Chill Factor

by James Axler

  "But you—"

  "Fucking move, boy!" Ryan shouted, pushing him, turning and snapping off half a dozen rapid rounds toward the Russian. The bullets sparked off the iron rails and floor, shrieking into the black vault around them.

  He didn't wait to see whether he might have scored a lucky hit, racing after the slight figure of his son, trying to ignore the looming android, its long arms extended toward them.

  The handrail on the right side broke away, almost tipping him over the edge, and he stumbled, nearly dropping the SIG-Sauer.

  Dean ducked around the corner, Ryan close on his heels. He risked a couple more shots at the sec droid, hearing the metallic clang as one of them hit it on the chest armor. Combined with the rocking of the gantry it was enough to make it fall on its back, sounding like a load of scrap iron being dumped into a storm cellar.

  Part of Ryan's attention noticed the crack of the high-powered rifle as Zimyanin tried a couple of shots at him. But the hopeless results immediately showed the Russian that the conditions were impossible and he laid the gun down, drew his pistol and started off after his enemy.

  "It kind of splits both ways, Dad."

  "Go right."

  Behind him, he could see the droid battling back to its feet, fighting for balance as the whole structure swayed, threatening to collapse. Zimyanin was thundering toward him, face split into a crazed smile.

  "Knock it over the edge," Ryan shouted, "or it'll chill us all."

  The Russian hesitated a moment, a moment that saw the hunter robot regain its equilibrium, head turning toward Ryan, knives flashing in Zimyanin's direction.

  There was still enough time for him to go back, leaving the droid to pursue Ryan and his son, but the major-commissar was shaken by the encounter, seeing his nemesis vanishing into the safe blackness. Zimyanin went after him.

  The killer sec droid followed them.

  "Broke off!"

  Dean had turned around, facing his father, who had just arrived at the T-junction. Ryan looked the other way, seeing that it, too, was snapped off, leaving only rusting jagged ends of metal, hanging out a hundred feet above the floor of the building.

  The only possible way out was back again, the same way they'd just come, along the narrow, teetering walkway.

  Toward the droid.

  And, much closer, toward Gregori Zimyanin.

  The Russian saw the dilemma and paused, hanging on to the single rail with his left hand. His laughter rang out above the void. "End of the line, ladies and gentlemen. All change here for the terminus of the line."

  The boy was close to the broken end of the walkway. Ryan and Zimyanin were barely thirty paces apart, both hanging on against the pendulum swing of the gantry. The droid was about twenty paces behind the Russian, moving slowly toward them.

  "It'll chill all three of us," Ryan shouted. "Unless…"

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  "UNLESS WHAT, CAWDOR?"

  "Truce!"

  "Agreement between gentlemen, involving a temporary cessation of hostilities?"

  Ryan was ready to shoot at Zimyanin, despite the erratic movements of the dangling walkway and the dreadful light.

  "We all try, we can mebbe chill the bastard. No chance for a man alone."

  The Russian glanced behind him at the leisurely approach of the sec droid, moving with a lethal, inexorable sense of purpose.

  "Agreed," he yelled. "Until the monster is destroyed, we are companions. After—"

  "After is after. Come on!"

  Ryan was virtually certain that the androids had been programmed in some way he didn't understand to hunt him down. Him and only him. Anyone who got in the way was chilled, but if Zimyanin simply kept out of the robot's path he'd probably be safe.

  That was something that Ryan kept to himself.

  "GET DOWN AND HANG ON, Dean," Ryan ordered.

  "I got my blaster as well."

  "More danger to me than that son of a bitch, rocking around like this. Do it, please."

  The sec droid had stopped at the junction, its head turning slowly from side to side as it took in the situation. To its left was a spur that ended in dangling wires and emptiness. To its right were the three humans. Its night-scope vision hummed as it appraised what it saw.

  Its determined subject, another humanoid, shorter and heavier, another humanoid, shorter and lighter.

  All were grouped close together.

  Its central gyrosystem was working overtime to keep it balanced as the ground beneath the lower support stabiliziers moved to external parameters. Despite the age of its controls, the droid was still functioning well.

  It was ready to complete the mission.

  "Why not shoot it down?" the Russian asked.

  "Tried that on another one. About as close to indestructible as I've seen. Arma-piercers'd put it away."

  Zimyanin nodded. "Perhaps I can knock it over the side."

  Ryan considered that one. It had a number of attractions to it. "Got that hammer hand and knives. Comp-fast controls. Hit you before you reached it."

  Now that all four protagonists were briefly still, the swaying of the overhead catwalk had slowed, almost stopped.

  Ryan glanced sideways at Zimyanin, noticing that the powerfully built man kept smiling, his lips pulled back off his teeth in what seemed a nervous reflex. But the smile never touched the dark obsidian chips that were his eyes.

  "You believe that this thing is faster and stronger than I?" Zimyanin asked, rubbing at his chin with the muzzle of his Makarov.

  "Yeah."

  "Let us see."

  The Russian began to edge toward the android, which watched intently. When he figured he was close enough, Zimyanin dived toward the steel knee joints of the robot, hoping to break its balance and shove it over the edge.

