Amazon Gate

by James Axler

  For both suddenly ground to a halt, and the laser blasters were withdrawn from their portholes in the sides of the wags. On the northeastern side, Jak pulled up sharply. With the portholes now closed, there was no target area for him to pitch a grenade. And something within his gut told him that the tide of the battle had, without the Gate having actually done anything to change it, shifted perceptibly.

  "What…?" Ryan furrowed his brow seeing this.

  Next to him, Krysty felt her sentient tresses move and loosen on her skull, flowing and moving with the agitation of change in the air.

  "They're coming out," Gloria said, expressing something that was now plainly visible in a voice that spoke of her disbelief. "Why the fuck are they—?"

  "Doesn't matter," Ryan snapped. "We've got them on our terms now."

  The one-eyed warrior and the Gate queen had no idea why the Illuminated Ones had changed their battle plan, but they knew that the odds had now tipped their way.

  On both sides of the camp, the backs of both wags opened, and seven Illuminated Ones spilled from the tailgate, each clutching a laser rifle. They were dressed much as the companions remembered them from their previous brief encounter, back near the villages of Raw and Samtvogel. The colorful one-piece battle suits of a shiny fiber, each suit a different color, were topped by opaque glass helmets that obscured their faces.

  The Gate warriors were stilled in their tracks, taken aback by the sudden apparition that stepped from the war wags. The companions, however, knew exactly what to expect.

  The Illuminated Ones spread out in a fan formation and raised their blasters. They moved swiftly and took advantage of the surprise their sudden appearance had caused.

  On the northeastern side, Jak was already within reach of the outriders, and could see that their surprise had made them sitting targets.

  "No! Move!" he yelled, raising his .357 Magnum Colt Python on the run, and letting off a shot that rang over the heads of the stunned Gate outriders.

  Audible in the sudden quiet on both sides of the camp, it was a shot that broke the silence and spurred all into action.

  The first laser blasts were deadly, crackling beams of light, intensely bright in the darkness, that scored the air and caught some outriders, raising shrill cries of pain and chilling. The night suddenly reeked of charred flesh and death.

  But the Illuminated Ones had lost the edge of surprise. As soon as Jak's shot rang through the darkness, it snapped the Gate warriors back to a reality where they were up against a seen enemy rather than an unknown quantity. The fact that this enemy had strange weapons rather than the usual blasters or blades was unimportant. All that mattered was that there were more of the Amazons than the Illuminated Ones.

  And numbers counted.

  Gloria, covering the ground in long, swift strides that belied her size, soon reached Jak.

  "You've fought them before," she breathed rapidly. "Tactics?"

  The albino snapped a shot at one of the figures clad in bright material. In the reflected light from the wag, the material made the Illuminated Ones an easy target. The heavy slug tore at the material of the figure, ripping the brightly colored fabric at the shoulder and raising a spray of blood where it gouged a lump of flesh. The gunner screamed and dropped the laser blaster.

  "Blasters not always shoot straight, can't always control," Jak snapped. "Keep moving, not let them take aim, hit hard."

  "Simple enough," Gloria replied before letting loose with a string of cries and whistles that signaled tactics to her warriors. A series of instructions that could faintly be heard on the other side of the camp by Margia, who amplified her sister's orders by repeating the signals to the warriors on her side of the divide.

  Whooping, the Gate Amazons used their handblasters to pick off the Illuminated Ones who were distracted by shots from Ryan's Steyr. Two were chilled immediately, while another was hit in the left leg and arm. With so many down from their small number, the remaining fit warriors realized that there was nothing for them to do except to effect a retreat into the safety of the war wag.

  One of them started to strafe the area with the laser rifle, sweeping the pulsing beam of light in a wide arc.

  "Down!" Gloria yelled as she hit the earth, the beam sweeping over her head so closely that she could feel the heat of it as she fell.

