by James Axler
Her finger snaked around the lightweight match trigger while the palm of her hand flattened against the high hand grip. The flat mainspring housing meant that the blaster nestled into her plump body just about as unobtrusively as it was possible to get, and she was careful to move with a slow and easy motion, so it would appear just as though she were scratching an itch.
Harvey looked at her. "Donna, don't do this," he said slowly and evenly.
"Do what, Harv? And don't fuck with my blasters. They ain't cleaned yet, not all of them."
Harvey smiled despite himself. He had always thought her dedication to the hardware was a little weird, and mebbe she was only pissed at him for messing with it.
In which case he wouldn't have to chill her.
"Listen to me, Donna," he said softly. "The time has come to decide which side you're on."
Her finger was still on the trigger, the grip still nestled into her palm, but she stayed any movement.
"Side, Harv? What sides do you mean? We're one people, right?"
"No, Donna, it ain't that simple anymore. That damned Cyclops, he's got Alien all confused and wantin' to go against how we've always been. If we don't stand up for what we believe, then we're sure as shit gonna be under the one-eyed bastard's thumb. We won't be us anymore. Is that what you want? Or do you want to fight with us?"
The chief armorer narrowed her eyes, trying hard to assimilate all that Harvey had said. Was that what the meeting had been about? But if so, then why would Ryan Cawdor's people want to take control and change things? She thought about their aid in the battle against Samtvogel, and more importantly she thought of J.B. Dix. Mebbe it was just the way the man seemed to be like her with weapons, but she figured that he was good people. It didn't figure…
Donna delayed just that little too long for Jenna's liking. The dark mutie snapped the safety on her blaster, the click sounding loud against the faint background noise that was beginning to permeate the tunnels. Her raven eyes glittered hatred.
"She doesn't believe you, Harvey, and we can't afford to waste time."
She raised the Uzi as though to fire.
It all happened in the same second. Suddenly, intuitively aware of the situation as her instincts broke through her confused thinking, aware only of the Uzi pointed at her, Donna drew the Springfield, snapping off a shot as her hand whipped around her body.
"No!" Harvey yelled, both at the chief armorer and at Jenna. He flung out an arm, snatching the Uzi from Jenna's grasp before she had a chance to pressure the trigger, and simultaneously pushing her from the path of the slug, which bit into the wall of the armory, raising a small cloud of dust.
The crack of the Springfield was echoed a fraction of a second later by the roar of the sec chiefs Colt Magnum Carry, as the snub-nosed blaster spit its .357 load at the seated woman. Drawn as he moved, and aimed low, the slug ripped into Donna's chest cavity and upper abdomen, spreading fatal damage as the slug tore cartilage and splintered bone, ripping bands of muscle and splattering layers of fat, scoring through major organs and causing massive internal hemorrhaging.
In the fraction of a second of life she had left to her, Donna was acutely aware of great pain and a rapidly spreading numbness. Her vision dimmed on the sight of Harvey and the baron's wife about to argue.
She figured that even if she was chilled, arguing like that they wouldn't be far behind her.
The merest flicker of a smile formed her death mask.
Meanwhile, Jenna shot a venomous glance at her erstwhile lover and partner. "What the fuck did you do that for?"
Harvey held his temper. "In the first place, I didn't want you chilled. And in the second, if you let that fucker loose even on controlled bursts in here, you're likely to hit some grens and blow us to hell."
Her temper cooling rapidly as she fought to stay on top of the situation, Jenna was able to see Harvey's point.
"Okay, Harvey. So what's your great tactical plan?" she said with as much sarcasm as she could muster.
"We've got control of the armory. We get the hardware to this who are with us and keep the rest down, chill 'em if necessary. Then we find Cyclops and Alien and blow them to fuck."
Jenna smiled a slow, evil smile. "That's good, but we need the real whiphand, sweet."
Harvey gave her a puzzled frown. "What's that?"
