by Mark Ellis
Wheezing through his teeth, Salvo made a show of controlling his pain, trying to force himself awkwardly to his feet with his left arm. When he achieved a half-crouching posture, his right hand tightened around the Sin Eater and whipped the muzzle up.
Kane had been waiting for that. He delivered the toe of his left boot full against the underside of Salvo’s jaw. Salvo went over on his back. He flopped and thrashed, using his heels to kick himself into a sitting position, bringing his blaster to bear. He snarled with rage.
Kane slashed the barrel of the Sin Eater across the side of his head, splitting open the scalp. Blood pouring down his face, Salvo fell heavily onto his back, his skull striking the flagstone floor with, a cruel crack. He made no movement after that.
Kane unstrapped the Sin Eater from his forearm, took the two extra clips of ammo from Salvo’s belt and left him where he lay.
Grant crooked a quizzical eyebrow when he approached. “You didn’t kill him.”
Kane shook his head. “If we’re leaving, let’s leave. A squad could be on its way, and I don’t want another fire-fight before breakfast.”
“Why didn’t you?”
With a certain amount of bitterness in his tone, Kane replied, “One of the few old, ingrained habits I can’t bring myself to break. He’s a Mag, and I can’t murder a Mag in cold blood.”
Grant grunted, looked around and said, “Little late for that.” He said nothing more.
There wasn’t time for more than cursory introductions all around. They all scrambled into the armoured box. Kane took the seat next to Domi, who still held the wheel. There was just enough room for Grant and Brigid to sit in the back. Cartons of survival equipment, food and containers of water were stored there.
Eyeing the girl, Kane saw for the first time the mini-Uzi tucked between her thighs and the seat. Turning toward Grant, he asked, “Does she know where she’s going?”
Domi reached for the instrument panel, saying, “Ask me. I talk.”
“Do you know where you’re going?”
She pulled down a couple of switches, worked the shift lever and put the machine into gear. The engine beat faster as the Sandcat lurched forward. “Watch and learn, sec man.”
The armoured vehicle rolled across the warehouse, the treads flattening boxes and crushing cartons. Steered by Domi, the machine rolled steadily toward the rear wall. The barricade remover struck it with a loud banging of metal. A section of tin, just wide enough and high enough to admit the Sandcat, folded inward, a reinforcing cross-brace assembly of wooden planks snapping and splintering.
Kane peered out through the windscreen at the narrow passageway. It was cut beneath the very wall of the barony itself, shored up here and there by heavy timbers. He saw no light ahead of them, and since the walls were approximately ten feet thick, the Sandcat didn’t have far to travel.
The Sandcat jounced roughly, its suspension creaking as its front end ploughed into a barrier. Grey light suddenly showed, appearing in irregularly shaped patches and cracks. Then sunlight flooded the passage.
The Sandcat pushed inexorably through a false front, chunks of clay, squares of turf and masonry collapsing onto the hood, pattering across the metal. Kane couldn’t help but laugh. Guana Teague had managed to burrow an escape tunnel right under the wall of Cobaltville. God only knew how many hours of labour it had taken him to dig it, and then construct the camouflaged exit. Bribery had to have played a large role in the project, as well.
As if reading his thoughts, Grant said, “He was a corrupt bastard, but a clever one.”
Domi hissed, but not in reaction to the remark about Teague. She wrestled with the wheel as the wag tilted sharply forward, rolling fast down the face of the bluff. Though the windshield was still partially obscured by sliding sheets of grit and dirt, Kane recognized the area outside the east wall.
Teague had chosen well, since it was the least tactically important piece of real estate around Cobaltville. It was also something of a blind spot, positioned between a pair of Vulcan-Phalanx turrets. Before the sentries on the wall caught sight of the vehicle and brought the big guns to bear, they would be almost out of range.
The Sandcat picked up speed, and Domi made no allowance for the slippery bank sloping down to the river. It was a shallow ford, and as the front end nosed through the water, it caused an up-surging splash that washed away the dirt and masonry from the windshield. The vehicle churned across the ford, the river swirling almost to the doors. When it reached the opposite bank, one of the tracks began to spin, squirting mud and water in a high rooster tail behind them.
