Axler, James - Deathlands 60 - Destiny's Truth Read online

The rising door reached head level, and the astonished expression on the Illuminated soldier as he stepped under the door—obviously in a hurry—and onto the bridge before looking up spoke volumes. He was a tall, gangling man who had his laser rifle strung across his back. He gaped at Ryan, who had taken two steps toward him before he even had a chance to try to swing around his rifle.

  "No, you don't," Ryan muttered to himself as he engaged with the soldier. He had to end this swiftly. The longer a fight went on, the more likely it was to raise an alarm, and the more likely it was to disturb the equilibrium of the bridge. Neither was a good option.

  The panga blade glimmered in the dull light as it sliced through the air at just higher than waist level, Ryan delivering a roundhouse action that brought the blade into contact with the Illuminated One's arm, just above the elbow as he reached for his rifle. His mouth opened in a silent scream as he lost the arm, the hardened and razor sharpened blade slicing through flesh, sinew and bone, jarring against Ryan as the resistance of the bone traveled up the blade. It cut through into his ribs and chest, slicing through bands of muscle and splintering rib edges, sending bone shards through internal organs.

  The Illuminated soldier staggered to the side, carried over by the momentum of the blow, and fell heavily against the rail. The bridge swayed dangerously, and the companions had to grasp at the rail. Ryan, trying to extract the panga from his adversary, was carried after him. The blade began to move, slowly and with an obscene sucking sound. Ironically, it was the downward momentum of the man that gave Ryan the extra purchase he needed to pull the blade free…but still it began to topple him.

  Ryan looked over the side of the bridge at the rock shelf twenty feet below. He could survive the fall, but what would the subhumans below do to him? And even if he could evade them, how would he get back up here?

  He had time to think about that as everything seemed to move in slow motion. It seemed like forever until he felt the hands on his ribs, moving around to his chest and bracing him, seeming to pull back with an infinite slowness.

  The panga came free, and the Illuminated soldier plunged to the rock shelf below, unable to scream for the blood bubbling and filling his mouth in death throes. He hit the ground with a dull thump, and a cloud of dust rose from beneath. As Ryan watched, a group of the subhumans began to run and shamble from around the ledge, headed for the dying man. They clustered around him, tearing at his clothes and flesh in a fury. The soldier was lost beneath a dense throng of half humans, venting their fury at their captors and creators on the one, chilled representative.

  Ryan felt himself pulled back, and turned to find that it was Krysty who had grasped him in his moment of need.

  "Be a pity to lose you after you'd already won the fight, lover," she said with a twinkle. "And to see you end up like that."

  Ryan shivered despite himself. The sounds of a feeding frenzy reached him from below, and he knew there would be little of his opponent left to give them away.

  "Let's get moving. We don't need another one like that," he said shortly, turning to head through the open door.

  IT WAS SIMPLE to evade the Illuminated Ones for the rest of the short journey. Although they had to pass by rooms that were occupied, they followed the same expedient as before: Krysty would scout ahead, and the others would follow when the way was clear. Once past the bridge, they were able to pick up speed again, and were soon nearing the mat-trans hangar.

  "Bastard! Which way?" Ryan swore as they reached a junction.

  "We came from down there," J.B. said, indicating the corridor that led to the small sec door under the viewing bay. "But we sure as hell don't want to go back like that," he added.

  Ryan shook his head. "We want to get up to the level above, take out the coldhearts overlooking the Gate. Need the comps to open the doors safely and take out any kind of alarm."

  Dean looked around. "It's not going to be a level up in the redoubt, so there must be an elevator or stairwell leading off one of these corridors."

  Ryan agreed. "Quick recce. We take each of them, splitting up. Meet back here as soon as possible. Triple fast, triple frosty, people."

  They separated into three—Dean and Jak took one corridor, Ryan and Krysty another, while J.B. traversed the third on his own. Within a minute they had gathered once more. Ryan shook his head and took an acknowledgment from Dean, but J.B. had more to say.

  "Sec door halfway down the corridor, closed where the others aren't. From the lay of the land, it can't do anything but lead up a stairwell."

