by James Axler
“All right.” Fixie cracked his knuckles. “Sounds good to me. Let’s get started, and I’ll jump in when you tell me what you want me to do.”
“I have a better idea.” Doc bowed. “How about if I assist you?”
Fixie thought it over for a moment, then shrugged. “Sure, Theo. Why the heck not?”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Ryan assessed the oncoming force in one heartbeat and decided on a strategy in the next.
At first glance, he saw one piece of artillery and lots of attackers—hundreds, maybe, judging from the crowd pressing forward at the front line.
So he and his team were drastically outnumbered, but at least there was only one big blaster to contend with. Since the shifters had to reload after each shot, there wouldn’t be a constant stream of shells pouring over the battlefield.
The best strategy was instantly clear to him: scatter, and kill from a distance.
Whirling, he shouted in his most commanding voice, “Scatter!” Eye sweeping across the group, he saw everyone but Union and Hammersmith present, already armed and steeling themselves for battle. “Get some elevation! Mow them down as they advance!”
He didn’t have to tell anyone twice. Without hesitation, they leaped into action.
Everyone bolted in a different direction, heading for a vantage point in the hills bracketing the battlefield. They would cut down the muties from the heights, then catch whoever got through in a cross fire.
If the artillery didn’t blow them to pieces first, that was. Even as Ryan ran for the closest hill, he heard the poom of the big blaster, followed by the wail of an incoming shell. The shriek passed overhead and dropped behind him, not far from the overturned wag. The ground shook when it hit, jarring his steps as he raced up the side of the hill.
The blastermen were pretty good. Once Ryan and the others started their sniper fire, it wouldn’t take long for the big blaster to sight in on their nests.
Breathing fast, Ryan quickly scaled the hillside. He stopped short of the peak, about fifty feet from the ground, and threw himself down so he was facing the attackers.
Even as he sighted the Steyr Scout longblaster on the front rank of muties, he heard a shot from another blaster crack through the air nearby. He instantly recognized it as the sound of Jak’s .357 Colt Python. As he watched the field before him, he saw a big mutie up front take a hit to the left chest and fly over backward into comrades behind him.
“My turn.” Ryan aimed at another big mutie up front and squeezed the trigger. The mutie’s head exploded in a sudden burst of crimson. “Next.”
Even as Ryan swung his longblaster to pick another target, and shots from his teammates boomed from the surrounding hillsides, he realized that the strategy was probably futile. His team of five had ten blasters among them and limited ammo, versus what looked to be hundreds of shifters with what looked like one blaster for every third man. The rest of the muties carried swords or maces or clubs. And then there was the artillery.
Ryan and the others had been up against some lopsided odds in the past and triumphed, but this was an extreme situation. No matter how hard they pressed the shifters, the numbers weren’t in their favor. The smartest play would be to flee…
The front rank of the shifters was less than a hundred yards away and fast approaching. They fired at the hills where Ryan and his people were posted, to no avail. Dozens of blasters fired at once from those enemy ranks, but no shot came close to striking any of the snipers.
Meanwhile, Ryan’s group kept picking them off, one after another, right down the line. It was a little like shooting at the surf of a rising ocean tide, but no one gave up. No one stopped shooting longer than it took to reload a weapon or sight a new target.
As Ryan cranked off another shot with the Steyr Scout, he heard the familiar boom of the artillery cannon, followed by the screech of a shell in flight. This time, the shell came down on the face of Jak’s hill, close enough to rattle Ryan’s teeth. Looking over, he saw Jak tumbling down the backside of the bombed hill, but then Jak stopped his fall and clambered back up to his nest.
Too close. As long as the big blaster was in play, Ryan’s side would have a very short life span.
But there was no good way to take it out of the game. The enemy’s front line was strung across a broad swath of sandy flat; no matter how he cut it, getting to the cannon would require a tooth-and-nail fight through tightly packed mutie infantry.
