by James Axler
“Try me,” the baron said coldly, his face set in stone. “Don’t fuck with me and hold back, Brian. It wouldn’t be a good idea.”
Ryan shook his head. “You keep saying that, but I tell you, considering what we’ve just seen, there isn’t much of anything that could be worse. Chill me now, fat boy, I really don’t care. But you might not get what you’re after if you do.”
“Now you know that holding out on me would be triple stupe—” Crabbe began. But Jak cut him off.
“No disk, but getting close. Must be.”
“Why do you say that?” Crabbe questioned, his brow knitting with the effort to understand.
“One redoubt left. Each got more weird shit tech. Should have figured before. They run in order,” Jak commented, waving a pointed finger at the laminated list that the baron treated as a holy relic.
Crabbe looked at it afresh. Suddenly, it seemed to him that something very obvious had been going on under his nose all along, and he had been blind. “Of course,” he breathed slowly.
Ryan tried to turn the grin that spread across his face into a grimace, which, considering the pain he was in wasn’t too hard. That had never occurred to him. The cunning of the albino teen was something that never ceased to catch him off guard. Looking across, he could see that Krysty was trying to keep a similar expression from her face. Had she, he wondered, caught on to the fact that he and Jak had returned with a hidden weapon? If he had figured right, then Doc and Mildred also had something hidden.
One redoubt left. One trip to be made. Krysty and J.B. needed to make it. And Jak’s subterfuge was exactly what could ensure that.
“I don’t get it,” McCready snarled. “What’s Snowy going on about?”
Crabbe shot him a pitying look. “I don’t guess that you wouldn’t get it,” he said in a condescending manner. “It’s really simple. The list was arranged in a certain order for a reason. The places we’ve sent them to have grown in importance as they’ve worked their way down the list. So it’s pretty fucking obvious, even to a stupe like you, that the last one on the list is the most important. And where else would you hide the disk except in the most important place? See? Fucking obvious.”
Mildred and Doc, without exchanging a word, were thinking the same thing. Jak was some kind of genius to get inside the baron’s mind and twist it his way. Without that kind of thinking, the old man would be on the verge of boiling over. But now he was looking almost triumphant, as though he could smell success. It was almost in his hand.
J.B., on the other hand, was just thinking that some people were born stupe and were bound to buy the farm that way, no matter what they did in between, and that Crabbe was one of those people.
“Okay, Snowy, Brian,” Crabbe began with a newfound enthusiasm in his voice, “if Kirsty and J.T. are going to be the ones to get the motherlode, then they’d better have an idea of what they’re going face. I want to know what happened from the time that bastard flashed until it did it again,” he said, indicating the mat-trans unit.
Ryan looked at Jak. “You want to tell it?” The albino teen shook his head. “Okay then, here goes…”
And so Ryan began. He related what had happened at the redoubt, from the moment that they had exited the mat-trans, through to the discovery of the armory. From the corner of his eye, he could see J.B.’s eyes almost glaze over behind his glasses at the thought of such an untouched and expansive armory. If nothing else, there was one man in the room who could appreciate the treasures that they had been forced to leave behind. Although it had to be said that the fact that it was so well protected and alarmed seemed to bring home the immensity of what they had found to Crabbe and McCready, the latter cursing audibly at the thought of what he could do with such a haul.
But any thought of what had been left behind was lost when Ryan began to describe the machines that had been triggered by the alarm. As he spoke, he could see a distant look spread across Krysty’s features, followed by an almost involuntary shudder as she recalled similar things that she had seen. The rest of the companions had encountered similar types of machines, and so found it less hard to comprehend than the baron and his sec chief. The guards remained impassive, guarded in so many senses of the word. Crabbe was almost slack-jawed with amazement, and McCready was frankly disbelieving.
“Bullshit.” He spit. “They’re making it up, Baron. Trying to fool you. Mebbe they’ve already got this fucking disk you want and they want to keep it from you.”
