by James Axler
"Get the laser blasters ready. We won't use them yet, but if things get too crazy they may give us the edge." There was a gleam in her eye that suggested she wanted badly for things to get that crazy.
At the front of the caravan, Ryan and Gloria advanced beyond the last line of cover into open space, with Jak, Krysty and Tammy on their heels. The taller Gate warrior, with her mass of auburn curls framing a face taut with tension, had risen swiftly in the ranks, and Gloria now trusted her implicitly. It was unspoken, but the manner of her acting had promoted the younger woman in the ranks of the Gate warriors so that she was now almost second to the queen in battle.
The last line of cover itself was a small wall that ran around the last row of buildings before the vast concrete expanse. It was roughly 150 yards in itself, but vast enough when the lack of cover made every inch a potential death trap. The wall was only two and a half feet high and would have been little use as cover in a firefight, but nonetheless it marked a boundary, and Krysty shivered when one foot went beyond that boundary. Her hair closed around her neck. The tendrils that snaked down into her collar spoke volumes of the imminent danger.
"I feel completely naked like this," Gloria whispered to Ryan.
"So do I," the one-eyed warrior replied, "but there's nothing we can do about it. They've directed us here. Why haven't they picked us off if they can move about the ruins that easily without being seen? Mebbe they want to capture us more than kill us."
"You hope…"
Ryan gave a small shrug. "Mebbe. Just keep triple red and shoot on sight. They won't be expecting that."
Gloria spared him a glance, smiling with that lopsided grin he was getting used to. "You hope…" she said with a dry humor.
"Wish they start," Jak added from just behind. "Getting itchy."
As if on cue, the first attack began, and from directly in front of them.
Emerging into the open forum in front of the building that lay at the center of the complex, it was clearly visible that this was indeed a replica of the Pentagon. The building had the classic squared design to its facade, leading off to diagonal walls that took it around in a five-sided shape. The open area of concrete, designed specifically for clearing a no-man's-land space all around, stretched away from them on all sides, curving around the diagonal walls and forming a circular shape where the decorative walls in front of the last line of buildings were shaped away from the line of the blocks.
It was a hell of a large space in which to be chilled.
The Pentagon look-alike in front of them had few windows on the airless facade, and those that there were had long since been blown out. But they expected the building to be empty aboveground. At a signal from their leader, some of the Gate warriors raised their handblasters to cover the windows above ground level, in case a few sec men fired from above.
It was what Ryan or Gloria would have done. The building provided cover, and the height gave a wider angle of fire. But whoever was in command of the Illuminated Ones' sec force either hadn't thought of such an option, or had a plan that precluded this move, for the windows were as lifeless as they had been since the nukecaust.
On the ground level, the Gate and Ryan's people found that they had emerged at the front of the building. If they had been given pause to consider, it would have been an obvious move—bring them into the open right in front of the main entrance to the building. It revealed something about the mindset of whoever was in charge of the sec attack.
And yet, although things were about to happen too fast for rational and conscious thought, the sight of the front entrance triggered survival and combat instincts in Ryan and Gloria—and their respective forces—that had been honed in long years of battle.
The front of the building consisted of a series of false windows along the length of the wall at ground level. They were shaped into the facade like the windows on the upper levels, but were bricked in with decorative stonework that had eroded and faded into a series of seemingly random shapes. A main entrance arch framed iron double doors that were much more primitive than those on the original Pentagon building. Like everything else on this copy, it was a rough sketch with the emphasis on solid security rather than on accuracy. So the double doors had no subtlety, but were solid enough to withstand even the most hardened firefight. Set along the wall at regular intervals were four other sets of doors, flush to the wall with no arch or buttress to shelter them from the elements. The hinges to the doors were protected by being laid back behind the main shell of the door, indicating that they had to open outward.
So, it was obvious from the lack of sec force on the upper levels, and from the fact that they had been brought out to the front of the building, that this was where the attack would stem from—an assumption that was proved correct as the large double doors began to swing open with a speed that indicated a regular maintenance.
"Dark night," J.B. shouted. "Five fronts—get them covered."
The Armorer had been watching the other sets of doors while Ryan's and Gloria's attention had been focused on the double set. He had seen the four doors begin to open as one, and he was in motion before the first thought in his head had finished forming into his shouted warning.
J.B. wasn't the only one to notice this.
"I'll take left," Tammy yelled, moving in the opposite direction to the Armorer, and showing her natural talents as a warrior. Like J.B., she had observed the doors, and had also caught sight of the wiry man in the fedora leveling his Uzi and peeling away from the main body of the caravan.
Galvanized into action by the two shouts of command, the Gate Amazons split into three with a natural grace that made the body of warriors seem like a flowing river spilling around a rock. Fanning out into three streams, they then spread farther apart to make themselves a harder target to hit.
Mildred and Dean followed J.B. to the right, while Krysty and Jak moved off to follow Tammy, their direction dictated by their proximity to each shout.
