The Heartstone Saga by Archibald Bradford (short novels in english .TXT) 📕

us are sleeping separately, with a gap all the way through… here.”

She traced her toe through the dirt, drawing a line straight across the camp.

Adrian gnawed at his lip as he stared at the divot that represented the gatling, but then the answer came to him so quickly that he let out a noise of incredulity in his throat.

“They’ve got it set up far enough away so that the prisoners can’t rush it!”

Sila actually smiled.

“My people have a sssaying. There is no commonality amongst criminals. This could be a weakness to exploit. When they attacked us in the desert, it was those that we kept in chains that led the charge and suffered the most casualties.”

“So maybe Tristan and his group are hoarding the best weapons for themselves. But they must be giving the prisoners something otherwise why would they stay together?” Alcaia mused.

“Ammunition.” Adrian snapped his fingers with a broad smile; “Every lost-tech weapon needs ammunition. For the blasters it is a special cell, for the gatling it is metallic projectiles fed into it on a belt.”

“Where are you taking us with this?”

He gestured at the diagram again.

“Setting aside the gatling for now, the amount of lost-tech they have is the problem.” He reasoned.

Sila crossed her arms over her armoured breasts, but otherwise waited for him to continue.

“Which means that we- I, have to mitigate that.”

“How?” Alcaia prompted, willing to embrace any plan that would minimize the danger to her people.

He pointed towards the center of the rough diagram and looked to the Amazon that had sketched it.

“The crates are here? In the middle of the clearing?”

“Yes. Their tents and lean-tos are set up on either side of it. The deceivers here, and the ones from the desert here.”

“But nobody in particular is actually guarding the crates?” He pressed.

Her eyes narrowed as she began to cotton on to his intentions.

“No… the sentries are around the perimeter of the camp, right where they ought to be.”

Gnawing on his lip, he came up with the only obvious solution.

“If I can get to them, I can cut off their supply of ammunition, if I can just mess with-”

But once again Sila hissed at him.

“You would never have time to sabotage their entire arsenal!”

He mustered his patience as best he could, staring at the rough map drawn in the ground and working the problem.

“I won’t need to. I only need to sabotage one. They have all this lost-tech stacked up in one place, which might make them easier to keep track of, but isn’t very smart.”

“How so?” Alcaia asked, her voice level.

She trusted that he knew what he was talking about, at least when it came to the enemy’s weapons.

“When the Aegis stores our lost-tech, we do it in small caches, because even one of these-” He held up his lone remaining strobe for their consideration; “-will explode under the right conditions.”

Sila looked ready to object again, but then her head tilted to one side as she began to see the merit of his plan.

“How do you create the right conditions?”

He held up a simple pair of pliers with a dark smirk on his face, it was one of the few items that he had on his belt when his team was ambushed.

“Give me two minutes with one of those crates and I will level the center of their camp.”

They all went silent for a few seconds, until one of Sila’s warriors broke in with a somewhat sarcastic tone.

“Not very ambitious.”

“Or sporting.” Olena remarked for the first time.

The Witch was sitting on a nearby log, cleaning a series of her bone needles in her lap with a little green cloth and deliberate movements of her fingers.

She barely seemed interested in the discussion at all, but no one dared challenge her on it.

He rolled his eyes and gestured towards the diagram again.

“If you attack from the opposite side of the camp from where they have the gatling set up, they may never get a chance to fire it before the smoke clears.”

“And how will you get past the dreaded weapon to begin with?” Sila demanded.

He did his best to project confidence when he answered.

“I’m well-aware of how miserable I look, so if I’m lucky I should fit right in.” Once again he lamented the state of his hair and clothes, and the lack of a bath in the last several days; “I think that all I need is a way to get into the camp without too much fuss.”

Alcaia nodded and tapped at one side of the map with her toe.

“If you circle around their camp, there is a gulley… here?” She looked to the scout for a nod of confirmation; “If you are quick and quiet, you should be able to sneak up it and into where the prisoners have been sleeping without being seen by the men manning the gatling.”

The scout was quick to agree with her warleader, squatting down beside him to offer what advice she could, her fingers gesturing at the map as she spoke.

“If you approach the crates from that side, Tristan and his ilk shouldn’t be able to see you so easily amongst the prisoners. And given that you are wearing the same clothes as them, whatever their condition, the prisoners would likely see you as one of Tristan’s men and may not challenge you at all. This could work.”

The Trogs standing amongst them were measuring Adrian with their eyes.

“Fine.” Sila finally agreed; “We will follow your lead… Aegis.”

She spoke the title somewhat grudgingly, but had to acknowledge that his plan was a good one.

Or at the very least it was better than nothing.

“Assuming everything works out.” Alcaia gestured back at the crude map; “We must still