gamma world Sooner Dead

by Mel Odom

  Riley’s hardshells kept coming, and the gunfire increased, accompanied by rockets launched by both sides. Within a couple of minutes, the sun dipped in the west and the shadows swelled out of the forest to fill the night.

  “Time to go. Before anybody from either of those two groups takes our scent.” Stampede stayed low and followed a line of trees to the mountain ridge they’d climbed earlier that day. Hella followed on Daisy, and they left the two groups at war behind them. Rockets, mortars, and small cannons lit up the deepening night. Tracer fire streaked the darkness, identifying the positions of both groups.

  Her face streaked with mud to lessen the chance of reflection, Hella trailed after Stampede on foot. They’d left Daisy up in the mountain range while they’d set up to invade the mil-plex. Quiet and withdrawn, Ocastya followed.

  Stampede was barely visible in the darkness. Occasional flashes of light from exploding rockets and mortars highlighted his shaggy fur, horns, and eyes. He gripped his rifle in both hands as he fell into position beside one of the exposed walls of the mil-plex. He focused on Ocastya. “Can you still feel Scatter?”

  “Yes.” Ocastya’s voice was tight. “But we must hurry. He is weakening. Soon Colleen Trammell’s devices will conquer his resistance; then my mate will be gone from us.”

  Placing one shaggy hand on the concrete wall, Stampede ran his palm over the surface. His eyes were half closed. His fingers drummed rapidly against the concrete, and Hella knew he was listening to the vibrations given back. He could sense weak spots. That was part of his gift.

  “Okay.” Stampede stepped away from the wall, took the rifle in both hands, and lifted his right hoof. After a moment of concentration, Stampede drove his hoof against the wall.

  The contact shivered across the concrete and peeled earth back from the mil-plex. Cracks showed on the surface, but the wall held. Then Stampede raised his hoof and slammed again.

  On the fourth try, the wall dissolved into a hail of flying shards and collapsed inward. Bright, electric light fell out onto the ground. Stampede drew back. “Hella.”

  Moving forward, Hella leaned in through the opening, morphed her left hand into a small-caliber weapon that cycled suppressed fire, and quickly shot out all the lights throwing illumination through the hole. The breach went dark. Hella went on inside then waited till Stampede joined her.

  Without a word, his path already mentally mapped from all the drawings Ocastya had provided, Stampede went forward down the hallway. Hella pulled her night-vision goggles up from her neck and fitted them over her eyes. Almost instantly her vision was incredibly clearer.

  The hallway was clean for the most part, except for stray bits and pieces of debris. Farther down the hallway in both directions, electric lights mounted on the walls removed the majority of the gloom. Echoes of shots revealed the battle still raged through the hole in the wall.

  Stampede passed through the halls quickly, without hesitation and without a false step. Hella followed, a shadow at his side.

  CHAPTER 32

  Sensor!” Stampede shoved back against a wall.

  Falling into place beside him, Hella glanced up and spotted the bubble-shielded sensor mounted on the ceiling sweeping the hallway. The wicked snout of a machine gun hung beneath it. A red dot glowed within the smoky gray, bullet-resistant material.

  “It is all right. I have hacked the sensors in our area.” Ocastya stood in the middle of the hallway. “They will not see us.”

  When the machine gun didn’t fire and the sensor continued its sweep without pause, Hella let out a sigh of relief.

  “Well, that’s handy.” Stampede took the lead again. “You didn’t mention anything about the security systems.”

  “I did not think I had to.”

  Stampede held up only a moment at the door leading to a stairwell. “Was that a joke?”

  “I believe so.” Ocastya looked confused. “My mate indicated that you and Hella prefer levity when situations appear grim.”

  “It’s not exactly something we look for.”

  “Oh. I have erred?”

  “No. It’s fine. I just didn’t expect it.”

  “Does humor still work if you expect it? That does not seem possible or logical.”

  Stampede growled. “Not a time for a discussion about rhetoric.”

  Despite the situation, Hella couldn’t help grinning at Stampede’s discomfiture. “We can talk about this at another time.”

  “I look forward to that.”

