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“Yeah?” Robert growled, notching another arrow into the crossbow. “What if we don’t wanna?”
Turning slightly, Delphi stared hard at the big man. “You have no choice,” he replied, making a gesture at the horses.
Lashed to the bumper of the predark truck with knotted lengths of old rope, the three animals shook violently all over, then slumped to the ground with red blood gushing from their slack mouths. The brothers stared in horror at the chilled horses and slowly turned back to Delphi. The outlander was still smiling, the expression tolerant, almost amused. It sent a shiver down their spines.
“Don’t fret about your beasts. You shall receive exemplary compensation for this assignment,” Delphi continued smoothly, tucking his slim hands up the loose sleeves of his robe. “Transport, reconnaissance, heavy ordnance…”
Having no idea what half of those words meant, John said nothing, his fingers aching to reload the longblaster, but knowing it would be seen as a sign of fear. Forcing his hands to obey, the elder Rogan rested the weapon casually on a shoulder. In any negotiation, especially when the other fellow held all the blasters, a man had to stay cool and calm. If all you had was words, then try not to use any. That always threw off the other fellow and helped even the balance a little.
Chuckling softly, Delphi seemed to be extraordinarily pleased by the lack of action for some reason, as if a pet had done a particularly clever trick and deserved a treat.
“Okay, you got our attention,” John stated, taking a step forward. “What’s the job, Whitey?”
“Something has been lost,” Delphi said, anger crossing his pale face for the first time.
“And ya want us to find it.” Alan snorted in disdain. “Easy enough. What is it that you’re looking for?”
“Salvation,” Delphi growled as a strange humming filled the air and white mists suddenly appeared to engulf the four coldhearts. “Salvation!”
Clawing for their weps, the Rogan brothers felt themselves drop into the ground, as the desert disappeared, replaced by an infinite panorama of burning stars.
TWO HOURS LATER the companions were halfway through their inspection of the redoubt.
Starting at the bottom, the companions did a fast recce on the humming nuclear reactors behind the thick walls of unbreakable glass, although Mildred sometimes called it Plexiglas. Then came the life support rooms, where the hundreds of pumps and filters kept the base clean, warm and uncontaminated from the radblasted hellzone outside the redoubt.
Everything was functioning normally and seemed to be in perfect working order. But all of that changed once the companions reached the storage and barracks areas. On that level, the redoubt was as bare as the last one they had visited. Every room, every closet, was completely empty. Even the beds in the barracks were devoid of mattresses and pillows. There wasn’t a pencil in a desk drawer or a roll of wipe on the toilet.
“If the last redoubt never got its supplies delivered or was stripped clean,” Ryan muttered, walking along a corridor, “then this one was still being built.”
“You can load that into a damn blaster,” J.B. agreed, his fingerless gloves tight on the Uzi machine gun. Some of the sections seemed unformed and still rough along the edges. It was just little things, doors out of plumb, keypads off kilter, details that nobody would ever notice, unless they had been in a hundred other redoubts.
Pausing at the next closed door, the companions took combat positions. With Jak keeping cover, Krysty pushed open an unlocked door. The walls were unpainted, and in the next room the floor was only bare concrete, without even linoleum tiles in place.
“Never seen so much nothing,” Jak drawled angrily, the heavy Colt staying tight in his grip.
“I agree with your double negative,” Doc rumbled pensively, easing down the hammer on his massive LeMat pistol. “This is most curious indeed.”
After checking out the entire level, the companions went to the elevator and pressed a button for the cage. When it arrived, they checked for traps, then piled inside. Using the tip of his SIG-Sauer pistol, Ryan started to press the button for the garage at the top of the redoubt, but then paused and hit the button for the next level upward instead.
“Impatient, lover?” Krysty asked, tilting her head.
With a tiny vibration, the elevator started smoothly upward.
“Worried,” Ryan answered honestly. “Sure. If the blast doors are remotely locked by whitecoats, then we’re prisoners.”
“Trapped without food,” Mildred said, frowning as she leaned against the bare metal wall. “Damn, I hadn’t thought of that possibility.”
“Starvation is a mighty slow way to be chilled,” J.B. noted, removing the unlit cigar, only to put it back in place once more.
