by Джеффри Лорд
Blade led on, trying to look more sure of where he was going than he actually was. His confidence grew as he found that about half the rooms were unlocked. After the third open room he was no longer leading quite so much in the dark. One rack there held several dozen portable lamps as powerful as miniature searchlights. They lit up the whole main corridor and showed a number of side ones as well. Blade refused to worry now about triggering alarms or defenses. He and Kareena were already far enough inside the complex to be helpless if any defenses did go into action. They were also far enough inside to have triggered them off a dozen times if they still worked.
Blade counted about forty rooms in the complex. Some of the open ones were empty or used only for what had to be junk. In many of the filled ones everything was so tightly packaged or sealed that Blade was reluctant to disturb it. He still found enough on display to impress him.
There were hundreds of sets of infantry equipment, including uniforms, boots, gas masks, body armor, and weapons. There were other garments which looked like radiation or chemical protection for rescue workers. There were portable radios and miniature computers. There was enough medical equipment for a small army, including what seemed to be a complete portable operating room. There were tons of rations, some still edible after all the years lying in the darkness. There were no waldoes or any vehicles except a few small freight trucks, but there was everything else needed to help the people of a bombed city defend its ruins.
Kareena was too amazed at the richness of the Oltec to say anything more for quite a while. When she could finally speak, the first thing she asked was, «Do you suppose there's something like this under Kaldak?»
Blade nodded. «It would make sense to have supplies stored under each city. It might be hard to carry them from one city to another in the middle of a war.»
«Then-all we had to do, to be as strong as Doimar-was to go a little farther down in Kaldak than the Law said we could? Then-it is because we have obeyed the Law that Kaldak has been put in danger?»
She looked and sounded so confused that Blade wished he could soften his answer, but knew he could not. «Yes. That is so. And the first thing we do when we return to Kaldak is explore every basement and every hole, in every basement in the city.»
They moved on, collecting samples of the smaller items as they went. Although they tried to restrain themselves, by the time they reached the center of the complex their packs were bulging and so heavy they were glad to unsling them for a while.
The center of the complex was unmistakably a command center of some sort. There was a central room with consoles, displays, and screens on all four sides. There were six reclining couches, and four unidentifiable contraptions with seats, helmets, gloves, and boots all wired to massive metal frames. Blade wondered if they were communications devices, or perhaps equipment for interrogating (and torturing) prisoners.
The rest of the command center included two bunkrooms, a storeroom full of rations and uniforms, and a bathroom. Kareena peered into the bathroom, grinned, then flexed cramped shoulder muscles. «Blade, I think I'm going to take the first bath anyone's taken here since the fall of the Sky Masters.»
«I doubt if the water's running,» said Blade, smiling.
Kareena sat down on the floor and started pulling off her boots. «Remember that soap-water in the cans? There should be some more in the storeroom.»
There was. Blade brought four cans of it, and found barrels of distilled water in the back of the storeroom. By the time he'd rolled one of them into the bathroom, Kareena was naked. She ran over and kissed him. With considerable self-control, Blade managed not to put his arms around her. He thought she looked disappointed. Then she frowned.
«Blade, do you suppose there are any ghosts here?»
Blade felt a moment's irritation at this superstition, then remembered his own feeling when he had stared at Mossev's dead towers in the evening light. He shook his head. «I don't think any of the Tower Builders died here. Even if they did, in England we think that to bring life back to a place where there are ghosts drives away the evil ones and gives peace to the good ones.» Cautiously he reached out and laid a hand on the smooth skin of her left shoulder. She did not flinch, and her eyes continued to meet his. «We're alive, aren't we?»
«Yes,» said Kareena. She raised a hand and covered his. «We're alive.» She lifted his hand, held it for a moment, then moved it down onto her right breast. She squeezed her eyes shut, and they stood like that for a moment. Then she raised a hand and began caressing Blade's neck and throat.
«Kareena,» he said. «Do you know what you're doing?» He thought he had his answer in the way her nipple was turning hard under his hand, but he wanted to be certain.
