by James Axler
Mildred leaned right into his face and said, "Colonel, you've got to stay awake. You've got to answer Ryan's questions."
Gabhart's eyes opened. There was something wrong with them. They seemed to focus in midair. It wasn't clear if he could still see. "Ryan?" he croaked through cracked, bleeding lips.
The one-eyed man took his hand and squeezed it hard. "I'm here, Colonel. We need to know more about the battlesuits. It's vital."
"Okay," Gabhart said, and his eyelids closed.
"Is it true that the EM shields only deflect things that are made of metal?" Ryan said.
"No. Things have to be subsonic, too. They'll deflect laser beams, coming at the speed of light."
"Colonel, we need a weak point. You've got to give us something to attack."
"Power supply," Gabhart said, grimacing. "The suits use the same kind of nuke fuel as the wags. Without fuel, there's no EM pulse, no combat arrays, no com link. Without fuel, a battlesuit is just so much light armor. It will stop conventional bullets, particularly where the plates overlap, but they will dent it, and if fire is poured on top of fire, the slugs will eventually penetrate. Unenergized, it will not deflect laser pulses, either. The fuel is highly concentrated and highly radioactive. It has to be shielded from the suit-wearer's body."
"How is the fuel stored?" Mildred said.
"Each suit has a fuel reservoir."
"Where is it?" Ryan said.
Gabhart's eyelids fluttered shut and his face went slack. Blood trickled out of the corner of his mouth and down his jawline to his ear.
Mildred gouged him again, pressing her thumb into his eye socket. Again the colonel came violently awake, moaning pitifully at the pain.
"You've got to try to stay with us," Mildred said. "Try to concentrate." Her face was starting to look drained in the eerie greenish light.
"Where is the fuel reservoir?" Ryan repeated.
"In the crotch of the suit," the colonel said. "Fuel and shielding are both heavy. For balance they need to be as low to the ground as possible and spread out."
"What's the reservoir made of?" Mildred asked.
"The reservoir is a flat, hourglass-shaped bladder sandwiched between sections of armor," Gabhart said. "The bladder itself is very flexible. It has to be to allow full range of leg and hip movement. Nuke power is transferred through the crystalline structure of the battlesuit. It is has its own inorganic circulatory system."
"How do we drain the reservoirs?" Ryan said. "Colonel?"
Gabhart was out cold again.
"His breathing is getting worse," Mildred said. "His lungs are starting to fill with blood."
"Do it," Ryan said.
Mildred had tears in her eyes as she awakened the colonel for the third time.
When the man stopped groaning, Ryan repeated his question.
Gabhart seemed to gather himself. His eyes focused on Ryan's face. "Once the suits are fueled," he said, clearly but with tremendous effort, "they can't be touched with energy or lead, or metallic hand weapons. There's a nipple for draining the used-up fuel and pumping in fresh. If you lift up the edge of the crotch plate the nipple is on, it will move about an eighth of an inch. The gap exposes one end of the bladder."
"Can they be punctured?" Mildred said.
"They are made of plastisteel but they can be cut with a sharp point, so long as it isn't metal."
"Dean, give me your blade," Ryan said.
The boy pulled his bone knife from his boot.
Ryan showed the colonel the serrated tip of the catfish spine. "Will this cut them?"
"Probably. The fuel is very dangerous, though."
"Explosive?"
"Not under normal conditions. But it's toxic. Don't get any of it on bare skin. If it gets on your clothes, strip them off at once. It is fairly viscous. Drips slow unless it is pumped hydraulically…which is how the reservoir is normally drained and filled."
"How much of this stuff is in each suit?" Mildred said.
Gabhart opened his mouth to answer. His eyes suddenly widened, almost bulging out of their sockets. Then blood gushed from his mouth and nostrils. He choked and sputtered, spraying gore as he strangled on the lining of his own lungs. His heels drummed on the tunnel floor, while his arms thrashed.
"Hold him down!" Mildred said.
They grabbed his arms and legs and pinned him to the glass.