“Eat blaster first,” Jak stated coldly, tilting his head slightly forward so that his snowy hair fell across his face, hiding the features.
“Then again, maybe Operation Chronos only wants us trapped long enough to get weak, and then they capture us alive,” Ryan guessed, voicing his dark thoughts. Why fight an enemy at full strength when you can wait a few days and clamp on the slave chains without resistance?
“Alive,” Jak growled. “Like for experiments?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“Nuke that,” Jak muttered, tightening the grip on his blaster.
Just then, the elevator gave a musical chime and the doors parted. As the companions stepped into the corridor, they became instantly alert. In spite of the warm breeze from the wall vents, there was a dry chill in the air. This was something they had encountered only once before, a long time ago.
“Just like that redoubt in Zero City,” Ryan said as a warning, bringing up the barrel of the Steyr longblaster. The two blasters were rock-steady in his hands.
“Just as long as it isn’t another Alaska,” Krysty added grimly, her hair tightening in response. The old madman in charge of that redoubt had a lot of funny ideas about breeding, and the companions had been triple glad to leave that place far behind. A recent visit had spooked them all.
Easing along the corridor, the companions saw only bare, blank walls until taking a corner. A huge steel door stood at the far end of the next passageway, the metal-and-ceramic surface touched with patches of snowy frost along the edges. There was no doubt that this was the source of the cold.
“A deeper,” Jak stated, stopping in his tracks.
Ever so slowly, Ryan gave a nod. Yeah, definitely looked like a Deep Storage Locker. He remembered the first time the Trader had told him and J.B. about such things. Just another legend, they’d thought at the time, only this one happened to be true. A deeper, a Deep Storage Locker, was a special vault filled with dead air—inert gases, Mildred called them—and then made colder than winter ice. The combo was supposed to keep everything from aging, suspended animation was the whitecoat term. The ammo would be live, the canned food fresh, the blasters in perfect condition, the medicine still potent. The companions had found only one of these before in all of their travels, and that deeper had been guarded by a sec hunter droid.
“How much C-4 do we have, John Barrymore?” Doc asked, using his left hand to pull back the massive hammer of the LeMat. It locked into place with a solid click, the single-action revolver now ready for immediate firing.
“Plas? Not a scrap left,” J.B. said around the cigar. “I’m down to road flares and bad language.”
“Mebbe we should check the blast doors first, lover,” Krysty said hesitantly. “Just in case we have to run.”
There was logic to that, Ryan had to admit. But there was also no denying the fact that somebody had rigged their last jump, and he’d sure as hell feel a lot better about that with some spare brass jingling in his pocket.
“We keep going,” the one-eyed man growled, hefting his longblaster. “But spread out more. We’ll need space if there’s a sec hunter droid inside the locker.”
“What we’d need is a freaking bazooka,” Mildred muttered under her breath, shifting her grip on the scattergun.
Proceeding warily along the corridor, the companions took their time and checked every room along the passageway in turn, making sure there wouldn’t be any surprises left behind them if the locker proved to be guarded.
Once past the last door, the companions gathered in front of the icy portal and studied it carefully. There was a painted curve on the floor to show the swing of the armored slab, and a keypad on the wall offered easy access.
Holstering the SIG-Sauer, Ryan started forward, but the moment he crossed the painted line, a siren started to bleat, and a red light began to flash above the icy locker.
“Warning!” a mechanical voice blared from the ceiling, rattling the tiles. “Warning! Intruder alert! Intruder alert! All security personnel to Section 9! Repeat! All security personnel to Section 9!”
Swinging the Steyr upward, Ryan blew the speaker apart with a single shot and blessed silence returned to the hallway.
“Stupe machines,” J.B. commented, using the barrel of the Uzi to push back his fedora. “Can’t tell the difference between—”
The Armorer never got to finish the statement as there came a soft hiss and the corridor behind them was suddenly closed off by a grid of steel bars that dropped from the ceiling to violently slam onto the floor. If anybody had been standing under the gate, he or she would have been mashed into bloody pulp.
“Good thing…” Ryan started, then felt cold adrenaline flood his body as a second sigh sounded. On impulse he dived forward. While in the air, something smacked into his left boot, sending the man tumbling. He hit the wall hard, gritting his teeth against the pain shooting through his ankle. Nuking hell!
