gamma world Red Sails in the Fallout

by Paul Kidd

  They searched the long wing lined with rooms and found them to be empty except for some disintegrating mattresses and surprisingly sturdy sheets that might make good sails for the Sand Shark. But in the dormitory section, Shaani made her great find. There, just lying on a table, there was a small handheld computer. She leaned over to pick it up and wiped the dust from the screen. The computer instantly blossomed into life.

  “Greetings, Officer Kierkegaard. Welcome to Tinder Plus Plus, your reading system of choice.”

  The thing had a voice. Shaani stared. “Um, hello.”

  “Do you wish to access reader memory?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Memory currently empty. Officer Kierkegaard, you have one credit left in the base library. What book do you select?”

  “Show me a menu.”

  The handheld unit’s screen filled with the titles of books.

  Shaani skimmed her finger along a menu. When she touched the screen, the images on the computer changed. She was most impressed. “Spiffy.”

  In the nonfiction section, a title seemed to leap out at her. She nodded in satisfaction. “Computer, can I load the Terran Trade Authority, Student’s Encyclopedia?”

  “You may, Officer Kierkegaard.”

  “Please load the encyclopedia.”

  The unit in her hand hummed briefly, and it was done. Shaani felt a surge of sheer excitement. She lifted up the hand unit and spoke into the screen. “Open encyclopedia.”

  The unit’s voice was calm. “Open.”

  “Show me … ooh, start with ‘A.’ Show me … alcohol distillation techniques.”

  “Provide security ID.”

  Shaani touched the side of the screen with a bracelet. “There you go.”

  “Confirmed.” The little screen showed video of giant steel vats attended by human workers. It was real footage of real people from oh-so-long ago. “Alcohol distillation techniques. Choose basic primer or advanced menu.”

  “Basic primer.”

  She skimmed text while ancient video told her stories. There was a history of brewing in ancient times; details of the chemical formula; then actual recipes for distillation of ethanol, methanol, beer, cider …

  It was going to be so damned useful. It was the treasure of a lifetime. Shaani hugged the thing to her heart in joy. From across the way, Xoota looked at her and raised one brow.

  “Happy?”

  “Science.” The rat was overjoyed. “What could be happier?”

  “This place seems weird to me. Given all the security outside, I expected there to be more on the inside. There is no evidence of what we saw on the screens earlier. It’s completely empty, all except for two energy cells lying in the dust.” She held them up then put them in her bag. The quoll looked around the dormitory.

  “I think this was a prison. This is the guard’s quarters; the other sections are cells.”

  It made sense. Shaani emerged from flicking starry-eyed through her new computer book screen, turning the old computer off. “That’s a jolly fine hypothesis.” She, too, looked around. “I can’t see much evidence of any prisoners.”

  “Well, maybe it was empty?” Xoota suddenly felt her antennae jerk. She got a flash of futures flicking past, filled with fire and blood. She whirled, her heart racing.

  “Where’s Benek?”

  Everyone was supposed to be in pairs. Rustle and Wig-wig were at the dormitory kitchen, thieving spatulas and cutlery. But Benek was gone. Xoota ran into the main central chamber. It was empty but the door to the E wing was somehow clean of dust. The quoll raced forward. Through the transparent door to the other wing, she could see Benek inspecting the pillar with its strange blue column of light. He was pushing buttons on a control panel at the top of the pillar.

  “Benek. No!”

  He touched a button, and the blue pillar of light suddenly shut off. The metal cube suspended in midair tumbled to the ground and split open. A sizzling flash of electricity scored into the floor. All the screens on the upper level suddenly screamed with static.

  Benek fell. On his belt, his handheld computer game scorched and sizzled. Electricity sparked. And just as suddenly as they had gone static, the screens showed a cascade of numbers and images.

  A female voice spoke calmly from the ceiling. “Security alert. Security alert. Artificial Intelligence prisoner J-31 has breached stasis containment. Security alrr—Scrity alerrr—” The voice warped horribly and ground to a halt.

  The screens around the upper level all lit with the opening screen of Benek’s computer game. The computer voice became harsh and grating. “Destroy all mutants. All must be cleansed.”