  One arm stretched with a hiss of gears, the hammer fist clubbing down. Zimyanin tried to roll and dodge it, but it struck him on the right wrist with the sickening, unmistakable crack of splintering bone. The pistol whirled into space, landing eventually with a sonorous clatter on the ice-covered concrete floor below.

  Ryan leveled the SIG-Sauer and fired four aimed rounds at the head of the android, trying to take out its vision. But the red specks of crystal were less than a third of an inch across, carrying thousands of optic fibers. The bullets whined harmlessly into the blackness, making the robot stagger slightly, giving Zimyanin a chance to crawl back to safety.

  He was moaning and cursing, cradling his right wrist in his left hand.

  Ryan didn't say anything, taking the moment to slot in a fresh magazine.

  The momentary scuffle made the gantry sway again, and a twenty-foot length of girder snapped off and plummeted down in a spray of orange rust. One end of the walkway dropped nine inches with a heart-stopping jar. The sec droid rocked, arms flailing, feet shuffling to keep upright. Its head revolved silently through three hundred and sixty degrees, returning to stare at Ryan.

  Somewhere near the roof there was the flat sound of a cable strand breaking.

  "Only chance," Ryan said. "Rock the fucker clean off."

  "Hey, hot pipe, Dad!" the boy whooped, ignoring the imminence of death for all of them.

  "Let us commence," Zimyanin agreed through gritted teeth.

  He clung on with his left hand to one of the frayed supporting wires, starting to sway back and forth. Ryan and Dean picked up the measure, both hanging on to upright supports.

  The sec droid responded by moving against the rocking motion, steadying itself with the hammer hand, its knees creaking with the constant effort of maintaining its position.

  The gallery rocked faster and farther, the corroded hawsers that kept it in place straining and screeching. A fine rain of fiery rust fell on the heads of Ryan, Dean and Zimyanin.

  Outside, the eastern sky was showing the very first glimmering of the cold dawn.

  "Faster, brothers. On, my droogs! Heave and heave and heave again."

  The Russian was roaring with laughter
, head thrown back, his bald head gleaming in the dim light.

  The excitement was contagious, and Ryan found himself bellowing out in time with Zimyanin, sending the fragile walkway swinging faster and higher. More chunks of rotted metal tumbled away, and they could all hear the wires twanging under the intolerable pressure.

  "It's losing it!" the boy screamed, his face flushed with the effort and the danger.

  The droid was beginning to stagger. In a desperate attempt to steady itself it seemed to be using some kind of electromagnetic force through the feet. There were sparks fountaining from the rusty iron grid, tumbling like a fall of golden rain into the blackness below them.

  Now it was employing both its upper extremities to fight to keep itself on the gantry, but the hammer was clumsy and the steel knives simply sliced through the old, rotten wires.

  Ryan's plan was working.

  "Da…da…da…da…" the major-commissar chanted in rhythm, kicking with his iron-toed boots.

  The sec droid was losing it.

  Ryan's head was whirling, his vision blurred by the sickening motion, but he could still see that the metallic killer was staggering.

  The whole building felt as if it were breaking up around them.

  There was an endless clattering of falling metal, and the air was filled with motes of rust. The walkway dropped with another deadly jolt, as one of the main cables disintegrated.

  "All fucking right!" Dean saw the droid slipping, losing its fumbling hold on the handrail, its feet sliding, claws grating.

  Its programming wouldn't let it give up, not even on the very brink of extinction. Feeling itself starting to fall, it powered toward Ryan, arms elongating, knives rotating.

  But Gregori Zimyanin was in the way.

  The murder machine toppled into him, one hand hitting him a glancing blow on the right shoulder. The knives slashed at his leg, cutting a neat circle from his coat, going on to slice through the remaining strap on the Dragunov rifle.

  Hanging on for grim life, Ryan witnessed an astounding display of physical strength and courage by the Russian.

  Fighting against the powerful servomotors, he gripped the droid by its neck in his left hand, tucking his feet under it and kicking hard.

  Ryan heard ribs go as the robot clubbed its steel hammer into Zimyanin's body, but it was already off the ground, unable to find any traction. With a grunt of agonized effort, the Russian heaved the creature up and over the rail.

  Ryan never heard it hit the floor. The air was filled with the sound of other cables snapping as the aerial walkway broke apart, one end coming away and falling vertically.

  Above him, Dean was swinging like a lithe monkey, arms and legs wrapped around a stanchion, saving himself from dropping.

  Ryan himself swung his right arm around a bent upright and felt it yield, then hold firm.

  But Zimyanin was going.

  Badly injured, his right hand useless, he slid away after the vanished sec droid, gathering momentum, feet first. Ryan watched him, expecting to see him vanish over the jagged brink.

  But his left hand still functioned. Incredibly the Russian swung there, hanging by the one hand from a frayed cable, unable to help himself up.

  For several breathless seconds, nobody spoke.

  A MILE OR SO AWAY, in the airless deeps of the old redoubt, a pair of crimson eyes clicked on in the blackness.

