Chapter Four

      Rockpoint was melting.

      Holding a large duffel bag in both arms, Alexander Hawk struggled through the waist-deep water. The man was wide with muscle, not fat, his features oddly flat as if there were a lot of Oriental or American Indian blood in his heritage, or just a touch of mutie. His long black hair was held back in a ponytail with a ornately tied length of rawhide, his boots were some kind of lizard skin and a brace of pistols rode protectively behind the buckle of his gun belt, the handles turned out for a fast draw. The blue head of a scorpion tattoo peeked from under his shirt, and the scars marring his body were too numerous to count.

      Towering high above the ville was the water spout rising from the destroyed temple of the Scorpion God. Scowling at the sight, Hawk sloshed around a corner of a sagging building as he headed for the front gate. As the chief sec man of the ville, Hawk had known the water shortage was a lie concocted by Baron Gaza to control the ville’s population. They had to obey his every command, or else he cut off their water ration. The plan was brilliant, simple and brutal. It had worked for years and would have for a lot more.

      Then those damn outlanders came riding into town and blew the temple, cracking open some sort of a preDark pip large enough to drive a truck into! Now the entire ville was flooded, the houses and buildings and barracks made of sun-dried adobe brick were literally dissolving under the never-ending rain from the gushing water column in the center of the ville. Most of the people had already fled into the desert, but the ocean of water was right behind them, pouring like a river through the gaping hole in the ville wall, and spreading out across the Great Salt in every direction. Rivulets of trickling water were becoming shallow creeks, and several nearby depressions had filled into small ponds. Hawk had no idea when the torrent rising from the temple would stop, mebbe never. Mebbe the preDark river was connected to some freshwater sea and would continue pouring into the Great Salt until it was an inland ocean again the way the wrinkles said it had once been in ancient times, millions of years before skydark.

      Tripping over something unseen below the muddy surface, Hawk almost dropped his bundle and tightened his hold on the heavy bag. The clouded water was filled with loose floating items from the disintegrating ville—straw, wooden spoons, some bits and pieces of preDark plastic and a lot of drowned scorpions. The little bodies bobbed about like veggies in a soup, and it broke the man’s heart to see so many of his beloved servants lifeless in the swirling muck.

      Then he saw a large black scorpion perched precariously on a dead child. With a shout of delight, he scooped up the tiny desert dweller and it instantly stung him, the barbed tail struck deep into his hand. Hawk grunted at the pain and put the creature on a shoulder for safekeeping. The scorpion dug in its legs and grabbed his shirt collar in self-preservation.

      Ever since he was a child, Hawk knew he was different from most folks, maybe a mutie of some kind, because he was completely immune to most poisons. He used this ability to make others fear him by always carrying around a lethal black scorpion, the giants of the desert who were five times bigger than their little red cousins. More than once that had saved his life, and it was how he became the sec boss in Rockpoint. People were terrified of a man who got stung a dozen times and it didn’t even faze him. As always, fear meant power, and now that the baron had fled, he had been their first choice to be the new baron.

      It was a bitter victory, though, since soon there would be nothing to rule. Not here anyway, but he would find another ville, and with the bundle in his arms and his few remaining sec men, Hawk would rule as baron yet! Then someday he would find former Baron Gaza and chill the man with a knife, twisting it slowly in his guts until he begged for death, then twist some more.

      With a groan, another building tilted sideways, and Hawk splashed hurriedly out of the way as the gaudy house fell apart, the crashing wall forming a wave that pushed the sec boss helplessly along until he slammed into the base of the keep. The impact knocked the breath from the man, and a sharp stabbing pain pierced through his shoulder, the bandaged wound in his chest suddenly leaking red blood.

      Struggling to stay erect, Hawk lurched away from the keep, still holding on to the heavy bag. Made of preDark brick and cinder blocks, not dried mud, the keep was the only structure still standing undamaged. It also used to be the home of the baron and was armed with a 25 mm cannon in perfect working condition. Not even the Trader in his armored war wags wanted to face the Scorpion’s Sting, as Hawk liked to call the gun. It tracked fast and could chew through any mobile armor, treads or tires. Once a war wag was motionless, it could be easily covered with loose tree branches, or anything else that burned, and set on fire. The crew would cook alive if they stayed, or be shot the moment they crawled outside. Either way meant death.

      Recalling the last time he had been inside the keep, hot rage flared in Hawk. Gaza had betrayed him, gunning down his sec boss because Hawk discovered that the baron was really a coward. Unfortunately for Hawk, he was a coward with a very fast gun and got the drop on the sec boss, but failed to finish the job properly. Now Hawk was back and hungry for revenge.

      Reaching the area near the front gates, Hawk found the rest of his sec men sitting on their horses and kicking away the occasional person who begged for a ride, or for food. One man tried to take a longblaster from the boot alongside a saddle of a riderless horse, but another sec man caught the motion and fired from the hip. The would-be thief staggered backward to flop limply into the dark waters, and his companions descended upon the dying man to yank off his boots, knife and other possessions.

      Since they were robbing a thief, Hawk paid no attention to them and splashed directly to the empty horse and carefully placed his bundle across the saddle. The horse whinnied at the tremendous weight and shuffled its hooves about unhappily, while Hawk lashed the bag firmly in place with lengths of rope and a few leather belts.

      “All set,” Hawk declared, hurrying to a second horse and climbing into the saddle.

      Twelve other horses stood before the open gate of the ville, and a small wooden cart. Eight men and two women were in the saddles, all of them heavily armed with blasters from the former baron’s private arsenal, the woman also carrying bulky packs of food and assorted supplies. Everything was soaking wet from the constant rain of the water plume, the roar muted to a low rumble.

      “Black dust, I can’t believe you got it,” a sec man said, shaking his head.

      “Gonna need it when we face the Trader,” Hawk growled, pulling a longblaster from the boot and checking the load. “Did you get the stand?”

      A burly man with a full beard grunted in assent. “Yes, sir. It was bitch and a half to drag through the mud, but we got her here.”

      “Good job, Mikel,” Hawk said bluntly. Always compliment your troops on a tough job. It only made them work harder