  A large gun suddenly popped out of the ceiling. It whirred around and aimed itself right between Xoota’s eyes.

  The quoll’s antennae fell.

  “Oh, kack …”

  CHAPTER 12

  Xoota felt the thing before it could fire, sensed the shot, and lunged forward. She came up with her pistol out of its sheath. She fired and missed but blasted a hole in the ceiling. She cursed and dived again as a shot from above struck her armor. She was protected but the force hammered her hard into the ground.

  Shaani leveled a hand and fired a blast of electricity straight into the gun. The weapon shorted out. “Xoota!” Shaani ran to Xoota’s side.

  Doors slammed as the different wings sealed off and gas started to hiss from the ceilings. Shaani fished for her respirator and yanked it into place on Xoota’s face before the gas could fill the main chamber. She held her breath while Xoota breathed then took the mask for a few quick breaths herself. Xoota had left her own gas mask back on the ship.

  Rustle wrenched open the dormitory doors. Wig-wig scampered through; neither seemed affected by the gas. Xoota, holding the gas mask with one hand, pointed to the E wing door with her other. Rustle ambled off and wormed his tendrils into the door cracks then wrenched the doors slowly apart. Wig-wig bustled into the corridor beyond like a living carpet, wriggled beneath Benek, and carried the man out onto the main room.

  The computer roared in a garbled, shattered voice. “All mutants must be purged.”

  Long, metal tentacles flailed out of a panel in the wall, reaching for Shaani. The rat ducked quickly enough that the tentacles missed her by a centimeter, plunging clean through a chair behind her. The rat immediately fled upstairs, away from Xoota and the gas mask.

  The tentacles turned on Xoota, but the quoll managed to get her shield up on her arm. She shoved a flailing tentacle away then fired with her pistol. The beam flickered then died but not before it clipped one of the tentacles, cutting it into a madly lashing stump. Xoota tried to fire again, but the pistol did nothing. She dodged against a wall as the remaining tentacles tried to smash her from above.

  Upstairs on the balcony, Shaani found a computer terminal, pulled the cover off, and jammed her hand in among the workings. Raw voltage shot from her hand, right into the base computer network. Screens sparked. Machinery fried. The lights flickered and blinked. And the computer terminals all abruptly shut off. Shaani staggered back, unable to hold her breath any longer. She breathed gas, choking and coughing, then fell to the floor.

  The tentacles that Xoota had been fighting lay limp and dead. The base computer systems were fried. Still wearing her gas mask, Xoota raced up, grabbed the rat, and threw her over her shoulder like a sack of roots. She led Rustle and Wig-wig to the elevator, where Rustle hauled open the doors. With no way to make the elevator run. Xoota pulled the old battery out of her pistol and reloaded with one of the power cells she’d picked up earlier. She fired the pistol three times into the floor.

  Half the floor smashed clean open. The edges of the hole were red hot and molten. Xoota looked down, picked her spot, then jumped. She rolled free of the elevator in case it suddenly moved to smash her flat and made a quick assessment of the antechamber.

  No guns. They were safe for the moment.

  Wig-Wig flew down to join her, and Rustle awkwardly lowered Benek
and Shaani down. Both of them were breathing but unconscious. While Rustle squeezed himself down the hole in the elevator floor, Xoota ran forward to the outer door to carefully check the scene outside.

  Again, her senses warned her with a quick look at an awful future. Xoota jerked to a halt and flattened herself inside the door frame. She drew a knife and used it as a mirror to look out into the world beyond.

  Energy beams hit the door frame, vaporizing metal and sending out an unholy mess of heat. Xoota’s knife melted and she dropped it in shock. Outside the door, the security robot’s voice snarled and roared.

  “Purge the mutants. Establish an empire of purity.” The robot fired again. Concrete blew apart in a storm of energy fire. “The minions of G.I.A.N.T. will be destroyed. The purity of mechanism shall overcome the mutations of the flesh.”

  Sheltering away from the glowing hot wall, Xoota blinked in shock and looked at Wig-wig.

  “Greatest Insect of All Nature and Time.” Wig-wig risked a peek about the corner. “I can has high score on Benek’s game.”