Ryan knocked down another shifter. J.B.’s M-4000 blew away another to the immediate left of that toppling victim.
The shifters continued to march forward, sending up clouds of blasterfire in the direction of the hills. Through the Scout’s sight, he saw the soldiers carried a hodgepodge of weapons, everything from machine blasters to streetsweeper shotguns to semiautomatic handblasters.
The big blaster unleashed another shell that hurtled over the troops, heading straight for one of the hills. Only as the shell whistled down did Ryan realize the hill was Krysty’s position.
He saw her looking up, then throwing herself in a wild roll down the hillside. She moved fast, almost a blur, even then only barely getting out of the way in time.
The shell hit just above her former position, blowing apart a chunk of hillside that would have included Krysty if she hadn’t escaped. As it was, the blast kicked her off the hill midway down, sending her flying.
Ryan’s heart raced, but she was beyond his help. Fortunately, she was athletic and recovered from the piranha-wasp attack. As he watched, she twisted and rolled in midair, tucking in her head and elbows and knees. She came down in the sand in a series of fast somersaults that bled off the momentum of her fall, bringing her to a gradual stop. When she uncurled and got to her feet, she looked undamaged. Ryan let out the deep breath he’d been holding ever since the shell had first hit.
Again, he ran the possibilities for disabling the big blaster. If the shelling continued, his group might not have to worry about the attackers after all; the artillery might kill them first.
Just moments after Ryan went back to sniping the shifters, he heard another boom from the cannon, then the signature whistle of a shell.
Looking up, he saw where it was headed. Clear as day, the shell traced an arc through the blue-green sky, passing gracefully over the horde of murderous muties.
Zeroing in on the very hill that Ryan currently occupied.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
“Hand me those wire cutters,” Fixie said from inside a crawl space in the wall of the mat-trans chamber.
Doc grabbed a rusty pair of wire cutters from a battered metal toolbox on the floor. “Here they come.” He pushed them into the crawl space as far as he could; Fixie, who was on all fours, contorted himself to reach back and get them.
“Thanks, Theo. I’ll need the pliers next.”
“Coming right up.” Doc liked Fixie and didn’t mind playing second fiddle to him. Of the shifters he’d been spending time with, only Fixie had a remotely genuine personality.
“So are you sure about this?” Fixie asked from the crawl space. “You really want to fix this device and hand it over to Exo or Ankh?”
Were the questions a test? Doc couldn’t be sure they weren’t, though he had a gut feeling that Fixie was trustworthy. “Do you really think you can fix it? That you can finish Hammersmith’s work?”
“What if I do?” Fixie asked. “Would that be in the best interest of the people of the Shift?”
Doc pushed the pliers into the crawl space. “I do not think we have much choice, do we?”
Fixie chuckled. “Let’s just say I know a lot more about this gear than they think I do.” He reached back for the pliers. “Though it’s true that our old friend Union really did a number on the place.”
“Union?”
“Hammersmith’s number one assistant who trashed the joint,” Fixie replied. “I’ve been repairing it on the sly ever since, in dribs and drabs from detailed plans that Hammersmith drafted.”
<
br /> “But Ankh said nothing in here had been touched since Hammersmith left.”
“He doesn’t know everything that goes on, though he likes to act as though he does.” Something clanked in the crawl space, and Fixie cursed softly. “I’ve been sneaking in here for months, setting things to rights.”
“So you can hand control over to Exo or Ankh?” Doc asked.
“So I can make this gear work the way Dr. Hammersmith intended. He created the Shift, you know, but he never meant to.” Fixie backed out of the crawl space, then stood and dusted himself off. “He wanted to turn the area into a Garden of Eden.”
“And that’s what you want, too?”
Fixie shrugged and dropped the pliers and wire cutters into his toolbox. “It wouldn’t hurt, would it?” He smiled and reached for a screwdriver. “It would sure beat what we’ve got now.”
Doc frowned. “You really think you can do it?”
