by James Axler
Opening the old tin box, which was rusty and battered on the exterior but carefully lined and cleaned on the inside, leading Ryan to the conclusion that the exterior decay was a blind to prevent the box being stolen by anyone who might think it important, Gloria carefully extracted the maps and documents, placing them before Doc.
"All yours, sweetie," she said quietly. "See if you can find it, but be careful."
Doc lifted the first piece of rolled paper and gently straightened it on the cold marble floor of the lobby, his eyes scanning its contents. As he did this, he murmured, "My dear woman, I would not dream of anything else. I shall treat it as I would my own aged, fragile bones."
A silence descended over the group as they watched Doc. It was almost as if the rest of the camp disappeared and a bubble of complete calm had enveloped the nine people clustered around the hunched figure of Doc Tanner, shutting out the rest of the Gate, the building in which they were situated, the compound, even the very Deathlands itself. Everything was focused on Theophilus Tanner.
And Doc was determined to find the right document. Muttering to himself, he unrolled paper after paper, laying it out flat and examining it carefully. Those that were full of text were immediately rerolled and stored back in the box. Those that were maps or diagrammatical in design were carefully examined, Doc poring over the detail, particularly on those that seemed to be of buildings rather than areas.
Gloria looked across at Jak, questioning in her glance. Had she done the right thing in allowing Doc access to these sacred writings, or was he just as crazy as he seemed? Jak read this in her glance and shook his head. He knew that sometimes the crazier Doc seemed, the more likely he was to be onto something.
"Hot pipe, I wish he'd find it," Dean murmured softly to Petor, "because I don't think I can take much more of the suspense."
Petor resisted the urge to laugh aloud at his new friend's comment. "Maybe he's not as stupidworks as he seems. Looks to me like he knows what he's after."
"Oh yeah, he does," Dean replied offhandedly, "but the trouble with Doc is he's likely to get sidetracked and then remember that he found it ten minutes ago."
Doc was oblivious to the stares and muttered commentary. His attention was focused solely on the papers in front of them, his lips moving soundlessly as he ran through his mind the images and words he could recall, trying to match them with each document as it unraveled before him. Had he really seen the map he remembered, or was it just a fevered imagining?
Doubts crept into the corners of his mind, black tendrils of hopelessness that his sanity had once again slipped… No, not now, not when he was so close to finding that which would help so much.
Doc unrolled another scrolled document. It was a map. Peering closely, banishing the doubts and fears beyond the furthest corners of his mind, Doc concentrated his attention on the paper in front of him.
He looked up with a smile spreading across his face. "I do believe I have found it…" he said slowly.
AL JORGENSEN was briefing his sec force. Down three levels from his meeting with the quorum, he was standing on a raised podium in a large, hangarlike room that was functional rather than decorative. The rock from which the redoubt had been hewn was still visible between the metal girders and struts that held the roof in place, and large neon tubing lights hung from thick-linked chains, bathing the vast hangar in a brilliant white light.
The podium on which the sec chief stood was in front of a large vid screen that, right now, showed a larger image of Jorgensen standing in front of a vid screen showing part of a larger image of Jorgensen. It was supposed to show the sec force what was going on in a potential area of combat, to acquaint and acclimatize them with their potential enemy and the territory in which they were moving. Unfortunately for the sec chief, the sharpshooting of Ryan Cawdor and his companions had rendered this option impossible, and so Jorgensen was forced to rely on words and some diagrammatic maps of the ground floor that lay above them.
He fixed his eyes on the faces in front of him. He knew almost all of the sec force by name, and he felt as if he had let every one of them down. Taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly, he began.
"People, this isn't easy for me to say. You know we've been put on emergency standby to evac if necessary. It's our job to make sure that it isn't actually necessary. They've got us on the back foot for now, but we can turn that around.
"I know that I've failed—" he raised his hands to still a murmur of dissent from those in the sec force who had served longest under him "—no, hear me out. I've failed because we've lost a lot of people we shouldn't have. I underestimated our enemy, and my tactics were a crock. The only explanation I can give to you for the deaths of your comrades—and this is no excuse, mark you, but a search for a reason why— is that the simulations and manuals are no substitute for real live experience. We haven't had that, and just maybe we should count ourselves lucky that we've been left in peace so long. But the downside to this is that we got our asses kicked out there today. The only thing we can do now is learn from it and go back to kick their asses.
"They're clever. I'll give them that. And brave. They only have primitive weapons, although some of our laser rifles are now in their possession. They shouldn't really have had the chance to train and use them, but we can't be certain. What they do have is courage and a fighting instinct. They're also adaptable. It seems that the women are solely the fighters, apart from a small group of five men who are with them. They are most likely from another tribe or group, and this may be useful to us as their methods of fighting may be different and may cause some dissent and distraction in the heat of battle.
"They have a good grasp of tactics and a knowledge of some technology. The reason I have no footage to show you of them and their current position is because they've located and shot out the cameras in the lobby of the Pentagon. As far as we know, they're resting up there right now. Any move outside of that we can pick up on existing cameras.
