Jak’s instinct for danger kicked in, and he blew out the idea of tackling the snake machine. It was right in line with the glowing center of the door, and there was no way he was going to get caught up in anything that might erupt. He sailed through the air, underneath the arc of the creature’s head as it tried to fry him with its laser. All it succeeded in doing was to send up a shower of sparks as it cut into the straggling tail of its own body. Its balance disturbed, it toppled as it tried to turn, the laser scoring across the ceiling and bringing down a shower of debris. It was falling backward as the sec door exploded in a shower of molten metal, splashing out the center over the snake, while more solid fragments shaken loose by the sonic wave were flung down the corridor, their sharp edges and high velocity driving them into and through the mechanical snake, severing portions of the body and rendering it into a useless heap of junk on the corridor floor.
Jak had landed on the far side, hugging the wall and keeping down as much as he possibly could. The violence of the sonic ripple made him feel like vomiting, and his ears felt like they would burst, but he opened his mouth to try to equalize the pressure. Before he had a chance to really register pain and shock, the wave had passed.
Hurriedly, still feeling uncertain on his feet, he straightened. Ryan had come through the hole where the sec door used to be, looking as unsteady as Jak felt, his face set in a grim mask of determination. He mouthed something that Jak couldn’t hear as his ears were still singing with the vibration. He figured he knew what it was, though. Looking back, he could see a flatbed truck on tracks, with a tiny blaster that looked far too small for such a trailer. That had to have been what caused the explosion.
For sure, he didn’t want to stick around to see what else it could do.
As he turned, he could feel the vibrations in the ground as it started to move forward. A quick glance told him how slow it was. It wasn’t made to move on rubble, and that was to their advantage. It also needed time to build up the power necessary for another blast like the last. The nozzle of the tiny blaster was showing a faint green tinge that grew brighter with an encouraging slowness.
Ryan was already ahead of him as Jak turned back to the remains of the mechanical snakelike creature. The head that had risen above him and looked so dangerous was now nothing more than a heap of inert junk—but
inert junk with a small and easily concealable weapon in its midst.
Keeping one eye on the rumbling flatbed, Jak leaned over the snake machine and started to detach the laser from its mounting in the end of the mechanism. He hoped that the weapon would have its own power source, and not be wired into the machine.
He got lucky. The head of the machine was obviously designed to carry any number of interchangeable weapons. That much was clear from the ease with which he detached his objective. The fact that it had been a laser mounted in the head was simply down to a quirk of fate when skydark hit the unlucky military and whitecoats who had been based here.
Lucky for Jak, though. He could see that the laser had its own small power cell built in as he detached the clipped circuit boards that wired it into the snake. He wanted to try it out and fire on the flatbed. It might serve a dual purpose and knock out the thing that was winding up toward pursuing them. But then he thought again. The power that the tiny blaster had unleashed might be even more destructive if just released by fire. Better that they outrun the bastard thing.
He angled the laser up and fired it into the ceiling. A crackle of power, and then a hail of dust brought down a small section of the ceiling on and around the flatbed as it rumbled slowly but inexorably forward.
Jak turned after Ryan and began running. He figured that the machine at their rear would have trouble following at anything approaching the speed they could run. And if it took time to build power, then even if it could tail them, it was of no real immediate danger.
Still, it wouldn’t be wise to hang around. He sprinted after Ryan, catching the one-eyed man with ease. Ryan was running awkwardly, hunched over to one side. Jak knew that he had added more damage to his ribs, and as he ran he took hold of Ryan, supporting his weight and taking it off the sore side of his body. It was far from graceful but it was effective, and Ryan’s pace picked up even as Jak slowed.
They were still vigilant for any further dangers, but it seemed as though the redoubt had flung at them all it had to offer. Despite the rumbling that grew more distant at their backs, but was still ominous, and the constant blare of the siren in time with the strobe, there was nothing else to bar their passage.
They reached the mat-trans anteroom, the strain of the run making both of them slow despite the desperate urging of their wills.
The unit stood in front of them, and at their back there was the low thrum of vibration as the sonic blaster began to build power. They threw themselves toward the mat-trans: Ryan collapsed on the floor, sprawled across the disks, while Jak slammed the door and hit the LD button. He hadn’t had a chance to check his wrist chron, but he fervently hoped that they hadn’t exceeded their time as the white mist began to rise in small columns.