“Do I understand everything Hammersmith set up here? Heck no.” Fixie swept the screwdriver in a circle, encompassing the room. “But can I get everything running again, and implement the changes mapped out in his plans? Pretty sure, yeah.”
“Then what?” Doc asked.
“Transform the Shift into paradise,” Fixie said. “Then destroy this equipment so no other idiot can get in here and ruin it.”
Doc nodded slowly. “If you can finish without Exo or Ankh interfering.”
“Good thing there are two of us in the picture now.” Fixie winked, then turned and headed across the cluttered room.
“If they do not get us before you finish, they will get us after,” Doc said. “Unless you have an escape plan of some kind.”
“Not yet. Though if we didn’t have all this torn apart, we’d be fine. This used to be a matter-transfer system.”
Doc knew all too well about the mat-trans, though he decided to keep playing his cards close to his vest. And he didn’t want to tip his hand by asking Fixie how he knew what it was.
“I had heard rumors about some sort of matter-transfer device but doubted its existence.”
“If it was still in one piece, we could supposedly just zap our way out of here,” Fixie said. “But we need to use it to make paradise instead.”
“Right.” Though Doc didn’t understand exactly how Hammersmith had converted the mat-trans to transform the local landscape, it did seem logical that it worked. Mat-trans tech juggled matter and energy, turning one into the other and back again. If it could reconstruct a human body from a beam of particles, why not use it to convert other matter into different forms, as well?
“If only we had some kind of weapons.” As Doc looked around the room, he took in the scattered tools and piles of junk. “Perhaps we could convert some of the contents of this chamber to that purpose.”
“Mebbe,” Fixie said, “but I think we ought to focus on getting this equipment up and running.” He went to a panel in the wall at eye level and loosened the screws in the corners. “First priority is solving the power-flow problem.”
Doc approached and watched over his shoulder. “You said the power source is intermittent?”
Fixie nodded as he pulled the panel off the wall. “There’s a nuclear reactor that powers this whole complex, but there’s a problem with the core. I haven’t figured out how to fix it, so I’ve been hooking this room up to a different source—a special high-yield nuclear battery backup. Once I switch over, we should have a steady, dedicated power flow to the mat-trans.”
“This will be up and running then?” Doc asked.
“I didn’t say that.” Fixie used the tip of the screwdriver to nudge apart some colorful wires in the space where the panel had been. “We’ve got a bigger problem, actually. The transmitter.”
“What about it?”
“It’s failing, too. Exo’s people have been trying to ‘fix’ it, but they’re clueless. We need to undo what they’ve done, which is the tricky part.”
“Why is it tricky?” Doc asked.
Fixie looked back at him. “Because it’s under armed guard.”
“But we have a mandate to repair the equipment, don’t we?”
“This equipment.” Fixie pointed at the floor. “But the transmitter’s handled by a separate team. Less possibility for one person to take control of all the components that way, I guess.”
Doc nodded. Though his tendency, in past adventures, had been to let others take the lead, his attitude had shifted in recent days. He’d begun thinking in a more proactive way.
Reaching down, he patted the razor blade in his coat pocket. “I suppose we’ll have to prove them wrong about that,” he said calmly.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Ryan didn’t hesitate. As the shell from the shifters’ big blaster soared toward his roost, he scrambled down the back side of the hill as fast as he could.
Holding tight to his longblaster, he descended the sandy slope in leaps and bounds, mentally bracing himself for the impact. It came within seconds, when he was three-quarters of the way to the bottom.
The shell burst against the opposite face of the hill with enough force to kick his legs out from under him. Amid a shower of debris, he slid and tumbled the next thirty feet to the base of the hill, coming down on his back and shoulders.
Wincing at the painful landing, Ryan threw himself over to get his hands and knees under him. He quickly boosted himself into a runner’s crouch, then got all the way to a standing position.
As far as he could tell, his back and shoulders were the worst of his injuries. Nothing was broken, and he’d managed to hold on to his weapons and ammo.