"We do, however, have some footage of them taken earlier. Watch and digest, people."
Jorgensen sat down while the lights snapped out and video footage of the earlier journey through the compound played on-screen. It wouldn't be particularly instructive to the security team in terms of battle strategies, but it would, Jorgensen figured, give them some idea of the number and hierarchy of the opposition.
When the footage had finished, and the screen had gone blank, Jorgensen's amplified voice rang out from the mike attached to his one-piece suit.
"So that's what they look like, and this is where they are right now with all possible avenues of pursuit covered."
A diagrammatic map appeared on the screen. It was the ground floor of the building above. The entrance elevators and shafts to the redoubt below were marked in red.
"You can see where the danger points are, and where we will cover," he said briskly. "The important thing to remember now is that although we begin from a defensive position, we have an advantage in numbers, we have a knowledge of the layout that it's doubtful they have—though I stress we must never underestimate them—and we now have an all too clear knowledge of how they make war." He paused to let this sink in, before adding, "We can't let them through. We have to wipe them out."
A COUPLE HUNDRED yards above the sec force, Gloria and Ryan were at Doc's shoulder as he hunched over the map.
"Are you sure about this, honey?" Gloria asked softly.
"As definite as it is possible to be," Doc said firmly but equally softly.
"I'm not getting at you, sweets, just remember that I can't read at all. None of us can," the Gate queen reminded him.
Doc favored her with a smile. "Of course, dear lady. I should not let my own creeping paranoias get in the way of what is, after all, a crucial point. But yes, let me reiterate for you that this is, without a shadow of a doubt, the thing I have sought. Herein lies the key to our attaining the promised land. If it is so, then indeed this is truly a sacred text."
Ryan put hi
s hand on Doc's where the old man's lay upon the paper, obscuring part of the map.
"Time for the talking later, Doc," the one-eyed warrior said. "First of all we need to get acquainted with the layout of this place."
"Very well," Doc replied brightly, withdrawing his hand.
The map that lay beneath his hand was of the Pentagon—but not the one that had once stood in Washington and had long since been blasted to dust by the nukecaust. This was of an amended Pentagon, a "doppelganger" as the scribbled note on the edge of the yellowing paper described it, a shadow Pentagon with an altered floor plan and hidden extras, all of which were carefully marked on the diagram.
"Dark night, this is just what we need," J.B. said softly as he peered over Ryan's shoulder at the map. "It's got every shaft and elevator marked, and it even gives us sec camera positions."
"It's enough to make you believe in God—if he hadn't put us here in the first place," Mildred added.
Ryan's scarred and craggy face cracked into a grin as he looked first at Gloria, then at his people gathered around. "'Who gives a shit? This gives us an edge over the Illuminated Ones. After all, they're going to think we're stumbling around up here like children in the dark. And an edge is what we need, 'cause they've got the secured positions and the manpower."
"Yeah, maybe, honey," Gloria added, "but we've got destiny."
Chapter Sixteen
Gloria stood before her people, Ryan to one side of her. Despite the fact that the one-eyed warrior, muscular and broad shouldered, stood more than a head taller than the Gate queen, her authority and sense of purpose made her seem his physical equal.
"The time is near. This could be our moment of destiny, and at this moment it's vital that we keep it frosty and know exactly what we're doing." Her piercing blue eyes lit up with a zealous fire as she said, "This could be what we've waited for all these years. We could be the generation of Gate who actually reach the gateway itself. For this chance alone we should be thankful, and should not squander it lightly. It is thanks to our friends from outside that we have the little knowledge we possess of those who stand in our path, and it is also due to them that we are able to glean information from the sacred texts that may help us."
She glanced across at Doc. "Doc Tanner has deciphered the meaning of one of our old maps, and it is from this that we know the ways into the underground lair of those who guard the gateway. Together with Doc and Ryan Cawdor, I have worked out a plan of battle."
Moving forward into the throng of Gate who waited anxiously on her every word, the warrior queen began to single out some of her Amazons, tapping them on the arm or shoulder and murmuring one syllable commands in a tongue Ryan didn't recognize. The warriors thus selected split into small groups, obviously picked by the queen so that they would be able to fulfill specific tasks in the forthcoming battle. Some of the smallest and wiriest of the women were singled off into groups that would be able to traverse the smallest of spaces, while the larger and more heavily muscled were selected for a head-on attack.
The small groups continued to divide until there were eight of them, each consisting of five or six warriors. The men of the tribe were directed to keep base camp defended and the young of the tribe safe from harm. This, as ever, was the task they were trained and best suited for, especially in such circumstances that would demand close fighting and combat skills.
The companions divided up so that they, too, would travel with each of one of the groups. As the slightest in stature and musculature, Jak and Dean were singled out for two of the groups that had the smallest of the Amazon warriors. Mildred, J.B. and Krysty each took a group. Ryan would be with Gloria, and knew already from their discussions that he and the warrior queen would lead the main assault on the elevator shaft that should—if the plans were correct— lead directly into the lair of the Illuminated Ones.
