by James Axler
When the sensation peaked, Krysty put both hands on the knob and turned.
There was a loud metallic crack and the knob rotated freely.
Her face flushed with the exertion, Krysty pulled on the knob, and its shattered plastisteel shaft slid out of the door. She leaned against the door for a moment, light-headed from the power she had channeled and redirected. Surprisingly, the use of the power didn't drain her. Then she poked a finger into the hole in the escutcheon plate and released the locking mechanism. The door opened a crack.
And the sound of moving people and things got much louder.
Krysty waited until there was a lull in the noise, then opened the door wider. She saw the backs of a pair of troopers hurrying away from her. They were carrying armloads of small canisters. She ducked out of the cell, heading the other way.
The corridor branched in three directions before her. She took the right-hand hallway without hesitation. Because Krysty had kept track of her position from the moment she entered the domes, she knew that that route was closest to the outside of the complex. Ryan had told her that if the comp was linked to the satellite, it would need an antenna to transmit and receive signals. Which could mean that it was located in a room with an exterior wall. Even if it wasn't, she had to start somewhere and proceed methodically.
She moved along the hall, looking at the doors. From her experience exploring predark redoubts, she guessed that the comp would need a "clean room," a place free of radical changes in temperature and free of dust and other contaminants. This dictated using a different sort of gasket seal around the door. It would also dictate a self-contained ventilation system. Evidence of both could be easily seen at a glance.
Krysty found nothing in the first corridor. All the doors were alike. As she started to follow the next right-hand branch of the hallway, she heard footfalls and rumbling noises coming her way. Turning back, she tried doorknobs until she found one that was unlocked. She quickly ducked into the room and closed the door.
A second or two later, the troopers passed outside. When Krysty took a moment to look around the room, what she saw puzzled her. The place had been ransacked. Equipment and supplies had been dumped onto the floor from shelves along one wall. Whatever the invaders were doing, they were doing it in extreme haste. From the chaos, it looked as if they were preparing for an impending retreat instead of an attack.
A forced retreat.
She slipped back out into the hall and resumed her search. Before she saw the ventilation grate, she felt its warm rush of air on the tips of her hair. It was set high in the wall next to a door. And the door was unlike any other she had come across. It had a thick, pliable gasket around its entire perimeter, and a locking wheel in its center instead of a knob.
When she tried the wheel, it turned easily. The door wasn't locked. As soon as she cracked it, a chorus of cluttering noises greeted her and she knew she had found what she had been looking for. The room before her was brightly lit by ceiling strips, and an entire wall was taken up by a bank of electronic instruments and LCD screens. She shut the door and moved closer to the stacked screens.
The images they contained were pictures of Earth taken from space. Not just scans of Deathlands, but the whole planet. Some of the displays used infrared to show temperature gradients of landmasses and ocean currents. Others offered analyses of current weather patterns, rock and soil types and indigenous plant and animal species. Still others pinpointed the locations of scattered human populations. On some of the screens, she could see what looked like individual people walking about between circles of huts, oblivious to the fact that they were being observed.
This unimaginable, all encompassing view of her world made it seem small and vulnerable.
A target.
One screen in particular caught her eye. It showed clusters of bright points of blue light on a flat grid-work. There were four points to a cluster. Some were so tightly overlayed that they could only be distinguished when they moved apart. And the clusters did move, independently, as she watched. The grid squares of the overlay were either lime green or fluorescent red. The green squares formed a path that wound through a field of red; they ended, abruptly, in red. All of the blue dots were inside the green grids.
Red was dead.
The blue pinpoints were the manacles of the individual slaves at Ground Zero.
Krysty looked around for something to smash the comp with, and, finding nothing more suitable, picked up a small chair.
As she raised it over her head, the door to the room opened, and a voice behind her said, "I wouldn't do that if I were you."
Chapter Twenty-Three
"What do you mean your troopers are unable to control the situation?" Dredda yelled in the man's face. "They have armor and weapons! The workers are defenseless!"