  Stampede’s ears twitched. “Can you do the same thing to the sensors in the stairwell?”

  “It is already done. The building’s security will not know we are here.”

  Hella hoped that was true. In the meantime, Trazall and the building’s security had their hands full dealing with Riley and his forces mounting a full-scale attack along the perimeter. Explosions echoed through the great halls, and the shrill warning klaxons pierced them like surgical steel.

  They went down the stairwells in rapid fashion. Stampede went first and Hella kept him covered till he reached the landing; then she hurried to catch up and repeated the process. When the mil-plex had first been constructed, there would have been more guards. And they would have had the sensor array intact.

  In less than a minute, they reached the fourth-floor landing. A wide, steel door barred the way. Bullet-resistant glass filled a small window that offered a view of a narrow, lit hallway lined with doors. Plaques beside the door indicated the presence of medical equipment and operating rooms.

  Ocastya held a hand out, and a trid presentation took shape above her palm. Although the image was less than half a meter wide and tall, the details stood out sharply edged. The view evidently was from one of the sensors at the front of the mil-plex. “Pardot’s team has breached the outer wall.”

  In the image the hardshells waded through Trazall’s mercenaries. Bombs and rockets knocked down walls and splintered furniture. Bodies and pieces of bodies spun through the air. Out in the wilderness, Trazall’s mercenaries stood a better chance, but in the urban combat arena, Riley’s forces ripped through them.

  Jack Hart gestured at a group of hardshells, and purple-black spots clustered on them. In the next instant, they plummeted to the floor under their increased weight. Bullets caught in the gravity shield around Hart dropped at his feet.

  Then Riley, his hardshell distinctive enough for Hella to recognize it, sprang out of the shadows. Riley launched himself into the air a moment before purple-black spots started swarming over him. As he fell, he thrust his right fist forward in a savage punch toward Jack Hart’s head. An instant before the fist ripped through the gravity shield, a long blade snapped out of the forearm armor.

  Hart tried to evade the knife strike, but there wasn’t time. Even as he dodged, Riley’s blade pierced his right eye and broke through the back of his skull. In the same instant, bullets hammered past the gravity shield, and Hart’s body jerked with the impacts.

  On his knees, Riley yanked his blade free and snapped it back into his forearm. He picked up his rifle and stood then got hit with a twisting mass of flames as Silence breathed on him. Riley staggered back under the onslaught, and the image winked out of existence.

  The suit will protect him. Even as she thought that, though, Hella knew that would only allow Riley to potentially threaten her and Stampede.

  Ocastya shifted her hand. “We don’t have much time.”

  Another image shimmered into view above her palm. It showed a medical lab. Computers filled the walls, and lights flashed in syncopation. Scatter lay strapped to a chair with a dozen computer leads attached to him. A skullcap covered the top of his head.

  Colleen Trammell stood next to a hospital bed, where a small girl lay on the starched white sheets. The girl looked pained and drugged at the same time.

  Stampede’s ears twitched. “Who is the kid?”

  “Alice.” Hella gave the name instantly.

  “Who is she?”

  “Co
lleen’s daughter. She has a disease. She’s dying.”

  A hurt look pulled at Ocastya’s silver eyes. “She’s only a child. That is horrible.”

  Hella silently agreed.

  Stampede shook his head. “There’s nothing we can do about that. What’s she doing here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Colleen held her daughter’s unresponsive hand for a moment then settled another skullcap onto her head. The wires led to a computer bank that shared the leads from Scatter.

  “But it has something to do with Scatter.”

  The image winked out of sight as Ocastya closed her hand. “We must go.”

  Stampede tried the door. A palm print scanner lit on the wall next to the door, and a retina scanner slid out. He glared at the technological security. “Well, that’s not gonna happen.” He raised a leg and smashed a hoof into the door.

  Pummeled by the energy he commanded, the door shrieked as it tore free of its hinges and flew into the hallway beyond. Before the door hit the floor, a half dozen gunners from Trazall’s group stepped into the hallway from nearby rooms and lifted their assault rifles.

