by James Axler
“Shit, no,” she breathed. “Not on my watch.”
Doc was looking up, still on his knees, but with his torso straightened. In truth, his spine was almost bent at a backward angle by the muscle spasm. It flashed into Mildred’s head, and she acted before she even had time to consider whether it might work. No time to wonder, just act. With a vicious upward jab she leaned down and punched Doc in the pit of his stomach, driving the air up and out of him. In any other circumstance, the expression that crossed his face would have been comical.
Not now. The wide-eyed and puckered-mouth surprise as the air was expelled from his body was exactly what Mildred had hoped to see. As the last of the air left him, the shock of sudden oxygen deprivation made him collapse. His body went limp and he slumped to the floor.
Limp. That was the key word. The spasm-induced rigidity had gone.
Struggling to raise himself as quickly as possible, despite the agony he felt, Doc reached for Mildred’s proffered hand.
“Thank you, Dr. Wyeth. Quick thinking. I may be a little slow because of it, but at least I am moving.”
Mildred took his arm and began to pull him in her wake as she half walked, half ran along the corridor. She looked at her wristwatch as they moved down another level. Only one more. Less than ten minutes remained until the last destination default kicked in.
They should do it. The place was empty.
That was when the floor began to shake and break up beneath their feet.
“What the—” she yelled in surprise, the rest of the question cut off as she was thrown off her feet, dragging Doc with her.
With a wordless scream, she found herself thrown into a fissure opened up in the ground by the tremors in the earth.
“HOW DO YOU THINK they’re doing?” Crabbe asked Sal.
Ryan suppressed a grin. He could see from the look on the mechanic’s face that it was the last question he wanted to answer. If he said good, and they either didn’t come back or came back empty-handed, then he would be facing the wrath of Crabbe. Equally, if he answered in the negative, it could do little except bring on more opprobrium.
“Hell, we’ll find out soon enough,” Crabbe murmured to himself, answering his own question. The relief on Sal’s face was almost laughable.
But still, it was a question that Ryan had asked himself. He was sure that each of the other three companions in the room was thinking the same. The Armorer would be worried about Mildred in the same way Ryan knew he would worry about Krysty when it was her turn. He knew that he shouldn’t value one of his team above the others. His head said that; his heart said otherwise.
From Krysty’s hair, he could tell that she was concerned. It lay flat on her scalp, the filaments slowly coiling and uncoiling around her neck, like the tails of agitated wild cats.
What were Mildred and Doc facing? he wondered. Had they jumped straight into disaster, or into a chilling? It was something they faced every time they jumped. But usually they were together. Now, being forced to sit and wait, the full import of what they faced was hitting him.
And he didn’t like it.
He looked at his wrist chron, moving slowly so that it wouldn’t draw attention.
Just over five minutes remained until they would know for sure whether Mildred and Doc had made it.
AS THE FISSURE widened and she fell into it, dragging Doc behind her, all she was aware of were the jagged edges of rock as they plucked at her clothes—and the heat, growing by the second, as though they were plunging into the heart of a volcano. The molten heart waiting to swallow them up.
A quake that had hit just when it would be least welcomed. That was some kind of coincidence.
Too much of one.
Mildred’s mind raced. They—she was certain that Doc was falling behind and above her—had fallen into the fissure as the floor crumbled, and had passed walls of rock that towered above them. But how could that be?
For surely, if they had fallen through the concrete floor of the redoubt as it opened up, the first thing they would have passed would have been the floor and walls of the lowest level.
But she hadn’t seen that. What had passed in front of her eyes was little more than rock. Unadulterated, and bereft of anything that resembled concrete, or empty space.
The damn gas. The traces of the nerve agent that remained in the recycled air had got to her mind once again. There had been no quake, and they weren’t plunging into the bowels of the earth. The trouble was, although her mind knew this, everything else told her that it was happening. She could feel the jagged rock edges plucking at her clothing, could feel the air whistling past her face, pushing at her skin. It was so real.
