by Ryder Stacy
Six
The next morning at 6:00 A.M., a mini-army of vehicles and hybrid horses assembled in the largest of Century City’s open chambers for final field prep. The ’brids whinnied and turned nervously around. They could always sense the start of a journey, could smell the danger. And they knew this one was bad. Maybe by the fear of the men themselves, from the sweat that percolated through their camouflage sweatshirts and jackets, anti-flak material thin as wafers sewn into every part of their clothing. Rock as well was wearing the new Kevlar material that Shecter had “demanded” they take with them.
It was a strange army, a mix of the very primitive and the high tech. “Bikes”—all terrain 3-wheel vehicles—were alongside snorting overfurred ’brids that were stomping around looking for some breathing room. Stripped-down black Liberator .9mm automatic submachine guns over shoulders, alongside strips of deer meat salted and layered over the back of the “kitchen bike,” driven by the official Strike Force cook, McCaughlin. And the two boy geniuses, looking very small indeed among the huge Freefighter men. Rock had them up on hybrids. They were more used to the animals than the high-tech bikes, as all youngsters of C.C. were trained in riding the stubborn mutated horse-mule animals from early childhood.
Rock didn’t want them on the bikes, they were too hard to handle. He only had the best drivers on those—but the two geniuses seemed happy as larks high up on their mounts with towering packs and satchels all around them. Indeed, the lesser weights of their bodies allowed their steeds to be loaded up extra high with precious supplies for the mission.
And the supplies were extensive. For they had to carry not just survival goods—food, blankets, medicine, water purification equipment (in case the waters they passed were all radioactive), not just firepower and explosives—but space gear as well. Wrenches and tools specially designed for work on the Dynasoar were needed. Gadgets that Shecter’s engineers had come up with, working nonstop in their machine shop crafting specialized items to work on possible problem areas in the ship. It wasn’t like you could run out to the corner store to get some needed parts. Whatever they took with them—that was it. God help them if they ended up missing one tiny fuse or the screwdriver to open some vital access port. They had prepared—it was in God’s hands now.
“Team ready?” Rockson checked, mounting up on his ’brid, Snorter-the-Fourth, that he had used for several years now. The mount had saved his ass more than once. He knew it was old-fashioned of him, but he wasn’t ready yet for Shecter’s all-purpose terrain vehicles, the improved models, or so they said, as the last batch had had a tendency to turn over when on steep cliffs, or when hit by unexpected strong winds. Which high in the mountains—was expected most of the time. The new ones had a lower center of gravity. But they’d see. Rock would stick to the smelly hairy beast beneath him stomping at the ground as its muscles ached to get back out in the open, to run free again as it had been cooped up for nearly a month inside the cave walls. Even hybrids can go stir crazy.
“Ready, Rock,” voices sounded out from around the nervous group. He had spread his Rock Team out among the rest of the squad, knowing that their firm veteran leadership would help to keep the seams from coming apart.
It was going to be a chaotic venture no matter how you looked at it with so many different personnel involved. Rockson looked around and saw that Detroit, Chen, and his main men were in place around the chamber, ready to goose the rest into action. He lifted his arm overhead and made sure that all caught sight of it. Then he shouted out.
“Dynasoar Strike Team requesting permission to leave Century City.”
“Permission granted, sir!” The exit guards saluted and then hand-pulled the ropes that opened two walls at one side of the departure chamber.
“Opening doors, sir,” the two shouted back as they grunted hard, pulling at the ropes. Usually the camouflage gates were opened electronically but it was a sign of honor to do it by hand. A throwback to the C.C. of old when everything had been done by hand using pulleys and gear systems.
The solid wall pulled back into the sides of the mountain and Rockson started forward up a concrete ramp that led twenty feet or so through a solid rock wall and then out into the damp and foggy Colorado Rocky Mountains’ morning.