"Let it go, Colonel," Mildred told the desperately struggling man. "Just let it go. It's done. It's over. You did good."
With a last, bubbling wheeze, Gabhart relaxed, his eyes fixed and staring at the ceiling.
"Brave man," Ryan said.
"Came a long way to die so hard," Mildred replied.
She gently touched the colonel's eyelids, closing them. "Did you get what you needed?"
"Thanks to Gabhart, I've got the start of a plan," Ryan said. "It's gonna take all seven of us to pull it off. We're going to need a couple of empty battlesuits."
"Is that all?" Mildred said.
"Let's get the colonel buried and start loading the sledge. We'll meet up with the others topside."
TWENTY MINUTES LATER, Ryan, Mildred and Dean pushed and dragged their full cart out of the mine. After they had traded ore for water, they hung around the compound until the other companions showed up.
Seeing that Gabhart wasn't with them, Doc said, "Did the colonel shed this mortal coil?"
"About thirty minutes ago," Mildred told him.
"Did he talk?" J.B. asked.
Ryan filled them in on what the colonel had said before he died. Then he quickly sketched out his plan.
"Problem I see," the Armorer said when he was done, "is the suit-to-suit communications. If one of the guards hears his pal in trouble, he'll either come running himself, tribarrel blazing, or he'll call in the others. Either way, we're cooked meat."
"It just means we've got to occupy them both at the same time," Ryan said. "Occupy them so they don't have a chance to think about calling for help."
"Get one to leave his post," Mildred said, "while we strip the other one."
"Jak, you're the fastest runner," Ryan said. "Think you can make one of them chase you?"
"Which?"
"Take the guy guarding the right fork," Ryan said. "The other one is more my size."
"Take him and lose him?"
"No. Lead him back to the fork."
Jak nodded, then headed toward the mine by himself.
The companions paused a moment to give the albino teenager a good head start, then pushed their empty sledges after him. When they reached the main tunnel's fork and the klieg lights, there was only one guard in evidence and he had his back turned toward them. He was staring down the right-hand fork, with the muzzle of his pulse rifle pointed at the floor.
J.B. jumped in the front cart's ore box, and Ryan, Dean, Mildred and Doc started pushing it as fast as they could. On the slick surface, it picked up speed in a hurry. They aimed the sledge at the trooper, who whirled at the last second and tried to step out of the way. Ryan countered, throwing his weight to the outside, which caused the sledge to veer sharply. Before the guard could get his pulse rifle up, the bow of the sledge crashed into him and carried him hard into the wall.
An instant after impact, J.B. jumped out and onto the trooper, pulling him headfirst into the cart's box. This tipped the guard's legs into the air. While the man fought to get free, wildly kicking his legs, J.B. sat on the back of his helmet, pinning him to the bottom and sides of the sledge. The Armorer used his boots to keep the trooper's hands off his throat mike's activator.
Mildred grabbed one flailing leg, and Doc the other. Ryan slipped between the two with Dean's dagger in his fist. His fingers found the battlesuit's fuel nipple fill, then the edge of the armor plate. He pried up the plate and thrust the point of the bone blade under it. The dagger point slipped in perfectly. Its serrated edge slashed deep into the fuel bladder. Ryan ripped it back out, splitting the bladder wide open.
"Look out!
" he cried as a thick fluid, lemon-yellow in the light of the kliegs, gushed out and splattered onto the floor.
"Kill the fucker!" shouted a passing slave. "Gut him!"
Others stopped their carts. They, too, began to shout encouragement.
This was something worth watching.
J.B. reached down and pushed the helmet's release button, then he screwed the helmet off the battlesuit's collar. Then he knee-dropped on the back of the guy's head, driving his face into the bottom of the cart. After two knee-drops, the trooper went dead limp.
"He's out," J.B. said.
"Get him onto the floor," Ryan said.
When they had the guard on his back, they started unbuckling the battlesuit. They removed the torso plates first, then arms and gauntlets, and finally the crotch panel and leg attachments. Under his armor, the trooper wore gray underwear with an Omnico logo. The companions tore it off, then tore up his underwear.