  Stampede ducked behind the door frame just before a fusillade of bullets struck the wall and ripped through the open doorway. His ears flattened as he hunkered down. “Could have done without that.” He drew his pistols.

  Hella gauged the hallway. To her there was plenty of room to maneuver, but Stampede was so large that he’d have a hard time moving or finding cover. He’d become an instant target. She morphed her hands into weapons.

  “I need a quake.”

  Stampede snorted and the ring in his nose stood out briefly. “You step out there, they’re gonna put holes in you.”

  “We stay here, somebody’s going to think of lobbing a grenade in after us, or Riley and his people will shoot us from above. Or maybe Trazall’s retreating crew will do it when they hit the stairwell.” Hella sucked in a quick breath. “Make it a big quake.”

  “Stay to the sides. I’m gonna fill the hallway with lead so they don’t forget about me.”

  Hella nodded and held her hands up at her sides.

  Stampede swiveled around the door and stomped a hoof on the floor. The metal floor quivered, lifting and falling a few centimeters, but it didn’t shatter.

  In motion at once, Hella whipped around the doorway with her hands before her. She fired, filling the air with a buzz saw of lethal projectiles that skittered from the walls.

  True to his word, Stampede filled the open doorway with his bulk and fired his massive revolvers. They sounded like cannons in the enclosed space, and Hella went temporarily deaf before the comm link could compensate.

  One man peeled away from a doorway and sprawled, hit by her bullets or Stampede’s, Hella wasn’t certain. She ran two steps up the wall, finding just enough purchase to manage that, knowing that Stampede’s revolvers would empty quickly.

  Two more men spilled into the hallway by the time gravity started to take over. She kicked against the wall hard and hoped that Stampede’s weapons were empty. She flipped through the air, burning through bullets to knock down a fourth man then a fifth. Landing on her feet, she stayed low and took deliberate aim at the sixth man.

  “Reloading!” Even with the comm link, Stampede sounded a million klicks away because of all the noise filling the hallway.

  Surging up, Hella opened fire on the sixth man. Bullets burned by her head, and she felt a sharp nip at her right earlobe. As the last gunman fell to the floor, she felt warm blood running down the side of her neck.

  “Hella!”

  “I’m fine.” Walking in profile, always keeping her left foot in front of her right so there was no chance of crossing them up and tripping, Hella closed on the lab doors. She whirled around the door frames and swept the rooms with her weapons.

  Stampede covered her back and filled the hallway behind her. She felt his presence, massive and unrelenting. She went to the next door then the next.

  When she entered the fifth doorway on the left, she discovered the lab where Scatter, Colleen, and Alice were.

  Colleen wheeled away from a sensor monitor to face them. On the monitor, the view out in the hallway showed the dead mercenaries, Hella, Stampede, and Ocastya. Colleen aimed a pistol at them and fired.

  Hella ducked back into Stampede just before the bullet ricocheted from the door frame. “Colleen, listen to me.”

  “Go away! I can save her! You have to give me more time!” Colleen fired again and the bullet ricocheted inside the room. One of the computer banks suddenly sprayed a cloud of sparks.

  “If you keep shooting, you’re going to kill Alice.” Hella held her position beside the doorway. When a moment passed and Colleen didn’t fire again, Hella stuck her head around the door frame.

  Colleen swarmed over the computer equipment, frantically tapping a keyboard. “Stay out! I’m warning you!”

  Seated in the chair, Scatter suddenly strained against his shackles. His mouth opened and his high-pitched screams reverberated inside the lab.

  Hella whipped around the door and lunged forward with her weapons raised before her.

  Colleen picked up her pistol again and wheeled back around. “Stay back! I said, stay back!”

  Ducking, Hella dodged below the line of fire, but she couldn’t shoot Colleen. She felt sorry for the woman and for the small child lying on the hospital bed, but she also knew that whatever had been done to Scatter might be undone by only Colleen. So close in, Hella didn’t want to lose him.

  Two bullets streaked over Hella’s head. Before Colleen could fire a third time, Hella morphed her hands back and threw herself at the woman. Grabbing the weapon, Hella wrested it away with one hand and wrapped a fist in Colleen’s lab coat.

