by Axler, James
The albino didn't waste time, disappearing into the crowd without a word. Ryan turned to his son. "Try and find Mac or Abner, get them to me. Let's go!"
Dean nodded his agreement and melted into the crowd while Ryan turned his attention to the sector of the crowd not covered by his son. It wasn't hard to spot Abner, as the old baron was relishing the victory over the insiders, gesturing with his blunderbuss and yelling incoherently at his people. He was a sitting target if Murphy or any of his men chose to take a shot from inside the wags. But the sec man didn't make a move.
Ryan fought his way through the crowd to Abner, grabbing the baron and unceremoniously pulling him to one side. The old man was so drunk with the atmosphere that he didn't even show any anger at being treated in such a disrespectful manner.
"We've got the bastards on the run, friend Ryan," he yelled, his eyes gleaming. "They're dead meat."
"But we don't want them to be," Ryan yelled back, desperate to make himself heard above the screams of the crowd. "Listen to me—if we follow them back to the redoubt in the other wags, we can strike inside and destroy them like we planned. Remember?" He spoke in simple terms to try to bring the old man out of his blood frenzy, to remember the plans and strategies they had discussed.
Abner paused. For a moment he looked blank, as though assimilating his thoughts. In that moment Dean appeared with Mac.
"Ryan," the fat sec man said with a face-splitting grin, "it goes well, my friend. I understand from the boy that we follow them back and hit 'em hard. Yeah?"
"Yeah," Ryan said simply. Dean had done a good job of explaining the situation. There was nothing else for him to say to Mac. It just remained to be seen if Abner had caught the drift.
"How many people you want?" the old baron said suddenly, everything falling into place for him.
"You, Mac, mebbe ten others at most. With us that makes eighteen in two wags. It'll be uncomfortable in there."
"I can handle a little of that—you get the best," Abner snapped at Mac, "and tell these mothers to let those wags go!"
"GO, GO, GO!" Murphy screamed at Bailey, his hapless driver.
"Can't, sir. These scum are holding us off the ground, and this is a front-wheel drive, sir."
Murphy cursed. There were four-wheel-drive wags back at the redoubt, but they were totally enclosed. His desire to be as open as possible for recce purposes was going to be his undoing.
"What about Avallone?" he shouted, referring to the driver of the other wag.
"Can't see, sir," Bailey replied.
Murphy swore loudly, picked up the handset for the radio and barked into it. Avallone's fear-struck voice replied that he was having the same problem.
"Shit. We're fucked now, really fucked," Murphy said, almost to himself, realizing that blind panic and losing his cool had gotten them into a no-win situation. What they needed was a miracle.
"Son of a bitch," he breathed in sheer disbelief as the whine of the engine suddenly became a roar. The wag bucked as the front wheels hit dirt and it began to move, skidding across the circle, through the main alley and out past the beacons.
"Sir, we're free and right behind you," Avallone's voice crackled over the radio, relief in every breath.
"Sir, why did they let go?" Bailey asked.
"Don't ask why, just be thankful that they did," the sec chief breathed.
RYAN AND JAK HEARD every word over the radio in their respective wags. J.B. had decided that Jak should drive rather than risk his ankle, which still gave him cause for concern if strained, on the pedals of the wag.
Jak drove silently, concentrating on the trail ahead of him, following Murphy and Avallone in their wags. He carried J.B., Mildred, Mac and five ville dwellers. They crouched and squatted in the back, crushed together as the wag bumped over the plains.
In the other wag Ryan carried Dean, Krysty and Abner along with five ville dwellers. Like the other wag, they traveled in a tense silence. They were going into the heart of the enemy's territory, something none of the ville dwellers had ever dreamed of doing.
Ryan and Jak kept close to the tail of the other wags, so that they could locate the bridge. Once they were over that, it was a matter of keeping them in sight.
The enclave housing the entrance to the redoubt came in view. In the driver's seat of each wag, Jak and Ryan could feel the tension grow behind them.
