by James Axler
Incredibly the third droid hissed as its belly-mounted needler swung into operation. The tops of the weeds jumped into the air from the supersonic passage of the 1 mm steel slivers. But then the ancient weapon jammed and the needler broke free from its anchor. Pivoting randomly, the weapon cut off two of the legs of its own droid. The machine staggered from the loss, and the needler stitched a line of holes across the droid with the beamer. Smoke began pouring from the riddled spider, and the beamer pulsed in return.
“Droid!” Jak shouted unnecessarily, triggering a long burst from the M-16 rapidfire. The stream of perfectly imbalanced 5.56 mm rounds smacked into the side of the lead spider, denting the dome and cracking an eye. Then the clip ran empty. With no more reloads, Jak cast away the useless blaster to draw his .357 Magnum Colt Python.
Caught in the middle of an open field, with only some weeds and their dead horses as cover, Krysty saw the dire state of the situation, in spite of the decrepit nature of the droids. They were all streaked with rust, and two of them had cobwebs dangling off their armored hulls.
Making a fast decision, the woman primed her implo gren and threw. The deadly sphere landed in the middle of the droids, and they instantly lurched away just before it detonated. The bright flash masked what happened at first, but as the glare faded there was a reverse hurricane of tufts speeding into the implosion. Plants were uprooted, frogs, newts, beetles and a coney were sucked into the reverse quantum event, then it stopped and fresh pollen filled the air, dancing in the sunlight like a summer snowstorm.
Then, rising from their prone position on the soggy ground, the three droids advanced once more. However, their belly weapons were now thickly coated with sticky mud. The laser on one pulsed, the energy ray burning the filthy lens sparkling clean. The microwave beamer hummed, boiling the front aperture clear, but the needler jammed, then exploded, the blast ripping open the bottom of the droid. Trailing loose wiring and optical cables like intestines, the machine marched onward, seemingly unaware that it was now unarmed.
Sloshing out of the puddle, a furious Doc cursed at the sight of the black powder trickling out of the LeMat, and drew the Webley to fire twice at the droids. However, that was when the man realized that he was sinking into the sticky mud a lot faster than expected. By the Three Kennedys, this wasn’t mud, Doc realized, but quicksand!
Yanking out his ebony sword stick, Doc jammed it into the muddy grass, trying to find some solid ground. As the stick encountered resistance, Doc rammed it in deeper and held on tight with both hands so that he wouldn’t sink any deeper. However, for the rest of this fight he was neutralized, and a sitting duck for any of the droids.
Just then a sputtering nicker caught his attention and Doc beamed in delight as his horse walked over to the edge of the pool and lowered her head, the reins sliding off the pommel to dangle only inches away. Risking everything, Doc released the stick and strained to reach the leather straps, his fingertips just brushing them. Then the horse shifted position and the reins were tight in his grip.
Wrapping the straps several times around his forearms, Doc did what was necessary to loosen the sucking sludge around himself, and emptied his bladder. Immediately the grip of the muddy quicksand eased.
“Now, girl, giddy up,” Doc whispered, shaking the reins while watching the droids continue the attack on his friends.
The horse started to back away and the reins tightened around his arms, the leather straps cutting into his skin. Bracing himself for what was coming, Doc flexed his muscles and hoped his arms wouldn’t come out of their sockets as the horse began to haul him out of the sticky muck. The pain grew as his circulation was cut off, and his hands turned purple, but the man rode through the agony, concentrating on trying to slide out of the quicksand. Don’t swim, that only makes you sink, Doc cautioned himself silently. Nice and easy, there’s the ticket…
Grimly holding on for dear life, Doc felt his hands going numb and the leather straps began to slide through his swollen fingers. Then a pale hand came out of the grass and Krysty grabbed his hands, holding the reins in place.
“Come on, Doc, take a piss!” she softly commanded. “Give it all you got!”
“I…already…did, madam!” he panted, the world taking on a reddish haze and a strange buzzing filling his ears. The strength in his arms was failing and breathing was becoming difficult.
