by Ryder Stacy
For better or worse, Rona was the type of woman who couldn’t sleep with a man if she could beat him up.
“Sure, let’s try it again,” Rock said, gently extricating himself from the red-haired beauty’s clutching grip. “The next man who tries something like that on me might not be friendly.” They squared off and went at it once more. Chen didn’t take the sash off right away, preferring to wait until Rockson wasn’t expecting it. But after several minutes of back-and-forth punching, kicking, flipping, and rolling, using maneuvers from about a dozen different fighting arts, Rock started forward. He had just managed to flip Chen with an Aiki-Jitsu move when he saw the sash come off fast. Before he could move, Chen had snapped it out toward his legs. But Rock had been figuring just how he would respond on the next try. He leaped high in the air, as if jumping rope, as the makeshift bolo came spinning at him. It missed this time, but kept going and managed to wrap itself twice right around Rona’s curvy hips. She yelled out,“I dislike this intensely!”
“I think it likes you, sugar,” Rockson said as he slammed Chen down onto the gym floor.
“Good move, Rock,” Chen said as the two men stopped their sparring. The Chinese-American head instructor of all Century City hand-to-hand combat courses slapped Rock on the shoulder. “There are three or four ways to avoid it as far as I can figure—but that’s probably the easiest—unless, of course, I had thrown higher.”
“Oh, you two,” Rona said with disgust as she unwrapped the silk snake from around her midsection. “Fight, fight, fight. Is that all you two macho men can talk about?”
“No, we talk about the weather sometimes, too,” Chen said mockingly. All three pairs of eyes suddenly turned to the right, looking past the groups of other men and women working out on mats all around the exercise and martial-arts training level, just one of many that made up C.C.’s underground city. One of Rath’s Intelligence people—by the color of his lapels—was tearing down the gymnasium floor toward the three of them.
“Whoa, pardner, easy,” Rock said as the huffing and puffing fellow, clearly a little overweight to judge by the bulge under his shirt and the red flush on his face, came to a halt. “Don’t want to get a stroke before you hit thirty.”
“Sorry, sir, sorry,” the man said, snapping up to a salute. He then became even more flushed. He knew Ted Rockson—even though he was the military commander of C.C., even though he was known as the Doomsday Warrior, whose name alone meant hope to the downtrodden slave masses throughout America—didn’t like salutes. Rock didn’t like any of that military bull. Rockson was famous for his dislike of all trappings of glory.
“Spit it out, mister,” Rona demanded impatiently.
“Rath sent me to contact you, Rock. All our internal intercom lines are still out, so . . . There’s a message coming in on several telecom frequencies. Keeps calling your name, then goes into some weird code that the cipher boys can’t even begin to make heads or tails of. And it’s coming, as far as we can backtrack it from its satellite bounce, all the way from Moscow. Rath said I should bring you right back to the comm room, see if you can make anything of it.”
“I’ll see you later,” Rockson said, slapping Chen on the chest. “Good workout. But let me have one of those bolo belts next time—see if I can lasso you.” The Chinese American just grinned silently.
Rock turned to Rona. “I’ll see you later, baby. I think we have an appointment for this evening.” It was Rona’s birthday and Rockson had promised, absolutely promised, that Russian MIGs couldn’t drag him away from this. He had missed the last three of the redhead’s birthdays while out on combat duty.
“You miss it and you’re in big trouble, mister,” the fiery beauty said, her cheeks reddening to nearly the color of her mane of hair, which cascaded down her shoulders to her slim waist. “I don’t care if Premier Vassily himself wants to surrender the Red Empire to you lock, stock, and barrel! My birthday dinner comes first.”
“Start powdering your nose, baby,” Rock commented. “You know I’m more scared of you than the whole damned Red Army. I’ll meet you at the Sky Lounge at, say,”—he checked a wall clock—“six-thirty.” With that he turned and started double timing along with the huffing messenger back across the exercise level.