They heard Murphy yell over the radio for the sec door to be opened. Ryan and Jak gunned their engines, getting every last ounce of power from the wags so that they could tailgate Murphy and Avallone, beating the sec door as it started to fall.
In each wag fighters prepared themselves. Once the wags rolled to a halt, then all hell would break loose.
Chapter Twenty-One
The wags screeched to halt inside the redoubt. The sec door to the enclave closed behind the four wags, leaving Murphy with the wags driven by Ryan and Jak between himself and the sec lock that would open the door once more. The sec door directly in front of him was also closed.
Wallace's voice came over the radio, now that the wags were inside the redoubt and in the range of the failing old tech. There was little doubt that the Gen had observed the return of the wags, and the manner in which they had screeched to a halt.
"Murphy, what in the holy hell is going on down there? Did you get the parts?"
"You could say that… Yeah, you could fuckin' well say that." the rattled sec chief replied. "The back two wags have got Cawdor and his scum, with some bastard outsiders, and they've been trained to fight. I lost half my men out there."
"Then don't lose this half. I'll be down with reinforcements," Wallace barked.
Murphy looked at the handset in his sweating grip. It occurred to him that if Cawdor had the radio sets switched on, he would have heard it all—the reinforcements and his own panic.
Shit, blast and damn them all to the deepest rad pit.
RYAN GRINNED as he heard the exchange between Wallace and Murphy. There was nothing like knowing in advance what the enemy was going to be doing. He turned to the back of the wag.
"Okay, everybody out, blasters ready. Keep alert or be chilled. We've got time—not a lot, but just enough— to take up positions. Let's do it."
As they left the wag, he saw that Jak had directed the passengers of his wag in a similar manner.
Reinforced-concrete arches stood near the entrance to the redoubt, buoying the doorway and keeping its shape intact. None of them had seen anything quite like this in previous redoubts, but the workmanship on the arches was rough and ready, not the work of skilled builders. Possibly it was the work of sec men shortly after sky-dark, refashioning the arch when the first wave of quakes had swept the land.
For whatever reason they had been built, they now proved to be a piece of serendipity. As silently as possible, moving from the back of one wag to another, Ryan came to where Jak had marshaled the people in his wag. As with the front wag, they were currently standing to the rear, covered by the vehicle. Ryan directed them to spread out to the arches, using them as cover, those at the back of the wag covering the progress of those heading for the arches.
The people in his own wag were doing the same.
Ryan swiftly repositioned himself behind the forward arch, where he was joined by Krysty and Mac.
"They're too quiet, lover," Krysty whispered, not wanting to break the heavy silence that had fallen. The engines of all the wags had ceased, and there was no movement from the two wags with Murphy's men.
"Mebbe Murphy's too scared," Ryan mused.
"Mebbe he has a plan that Wallace doesn't know about. When that door goes up, that's when we'll know for sure."
The one-eyed warrior gestured with his Steyr at the sec door beyond the two wags. It had closed as soon as the wags had screeched to a halt. Beyond it lay the rest of the redoubt, the mat-trans they needed to get out, and Wallace…
Ryan cursed the fact that they had lost their contact with the Gen's plans by having to leave the wags a
nd the radio, but they would have been a sitting target. At least out there they were spread out, and Wallace would have a clear shot at the enemy when they came.
MURPHY SAT in his wag, biting his nails and thinking as swiftly as his terror and the changing circumstances allowed him. This could be his big chance. Most of the military was on his side, plus some of the civilian scientists. It was a good opportunity. Wallace had never had anyone invade his base before. Let him make a mess of things, then step in to clean up. That way Murphy could avoid any blame, as well. He allowed himself a brief wave of optimism. This might just go his way.
"Murphy!" Wallace barked, his tone harshened by the reception of the radio. "Get yourself ready, boy— we're coming in…now!"
He turned to the other sec men in the wag. "This is it, men, Operation Munich."
The sec men exchanged puzzled and worried glances. "Now, sir?" one of them asked in a nervous quiver.
