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back into his boot, he can probably limp along for a while, but it’ll be at half speed at best.” She reached for his boot, then hissed in pain and put her free hand to her chest. “Almost forgot one of those eight-legged bastards tagged me, as well.”
    “Why didn’t you say so earlier?” Krysty asked. “Here, let me take a look.”
    “Sure, just hang on.” Rummaging in her pockets, Mildred came up with a small tube of antibiotic ointment.
    “Jak, catch,” she said as she tossed it to him. “Rub a bit on each cut. The last thing we need out here is infection.”
    While the two women examined Mildred’s wound, and Jak and Ricky treated themselves, J.B. walked over to Ryan. Despite the half dozen instances of near death they’d all encountered in the past hour, he was as calm as ever, but Ryan saw through the placid demeanor of his oldest friend and realized something was seriously wrong.
    “How many loaded mags for the Steyr do you have left?” J.B. asked.
    “Fireblast, J.B.! I thought I’d take a minute to enjoy still being alive, mebbe wipe the black shit off my face before I did inventory—”
    “Hey, I’m as happy as a scavvie in a honey hole that we made it through that, but it doesn’t mean our problems are over.” The Armorer stepped closer. “How many mags?”
    Ryan walked over to where he’d stashed his empties along with the bandolier and blinked at what he found. “One full and one with four bullets left. Damn, blew through more shells than I thought,” he said at J.B.’s slow nod. “My SIG has two full mags. What about you?”
    “I ran out of 9 mm for the Uzi while getting up here, and there’s mebbe a handful of shells left for the shotgun. I haven’t checked with the boys yet, but I bet Jak’s got one reload for his Colt, and Ricky might have a dozen, mebbe eighteen rounds left. And you know neither Doc nor the women carry a lot of bullets in the first place.”
    Ryan had already pulled his spare blaster magazine and handed it to J.B., who began pushing bullets out with his thumb and loading one of his empty magazines. “We’re low on ammo, is that it?”
    The Armorer nodded. “In a nutshell, yeah. I mean, I’m not blaming anyone—we all did what we had to do to get out of there, but now we’ve got to figure out what comes next, and that involves getting off this rock, and I bet it’s going to be some hard running and fighting to get out of here in one piece.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the killing ground below. “Those bugs don’t seem to be the type to forgive and forget. And with Doc lamed and all of us low on both firepower and supplies, it’s going to be a rough, hard trip out of here.”
    “You thinking those things might come back?” Ryan asked.
    “Probably should ask Krysty about that. She seemed to have a pretty good line on them,” J.B. replied. “Bottom line is we can’t stay here, but we’re not sure where we’re going, either, except out of this damn valley, I figure.”
    “Ace on the line,” Ryan replied. “Well, we best figure out what we should do sooner rather than later. Come on.”
    He led J.B. back to the rest of the group and took a minute to explain the situation as the Armorer saw it. “Now, we all kicked some serious ass today. However, there could be another hundred, five hundred or thousand of those bastard bugs down in their hive or lair or whatever. So we should figure on getting out of here while they’re still recovering from their ass-whippin’. The more ground we put between them and us, the better.”
    Nods and murmurs of agreement met his announcement. “A capital idea, my dear Ryan, but where are you suggesting that we go?” Doc asked. “Surely not back to the redoubt.”
    The redoubt that had brought them here had been cracked open and looted long ago, and their arrival had destroyed its mat-trans unit, as well. Since then, they’d been traveling the dusty plains, with this valley their only encounter