"You'll see." She called to Bodie. "In here, boy. When we've gone, you get these to our folk, you hear?" she continued as he entered the armory from his sentry post outside. He had ignored the blasterfire, trusting the sec chief to keep things under control.
"Yes, ma'am," the fat sec man replied. "We'll soon have things under control for you."
Harvey was still puzzled. "What's the idea? Where are we going?"
Jenna's evil smile took on an icy edge. "Sweetie, if you want total control of them, you have the total weapon. We need fear to still the opposition, keep them down and under us. Every strong society needs its menials. They stay menial by fear. So why don't you show me where Alien stored that little ol' bomb he got from Sunchild?"
"COMING THIS WAY. Back!" Jak whispered as they came to a crossroads in the tunnels. Ryan had sent the albino on slightly ahead of himself, changing his usual practice to lead the way. It seemed to the one-eyed warrior that Jak's ability to detect direction would be better employed leading until they had some idea of the situation in the center of the ville. In such a maze of passages and tunnels, Jak's ability to pinpoint sounds was a vital weapon.
They had heard the pitched battle commence, and the occasional blasterfire told them that the armory hadn't yet been raided to a full extent. As they were all armed, apart from the baron, this gave them an edge. Ryan handed the baron his SIG-Sauer as a defensive weapon, feeling that Alien would cope better with the handblaster than with the Steyr.
They had advanced this far without a pause, and with hardly a word between them. J.B. kept point as was usual, Downey close to him. Blake was beside Ryan, following hard on Jak's lead. Strung out between them in the narrow tunnel were Krysty, Dean, Alien, Mildred and toward the rear Doc.
At Jak's command, they flattened against the tunnel wall, closing ranks so that they were ready to flank across the narrow space should an enemy round the corner.
But it was no enemy. Voices, indistinct, became clearer as they neared: the breathless voices of the twins.
"Shit, bro, I hope we find them soon."
"Ain't nowhere else to fuckin' go, dude. They've got to be around here somewhere."
"Sure as shit hope so, 'cause I think my lungs are gonna fuckin' burst!"
The twins laughed despite themselves, coughing hard but still keeping the pace.
Ryan and Blake exchanged glances as the footsteps neared. The wizened sec man nodded, agreeing without the question even being voiced.
"Hey, boys," he called, "who you lookin' for?"
The footsteps pulled up short. Ant called, "Shit, Blake, man, where the fuck you been? We've been all over here looking for ya. You got Ryan and his crew with you?"
"Mebbe," the sec man replied cautiously. "What you boys wantin'?"
"You, dude. You gotta get back, man, 'cause all hell's broken loose. Harv and that bitch have got some sort of takeover goin' down, and we need all the help we can get."
Ryan and Blake exchanged glances once more.
"Trust them?" the one-eyed warrior asked.
"With my life. Crazy fuckers, but too crazy to lie if they even wanted to," he replied.
"Good enough for me," Ryan said.
"We're coming out, boys," he called to the twins.
Ryan and Blake stepped out simultaneously into the junction between the corridors, blasters ready as a precaution.
"Whoa, dude, easy!" Ant exclaimed as he and his twin held their shotguns away from their bodies. "I know what one of those fuckers can do, so 'scuse me being nervous," he added, gesturing with his free hand at J.B.'s M-4000, which Ryan had borrowed.
The one-eyed warrior allowed himself a smal
l grin as he lowered the M-4000. "Okay, so fill us in," he said as the rest of his party, including the baron, stepped out into the junction.
The twins explained the situation, keeping it as concise as they could without contradicting each other too often. When they had finished, Ryan turned to the baron.
"Seems to me that most of your sec force want to take their chances with Harvey."
Alien shook his head sadly. "Whatever happens, I can't go on now."
"Worry later. Get Harvey chilled first," Jak snapped pithily, not allowing Alien to slip into self-pity.
"What's the state of play with the armory?" J.B. asked. "Right now, only sec and us have blasters. But if everyone on Harvey's side gets them…" He trailed off, feeling it unnecessary to go on.