Looking backward, Ryan scowled at the sight of a second gate sealing off the corridor, the other companions now trapped between the array of steel bars. Caged like rats.
Her hair flexing wildly, Krysty started to speak, but then jerked her head toward the ceiling as panels swung open and a Vulcan minigun dropped into view. The deadly rapidfire was covered with armored cables and enclosed in cascading ammo feeds.
“Drop your weapons!” a voice boomed through the speaker mounted on the Vulcan, the volume almost deafeningly loud. “Drop your weapons, or die!”
Wasting no time, Ryan ignored the pain in his ankle and stood up to grab with both hands the electrical wiring attached to the bottom of the minigun. He pulled with all of his strength, and the smaller wires easily snapped free. But the larger cables were sheathed in flexible metal and only bent under his weight.
“Alert! Alert!” the speaker loudly announced as the robotic weapon swiveled, trying to target its attacker. The barrels began to spin and the Vulcan cut loose, the armor-piercing rounds chewing a path of destruction along the floor. The tiles disintegrated, spraying out rubbery pieces in every direction and exposing the hard concrete floor underneath. But hanging suspended directly underneath the Vulcan, Ryan stayed just outside its range.
Ricochets flew everywhere, several of the slugs zinging off the steel bars of the security cage holding the companions prisoner. In response, J.B., Krysty and the others shoved their blasters through the cage and hammered lead at the shielded control cables of the deadly rapidfire. The incoming barrage tore the flexible casing apart, and Ryan dropped to the floor with two fistfuls of sparking wires. Instantly the deadly Vulcan stopped firing and the spinning barrels slowed until they went completely still, the metal ticking as it radiated away the tremendous heat of the brief barrage.
“Anybody hurt?” Ryan demanded, tossing away the circuitry. As the wires hit the floor, miniature computer chips broke off from the ends. He had never seen tech like that before. Curious.
“No blood in sight,” Mildred reported, glancing quickly about as she slung the shotgun over a shoulder. “Damn, that was lucky!”
“Lucky my ass,” Krysty retorted, grabbing the steel bars and trying to shake them. The metal grating didn’t budge. “We’re locked in tight, and you’re trapped between this and the door.”
Walking the perimeter of the cage, J.B. studied every section. Steel bars closed off both sides of the corridor, and more had slid into existence along the walls when he hadn’t noticed, probably when the Vulcan was blasting.
“There’s no way out of this that I can see,” J.B. said in disgust. “There’s no lock to pick or keypad to short out.”
“Pity young Dean is no longer with us,” Doc said slowly, biting a lip. “He could have easily slipped out between these bars.”
“What good would that do?” J.B. demanded. “We need to liberate everybody, not just one of us.”
Jak dropped his backpack and started to remove his boots, then the rest of his clothing. In a few moments the teenager was stark naked and forcibly throwing himself at the smooth bars. Sheer momentum got Jak halfway through before he became stuck. Wiggling, the teenager gained another inch, but then stopped, unable to advance or to retreat.
“Exhale deeply,” Mildred directed. “Contract your chest.”
Grimacing unhappily, Jak did as requested as J.B. put two hands on the teenager’s shoulders and started to push. Both of them began to curse from the exertion. Then, with a lurch, Jak came free and tumbled down the corridor.
“Well done, lad!” Doc stated with a sharp nod. “The legendary Count of Monte Cristo could not have done better!”
“Now what?” Jak demanded, rubbing his scraped chest. The albino’s skin was already starting to show a few bruises.
“Head for the garage and find a crowbar,” J.B. suggested as Krysty passed the teenager his clothes, the Colt and the gunbelt.
“I don’t think a crowbar will lift these,” Ryan said with a dark frown. “And there’s no way you could drive a Hummer down here to try to ram the bars, even if there is one on the garage level.”
“Got no choice,” Jak said as he dressed. “Best light candles.” Turning, the teen started at an easy lope down the corridor toward the waiting elevator.
“Use gloves if you got any!” Ryan shouted through cupped hands.
Pausing at the corner, Jak waved in understanding, then dashed out of view. A moment later there was a soft chime from the closing elevator doors.
“Candles?” Mildred asked in confusion, then her eyes went wide. “Oh hell, he’s going to try to cut the power to the whole redoubt!”