  “No!” The woman screamed and struggled, but Hella didn’t release her. “I brought Alice here, I betrayed Pardot, to save my daughter. You’re not going to stop me. Let me finish what I started.”

  Ocastya ran to Scatter and hesitated before wrapping her arms around him. Scatter didn’t respond; he did not even look at her.

  Stampede stood guard over the door. “Can you get Scatter free?”

  Picking at the leads, Ocastya shook her head. “I do not understand what has been done to him. He is trapped in some sort of limbo.” She glanced up and looked around the room desperately. “Maybe in one of these computers. Maybe somewhere else.”

  “He’s in that chair.”

  “His physical self is. Not the part of him that makes him who he is.” Ocastya turned to Colleen. “What have you done with my mate?”

  Colleen struggled to get away, but Hella held her fast. “The two of you have lived hundreds of years. Several lifetimes. You don’t deserve to do that.” Tears ran down the woman’s face. Mucus dripped from her nose, and her lip trembled in fear, but Hella didn’t think the fear was fueled by a survival instinct. “My little Alice has barely lived nine years. It’s not fair. She deserves more out of her life. I will not watch her die when I can do something about it.”

  “I understand your pain. I have lost people—loved ones—in my life. I would feel pain again if my mate is lost to me.” Ocastya stepped toward Colleen. One of the fractoid’s hands flowed into a long, sharp blade. “I will not permit you to take him from me. You need to understand this.”

  Hella glanced at the sensor monitor array on the wall in front of her. Through the shifting images, she saw that Trazall’s mercenaries had broken and were now fleeing for their lives, trying to stay out of the kill zone created by Riley’s hardshells. Although they had taken considerable losses, the hardshells were definitely a threat that was closing fast. “Stampede.”

  At the doorway, looking massive against the enclosed space of the room, Stampede nodded. “I see them. They’ll be on us in minutes.”

  “We have an exit strategy.”

  “Not if we get caught in this room.”

  Ocastya stopped in front of Colleen and raised her weapon. “Tell me what I need
to do to save my mate. Otherwise, I will kill you and risk finding an answer on my own.”

  “No.” Colleen slapped Hella’s face and almost succeeded in getting away. “I have almost saved Alice. I can transfer her mind to that body. She doesn’t have to die. I can overwrite all the programming that’s there.”

  Despite the stinging pain from the woman’s slap, a cold chill crept through Hella. Was it so simple? Could Scatter just be erased? Overwritten?

  “Mommy?” The child’s plaintive cry barely reached them even so short a distance away. The gunfire and explosions from the confrontations on the floors above carried into the lab with ease. “Mommy?”

  Colleen tried to go to her daughter. Hella didn’t release her. Colleen closed her hands over Hella’s and looked at her desperately. She smiled and the effort looked sick and twisted.

  “Please, Hella. Let me got to her. Alice is scared. She needs me.”

  Hella stood frozen, uncertain about what to do, thinking that if she released Colleen, Ocastya would kill her. Images of the dead rat in the dream kept haunting her, changing from rat to child.

  “Mommy!” A coughing fit racked the child on the bed. She convulsed and got sick, throwing up a bit.

  “Please. My daughter needs me.” Colleen pushed back from Hella. “She’s dying. I don’t want her to die alone.”

  Numbly Hella released the woman and stepped in front of Ocastya, wondering if the fractoid would simply try to kill her first to get her out of the way.

  On the walls, the computers continued flashing.

  Ocastya regarded the hardware then Scatter’s body seated in the chair. “She’s stealing him away from me.” She focused on Hella. “You know I cannot permit this. Even if she succeeds in overwriting my mate’s self with her daughter’s, her daughter will not survive. My mate and I are twinned to one another. Both of us must survive. We cannot survive on our own.”

  At the child’s bed, Colleen took Alice’s hands and held them tightly. “Everything’s going to be all right. Mommy’s here. Just close your eyes, and you’ll wake up feeling much better. Listen to Mommy.” She leaned over her daughter and kissed her. “You’re going to get better.”