"It looks like the slaves got their hands on some pulse rifles," the trooper said. "They overpowered a couple of guards, then stripped them of their armor and weapons. At this point things are, well, fluid."
" 'Fluid'? You mean they could go either way?"
The man nodded grimly, then braced himself for more verbal attack by his commander.
He wasn't disappointed.
Dredda put a finger in his face. "I ordered you to maximize output at the mines and instead, you have jeopardized everything. Everything! I should never have put men in charge there. But I figured that slaves—underwatered, unfed, overworked slaves— even you could handle. I underestimated them, and I overestimated you."
The trooper noncom pulled himself together and said, "To regain control of the mines, we're going to need reinforcements. We've lost men out there. They need to be replaced."
"So, I'm going to have to spend fuel and time recovering what shouldn't have been lost in the first place. The question is, should I even bother?" Dredda turned to the lanky man standing quietly to one side. "What is your analysis of the situation?"
"The cost-benefit ratio is difficult to quantify," Dr. Huth said. "There's no way of estimating the additional fuel and the time that will be required to retake the mines. Recovering the loss of time is impossible, obviously. Recovering the lost fuel depends on how quickly control is regained. If the expended fuel can't be recovered in the time remaining, with some considerable extra to boot, there's no advantage to putting down the slave rebellion. To do so would only mean less energy available before and after the jump."
"I get the feeling that everything is closing in on me," Dredda said. "Everywhere I turn I find a dead end, and I don't like it!"
"The options are definitely narrowing," Huth agreed. "I suggest an immediate, limited operation. Commit as few irreplaceable resources as possible. If during the confrontation the opposition gives any hint that it can't sustain itself, throw everything at them."
"Sounds reasonable," Dredda said. She faced the noncom and said, "I want you on the road to Ground Zero in two minutes with fifty troopers in four of the attack wags. I want that compound secured in half an hour and the ore wags rolling again. If you can't accomplish that, don't bother coming back."
The trooper started to say something, but thought better of it. He saluted, then turned stiffly and left the room.
Dredda called in the pair of sister gyro pilots who had been waiting in the corridor.
"We've got a major crisis on our hands," Dredda told them. "There's been a slave revolt at the mines. The troopers stationed there haven't been able to get it under control. The flow of ore to the processor has been cut off, which means we can't maximize our fuel stockpile before the jump. It means we will take even less equipment with us."
"What do you want us to do?" asked the taller of the two transgenic females.
"I want you to attack Ground Zero from the air. I want you to break the back of the rebellion with a minimum loss of life and limb on the workers' side. It can't be an indiscriminate slaughter because we need the slaves to mine the ore. If you injure too many, the operation becomes pointless."
"Understood.
"
"Now, listen very carefully," Dredda said, "this is most important. If anything happens that eliminates the possibility of recovering more ore from the mines I want you to break off contact immediately and return here. Is that clear?"
"If the supply line break looks permanent, we come back at once," said the taller pilot.
"That's right. If no more ore can be extracted, there's no use burning additional fuel, not to mention risking your lives and the two gyroplanes. At that point it becomes a cut-our-losses situation. We'll have to make do with what we have."
"And the troopers on the ground?" the other pilot asked. "What's going to happen to them if we withdraw?"
"I hadn't planned on taking any of the males with us, anyway," Dredda said. "There isn't enough fuel to transport both them and the gear we need. They're just extra baggage. We will jump without them."
As the pilots hurried out of the room, Dredda felt a gnawing pain in the pit of her stomach. Other reality jumps had always been part of her master plan. Eventually, each of the original sisters would have her own Shadow World to rule. And their unique kind would disperse through the limitless, near-mirror-image parallels in time-space, proliferating themselves in each reality, using up the available resources before moving on. Always moving on. She had never considered the possibility that their first jump might end so prematurely, in such disarray, in such a nightmare of unforeseeable circumstances and inexcusable blunders.
