by James Axler
The albino youth nodded, and they headed up to the next level.
“Sec door’s closed,” Ryan murmured as they took a dogleg in the corridor. “You’d think the looters would have blasted it open.”
“Wait,” Jak said, turning and running swiftly back to the last junction, where there had been an elevator. Like Mildred and Doc, they had forgone the use of the redoubt elevators to keep themselves aware of all that could occur around them. Jak returned a few moments later.
“Elevator out,” he said.
“Guess they could have shot them out like they shot out the sec cams,” Ryan mused. “You want to check it out or go back?” he asked, indicating the sealed doors in front of them.
Jak breathed in heavily, and stood looking at the doors for what seemed to be an age. Ryan guessed that the albino teen was weighing any possible dangers that may lay behind the doors being closed and the elevator being out. To Ryan, it seemed unlikely that they would be at any risk. The stupes who had looted this redoubt had long since departed, and there was no sign of anyone having been left behind even then. Let alone there being anyone around who could give them trouble now.
“Place empty. Mebbe something useful next level. Just how long it takes to open door?”
Ryan checked his chron again, mindful of time. “Thirteen minutes,” he affirmed. “If we can’t get this bastard open in three, we give up.”
“Sounds good,” Jak agreed.
They walked up to the door, and Ryan tried the code that had been etched on the keypad’s plate.
No response.
They exchanged glances. Jak shrugged at Ryan’s unspoken question. He took one of his leaf-bladed throwing knives from within his patched camou jacket and, using it as a screwdriver, deftly unscrewed the plate that was set into the concrete frame housing the sec door. Within moments, the workings of the control panel and keypad were exposed to view.
“Everything seems to be connected okay,” Ryan mused, eyeing it carefully. “No reason I can see why the bastard isn’t working. It must be some kind of mechanical jam in the door itself. Hang on. Let’s see if I can override the emergency function.”
It was something that he hadn’t done in a long time, but hot-wiring was an old trick. It might just work. He could remember the sequence as clear as the first time he had seen someone do it. He took two wires and pulled them from their mounts, ignoring the sparks that hissed and fizzed at him.
“Ready for this?” he asked Jak, looking back. The albino teen had taken a couple of steps back, and at first Ryan thought it was because he wanted to be out of range of the possible charge when the wires touched. But he could see that Jak was studying the doors.
“Ryan, doors buckled at top. Jamming ’cause that. Wonder why?”
They’d soon find out, Ryan figured as he touched the wires together.
The shock of the wires coming together made him gasp, and he was thrown backward with blinding flash of light. The door squealed as the twisted metal tried to move in the straight grooves of the frame.
“Fireblast! I didn’t expect it to hurt like that,” Ryan groaned as he scrambled to his feet. Then, following Jak’s gaze, he added, “What the—”
A thin trickle of water was visible, running faster and then furiously down the crack between the two sections of the sec door.
“Oh, fuck!” he yelled, trying to turn away. But it was too late.
A high-pressure stream of water, like a blunted spear, shot through the narrowest of gaps and caught him in the ribs as he turned. The force threw him against the wall of the corridor, and for a moment light exploded around his head once more.
Then it went black.
Chapter Eight
Jak took two steps back as he saw the water pressure build, then threw himself to one side a fraction of a second before the pressurized jet broke through and flattened Ryan. He hit the ground in a roll, and despite the impact knocking the air from him, he was dragging in breath before he had gotten back to his feet,
Spray soaked him and flew into his eyes, making it hard to see. But not so hard that he couldn’t spot Ryan, prone and on one side where he had been flung back and hit against the angle of wall and floor. The one-eyed man was facedown, and water was starting to gather in rivulets on the floor. Not deep enough to drown a man, perhaps, but who knew what would happen if he inhaled while unconscious.
Jak made his way over to where Ryan lay.
“Ryan, c’mon,” he yelled, turning the one-eyed man so that he was on his back and slapping him across the face. He barked the man’s name a few more times, hitting him as he shouted. The water was less high pressure now, but that was far from good. It only meant that the weight of the water had pushed the doors farther apart. The water was flowing fast and free, starting now to run in wider and wider rivulets that grew to small streams, eddying and flowing around Jak as he knelt beside Ryan, rushing up and welling around the man’s face and neck. His eye opened, sightless and unfocused for a moment. His mouth opened and closed with no sound. Then, with what seemed to be a supreme effort of will, he forced himself into some kind of awareness.
“What’s—”
“Quick. Flooding,” Jak snapped. It was stating the obvious, with water pouring over them, but he figured the sooner he shocked Ryan back to himself, the sooner they could get out of the redoubt.
“Fireblast and fuck!” Ryan jolted into full consciousness, and although his head ached and his neck muscles felt as though they’d been twisted backward, he scrambled to his feet, splashing violently in the water and slipping once or twice on the way up, despite Jak’s assistance. When he was on his feet, he had to resist the urgent desire to vomit, his head spinning and his ears humming. He tried to shake his head clear, but that only succeeded in making things worse. He clung to Jak for support as the albino youth started to make tracks back toward the lower levels. They only had a short time in which to move. Not just because of the time limit that had already been imposed on them.
