“This way,” Mildred said, leading the way for the sec men carrying the badly bleeding Foghat.
The slave groaned in pain with each step the sec men took. His cries were growing weaker and weaker as the man’s lifeblood dribbled out of the huge rent in his arm.
Mildred opened the door to the nursery. “Put him on that table in the middle of the room!” Foghat needed her immediate attention. When Brody arrived, he could be given a painkiller from the generous medical stores and be made to wait until she’d finished with Foghat. “And when the other one is brought in here, put him on the table by the wall.”
The sec men carried Foghat across the room and eased him onto what was normally a delivery table. There were all sorts of medical instruments and supplies in the nursery, more than was generally necessary for the delivery of babies.
Mildred hoped it would be enough to save the man’s life.
She began by checking the man’s pulse. It was weak, but he still had one. She’d managed to staunch the flow of blood from his arm with a tight tourniquet, but didn’t want to cut off the arm’s blood supply for too long.
“Can I help you, dear?” the old woman who usually worked in the nursery said.
“Get his shirt off and clean up his arm,” Mildred ordered, rifling through the medicine cabinet, hoping to find a vial of morphine. Luckily there was some.
One of the sec chief’s lieutenants had followed the men carrying Foghat into the nursery and was now watching Mildred with a look of disbelief on his face. “What are you doing?” he asked.
“Trying to save this man’s life.”
“Why?”
“For old times’ sake.”
“What?”
Mildred paused for the briefest of moments. “Let’s just say I’m doing this because I can.”
“You’re wasting time, and using up medicine on a slave. Just amputate the arm and send him on his way.”
“No!” Mildred said forcefully
“But he’s just a slave.”
Mildred paused again, looking at the problem as the sec man would. “How much good to the baron is a one-armed slave? What do one-armed slaves go for at auction these days?”
The sec man fell silent.
“You don’t tell me how to do my job, and I won’t tell you how to do yours. All right?”
The sec man took several steps backward.
“Come on, dear,” the old woman said, taking hold of the sec man’s sleeve and moving him away from Mildred. “We’ll be a while in here, and it won’t be pretty. We’ll let you know when we’re done.”
Reluctantly the sec man left the room, standing out in the hall on the other side of the open doorway.
Mildred got to work on the wounded slave.
Foghat was falling asleep from the morphine, but before he went unconscious, he managed to look up at her, smiled and said, “Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me yet.”
“I know you’ll save my arm,” he said before the morphine finally put him under.
Mildred sighed. “I wish I was as confident as he is.”
JAK GRABBED the barrel of the .50 caliber and helped J.B. lift it into place on the back of the transport wag they would be using to free Ryan, Krysty and Mildred.
The Armorer had fit two of the P-39’s blasters with makeshift pivots and was mounting them on the front-left and rear-right positions of the wag’s open cargo area.
The two eased the blaster into position, and J.B. locked it in place with a single horizontal bolt and a cotter pin.
“Short bursts,” Jak said. “Two, three seconds, not more.”
“That’s right. Anything longer and you’re wasting ammo.” J.B. took hold of the blaster handles he’d made from a bale of heavy-gauge steel wire he’d found on one of the loading docks and tested the movement of the gun. To his delight, it swung easily in both directions. “Should give a good range of fire. Pretty much a complete circle.”
“Test in morning?” Jak asked.
J.B. nodded. “I’m sure the .50 calibers will fire without a glitch, but I’m not so sure about the cannon.”
“Although I’m more than two centuries old, I never thought I would live long enough to see the day when John Barrymore Dix was unsure about anything to do with weaponry.” Doc had wandered up to the wag and was standing by the rear wheels, looking up at J.B. and Jak with a delightful grin on his face.
“Mebbe Mildred right,” Jak said.
“About what?” J.B. asked.
“Your dream.”
J.B. was silent. Being reminded about his dream sent a chill down his spine. The .50-caliber design had been tried and tested for years. The cannon was another matter entirely, since it had probably had a few reliability problems during its lifetime, even when it was new. He’d done everything he could to make sure it was working properly, but there was still a chance it could fail when they needed it most.
But while the Armorer had some reservations about the cannon, Dr. Theophilus Algernon Tanner had none whatsoever.
“Of course the cannon will fire, John Barrymore. Not only will it fire, but it will fire magnificently…stupendously. It will cut a swath of destruction through the farm, unleashing a little bit of hellfire from its angry maw with each deadly round.”
Doc had his swordstick raised in the air and although they were underground, he seemed to be standing in the path of some strange breeze that blew back his white hair and made him look like a wild-eyed doomsayer atop a mountain.
“Thunder will roll, the earth will shake and barons and sec men will cower in fear at the mere sight of this infernal blaster.” There was a strange shine in Doc’s eyes, and his body was beginning to shake and tremble uncontrollably.
Jak signaled to Clarissa to come to Doc’s aid. She came running, and when she reached Doc’s side, she took his arm and led him to a nearby pile of crates where he could sit and rest, while whatever it was that was affecting him ran its course.
“He’ll be all right,” J.B. said.
“Not worried Doc,” Jak replied. “Worried Ryan and others.”
“If I know Ryan Cawdor, he’s probably sitting back and enjoying his time on that farm. Who knows, after we break in, he might not even want to leave.”
The two men laughed.