He had debated whether to travel only at night, but the weather techs had predicted deep fog through the Rockies for at least the next week, as a thick storm pattern had stalled over the whole region. Anyway, there wasn’t time to play it safe. They weren’t waiting up on the Wheel.
The air was wet and cold, but it felt good, waking Rock from his sleep-addled brain. Soon, the fog, the thick pine scent of the forest, the wildlife rustling around them made Rockson’s senses come alert one by one. Until he was in that perfect state of battle readiness, a zen of combat, in which ears, eyes, nose, skin are all tuned together, reading out every input from the outer world. Reading every nuance of nuance.
For death moved in split-second strikes out here. And the slow were fertilizer.
He kept turning and looking back, hardly able to believe that this hybrid team of men, boys, fighters, scientists, and Rock team vets was holding together. But after an hour or so of riding, and seeing that lo and behold no one fell off the side of a mountain, no one tried to kill anyone else, and none of the six tech boys were puking their guts out from the jerky ride—Rock began relaxing just a little. The animal life crackled through the morning forest and bought a little touch of hope into his heart.
It was always good to see life-forms, especially non-mutated ones, in the mountain forests. It meant life was holding its own against the radioactive poisons that still swept over the earth in undulating restless bands, releasing dangerous rays, acid rain, and storms of pure poison. But nature didn’t give up that easily.
He saw a family of white-tail deer, beautiful and graceful as they bounded off. Then a bunch of snow rabbits. He thought of bagging a few, but there was plenty of chow and there was no sense in not letting everything that wasn’t absolutely needed for sustenance survive and flourish. A mangy brown bear skulked off into the woods, only Rock’s trained eye picked it out as he slowed down to see the big ugly brute head off into a den.
Then, as he came around a bend, Rockson saw a sight that always gave his heart a few palpitations. A nuke mutation.
And this one a mean and truly nasty one. It was sort of a wormlike creature about ten feet long and as wide as a beer barrel around. It was black, but with an immense buck-toothed pink mouth dripping saliva. It had snagged an elk, which was still alive but pinned down as the worm-thing snapped into the animal’s side again, injecting it with venom from eight-inch-long icepick teeth, which began ripping into the baying creature.
It didn’t matter to the worm-slug that its prey was still alive. It tore into the stomach, its favorite part, taking huge chomps out even as its victim screamed out, sounding eerily like a man for a few seconds. Then the creature twisted and shook its wet red-soaked head and dove back into the elk’s guts, ripping out intestines, pulling back until it was standing straight up, and then swallowing them down so the whole long neck convulsed, and the pieces could be seen for a few feet as they worked their way down into the hideous gullet.
“Jesus,” Rock muttered darkly as he pulled his ’brid about fifty yards off from the thing, making a wide circle. The mounts wouldn’t like something like that. Nor the men for that matter. There was no reason to spook them all not yet an hour out. But most of them saw it anyway, even though he made a sharp right angle turn. He prayed as they all did that it wasn’t mutations such as this that were going to take over the world. For if they were, perhaps better to die now and get it over with. No one wanted to go out like that elk.
The day was long and rotten to the bone. Even the two whiz kids, who rode just behind Rockson, were looking pretty dog-eared and frazzled after just a few hours. No man really knows what it’s like to travel unprotected in the Rockies and the northern states until he’s experienced it. He felt sor
ry for them. But still he’d had it a lot harder. He’d had only a rusty knife and thin jacket and nothing else when he’d made his way nearly a thousand miles across winter wildness to C.C. when younger than even these two. Still he didn’t want to press them too hard. There was a long way to go.
He stopped and told the whole team to get out their alumatarps, thick “space blankets” which could be wrapped right around the rider and held together with velcro strips. It offered almost ten times more protection from the elements than even the warmest of foul weather gear. After that the whole unit seemed a lot happier. The alumatarps keeping out the worst of the stinging wet, the rain slid down the silver coccoons.