There were over twenty levels of the underground Century City, an entire subterranean city of Freefighting men, women, and children buried in the Rocky Mountains. Each level specialized in a different function: living cubes, commissaries, a hospital, libraries, and armaments factories which turned out the Liberator Rifle, submachine gun, and various other military weapons which were shipped out to other Freefighting cities around America. Century City had been founded by highway commuters who had gotten trapped inside an interstate tunnel complex when World War III had begun over a century earlier. It was a far different place now, with its multiple levels and functions and over 50,000 inhabitants, than it had been then. Rock was always impressed with the ever-advancing city when he moved through it.
Still, even though it was the most advanced of all the guerrilla cities, not everything always functioned quite as it should. Although there was an elevator system which could carry a man in seconds to any of the complex’s levels, it wasn’t functioning right now. A recent disturbance in the thermal heat ducts which the city used to partially power itself had sent up geysers of superheated steam right into the main power circuits for the lift system. So the whole Freefighter city had to use the walk ramps which, thank God, had been built many decades earlier—way before the city even had elevators or moving walkways. Men and women were pushing carts up and down the ramps, and using small vehicles to carry supplies back and forth around the city. Its vital functions couldn’t stop even for a day. Not if America was to triumph over the Reds.
It was clearly hard work for the messenger, who was so red faced by the time they reached Intel Chief Rath’s main war room that Rockson ordered the guy to sit down and take a breather.
“Should really get your men into better shape, Rath,” Rockson said as the dour hawk-nosed Rath paced impatiently around a table filled with men monitoring radios and satellite frequencies. Rock knew they were there twenty-four hours a day, trying to increase their information on Russian troop movements, convoys, and other intel.
“Right, Rockson. I’ll take all my men off their command posts and have them jog five times around the city.” He said it without the trace of a smile. The two men had had their differences many times, but they had to work together.
“So what’s the emergency?” Rock asked with his own scowl. He would have vastly preferred working out with Chen for another hour than playing around with Intel Chief Rath.
“We’ve been getting a repeated message being played over half the Red intercontinental-transmissions comm satellites. It begins with your name, and then goes right into a code that none of us have heard before. The Reds aren’t the greatest cryptics experts, so we can’t figure out how they developed this one—and why they’re so damned impatient to get this info to you. Here, listen.” Rath flipped a switch on one of the comm units that filled a long metal table, and immediately a voice came over the speakers that were mounted up on the walls.
“17, numbers 3, 9, 15, 27, 89, 121, 189. 19, numbers 11, 17, 84, 87, 99, 122, 143, 155. 347—”
“What the hell is it?” Rath blurted out after a few seconds. “Do you know?”
Rockson looked confused as well as he tried to zero in on the voice that was reciting the numbers. It was a deep basso voice that read off the “meaningless” numbers.
“You say this is coming from Russia? From what city, comrade?” Rock asked with a smirk. Rath’s mouth didn’t budge a millimeter.
“Moscow, or very close to it, as far as we can tell. Do you have any idea what—”
“Yeah, I think I do,” Rock replied. “Have one of your men run to the library and pick up a copy of War and Peace. I pray we have a copy.”
“War and Peace? What the hell are you talking about?” Rat
h exclaimed, flustered, wondering if Rockson had finally cracked up.
“The speaker on that tape is Rahallah, Premier Vassily’s right-hand man,” Rock said softly, starting to realize that something really was up if the African was putting so much effort and using all their comm lines to get to him. “When I was in Moscow we worked out an arrangment that if either of us had to contact the other and didn’t want anyone else to know about it, we would use War and Peace as our code framework. The first number of each sequence is the page; the following numbers are the words on that page. It’s a childishly simple code system. But if you don’t know what book it refers to, you could spend the rest of your days trying to figure the damned thing out.”
Rath looked stunned for some reason, perhaps because he had had his entire operations unit spend hours trying to figure the thing out. “But I’m afraid that if it’s Rahallah calling,” Rock said almost in a whisper, “the message can only concern war. Men don’t get that desperate when their words are of peace.”
