by Axler, James
"Shit…" She threw herself away from the strangely shaped gren, which was oblong with a squared end and unlike anything she'd ever seen before. Not that it mattered—a gren was a gren. It didn't have to be just one shape to be able to chill you.
J.B. appeared in the chamber doorway, holding his Uzi, preferring its accuracy to the less controlled M-4000, which could hit the rest of his party as easily as any enemy sec men.
"Gas gren of some kind. Try to cover your mouths, breathe as shallow as possible," he yelled, pulling a kerchief from one of his pockets and thrusting it over his nose and mouth.
A pale white mist, similar to that preceding a jump, started to infuse the room. It had no smell, but an immediate effect. Ryan felt his eye mist with tears as the gas pricked at it.
"Fireblast! Need to get the hell out of here." His words came slowly. It seemed as though his brain were cut off from his body, the thoughts traveling miles to reach limbs that felt heavy and leaden. The SIG seemed to weigh more than usual, the weight dragging his arm down.
The others were now out in the room, and they seemed to be moving in slow motion.
"Nerve gas. They must be able to seal the room— otherwise the air-conditioning system would spread it through the whole place." Mildred gasped out the words, trying hard to breathe shallow as she sunk to her hands and knees. "John, they must want us alive. Why?" She collapsed unconscious as she forced out the question, trying to look around for the Armorer.
J.B. was close to the floor, figuring that the gas would rise, being lighter than air, and that the air nearer the ground would be clearer, at least giving him a chance of staying conscious long enough to see what their captors looked like.
Ryan was on the floor beside him. Both men were struggling to stay conscious. J.B. swum in and out of focus in Ryan's good eye.
"Well organized. Not crazy muties for sure. Precise, like well-drilled sec men," the Armorer forced out.
It sounded to Ryan as if J.B. were talking in slow motion, the words drawn out and distorted. Blackness closed in at the edge of his vision, as if he were entering a long, dark tunnel.
The Armorer was the last one to pass out. He didn't last long enough to see the door open.
WHEN J.B. OPENED his eyes again, he found that he was staring at the ceiling of a dorm. Hauling himself onto the edge of the bed, he could see that all six of his companions were laid out on the beds, as well. It was one of the smaller sleepers in a redoubt, usually accommodating only four beds. But even with the extra three beds, there was still room to move around and stretch aching muscles. Outside the closed door, he could hear distant activity. From the sound of it, a large number of people inhabited the redoubt.
Figuring it a certainty that they were heavily guarded on the outside, he looked around for a sec camera like the one Jak had spotted above the chamber door. The dorms didn't usually have them, but then this was obviously no ordinary redoubt.
The sec camera was above the door, pivoting on a bracket and covering the entire room in a sweep. The only blind spot would be right up against the door, which was next to useless. Its steadily flashing red light showed that somebody was watching them.
A quick search of his pockets while he gained his equilibrium on the edge of the bed showed the Armorer that his pockets had been stripped of all ammunition, and that his knife had also been taken. That his blasters would have been taken from him he had assumed as a matter of course.
He stood and found that his muscles were sluggish, and that his arms and legs felt as though all the tendons had been sliced through. Pain lanced through them, and they failed to respond immediately.
His first, tentative steps were toward Mildred. She was still out cold, as he could see when he thumbed back her eyelid to reveal the eyeball rolled up in the socket. At his touch she moaned slightly and shifted in her deep sleep.
Moving with increasing ease and speed among the rest of the party, J.B. was able to determine that all of them were still unconscious. Jak's coat and knives had been taken from him, as had Ryan's SIG-Sauer and panga. Both Dean and Doc had also lost their blasters.
But surprisingly they had neglected to take Doc's swordstick from him. The dark ebony cane with the silver lion's head looked like a walking stick from pre-dark days, and perhaps their captors had assumed it was an aid to the old man. He had already seen that Ryan still had his scarf wound around his neck. It was heavily weighted at the ends, and was a deceptively useful stealth weapon. It, too, also had the advantage of seeming to be innocuous.