The ’brids were drenched but took it all in stride, their ultra-thick hides and huge mops of manes which came down over the sides of necks and faces was strong protection. They even had extra eyelids which could cover the eye as gusts of ice blew into them. In fact, the hybrid horses liked this sort of weather. It made them frisky as they snorted and occasionally stood up on hind legs in a look-at-me kind of dance. The animals were never quite as tameable as horses had been. But they sure as hell were tough as wind-hardened rock.
Thus encased in silver foil, Rockson pushed the team to the max, riding them a full twelve hours without stopping. They had volunteered—they would pay for it in bumps. And when they stopped that night and set up a mini tent city out of the aluminized tarps, joining them together in tents, the whole crew was bitching aloud. Bitching about how their asses felt like they had just been riding all day in saddles made of broken glass and razor blades.
Seven
Killov stared hard into the faces of Col. Heinrick and Führer Glock in the Captain’s quarters of the orbit-warship Talon, to which he had been kidnapped two days earlier. The Fourth Reich—Space Nazis—remnants of an organization run by a Nazi madman who had worked with NASA as a top scientist—but on the side had been building his own ship. He had made it into space with five others before Nuke war broke.
And now his descendants, a hundred years later, lived in five ships and the half-Wheel which they had claimed as their own long ago. Now the space-based Nazis had made their move—to make the Great Wheel whole, to return it to its past dark beauty. And they had brought Killov up to help them put it together again—and make it function.
He mused, yes, he would help them. Oh indeed. To rearm the greatest weapon in the history of man—and to be in control of it. It was an offer he could not refuse.
“Yes, I’ve thought over your offer,” Killov said, addressing the two head Nazis. Führer Glock was the great-great-great grandson of the original colony founder, Dr. Glock. And as nasty no doubt as great grandpa. But Killov’s eyes burned a thousand times colder than either of the Nazis, and it was they who turned away first from his gaze, try as they might not to. “And I will help you. You were right in selecting me as the one man on earth who could do the job . . . Not that I can do it myself—but I know where to find the men—through my years as KGB director and gathering intelligence from around the globe—before I was er . . . extricated,” he said bitterly. He wished more than anything that he could get back at Ted Rockson who had been responsible for the extrication. With the Wheel he could take out whole sections of the Rocky Mountains within a hundred-mile radius of where he knew Century Center lay. Take it all out until he was sure he had burned it. His previous weapons were mere toys compared to what the Nazis had!
“Then what are your needs?” Col. Heinrick asked, leaning forward, as he was responsible for the day to day operations of the Wheel project. The wall-eyed Führer sat back. Killov knew he was not cognizant of exactly what was happening with all this. Just that it would give him greater power. Heinrick was the manager of the show, the brains were in his bald head, not under the Führer’s slicked-to-the-side hairdo.
“I’ll need to have ten men, scientists, kidnapped from their research posts around the Soviet Union. I can give you their exact locations and the times at which they will be there. They must be brought up here unharmed—especially their heads. If you must wound them, do it in a lower part of the body! Their minds are what we need. Now I see that your construction of the Wheel’s frame is proceeding at an admirable pace,” Killov said, taking control of the conversation. For he knew how to manipulate men from the tips of their noses down to the very bases of their souls. He was the master. These two, as tough as they were, with all their Nazi swill, were going to be easy pickings for Killov. But he would never let them know it, until it was too late. All was slow, subtle. There was no need for rushing. He could pick the bones clean, at leisure. They tasted better that way.
“Yes the frame is not the problem for us,” Heinrick said, stroking his thin brown moustache, his blue eyes surrounded by dark puffs of skin, looking proudly out the great bay window that ran all along one wall of the Führer’s chamber.
All of space before them, the stars spread out like a trillion diamonds across the chest of night, Killov thought, half-mesmerized himself. A man could feel either mighty insignificant—or mighty powerful to be up here among the gods’ twinkling eyes. But Killov felt not just equal—but superior to the gods. Perhaps some day he would subjugate even those white flames in the night.