Ant shook his head. "I guess he's headed straight for it, but the problem the dude's got is that our side is between the armory and his side, ya know?"
"Then he'll need another tool to bargain with," Ryan stated flatly.
"By the Three Kennedys," Doc whispered, "he wouldn't."
Mildred caught Doc's inference. "He might not, but I bet she would."
Alien looked at them blankly. He was a broken man, and unable to focus on events.
Ryan, on the other hand, had clicked into combat mode, and his mind was racing.
He turned to Blake. "You take Downey and Alien and head for the center. Take Jak and Dean with you. They're good fighters, and you may need them."
The sec man nodded, glad that he would have Jak by his side. "And you?" he asked.
"We're going after Harvey and Jenna. Reckon they've gone for the nuke. You with us, boys?" he asked the twins.
"Bet your ass," Ant replied.
"Yeah, and whip that sorry mother Harv's ass," his twin added.
With a brief farewell, the two forces parted company, both headed for what they knew to be the final showdown.
Chapter Eighteen
The area where the nuke was being stored was deserted. Alien had felt it unnecessary to mount a guard while he had the ville meeting, and Harvey had been only too pleased to go along with that, wanting all his people concentrated.
One thing he hadn't foreseen was the willingness with which Jenna would turn to the nuke as a bargaining tool.
There was an almost eerie quiet about this part of the ville. Away from the pitched battle, and on the other side of the tunnel and passage complex to where her lab was located, Jenna was certain that they would be left in peace until she had worked out how to arm the bomb.
"Are you sure about this?" Harvey asked her as she opened a panel on the garishly painted side of the nuke, near the nose cone.
"In what way?" she replied calmly, partly as a result of her preoccupation and partly because she felt the power within her grasp, and the self-confidence that engendered. "What's the problem, sweetie? Until I've actually examined this, I don't know for sure if it's even armed."
"But what if it is?"
She looked at him with an expression of complete calm that froze his blood. "Then if it is, I set it going."
"Another nukecaust?" Harvey queried, unable to keep the quaver from his voice.
Jenna laughed, harsh and cold. "Of course not, you cretin. I set it going, and then turn it off on the failsafe when my idiot husband and the one-eyed fool have acquiesced to us. For fuck's sake, you don't think I'd be doing this if I couldn't stop it?"
"Yeah? How can I be so sure you even know how to get it going properly?"
"You know I can. You know I have the learning. After all, if you really thought I couldn't set it running, you wouldn't be shitting yourself right now, would you?"
Harvey didn't answer. She was right.
Jenna turned her attention away from her lover and fully to the nuke. The old comp circuits were still in operation, and using codes she had learned from books and papers taken by her forefathers from the redoubt, she punched in a series of commands that told her that the nuke was armed and ready. She set the timer and punched in a sec code so that only she could turn it off. It was a sec code set by the original programmer of the missile from the redoubt, and was a name the like of which she didn't recognize, but had memorized earlier.
"There." She smiled, standing back from the gaily colored instrument of destruction. "That's done."
"Good," Harvey breathed. "Can we get the fuck out of here now?"
"Of course we can. We've got another little battle to win. I wonder how your people are doing right now?" she asked, shrugging the Uzi off her shoulder and flicking the safety catch, switching the firing mechanism to short bursts.
"Only one way to find out. Let's get the hell back," Harvey muttered, leading them away from the nuke and back toward the center of the ville.
IN THE CENTER, the battle had reached stalemate. Those sec men and ville dwellers who had sided with Alien were blocking the route to the armory. Although they outnumbered the opposition, they had fewer sec men on their side, and so had fewer blasters, which evened things up.
The battle had died down to a war of attrition, with both sides adopting a siege mentality. The occasional shot was fired, the occasional seized object thrown over the hastily erected barricades. But there was a general tense silence.
Into which arrived Blake, Downey, Jak and Dean, with Alien close behind them.
Rankine was one of the few sec men who had aligned himself with the baron, and he had assumed command for want of anyone else. However, he was at a loss how to break the deadlock, and the relief on his face was evident when Blake and Jak picked their way through the line to arrive at the front of the barricade.
