by Mack Maloney
The Spetsnaz soldiers went through the guards' pockets, taking their wallets, watches, radios, and ID badges. They pushed the truck over the other side of the mountain. It landed, out of sight, into a crevice with a dull, almost noiseless thud.
The team quickly reconstituted itself and began moving down the side of the mountain, but not before the squad leader turned to Hunter. He indicated the two unconscious security guards and drew an imaginary knife across his throat
"Execute them quickly," he whispered harshly to Hunter. "Then catch up."
With that, the five Spetsnaz men disappeared down the other side of the mountain, leaving Hunter sitting there, mouth agape.
Damn … now what?
He knew if he didn't hurry and catch up with the others as ordered, they would certainly come back looking for him. And then his cover would be blown. But would that really make any difference? Could he call a halt to the mayhem here, just as he did earlier on the moon that recreated a bizarro version of World War Three? There was no way of knowing. But something told him these Russians would not play along like the last ones did. They seemed too committed, too serious…
On the other hand, there was no way Hunter was going to kill these two security guys, either. Yet he couldn't just leave, as the Spetsnaz might come back and finish the job themselves.
He finally took out his quadtrol and gave it a spin. He asked it the standard questions: Where was the Mad Russian? Where was the next ticket booth? He was surprised that he got a hit. The quadtrol claimed "something of interest" was located almost directly below him. The know-it-all device didn't know quite what; it was processing insufficient data. But it was a ticket booth at the very least — and maybe even the Mad Russian himself.
So now Hunter knew he had to continue this game and indeed join the others.
At this stage, it was probably his only way out of here.
He took off all but the guards' underwear and tossed their clothes over the cliff. Then he ran to catch up with the others.
He practically rolled down the hill, colliding with the squad leader at the bottom. They were now on a sort of plateau, just fifty feet above the northwest edge of the base. The squad leader's ability to mimic the guard's twang came into play when the guard's radio beeped just seconds after Hunter arrived. It was the security HQ calling their men on a routine check. The Spetsnaz officer replied in a near perfect imitation of the man's voice and even ended the conversation with a joke about an upcoming sporting event.
Meanwhile, Hunter did his best in pretending to wipe blood from his hands, hoping to maintain a charade of his own. Then he took up a position next to one of the other special ops soldiers and for the first time saw what was below them. At first it seemed like a road that ended nowhere. It started down by the hangars, ran past the fuel tanks and support buildings, and then… just ended.
But closer inspection told an even stranger tale. The road ran right into the side of the mountain. The Spetsnaz team did not have night scope devices, but oddly enough, they did not need them. Hunter just squinted a little and saw what the others saw. There was a huge door in the side of the rock. It was made of steel, painted to blend in, but it was a door nevertheless.
And this is where it got very weird for Hunter — if in fact this whole escapade could get any weirder. Because at that moment, he had a kind of convergence of both his previous lives. This door — he'd seen it before, or at least something very much like it. And this secret place — suddenly he knew what that was all about, too.
Way back when he first discovered himself in the seventy-third century and was brought to Earth to eventually win the prestigious Earth Race, one of his prizes was a tour of a place not unlike this. One big valuable secret, hidden away, under the tightest guard imaginable in a mountain in the western desert of present-day Earth.
But back in the time period he'd originally come from, the twentieth century, there was also a very secret place in the western desert of America.
It was called Area 51.
That's where he was now, or at least the dizzylando version of it. Top Secret air base then.
The home of the Big Generator now.
How freakin'strange is that?
The Spetsnaz squad stole down to the door — it was obviously their first objective — and very quickly attached a strip of plastic explosive to its huge right-side hinges. Incredibly there was an explosion with virtually no flash and absolutely no noise.
The door conveniently blew to one side for them. They rushed in, weapons up, the squad leader in front, Hunter, as usual, taking up the rear. They were suddenly running inside a very dark tunnel. It smelled of grease and spilled jet fuel. It had a sharp slope, and more than once Hunter almost wound up on his ass, losing his balance on the slippery surface. The deeper they ran, the stranger the sounds they could hear coming from below. They were very eerie. And not entirely mechanical. They almost sounded organic. Pulsating, pounding, there was also the element of human screams mixed in somewhere. With each step, these unnerving sounds became louder and louder, not unlike the sound effects back in Ping's Palace. Just a whole lot creepier.
The Spetsnaz guys knew what they were doing; Hunter caught himself imagining that they had practiced this assault many times before. Perhaps in a mock-up. (But then again, this whole place was a mock-up!) They came to several TV cameras hanging in the tunnel. Without breaking stride one iota, the Spetsnaz soldiers expertly shot them off the wall. Any security detectors they came to suffered the same fate.
This went on for what seemed like a long time, though probably only a few minutes. They were getting deeper and deeper into the base of the mountain. The weird sounds grew louder, as the air grew colder. Hunter kept up with the Spetsnaz soldiers but kept looking over his shoulder every few seconds, wondering when he was going to see someone coming after them.
They eventually reached another huge door. Again, the Spetsnaz guys barely stopped. They threw their explosive charges at it, and it blew off its binges just as they reached its threshold — a rather fantastic circumstance to Hunter's mind. Running past the blown apart door, they slid into a huge room and finally came to a stop.