  “Oh, lovely.” Xoota tried to poke a stick around the corner, but it was instantly shot to pieces. She tried two sticks; they were shot to pieces a split second apart, one after another. At least the robot could only target a single foe at once.

  “Wig-wig. Do you still have Officer Kierkegaard’s helmet?”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “Give it to Rustle.” Xoota felt at the back of her belt. “Rustle, when I say ‘go,’ you throw that helmet out through the door as far as you can.” Xoota readied herself. “Okay? Ready … steady … go.”

  The huge plant flung the helmet out into the grounds. Energy beams flashed, missing the helmet then hitting it hard. Xoota was already leaning around the door. She flung her magical go-away stick at the robot, the fuse ticking busily away. The grenade, hit the pavement, was missed by a snap shot from the robot, and landed, clanging, at the robot’s base.

  The magical go-away stick exploded in a brilliant flash. The ground shook. The instant the flash had passed, Xoota hurled herself around the corner.

  The robot was broken open and spitting sparks. Its tentacles still thrashed wildly back and forth. Xoota flung herself on the robot with her mighty cog mace. She battered the robot’s cranium to pieces.

  “Die. Die, you gravy-sucking pig.”

  The robot made a high-pitched noise and ceased to move. Xoota jumped up and down on its innards for good measure. Suddenly the machinery began to smoke. The quoll sped away, and the robot detonated with a sullen bang.

  Red hot scrap metal showered the grass. Grass fires instantly flared up all around the prison.

  It was time to go. Xoota holstered her pistol and led the way. The fence stood dead and deactivated; the gun position atop the prison seemed to have shorted out. There was decidedly no loot to be had there. Annoyed, tired, singed, and furious at Benek, Xoota collected the teleporters and led the way back to the ship.

  When Benek came to, he was in the hold, unarmored and with his hands clamped behind him with the orange prison restraints. He was secured to a ring bolt in the deck. Xoota sat on a box of dried insect sticks on the far side of the hold, her crossbow in her lap and a sheaf of photographs in her hand.

  Her face definitely did not look happy.

  “Hello, Benek.”

  He said nothing. He merely glowered at the quoll with malice.

  For her part, Xoota lounged back and sifted through the photographs. “So I wondered. I mean, a genetically modified superhuman in a world full of mutants. No powers, no alphas, no weirdness. Just pure, slathering, ursoid muscle and easy-to-manage hair …” She flicked through photos. “I’m sure the ‘perfect brides’ idea is appealing. But surely there must be at least one or two human women somewhere in the desert? Why go all this way? What is so damned important about this starport?

  “And then we found this.”

  There were other printouts, pictures that had been hidden deep in Benek’s baggage, pictures of massive, armored suits designed to equip human behemoths armed with energy weapons that could make a mockery out of crossbows and spears.

  “This is what you want, isn’t it? An ancient armory. Enough firepower to conquer half the planet.”

  Benek remained silent.

  Xoota dropped the photographs to the floor. “Who are you working with?”

  The man looked at her with pure scorn. “That is not the concern of beasts.”

  She left him there, secured in the hold, and took the ladder back to the deck.

  The ship was heeling in the wind, heading southeast with the sea breeze in her sails. Shaani was lying on the copilot’s chair in the control cabin with Wig-wig bustling back and forth. Rustle loomed just outside the door and helpfully licked her face in a weird attempt at first aid. The rat blinked, winced, then winced again as a long, gooey plant tongue licked her up and down.

  “Eww.” She blinked. “I feel sullied and unusual.” She opened bleary eyes and coughed. “What happened?”

  Xoota was ready with iced tea and a scone.

  “Benek freed some sort of machine intelligence.”

  “I know that.” The rat put a hand to her head. “I mean what happened after I got gassed?”

  “Ah.” Xoota wiped the rat’s brow with a cool cloth. “Well, the computers and electronics inside the building were all fried. The machine intelligence transferred to the security robot outside. We had to finally get rid of it with the magic go-away stick.” Xoota shrugged. “We survived.”

  “And how is Benek?”

  “Yes,” Xoota’s mood was dire. “Let me tell you about our friend Benek …”

  The ship was pretty much driving itself across a flat section of plains. Xoota sat and shared tea with Shaani, discussing Benek’s apparent plans for world domination and the likelihood that his “perfect brides” had ever even existed. Shaani sighed unhappily. She had no idea how to deal with people on that sort of level. Benek was outside her real realm of expertise.

