by James Axler
“No grens, plas or pipebombs,” J.B. replied, setting the firing switch on the Uzi to full-auto. “If we happen to run into a sec hunter droid, just aim at the eyes and stay out of the reach of its blades.”
“Good luck with trying that tactic,” Doc commented.
Removing the last .38 bullet, Jak tucked them carefully into a jacket pocket, then thumbed in the more powerful .357 rounds. If they were facing whitecoats, he wanted a sure chill with every stroke of the trigger.
“Here,” Mildred said, pulling a plastic bottle out of her med kit. She splashed some of the homie shine on a strip of cloth normally used for a bandage, then tied it around her mouth.
“In case they try to use sleeping gas,” she said, wetting another strip and passing it along. “I don’t know how much it’ll help, but this should buy us a little time.”
Everybody took a mask and tried not to make a face as the sharp smell of the homebrewed alcohol filled their nostrils.
Keeping a close watch on the door, Ryan checked his weapons one last time. He had three full clips for the SIG-Sauer, plus four for the Steyr longblaster. After that, it would be hand-to-hand with the panga. In preparation, Ryan loosened the knife in the leather sheath on his belt.
“Okay, I’m on point,” Ryan stated. “Jak and Krysty, cover me. Mildred and Doc, hold off as backup. J.B., you bring up the rear.” The one-eyed man had almost issued instructions to Dean, too, but his son had left the group a few months ago. His absence left like a ragged wound deep inside Ryan, but pain was part of life, and he accepted it as such. Only the dead felt nothing.
As the other companions moved into positions, Ryan pressed an ear against the door, listening for the sounds of any movement beyond. The silence was thick and heavy. Gingerly, he ran his hands along the jamb, searching for boobies. J.B. then stepped forward and ran a small pocket compass along the surface of the metal. The magnetic needle didn’t quiver once to indicate a hidden magnetic switch or mass proximity fuse.
Mildred tried to snort at the sight of J.B. studiously moving the tiny plastic compass along the door frame. The compass was a recent acquisition, found inside a cereal box in the ruins of a predark convenience store. It was a toy, nothing more, laughably inaccurate compared to a Boy Scout compass or a military-issue model. However, most of the predark compasses the companions found had been demagnetized by the EMP blasts of the nukes that burned down civilization. Incredibly, the toy still worked, and that alone made it invaluable.
“Looks clean,” J.B. said hesitantly, tucking away the precious compass and stepping back. “At least, no traps that I can find.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Mildred noticed that Doc’s hands were shaking a little as he set the selector pin on the LeMat.
“Sure that you can shoot straight?” she asked bluntly.
“Shoot? Absolutely,” Doc replied, assuming a firing position with the Civil War revolver. “As for straight, that is another matter entirely.”
“You know, they may not have attacked us yet,” Krysty said unexpectedly, “because they don’t know we’re here.”
Thoughtfully sucking at a hollow tooth, Ryan considered that notion. “Fair enough. Let’s try for a nightcreep first,” he suggested, inspecting the SIG-Sauer’s acoustical silencer. “We go soft and silent. No blasters until absolutely necessary. Jak, get ready.”
The albino teenager holstered his Colt Python and flexed both hands. Leaf-bladed throwing knives slid from inside his camou sleeves. He flipped the blades once in the air, catching them by the handles, then nodded. “Ready.”
“Triple red,” Ryan ordered, advancing to the door and pulling the lever. As the door swung aside, he slipped into the anteroom, then the control room with his blaster leading the way.
Nobody was in sight.
Whistling softly, Ryan waited as Jak and Krysty moved into the control room. Then the three companions quickly spread out so that they wouldn’t offer a group target for any snipers. Moving in unison across the control room, the three listened hard, but couldn’t hear a thing except for the soft mechanical hum of the giant, wall-spanning comps, and their own harsh breathing.
Reaching the opposite door, Ryan whistled and the other companions entered the control room, their blasters searching for any possible dangers. Staying close to the rear, Doc seemed uneasy, the scholar constantly switching his black-powder blaster from hand to hand to dry his palms on a pant leg.