  It was unnecessary for her to cry—more instinct than conscious thought—as most of her warriors had already hit the ground, as had Ryan, Krysty and Jak. Krysty raised her Smith & Wesson blaster and took aim at the enemy rifleman who was laying down the covering fire. She squeezed gently on the trigger to keep recoil to a minimum and maximize her chances of an accurate shot at the distance and visibility she had. By a quirk of fate, the man was saved by the way in which he was firing, as Krysty's slug was prevented from hitting him in the chest by the arc of his own fire, cannoning into the metal of his laser rifle and wrenching it from his grasp. The blaster flew harmlessly away to his right, and he grasped at his wrist, broken by the impact and force with which the rifle had been torn from him.

  The Illuminated Ones were now wide open to attack, but covering fire had given them enough time for the uninjured members of the wag's crew to gather in the injured members of their party. A force blast from a laser rifle shot from the back of the wag and into the encroaching members of the Gate tribe, stopping them from taking out the last man in—the one whose covering fire had caused them so many problems.

  On the other side of the camp, things had gone even more in favor of the Gate. Doc, catching up with the main body of the attack as it was delayed by the laser fire, raised his LeMat and loosed the scattergun charge in the direction of the wag. The shot spread out over the longer than usual range, and didn't have the lethal effect that could have been hoped for. It did, however, cause enough damage to disable two of the Illuminated Ones' soldiers and cause them to drop their laser blasters.

  Following suit, J.B.—who was a little closer to the wag than Doc had been—dropped to the earth and shouldered the M-4000, letting fly with a charge of the wickedly barbed metal flechettes, which tore into the group of Illuminated Ones, causing laser rifles to drop to the ground. One warrior—in a blue one-piece that became purple as blood spread across the blue material—received several hits to the chest and was thrown backward into the wag.

  Margia whooped and gave a harsh, throaty cry, leading the charge on the wag. Those Illuminated Ones who still held their blasters showed the lack of battle expertise that Ryan had suspected by becoming erratic in their fire, the rifles cutting out as they managed to jam the delicate mechanisms in their panic.

  "Got them on the run," Dean yelled to J.B. and Mildred, his eyes alight with the fire of battle. He raised his Browning Hi-Power and took careful aim, finishing the life of an Illuminated One who was attempting to fumble his rifle back into life.

  As with the wag on the northeastern side of the camp, those of the warriors still uninjured, and those crew in the wag itself, pulled their wounded and chilled back into the vehicle while an arc of covering fire was laid down.

  Both wags secured from the fire of the Gate warriors, which now bounced harmlessly off the armored sides of the wags, they effected retreat. The wag on the northeastern side of the camp reversed and skidded in a 180-degree turn, roaring off in the direction it had come, while the wag on the southwesterly side of the camp sped forward, arcing around the encampment and following the other wag toward the northeast and the seemingly deserted settlement Gloria had seen from afar. As quickly as it had begun, the battle was over.

  AS DAWN BROKE over the camp, Gloria and Margia sat around the remains of the campfire with Ryan and his companions. There had been two Illuminated Ones left behind, both chilled. Mildred had examined them and found that they were seemingly healthy and unmutated specimens. Both had been chilled by bullet wounds. They were ritually cremated as fellow warriors with the eight Gate Amazons who had been chilled in the battle. Each of the Gate had been burned badly by the las
ers.

  There were four of these lasers left behind, and Margia now had them at her feet.

  "These will be useful," she said almost to herself.

  "Too erratic to be trusted," J.B. remarked.

  Margia raised an eyebrow. "Depends on who uses them, honey," she said archly. J.B. and Mildred both saw trouble ahead with the laser blasters.

  Gloria and Ryan weren't listening. Instead, along with Jak, they were staring into the remains of the fire.

  "So that is to be our destiny?" the Gate queen mused.

  "Or who stands in the way," Ryan replied.

  Jak shook his head. "Lucky this time. Mebbe not when more of them than us."

  Gloria smiled at him. "Then we'll just have to be triple frosty, sweets. 'Cause there's no turning back now."