"Thank fuck you're here," he said gladly.
"Where are the rest of you?" he added, speaking to Jak.
"After Harvey. Never mind. Get this finished," the albino said shortly. "Alien not happy."
"Yeah, his heart ain't in it," Blake chipped in, speaking softly. The other ville dwellers on the barricade had spotted their baron, and the atmosphere had noticeably lifted at the sight of the big man. "Listen, we need to act before it becomes obvious and has a bad effect. What's the score?"
Rankine filled them in on the details, and Blake listened carefully. "Okay," he began when Rankine finished, "the first thing is to get people armed. Have you raided the armory yet? No, obviously not," he said, spotting the furrowed brow on his fellow sec man. "Get some people back there. Meanwhile, I think we need to do some scouting. How much hardware do we have right now?"
Rankine made a quick head count. "We got eight sec here, so eight blasters—nine including me."
Dean had made his way forward with Downey. Blake turned to him.
"Whaddaya say, kid? Covering fire from the marksman here and a few of the boys while you, me and Jak make a little scouting foray?"
Dean took a look over the barricade. The lines had been drawn in the main stretch of the tunnel at the center of the ville, with a distance of two hundred yards between the two barricades. Not a lot of room to play with, but with plenty of cover in the shape of empty units and overturned barrows.
"More than scouting. I reckon we could make a bridgehead out there. Think so, Jak?"
The albino nodded. "Enough cover if you give enough cover to make it," he said to Rankine and Downey. "Get blaster from armory triple quick and we got them. Get grens mebbe."
Downey shook his head. "Risky down here. Better if we can avoid it."
Jak nodded. "Make sure you sharpshooter."
Blake called two sec men over and ordered them to accompany a party of ville dwellers to the armory and return with blasters. While they assembled the small party and headed off, he directed two more to join Rankine and Downey in laying down covering fire. Meanwhile, Jak and Dean made note of the best cover, both for themselves and for Blake.
The wizened sec man turned to them, his face set in stone. "Okay, ready from my end. You?"
Jak nodded. "We head there and there—" he indicated two positions of cover. "—and you there," he added, pointing to the easi
est spot.
Blake smiled appreciatively. "You trying to tell me something?" he said simply before turning to the four marksmen. "Okay, guys, now or never…"
The four marksmen assumed positions along the barricade and started to lay down a barrage of covering fire.
"Hot pipe, this better work," Dean shouted, as much to himself as to Jak and Blake, as the three clambered over the barricade and began their zigzagging run for cover.
IT WAS a long haul across the ville from where Ant and Dee had met Ryan's party to where the nuke was stored, and the one-eyed warrior pushed the pace at which they crossed the distance. All the time, he was aware that Doc was the weak link, but he wanted the old man on hand when they reached the nuke. If it had been set running, then Doc's knowledge of pre-dark tech, as sketchy and clouded as it was, may prove useful. Mildred knew more about comps per se, but she hadn't had the firsthand experience of the Totality Concept that Doc had. That might make all the difference.
They had to circumvent the tunnels and passages, avoiding the strife-torn center, and that made their task all the more difficult. Ryan cursed with almost every step he took, the twins keeping pace with him. Krysty followed close behind. Mildred and J.B. hung back a little more, assisting Doc to keep pace.
"Go on ahead," he puffed, moving as fast as he could. "I swear by all that is holy that I shall not be far behind. Besides, you may have to chill a path to the nuke that will take time."
Ryan assented with a gesture, and in company with the twins and Krysty, he increased his pace, allowing Mildred and J.B. to stay with Doc. The old man was right. He could assume that only Jenna and Harvey were with the missile, but they may have others with them. If so, it may take valuable time to dig them out before trying to shut off the nuke.
"Down here, shortcut," Dee puffed, swerving down a smaller tunnel.
"But be careful at the end," his twin added. "It brings us out on a sharp turn. Take it easy."