming into a line, with Jak and Marissa sheltered in the middle, aided by Mildred, Ryan and Krysty in the lead, Doc and J.B. covering the rear, they set off to canvas the building. The lower levels were deserted. With Dr. Jean gone, and the hypnotic effects of the drugs and old tech causing a desire to fight anyone over anything, the only occupants of the rooms they recce’d were corpses or those who were close to buying the farm—the victors in those particular fights having left the building to take up arms in the square.
Moving up the staircase, keeping tight formation with blasters ready to shoot the hell out of anyone who stepped into their path, they traversed the whole building. The story was the same on every floor. The only occupants of the building apart from themselves were those who were either already chilled, or were mortally wounded and well on the way. Those who had emerged victorious from these internal firefights had already made their way out into the square.
On the sixth floor they came across an open-plan office layout that housed a series of comps and tone and noise generators that were running and were linked by cables to the vid machines that were still pumping out the propaganda about the now deceased baron to a crowd that was no longer listening and no longer cared.
“This is where it’s coming from,” Krysty said, immediately going over to the comp consoles and seeing if she could make much sense of them. Dean had taught her what he had learned at the Nicolas Brody school. Mildred stood over her shoulder.
“Can you switch it off?” Doc asked.
“Sure we want to do that?” Ryan asked. “If they’re not out for each other, would they come looking for us?”
“No more than if we stumble on them by accident while they’re like that,” Mildred replied. “You take this shit away from them, and they’re going to see what they’ve done to one another. Hell, they’re not going to know what to do,” she theorized.
“Can’t be any worse one way or another.” Ryan shrugged. “It’s convinced me. Can you turn this shit off?” he asked Krysty.
She shook her head, her long, sentient red hair flowing more freely than it had for some time. “Hard to tell. Some of this stuff is really complex, more so than anything I’ve seen before. If I screw with it and get it wrong, I could make things worse. You want my honest opinion?” she asked, grinning as she looked Ryan in the eye. “You really want to make sure about this, then I’d say blast the shit out of the fucker.”
“That should work.” Ryan laughed. He beckoned for them to pull back to the doorway, in case the shorting of the comp circuits caused a fire or small explosion in the room.
“J.B., you want to do this?” he asked, indicating the M-4000 that was slung over the Armorer’s shoulder. The load of barbed metal fléchettes would certainly cause considerable damage to the delicate comp circuitry.
“No, let me,” Marissa said, her voice sounding unusually loud and clear. “It’s my people who suffered because of that shit, so I’m the one should finally end it.” Her voice cracked under the strain of controlling herself while the jolt was still in her system. She held out her hands for the M-4000. J.B. eyed her appraisingly, trying to judge if she was up to the task. She still looked a little dizzy from the jolt, but her expression was set and firm. He could tell that she wouldn’t take no for an answer, and so held out the blaster to her.
Steadying herself, she aimed for the main bank of comps and fired into them. The load from the shotgun spread and ripped through the metal casings of the comps, rupturing circuit boards and transistors, breaking delicate chips. The shattered comps fizzed and crackled, flames licking at them.
She turned her attention to the tone and noise generators that were feeding the hypnotic impulses. Firing at each of the three generators in turn, racking the blaster between each, she reduced them to shattered hulks of metal that now lay silent.
There was no danger of a fire spreading, as the few flames that had been produced flickered and died with nothing to feed them among the metal of the old tech.
“It’s over…” she said before handing the M-4000 back to J.B.
THEY WAITED UNTIL DAYLIGHT, watching the ville destroy itself, from the top of the old courthouse building, resting in turn and feeding from Dr. Jean’s kitchens. They were also able to stock up on their own supplies by looting the deserted building. Through the night the inhabitants of the walled ville of Lafayette waged war, sporadic bursts of blasterfire and outbreaks of actual fire occurring at random around the ville. From the roof they were able to get a panoramic view of the settlement, and could see the same patterns repeated all over.
For some reason, the old courthouse was left alone. Perhaps because it had the shrine in front of it, and even in their confused state, freed from the hypnotic bonds of the baron now that the vid screens were blank and silent, they still held a fear of the place where he had once dwelt.
No matter. It suited the companions well for this to be the circumstance. It gave them a chance to rest up and wait in the middle of all the mayhem, to have a chance to recuperate before attempting to leave the walled ville and return to the swamp.
By the middle of the following morning, a kind of calm had descended over the ville. A few fires still burned, and there was the occasional crackle of blasterfire, but for the most part the people had fallen into a kind of stupor, worn from the fighting of the previous night, and dazed about what to do next.
Ryan gathered his people in the baron’s old chambers.
“Time for us to leave,” he said simply. “I figure the best thing we can do is get hold of a sec wag and try to drive out as far as possible.”