  Chapter Twelve

  Ryan wasn't the only one of the party to be glad when they had finally crossed the plain. By the time it was full daylight, the camp had been disassembled and the wags packed. The Gate had carried out their farewell burial ceremonies for their own people, and also for the chilled Illuminated Ones who had fallen in battle. The remains were buried on the plain, a square of turned earth in the grassland marking the spot where their remains came to rest.

  The Gate and Ryan's people set forth across the remains of the plain, Gloria in front as always. Jak and Ryan followed close behind her, along with the first guard of Gate women. In the middle of the party came the wag that carried the young of the tribe. The children were always well protected and kept from harm, and the fact that they had hardly been noticeable on the journey spoke volumes for the abilities of the tribe's menfolk to keep the young safe under pressure. But this day was different. Two of the eight Gate Amazons who had been chilled in battle had children among those on the wag, and the three children—two girls and a boy—were visibly distressed by the passing of their mothers, even though they showed relatively little sign of this by most children's standards. Dean traveled with them on this morning, the memories of his mother, Sharona, strong with him. Krysty accompanied him, empathizing with the emotions she could feel coming from him.

  Doc was traveling at the rear of the caravan, along with Jon and Petor.

  "I'll be glad when we get out of the open and into some cover," Jon muttered.

  "Better to see them coming, like last night," Petor mused.

  Jon shook his head. "No, at least in cover we can send out outriders and take our own cover. Out here we're exposed."

  "Harder to ambush, though," Petor added.

  Doc smiled, his unusually strong white teeth gleaming in the sun, and a light sparkling in his eyes. "I think, my dear boys, that you have discovered one of the great dichotomies of warfare—that for every advantage there is a disadvantage. It is all a case of swings and roundabouts, mountains and valleys. What you lose on one hand you gain on the other, and so on and so forth. In other words, my dear boys, there are no winners or losers ultimately, because it all depends on which side of the fence you stand and which part of the half-empty and half-full glass you examine."

  With which he sat back on the top of the wag and smiled serenely while Jon and Petor gave him bemused stares.

  Mildred and J.B. were just in front, and heard Doc Tanner's discursive lecture. Looking back at the two confused teenagers, Mildred laughed.

  "You crazy old buzzard, you want to confuse these poor boys so that they don't know if they're coming or going?" she called back to Doc.

  The old man continued smiling serenely, and merely stated, "Life is confusion, a harsh lesson that I learned the hard way. If I can make it a little easier for someone else, then I shall be a happy man."

  J.B. pushed back his fedora and scratched his head. "If that's making things easier, Doc, I'd hate to be around when you made them difficult."

  Meanwhile, at the front of the caravan, Gloria had approached the beginnings of the woodland. The division between the plain and the woods was sharp, emphasizing that this was an artificial division. She slowed her pace as she reached it, her spring-heeled walk slowing and the flowing red mane of hair bouncing less and less. When she reached the edge of the plain, she turned and held up her arm.

  "Okay, time to get triple red again," she called. "You know what to do, so do it."

  Ryan and Jak arrived beside her, both glad that they were able to slow their pace under the burning sun.

  "It'll be good to get out of this fireblasted heat," Ryan said, casting his good eye to the skies.

  "Too true. I hate traveling when it's this blasting," the warrior queen said.

  "Not look like it," Jak said humorously, eying the nut-brown and tanned skin of the Gate leader.

  "Well, mebbe a bit, then, sweetie," she said with a lopsided grin.

  While this exchange had been taking place, a group of outriders had moved into the woodland, spreading out to cover all points in front and to the side of the path the Gate queen intended to take. She unsheathed her panga and tested the edge with the ball of her thumb.

  "Time to start the work," she said softly, inclining her head to catch the sound of whistled signals from within the forest ahead.

  "Then let's do it," Ryan said, unsheathing his own panga.