Doc, however, didn't move forward. His mind was racing. He recalled only too clearly some of the dangers Ryan's warriors had discussed in their short briefing. As Doc had been some way back in the caravan, having been in the process of moving up from his previous traveling position on the armory wag, he had seen the beginning of the firefight with a perspective denied those at the front.
Why? The single thought raced through his mind. Why would the Illuminated Ones' sec force, on home territory, not utilize the advantage of the upper levels in the building, allowing them a clean sweep of the concrete area? Unless their forces, which weren't infinite at any rate, were to be split in some way. Split, perhaps, because the exits that had been used to access the wrecks and block the road were to be used again to mount an attack from the rear, as his companions had considered a possibility.
More than a possibility. Just the briefest of glances told Doc that the Gate warriors were focused on the front, and even the men leading the wags, armed as they were, hadn't yet considered to glance behind them.
"By the Three Kennedys, this could be appalling!" Doc muttered to himself, turning on his heel and racing back through the dispersing Gate Amazons.
Seeing Doc rush toward them, Jon and Petor both felt confusion. They hadn't known Doc long, but although they considered him quite mad, they would never have thought of him as a coward.
Doc saw their faces, and yelled, "No—behind! Look behind."
There were two groups of wags at the rear of the caravan. The first consisted of the camp materials and the armory, and was still standing in the roadway they had just traveled. The second housed the children of the tribe and the food supplies. These had already been moved into what little cover was supplied by the buildings facing the open area. Both groups of wags were manned by the men of the tribe, carrying rifles and machine blasters. None of them looked particularly at ease with the blasters, and none of them seemed too pleased at Doc's garbed words.
Petor spun on the top of the armory wag and caught just the brief
est glimpse of a gray uniform as it flitted from the cover of one doorway to another.
"Fuck, he's right. They've got behind us!" the young man yelled as a breathless Doc caught up with the armory wag.
"Secret exit…how moved old wags…should realized sooner…" Doc gasped, trying to climb up and join them on the armory wag.
"Don't worry, you thought of it soon enough," Jon said, helping Doc to mount the side of the wag. "Sooner than us stupidworks bastards would have." He turned his attention to the other men of the tribe and snapped out the order, "Watch all the sides. Try and save ammo, but shoot the fuckers as soon as you get a chance."
He spoke not a moment too soon, for as his last words rang out on the air, a beam from a laser blast scored the air past his shoulder, plucking at the thin material of his shirt and making it smolder.
"Fuck!" he exclaimed, dropping from his upright position onto one knee.
Beside him, Petor took careful but swift aim with his Lee Enfield .303 and snapped off a shot that shattered the visor of the purple-clad Illuminated One sec man who had stepped out to take the shot. Soundlessly, any cry muffled by his helmet, the sec man crumpled, dropping his blaster.
"Thanks," Jon said simply.
Petor smiled grimly. "Good thing we did that target practice behind Margia's back."
Meanwhile, back at the front line, things were beginning to heat up.
The Gate had spread as the doors began to open, expecting at the very least for a wag to come from the large double doors. However, instead of the armored and fortified front line they expected, they were greeted by a procession of sec men on foot, charging from the open doors with their laser blasters raised.
"Hot pipe, they must be triple-stupe muties," Dean breathed, leveling his Browning and picking off the first man out with a shot that penetrated the chest cavity with little problem.
AT THE FIRST LEVEL beneath the subbasement of the building, and the uppermost level of the redoubt, Simon Rack was seated in front of a bank of monitors next to Al Jorgensen. Rack had been selected to monitor the attack through the series of cameras planted around the building to record any movement in the vicinity. There were more cameras within these few hundred yards than in the rest of the deserted compound, and the monitors were banked together instead of separately in order for one operative to assist the head of sec in building an overall picture. Rack had been chosen because—despite his efforts to lay low— he was good at his job.
The thickset, jowl-heavy man by his side was in his late fifties, and had been head of sec for the past fifteen years. During that time, apart from a few skirmishes with stickies and one brush with a trading convoy that skirted the outer reaches of their territory, there had been no hostile activity or combat. Jorgensen hadn't raised a blaster in anger for more than twenty-five years, and although he did the simulations, read the manuals and kept his people up to scratch in target practice, he was only too well aware that the lack of actual combat experience was telling.
Simon cast a glance at the man beside him. Al sat forward in his chair, hands gripping the armrests, posture stiff and rigid. Sweat beaded his upper lip, and his forehead was slick with moisture. The headset that crossed his cropped scalp was loose with the slippery state of his skin, and the mouthpiece quivered over his lips, parted slightly in disbelief as he watched the monitor in front of him.
The Gate had been taken by surprise by the speed at which the sec force had spilled out of the doors. At least, that had been Al's hope. Despite the beating his people had taken on the plain, he had put that down to the greater numbers of the Amazon women, and had gambled that a roughly equal number of his own force spilling out the front would be a greater match.
Looking at it from his point of view, the facts were simple. He had an equal number meeting the Gate head-on, and a skeleton force attacking from the rear. His forces were armed with blasters that were far superior to anything that the Gate might carry. In terms of numbers and arms, his force should be able to counteract and eliminate the intruders with ease, especially as it had been so easy to fool them into following the path he wanted.