“Nothing here—” Ryan started to say, then abruptly spun around and fired from the hip. Across the room something exploded in the shadows under the main console, spraying out bits of plastic and wiring.
Advancing slowly, Ryan scowled at the smoking device, wondering what the hell it could be. Then his eye went wide as the pieces lying on the floor began to ripple through an array of colors to finally match the pattern of the floor. But the effect only lasted a few moments before the smashed electronic circuitry of the broken device gave an audible click and the plastic faded into a neutral beige.
“Shit,” Jak muttered, tucking away a knife. “Seen lizard do, but…machine?”
“That is a probe droid,” Doc said, the wall vents gently sucking away the acrid smoke rising from the debris. “A robotic hunter for Operation Chronos.”
“Like dog?” Jak asked.
“Exactly. It is just one of their many…toys,” Doc finished with a sour expression. Standing straight, the scholar looked around with a scowl. “But if I recall correctly, a probe droid is for true emergencies only. By gad, where are we, their headquarters?”
“Does the place look familiar?” Krysty asked, frowning, her long hair coiling tightly in response to her tense nerves.
“They all do, dear lady,” Doc said angrily, thumbing back the hammer on his handcannon, only to gently ease it down again. “I always assumed that was done deliberately as another of their endless defenses. If an enemy force jumped in, they would still have to waste precious time making sure they were at the right location before attacking.”
“The way we do,” J.B. said unhappily.
“Exactly.”
“Shit.”
“Any chance two of them?” Jak asked urgently, watching the shadows in the corner for any suspicious movements.
Askance, Doc raised an eyebrow. “Two? Good Lord, no. You’re looking at about several million dollars’ worth of advanced robotics lying in pieces on the floor. They never even sent one of these after me before. I learned of them only by accident when I was crawling through an air vent in one of their insufferable prisons.”
“That during an escape attempt?” J.B. asked, reaching into a pocket and pulling out half a cigar. He tucked the stogie into his mouth and chewed it into place.
“During one of my many attempted escapes,” Doc corrected, his face going neutral. “They caught me that time, and…punished me severely. Then the scientists decided I was too much trouble, and, well, you know the rest.”
“A hunting probe,” Ryan growled, rubbing his chin. “If the whitecoats didn’t send one after Doc, then we can damn well guess what it was looking for this time.”
“Us. The whole nuking group,” Krysty said grimly, her hair flexing in agitation. “I thought there had been something watching us in the redoubts for a while.”
“Well, they found us at last,” J.B. agreed, tilting back his fedora.
“No, they haven’t,” Mildred corrected, kneeling alongside the broken machine. Fumbling among the wreckage, she lifted a flexible cable into view. “See this? It’s a USB cable, and I don’t see any radio inside the probe.”
Moving the end of the cable closer to the master control board, she point at a USB port set about a foot off the floor. “That’s where this goes,” Mildred stated, holding the cable near the input jack, then she moved it slightly farther away again, just to be safe. “So maybe this droid knows we’re here, but it never got the chance to tell anybody.”
“Mebbe,” Ryan said darkly, his face unreadable. “On the other hand, if
they were here, they’d be using the sec vid cams in the walls and not some fancy robot.”
“So the whitecoats must be in another redoubt.”
“Yeah.”
“Makes sense,” Krysty agreed, looking at the hallway door. “But there’s only one way to be sure.”
Crossing the control room, Ryan went to the exit and yanked open the door. The outside hallway was empty, all of the doors along both sides of the passageway closed as usual. The floor was spotlessly clean, the air from the vents warm and clean, smelling ever so slightly of disinfectant chemicals. Personally, Ryan would have been more comforted by a few scorch marks from explosions and some decaying corpses. A redoubt full of dead he could comprehend. Why the predark mil had removed all of the supplies and left the bases stripped bare had never made any nuking sense.
“Stay triple red, people,” Ryan commanded, proceeding along the hallway. “Chill anything that moves against us.”