"Hell, yeah!" the sec chief exclaimed, trying to hide his own nervousness behind an exterior of bravado. "What better time? These scum can fight it out with the Gen and his people, then we pick up the pieces and take control."
"Uh, how do we let the others know?" one of the nervous sec men asked.
"Word of mouth, boy," Murphy replied. "Now, heads up. It's all starting to come down."
The sec door was grinding to life, rising slowly.
FROM HIS POSITION behind the arch, Ryan could see how slowly the door was rising. And to his amazement he could see the sec men on the other side just standing there, waiting for the door to finish its job. Standing unprotected and without cover. He risked a backward glimpse, catching the astonished faces of J.B., Jak and Dean. It seemed so incredible that for a second they were all frozen to inaction by the idiocy of Wallace's tactics.
Given time to reflect, Ryan would have realized that Wallace considered the outsiders, and the friends, as no better than dirt. He was so obsessed with his own superiority in the position of Gen that he couldn't believe anyone could out think him. And he was slack from lack of actual combat.
But there was no time to reflect. There was only time for action. It was Mildred who broke the spell. While the others gaped, she raised her ZKR in a two-handed competition stance, feeling sheltered by the arch, and took aim.
The crack of the ZKR was high and clear, breaking across the low rumble of the opening door. It was followed by the high-pitched scream of a sec man hitting the concrete floor, his kneecap shattered into a bloody mess of shards by the high-velocity bullet.
It broke the spell. Falling to his belly, the Steyr raised slightly on his shoulder, Ryan fired. Simultaneously J.B. had moved forward to get a better sweep of fire with his M-4000, the barbed steel flechettes loaded into his blaster spreading out in a deadly hail that ripped at the knees, thighs and groins of the sec men on the other side of the door. The flechettes spelled death rather than pain as they gouged at high velocity into faces and throats, ripping out flesh and artery.
The door was now three-quarters of the way up, the bodies of the sec men still standing now fully exposed. In the confusion and mayhem, some of them still had their blasters down. They died in a hail of slugs and shells from the homemade blasters of the ville dwellers.
The shooting was erratic, and some of the raiding party forgot the tactics they had been taught, lost in the blood lust and the heady excitement of a victory that seemed within their grasp. They stepped into the open and were mowed down by the surviving sec men, Uzi and H&K fire sweeping across the space between the arches and the wags. Four of the raiding party caught the last train west, and in his wag Murphy wondered what the hell was going on. He and his own men were trapped.
Mildred continued to pick off sec men with clean, precise shots, as were Krysty and Dean. Jak was distracted by the need to try to rein in some of the raiding party before they were all wiped out, lessening the chance of recovering Doc and reaching the mat-trans.
"BACK… BACK NOW!" The distorted voice of Wallace, using a bullhorn to issue commands crackled and barked over the noise of blasterfire. In confusion the remaining sec force started to pull back, covering themselves.
"Perfect," Murphy whispered to himself. "Go, go now. Let's get out of the immediate area and get organized. I couldn't have expected more," he said to Bailey, the driver.
"Sir, those are our men," Bailey replied in a quiet, shaken voice.
"Mebbe, but if we don't move, there won't be any left, will there?"
Bailey didn't answer. He slung the vehicle into first gear and touched the accelerator. The wag moved beyond the open sec door, skidding on the concrete floor, which was slick with the blood of their dead fellows. The second wag automatically followed.
It left the raiding party on its own, suddenly cut off without a visible enemy and the echo of the firefight still ringing in its ears.
"HAVE WE GOT THEM on the run, or is there something going on here that we don't know about?" Mac asked Ryan, looking puzzled. "There's no way that this is the end, right?"
Ryan nodded. "Reckon there's something going on between Murphy and Wallace. If we're lucky, then it might help us get what we want."
"And if we're not?"
"Then we might buy the farm," Ryan replied grimly.
They turned back to where J.B. and Jak were trying to subdue the triumphant outsiders. Abner was one of the most vocal. Ryan cast a quizzical glance at Mac, who shrugged.