Doc would travel in a group with Margia, and already he was eying the easy way in which the blond armorer was toying with a laser blaster.
"Do you think you will really get the chance to use that?" he asked with a raised eyebrow.
"I hope so, sweetie. If not, well, I just may have to make that chance." She smiled. It was a cold smile, the eyes stone hard.
Doc bit hard on his cheek to avoid giving anything away in his expression, but made a note to keep an eye on the blonde, even in the heat of a firefight. The laser blasters were erratic enough in the hands of those who knew how to use them, let alone in those of someone like Margia, who had no practical or combat experience with the weapon.
With the groups now divided, Gloria once more took her position at the head of the camp, with Ryan and Doc close at hand.
"Now that we're in combat groups for the battle ahead, it's time to talk tactics. We're lucky enough to have discovered—via Doc Tanner—that we have a map to this building that lets us see all the entrances into the places below ground where the guardians of the gateway have based themselves. They don't know we have this, but they know we're here, so we'd have to be complete stupidworks to assume that they don't have every entrance guarded, except maybe for these…"
She beckoned to certain groups—those including Jak and Dean, and those consisting of the slightest and most petite members of the tribe—to gather closer to where she and Doc held the old map. The other groups moved in behind, but allowed those indicated to gather at the front, as that was obviously of the most concern to them.
"Right, pay heed, and pay it well," the warrior queen began. "There are passages marked out on here that have nothing to do with the elevator shafts and emergency stairwells that the guardians will expect us to find. They're, well, what did you say they were, Doc?" she asked, turning to the old man.
With a gentle inclination of his head to acknowledge her request, Doc indicated the faded blue ink that marked some passages on the aged map.
Tracing with his index finger, Doc began, "Every redoubt, which is what they called these places in the days before the nukecaust, was equipped with its own air conditioning and purifying plant with which to take in contaminated air and clean it up for the consumption of those living beneath the surface. Although the plant itself should obscure the way into the redoubt, this is not actually the case as the supposedly airtight seals dividing some sections of the shafts are not exactly that airtight. It is strange," he continued, looking into the distance with a wry smile, "how the greed that could cause skydark could also cause those who created it to overlook the simplest of safety precautions. One backdraft and the air purification system would be shot to shit, as they used to say. Ah, the vagaries of the human condition never cease—"
"Big words, Doc. Stick point," Jak cut in pithily.
Doc's smile grew, and he shook his head. "Of course, dear boy, of course. My apologies, my friends. The point being, of course, that it is possible to break through the partitions and gain access through from here—" he indicated one shaft on the map "—to here." His finger sharply pushed along the faded and cracked paper to a parallel shaft. "And by entering this shaft we find ourselves in the interesting position of being among the maze of service shafts and tunnels that run between the levels of the redoubts and behind walls. These will allow the selected groups to move freely along and around the forces below ground, using the service grilles as points of observation and exit, and leaving plenty of scope for surprise attack on the enemy."
"That's why I've selected those of you who are the most petite," Gloria added. "The shafts and the access to them will be pretty difficult, and no one's pretending that it's the best way to enter combat. But as you all know, there's no easy way to fight, and your size will enable you to access areas that others can't. The gods alone know that I'd join you, sweeties, if not for the fact that my position as queen makes it incumbent on me to join my fellow warrior Ryan Cawdor at the head of the firelight."
"I appreciate that," the one-eyed warrior said, "and if it's okay with you, I'll outline the rest of the plan."
"Go ahead, sweets," the warrio
r queen said with a smile. "It's your and Doc's plan more than mine. You guys know these places, and we don't."
Ryan nodded briefly and turned his attention to the assembled warriors, fixing them with his steely gaze.
"These are the access points," he said briefly, pointing out the shafts and stairwells. "The stairwells have heavy sec doors, and the elevators are large with sec locks. They move fairly rapidly, but the one thing we have to do is check for sec forces hiding on the roof, ready to fire on us through the access and service hatch. Hey, we know about this because we've done it to other sec forces," he added, looking across the crowd to J.B. for confirmation. The Armorer gave a brief smile in agreement.
"Number one rule—if there's a sec hatch, then check the fucker before getting into the line of fire," he said.
"Right," the one-eyed warrior agreed, his single word drawing the attention of the assembled Amazons and his own people back to the map in front of him. "The stairs will probably be guarded at the blind spots in their curves, and the elevators open onto corridors that will have perfect cover points for the defending force. So we have to be careful. These will demonstrate," he continued, taking two pieces of paper from Doc, on which the old man had made brief maps of one stairwell and one elevator opening. "These are general, but the design of these places is such that they hardly ever differ from level to level, redoubt to redoubt. Don't take this as the absolute truth, but heed the general lesson."
He took some time to explain the different angles of defenses and attack, making sure that he was understood on each point. Finally he was ready and indicated that to Gloria.