Two weapons left, then. Their first mistake. That was encouraging. If there was one error, then there would be the opportunity for others.
Suddenly feeling overcome with a wave of exhaustion, J.B. made his way back to his own bed, trying not to show surprise at the discovery of Doc's swordstick.
He sat on the edge of the bed and took a deep breath, which sawed his lungs.
"Dark night," he croaked through dry lips, "what was in that gren?"
He figured that he had awakened first because he had managed to avoid gulping as much of the gas as the others. And yet it had still had this effect on him…how would the others feel when they began to come around?
He took off his wire-rimmed spectacles and polished them with his kerchief. Their captors knew he was awake. They'd figure the others wouldn't be far behind. And they'd know that they wouldn't be in any condition for a fight.
The only thing to do right now was sit it out.
BY THE ARMORER'S wrist chron, it was just over fifteen minutes before Ryan stirred.
"Feel like a nuke shit in a pox-riddled gaudy house," he muttered in a low, quiet voice, forcing his eye open.
He still felt as if he were separated from his body. His eye focused on J.B., sitting on the edge of his bed.
"Effects take a little while to wear off. Feels like you've had every tendon in your body severed and then soldered back together. Otherwise it's not too bad."
Ryan forced a smile. A joke from J.B. was a rare thing, and could only mean that his old friend had the situation as assessed and secured as was humanly possible. Ryan's hand instinctively slipped down to his waist and leg, feeling for the panga, touching only the empty sheath.
"They took everything. Only left Doc his walking stick." J.B. spoke carefully, indicating with a slight tilt of his fedora the sec camera behind him.
Ryan took it in at a glance. He didn't know whether they could be heard, as well as seen, but he wasn't taking any chances with predark technology that was in the hands of people who obviously knew how to use it.
Krysty moaned as she raised her head behind them. J.B. repeated his warning about the aftereffects of the gas gren.
"Gaia! This and a jump in the same day… It's no wonder I feel like a herd of mutie pigs has trampled over every bone in my body."
"Tell me about it, girl," Mildred murmured as she began to tentatively move her own limbs.
Jak had obviously taken in more of the gas, as it was some time before he recovered consciousness, during which time Dean had opened his eyes.
"Anyone know who did this?" Jak asked finally, shaking his head to clear his vision. "Tell me and I chill with pleasure."
Only Doc remained unconscious. Mildred grabbed her backpack and went over to him. In addition to bits of cloth used as bandages, it usually contained medical supplies traded at villes or plundered from redoubts and ruined sites across Deathlands. The bag now revealed itself to be empty.
"Shit. Whoever they are, they've taken everything."
"Figured they would. The bastards are thorough." J.B. pushed his fedora back on his head. "Mostly," he added.
Mildred felt Doc's pulse, which raced out of control. The old man was sweating and moaning, his REM making his eyelids twitch uncontrollably. The physician cursed the people who held them, and cursed the Deathlands. Why had they taken the few medical supplies she had?
"Is he going to be okay?" Dean asked. "He doesn't look too good."
"I wond
er how much more he can take," Krysty added.
"So do I. It's hard enough to figure out what's happened to his metabolism anyway, without the stresses of a mat-trans jump and a nerve-gas gren adding to it in such quick succession."
She was still holding Doc's wrist when his slack hand suddenly made a grab for her arm, holding it tightly with a strength belied by his skinny frame. His eyes opened wide, staring glassily into the light above her.
"Ah, Emily, my dear. Is it teatime already? I fear I am studying too hard, as I seem to fall into the arms of Morpheus far too quickly. So tired… Tell me, did you toast me a muffin, and is there honey for tea? I promise that I will take you and the children for a picnic when the weather improves enough."
Doc's rambling didn't disguise the click of the door as it opened behind them.
Ryan turned slowly. No need to turn quickly and make jumpy trigger fingers itch on their blasters.