Four
But it wasn’t going to be as easy as that. Rockson had learned long ago that nothing is. One of Rath’s intel ops ran down to the Century City library, and after scrounging around for nearly half an hour was able to find a dog-eared copy of the novel—somewhat motheaten, to say the least, pages yellowed as corn. But the words, which were what mattered, were all still there. However, when it was brought back and they began trying to decipher the code that Rahallah and Rock had worked out, the cipher boys ran into problems. The very first part of the message appeared to read, when translated, “Tree love no samovar quick Czar appetite dirt dog.” So much for the first sentence, which Rock thought might have been some form of beatnik poetry circa the mid-twentieth century, but hardly a decoded emergency message from the Kremlin!
“The problem is—we’ve got different editions of the book in English,” Rath suddenly exclaimed, slapping his forehead with such force that it looked like it hurt. “Even slight differences in the number of words per page makes it all not match up.” He thought for a few more seconds, his brain whirring feverishly, his eyes half closed as he was wont to do when deep in concentration. Even Rockson had to admit, though there were plenty of things he didn’t like about the man, he did his job well, almost fanatically.
“But we will be able to figure it out anyway,” the intel chief suddenly blurted out as his mouth twisted up into the first hints of a smile Rockson had seen since he came in. “Once we analyze the sequences of words in our book, we can send it through the computer to re-do the edition Rahallah’s using. That’s the right track!” He immediately set the five cipher techs to figuring out just how to program the C.C. mainframe with the actual book before them. It took nearly three hours before they understood the right sequencing between words. But at last, success. Rock could see that Rath took a certain pride that his men were able to come through. And he congratulated him.
Once the message was completely unraveled, the linguistic experts turned over the sheet of paper with their scrawlings on it to the intel chief, who read it out, as Rockson listened intently:
“To rock son from your friend, the premier’s aide, R. in Moscow: I think you and I trust one another. We’ve already been through battles together and you know my word is good. We face great danger. The madman kill love who we both believed to be dead is alive. I received a thought vision from my relative, a witch man from the Sudan. You will understand for you are a star pattern sensitive, capable of similar mental connections from time to time. His village was being destroyed by terrible weapons, by whole mountains falling. And I saw kill love’s face in the midst of the bloodshed. Even as my uncle died in an instantaneous dissolution I watched through his eyes, felt the final gasp, saw the skull’s dark eyes coming toward the village.
I was able to use the premier’s intelligence gathering services to find out what the skull is up to. It is perhaps the worst threat this planet has faced since the great war itself. He is conquering north Africa. Has already taken over large parts of Egypt. These terrible falling mountain weapons enabled him to do it. I have not been able to discover thus far how they work, how many there are. I know that he’s taken control of some Egyptian cult, worshippers of the ancient sun god. Kill love’s weapon can lift whole mountains, carry them along for hundreds of yards above the ground, and then drop them down on any target. He clearly plans to conquer and then use all of north Africa as his base of operations. He’s moving very swiftly to consolidate power. He is clever. Even with these fearsome weapons, he needs a base of support. He needs a conquering army to follow behind his cult and take control. If my intelligence reports are accurate, he could control all of north Africa within another month. The entire continent within a few months. And then we both know he will not hesitate to move into Europe, Asia and then over to your country.”
Rath, who was reading the message with a tremulous voice, paused for a moment as his eyes came up to meet those of Rockson, who could hardly believe his ears. Rockson knew, more than anyone, the depths of Killov’s dark soul. And his ability, like some phoenix from hell, to climb out of the ashes again and again and resume his attempts at world conquest. Only he had never had as terrible a weapon as the one that Rahallah, the Soviet Premier’s aide, spoke of.
Rath read on, after wiping his brow:
Rock son, you can imagine how I have tried to get the premier to commit troops to combat this threat. But the idea that the madman kill love with an army of a few thousand sun worshippers could actually threaten the Soviet empire is beyond his comprehension. The premier scoffs at the very idea, making only vague promises to send some elite soldiers down there. There are riots throughout Russia; many cities are under martial law. His attention is diverted elsewhere. There will be no resistance from the Red Army to the skull’s designs until it’s too late.