With a hum and a crack, the lights went out above and around them, plunging them into blackness for a moment before the emergency circuits cut in and red light flooded the corridor. The water around them, now swirling to their ankles, was as red as the blood that thundered through their veins as they ran full-tilt toward the next sec door.
How the hell had the levels above become flooded? Was it something that the looters had done, or was it some kind of natural freak that had happened after? It would at least explain why no one had come back to the redoubt to use it after the first looting.
The thoughts rushed through Ryan’s confused and still aching head, but he tried to dismiss such speculation. It would serve no purpose, and at this stage would do little other than slow him and dull his reactions.
Jak cast a look over his shoulder as they skidded and splashed around the dogleg of the corridor. There was no way they could have stayed and tried to close the sec doors to stem the tide. The warp in the doors had turned into a full buckle. Above the sound of the water, and the sirens that had started to sound an alarm when the red lights had come on, he could hear the squeal of twisting and protesting metal as the weight of the water bent it out of shape and pushed it free of the grooves that had contained it for so long.
The sirens and the red light had been triggered when the circuits in that section of corridor had been shorted. Was it a fail-safe? Maybe it was possible that the upper levels could cut out without interference to lower levels. That had to have happened where the closed sec door had acted as a dam.
That also had to have been why the sec monitors for the upper levels were blank. The lower level monitors blanked by looters’ blasterfire had only muddied the waters. At any other time, Jak would have considered that one of his rare jokes.
Except this race against the water was far from funny.
Behind them, they could hear the water start to rush faster and faster as the gap in the twisted sec doors began to grow larger. At any moment a wave would hit. They
needed to get to the next interior sec door, and quickly. Not just to avoid the wave, but because the automatic emergency procedures would start to kick in.
The water was rushing around them now, reaching up to their calves. At least it wasn’t flowing against the direction of their movement. It wasn’t acting as a resistor. But it was making the floor beneath them treacherous, and it sucked at their boots. They found themselves slowing as they tried to stay on their feet. To fall in these conditions meant the risk of losing consciousness and thus losing all hope of making the mat-trans unit in time.
It was only when they turned the corner that they could see the lights beyond the next sec door were still as normal. The water was flowing fast ahead of them, making the floor slick.
And the sec door was beginning to close.
DOC SIGHED HEAVILY and looked up at the ceiling.
“Something bothering you, Jock?” Crabbe asked him.
“Beyond the inability of people to hail me with my given appellation, I think not,” Doc mused. “Although the manner in which stories can become distorted by the telling and retelling so that they resemble nothing so much as myth is also somewhat of a concern.”
“What the fuck did that crazy old coot say?” McCready asked, looking at his baron.
Crabbe shrugged. “Jock’s like that. That’s the way I hear it, anyways. Got no reason to think any different from the way he’s been acting. How’s the power doing, Sal?”
The mechanic had been running a routine check, just as he had while Doc and Mildred were away. He was a proud man, but his nervous demeanor betrayed a self-doubt concerning his abilities.
“It’s fine,” he stated. “Everything’s holding. They’ll have no trouble coming back.”
Krysty wanted to laugh, but held her peace. It wasn’t this end that they had to worry about. It was whatever they might have found at the other end of the jump. Doc and Mildred had only just gotten back, and they’d been lucky. Would any of the others find it as simple? She looked across at J.B., and his gaze met hers. There was an understanding there. They would be next, and there was a mutual—what? Fear? Trepidation? Yes, perhaps that was it—trepidation about what they might find. At least the others had already faced that.
She looked at Mildred and Doc. Both of them looked as though they had aged ten years and had gone weeks without rest. A one-way jump was draining enough. To jump back in half an hour was putting an immense strain on the body.
But it was to be worse than that. They would all have to make two trips. Four jumps. She looked at her wrist chron. Ryan and Jak had been gone just over twenty minutes, and it was just under an hour and a half since Mildred and Doc had been the first to jump.
She wondered if Mildred and Doc had been able to find anything to use against Crabbe and his men. How the hell could they communicate, with the baron and so many sec men in such close proximity? Would Ryan and Jak be able to find anything? Would she and J.B.?
Even if they did, even if they were able to somehow let one another know about any discovery, even if they had the chance to take the enemy by surprise… After so many mat-trans jumps in such a short time, would they be up to the fight?
She could only hope so. Looking at Mildred and Doc, she wondered how she and J.B. would feel.
“THIS ISN’T GOOD,” Ryan gasped as he floundered in the water, struggling to keep his balance as he ran. The sec door in front of him was closing too quickly for them to reach at their current pace. And yet it was an agonizing irony—the way in which it was grinding shut was, perversely, almost too stately for the rising tide of water. They needed it to close fast and cut off the flow before it hit the circuit breaker and that level, too, was reduced to emergency power only. The water would run faster the more that poured in. If it outran them, outran the sec door mechanisms, and reduced all levels to emergency power, then they would be stuck. There would be no way to make the jump back, and nowhere to go to escape the rising waters.
A slow chill by drowning awaited them.