Out in the field, the blasters were firing nonstop, the laser humming steadily in reply. A horse screamed, something exploded, then a droid erupted, broken machinery forming a geyser into the air. But the last droid was still in motion, the laser stabbing out constantly, burning the green plants brown, starting small fires and boiling the puddles.
With no choice, Krysty let go of the man with one hand and dragged around her canteen. Unable to unscrew the cap with just her left hand, she shoved it into the mud, then drew her knife and stabbed holes in the lightweight aluminum. There wasn’t much water inside, but it did help, and Doc advanced a few more inches. Then the man gasped as his boot found purchase under the cloying mud. Root, rock or human skull, Doc didn’t care. It was solid, and that was all that mattered.
In a rude sucking sound, Doc came loose from the quagmire and stumbled onto weeds. His boots and pants were caked with filth, but he was alive and free.
“Thank you…dear lady,” Doc wheezed, dropping to his knees to stay out of sight. His swollen hands were badly bruised, and stiff. Using his blaster at the moment was completely out of the question.
Nodding at the panting man, Krysty rolled aside and came up firing, the .38 rounds of her blaster loudly ricocheting off the rear end of the belly laser, but achieving nothing. There was a ventilation grid there to help dissipate the tremendous heat generated by the weapon, but her copper-jacketed rounds simply didn’t have the power to achieve penetration.
Just then something came hurtling her way to land in the cool green grass. Krysty blinked at the sight of Doc’s Webley, then scooped it up in both hands, took a stance and fired off all six rounds. By the third time, the grid was smashed into the laser, allowing the remaining big-bore .44 manstoppers of the handblaster full access.
Although built to be bulletproof a hundred years earlier, the military weapon now succumbed to the hammering fury of the booming Webley. Fat blue sparks crackled from within the smashing electronics and smoke poured from the sides. The droid quickly spun, and Ryan stood to empty the SIG-Sauer into the laser, finishing the job. Suddenly the entire droid was covered in crackling electricity, and the companions felt a tingle in the mud through their combat boots. The last two horses reared at the sensation, nickering loudly. Then Jak shoved his .357 Magnum blaster into a red crystal eye and fired twice. The lens shattered and the rounds plowed deep into the electronic brain of the machine, scrambling the primary circuits.
Sagging into the mud, the droid went still, its head tilting sideways before it went completely motionless.
“Frag that drek,” J.B. growled, and fired a burst from the Uzi into the smashed eye, the 9 mm rounds noisily ricocheting inside the machine, smashing more delicate circuit boards, relays and control elements. In only a few seconds dark smoke began to trickle from the dome, and then a fire started inside the smashed droid.
“It’s dead now for sure,” Mildred stated, rising into view from behind a mossy tree stump.
“Damn well hope so,” Ryan said, pulling out his Navy telescope to check the horizon for any more of the machines. But the forest, glen and grasslands were clear. There was nothing in sight but lush greenery, chilled droids and the aced horses.
Cleaning off her hands with a dry cloth, Mildred went over to examine Ryan, then extracted a plastic straw from her med kit. “Good thing the laser attacked from your left,” she said, gently removing his eyepatch to smear a salve over the blistered skin. “Or else you might have been permanently blind on this side.”
“Losing an eye saved me from going blind?” Ryan said, and in spite of the situation, the Deathlands warrior snorted a
laugh. Anybody who claimed that the universe had no bastard sense of humor was clearly out of their mind.
When Mildred was done with the salve, she wrapped his head in strips of clean cloth, and Ryan tucked the leather patch into a pocket.
“You should be fine in a few days,” she said, tucking away her meager supplies. “Just try not to smile for a while.” Just for a moment, the physician remembered giving almost the exact same advice to Doc a week ago. It would seem that smiles were forbidden on Clemente Island.
“Not a problem,” Ryan replied out of the right side of his mouth. “By then, we should be back on the mainland. Hopefully inside a redoubt.”
Gathering their saddlebags from the corpses of the three chilled horses, the companions removed the heavy saddles from the last two horses, then draped the bags across the animals. Tethered to a tree stump, the horses snorted, seemingly at the demotion to a lowly pack mule.