She took another step closer to him. «Yes, Blade. I know. Now both hands went to work, unbuttoning Blade's jacket. He shrugged himself free of it, then ran his hands up and down Kareena's back. He knelt as she struggled to pull the shirt over his head. When she'd succeeded, he gripped her neat, solid buttocks firmly and began kissing her smooth stomach. He ran his lips up over her ribcage and she sighed louder. So did Blade. He'd never expected to find a woman's ribcage a beautiful sight, but there was a first time for everything. When Blade's lips encircled a nipple, Kareena gave a little choking cry. When he ran one hand lightly up between her thighs to the damp hair where they joined, he could feel her trembling so hard he was afraid she would fall.
«Blade.» His name came out barely recognizable. «Blade. The beds.»
He stood up and kissed her lips, pulling her close until he could feel her swollen nipples and she groaned at the feeling of his erection against her thighs. Her mouth flared open and her tongue leaped out to seek him.
«Kareena….»
They managed to get out of the bathroom, but they never got to the bedrooms. Their desire was too strong and one of the reclining couches was too close at hand. Kareena bent down and swiftly unfastened Blade's trousers. It took her a little longer to find the catch on the silver loinguard. Then she would have kissed his erection if he hadn't pulled her away just in time. Blade knew that Kareena's lips on top of everything else would cause him to have a climax then and there. If she was a virgin he was going to have enough trouble controlling himself to give her what she desperately wanted and certainly deserved.
Blade was right about Kareena's being a virgin, but he'd underestimated how eager she was. She practically pushed him down onto the couch, without even giving him time to finish taking off his trousers. She needed no guiding to straddle him, and he needed no guiding to slide smoothly into her warm, damp readiness. The moment of resistance came and went so swiftly that Blade could hardly be sure it happened at all, and Kareena's eyes were already squeezed tightly shut. Her mouth opened, and it gaped wider as she threw her head back. Her body swayed like a tree in a high wind.
Blade hoped he could last. Then Kareena started squirming from side to side as her own control slipped, and Blade knew that his was going to vanish entirely in another moment. So he gripped her by the shoulders and pulled her hard toward him, until his lips could work all over her breasts. She bent over even farther and bit him in the neck so hard he yelled, and thoughts of vampires ran weirdly through his mind.
Then she cried out, too, even louder. Blade felt her writhing and twisting inside as well as outside for one fleeting moment. Then he felt nothing except his own explosive release, as he drained himself into Kareena.
For a short time the ceiling could have fallen in without either of the people sprawled on the couch noticing it. Then Kareena slowly curled herself onto Blade's sweat-speckled chest. He noticed she was very careful to keep him inside her, and he was happy to stay there.
«You said we would do nothing which was not for the good of Kaldak,» he murmured in her ear. «Was this for the good of Kaldak?»
«I don't know what it did for Kaldak,» said Kareena. «But it was certainly good for me.»
Chapter 13
After a while Blade and Kar
eena felt like moving again. They took a bath, using up most of the spray soap and making a happy mess on the floor. At the finish Kareena was kneeling in front of Blade, sponging off his thighs and groin. At last she threw the sponge away, ran her hands up between Blade's thighs, and followed with her mouth. They quickly wound up on the couch for a second time. Kareena seemed willing to make up for what she lacked in experience, with her enthusiasm and willingness to try anything.
Both of them would have enjoyed a third time, but Blade couldn't forget the long shaft leading to the surface. He was sure the Doimari knew of the defeat of their waldo, and would react to it sooner or later. He didn't want to find them waiting at the mouth of the tunnel, a dozen laser rifles or another waldo ready to fry anyone who came out.
He kissed Kareena, then swung his legs off the couch, and patted her gently on the rump. «It's time we were on our way out of here,» he said. «If we stay much longer, we'll be sacrificing the good of Kaldak to our own pleasure.» He walked over to the packs and started rummaging through them. «Now if I can just find something to use for a booby trap-«
Kareena sat up. «A what?»