  GREGORI ZIMYANIN LAUGHED, a quiet, ruminative chuckle.

  "So, Yankee, this is it."

  "Looks like it."

  "How is the… the truce?"

  "Until we beat the droid. And we beat it."

  "I beat it, Cawdor. The honor of victory is mine, is it not?"

  The building was silent. The jerky pendulum movement was gradually slowing down.

  Ryan finally answered the Russian. "Guess you did it, all right."

  There was pain running ragged through Zimyanin's voice. "What is honor, Cawdor? And do you have it? Will you let me fall or will you help me to ascend? Which?"

  With only one effective hand, and other crippling injuries, the Russian couldn't possibly climb back to safety without help. Nor could he hold on long enough for help to come in from outside the thick-walled building.

  Within a minute or so he'd lose his hold on the rusting strands of the cable and plummet to a sickening death.

  Ryan knew what the Trader would have done, knew what he should do.

  He began to crawl slowly down, a gloved hand reaching out to help Zimyanin.

  "No, Dad."

  He heard the click of the Browning's action behind and above him.

  "I promised, Dean."

  "I didn't. I'll chill him. I swear on my mother's death that I'll chill him."

  "We had a truce."

  "Until that steel bastard was negatived. It's gone. The truce is done. He's done."

  The boy's voice was steady. Ryan glanced up, seeing the heavy automatic held in both hands, Dean keeping his grip on the stanchion by wrapping his legs around it.

  "Pull the trigger and you could get thrown off."

  "I know that, Dad. My chance. I'll take it."

  Zimyanin laughed again. "His father's son, is he not, Ryan Cawdor?"

  "Yeah, he is."

  The round, pocked face stared up, a pale sphere in the gloom. "I would not want one so young to carry so heavy a burden." Something that could have been a smile flashed across his face. "Goodbye, Cawdor, and your boy."

  The hand opened, quite deliberately, and Major-Commissar Gregori Zimyanin fell to his doom.

  Nothing in his brutal life equaled the manner of his passing.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  IN THE SCANT THREE seconds before his body impacted with the stone floor, Zimyanin succeeded, left-handed, in drawing a silver-hilled, leaf-shaped throwing knife from its sheath. He hurled it up at Ryan Cawdor with a scream of maniac laughter.

  It missed by a good twenty feet and tinkled down to the concrete four or five seconds later.

  DEAN LED THE WAY up the web of hawsers and thinner wires to a ladder gallery that ran around under the roof. From there they managed to pick a route down onto the safer levels below. Getting out and onto the mountain wasn't difficult.

  The guards were unsettled, the word passing that Zimyanin had gone into the cavernous building over two hours ago, and nothing was known since.

  Someone claimed to have caught the sound of gunfire, and someone else said he'd heard cries that could have been laughter, pain or sorrow.

  One of the sec men, armed with an old Kalashnikov AK-47, fired a burst at two figures he saw making their way around the rim of the canyon, keeping ahead of the rising tide of sunlight. But it was at extreme range and he didn't think he'd had much success.

  If they were escaping slave workers, then either the cold or the trackies would certainly pick them off.

  IT WAS still bitingly cold and Ryan and the boy hurried through the redoubt and into the gateway chamber, with its walls of dark, dark brown armaglass. Ryan pressed the button that should return them to the last destination used by the mat-trans unit, praying hard as he did so that none of Zimyanin's sec men had used it since their previous jump.

  Dean had the heavy Browning tucked into his belt, face split in a great grin. "Going home again, Dad," he said.

  The jump mechanism was already triggered, the disks glowing and the air seeming to become thicker around them. Ryan could hardly hear his son's words through layers of gauze.

  But he managed to nod and smile.

  THE MORNING WAS scorching hot. There was a light wind, carrying the sharp scent of sagebrush to their nostrils as they stood together, drawing in deep breaths of the New Mexico air.

  It hadn't been a bad jump.

  Dean had been sick. Ryan had suffered a small nosebleed. But now they were out of the claustrophobic depths of the ruined redoubt, only a few miles away from the homestead where they could both have a good hot bath to wash away the stinking yellow taint of the sulfur and ease the
exhaustion from their bruised bodies.

  "A good meal. Eggs, potatoes and some thick-sliced ham."

  Ryan put his arm on the boy's shoulders. "And sleep for a day and a half."

  "Sure, then…" He paused, shading his eyes as he stared across the land. "What's that, Dad?"

  "Dust storm, or—"

  "Looks like smoke." Dean sniffed. "Yeah. You can actually smell it. Burned wood and a kind of scent like charred meat."

  The column of dark smoke rose and curled, high above the desert, until it vanished.

  It came from the direction of Jak and Christina's home.

  Ryan felt his heart shrink into cold marble.

  "Come on, Dean," he said quietly. "Best go take a look."

  Behind them in the redoubt's heart, the walls of the silvery armaglass that formed the gateway chamber were beginning to fill with a pallid mist, and the disks in the floor and ceiling were starting to glow.

  Someone had triggered the mat-trans mechanism and was in the process of making a jump.

  Someone.

  Something?