* * *
Chapter Four
The desert night air was cool and sweet, scented with the flowers from the nearby cactus grove. The roiling polluted clouds overhead had broken, allowing the crescent moon to shine a silvery light across the landscape, turning the box canyon a stark black and white. The only source of flickering color came from a small cookfire. Squatting around the crackling flames, the four Rogan brothers licked their fingers and wiped greasy mouths on grimy sleeves.
Hawking and spitting on the ground, Alan Rogan cut loose a satisfied belch. “Now that was a good dog.” He chuckled, scratching his belly. “Don’t you think so, bro?”
The elder Rogan scowled at his brother. “Shaddup,” John snapped, tossing a gnawed leg bone onto the fire. The impact stirred up a cloud of red embers that lifted into the air and danced about to float away on the breeze.
Alan frowned. “Hey, I was only—”
“Go water the horses,” John ordered, licking his fingers clean. “This shithole didn’t have anywhere near the number of people we were told. We ride at dawn.”
“Hopefully to a ville with some sluts,” Robert groaned in a horrible, barely human voice. The large bald norm then broke a bone in two and sucked out the dark marrow. A dirty silk scarf was wrapped around his throat, almost hiding a long puckered scar that completely encircled his neck, the classic telltale mark of a hangman’s noose.
Dropping the pieces of bone into the flames, Robert rubbed a greasy hand across his bald head and smiled ruefully. “Been a long time since I showed some gaudy slut the ceiling,” he croaked. “Too goddamn nuking long.”
“We still have the shovel,” Alan said, jerking a thumb at the darkness outside the nimbus of the firelight. “I’m sure if ya really wanted to you could still find the wrinklie. Mebbe the ants haven’t eaten much of her good stuff yet.”
John snorted a laugh at that, but Robert lowered his head as if about to charge like a rampaging bull. “I’d do you before a rotter,” he growled in mock warning.
Without any expression, Alan gestured and knives slipped from his sleeves into each hand. “Any time you wanna try, big brother,” he replied softly, turning the blades slightly so that the feathered edge of the steel reflected the reddish light of the campfire.
Moving back slightly, Robert raised his hands as if in surrender, and Alan now saw that one fist was holding a pipebomb, the fuse smoldering and spitting sparks.
“Come to Poppa,” the bald man snarled, gesturing closer.
“Cut out the fragging drek and get to work,” John ordered, dismissing them both with a wave of his scarred hand. “Alan, the horses. Robert, go spell Ed.”
Grinning broadly, Robert licked two dirty fingers and pinched out the fuse, then pulled the string from the pipebomb and tucked it away into his voluminous jacket. The bomb itself went into a pouch on his belt. “Sure thing. No prob, bro,” he croaked, and stood to walk away into the night.
“Why is he always on my ass like that?” Alan complained, tucking the blades away again. “I was only joking around.”
“He’s bald as a rock, and you got a ponytail down to your balls. Figure it out yourself,” John said, sneering contemptuously. “Now water the fragging horses, or do ya wanna try that knife trick on me?”
Angry, Alan started to shoot back a taunt, but then saw his elder brother’s face and thought better. John was in charge of the gang because he was the smartest, there was no denying that. But also because the other brothers were terrified of him, and there was no denying that, either.
Forcing a smile onto his face, Alan strolled away into the night, kicking at the sand to raise little dust clouds as he moved toward the remaining horses.
As Alan vanished into the gloom, Edward appeared and sat on the ground. Taking a haunch of roasted meat from a rock near the crackling flames, the barrel-chested man started tearing off pieces like a wild mutie. In spite of the cool evening, he had his shirt mostly unbuttoned, and a grisly necklace of shriveled “trophies” hacked off his enemies was clearly visible.
Lighting a handrolled cig, John sucked in the sweet dark smoke of the zoomer, nodding in satisfaction that he finally got the mixture of tobacco, marijuana and wolfweed just right. A little too much of the tobacco and you didn’t get zoned. Too much of the mary and it tasted like drek. Some people chatted about shine as if it had tits and an ass, but weed was the cure for what ailed a man.
“Any more?” Edward demanded as a question, trying to crack the bone apart for the marrow. But the bone splintered in his enormous hands and he cast the greasy mess into the flames. The glowing charcoal sputtered and started to give off thick smoke.