But now, watching the firefight unfold on the screens in front of him, while his attention directed every now and again to a particular screen where something was occurring by a word from the impassive Simon Rack, Al felt the world begin to cave in on him. A flurry of crackling voices rang in his ears, tinny and distorted through the rad interference and the size of the headphones. And all asked the same thing…what do we do?
Simon looked at Al. The older sec chief seemed almost frozen in…not fear, exactly, but a kind of indecision.
Oh, great, Simon thought, that was just what they needed.
OUT ON THE CONCRETE expanse that had become a battleground, crowded with bodies, blood and the sound of sizzling laser blasts punctuated by the staccato bursts of blasterfire, things were rapidly moving forward.
The sec forces who had moved out into the open had found that they had as little cover once they were in the open as the Gate warriors they were supposed to chill. They spread out as much as possible, but were already on the defensive, having lost the element of surprise as soon as the doors had finished opening and the first of their number had spilled out. The biggest problem had been with the single doors. Those sec soldiers behind the initial charge had been unable to lay down the covering fire they had hoped, for the simple reason that the narrow width of the door hadn't afforded them the angle necessary to fire without actually cutting through their own people. That had allowed the Gate a free shot at those emerging sec men as they leveled their laser blasters to fire.
The air was filled with the piercing screams and cries of the Gate warriors as they either flattened to the concrete or raised their blasters on the run and let off the opening volley of shots. The cries served a dual purpose. Part of the self-trancing process by which the women psyched themselves up for battle and moved into a berserker mode; they also struck terror into any opponents by their sheer primal savagery.
Ryan, on the concrete with the Steyr snug in his shoulder, picking off sec men, noticed that there was a male note in among the screams. Jak, caught in his bond with Gloria and the closeness with the Amazons that he had developed while training with them, was also screaming as he moved across the concrete, snapping off shots from his Colt Python as he moved. Gloria was beside him, her eyes cold and hard, glittering with the dark fire of battle as she used her Vortak to pick off her targets, sinuously moving to avoid the erratic beams of laser fire that emanated from those Illuminated Ones who were still able to fire.
Even those brave sec men were handicapped by yet another problem not foreseen by Jorgensen. The blasters were erratic in combat when away from the confines of a target shoot. And so the sec men who were able to put up a fight found themselves let down by blasters that either jammed and cut out, or shot laser fire that moved erratically away from their aim.
At the fringes of the fan formed by the Gate, things were also happening. To the left of the main thrust, Tammy had led her phalanx of warriors until they had covered the entirety of the building's length and spread around one of the diagonal sides. Those women who had achieved that were then able to use the oblique angle of the side of the building to shelter themselves from the emerging Illuminated Ones and pick their shots at them. The auburn-curled Gate warrior—no longer a girl but now a full-blooded Amazon—led her troops with a series of blood curdling shrieks as she circled the area in front of the doors, taking her time to pick her shots and standing upright and unafraid, her berserker instinct now to the fore. The adrenaline coursed through her veins, and if she was capable of rational thought at that moment, then she truly believed that she was invulnerable.
On the right-hand side, the Gate women led into battle by J.B. were faring as well, if a little differently in approach. The Armorer led from the front, teeth ground tight together in concentration as he leveled the Uzi, switched to continuous fire and let fly with a stream of lead at the eme
rging sec forces. Regardless of the ammo that was wasted in the process, he sprayed along the front of the building so that some slugs flew harmlessly into the stonework, ricocheting off and throwing out small slivers of sharpened stone and little clouds of dust. It was worth these wasted slugs for the time it saved him in aiming, firing small controlled bursts, then switching direction to aim and fire at the other doorway. The fractions of seconds saved in each sweep may have wasted ammo, but made it easier for J.B. to keep momentum in his attack, and prevent as many as possible of the sec force from emerging.
Some were chilled. They fell as they reached beyond the doorways—not enough to block them, but enough to make it harder for the next soldier out to negotiate the exit with ease while raising and aiming their laser blasters. Often it was easier for the man to stay back in the safety of the doorway and attempt to take a blast with the laser from inside, even though it narrowed the area of fire, even though it was still a clearer shot than if a fellow soldier had been in front, as some of the chilled sec men had found to their cost when they had blocked their own covering fire.
J.B.'s firing pattern had prevented a swarm of the sec force from emerging out of the doorways to his side, and enabled the Amazons to gain good positions for firing at their enemy.
Jon and Petor were hunched down on the armory wag, their tender years and the reality that they were men in an Amazon tribe belied by the fact that they were both calmly and assuredly issuing battle orders to the other men clustered around the two groups of wags.
Those men who were guarding the children of the tribe had formed a small arrowhead formation around their wags, and were firing in a regular pattern at any sec forces they could see. The other men, who were in the cluster of wags that included the armory wag with Jon, Petor and Doc, were taking shelter behind their wags as they were in a more exposed position, and were also picking off shots at any uniform that heaved into view.