Dredda looked over at Huth, who stood with his arms folded across his chest. "What are you smiling at?" she demanded.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Gradually, as Ryan and J.B. climbed away from Ground Zero and the bottom of the nuke's crater, a ribbon of the real world reappeared on the horizon on all sides. Snow-covered mountaintops peeked above the rim of glass, then familiar red mesas. The sense of oppression that both men had felt began to lift.
They had been traveling about fifteen minutes when another ore wag rounded a curve in front of them. This one was empty, and headed back to the mines. It eased over onto the right-hand side of the road so the vehicles could pass without a collision. The two men flattened themselves on the glass until after the truck went by.
"That trooper's in for the shock of his life," J.B. commented.
"Damned well better be," Ryan said.
When their wag reached the last rise leading to Slake City, the driver shifted into low gear and they crawled up the grade. Minutes later, as the wag finally cleared the top of the rise, Ryan looked down the long slope that ended in the invaders' compound. Even from a distance of fifteen hundred yards, he could see the intense activity that seemed to be concentrated in a small section of the plain. The tiny black figures were running to wags, which were parked in formation beside the cluster of domes. As he watched, a pair of gyroplanes lifted off from the landing strip and one of the wags started up and headed toward the entrance to the road.
"Sure looks like they got a bug up their butts," J.B. said. "Do you think Mildred and Jak made their play?"
"Could be this is the otherworlders' response," Ryan said. "They could be getting ready to launch an attack on Ground Zero."
"Or they could be getting ready for us," Dix said. "If they found the naked troopers, they might have guessed we're in their suits. If that's the case, that wag coming our way is big trouble. We've got no weapons and nowhere to run."
"So we'll just stay put and play it out," Ryan said. "Let's screw on our helmets and keep down."
The first assault wag zoomed up the track toward them, but it didn't slow down and it didn't stop. Ryan watched it go by through the crack between the wag's rear gate and side frame. J.B. gave Ryan a thumbs-up sign.
So far so good.
Their ore wag continued down the road. When it reached the edge of the glass and rumbled onto the dirt, three more assault wags roared around it and shot up the road toward Ground Zero. The ore wag circled the domes and stopped beside the processing trailer, where another truck was in the middle of being unloaded.
Ryan tapped J.B. on the helmet and they bailed out of the back of the wag. Vaulting the far side of the bed, they scrambled to the ground. Then they moved quickly around the front of the wag and along the side of the trailer.
The compound was in chaos. And it wasn't just men readying themselves for battle. Troopers were pounding fluorescent-pink perimeter markers into the dirt, creating a roughly elliptical shape around a lineup of their mobile gear. At either end of the row were big black trailers. Not ore processors. These had no hoppers for dumping in nukeglass. And they were connected to the fuel trailer by long, thick, black hoses. They were the only machines connected to the fuel trailer, which stood in the middle and to one side of the ellipse.
Around the processor there was a frantic jockeying of other gear. Troopers were using wags to tow gyros into the line. The aircrafts' rotors were secured for transport, folded up into points above their fuselages. Other equipment was stacked on pallets, covered with plastic webbing. Ryan could see battlesuited troopers carrying stuff out of the cluster of domes, moving it inside the marked perimeter.
"What the blazes is all this about?" J.B. asked, his voice muffled by the helmet.
"Looks like moving day," Ryan said. "Except for that." He pointed up the road at the last of the four wags as it disappeared over the summit of the rise. The two gyros were long gone. "They are definitely sending troops to Ground Zero," he said. "The assault wags will take some time to get there. But not the gyros. They'll be within striking distance in a few minutes. We've got to find the main comp and disable the cuffs."
"What about Krysty?" J.B. asked.
"The cuffs first, then Krysty," Ryan said. He took Dean's bone blade out of the top of his boot and palmed it. "Let's go."