  And so began the next phase of the journey. They were out of the plain, and now only a few miles from the settlement that appeared on the surface to be devoid of life, but that they knew to somehow house the Illuminated Ones—probably in a redoubt of some kind.

  When they had made camp for the night, Doc sat with Ryan, Krysty and Gloria, musing on this.

  "It presents us with a whole series of thorny little problems, doesn't it?" he asked rhetorically. "If the Illuminated Ones are in a redoubt, then why have they never tried to travel around the Deathlands? Or at least, not to the extent where we have ever come across them before, or heard mention of them until recently."

  "Mebbe, if they are the ones of which our legends speak, and they are the guardians of the gateway, then they have greater knowledge," Gloria mused, running loose earth through her fingers and watching it fall to the ground as she spoke. "Mebbe they have a way of regulating their travel through the old tech—yourselves have spoken of how you cannot control where you land. Well, mebbe they can."

  Ryan and Krysty exchanged sharp glances. They, and the others, had been careful not to speak too much of their travels through the mat-trans in front of any of the Gate. Did this mean that Jak had been speaking to Gloria about these things without telling the others? There had been no set rule about this, but it had been assumed by all that it would be best to keep this quiet until or unless it was necessary.

  Doc also noticed this, but chose to ignore the apparent oddity and keep his own counsel…as ever. "A good point, my dear lady. It would seem that it was the merest accident that tapped us into the previous Illuminated Ones' redoubt that we encountered. If they have their old tech in good working order, they may be able to use other redoubts and block their own ones from receiving any, ah, unwanted visitors, shall we say?"

  "Well, they may be getting them now," Gloria said quietly, with a sly grin to herself.

  Doc seemed not to notice this. He was staring over Gloria's head at some point far off in the middle distance, where there was something that only he seemed to see.

  He continued in a faraway voice. "It was a strange thing, to be pitched into the middle of an alien time and to hear so much that seemed to make sense only with the benefit of hindsight. There were rumors of a secret society that was ready to take over the government and use it for its own ends if the end time came. And yet, in one of those strange dichotomies that seem to occur so often when power and intrigue become inextricably entwined, it was also rumored that this society was funded by the black operations budget of the very government that it sought to overthrow. Indeed, it was rumored that the security agencies of that government had infiltrated the secret society to such an extent that it was, in fact, operated by the government itself and was no more than a failsafe device for retai
ning power if civilization collapsed around its ears…which, of course, it did. Ironic, then, is it not, that this very society is now little more than a footnote to the saga of the Deathlands, existing in its own little void somewhere in the northeast of what used to be a so-called United States?"

  There was a pause, then Gloria said, "Nice story, honey, but what does it have to do with what we're after?"

  Doc seemed to snap back from his own private world, and for a moment looked at the Gate queen with eyes that were wide and innocent, uncomprehending of the world. And then her words filtered through, and a look of amazement spread across his face. "Why, is it not obvious? If the Illuminated Ones and the government of the old predark United States were one and the same, in effect, then doesn't it make sense that the shadow center of government that I heard rumors about will be the very place where the secret society will be based? Where the gateway you seek, and where the possible entry to the stockpile and peace which we seek… Well, where they will be?"

  Ryan fixed Doc with a steely gaze from his icy blue eyes. "Are you saying what I think you're saying, Doc?"

  The old man nodded. "I believe so, my friend. Welcome, indeed, to what is left of the constitutional government of the United States of America. And believe me, you really are welcome to it…" he added bitterly.

  AS THE NIGHT DREW in, Gloria gathered her people before the campfire. Only the guards outside the encampment were out of sight and hearing.

  The Gate queen sat with her back to the fire, no more than a backlit shadow as she spoke, the light from the fire illuminating the halo of her red mane, making it glow like the fire from her soul as she began to breathe slowly, steadily and deeply, trancing herself to begin another retelling from the legends of her people. A retelling that was to be saved especially for a moment such as this, a moment when the great aim of the tribe was to finally be within their grasp.