Outlanders 24 Equinox Zero by James Axler

Author:James Axler
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

"Goddammit, Kane—wait up!"

Kane shortened his long-legged stride enough for Domi to catch up to him in the corridor. Her bare feet slapped softly on the vanadium sheathing of the floor, muting the sound to little more than a series of pats.

"Where are you going?" she asked.

He hefted the USAS-12 shotgun and patted his holstered blaster. "To turn these back in, as per procedure."

"Oh." She fell into step beside him "You don't seem too surprised by Grant bailing out on us."

Kane only grunted in response. They passed the workroom and the vehicle depot and entered the armory. He pressed the flat toggle switch on the door frame, and the overhead fluorescent fixtures blazed on, flooding the armory with a white, sterile light.

The big square room was stacked nearly to the ceiling with wooden crates and boxes. Many of the crates were stenciled with the legend Property U.S. Army, and others bore words in Russian Cyrillic script.

They moved along the aisles, past glass-fronted cases holding M-16 A-1 assault rifles, SA-80 subguns, and Heckler & Koch VP-70 semiautomatic pistols, complete with holsters and belts.

Lining the walls were bazookas, tripod-mounted M-249 machine guns and several crates of grenades. Mounted on frameworks in a corner were two full suits of Magistrate body armor, standing there like black, silent sentinels. Every piece of ordnance and hardware, from the smallest-caliber handblaster to the biggest-bore M-79 grenade launcher, was in perfect condition.

All of the ordnance was of predark manufacture.

Caches of materiel had been laid down in hermetically sealed Continuity of Government installations before the nukecaust. Protected from the ravages of the environment, nearly every piece of munitions and hardware was as pristine as the day it rolled off the assembly line. Over a period of years Lakesh had smuggled out all of the weaponry from the largest COG facility, the Anthill, assuming wrongly that everyone he recruited to his cause would gleefully snatch up all the ordnance.

Most of the exiles had never so much as touched a blaster until they arrived at Cerberus. All of them were expected to become reasonably proficient with guns, and they had spent some time on the indoor and outdoor firing range under Grant's tutelage. The lessons were restricted to the use of the SA-80 subguns, lightweight "point and shoot" autoblasters even the most firearm-challenged person could learn to handle.

Domi paused at an open gun case where nearly a dozen Sin Eaters in their forearm holsters hung from pegs. Kane and Grant had appropriated the spares a short time before from a squad of hard-contact Mags dispatched from Cobaltville.

The squad's mission was to investigate Redoubt Bravo and ascertain if it was inhabited. The Magistrates were stopped and soundly defeated by Sky Dog's band of Amerindians in the flatlands bordering the foothills Grant and Kane were instrumental in the victory, although they managed to keep their involvement concealed from the invading Mags.

The survivors of the engagement were disarmed and allowed to go on their way, believing the Indians alone were responsible for their humiliation.

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