“My dear sir, I can vouch for the veracity of my friend’s words. I have seen many things, and I can tell you that whitecoat scum of the predark age had many such obscene devices.”
“Shut the fuck up, Jock, I wasn’t asking you,” McCready snapped. He leveled the barrel of his blaster directly into Doc’s face. The old man stood calmly, but inside he was certain that his misery was about to end.
If only the sec chief had known how close to the truth he had inadvertently come. The friends kept their counsel, but hoped that this wouldn’t spur the baron into another train of thought.
No worries on that score. Any doubts that might have been sown by the words of the sec chief were immediately obliterated by an unlikely source of excitement—the mechanic, Sal.
“Bullshit yourself,” he exploded angrily in the face of the sec chief. “You’re always saying what I do is shit, but who got this going and enabled these bastards to make the trip? It was me, and the skills I learned from the old days. These things are possible and given enough time to study it I could bring back that kind of glory. You’re just shitting yourself because you’re worried that this kind of tech could make you useless and pointless. And who the fuck could you bully then, you stupe shithead?
“Baron,” he continued, turning to a startled Crabbe and carrying on before a furious but stunned McCready had a chance to bite back, “you’ve got to let me go there and study it. I know I could rebuild anything I found.”
For a moment it looked as though the baron was seriously considering this option. Then, at length, he said, shaking his head, “No, I can’t see that. Not yet. Mebbe once we’ve got the disk and started to learn from it. These things they talk about, they ain’t going nowhere. Just be patient. You get there in the end, Sal. Look at what’s happened to me—all that time, and now it’s within my grasp.”
“But will you let me?” Sal implored, an almost messianic gleam in his eyes.
“In due time,” the baron said simply. But there was something in his tone that the mechanic recognized, and he seemed to be satisfied. It was just another reason why Ryan and his people knew that they had to stop Crabbe.
There was a moment’s silence before the baron looked at the laminated list in his hand with something approaching reverence.
“Let’s do this,” he said quietly. “Give Kirsty and J.T. their weapons, McCready. It’s time for them to get going.”
Without a word, J.B. rose to his feet under the watchful eye of the sec, while Krysty moved to join him. The briefest of looks passed between them as they moved close to each other. Brief, but enough for both of them to know that when the Armorer and Krysty returned it would be time for action.
It was only when they were in the mat-trans unit, and the door had clicked shut on the world beyond that Krysty and J.B. dared to speak.
“Think there’s anything in that, and we’ll find it tougher going?” the Armorer asked.
Krysty shook her head. “Jak was just shitting Crabbe. I don’t think there’s any reason to any of this. I would have said they were just maintenance redoubts from the look I had at that list. But mebbe some of them were storage facilities, too, and that’s why they had that weird shit.”
J.B. grinned crookedly as the mist began to form. “Yeah, well, let’s hope we find a nice little storage facility for heavy-duty blasters this time around.”
They were the last words she remembered as the darkness closed in around her.
WHEN THE DARKNESS ebbed away to be replaced by a foul ligh
t and an equally foul taste in her mouth, Krysty knew that they had arrived at their destination. She was sprawled facedown on the floor, and she fully expected the taste in her mouth to be echoed by a leaden feeling in her limbs. Yet as she tried to drag herself to her feet, she realized that she felt very differently. There was almost a springiness to her as she clambered to her feet, and she looked over to see that J.B. was similarly affected.
“Weird, huh?” she said. “Wonder if there are any other surprises waiting for us out there?”
“Nothing like last time, I hope,” the Armorer answered wryly as he moved to the redoubt door. “Take it like last time, okay?”
Krysty nodded, and as he opened the door onto the anteroom beyond, they fell into the roles that they had established for themselves on the last jump. And, as it had been that time, it was a simple task to secure the anteroom as it was empty, and the control room showed no sign of having been in use since skydark.
“So far, so good,” J.B. murmured as they recced the corridor before heading out. The rooms were cold and dry, despite the temperate conditions maintained automatically. It was a different kind of cold, one that came from years of emptiness and lack of use.