  “Thank you, Wig-wig. My headache is finally going away.” She gratefully drank her tea. “What do you think we should do now?”

  The quoll sucked her fangs in indecision. “No idea.”

  “Well, unfortunately we can’t keep our agreement with Benek. I’m certainly not furthering any plans for world domination by the self-elected genetically pure.”

  “Yep.” Xoota thrashed her tail. “But oddly enough that starport is too important a find to just ignore. It might have all sorts of tools we could use.”

  The rat smiled knowingly. “Ah, treasure.”

  “No, no—tools. And … research … and stuff.” The quoll was quick to protest. “We can’t just sail back to Watering Hole empty-handed.”

  It was getting close to evening. The sun was almost at the horizon. It had been a rather eventful day.

  Shaani sat up on her chair and looked sideways at the quoll. “Well, you’re right, of course. We should investigate. A starport could be a treasure house of knowledge.” She heaved a sigh. “We need to go there, if only to destroy that armory.” Shaani lifted a finger. “People can’t all be lab rats, you know. They can’t be trusted with that sort of firepower.”

  Xoota shrugged. That part was negotiable. Personally, she wouldn’t say no to having a suit of powered armor in the hold for emergencies. “We’ll have to keep Benek restrained until we’ve checked the place over and are well away.”

  “I suppose so. And if we find any brides … well, he can have them as per our original agreement.” Shaani tried getting to her feet, but she wobbled unsteadily. “That gas has left me damnedly wonky.”

  “No, no, we’re going over some sort of rocky rubble.” Xoota headed for a hilltop. “Shall we head for the starport?”

  “Let’s shall.”

  The ship was heading south as they looked for a pass through the eastern hills. They kept on sailing until sunset spread calm and magnificent across the sky. They halted the ship atop a hill with a fine field of fire
all around and settled down to enjoy the evening in peace.

  Shaani took the midnight watch. It was a peaceful time. She needed to make some more gun cotton, which meant distilling some acid. There were also two new plastic suits of armor to examine. But best of all, there was Shaani’s brand-new toy, something her rat ancestors must have designed as an education aid. And it would perform that noble function once again. Shaani sat down and pulled out her new computer reader, turned it on, and settled down to read.

  But where to begin?

  “Computer—hmm, show me … basic electronics.”

  “Basic electronics. Please select menu—history or practical lessons.”

  “History first, please.”

  The videos and comments had only just begun to run when a flash disturbed the darkness out on the plains. The light was so quick and bright, it scarred an impression onto Shaani’s eyes. She looked blankly around the darkness to the west then saw a violet streak of light that flickered somewhere on the plains.

  Then again and again.

  Shaani went to the cabin and shook Xoota awake. “Something’s happening.”

  Xoota lunged awake and reached for her clothes.

  The two women climbed into the rigging. There were grass fires many kilometers distant over the plains, but they saw no more weird, violet flashes. It had been energy weapons fire, Shaani was sure of it. Someone out there was in trouble.

  The rat carefully watched the distant fires. “Do you think you can steer us in the dark?”

  Xoota looked aloft. There was a decent moon in the sky. It made the shadow sides of the hills jet black, but the crests were silvered with ghostly light. She checked the wind meter. “I think so, if we’re careful. Get the others up, raise sails, and we’ll go. Keep the lights off so we’re harder to spot.”

  First Xoota and Shaani loaded the catapult. They locked a bomb in place on the rails then went to rouse Wig-wig and Rustle from their slumber.

  Under headsails and mainsail, the ship slid slowly through the dark of night. The wheels were almost silent. Shaani stayed up in the rigging with Xoota’s broken binoculars and Benek’s confiscated night goggles, carefully searching the darkness. They kept on rolling silently through the night. The wind whispered in the rigging; the wheels rumbled softly in the grass. The distant grass fires continued for a while, disappearing from view as the ship rode up and down the rolling plans. The fires spread wide, driven into the west by the winds and burning out slowly as they reached the sparser sand. But vast square kilometers of grass had been consumed, and black smoke choked off all view of the stars.