This place was better described as a chamber. Its walls seemed covered in silver and gold. It was filled with computers and control panels and lights flashing on and off. A Klaxon began blaring as soon as they arrived, but a fusillade from the team leader's assault weapon silenced it as quickly as it had started. Sitting in the middle of the chamber seemed to be what the Russians had come for.
It was a flying vehicle of some sort. Hat, ovalish, with two very small winglets on its tail, and a very small canopy on its front. Hunter was stunned again. This, too, he recognized, though it took him a moment to realize why. Hat. Silver. Tiny wings, tiny top. Way back… during the mind ring trip he took to explore the devious origins of the Fourth Empire, in one version of how it all began, a vehicle just like this had crashed into a place called Kelly's Hollow, the site recognized by most as the birthplace of the First Empire.
But how could this be? Why was its re-creation here? What was the connection? Or was there any connection at all?
He had about two seconds to think about all this when he suddenly realized this was not their prize at all. While he stood gawking at the strange aircraft, his comrades were busy blowing yet another door off its hinges. This time the explosion was loud and violent, but that did not slow the Spetsnaz men one bit. They flowed through the new opening, and Hunter was compelled to follow.
Down they went again, deeper and deeper into the ground, through the long, spiraling tube. More weird noises. More slippery ground. More security cameras blown from their stations. They came to another door. It was gone in another brilliant flash. They stumbled into another chamber, but this one was as different as one could imagine from the one before. There was no silver or gold or any wild flying vehicles here. This place was dark, scary. Full of shadows and ghosts.
And yet, once again, it was a place t
hat Hunter recognized. Indeed, he'd been here before, too. On his tour after winning the Earth Race, they brought him to the sacred place where the Big Generator itself was located. And this was a perfect re-creation of that place. But that time, the Big Generator was here, and it was a large black piece of stone, or something that looked like stone. It was imposing and mysterious and really didn't strike Hunter at the time as being able to generate anything. Yet it was the most holy stone of the entire Galaxy, and it was from it, so the Em-pirists claimed, that all power and knowledge sprang forth.
Though he was now in almost the exact same room, there was no intimidating obelisk here. No Big Generator. Instead, in the middle of the rather musty, dirty room was a device so small Hunter could have held it in his hands. He couldn't help but go over to it, touch it, and indeed pick it up. And strangely enough — and here it got funny again — the device was a generator. An old, disconnected, drained-of-oil electrical generator. Something that could provide power to nothing more elaborate than a fork truck or a car, or maybe a small static machine of some sort back on old Earth.
Hunter would have laughed if it hadn't been so absolutely fucking weird.
Another door was blown off, and their descent into madness continued. This time the tunnel was steeper, darker, slipperier. Four TV cameras were blown from their mountings; another Klaxon was silenced. Again at the end of the pack, Hunter was running with his head turned, expecting at any time to see an army of security guards coming around the corner they'd just turned. At this point, in fact, he wouldn't have been surprised to see a bunch of tin soldiers with buckethead helmets chasing him. That's how crazy things had become.
At last they came to the final door. This one was big and black and looked stronger and thicker than the rest by a factor of ten. The Spetsnaz soldiers unloaded all their explosives and quickly placed them around the huge portal. This would not be a blow and go. They had to take cover for this one. The squad leader touched the trigger terminals, and indeed there was a fantastically huge explosion. The door came off.
Another deeper chamber lay beyond.
And finally, they found what they were looking for. Sitting in the middle of this hall was a perfectly round, gleaming flying saucer.
"Damn…" Hunter said out loud.
He'd seen one of these things before, too.
Before he could take another breath, all the Russian soldiers turned to him, and the squad leader said: "You do know how to fly this thing, don't you?"
But Hunter never got to answer. Suddenly, a bullet went through his back, hit three of his ribs, and exited through his collarbone, making it impossible for him to speak. An instant later, a second bullet went through his arm and out his stomach. A third punctured his thigh. He was spun around by the force of these bullets to see that the small army of security men he'd feared was on their tail had finally materialized from within the smoke of the blown-away door. Leading the charge were the two security guards he'd left up on the mountain, still in their underwear. They were the ones who'd shot him.
The gunfight that broke out now was ferocious. Bullets were suddenly flying everywhere, bouncing off the walls, the ceiling, even the flying saucer. Hunter was down on the oily floor in a heap, feeling like he had a couple tons of concrete pressing on his chest. Could he be killed here, in this fantasy world? The answer, bleeding out of his body right now, seemed to be a very frightening yes.
He started crawling away, feeling the heat of bullets zinging by him. He crawled past the Russian soldiers who were firing madly at the security guards. They ignored him as he dragged his near lifeless body by them, leaving a sickening trail of blood in his wake.
He somehow found the strength to reach into his pocket and retrieve his quadtrol. It was his one and only hope. He managed to turn on the device and tried to hang on as it searched desperately for the ticket booth. He actually felt his heart leap as the screen indicated that it lay just "beyond the next door."