  "That's got to be it," Ryan said firmly. "But it's going to have to be a full assault. There's no other way we can handle it. Just the one entrance."

  "Dean, if the comps are down, could we open the main sec door to the chamber from any other way?" J.B. asked.

  The younger Cawdor considered that for a second. "Depends. I reckon we could still rewire and bypass any damaged terminals."

  "I'm thinking of tossing a shrapnel gren up the stairwell into the ob port. I'd prefer a nerve gren, but I don't have one. It's just the comp damage…"

  "What about the walls?" Krysty asked. "We don't want to bring down the redoubt around us."

  The Armorer shook his head. "The armaglass will give way, and the blast'll be directed out into the hangar. The only worry is that the people below will pick up some superficial injuries. But they should be able to take some kind of cover," he added.

  "We'll risk it. It's virtually asking to buy the farm if we do it any other way," Ryan decided.

  The Armorer nodded and pulled a gren from his omnipresent canvas bag. "I'll do it," he said calmly.

  Without a word, Ryan punched in the sec code on the door, and it opened. The Armorer looked up the twisting staircase that led to the ob port. He had hoped that he would only have to toss the gren up the stairwell, but the angle at which it twisted dictated that he had to take another course. He figured that if he was quick enough, he could take a couple of the steps, then toss the grenade around the angle of the stairwell and pull back before it detonated. The thing he didn't want was for any of the Illuminated Ones keeping watch from the ob port to suddenly descend the stairwell as he was on the way up.

  Taking a deep breath and counting inside his head, J.B. took the stairs two at a time. Four stairs, two steps, pull the pin…count one, two, three, four… He tossed the grenade around the angle of the stairs and leaped back down to the corridor as the gren went off with a roar that shook the walls around.

  "Hot pipe! If that didn't do it, nothing will," Dean exclaimed.

  "WHAT THE FUCK is going on?" Tammy yelled as the armaglass above the heads of the huddled army exploded in an explosion of light and sound.

  The Gate and the Crossroads dwellers had been kept in semidarkness and silence since the companions had been taken from them. Once Ryan and his people had been removed, the Illuminated Ones seemed to have lost interest and had merely maintained a watch. There had been no further communication, and the people in the ob port had dimmed their light so they couldn't be seen. In truth, the people below had no way of knowing whether they were still being observed.

  There had been no more attacks with the water, and the Illuminated sec hadn't entered the chamber to collect the discarded weapons. After a period, Gloria had directed her warriors to pick up their weapons and clean them off, checking them so that they could be used despite the film of water across the floor. She had no idea if they would be able to use them, but hoped that the companions would find a way to release them and fulfill the mission. Jon traveled around, checking weaponry, and was able to report back to Gloria that the force would be ready, if and when necessary, to begin the fight.

  But the question was when?

  The time passed with no way of knowing how long they had been there. The cold inside the chamber, the damp from the soaking they had received, ate into their bones, making them shiver and feel that they were stuck in limbo.

  So the sudden violence of the gren explosion did far more t
han give them hope—it jolted them out of a stupor caused by inertia and cold that threatened to lull them into hypothermia.

  "Gaia! It's Ryan!" Gloria yelled. Her heart leaped when she saw the companions appear in the hole left by the shattered armaglass. Dean then disappeared to one side, while Ryan shouted down to them.

  "The main man is chilled. Mildred and Doc are in search of the cure. We're gonna open the doors, then we move. Clean the place out, quickly as possible."

  "I hear you, honey!" Gloria yelled in reply. And with a whoop, she turned to the fighters around her. "Check your blasters and check your brains—we're gonna roll."

  Up in the ob port, Dean had picked his way over the blood splattered corpses in the bay, and was examining the smashed comp terminals. There had been three people in the area, and the shrapnel grenade had ripped them to pieces. It had also ripped into the terminals, and Dean was examining the smashed metal to try and make sense of the fiber optics that lay loose across the floor.

  Krysty came across to him. "Think it can be fixed?"

  "Don't know."