Which means, rock son, that by the time you receive this, I will have already flown to Egypt to try to help stop it myself. I owe it to the planet earth itself to try, even if I am destroyed. I owe it to my uncle and his people, who were wiped out like so many ants beneath a boot. They are of my blood. There was no one I was closer to.
I need aid. I need a man like you, rock son. You have been able to defeat the skull before, and send him packing. You have driven him from power in your land. I know this is an incredible request on my part. You have many problems and battles of your own going on at this very moment. But I pray that you, above all men, will understand the threat. I throw all pride to the wind and beg you to come.
If you do, the following locations are where I or my agents will meet you. I will wait two weeks from the sending of this message. We will come and check out the rendezvous point every day. Then I and my fighters will be forced to begin the war against kill love on our own. I know that many of your own people will think this is a trap. By the blood of the plains lion who is my namesake, by the blood of my uncle which was spilled, I speak true. May the spirits give you guidance. Please help.
Rath let the several pages of notes fail loosely in his hand as he stopped reading. He looked up at Rockson, and with as dark an expression as the Doomsday Warrior had ever seen the frozen face possess, he said, “It’s a trap, Rockson. Killov’s dead, we know that. The Reds are just carrying out all this elaborate bull to get your ass in tow and kick it down into the dirt!”
But Rockson looked the intel chief squarely in the eyes and said with absolute firmness, “I’m going, Rath. Not all the Council edicts in C.C. could stop me.”
Five
There was a breakdown in four of the five power stations just when Rock called a meeting of his elite team. But that was hardly unusual around Century City. Things were continually breaking down. It wasn’t that the men who made the underground city’s machinery and equipment weren’t skilled, but rather that they used poor materials—half the time leftovers from a century before. Their materials had been used, reused, and then used again, and were reaching the very limits of their durability. Even steel atom
s had their breaking point!
But the “Rock Team” met by torchlight in one of the smaller conference rooms, three flashlights set upright on the table casting their faces into demonic-looking presences. McCaughlin, the joker of the group, was none too slow in commenting upon how “handsome” Archer appeared, or the fact that Detroit almost disappeared in the shadows with his midnight black skin.
“Can it,” Rock said. Then Rock looked around the table at the men who had worked and fought and bled alongside him for years. Men who would walk anywhere beside him, fight any enemy—the devil himself, if Rockson asked them. Aside from his fighting prowess and mutant sixth sense which had saved them all more times than they liked to think about, Rock had something else—the ability to lead men. The ability to make them feel that he was going to get them through it all no matter what. And if somehow he didn’t, well, not a one of them could think of a man they’d rather go down fighting next to than Rock.
He had already gone through in his mind just who to bring along for the cross-oceanic journey. They were all good-spirited, tough men, each a specialist in his own way, each with his own niche. Detroit, the black bull of a man, was shorter than Rock, but with shoulders and a chest that would have made Mike Tyson, the great heavyweight boxer of the last century, green with envy. Next to him sat McCaughlin, the huge Scotsman, cook, joke-teller, and general all-around bone-crusher when the going got rough. Then Chen, whose martial-arts abilities and exploding star-knives made him, in Rock’s mind, one of the toughest dudes on the face of the planet. Though they had sparred numerous times—sometimes one, sometimes the other coming out on top—Rock didn’t look forward to ever really fighting it out with him. It was one battle he couldn’t even imagine the outcome of. Then Archer, the towering seven-foot-plus near-mute who Rock had rescued from a quicksand pit years before. The man had been like an obedient puppy to Rock ever after, ready to dive into a volcano if Rock requested it. His tremendous strength and immense crossbow—which he carried around his back—made him a super combat man. Then Sheransky, the newest member of the Rock Team, a Russian defector whom the others had at first been very wary of, both because of his Russian background and because they hadn’t been all that happy about welcoming another man to their elite group. But after a few skirmishes with him along, after they had seen that the man was neither a traitor or a coward, but the equal in heart and ability of any of them, he had been warmly accepted.