«A booby trap.» Although he knew that every minute might count, Blade took the time to explain what he meant. He might be killed, and if he wasn't he would sooner or later be returning to Home Dimension. The more of his knowledge of the fine points of handling Oltec he passed along to Kareena, the better for Kaldak and the Land.
«Watch what I do very carefully,» he finished. «That way you can teach the Kaldakans to do it, if I am not around. You can also warn the Kaldakans who come to this place, so they will not fall into the traps I set for the Doimari. If I can set any traps, that is,» he added. So far he hadn't found anything he could use in the packs. They couldn't afford the time for another complete search of the whole complex, but he hated leaving this wealth of Oltec for the Doimari.
Toward the bottom of Kareena's pack Blade found a ridged metal ball with a ring on top. It looked remarkably like an old-fashioned hand grenade. It exploded like one, too, when Blade tested it by pulling the pin and dropping it down the shaft. The Tower Builders hadn't abandoned reliable older weapons while developing new ones. Blade pointed this out as an example of their wisdom.
«So we should not give up bows even when rifles are as common as bows are now?» asked Kareena.
«No. The bows will still be good for hunting. Every animal you kill with an arrow saves power cells for killing Doimari.»
Kareena remembered where she'd found the grenade and led Blade to the room. He picked up all the grenades he could carry. Then he booby trapped the entrance to the shaft with four grenades wired to the door. Any unsuspecting visitor opening the door would stretch an almost invisible wire, pulling the pin out of one grenade and setting off the rest. Then Blade and Kareena slung their packs and started climbing.
Halfway up the shaft Blade burned off ten rungs of the ladder, leaving a fifteen-foot gap. At intervals from there to the top he cut halfway through a rung. Each rung still looked sound, but under a man's weight it would break and drop an incautious climber several hundred feet to the bottom of the shaft. Kareena watched carefully, asking questions whenever she didn't understand what Blade was doing. Sometimes he laughed grimly at the thought of the fate awaiting unsuspecting Doimari.
They saw no sign of any unwanted visitors in the store room. Blade and Kareena left some of the items they'd collected below, then filled up the space in their packs with power cells. As far as Blade was concerned, they couldn't have too much power for their rifles. Then they started up the tunnel. Halfway up, Blade used all but two of the remaining hand grenades to set another booby trap.
«Won't that bring down the whole tunnel?» asked Kareena.
«I hope it will,» said Blade. «It's better that no one have the Oltec here than that the Doimari use it in the war.»
Kareena looked stunned for a moment, then nodded slowly. «Yes, I suppose it is so. With ten thousand men armed with that Oltec, the Doimari would not even need the war machines.»
Blade would have liked to kiss her for such clear thinking, but the tunnel was too narrow. Instead he simply squeezed her hand, then started climbing again. As they approached the mouth of the tunnel, Blade found himself stopping every few yards and holding his breath. He heard nothing except his own heartbeat and a faint distant sighing which might have been the wind in the street.
They'd stayed underground longer than he thought. When they finally crawled out of the tunnel, it was so dark outside that Blade could barely find the hole in the wall made by the waldo. «Oh, good,» whispered Kareena. «It will be easier to escape in the darkness.»
«Perhaps,» said Blade. «But there is Oltec which lets a man see in the dark almost as well as in the light.» He explained infrared searchlights and gunsights in language he hoped Kareena could understand. Relying on his own excellent night vision, Blade studied the room. He saw no signs anyone had entered it since the Kaldakans left. There didn't seem to be anything to be gained by waiting longer.
«Come on, Kareena.»
They'd taken no more than a dozen steps beyond the door when the trap closed. Two laser beams blazed down from a window across the street, striking just above the hole made by the waldo. A dry patch of climbing vine caught fire. The flames were almost as good as a flare for lighting up the street. Kareena screamed, started to run back toward the building, then pulled herself to a stop.