“Hurry, you bastard,” Ryan hissed to the floor as he felt the low, slow thrum build in intensity. The rumbling of the tracks was audible now as the flatbed truck approached the corridor outside.
The low, sickening fluttering of the sonic wave grew in his gut, making him want to puke, even as the wave
of darkness from the mat-trans jump began to sweep over him.
As it did, he looked up to see Jak grinning triumphantly, brandishing the laser.
Fireblast! Let it be in time….
Heat. That was the overwhelming impression of everyone in the room as the seconds ticked slowly past. Krysty and Mildred were able to look to their wrist chrons with some degree of stealth, but for Doc and J.B. it was a no go. They were being covered by McCready’s men with an eagle eye that grew ever more jumpy as time went on. The companions were exhausted because of the mat-trans jumps and the action they had encountered in the past few hours. The sec men, Crabbe and his mechanic didn’t have that excuse. Nonetheless, they found that their nerves were ground to a fine edge, singing with the tension of waiting.
The room was small. As a control room, it had been designed to hold only three or four people at a time. There were twice that number within its narrow confines. Sure, there was air-conditioning in the room, as the redoubt was in full working order, but even with the best air filter and cold air mechanisms, it was still too many people rammed into too small a space for such a long stretch. As well, the number of jumps had only added to the stifling atmosphere, as each flash of light was accompanied by a correspondingly large release of heat that had nowhere to go other than to be absorbed by the people who were contained within the confines of the room.
The tension of waiting was written large on all of them, albeit for vastly differing reasons. The friends were anxious that Ryan and Jak return, and in one piece. Crabbe was anxious that they return, and this time bearing the disk that he so craved. Sal was just anxious. The mechanic was proud of his work, but he wasn’t a brave man. He knew that the baron was volatile. He also figured that McCready was even more volatile than his supposed boss. And it didn’t take a genius to work out that the sec chief was just itching to send the outlanders on the last train west, maybe even the baron too. It could, from his point of view, chill two rank old birds with the one blast. And where would that leave Sal, then? Now there was a question that the mechanic didn’t want to have answered in any kind of a hurry.
As for the sec chief and his men, beads of sweat dripped into sore and red-rimmed eyes as the sec men maintained their vigilance. Each one of them was aware that their chief was ambitious, and although it wasn’t openly spoken of, they all knew that there would be a time when he would push for power, and it would be politic to be on his side. So they were all determined to do their best for him.
But the heat, the strain of not sleeping and having to stay vigilant when they ached in every fiber, and the knowledge that even unarmed these coldhearts they guarded had a reputation that made them something to be feared…. That lay heavy on them.
That and the fact that their chief was starting to show signs of impatience and a desire to get things moving. The muscles in his jaw twitched as though he was
barely restraining muttering to himself, and each of his men was acutely aware of the way in which his eyes flickered between the baron and the captives.
When the mat-trans disgorged its cargo, then things were okay for a while. It was the interminable wait in between that was stretching them so tight that they might just…
Snap?
It was a sudden and disturbing flash of light that made them all jolt. Fingers on trigger guards instinctively tightened in a way that would have tapped bursts of rapid-fire under any other circumstances.
For a moment there was complete silence and no movement in the room. Krysty looked over to where Mildred, J.B. and Doc were seated. She could see that they were trying to keep it from their faces, but each was wondering if Ryan and Jak had made it back in one piece—and perhaps whether they had found some ordnance that could be used against their captors.
Then Crabbe yelled, as though woken from a reverie with a start. At his command, McCready beckoned two of the sec men to go to the mat-trans. With a shock, Krysty realized that less than the stipulated half hour limit had gone by. Did it mean that they had found something they could use, or—infinitely worse—that they had encountered a peril that had forced them to cut short their search? Did it mean that there may only be one person in the mat-trans?
She made to move, but felt the arm of the baron as it moved across her chest, barring her way. She looked at him, and there was coldness in his eyes.
“You stay where you are missy…and you,” he
barked, pointing with his free hand at Mildred as she made to move. “Cover the bitch,” he continued. “I ain’t taking no chances with these outlanders.”