  The younger Cawdor crossed fiber optics, and the lights came on in the chamber below.

  "It's a start," he commented, before crossing another two.

  In the chamber below, the main sec door began to rise.

  "Come on, let's get down and join them before the sec arrive," Ryan said quickly. The others assented and dropped down the dozen or so feet to arrive on the floor of the chamber. It was an easy descent compared to many, and they were soon with Gloria and Tammy, ready to begin the assault.

  Gloria embraced Jak, holding him close. "C'mon, sugar, let's get this tidied up and get you sorted."

  Jon made his way through the throng of people and handed the companions their blasters, holding back Doc's LeMat and Mildred's Czech-made ZKR. "I'll keep these for when we catch up with them," he said laconically. "You'd better check—but I've given them a thorough clean and check already."

  "You're a good man," J.B. said simply, noting that the Uzi and the M-4000 were ready to fire. Jon smiled. From J. B. Dix, that was the highest of praise.

  The companions took their weapons, and Gloria watched them. They were ready now for a firefight, and for the Gate to move forward in their destiny.

  Despite what had happened, the Gate queen still believed that part of the legend of their tribe could be fulfilled by this battle.

  The woman turned to her people, checking Ryan's expression. He gave her an imperceptible nod, and she yelled, "Let's go get those scum fuckers!"

  THE BATTLE WAS SWIFT and violent. The Gate and Crossroads fighters spilled out of the opened sec door with speed, their enforced idleness now cleansed in the expectation of battle and of vengeance.

  "Take the corridors—split into groups and root out the scum," Gloria yelled. "Tammy, split them like before."

  "You know your task—you know how you were split. Take out the corridors one by one!"

  "Will we be able to open those doors?" Yardie yelled, his dreadlocks plastered to his head, panting heavily, his dark skin gray with the cold and exertions to which his fat frame was ill used.

  "Yeah, the main comp is off, I guess," Dean replied. "Once we were locked up, there was no need to secure the redoubt, and there's no one to operate the comp now. Key in the sec codes."

  Yardie read the code from the scratch plate and keyed it in. The door began to rise.

  He yelled, then screamed, "We've got the bastards!"

  Following his lead, other war party leaders keyed in codes and the doors began to rise along the corridor. The army split into parties that began to traverse the corridors.

  They were of taut nerve, ready for action, and for the most part highly trained fighters. They were up against a force that was unprepared for the attack, and had no idea that their leader had been chilled—at any moment, they expected some kind of leadership, and none were prepared to take the lead. The explosion in the ob port had resounded along many levels of the redoubt, but without an alarm or any information to tell them what was occurring, the Illuminated Ones were easy meat.

  Some were more alert and had better fighting instincts than others, banding together to try to form bridgeheads from which they could defend their positions. But despite their laser rifles, and the defensive strength of being inside the rooms that were overrun with the invading forces, they didn't have the skills of the Gate and were soon eradicated. The invading fighters suffered few in the way of casualties, with only a few Crossroads dwellers getting caught in the cross fire. For the most part, the Gate warriors mopped up resistance with ease.

  The companions stuck together as they swept through the redoubt, with Gloria and Tammy joining them when their paths crossed at corridor junctions.

  "Where are Mildred and Doc, sweets?" Gloria yelled over the noise of blasterfire.

  "I don't know," Ryan answered briefly. "We need to find them."

  Tammy soon joined the party, and they headed toward the sec door leading out onto the bridge.

  "Over the other side there's very little going on, but they must have some kind of warning by now," Ryan shouted as they ran. "Can only get a few people over at a time, so we need to really hit hard and fast."

  He keyed in the sec code and the door rose, revealing the bridge stretching out over the chasm.

  "Sweet Gaia," Gloria breathed as she surveyed the narrow metal strip that ran across the abyss. "That's gonna be a fucker if they come out the other end."

  "We'll have to get across quick and hope they don't, then," Ryan said with gritted teeth as he stepped onto the metal, not looking down at the rock shelf below. "Tread lightly," he said to Gloria and Tammy, "this bastard thing moves too much for my liking."