He spotted the only other door in the chamber and crawled over to it. Bullets still flying all over, he reached up to its handle, only to find it was locked. This took just about the last of his energy out of him. Never before had he felt so weak.
He didn't have enough strength to breathe, never mind try to get the door open. But then serendipity — or part of the program of this place. A fusillade of bullets went over his head and snapped the door neatly in two. One half of it fell away, the other half fell right on top of Hunter. Now it felt like three tons of concrete were pressing down on him, instead of just two.
He never stopped crawling, though. He made it inside the room and suddenly found himself staring up at a stereotypical ticket booth. Cramped interior. Fake wood. The PC sitting as always right in the middle. Hunter was losing blood and breath. He had no time to admire the strange location of the place. He dragged himself to the PC table, lifted himself up to it, and started the painful process of booting up. It took longer than usual — and all this was happening as the gun battle was drawing closer to the tiny room.
Finally he faced the last field. The one that asked about his hobby. He barely had the strength to type it in.
Then, with the last ounce of life in his body, he pushed the Enter button.
8
"Let me take care of that stain, sir…"
Hunter watched in dazed confusion as the girl in the very low-cut dress began wiping the blood from his chest.
There is nothing more exhilarating than getting shot at with no result. Someone famous had once said that. But at the moment Hunter was more stunned than exhilarated. It was dark. He was barely aware of his surroundings. One moment, he was pushing the Enter button on the old PC. The next, he was here — wherever here. was.
He tried his best to get his wits about him. He was seated at a wooden table, an old gas lamp burning dimly in front of him. He could hear choppy piano music rising behind him, its song boisterous and off key. But his vision was still blurry, and the oil lamp was doing him no good. He could just make out the pair of partially exposed breasts just inches in front of his face.
Am I dying — or not?
This was the only question on Hunter's mind.
He blinked his eyes, and when he opened them again, his vision began to clear. The woman in the low-cut dress was dressed like a saloon hall girl. She'd stuck the hem of her short black skirt into a glass of water and was wiping Hunter's shirt again.
"California red wine," she was saying. "Good thing it's cheap. It won't stain too much if you catch it in time."
Hunter looked down at the table again and saw a wineglass tipped over and a small pool of red wine in front of him. And some of it had splashed on him. In fact, the red stains coincided exactly with where he'd been shot just seconds earlier: up near his shoulder. On his chest. Down on his thigh.
The bar girl began aggressively attacking the stain on his pants.
"I'm sorry, partner," she was telling him. "I'll get you another glass…"
That's when Hunter finally patted himself down — and much to his surprise, found his body free of bullet holes.
"Can you make it a whiskey?" he asked her with a croak.
"Anything for you, honey."
"How about a double then…"
She departed into the blur. Hunter leaned back and prayed that she would return with something stronger than colored water.
His body was still shaking, his brain felt like it was pounding its way out of his skull. He checked his body again. No blood. No wounds. No perforations anywhere. Just some wine stains.
He finally slumped back in his chair and let out a long, low whistle of relief. That had been too freaking scary.
But where the hell was he now? If there had been a sign at the last ticket booth announcing the next ride, he'd missed it during what he thought were the last few moments of his life. So he had not even a hint of his new reality. But soon enough, he began spotting clues.
He was back in his combat suit, and he had his old flight boots on agai
n. But his crash helmet was hanging off the back of his chair. He felt another kind of hat on his head. He took it off and studied it. It was big and broad with its rim turned up in either side. He'd seen one of these before somewhere. He looked at the inside label. It read, Made in Texas. 10 Gallon — Wide Band. Everyone around him was wearing the same kind of hat.
He was in a saloon. A huge one. His table was just one of 200 or more. The bar itself seemed to stretch off into infinity. It was crowded with rowdy drinkers dressed in dirty pants, muddy boots, and long overcoats he knew were called dusters. Across from the bar was a stage. Several girls not unlike the one who'd just cleaned him up were doing a hideous dance that most closely resembled the odd ballet the girls in front of Ping's Palace had been performing.
The music was coming from an ancient upright piano jammed into the corner of the stage. The man playing it looked drunker than the patrons at the bar. He also had an arrow sticking right through his derby hat. If it was real, then it was probably sticking right through his skull, too. But this didn't seem to have any effect on his playing. It was awful, but earnest. Strangely, right above his piano was a huge red star.
The saloon hall girl returned to Hunter's table. "Sorry sir, but we are out of whiskey," she said. "Would you like a glass of vodka instead?"
She put the drink in front of him before he could even reply. He drank it greedily. It looked like water, but it tasted like gasoline, burning his gullet all the way down. At last! Real booze!
The vodka made him relax. His head cleared enough for him to think a bit more rationally. He'd just made his escape in the nick of time from the Alien Mystery World. He shook off any thoughts of what might have happened if he hadn't made it into the ticket booth when he did. He took another long slug of the vodka, finishing the glass. He signaled the attentive bar girl for another. The music began to rise again. The patrons along the rail were becoming more rowdy. The girls on the stage continued dancing very provocatively. His second drink arrived. Hunter downed it on one gulp. He asked for a third.