A man and a woman stood just inside the room. Both sec guards held 9 mm Heckler & Koch MP-5 K blasters, with the casual air of the regular user who was used to little opposition. Light grip, ready to brace and tighten on the trigger in an instant. They felt they didn't have to keep on the alert, as the blasters would take out the closely gathered group in front of them with ease.
In Deathlands you always kept on the alert or got chilled.
Ryan noted it as mistake number two.
Chapter Three
"Is there any point in asking where you're taking us?" Ryan asked as they exited the room.
"Shut up and walk," Murphy replied, a smile playing across his face.
His captain reveled in having the upper hand. Ryan could see that it made him sloppy. The Heckler & Koch was pointing downward at an angle of about sixty degrees. It would take him precious fractions of a second to level it.
The corridor was a typical redoubt corridor. Long, with a dull floor and walls broken only by the installation of vanadium-steel sec doors.
It was bizarre to see shuffling figures attending to maintenance tasks. One man was mopping the floor; another had the control panel off a sec door and was staring blankly at the wires, as though trying to remember why he had taken it off in the first place.
"John, is it me or is this ridiculous?" Mildred whispered from the side of her mouth to the Armorer, who was walking slowly beside her. "They call this an armed guard?"
"They're either triple stupe or it's a trap of some kind," J.B. replied. "Problem is, I can't figure out what kind of trap."
"Or why… I'll go for the stupe option. Maybe they just need to get out more."
Panner heard the whispered conversation and yelled, "Hey, shut the fuck up, you black bitch. And you, four-eyes."
Mildred's lips tightened, and J.B. could feel her body tense beside him. Not that he was exactly pleased at being insulted by someone who was made brave by a blaster.
"Oh-oh," Dean murmured to himself, exchanging a shifting glance with Jak. Both were aware of Mildred's intense hatred of stupes who picked on her color. Both knew it would be stored up for a future occasion.
Which came sooner than they expected.
Doc had been lagging behind. He walked slower than the rest of the party, and Panner had gleefully jabbed him in the ribs with the barrel of her weapon, spurring him on. Looking over his shoulder, Ryan wasn't sure if the old man was planning something or if the effects of the jump and the nerve-gas gren still debilitated him. He tried to look at Krysty, to see if she could give him some indication. To see if she could sense something.
There wasn't time.
Doc was still shuffling, and Panner shoved him again. Harder, this time. Hearing her braying laugh, J.B. looked around at the same time as Ryan.
Both men knew instinctively that Doc was giving them an opportunity to move. He had timed his last shuffle until they passed the point where one of the maintenance men was washing the floor with an old, almost bald mop. Suds and water were gathered to one side of the corridor, and Doc contrived to stumble away from Panner and slip on the soapy water.
He fell in a manner that appeared to Murphy and Panner to be clumsy, but was in fact a perfect pratfall. Spinning on his heel so that he reversed position and faced the two sec personnel, Doc fell backward. Although it would seem that he was out of control, both J.B. and Ryan noted that the old man relaxed his muscles, spiraling to the concrete floor with a floppiness that protected him from breaking bones.
He also knew exactly the way in which he would land. He contrived to get the lion's-head walking stick on one side of his body, shielding it from the view of the sec corps.
Panner was laughing so hard that her flabby jowls wobbled, and her eyes ran with tears.
"What are we worried about, Sarj? These outsider scum are no danger. This old fucker can't even stay on his feet!"
Even the otherwise taciturn Murphy stopped scowling long enough to crack a grin. Panner stepped forward, her Heckler & Koch blaster now lowered to the concrete floor, and idly prodded the prone Doc with her combat boot.
"C'mon, get up before I chill you and mess the floor, you old fart."
With a speed that would seem surprising for his age, Doc flicked his right arm from the position over his body where he had been grasping the hilt of his stick. Instead of ebony, a rapier-thin double-edged blade of the finest Toledo steel whistled through the air, catching the light from overhead.
It would have mesmerized Panner if she'd had the chance to see the light reflected. However, by the time this happened, she had already dropped her blaster and was clutching at the blood pumping from her torn throat. With the most delicate twist of his wrist, Doc had stroked back and forth, the blade ripping at the exposed area of flesh between Panner's chin and the beginning of her combat armored vest.