Domi cursed, worked the shift lever, and the treads found traction again, pulling them up the riverbank and onto dry land. Kane didn’t make any comments. He pretended to have faith in the albino girl’s expertise.
Hitching around in his seat, he asked, “What’s your assessment of the kind of pursuit we can expect?”
Grant considered the question thoughtfully for a moment. “Not overland, even though we’re cutting a trail a blind jolt-brain could follow. By air is the most likely. Three Deathbirds are flight ready, but the division is down to only two experienced sky jockeys, since me and Carthew are out of the loop. That leaves Pollard and Salvo, since you couldn’t break your habit of not killing Mags.”
“I may not have killed him, but the condition he’s in, he couldn’t jockey himself to the can. What about that new guy, Zack?”
Grant shrugged. “Zack’s only in pilot’s training, but they might press him into service.”
“So, worst case is a pair of Birds, one piloted by a novice. Time factor?”
“Let’s cut ourselves a break and hope it takes a minimum of an hour before Salvo and others are found and taken back to the division. Factor in another forty-five minutes before the Birds can be crewed and launched.”
“Leaving us approximately two hours before we have to worry. But only half a minute to agree on a destination and a route.”
Grant said, “Guana had a plan to hit the Mesa Verde hellzone. He figured no one would want to look for him there.”
“Not for him, maybe,” replied Kane. “They’ll be looking for us no matter where we go. Besides, there are no roads into Mesa Verde.”
“Don’t need no roads if you know the way,” declared Domi.
The machine hit the base of a bluff and jarred everyone, dragging a pained curse out of Grant. “At the speed we’re traveling,” he commented, “two hours is barely enough time to reach the zone, much less the canyon.”
Kane tapped the side of his helmet. “I’ll be able to pick up the comm link transmissions when they’re three miles away, assuming they don’t scramble the frequency. We’ll have a few minutes’ warning, at least.”
“What good will going into a hellzone do?” Brigid demanded. “You didn’t save me from a quick death just so I can contract rad cancer and die slow, did you?”
“No, I didn’t.” Kane looked at her. Brigid’s hair was tangled and disarrayed, and her lips were compressed and white with fear. He grinned.
“What’s so funny?” she asked irritably.
“Remember what I said about surprising you?”
“So?”
“So, Baptiste—prepare yourself for a very big surprise. Maybe the biggest one of your life.”
“After what I’ve just been through,” she retorted, “it’ll have to be gargantuan to impress me.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
THE OLD SANDCAT was a miserable conveyance, especially traveling over rough terrain. Domi completely circumvented the single road from the barony, opting to drive along gullies and coulees. The old vehicle groaned a perpetual protest from every joint, seam and rivet. Many of the Cat’s metal tread sections were worn to thin wafers, and the racket made by the return rollers was incessant, as was the clatter from the diesel engine.
Brigid treat
ed Grant’s wound as best she could from materials in the medical kit stowed under the driver’s seat. His pain was evident as she swabbed the shallow gouge with antiseptic and sprinkled sulpha powder into it. There were ampoules of morphine in the kit, but Grant refused them, saying he needed to keep a clear head.
While Brigid bandaged his leg, Grant told Kane how Salvo had triangulated his position over the transcomm in his coat. “Seemed to make sense to wait for him instead of running, since I expected you there at any time. Domi hid inside the Cat, and when Salvo arrived, I fed him the same story I gave you, about Uno and Guana killing each other.”
“He told you I’d fused?”
Grant nodded. “Said Baptiste here had seduced you, tried to get you to join the Preservationists. Said he had vid proof of you two in her place.” Responding to a sharp glare from Brigid, he added hastily, “No offense.”
Kane shook his head in disgust, wishing he could remove his helmet, but it was critical to their escape that the Magistrate comm-link frequencies be monitored. “Salvo is the one who fused out. Or maybe not.”
“What do you mean?”
“And what about this big surprise?” inquired Brigid as she finished tying the bandage.