“Think that will also open the Deep Storage unit?” Krysty asked tersely, reloading her revolver.
Frowning deeply, Ryan turned to stare at the giant portal. “Sure as frag hope not,” he muttered, sliding off the Steyr and checking the rotary clip inside the longblaster. “But we better get hard, just in case.”
Long minutes passed as the companions prepared for a close-quarter firefight. If the locker door automatically opened and a sec hunter droid came rolling out, Ryan was the only person in real danger. The droids weren’t armed with distance weps—that they knew about, at any rate. Protected by the thick steel bars, everybody would be safe from the deadly war machine, except Ryan. Trapped between the cage and the locker, the one-eyed man would only have a few yards in which to try to outmaneuver the kill bot. His only defense would be the combined firepower of the trapped companions.
“All for one, and one for all,” Doc muttered in a singsong manner.
“Do we look like the Three Musketeers?” Mildred snorted rudely.
“There were four of them, actually,” Doc corrected with a smile.
“Oh, I know that. Keifer Sutherland, Oliver Platt, Charlie Sheen and the other guy.”
Doc blinked. “What in the name of God are you babbling about, madam?”
Suddenly the ceiling lights flickered and went out.
“Here we go,” Ryan growled softly as the air vents slowly stopped blowing and a deafening silence filled the subterranean mil base.
Chapter Five
A flicker of light stabbed into the darkness as Ryan applied the flame of his butane lighter to a wax candle stub. As the wick caught, he set the candle near the wall and the reflected illumination cast flickering shadows across the people in the cage.
Reaching into her med kit, Mildred pulled out a survivalist flashlight and worked the small pump on the handle to charge the old batteries, then she flicked the switch and the device gave off a weak yellow glow. She had gotten the flashlight from a baron quite a while back as a reward for saving his son’s life. The battery was rechargeable, but there were no spare lightbulbs and the last bulb was starting to die. However, the flashlight still gave off ten times the power of a wax candle.
As Krysty and Doc also retrieved butane lighters and got more candles going, J.B. fumbled in his munitions bag and pulled out a predark road flare. Twisting off the cap, the Armorer scraped the magnesium nubbin underneath and the stick sputtered, almost seeming to go out for a moment. But then the chemical flame returned bright and strong, the flare giving off a tremendously bright reddish flame, along with a great amount of dense sulfurous smoke.
“Good thing the fire detectors aren’t working,” Mildred joked, shying away from the sputtering flare. “Jeez, that thing stinks!”
“Still works, though.” Reaching through the bars, J.B. tossed the flare outside the cage and the thick smoke rose upward to pool on the ceiling, the dark fumes flowing along the white tiles like a living thing.
“Okay, let’s see if we can hoist this,” Ryan said, grabbing two of the bars in his big hands. The man twisted his fists on the smooth steel to try to get a good grip. “Ready?”
Just then there came a loud gurgle, as if some horrible beast had been awakened. The companions froze, then gave a nervous laugh when they realized it was merely the water pipes draining inside the walls.
“All together now,” Ryan ordered, bracing his boots on the floor. The man tensed his legs and back. “One…two…three!”
The companions heaved with all of their combined strength and the gate slammed into the ceiling it lifted so easily and without resistance.
“Son of a bitch,” J.B. said, releasing his grip. “The grating must use a mag lock! With the power gone, it’s dead easy to open.”
Stepping into the cage, Ryan let the gate slide back down, then crossed over and experimentally lifted the other side with a single finger.
“Come on,” Ryan said. “We need to find something strong enough to use as a prop under these. With the juice turned off, we can’t use the keypad to get through the door of the locker. Besides—”
There was a metallic crash from somewhere and bright lights came on overhead, flooding the corridor with rods of sharp illumination that marked the exit door to the stairwell and a couple of empty wall niches that probably should have held fire extinguishers.
“Yeah, backup power,” Krysty said, casting a glance at the closed door. “Sometimes I forget that the redoubts clean and repair themselves. The main power will come back on anytime.”
Leaving the candles on the floor, the companions headed for the stairs. Along the way, J.B. pulled out his butane lighter and lit the end of his cigar. He knew that Mildred really disliked the habit, but there was a rare time when a man needed a good smoke. Ah!