" 'Manners maketh the man.' I would venture to suggest that bad manners can be an undoing," Doc murmured.
The blade had cut through her carotid artery, ripped tendon, fat and muscle and severed her jugular. It was a perfectly judged stroke, avoiding jarring the blade on bone and throwing the timing of the attack. Blood spilled from her mouth, open in an "O" of surprise. It pumped over and between her fingers, spilling down her combat vest and covering the newly washed floor. It also splashed onto Doc, already climbing to his feet with a limber spring that was spurred on by an adrenaline rush.
Murphy dropped his own blaster, barrel to the floor, unable to believe his own eyes. Panner was his second-in-command, his loyal lieutenant. She had the instincts of a killer, and yet an old man had chilled her in front of his eyes. Furthermore he couldn't work out where the blade had come from.
In slow motion he watched her blaster fall toward the floor.
Before it had a chance to touch the concrete, J.B. sprang toward it and caught it, his forward momentum carrying him into a roll, which pulled up painfully short against the wall of the corridor. The Armorer grunted as the blow knocked the air from his lungs, but regardless he pulled himself into a sitting position. The Heckler & Koch was positioned in his hands, finger taut on the trigger, directed at Murphy's head. The Armorer would have preferred a body shot, but knew it would be useless with the combat vest. At this range it wouldn't stop a burst of fire fatally injuring the sec man, but it could slow his death enough for him to chill his opponent.
J.B.'s snap aim wasn't to be tested. Murphy had allowed his full attention to be directed toward the Armorer, and hadn't noticed Ryan step forward just two paces.
That was all it needed. The one-eyed man unfurled the scarf from around his neck, wrapping one end around his right hand. The weighted end swung down loosely, and with a snap of his wrist he jerked the scarf so that the metal weights were propelled like a slingshot, catching Murphy on his right temple.
The sec man grunted and collapsed in a heap on the floor, his blaster falling from his grip and clattering to the concrete. Ryan retrieved it, checked it and had it in hand ready for use in one fluid motion. Without a closer check, Ryan couldn't tell if Murphy was still breathing. Certa
inly he was out cold, and for some time. There was an indent in the side of his skull, a depression that was already turning blue and weeping blood slowly.
That only left any possible danger from the two maintenance men. Jak took the one nearer Doc, the one who had been cleaning the floor. The man had been looking blankly at the action unfolding in front of him, and didn't even notice Jak until the wiry albino had his hands around the man's throat. Then he slackly turned his head, his dull eyes staring into the youth's glowing red orbs with an incomprehension of what was happening to him.
Jak twisted, snapping the man's neck and watching the light in his eyes slowly fade and extinguish. There was little change in his expression, as though he hadn't even taken in his own chilling.
The maintenance man who had been working on the sec-door control panel was more of a problem. But not much. Just that bit detached from the action, being ten feet in front of Mildred and J.B., he watched with an uncomprehending horror at what was occurring.
Like the comp tech Murphy had tried to talk to earlier in the day, the maintenance man was from a lower level in the colony, a level where mutie blood and inbreeding had been more rife. Somewhere along the line, a stickie had entered his family tree, as evinced by the suckered pads that spread out where he should have had fingertips. It gave him a strong grip on the needle-thin screwdriver he was holding, a piece of sharp, strong metal that would have no problem penetrating bone, as well as flesh.
There was little intelligence in his brain, but a strong loyalty to the colony that had been passed down since the earliest days of skydark. He was aware of Murphy's and Panner's positions in the colony, and that he had to try to help them.
With a wild yell he charged toward the group.
Mildred, like the others, had her attention focused on Murphy and Panner, aware of the immediate danger from their blasters. She whirled, catching sight of the maintenance man out of the corner of her eye as she began to turn. She threw her balance back on one heel, and his wild, running thrust went past her.
Completely off balance, the maintenance man flailed wildly toward Dean, who muttered an oath Krysty would have scolded him for using as he adopted a combat stance.