“That will have to wait until we’re out of sight of the barony.”
Domi chose to do that by driving through thickets, squeezing through copses of trees and jouncing along the bottoms of coulees. She expertly maneuvered the Sandcat up, then down, treacherous slopes. She appeared to know not only what she was doing, but where she was going, so Kane didn’t question her.
Official Cobalt barony territory extended in a fifty-mile radius, using the Administrative Monolith as the hub of a wheel. Beyond the rim of that invisible wheel lay the hellzones and then Terra Infernus. Baronial law was enforced there of course, but only when deemed necessary and often by whim.
Kane was vaguely familiar with the topography of the area immediately surrounding the barony, but Domi knew where the checkpoints were. As an outrunner, she would have their locations imprinted in her memory. One of the few redeeming characteristics of outrunners was their unerring sense of direction
He caught that thought and glumly tried to chase it out of his head. All of them now were outrunners, and a slip of an albino girl held seniority, outranking them by dint of her birth and years of experience. In the kingdom of the disenfranchised, she was pretender to the throne.
Checking his wrist chron, Kane saw that half an hour had passed since they’d forded the river. Mesa Verde was an hour’s flight time by Deathbird, so he calculated an overland trek, especially one not following roads and side trails, would take about three hours, traveling at an average speed of thirty miles per hour. Unless Domi knew a shorter route.
He asked, “Do you know a shortcut?”
She gave him a quick, annoyed glance. “What you think this is?”
“The scenic route?”
Brigid leaned forward, stretching her cramped legs. Gripping the back of the front seat, she said, “We’re out of sight of the barony. Time for your big surprise.”
Kane turned back, and she self-consciously averted her face. He realized she wasn’t used to enduring such physical hardship and was ashamed of her sweat, grime and the state of her clothing.
“All right,” he said loudly. “Listen up, because I only want to tell this once.”
He should have known better. Because of the noise of the Cat, he had to repeat himself several times, half shouting to be heard at all. By the time he had related everything he had been told about the Trust, Conception Infinitis, the portal in Mesa Verde canyon, the Archon Directorate, his theories on the attempted assassination of Grant and Brigid’s frame-up, he was hoarse and his throat was dirt dry.
Brigid handed him a bottle of water. As he drank from it, he caught Grant’s eye and saw how stunned and angry he was.
“Bullshit,” Grant announced doggedly. “Bullshit, bullshit. Bullshit. How much of that crap did Salvo expect you to believe? How much of it do you believe?”
“To both questions, the answer is I don’t know. The Conception Infinitis stuff can be verified, at least as far as a tele-trans unit is concerned, so I guess I have to believe that part of it.”
Brigid’s eyes shone with suspicious contemplation. “Why would there be a teletransducer in a smuggler’s slag-hole?”
“To transport the merchandise, remember? Quick and easy.”
“And you figure,” challenged Grant, “that if we get ourselves there, we can use it to beam ourselves to this Dulce place?”
Kane nodded toward Brigid. “She claims she’s memorized all the portal codes. Presumably we can transmit ourselves anywhere there’s another unit.”
“In theory,” Brigid responded doubtfully. “It stands to reason that only the active-destination portals can be accessed. Even if the unit is there, and it’s operable, there may be a lockout on the controls.”
Grant shook his head side to side, his expression set. “Listen, Kane. I’ll go along with you on some of this, because there’s a certain amount of proof. Salvo wanted me dead for some reason, then tried to con me into thinking that you’d gone over the edge. Okay, fine. He’s following some sort of secret agenda, maybe sanctioned by the baron or that Trust gang. Maybe not. But I don’t see anything about Archons or aliens or anything else. All I know is I sacrificed everything for you. I owe you my life, but don’t ask me to swallow the rest of this shit.”
“You saw the portal chamber in Reeth’s slaghole, just like I did. He even called it a portal, right?”
Grant nodded grimly. “I saw a funny room, which for all you and I know could have been a fancy clothes closet. And even if it is one of those tele-trans things, Salvo ordered the place flash-blasted.”