Krysty felt the tension in his arm lessen as she moved back, stopped straining forward. But even so, she felt a burning desire to push past the baron as the sec men pulled open the mat-trans door.
Inside it was dark now that the initial flash had faded, and for a moment there was no detectable movement, nor any audible sound. Her heart leaped to her throat as she wondered if there was anyone in there at all. Was it possible that the unit had somehow triggered itself, leaving Ryan and Jak stranded?
And then there was the sound of footfalls, and Ryan and Jak stepped into the light. Both were disheveled and showing obvious contusions. And Ryan was walking awkwardly, suggesting that his ribs were causing him more than a little discomfort. Yet both men were stoic as they emerged into the room, handing over their weapons to the sec men before calmly making their way to where the others were seated. Ryan resisted a small grin as he saw how that infuriated McCready, who wanted them to be suffering. Even though his ribs were starting to feel as though a horde of mutie buffalo had been dancing on them, Ryan refused to let any sign of discomfort consciously show. Without a word they seated themselves. Anyone who didn’t know them wouldn’t realize a thing, but to those who did, there were clues. The body language was just a little more relaxed than it might have been, and there was something about the way that Jak looked all of them in the eye by turn, with something that would have been taken
by a stranger as a slight nervous muscle twitch. But to those who knew his usually stonelike features, it was more than that.
It was the closest to a wink that the albino youth would ever get.
For each of them, it signaled that there was hope. How or what, they couldn’t tell, but there was no denying that the signal meant that either Jak or Ryan—maybe even both—had somehow managed to find, and conceal a weapon.
They took their place among their companions and said nothing. Ryan grimaced as he seated himself, the pain from his ribs making him catch his breath.
“Well?” Crabbe exploded eventually, unable to contain himself any longer. “What the fuck happened to you out there? You look like shit, so it must have been something spectacular,” he added, taking them in with a raking glance.
“Thanks for that,” Ryan commented wryly, the effect spoiled a little by the stabbing pain that made him wince as he spoke. “You’d never believe me if I told you.”
“Try me,” the baron said coldly, his face set in stone. “Don’t fuck with me and hold back, Brian. It wouldn’t be a good idea.”
Ryan shook his head. “You keep saying that, but I tell you, considering what we’ve just seen, there isn’t much of anything that could be worse. Chill me now, fat boy, I really don’t care. But you might not get what you’re after if you do.”
“Now you know that holding out on me would be triple stupe—” Crabbe began. But Jak cut him off.
“No disk, but getting close. Must be.”
“Why do you say that?” Crabbe questioned, his brow knitting with the effort to understand.
“One redoubt left. Each got more weird shit tech. Should have figured before. They run in order,” Jak commented, waving a pointed finger at the laminated list that the baron treated as a holy relic.
Crabbe looked at it afresh. Suddenly, it seemed to him that something very obvious had been going on under his nose all along, and he had been blind. “Of course,” he breathed slowly.
Ryan tried to turn the grin that spread across his face into a grimace, which, considering the pain he was in wasn’t too hard. That had never occurred to him. The cunning of the albino teen was something that never ceased to catch him off guard. Looking across, he could see that Krysty was trying to keep a similar expression from her face. Had she, he wondered, caught on to the fact that he and Jak had returned with a hidden weapon? If he had figured right, then Doc and Mildred also had something hidden.
One redoubt left. One trip to be made. Krysty and J.B. needed to make it. And Jak’s subterfuge was exactly what could ensure that.
“I don’t get it,” McCready snarled. “What’s Snowy going on about?”
Crabbe shot him a pitying look. “I don’t guess that you wouldn’t get it,” he said in a condescending manner. “It’s really simple. The list was arranged in a certain order for a reason. The places we’ve sent them to have grown in importance as they’ve worked their way down the list. So it’s pretty fucking obvious, even to a
stupe like you, that the last one on the list is the most important. And where else would you hide the disk except in the most important place? See? Fucking obvious.”
Mildred and Doc, without exchanging a word, were thinking the same thing. Jak was some kind of genius to get inside the baron’s mind and twist it his way. Without that kind of thinking, the old man would be on the verge of boiling over. But now he was looking almost triumphant, as though he could smell success. It was almost in his hand.