Mildred pointed out the angry rash across trooper's lower back and down his right leg.
"Try not to touch it," she warned the others. "Could be some land of off-world scuzzies."
After they tied and gagged him with strips of his own clothing, they dumped the trooper back in the cart and shoved it to the side.
The spectator slaves moved in around the sledge. They took turns leaning in and punching or spitting on the defenseless guard.
"That rash could be contagious," Mildred told Ryan as he reached for the armor. "Could be something living in that battlesuit."
"The least of my worries," he said, buckling on the torso plates.
Ryan had trouble getting on the gauntlets and boots because of his manacles. It was a very tight fit, especially over his ankles, but with help he managed it. He was careful with the crotch panel, which still dripped a feeble trickle of fuel.
"How does it feel?" J.B. asked him when he stood.
"It's a lot lighter than it looks." He rotated his arms. "Flexes good, too. I got a full range of movement."
Doc handed Ryan the helmet, and the Armorer helped him screw it on.
"Can you see out of it?" Mildred said.
"Kind of," Ryan said. She couldn't hear him. Without power, the voice amplification didn't work. Neither did the oxygen pump. There was no air in the suit. And the visor began to fog over from his breath. He unscrewed the helmet at once.
"The suit's ventilation system is shut down," he said. "Lend me your ax, J.B."
Ryan laid the helmet on the floor and with powerful blows of the ax, punched a series of ragged holes in its back, just above the join with the battlesuit collar.
"There," he said. "That should do it."
"A no-tech solution," J.B. stated with a grin. "Pure Deathlands."
Ryan picked up the trooper's laser rifle. Although it looked bulky, it was light and quick in his hands. The bullpup design came up fast to his shoulder, and its balance was nose forward and sweet. Gabhart and his crew had shown them how to read the charge-indicator LCD. The indicator read full. Enough power to saw through a hundred yards of igneous rock.
"Where did the cart with the trooper go?" Mildred said.
The sledge wasn't where they'd left it.
It was nowhere to be seen.
"The other slaves must've taken him into the mine when we had our backs turned," J.B. said. "By now he's dead meat."
There was nothing for the companions to do but wait around the fork for the mutie albino to show up.
"I wonder what Jak did to get the other trooper to chase after him?" Dean said.
"Whatever it was, it sure worked," Ryan said.
"Must've pissed him off, large," J.B. agreed.
"There's no denying the fact," Doc concluded, "our young Jak is a most enterprising fellow."
Chapter Eighteen
As Jak walked down the tunnel, he didn't have a clue what he was going to do. He didn't have a clue until he saw the ore sledge coming his way, up the right fork, on other side of the klieg lights.
It was full of big blocks of glass.
Nonmetallic glass.
Something twinkled in the blood-red seas of his eyes. A smile twisted his pale lips and he laughed out loud. Why hadn't he thought of that before? Why hadn't any of the others thought of it?
Though Jak was a man who usually communicated in terse, fractured English, it was no indication of his mental powers. The albino teenager had a keen native intelligence, a quick, decisive mind and an instinct for making the right move at the right time. Some people might dismiss this talent as a survival urge, something he shared with the lower beasts, even the insects, but it was much more complicated than mere reactive hardwiring. Jak had put together Gabhart's last words with the problem he faced and the tools at hand, and come up with a viable solution. It was real time synthesis, under pressure of certain death.
He timed his loping stride so he arrived at the guard station a second before the sledge did.
"Whoa!" he said, holding out his hands, grabbing the front of the cart and stopping it.
"What do you want?" said one of the slaves doing the pushing. "Get out of the way, you white-haired runt!"
Jak walked around the trooper's side of the sledge. He looked into the box and said, "Ore's no good. Not rad hot enough."
"What's the holdup?" the trooper said, coming closer.
Jak reached into the cart and hefted out one of the big, rectangular blocks, bending his knees to take the weight, which was considerable. "This," he said, turning and opening his arms.