  "Don't worry about us." Gloria grinned. The Gate warriors had spent too long moving through trees and dense foliage, balancing and picking their way across branches, to be worried by the metal bridge.

  Gloria and Tammy moved across behind Ryan and Krysty, and before Jak, Dean and J.B. The Gate women looked over the side at the chasm and at the ledge populated by the subhumans.

  "What the fuck are those poor bastards?" Tammy asked.

  "More experiments by these coldhearted scum," Dean said softly. "Could be us, if we hadn't got the hell out in time."

  Tammy shook her head sadly. "Be a better place without any of those scum fuckers."

  They were halfway across when the sec door on the opposite side opened. A sec squad of Illuminated Ones was behind the door, armed with laser blasters. It was obvious that they were now aware of the battles taking place on the other side of the redoubt. Although they hadn't had time to recce fully, it was possible that some of the corridors curved around the chasm, and war parties had already reached that area, alerting the Illuminated Ones to the invasion.

  Whatever the reason, the party standing on the metal bridge now found itself at the mercy of the sec squad, with nowhere to run.

  "Damn those bastards to hell," Ryan yelled as he pulled the Steyr from his back and blasted toward the gathering of sec that were clustered in the doorway. The rounds from the rifle ripped through them, scattering the Illuminated Ones. Some fell to the ground, chilled or fatally wounded. Others dived backward to get out of the angle of the shots. Others still dropped to their stomachs and began to fire back with wayward blasts of laser fire that dipped wildly about the bridge.

  "Try and keep out of range," Krysty yelled, diving to the moving floor of the bridge and attempting to take aim with her .38 Smith & Wesson. But the bridge was now beginning to sway wildly as the seven people gathered on it began evasive maneuvers. Both Ryan and J.B. were trying to aim their weapons with one hand while gripping the thin metal rail with their free hands in an attempt to duck out of the way of the laser blasts and still stay on the walkway.

  But it was getting harder to keep balance with each evasive move. The sway of the bridge increased, and two of the sec squad had good cover within the corridor beyond the door from which to snipe at the bri
dge. Either the laser blasts would get them, or the bridge would throw them off, such was the cumulative increase of its motion as they moved upon it.

  Then the laser fire ceased. Sounds of battle came from within the doorway, and as the bridge steadied the people on it could hear a laser fire exchange beyond. It was short and sweet, ended by the screams of two people.

  "Hold your fire, I implore you!" called a voice from beyond the silent doorway.

  "Doc!" Dean yelled. "It must be Doc and Mildred."

  As the companions, Gloria and Tammy moved along the bridge, they saw Doc and Mildred appear in the doorway, holding laser blasters.

  "Our people are everywhere," Mildred gasped. "It's like a charnel house back there, but I think we're ahead. There's not many of the Illuminated Ones left."

  "That's good, but…" Ryan left the question unsaid.

  Mildred smiled. It was weak, as the disease had left her system ravaged, but there was a note of triumph in her voice as she spoke.

  "The disease cultures are destroyed. So is the clone—" she ignored the look of complete confusion from Tammy and Gloria "—and we've got an antidote. It'll prevent the spread of the disease, but whether it'll cure those who have it, I guess you'll just have to watch me and Doc to see."

  Chapter Eighteen

  In the aftermath of the battle, it was relatively easy to mop up the last few Illuminated Ones and dispose of them. Normally, Ryan would feel that chilling the defeated and defenseless was somehow wrong, but with the Illuminated Ones he was prepared to make an exception. They wished to eradicate the remnants of humanity, and as such deserved to be treated as little more than vermin. It wasn't execution, even, it was pest control. After them, the subhuman creatures they had created had to be destroyed. The poor, shambling half humans were riddled with disease, and the war party was advancing their date of chilling, making it as quick as possible.

  While Ryan and Gloria organized that, Tammy and J.B. joined Doc and Mildred in the lab, where Mildred explained her plans for inoculation and spreading the antidote across the lands. After she and Krysty had synthesized large amounts, she would leave it in Crossroads for convoys to transport. But in the meantime…