“Slow, but not far till boat,” Jak stated, as if the matter was of little concern. His jacket was caked with mud, the feathers bedraggled to the point where several had fallen off, exposing the razor blades sewn into the collar.
Going to the splayed ruin of a droid, J.B. studied the interior for a moment, before moving onward. There was no way to scav the needler from the wreckage. The weapon had been blown asunder. Unfortunately, so was the microwave beamer. However, the laser was merely smashed, not completely destroyed, and J.B. eagerly knelt on the damp grass to pull out his tools and start disassembling the interior workings of the droid.
“Hot damn!” J.B. cried, swinging aside a service panel. Inside was a bed of gray military foam, the kind used to pack grens, and nestled into the material were rows of spare parts, enough for the droid to repair any conceivable damage to the laser.
“Give me an hour and we’ll have a working laser,” J.B. chuckled, lifting a prism into view, then the smile faded. “Dark night, the bastard focusing lens is cracked.”
“Can’t use?” Jak asked with a frown.
“Yeah, I can make it work,” J.B. answered slowly, turning the optical assembly around. “But it’ll never cycle through the spectrum again, that’s for nuking sure. We’re down to a single color, and just the basic three—red, blue, yellow.”
“What possible difference could the color of a laser beam make to the target?” Doc asked, using a stick to clean the quicksand off his boots. At the moment the man looked as though he had escaped from a grave, which was frighteningly close to the truth.
“Lasers operate on the absorption of light,” Mildred re plied. “An apple absorbs all of the colors in visible light, except for red. It reflects that and thus we see it as red.”
“So a red laser could not harm a red apple?” Doc asked, clearly surprised.
Mildred shrugged. “Well, eventually enough heat would be transferred to wither the fruit, then it would start to brown, allowing more of the beam to be absorbed and finally the apple would be destroyed.”
“That’s why mil lasers look like rainbows,” Krysty said in startled comprehension. “So that whatever they hit will be aced!”
“Exactly!”
“Blue,” Ryan decided. “Rhino blood is yellow, norm blood is red, but I’ve never aced anything that gushed blue.”
While J.B. got to work, Ryan stood guard over the man as the rest of the companions reloaded their weapons, affected some minor repairs and washed their clothing in one of the larger ponds.
It took longer than a hour, but soon J.B. had the bulky nuke battery removed from the droid armed with the needler, and attached to the rebuilt laser with coaxial cables recovered from the droid with the microwave beamer. It was a mare’s nest of stolen tech, a hodgepodge held together with duct tape and baling wire. But when J.B. flipped the switch, a deep azure beam of condensed light fiercely lanced from the aperture at the end. The startling beautiful power ray hit a pine tree on the outskirts of the glen, slicing the trunk neatly in two. To the sound of snapping branches, the tree toppled over with a loud crash, disturbing a large flock of spar rows that voiced their outrage at the unprovoked attack as they took wing to the cloudy sky. Softly in the distance, thunder rumbled and lighting flashed.
“Next rhino comes our way is dead meat,” J.B. stated grimly, resting the cumbersome device on a shoulder.
“Then let’s hope that is the worst thing this island has to offer,” Mildred added, slinging the scattergun across her back.
“Always stickies about,” Jak stated, looking around. “They here. Just not find us yet.”
“And let’s hope it stays that way,” Krysty said, thought fully biting a lip. “We’re going to need a litter for that nuke battery. Should be easy enough to make out of some rope and branches.”
“Then let’s head for the trees,” Ryan growled, brushing back his wild crop of hair. “We still have a fair distance to cover before reaching the coast.”
“For the woods are dark, quiet and deep,” Doc said in a singsong voice. “But there are promises to keep, and miles to go before we can sleep.” Nobody disagreed with the man, having heard him paraphrase the ancient poem before. It was one of his favorites.
Building a litter from tree branches, rope and a horse blanket proved to be no problem. Even dragging the rig along behind, the horses still made good time on the dry land.
Chapter Eighteen
Two days later the companions began to recognize some of the landmarks and headed to the south toward the shore. Soon, they caught the refreshing smell of a salty breeze coming off the ocean—along with crackle of multiple blasters, closely followed by the dull thud of a gren.