Drive the air out of her body, so that the trace effects would rapidly be expunged. That was the only way. It had worked when she had run and become breathless. It had worked for Doc when she had punched him in the gut. But how could she do it when she felt like she was in freefall, and her limbs wouldn’t respond to any instruction she tried to give them?
She had to scream, loud and long, and not drag in any breath. Get it all out.
So she screamed. And kept on screaming.
Doc stood over her, barely able to keep himself upright as the effects of the laughter and of her assault made it hard for him to breathe and move. One moment he had been trailing behind Mildred as she pulled him, the next he had shot over her prostrate body as she fell. Now she was flat to the floor, screaming loudly and incoherently while he tried to yell at her, the words and volume lost in his own strained thorax.
Time was of the essence. She had told him that, and as he looked at his own chron, he could see that she was correct. If he was right, they had only a little over five minutes. They were one level up, but he couldn’t move quickly. Mildred wasn’t moving at all, by the look of her, and if he couldn’t get her to stand, then all was lost.
He was about to stand back and take a wild swing at her ribs with his foot, unsure as to whether it was worth breaking a rib to deprive her of breath in the same way as she had punched him—and whether she would see it later as some kind of revenge—when she suddenly stopped screaming. Doc tottered uneasily as he stayed his foot.
“My dear Mildred, are you with us again?”
Mildred raised her head. The floor and walls around her were solid enough.
“Shit, that was so real.”
“I shall not ask,” Doc said quickly, partly because of shortness of breath and partly because he didn’t wish to waste time. “Come.”
Mildred gratefully took his proffered hand. Although he was weak, and in truth did little to assist her to her feet, the fact of his being there helped her find that strength within herself.
“The sooner we get out of here the better,” she whispered through heavy, deep breathing as she sought to gain the strength to move. It was, as she was aware, a double-edged sword. She needed the oxygen to move, and yet at the same time the very air she craved ran the risk of driving her imagination into overdrive.
Stumbling over their own feet, the desire for speed outstripping the strength in limbs that were now leaden and lungs that were running on empty, they half ran toward the lowest level. Twice, Doc stumbled and fell, scrabbling to his feet as Mildred turned back to help him. Once she toppled over, her momentum outstripping the alien feet attached to numb legs.
It was only when the entrance to the mat-trans unit was in sight that they both realized that the heavy breathing necessitated by their flight was allowing too much of the trace agent to enter their nervous systems and brains.
“Lori?” Doc breathed out slowly, stumbling to a lesser pace despite himself. The blonde was standing in the doorway. The notion was ridiculous, as she had long since bought the farm. Yet she seemed so real. His companion and solace in this world, snatched from him as he had been snatched from the bosom of his own family.
“Dad?” Mildred also slowed. In the doorway, she could see her father, the Baptist preacher who had taught her of the hell on earth that she
now lived.
“Come with me. Don’t go back. What is there to go back to?”
The words were the same, even if delivered in different voices. For a moment both Doc and Mildred halted. Perhaps those were wise words. What was there in this land for either of them? Displaced and not belonging…
They looked at each other.
“Who can you see?” Doc asked.
“My father,” Mildred answered. “I heard him, too.”
“Strange how it plays on our deepest fears. True as they may be, we cannot give in now.”
Mildred laughed without humor. She grabbed Doc’s sleeve and pulled. The two of them broke through the doorway, each feeling the phantom of their own deepest doubt plucking at them as they passed.
Ignoring the imprecations from behind them, they plunged forward and into the chamber. Mildred pulled the door closed, the lock clicking, shutting out the voices that still called from beyond. She pushed the LD button, then sat on the floor beside Doc.
As the mist began to gather, and the air crackled, Doc checked his chron.
“Thirty seconds on a one-way ride…” He laughed, in relief rather than amusement, holding up the chron for her to see.
As blackness closed in, all she could hope was that it was thirty seconds on the right side of thirty minutes.
Chapter Seven
Time. There was never enough time. Ryan bit down hard on his lip as he eyed the second hand of his wrist chron. Only a few seconds and it would be past the half hour mark. Whatever had happened to Doc and Mildred at the redoubt they had been sent to, it would be unimportant unless they managed to hit the last destination time limit.