They started walking for the entrance to the domes. Because everyone else in the compound was running, Ryan broke into a trot. He and J.B. blended right in. No one paid them any mind. The other troopers were too preoccupied with their own duties to notice the unusual condensation on the inside of their visors, or the crude puncture holes in the backs of their helmets. Ryan knew the possibility that the naked troopers had been discovered and that they were heading into a trap was growing less and less likely. Which was a break since their only chance if a firefight broke out was to be inside the structures.
As they entered the doorway, a pair of troopers exited carrying armfuls of green canisters.
The doors along the hallway were all ajar. Ryan slowed his pace so he could look into each of them as he passed by. J.B. followed closely behind him. The rooms looked ransacked, and there were no comps in evidence. More troopers came their way, pushing dollies stacked with heavy crates. They passed in the corridor without incident.
Then Ryan looked into a room on the right and saw a trooper bent over something that might have been a comp. When he stopped in the doorway, the trooper looked back through a cleared visor. He was bent over a black cube on little wheels. Not a comp. The trooper stared at the dewdrops on Ryan's visor, puzzled for a second.
Ryan could see the guy put two and two together.
His expression changed. His hand reached up for his throat mike.
The one-eyed man launched himself through the doorway. He hit the trooper with his shoulder as the guy rose from the crouch. Ryan bowled him over the cube backward, and they both crashed against the wall.
J.B. was right on their heels. He pulled the door shut behind him.
"Get his hands!" Ryan said.
J.B. caught the gauntlets by the wrists and the two of them controlled the guy with brute force, making him fight their combined body weight until he had exhausted himself, which didn't take long. When J.B. screwed off the guy's helmet, the trooper's eyes got big with fear. He had an angry rash across the top of his nearly shaved head. It was peppered with sores that oozed pus. The ochre-colored discharge smelled sweet and rank.
"Who are—?" the trooper started to say.
Before he could finish, Ryan sla
pped him across the face. "I'll ask the questions." Their he showed the trooper the bone blade. "Where's the comp that controls the cuffs?"
When the soldier didn't answer, he held the serrated edge of the bone blade up under his chin. "Did you say something? I didn't hear it."
"Down this hall," the trooper told him, "take the first fork to the left, stay left."
"Do you think he's telling us the truth?" J.B. asked. "Came back kind of quick with the info if you ask me."
"I'm going to give you a chance to change your story," Ryan said. "If it turns out you're lying, we're coming back to finish you."
"I'm not lying."
Ryan punched him hard on the point of the chin. The back of his head hit the wall with a thud, then his eyes fluttered shut.
The door to the room opened as J.B. straightened. Two troopers, one armed with a laser rifle, stepped in. The newcomers were clearly stunned to see an unconscious man in battlesuit and two guys with air holes punched in the backs of their helmets leaning over him.
Before either of the troopers could react, J.B. grabbed hold of the tribarrel's flash-hider and used the rifle like a lever across the man's chest, forcing him from the doorway and into the corner. The trooper couldn't let go of his weapon to go for the com link.
The other trooper jumped on J.B.'s back to try to pull him off.
That was a mistake.
Ryan lunged up from the floor, throwing an arm around the second guy's helmet from behind, blocking his access to the throat mike. With his other hand, Ryan slipped the point of the bone blade under the armor just below the man's right shoulder blade. Feeling the angle of the slot between the overlapping plates, he pushed the dagger home.
It sank in to the hilt.
The trooper went rigid against him as the blade skewered his lung and heart. Then the man sagged, his legs buckling. Ryan let him topple over onto his side.
J.B. in the meantime had his hands full. He seesawed back and forth with the pulse rifle, trying to get the advantage on his adversary. He managed to work the guy's back against the wall, but they were too evenly matched strengthwise; he couldn't get control of the weapon. The Armorer timed the flip perfectly. He caught the trooper off balance, pulling as the man pushed. He let himself fall to his butt on the floor and, using the guy's forward momentum, sent him whipping over onto his back across the top of the cube.