Quickly taking cover behind a stand of trees, Ryan climbed into the branches and used the Navy telescope to try to find the fighting.
As expected, there were people fighting all over the lagoon—the docks, the Quonset hut, even inside the mouth of the tunnel, even though J.B. had closed it off and the passageway was only about fifty feet deep. Some of the people were bare-chested and covered with tattoos, while the others were dressed in the dark blue uniform of the giant from the volcano.
“It’s the baron and his sec men from the volcano,” Ryan called down, adjusting the focus on the antique longeyes. “They’re fighting a bunch of pirates.”
“Who winning?” Jak asked, brushing the snowy-white hair off his face with the barrel of his Magnum blaster.
“Nobody,” Ryan answered truthfully. Crumpled bodies from both sides were strewed everywhere, oddly mixed with the corpses of dogs, horses, a couple of stickies, a lot of stingwings, even some eagles and one blubbery sea lion. Weird. It was almost as if the animals had also attacked the people, but if they were trying to ace somebody specific, or to help one side over the other it was impossible to say.
In the center of the battle was the Moon Runner, or what remained of the bedraggled ship. The wheelhouse was missing, there was a splintery hole in the stern hull, a dozen bodies festooned the sagging gunwales, and deep inside, the engines seemed to be on fire. Thick black smoke poured from every porthole and hatchway to spread a murky haze over the screaming combatants.
Out at sea, just this side of the breakers, was a ship, or boat of some kind, although Ryan would have called it a canal barge. On the bow was the name Tiger Shark. The craft was big and flat, with sandbags lashed to the deck with netting to serve as a crude gunwale. The barge was covered with pungi sticks and barbed wire, and looked about as maneuverable as a lead safe. On the other hand, the sailors were firing at the sec men with a couple of .50-caliber machine guns and a pair of huge arbalests. As the one-eyed man watched, a sailor launched an arrow almost a yard long. It lanced through the masking smoke of the Moon Runner to slam into a sec man frantically reloading his flintlock pistol. The giant arrow pierced him completely, slamming the norm against the rock face of the cliff. Still horribly alive, he began to shriek, pinned in place like a trophy to the wall.
“I can hear the names of Captain Carlton and Jones,” Krysty said, her face scrunched tight in concentr
ation. “Along with baron.”
Grunting in reply, Ryan eased down from the leafy branches to drop the last few feet and land in a crouch. Slowly he stood. At least they now knew the names of the people who wanted them chilled. That might come in useful if there was a chance at negotiations. Ryan doubted that highly. However, it was smart to prepare for what the enemy could do, instead of merely guessing what they might.
Suddenly a raven-haired woman stood into view and aimed an M-16 combination assault rifle at the Tiger Shark, first triggering a short burst from the M-16 rapidfire, then launching a gren. The 40 mm round smacked into the sandbags, blowing open a three-foot breech, and sending everybody on the deck flat on their backs.
“An M-203? My, my, it’s good to be the king, or in this case, the queen,” Mildred remarked dryly, peeking out from behind a pine tree. “With a weapon like that, she has got to be the baron’s wife.”
“Good thing she has it,” Ryan countered gruffly. “No body out there is a very good shot.”
“Don’t really need to be, the way they’re throwing around lead,” J.B. added in frank disapproval.
“The damn fools don’t seem to be fighting over the Moon Runner, control of the dock, or any damn thing else,” Krysty stated with a scowl. “They’re just fighting.”
“Civil blood doth make civil hands unclean,” Doc muttered.
“You really think that anybody out there is biting his thumb?” Mildred snorted.
“Each in their own way, of course, madam,” Doc espoused, with a hand to his heart.
“So, pray tell, what is the plan, my dear Ryan? Shall we steal their bikes to drive inland, far away from the tumultuous sea?”
Touching the bandage on his face, the man scowled. “Back to where, the volcano? We’d have to abandon the bikes, swim across the bay, climb a waterfall, and even if we find the right tunnel leading to the redoubt, we haven’t a single implo gren to use against three Cerberus clouds,” Ryan said, rubbing his jaw. “No, we need that boat.”