The air became taut and tense around them. Within the sealed chamber, lights began to glow, luminescent as the wisps of mist that began to form and spread into a cloud. The light increased suddenly and without warning, going from pearlescent glow to blinding flare almost before he had time to avert his eye. He heard J.B. mutter something that may have been a prayer, or may just have been a sigh of relief.
“They’re back!” Crabbe exclaimed in a statement of the obvious that Ryan found all the more irritating because of what was running through his mind. They may be back, but in what kind of condition?
Leaving Sal behind the comp desk close to Krysty, Crabbe rushed toward the mat-trans unit and tugged at the door. He swore heavily when it failed to yield to him. Krysty’s eyes flickered to Ryan, J.B. and Jak. She knew what they were thinking.
“Dammit, why the fuck don’t they come out?” Crabbe yelled at Ryan as he tugged once more at the door.
McCready leaned over and prodded Ryan with the end of his Kalashnikov. “You people better not be screwing with Crabbe,” he whispered. “Fuck with him, and he’ll let me handle you just how I want.” He smirked, indicating Krysty as if to make his intentions quite clear.
Ryan’s voice was low, growling with barely contained anger. “Keep your mind on the job, boy. Just one slip…”
McCready was about to answer when the yell from his baron cut him off.
“It’s opening!’
The door to the mat-trans unit slowly swung open, and Mildred staggered out. Her eyes were glazed, and she stumbled twice before collapsing into a heap.
“Shit!” Crabbe stepped back, as though scared of contamination—of what was a mystery. Nonetheless, his fear was palpable.
Krysty rushed forward. J.B. tried to struggle to his feet but was beaten down by the barrel of a blaster, swung by a sec man. Jak’s hands snaked up and grabbed the blaster, twisting it so that it was jerked from the hands of the sec man. The Kalashnikov spiraled in the air, whistling past J.B.’s head as the Armorer was caught between half standing and falling back down, reeling from the blow. Ryan reached across him, and suddenly it became apparent to McCready what was happening. He raised his own blaster, but was too slow. Before he had it level at Ryan’s chest, he was staring down the barrel of the blaster taken from his own man.
“Something to say?” Ryan growled.
Crabbe looked wildly around him. Things had happened suddenly and had taken him by surprise. But he wasn’t a baron without reason. Thinking on his feet was something that kept him from buying the farm.
“Brian, think before you do it. Unless you want Kirsty and Millicent to get blown away. I don’t think J.T.’ll like that too much, either,” he added.
“Jak?” Ryan asked, unwilling to unlock his gaze from McCready’s.
“Got handblaster. Smith & Wesson. On Krysty and Mildred. Both prone. Take ’em before you turn,” the albino youth said calmly.
Ryan’s mouth quirked. “Guess you got the whip again, Crabbe. Get your boy here to back off, and he can have his toys back. But let Krysty see to Mildred. A mat-trans jump isn’t much fun.”
“Okay. You take it easy, Nelson. Shouldn’t have been such a damn fool in the first place,” Crabbe said easily. He held up the barrel of the blaster, so that it pointed at the ceiling. “Tell him, Snowy.”
“Not on now. Good as word,” Jak affirmed.
“Okay.” Ryan lowered the barrel of the Kalashnikov, turned it and held it out sideways to the sec man. He snatched it, almost dropped it, then made a point of leveling it squarely at Ryan. The one-eyed man took note. The man was easily rattled.
Krysty leaned over Mildred, ignoring what went on around her. The black woman’s pulse was fluttering, and bile flecked the corners of her mouth from the rigors of the jump. Her eyes rolled in her head as she tried to open them. Her mouth moved, but no sound emerged at first, as if it was on a ten-second delay.
“Doc…”
It was then that Krysty realized Doc hadn’t yet emerged from the mat-trans unit. She scrambled to her feet and ran inside, shrugging off Crabbe’s hand as it reached for her.