He turned to Marissa. “There’s a chance that some of your people who managed to escape the battle last night may be trying to get back to your ville. Mebbe we can pick some of them up along the way, if they—and us——can avoid the sec patrols who are coming back. I figure it’d be good if you were there to meet them,” he finished.
Leaving the old courthouse, keeping the same formation as the previous night, even though both Jak and Marissa seemed fully recovered from the drugs, they searched for a sec wag. It didn’t take them long to find one. All the wags had been deserted, and some had been set ablaze.
Ryan and J.B. sat in the cab, with the others on the bench seats on the open back. Keeping triple red as they drove through the ville—as a precaution—they found that there was a defeated atmosphere about the walled ville, even though the only battle had been among the ville dwellers. People looked on blank-eyed as the wag passed them, unable even to register curiosity. When they reached the gates, they found that they had been left gaping wide, the SMG posts along the walls deserted. Wags were scattered around the entrance, left by returning sec patrols who had no orders and leadership anymore, and who had rushed into the ville to take part in the firefight within. Some of sec men sat by their wags now, returning to them as they had little idea what else they could do with themselves. They, too, sat and watched as the companions drove past.
Without his charismatic figurehead, the reign of Dr. Jean had ended within hours, the great empire he had planned to build little more than dust. Jak and Marissa looked on this, but neither considered their army to have been the cause. If anything, the catalyst had been the intervention of those who sought to save Jak and Marissa when their own campaign had crumbled. As the wag ground to a halt where the swamp became too impenetrable for a four-wheeled vehicle to proceed, they both considered—separately—that this had been a Phyrric victory: they had defeated Dr. Jean, but at the cost, it seemed, of all those who had remained united against him.
So it was with a weary tread and heavier hearts that they made their way through the hidden paths of the swamp to where the settlement lay hidden.
Scouts who kept watch on the paths sent ahead word of their arrival, so that they were greeted by Beausoleil when they entered the ville. Those who had been left behind gathered with the old man. To Marissa and Jak it seemed a pitifully small number of old men, old women and children.
“So you reached Lafayette in time to save them, if no one else,” was his bleak greeting.
“There haven’t been any others made it back yet?” Ryan countered. The old man shook his head.
The one-eyed man told the assembled throng what had happened. The others left it to him, and for her part Marissa was glad not to have to talk about the action she now saw as ripping the heart from her ville.
“I suppose you’ll say you told me so,” she said bitterly, addressing Beausoleil when Ryan had finished.
The old man shook his head. “Ain’t no blame to put anywhere. Never forced no one to do nothing. Besides which, Dr. Jean is gone, so whatever comes next has got to be better. Sometimes it just costs more than jack to get things done.”
“How can you say that? Nearly everyone is chilled,” she countered, tears beginning to flow down her cheeks.
The old man shrugged. “Things is as they is. Don’t expect me to feel bad to make you feel better.”
He turned and walked away, leaving her to start sobbing on Jak’s shoulder.
OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS, some did come back. They had tales of how they had run through the streets of the walled ville, hiding while the firefights raged, then made their way out past blank-eyed and lost souls wandering the broken ville. Some carried injuries that had slowed them, others had stayed to try to loot before running for home, hoping to bring things back with them. Eventually, the stream trickled and dried. About sixteen of the rebel army had managed to stay alive and stay free, making it back to the hidden settlement. If nothing else, it made Marissa feel better. They now had a few more people back to band together and come out of hiding. There was nothing to hide from. Now they could start to build a new community, a new life.
And Marissa wanted to build it with Jak. But the albino hunter had no wish to stay.
“But why?” she asked him when he told her. “I thought we were your people, and you were one of us…and I thought that you and me…”
Jak shook his head. “Nothing here now. This your land, your people. Mebbe been away too long, and mebbe not really belong anywhere anymore. Except mebbe with them.”
He looked over to where the companions were preparing to leave. J.B. and Mildred had been distributing ammo and med supplies as needed before they set out for the redoubt they had originally been headed for. They figured that Dr. Jean’s sec force would have wandered away after his fall, and they could enter undisturbed. If nothing else, a few now-isolated sec men would present little problem. As he watched the companions, Jak knew that they were his people. When he had chosen to leave with them the first time, when he had returned to them after avenging the murder of his wife and child… They shared bonds that no one else could understand.
How could he explain that to her?
Jak took Marissa’s hands in his and looked in her eyes. “Another time, another place, mebbe this was home. Mebbe always looking for home. Thought found it, but was wrong. Mebbe home is with them, wherever find together. Mebbe… But even with you here, this not it. Not know where it is.”
“So how will you know?” she asked him tenderly. He could only shrug.
“Only know when find it. So until then, can’t stop searching.”