It wasn’t a bad result, but he couldn’t afford to waste time counting his blessings. He needed a tactical status, and he needed it now.
Adrenaline burning in his bloodstream like a bomb’s lit fuse, Ryan charged around the base of the hill for a look at the battlefield. What he saw was about what he expected: the shifter front line advancing from fifty yards away, firing more or less indiscriminately at the surrounding hilltops.
In the few seconds that he was standing there, some of the frontline shifters spotted him and swung their weapons to shoot in his direction. Ryan immediately flung himself back behind the curve of the hill, planning to clamber back up to regain some altitude.
Instead, he found himself being struck in the middle of his back with the butt of a longblaster.
Ryan pitched forward and whipped around, getting a look at the person who’d attacked him. He fully expected to see a shifter there, a sneaky point man who’d run ahead of the oncoming attackers and gotten behind him.
But that wasn’t at all what Ryan saw. Instead of a shifter, a six-foot-four woman with platinum blonde hair glared back at him. Union.
He wasn’t completely shocked, though, after what Jak had told him she’d said. She’d pretended to be an ally—a frigid one, to be sure—but now the mask was off, and she was moving in for the kill.
Without a word, she stormed forward and lashed around the butt of her Heckler & Koch assault weapon, aiming for his head. Ryan ducked just in time, and the stock whipped past above him.
Spinning the automatic longblaster back, Union caught the barrel in one hand and the grip in the other. But before she could squeeze off any close-proximity shots at Ryan, he charged and tackled her backward, taking her all the way to the ground.
Ryan landed on top of her and latched on to the longblaster, jamming it lengthwise against her throat. He pressed it down with all his weight, hoping to black her out, but she used the ground under her as leverage and threw him off with one sudden twist.
As Ryan rolled one way, she rolled the other, coming up facing him with the H&K pointing in his direction. Ryan kept rolling, making it down into a dip in the sand just as she squeezed off a shot that narrowly missed.
Breathing deeply, Ryan waited until just after her second shot, then launched himself to his feet and sprinted for the closest hill. Legs pumping, he barely outran her next shot, diving behind the hil
l as if he was slicing into deep water there.
“Hey, One-Eye!” she shouted in a taunting voice with a heavy foreign accent. “You forgot your longblaster, big fella! What’re you going to do without that?”
She was right; he’d dropped the Scout in the ambush. But it made no difference to him. He still had the 9 mm SIG-Sauer and all the deadly odds and ends he needed, including his fists and feet. And now that he recognized that accent and realized what her nationality was, he was more motivated than ever to hammer her down hard. Because not only had she betrayed his team from within, but she was part of the nation that had brought the Deathlands into being in the first place.
“I am coming for you, One-Eye.” Her accent was Russian. “When I am done, I will wear your balls around my neck, on either side of that one eye you have left.”
Ryan drew the SIG-Sauer, checked the magazine, flicked off the safety and started around the hill, then doubled back when he heard her footfalls coming around the same side. He darted halfway back to the spot where she’d originally surprised him, wondering if she was coming up behind him or doubling back herself.
Then, following his gut instinct, he sprang up the hillside instead of staying at ground level. He quickly climbed twelve feet up the base and flung himself on his belly with the SIG pointing downward.
Seconds later, he saw Union creeping along below, crouching and peering ahead for some trace of him. She would be an easy shot, though he wasn’t going for the kill; he still needed answers regarding her betrayal, her true motivation and whomever else she might be working with.
Before he could squeeze the trigger, though, she saw something on the ground—a footprint?—and swung up the H&K and blasted a round up the hillside. Fortunately, she wasn’t as quick a shot as she needed to be, and the round went wide by a foot.
Ryan responded by putting a 9 mm slug square in her left shoulder. The impact spun her back, and she followed it around the curve of the hillside. Looking down, he saw her blood trail speckled in the sand, but she was otherwise out of sight.