“Looks like it might be an easy ride,” J.B. observed.
“Don’t speak too soon,” Krysty retorted. “Wish Crabbe could see this, though. It shoots holes right through his belief.”
“Hey, he only has that ’cause of Jak…and that’s Jak’s way of ensuring the rest of us stay away from buying the farm before we get back.”
“I know,” she admitted. “It’s just that Crabbe is really bugging me.”
“Don’t let him,” J.B. said in a matter-of-fact tone as they moved along the corridor, scoping out the empty rooms as they went. “The way I figure it, both Millie and Doc, and Jak and Ryan managed to get some kind of weapon they could hide away on their last jump. I figure if we can do the same, and we get surprise on our side, then we can wipe out that scumsucker McCready before Crabbe even knows what’s going on.”
“You figure him for the real danger?” she asked as she kicked open another door onto an empty room.
“Dark night, the baron is a fat fuck with a temper, but he’s got no real ordnance. McCready is the man with the blaster. And he’s boss of the men with the other blasters. I’ve seen the way he looks at the baron when he thinks Crabbe isn’t looking. And I’ve seen the way his men obey him. I know who they’d be with if it came to a straight decision.”
“Yeah, guess I’d have to go with you on that,” Krysty admitted. Her hair was twitching at the ends, but she couldn’t figure out why. The place seemed deserted.
“J.B.,” she said quietly, “is it me, or do you reckon this place is just a little too quiet?”
“Not sure if you could call anything too quiet after some of the shit we’ve all been through,” J.B. mused. “Feels to me like it’s empty down here, and there doesn’t seem to be too much sign of life. Why? You starting to feel something?”
Krysty shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said slowly. “There’s something that doesn’t feel right, but I’m not really sure.”
J.B. grinned and racked his mini-Uzi. “Just have to keep it triple red. And blast first, ask later, right?”
“Sounds okay to me,” she agreed.
They moved along the deserted corridor until they were beginning to move up to the next level. Unlike some of the redoubts in this sector that were on the baron’s list, there seemed to be nothing wrong with this one. The corridors were free of dust and dirt, and the air was fresh and clean. All of the maintenance systems were working fine, and it gave the redoubt the strange feeling of being a place where the previous inhabitants had just left temporarily, and would be back in a moment.
When they reached the next level, it became apparent that something wasn’t right. The sec doors to the dorm areas were closed, and they showed no signs of being forced or even of having any wear. But when they opened them, they could see that the beds within had been disturbed, and there were clothes on the floors.
“Someone left in a hurry and never came back,” J.B. murmured.
“Don’t be so sure,” Krysty returned. She could feel her scalp prickling as her hair started to coil, though for the moment she couldn’t identify the feeling of unease that was causing this. She walked to the bed nearest to where she was standing, on the threshold to the room. Bending, she reached down and touched the sheet and blanket that were rumpled in the middle of the mattress. She had only half expected it to be cold, so even though it was a shock to find it still warm, it didn’t make her jump.
“I don’t think we’re as alone as we thought,” she said softly. “Though where the hell anyone else is hiding down here I don’t know.”
J.B. joined her, looking down at the bed as though expecting it to yield some secrets to him.
“It hasn’t been empty that long by the feel of it,” she continued. “Though where they are… I mean, I can feel that there must be someone using this place, but I don’t feel like they’re here.”
“Mebbe they’re not,” J.B. said. “Could be they’re out on a hunt or recce of some kind. Whatever, we’d better be real careful.”
They left the dorm and, making certain that their blasters were ready to fire at the slightest twitch of a trigger finger, they explored the level they were on in more depth. There were two other dorm rooms, both of which showed signs of life. There was some soiled laundry on the floors, but not enough to suggest that these people—whomever they may be—lived like animals. Indeed, to judge by the shower and latrine blocks that they then explored, the people who used this redoubt as a domicile were about as civilized as it was possible to get in the Deathlands. They showed every sign of keeping the redoubt as a clean, well-maintained residence.