“He wouldn’t touch the portal.”
“You don’t know that. Listen, Mesa Verde is a box canyon. We can maybe hole up and hide and hold off a few Mags for a few hours. But all we’ll be doing is making a last stand.”
“What’s your alternative?” Brigid inquired.
“Guana told me he was heading for the Western Islands or Terra Infernus. He was only hitting the zone long enough to throw off pursuit.”
“We’ve had this conversation,” snapped Kane, growing angry in spite of himself. “That was Guana, not a pair of turncoat Mags and a condemned insurrectionist. For now, they’ll chase us to the Western Islands, across the Pacific and to fucking Mongolia before they give up on us. Later, they’ll forget a bit and get busy with other things. Then we’ll be able to slip back in, when the heat’s turned off.”
Grant opened his mouth to respond, and then he considered the words he’d just heard and bowed his head. Dejected, he murmured, “God help us.”
Kane said reasonably, “The portal is our only chance. It’s a long shot, I admit. A one-percenter. But we’ve got to play out the hand those bastards dealt us.”
Grant blinked, angry tears shining in his eyes. “I’ve lost everything. Everything.”
Brigid ran a sympathetic hand over the back of his head. “We all have. Except our souls. We get to keep those.”
Kane turned back around, gazing through the windshield. Domi cast him a single, dispassionate glance, and then returned her attention to driving.
Kane’s jaw muscles knotted. Now that there was respite from the action, for the first time in nearly twenty-four hours, guilt filled him like a cup. His dislike of Salvo and his suspicion about the Mesa Verde penetration had resulted in the destruction of two innocent lives. He could deal with the consequences if they had landed solely on his shoulders, but when he pulled his own personal plug, he’d dragged two good people down with him. There was no way he could ever make it up to them. The sudden taste of self-loathing was so bitter, he nearly gagged. He busied himself with reloading his Sin Eater from the ammo clips taken from Salvo in the warehouse.
&
nbsp; The Sandcat clanked and shuddered onward. Gently rolling hills bordering unbroken flatlands stretched before it. Here grew thorny shrubs and squat, scrubby trees so short they were more like overgrown bushes. In the distance were stands of cedars and evergreens. The ground bore green traces of spring, but harsh rocks and boulders pushed up everywhere. Kane had heard it said Colorado had been spared much of the devastation that overtook the rest of the country, but he couldn’t really tell it by the land they were traversing.
Every so often, Kane consulted the jury-rigged rad counter on the instrument panel. It was one of the ways to tell when they entered the hellzone on the outer edge of the Terra Infernus.
The ride became rougher as the Sandcat maneuvered hills and slopes. Domi took every hillock and every bluff in stride, maintaining a steady pace under forty miles per hour. She eased off on the accelerator only when she urged the vehicle to climb a particularly high slope. As the angle of ascent steepened, Grant and Brigid had to lean against the boxes of supplies in the back. Rocks were crushed beneath the rolling tracks, and Domi continually downshifted until their speed was little better than a fast walk. The engine and moving parts strained and whined.
Finally, the vehicle topped the brow of the slope. They had a panoramic view across the countryside. In the distance, cliffs, outcroppings and hills swelled, but they lacked trees and grass. The Sandcat approached the hellzone, where frequent showers of acid rains and chem storms defoliated the once lush countryside, allowing only the hardiest vegetation to survive.
The needle of the rad counter wavered, edging between yellow and orange. The level of contamination around them was still tolerable, if not exactly safe, at least if they didn’t expose themselves to it for very long. He assumed Teague would have taken standard shielding precautions if he intended to drive the Sandcat through a hellzone.
Domi guided the vehicle up and over another bluff and onto fairly level ground once more. She increased the speed to forty miles per hour. After six miles, the rad counter slowly crept over to the orange band. The few trees they saw were leached of all colour, a monochromatic shade of grey. It was like looking at the world through the night-vision visor, only not quite as stark. The sun overhead was bright, but the countryside was various shades of grey. A few dead branches crunched under the treads, falling apart like sculptures made of ash.