“We are demons at construction work,” Heindricks said. “The Nazi spirit has always been most industrious. And we have had many years to work it all out. It’s the Wheel’s weapons systems—actually making them work—that is why we need your expertise, Colonel.”
“Yes, I see. A synthesis of perfect needs—you and I.” He smiled grimly at them and popped two pills before their eyes. “Well, I’ll run your show for you all right. Just get me those scientists I named. Bring them to me—let me bring them into the Wheel—and we will soon make her the mightiest weapon over the face of the earth.” His voice changed to an emotion-charged whisper: “Yes, to blacken the face of the earth, to turn it red with fire, and dark, charred coals, with burnt husks of men and buildings.”
The Nazis’ eyes grew bright as Killov wove his hypnotic web of destruction before them. Already they were falling under his dark spell. Already his visions of hell were entrancing them with bloody possibility, superseding their own blood lust with a greater vision of dark power.
Eight
It was slow going for Rock and the Dynasoar expeditionary force. The same gray wetness and low clouds that seemed to fly just overhead were both a blessing to the Freefighters in that it made them virtually invisible to prying eyes—and a curse in that it was cold, damn freezing cold. And even the sturdy ’brids had a hard time on the ice-sheened rocks and slippery slopes of the northern Rockies. They came out of the higher mountains and down into foothills only eight or nine thousand feet tall. The lower lands to the east were too dangerous even for such a well-armed force, filled with mutations that made the worm-thing they’d seen back there look like a mosquito.
But the all-terrain vehicles—the “bikes”—which the field equipment science boys had been so proud of when they putted them around the test course a thousand feet below ground, were not quite behaving the same way out here in the wilds. Rock had set half the force on ’brids, half on the high tech bikes, figuring whichever way the odds went, at least they’d come out fifty percent. And already the bikes were having some major problems. Two of them conked out completely after only eighteen hours on the road. The motors couldn’t take the cold and the driving ice rain. The bikes clearly hadn’t been insulated enough for the outer world, it being nice and dry down in C.C.’s subterranean testing grounds.
Maybe next time.
He had the men abandon the nonfunctioning bikes when it became clear after two hours of trying to repair them that it just wasn’t happening. Which meant that they had to dump various non-essential supplies and have the men double up on another one of the vehicles.
There were extra ’brids carrying other supplies, so they could even handle a few more mechanical disasters. But supplies were precious. And if it came down to it, they’d have to
give up food and medicines and other such luxuries. For their own lives were expendable. It was the firepower, the space tools—these were the things that had to make it. They were just fodder for the cannons if it came down to it—every one of them. And slowly they were starting, the ones who hadn’t seen heavy travel or combat, to see just what they had gotten themselves into: A hard trek towards death.
Still, under Rock’s firm leadership they made pretty good time considering the damned mechanical failures and the natural elements they were up against. He marched them until their fingers and hands felt like they would fall off—and then marched them some more. He knew the ’brids could take days of it at the slow pace they were going, not even stopping for sleep—as long as water and food bags were attached around their necks in motion. In fact, the animals liked nothing more than a leisurely mountain stroll munching up slow mouthfuls. For a hybrid it was just about the closest thing to heaven. Like eating popcorn in front of the VCR, when there had been such things. But Rock kept an eye on the two whiz kids, using them basically as his “guides.” Meaning map readers. They were not expendable either. The two of them were game enough, that was for damned sure—but they were just kids whatever their brainpower. And he could see after about twelve hours of riding they couldn’t take anymore. Even Rajat’s cocoa-colored skin was turning a shade paler, while Connors’s Irish freckled skin was already into the purplish range.
By day four, they’d covered about two hundred miles, without major incidents other than a few cases of frostbite of fingers and toes which were given extra coverings. But when the shit hits the fan it usually hits fast, spraying out into the world in lightning splatters its heavy enlightenment spray.