«Come on! They've got that way covered!» Blade shouted. Then another laser fired from their left, the beam going so wide that it was either a bad shot or a deliberate miss. Blade didn't care. Charging at even a bad marksman armed with a laser was simply committing suicide. He jerked Kareena around to the right, then pushed her toward the far side of the street. If she got close enough to the buildings, the snipers in the window couldn't see her.
Blade raised his own rifle, waited until the next shot from the left, and saw it go even wider than the first one. This was puzzling but it also gave him a target. A quick shot from Blade brought a scream and the clatter of a falling weapon. The remaining snipers in the window fired again, but now they seemed unsure whether they should aim at Blade or at Kareena. They missed both, then Kareena was close under the window. Blade came up behind her, pulled the pin out of a grenade, and got ready to heave it up into the window. If the Doimari were relying too much on their weapons and were too thin on the ground to meet a determined effort to break out-
Something went whump in the darkness behind Blade, and something else went wsssshhhhhh in the darkness overhead. «Get down!» he yelled, and dove for the ground as the pavement around them erupted in flame and flying debris. Kareena was still on her feet when the blast caught her and dashed her to the ground like a doll. A second explosion went off, then a third and a fourth beside the building over the tunnel. Five, six, seven-Blade lost count and hugged the pavement, hands over his ears, not sure that his last moments hadn't come and only hoping the Doimari would wipe out half their own men with all the explosives they were throwing.
Dust was still settling around Blade when he saw dark-clad men converge on Kareena. She tried to get to her feet, one leg buckled under her, and she fell again with a throat-tearing scream of agony. She still had her sword and the courage to use it. A man who moved in too close screamed even louder than Kareena when her sword's point went into his groin. Then one man stamped down on Kareena's sword hand, another kicked her in the stomach, and several more fell on her.
As they did, Blade rose to his feet. He was an ice-cold killing machine now, mind and body united to serve only one goal: killing as many Doimari was possible before he went down himself. Firing from the hip, he swept the beam of his rifle back and forth. Doimari howled and fell on top of Kareena. Blade shut his ears against the cries, waiting for a return laser blast in his guts or a grenade explosion tearing him apart, vaguely surprised when neither happened.
Too late he heard footsteps behind him. He was turning, rifle still
firing, when the net fell over his head and shoulders. He held onto the rifle with one hand and tried to lift the net clear with the other. A sudden jerk on the net pulled him over backward. He struck his head so hard that for a moment comets and fireworks blazed in the darkness. He felt utterly disgusted with himself at falling into a trap so quickly that he couldn't even give Kareena a clean death.
Then clubs smashed down at every exposed part of his body, and Richard Blade no longer felt anything at all.
«My name is Nungor,» said a wavering, distorted voice in the distance. Blade could barely make out the words over the roaring and hissing in his ears. «Are you the man called Blade of England?» More roaring and hissing. «Are you?» Then silence, and suddenly a deluge of cold water descending from nowhere onto Blade's head. The roaring and hissing faded away, although they left behind aches and pains in a good many parts of Blade's body. He also discovered that his hands were bound behind his back with wire. Then he found himself staring up at a brown face with a dirty black beard and a dirty green patch over one eye.
«I am Nungor,» the face said again. «Are you Blade of England?»
«Since you already know my name-«began Blade, then gritted his teeth as someone clubbed him across the shin. Nungor spun around and yelled at a man Blade couldn't see.
«No, you rat's bastard! The woman, the woman only! Feragga wants this one!» Then Nungor bent over and jerked Blade up into a sitting position. Blade saw that the man was no more than five feet four inches tall, but nearly as wide, and all of it was solid muscle with scars on every inch of exposed skin.
«You are Blade of England, aren't you?» said Nungor, an edge in his voice. Then he shook his head. «It won't be you paying the price for not talking. It will be Peython's daughter.» He pointed. Blade saw Kareena spread-eagled on the ground, wrists and ankles tied to heavy stones with wire. Blood oozed from around the wires. She looked as if she'd been run over by a truck, with face and thighs horribly bruised, a dozen cuts crusted over with dried blood, and a crude bandage on her left leg. Half a dozen men were standing around her, holding a variety of weapons and tools.