J.B., on the other hand, was just thinking that some people were born stupe and were bound to buy the farm that way, no matter what they did in between, and that Crabbe was one of those people.
“Okay, Snowy, Brian,” Crabbe began with a newfound enthusiasm in his voice, “if Kirsty and J.T. are going to be the ones to get the motherlode, then they’d better have an idea of what they’re going face. I want to know what happened from the time that bastard flashed until it did it again,” he said, indicating the mat-trans unit.
Ryan looked at Jak. “You want to tell it?” The albino teen shook his head. “Okay then, here goes…”
And so Ryan began. He related what had happened at the redoubt, from the moment that they had exited the mat-trans, through to the discovery of the armory. From the corner of his eye, he could see J.B.’s eyes almost glaze over behind his glasses at the thought of such an untouched and expansive armory. If nothing else, there was one man in the room who could appreciate the treasures that they had been forced to leave be
hind. Although it had to be said that the fact that it was so well protected and alarmed seemed to bring home the immensity of what they had found to Crabbe and McCready, the latter cursing audibly at the thought of what he could do with such a haul.
But any thought of what had been left behind was lost when Ryan began to describe the machines that had been triggered by the alarm. As he spoke, he could see a distant look spread across Krysty’s features, followed by an almost involuntary shudder as she recalled similar things that she had seen. The rest of the companions had encountered similar types of machines, and so found it less hard to comprehend than the baron and his sec chief. The guards remained impassive, guarded in so many senses of the word. Crabbe was almost slack-jawed with amazement, and McCready was frankly disbelieving.
“Bullshit.” He spit. “They’re making it up, Baron. Trying to fool you. Mebbe they’ve already got this fucking disk you want and they want to keep it from you.”
“My dear sir, I can vouch for the veracity of my friend’s words. I have seen many things, and I can tell you that whitecoat scum of the predark age had many such obscene devices.”
“Shut the fuck up, Jock, I wasn’t asking you,” McCready snapped. He leveled the barrel of his blaster directly into Doc’s face. The old man stood calmly, but inside he was certain that his misery was about to end.
If only the sec chief had known how close to the truth he had inadvertently come. The friends kept their
counsel, but hoped that this wouldn’t spur the baron into another train of thought.
No worries on that score. Any doubts that might have been sown by the words of the sec chief were immediately obliterated by an unlikely source of excitement—the mechanic, Sal.
“Bullshit yourself,” he exploded angrily in the face of the sec chief. “You’re always saying what I do is shit, but who got this going and enabled these bastards to make the trip? It was me, and the skills I learned from the old days. These things are possible and given enough time to study it I could bring back that kind of glory. You’re just shitting yourself because you’re worried that this kind of tech could make you useless and pointless. And who the fuck could you bully then, you stupe shithead?
“Baron,” he continued, turning to a startled Crabbe and carrying on before a furious but stunned McCready had a chance to bite back, “you’ve got to let me go there and study it. I know I could rebuild anything I found.”
For a moment it looked as though the baron was seriously considering this option. Then, at length, he said, shaking his head, “No, I can’t see that. Not yet. Mebbe once we’ve got the disk and started to learn from it. These things they talk about, they ain’t going nowhere. Just be patient. You get there in the end, Sal. Look at what’s happened to me—all that time, and now it’s within my grasp.”
“But will you let me?” Sal implored, an almost messianic gleam in his eyes.
“In due time,” the baron said simply. But there was something in his tone that the mechanic recognized,
and he seemed to be satisfied. It was just another reason why Ryan and his people knew that they had to stop Crabbe.
There was a moment’s silence before the baron looked at the laminated list in his hand with something approaching reverence.
“Let’s do this,” he said quietly. “Give Kirsty and J.T. their weapons, McCready. It’s time for them to get going.”
Without a word, J.B. rose to his feet under the watchful eye of the sec, while Krysty moved to join him. The briefest of looks passed between them as they moved close to each other. Brief, but enough for both of them to know that when the Armorer and Krysty returned it would be time for action.
It was only when they were in the mat-trans unit, and the door had clicked shut on the world beyond that Krysty and J.B. dared to speak.