A hundred pounds of nukeglass fell with a satisfying crash onto the soldier's boots.
No EM pulse.
No deflection.
"Nuking hell!" the cart pushing slave exclaimed. He gawked at the block, which covered the black boots up to the shins.
Jak couldn't see inside the trooper's helmet, but his body language—all scrunched over, barely holding onto his laser rifle—said what had just happened didn't feel good.
Before the soldier could move, Jak took another, smaller piece of glass and slammed all twenty-five pounds of it onto the top of his helmet. The pulse rifle clattered to the floor beside the block.
At this point, the cart-pushing slave and his partners silently backed away from their sledge and made themselves scarce, hightailing it toward the mine entrance.
The trooper bent and retrieved his rifle. Then he used it like a pry bar to lever the block off his boots.
By that time, Jak was running down the side tunnel, his shoulder length white hair flying.
The trooper didn't hesitate. And he didn't call for help from his pal in the other fork of the tunnel. As soon as he got free of the block, he charged after the albino teenager.
Jak actually had to slow down so the trooper could keep him in sight as he ducked into one of the crevices at the end of the tunnel fork. He didn't want him to lose hope and give up. On the other hand, he didn't want to give him a clear shot with the pulse rifle.
The passage ahead ran straight for maybe thirty yards, before splitting off into narrower corridors. Jak knew where each went, having out of habit already memorized various routes through the underground maze. His red eyes, which had limitations in bright sunlight, worked well in the green gloom of the shafts. He saw the other slaves coming long before they saw him. He saw their surprise when they blinked and found him running, bagless and full tilt, down the passage straight at them.
They were even more startled by the whistling shriek of a laser rifle in the enclosed space. A beam fifty times brighter than their badges sliced through the cavern's pall. Diving to avoid the energy pulse, they dropped their ore bags and flattened themselves to the floor.
The shot was high and to the right, just past Jak's shoulder.
The draftsman's line of green light hit the wall in front of him.
And melted it.
Instantaneously.
Unlike plain old rock, there was no red glow of the heat-up stage, no incandescent center before it began to drip. At the laser's impact p
oint, the glass immediately liquefied. And the damage spread out around the initial hole, like ice melting around a blowtorch flame. There was no steam, but there was smoke. Harsh, throat-rasping smoke. The liquid glass poured down the wall and melded with the floor as it quickly cooled.
Jak suddenly saw how the invaders had cut the tunnels leading to the high-rad areas. With their shoulder fired energy weapons, they could carve out immense caverns in the glass in a matter of minutes.
As Jak raced for the turn in the corridor just ahead, another slave appeared around the bend, lugging his ore bag. The trooper fired again. And again he missed high, perhaps because he was shooting on the run. This time the pulse opened a two-foot-wide hole near the top of the wall. The slave who ducked under the shot was caught in a molten glass waterfall that poured down over his head and back. He managed to stand for a split second as it cascaded over him, then he slowly sank to the floor, unable to scream because his lungs had already been scoured out. As he slumped, his flesh burst into flame. By the time Jak reached the turn, all that remained of the man were the charred bones of his legs, which stuck out of the smoking blob of glass.
Jak ducked around the corner and sprinted. The sound of his own breathing was loud in the narrow corridor. But not loud enough to drown out the sound of heavy boot falls behind him.
The tunnel went through a series of zigzags before a crevice on the left offered him the detour he was looking for. He slipped through the crack and followed it as it doubled back to join the main shaft. The trooper couldn't fire at him. He was a hundred feet behind and his target was not only out of sight, but pulling away.
Jak knew his real trouble was going to come when he got back to the sledge loading zone at the end of the side tunnel. There were no sharp turns in the shaft there to give him cover. And there was a long straightaway before he reached the fork. All he could do was pour on the speed, try to get as big a lead as possible.
Head bobbing, arms pumping, he burst through the end of the crevice, vaulting past groups of slaves who stopped loading their ore and craned their necks around to follow him.
Ahead was the hard glare of the klieg lights.