“Panga,” Jak said at Ryan as they ran. He still had hold of the one-eyed man and was pulling him. Ryan was aware that he was slow, more in brain than body. It took a second for him to realize what Jak meant, and he should have thought of that himself.
No time for recriminations. He unsheathed the blade, flipped it and thrust the hilt into the albino teen’s free hand. Acknowledging him with a nod, Jak dropped Ryan’s arm and forged ahead. The water was shallow on the floor, but not so shallow that it didn’t enable Jak to dive and skim across the surface like a pebble, his momentum and that of the water incrementally increasing his speed. He was able to reach the sec door when the opening was down to a few inches. With all the strength he could muster from such an oblique angle, Jak thrust the blade of the panga between the bottom of the door and the floor. There was barely enough room for the thickness of the blade, but he pushed with all his might. In dry conditions the metal would have sparked on the concrete. Not now. But it did have an effect—the door squealed as the obstruction worked against the movement of the mechanism. It didn’t halt completely, but it did slow almost to a standstill.
Jak could feel the tension singing in the blade. It wouldn’t hold for long, but perhaps just long enough.
He was still listening for the distant crash of the last set of sec doors finally giving way totally, and the wave of pent-up water to be unleashed.
Ryan pushed himself forward with all the strength that he could muster. The gap in the door was narrow, and even as he hit it he could feel it constrict his chest. The pain was immense, his ribs being slowly squeezed as he struggled to push his muscular frame through a gap that was far too small. He yelled in agony and frustration as he seemed to get stuck. One last, supreme effort of will, and…
Perhaps it was that, or perhaps it was nothing more than the expelling of air in rage and frustration that enabled the one-eyed man to constrict his chest cavity enough to forge through.
He fell onto the other side of the door, aching and sore and aware both of the fact that there was still another battle ahead and that there was a pool of water beneath him, running swiftly ahead.
Before he had a chance to gather his thoughts, Ryan could feel Jak tugging at him. The smaller frame of the albino youth had made it easier for him to squeeze through, even though he was second in line. He had also managed to pull the panga out from beneath the door, which now closed in stately motion, cutting off the water.
Ryan looked up. The lights were normal, not red. The circuits hadn’t been shorted on this level. With a bit of luck they could make it back to the chamber without any further perils.
“C’mon,” Jak urged, handing Ryan the panga as he pulled him to his feet. “Hurry.”
Ryan clambered to his feet. “Wait,” he wheezed, his breath coming slowly and painfully, “I can’t—”
He was about to say that he couldn’t hurry, and that there was little need. The words died in his throat as he heard a thunderclap and an ominous rumbling from above them.
“Door finally gone,” Jak said simply. “Move.”
The albino teen was already on the move, and Ryan stumbled after him, hearing the onrushing tide of water, finally let free, hurtling down the corridor toward them. The weight of it had to be immense. The sec door at their rear was shut, but how long would it be able to hold against the battering ram of water that was about to hit?
Every step for Ryan made his lungs burn. The impact of boot on concrete drove acid bile into his throat. He spit it out when it became too much, and tried to focus on moving. Jak was a few paces ahead of him, looking sporadically over his shoulder. The sound of the sirens in the distance was now lost to the rumbling of the water as it approached.
It hit the sec door with a crash like the explosion of a ton of plas ex in an empty tank. The sound was almost physical in the impact it had on them. Partly because of that, and partly from a reflex desire to seek cover, Ryan threw himself forward as the crash reverberated around the corrido
r. He expected to be consumed in a wall of water that would wipe life from his body.
Yet nothing followed the crash other than a jarring impact on his already bruised body as he hit the floor in a roll. There was no wall of water. No lights turning to red as the circuit was flooded, no alarms sounding off in his ears.
“Fireblast—it held!” he exclaimed.
“How long?” Jak answered, coming back to help Ryan to his feet. The albino teen had also dived when the sound had hit, but he was quicker to his feet. He suspected that the first jet of water may have broken a rib or torn muscle in the one-eyed man’s chest. No way did Ryan normally move so slowly. And the crack on his head had also disoriented him. Ryan had never left any of his people, and Jak felt the same about his leader, even though his instinct screamed at him to run.
Ryan let Jak pull him up, and he shook his head violently, as though the action would clear it of the torpor that threatened to overtake him. It didn’t work, but it did renew his determination. They started to run again. At their back, out of sight now but not out of earshot, they could hear the groaning of metal that was being subjected to appalling stress as the weight of water pushed at it, searching for weaknesses that it could exploit to find entry. Wailing like a wounded bear, the metal bent and twisted out of shape.
There was only a thin layer of water at their feet, spilling across the floor and barely covering the soles of their boots. But the sounds from behind them were soon to be joined by a trickle of water that spread and covered the floor, rising so that it ran over the toes of their boots as they splashed toward the next level’s sec door. If they could just get to it and get the door closed, then it would buy them the time they needed.
They passed the medical facilities and the armory, jumping the discarded boxes that littered the floor, shell casings starting to float past them as the level of water rose. At their backs, the squeal of twisting metal as it was wrenched from the grooves of the automated door frame ripped through their eardrums like knives. It was painful to hear, and painful to think of the consequences should it give before they reached their target.