“Hey—”
She ignored him and looked around. Was Doc actually here? With a mixture of relief and fear she saw what appeared to be a bundle of black rags in one corner. Doc was slumped and seated with his black frock coat pulled tight around him, his head low to the floor.
“Doc?” She approached him carefully, reaching out to touch him, not knowing if he was conscious, or even alive. When he suddenly raised his head and beamed munificently at her, she jumped back with a gasp.
“Fear not, my dear Krysty,” he murmured in a small yet strong voice. “I am fine. It’s the good doctor you should be worried about.”
“That’s kind of what she said about you,” Krysty said, reaching out to assist him as he started to struggle to his feet. “But she’s almost out cold, while you’re—”
“Feeling like death. But then that’s only to be expected. Pray assist me, I shall only be able to speak of this the once.”
When she led him out of the mat-trans, his weight supported on her shoulder, she saw that Mildred was being attended to by J.B., while Ryan and Jak were being covered heavily by the sec men. The implication was clear. If she, or J.B., should try anything, it would be the big chill for Ryan and Jak.
Crabbe was standing back behind one of the comps, next to Sal. The mechanic looked nervous. Sweat lined his brow, and his anxiety was transferring itself to the baron, who twitched as he held his blaster at an angle.
“Well?” he snapped. “What the fuck went on? Have you got the disk?”
Doc laughed. It was a hollow sound from the center of his chest. “You really think it will be that easy?” he asked in a mocking tone. “You have no idea, but while the good doctor recovers herself, let me explain something to you.”
Doc told the baron what had happened from the moment they had landed at the redoubt. He told him in detail not because he cared what the baron thought, or even that he deserved the whole story. He told him because he knew that his companions would be listening intently, and any information about redoubts would be invaluable—particularly if it revealed something that they hadn’t encountered before.
By the time he had finished, Mildred had recovered enough to have gotten to her feet. Her breath still ra
sped, but at least she was now free of the hallucinations generated by the contaminated air.
“This is true?” Crabbe asked her.
“I haven’t got anything to add,” she rasped in agonizingly raw tones. “Except maybe this—if you think it’s going to be easy to get what you want, then you’re sorely mistaken.”
Crabbe’s face hardened. “It’s there. It’s in one of the places on that list. You better do the job properly if you want to get out of here alive. Now get your asses over there where we can cover you.” With which he indicated the area where Ryan and Jak were seated. “As for you, Brian, you and Snowy are next in line. Anything you wanna say about that before you’re sent off?”
There was plenty that either of them would have liked to say. But one look at the way in which they were covered, its futility was obvious. They exchanged the briefest of looks, of nods, and then made their way to the tarp housing their weapons. They waited patiently for the sec man to hand them their blasters and blades. Ryan sheathed the panga, while Jak secreted his leaf-bladed knives. They checked their handblasters, and Ryan chambered a round in the Steyr before shouldering the rifle.
“Count yourself lucky,” Ryan murmured to McCready as the sec chief watched them. “Come the time…”
“I’ll be waiting,” McCready replied, sneering. “Have a good trip.”
Ryan ignored him. He looked at Jak, who nodded, and they made their way to the mat-trans unit.
“We’ll back. Disk or not.” Jak spit on the floor, as if to express that which he couldn’t speak.
“Do that and things’ll be fine,” Crabbe replied.
Krysty watched them enter. Jak went in first. Ryan didn’t look back at her as he pulled the door shut behind him.
“TRIPLE FROSTY when we come out the other side,” Ryan said to the albino youth.
“Yeah, long as unit still there,” Jak replied with a grim smile.
Without another word the two companions hurried to settle themselves on the floor. The air was already charged, the mist rising from the disks. Having now seen a jump from the other side of the armaglass walls, Ryan was more amazed than ever by the swathes of mist that formed from the briefest of tendrils. The light didn’t seem to him to be as bright as when he’d seen it from the exterior. Maybe that was the point at which their very being was ripped into its constituent atoms and flung across some kind of void, before being reconstituted.