That showed a certain intelligence, if nothing else—keep the place in good condition and don’t destroy the haven you have found. It was an intelligence that could make them very dangerous indeed.
Krysty and J.B. continued their recce and moved up to the next level. The kitchens, food stores and dining area showed signs of use. The stores were depleted, but not needlessly decimated, and there were cuts of meat in the deep-freeze area that weren’t wrapped in plastic, and had obviously been chilled in recent times. The kitchen area was a little dirty, as though not recently cleaned, but had obviously been rearranged and washed down at some point. In short, it probably resembled the way it would have looked in predark times when it was a working military base. The original food stocks had been partially used, but showed signs of being eked out with care and caution, another sign of an obvious intelligence at work.
“These people use this as a base. They’re not just muties, stupes, stickies, crazies or looters,” J.B. stated. “Dangerous.”
“Probably out doing whatever it is they do. And from the look of the meat in the freezer, they can do it well,” Krysty added.
“Then we’d better be ready for them when they come back,” J.B. said softly. “Let’s see what they’ve done to the armory.”
Ultracautious and on triple-red alert, they continued their exploration by moving toward the armory and the medical facilities. They found a selective use of the facilities that told them a lot about the type of people who had made the redoubt home.
In the medical room, things like bandages were in heavy use. Dressings for wounds were sorely depleted. Yet the more complex meds, and the ready-filled hypos of antibiotics and painkillers that Mildred had taught them about, and which had been so useful to them, were untouched, as were the facilities for minor surgery that all such redoubts carried.
The armory told a similar story. The handblasters and SMGs had been freely looted, as had the ammo for such things. Among the stock of rifles, too, there had been some heavy use. Yet even here, the stock depletion hadn’t been random and unchecked. The boxes from which they had been taken were stacked carefully to one side, seemingly to keep a record of what had been used. Those boxes tha
t hadn’t been opened had been separated from the others with an equal care. And yet they had stayed away from the boxes of grens. Again, a careful separation had taken place, as frag grens had been moved to sit beside the boxes of ammo. Some of them were now empty, with one half-full and open on the floor. The flamethrowers had been left in their racks, untouched.
“Very selective, aren’t they?” Krysty commented, eyeing the ordnance that they had used as much as that which they had ignored.
“Go for what you know, and don’t trust the tech you can’t take apart,” J.B. mused, scratching his forehead under the brim of his fedora. “That would explain why the mat-trans had been left alone.”
“And why it felt so empty down there,” Krysty added. The way in which her occasional doomie sense had been bugging her was now a little more explainable. And it gave them more of a clue as to the kind of people they would have to expect when they returned from wherever they had gone.
“I’d bet you every piece of ordnance in here that they’ve got no idea how this place works. They’re just thankful that it does. Which, I’m hoping, means that they also don’t know how to work all the automatic sec shit, and watch the cams. So mebbe, when they get back, they won’t have any indication that we’re here. That’ll give us the drop over them, at least. If we’re still here, that is. Just a bit of luck and we can be away before they get back.”
Krysty pursed her lips and nodded. “Yeah, sounds reasonable. Guess we’d better recce the rest of the place while we still can.”
The Armorer nodded, and they wasted no time in covering the rest of the redoubt. There was a vehicle bay that was large enough for two wags, both of which were gone. Oil and gas stains on the concrete showed that they were in some kind of regular use, and cans of gas were stored by the predark reservoirs that were built in to the bay, bespeaking of a regular use and an outside source of gas.
Question was, where did it come from and how had they acquired it?
A quick recce of the rest of the areas showed that the sec camera area had been left well alone, while what had once been the mess room for the predark military staff was in regular use. One thing for sure—these people had been happy to use the facilities, and if they had ever questioned how it kept itself ticking over they had opted not to delve too deeply. They also felt secure enough to never leave a guard behind when they left their base.