"The old man hasn't been in a firefight for years. Guess he's just overexcited," Mac said.
"He'd better calm down, or he'll get you all chilled," Ryan murmured.
Mac nodded.
When they reached the group, clustered in front of the wags, Abner and the others had been calmed considerably by words from Krysty and Mildred. For some reason they were more inclined to listen to them than to Dean or Jak.
"It's because they look on them as kids, despite the fact they could outfight most of us," Mac commented.
J.B. stood a little apart from the rest, checking his Uzi, then reloading the M-4000. He beckoned to Ryan, who left Mac and went to join his old friend.
"What is it?"
J.B. took off his glasses and cleaned them, then pushed back his fedora and scratched at his forehead.
"I'm worried," he said simply.
"About these stupes?" Ryan asked, indicating the raiding party with an incline of the head.
"Nope. Me. This ankle. If I get left behind, don't worry about me too much. I'll find a way—"
Ryan clasped his friend on the shoulder. "No. We split up with different objectives, but no one gets left behind. Fireblast, we might even find Doc."
The Armorer allowed himself a wry smile. "You think he's still alive?"
"Wallace wanted him for a reason. He's not likely to have chilled him just like that," Ryan said, snapping his fingers.
The one-eyed warrior turned his attention back to the main group. Going over to them, with J.B. close behind, Ryan said, "They're on the run, but not because of us. There's something else going on here, and we need to find out what it is."
"WE ARE UNDER ATTACK. Wallace is not the man he was. We sense that he isn't the same man. How much time has passed since we were joined together? What has occurred outside in that time? And part of us wants to know why, when we have this capacity, we spend our time using just a fraction of it to run this base?"
The amorphous mass of men moved across a landscape of burned-out rubble and rotting corpses. Doc had discovered that this was how the Moebius MkI spent most of its time—if time was a concept that could exist to something so alien to human experience—moving across the logical conclusions of its purpose, simulated in a vista that continued forever.
And now there was real danger on the outside, and the mechanism was powerless to do anything about it. It flailed about in its imaginary landscape, recording and assimilating impressions from the outside, impotent to do anything except keep the redoubt running…and suddenly realizing its impotence as it came under attack for t
he first time in its long life.
Doc, knowing from the assembled data, who was invading the redoubt, tried to block that knowledge from the rest of the mechanism, to stop it using all he knew about his companions to defeat them.
"We are dividing. Why does Dr. Tanner wish to leave us?"
WALLACE WAS in his office when Murphy burst in with six armed soldiers behind him. The Gen was sitting at his desk, calmly reading the regs, as though they comprised a holy book, which, to him, it was.
"Ah, I was wondering when you would get here," he said calmly, an edge of ice to his voice.
"You guessed, then?" Murphy asked him, the blue 9 mm Beretta trained on a spot between the Gen's eyes.
"Oh, I knew that you had plans. Very well, you think that you can usurp the chain of command? Let's see what you make of these outsiders."
"More than you have. There were some good men mowed down out there," Murphy replied.
Wallace gave him a stare to chill his blood. "If you expect me to believe that you really care about those men, you must think that I'm a bigger stupe than the outsider scum. You have a wooden heart, and your men will learn the hard way."
Murphy ground his teeth, repressing the urge to rant at the Gen, to pistol-whip him now that he had him at his mercy. Instead he turned to the men behind him. "You and you," he snapped, gesturing at two of them. "Guard him. The rest of you come with me. Spread the word that we're in charge now. Things are going to be different."
He turned back to Wallace. "I'll deal with you when I've dealt with the outsiders."
"I wish I had your confidence in you, boy," Wallace said with a sneer as Murphy left the room.
Murphy's plan was simple—position sec men so that he could guide the raiding party down a certain path, insuring that they could be trapped and chilled with the minimum of fuss. After all, they had only seen the redoubt once, so they would have no idea where they were going.
This overconfident reasoning neglected the fact that he had witnessed their ability to find their way around the base when they had earlier escaped from his guard. But Murphy was high on his own sense of victory, and his memory had become selective.