“Nope, we each got a quarter,” John said, letting the zoomer dangle from his lips. “Share and fair alike, as always, bro.”
“I’m bigger,” Edward complained, thumping a fist onto his hairy chest. “I should get more.”
“Would, should, could. Don’t mean shit to me.”
“Ain’t fair,” Edward rumbled dangerously.
Blowing out a smoke ring, John debated getting rough, when there was an unexpected flash of light. For a split tick, he thought he was having a vision from the drugs in the cig. But then the light came again, softer, whiter, and rapidly expanded to fill the entire box canyon as if it was high noon.
“Son of a bitch!” Edward cursed, reaching behind his back and pulling out a short hatchet. “What the hell is this?”
Dropping the zoomer, John rolled backward off the rock he had been sitting on and grabbed the blaster from his bedroll. Clicking back both of the hammers on the double-barrel longblaster, the elder Rogan looked frantically about. The weird light completely filled the box canyon, all the way up to the rocky ridge above. But it seemed to stop there, as if it were a pool filled with shiny water.
Now how the nuking hell can that be possible? You can’t carry a bucket of light! he pondered.
Glancing down, John felt his gut tighten at the sight of no shadows on the ground, not even behind the rocks set around the crackling fire. Experimentally, he tilted a boot, and there was no shadow underneath. That was impossible. Mother-nuking flat-out impossible. Light had to come from somewhere. Air didn’t fragging glow! He paused at that. Actually, yes, it did, but only at the bottom of blast craters thick with rads.
Looking for his brothers, John saw Robert standing over by the truck with the loaded crossbow in his hands, the bald man’s eyes darting about madly. Alan was walking toward the horses…
John blinked and looked again. No. Alan was backing away from the horses, and there was an outlander strolling toward them!
The fellow was slim and pale, and his hair was slicked down flat to his head, the soft face as smooth as a young girl’s. The outlander was wearing some sort of white outfit, kind of like a robe that draped from his shoulders down to the silvery moccasins. Oddly everything he wore was spotlessly clean, damn near looked brand-new. Now, that was weird enough, but even more bizarre was the fact that the outlander didn’t have any weapons. There wasn’t a sign of a blaster, blade o
r a bomb. Yet he was smiling broadly as if he had just won a big hand of poker in a friendly ville.
“Feeb,” Alan whispered, raising both knives.
“Loon,” Edward retorted, leveling his wep.
“Hello, Rogans,” the outlander said with a friendly wave. “My name is Delphi, and we should talk.”
“Frag that,” Robert snorted, frowning at the use of their family name. “Take him!”
Grunting in acknowledgment, Edward instantly fired, the arrow from the crossbow flying straight for the outlander. But a few feet away from the man, it smashed apart in midair, as if hitting a brick wall. The broken pieces tumbled to the sand.
What the nuke? With a snarl, John raised his blaster and cut loose with both barrels, just as Alan jerked his hands forward. But the spray of birdshot and the knives impacted the same invisible barrier around the outlander and ricocheted away.
“Done yet?” Delphi demanded, impatience flashing in his silvery eyes.
This damn mutie is laughing at us, John realized in cold shock. Laughing at the Rogan brothers! As if we were children playing games!
Just then a large rock slammed onto the shield, or whatever it was, around the outlander, and shattered into pieces. Breathing heavily from the exertion, Edward stared at the stranger more in puzzlement than fear.
“Let me know when you’re done,” Delphi said, sounding annoyed. “We have business to discuss.”
Muttering a curse, Robert threw the pipebomb. It landed behind the pale outlander and detonated, the blast throwing out a death cloud of sand, pebbles and iron shrapnel. The entire grove of cactus shook, dropping a hundred pieces of fruit, and just for a single moment there was clearly defined shape around the outlander, some sort of glass ball or transparent sphere. Then the force of the blast faded away, the rolling noise echoing into the open desert.
Not glass, John realized, squeezing his weapon in frustration. But some kind of shield. There was an invisible wall as hard as iron around the newcomer. Was this some form of mutie mind power or predark tech? His bet would be for tech. But there was no way to be sure.