by James Axler
As they advanced, the men—they could only assume they were all men, and in truth it didn’t matter—kept firing wildly. Their anger made them careless, and that was all the edge the more experienced companions needed. The wild firing echoed around the confined space of the corridor, loud even to Krysty’s and J.B.’s ringing ears, providing the perfect cover as it chipped away at the walls, sending up a covering cloud of dust.
The two companions didn’t have to look at each other. They knew that they just needed to keep focused on the onrushing enemy. Wild and unthinking in their surprise and anger, they were rushing headlong to their own doom, even though they seemed to be completely unaware of it.
J.B. and Krysty kept their focus tight on the bend in the corridor. The overhead fluorescent lighting cut through the dust, its even glare making the use of shadows to track the enemy impossible. It would have to be split-second timing….
“Now,” J.B. yelled, even though he knew Krysty didn’t need him to tell her—indeed, it was doubtful that she could even hear him in the sudden explosion of sound as he tapped the mini-Uzi. That didn’t matter. All that mattered was that his chattering roar of fire was punctuated by rapid rounds from her Smith & Wesson blaster, stilled only momentarily as she paused to reload.
The enemy—were they really that, or just men who were responding to intrusion and attack much as they would have done under similar circumstances—came rushing. Too fired up to think straight, too angry to react with any speed, they came into the hail of fire. There weren’t many of them, but more than enough to have cut J.B. and Krysty to ribbons given half a chance, which was denied to them by the calm under pressure of people who had seen more combat, and could keep anger under control.
As soon as the last man hit the ground and they were sure that there were no others in his wake, the two companions were once more on their toes, now running unhindered toward the mat-trans.
They entered the unit and slammed the door shut, J.B. checking his wrist chron as Krysty hit the LD button.
“Thirty bastard seconds,” he rasped, his face cracking into a grin. “Plenty of time.”
Krysty sank down the wall, gasping for breath as the air started to crackle and the mist began to slowly gather in wisps around them.
“Nothing to take back,” she wheezed.
“No worries,” J.B. said in return, holding up his mini-Uzi while he racked another load. “Just have to come out blasting. Surprise the bastards.” He grinned at the unspoken question her expression threw at him. “Don’t reckon Ryan would expect anything less.”
It was the last thing he said before the inevitable darkness overwhelmed them once again.
Chapter Seventeen
The one-eyed man was keeping that single orb focused on the baron. Crabbe was a man who was being almost driven to distraction by the prospect of both grasping and losing his dream. Grasping it if J.B. and Krysty returned with the disk—which, of course, Ryan knew they couldn’t—and having to finally realize his wildest fantasies, which had in all probability never entered the realms of being practically mapped. Paradoxically, he was face-to-face with the idea of his dreams being finally dashed. While he had been searching for the companions, and planning how to get to the mysterious places of dreams that the laminated sheet represented, he had been able to nurse the secret dream to his breast and take comfort from its possibility.
Not now. Neither was an option. There would only be the cold hard fact. Ryan knew which way it would go, but for Crabbe the double edge to the sword was that he was facing the fact that whichever way it went, it would never be like the fantasy.
And he was cracking under the strain of that realization. Pacing up and down, muttering to himself, casting glances at Mildred and at his own men, he was a baron who was no longer in control of himself—and so, by extension, of his people.
There would have been those who would have wondered why Ryan was watching the baron when McCready was the one with the blaster in his hand. The sec chief was waiting for the moment to mount his own coup. He had the men and the blasters. He was the real threat in that sense. Ryan didn’t like the sec chief, any more than the squat man liked him. But he knew a natural fighter when he saw one. McCready was such. The one-eyed man knew that he would be watching the baron with similar thoughts racing through his mind. To watch him and then react would be, for Ryan, to put himself at a disadvantage, a fraction of a second behind.
Screw that. To do that would be to invite your own chilling. The man a fraction of a second behind was the one who bought the farm. But to watch the baron just as McCready was doing, and then to react at the same time, or perhaps that fraction before—that was to be the winner.
Ryan trusted his own skill and experience. He believed he could make that judgment just that moment before the sec chief decided to act.
And if he couldn’t, he was damn sure that Jak was doing exactly the same thing. Just as he felt certain that Doc was watching the sec chief who stood almost directly in front of him. Just as he knew that Mildred was using her position to watch the overall picture, ignoring the pacing and angst-riddled baron.
The tension in the room was tighter than a drum. It would take just the slightest thing to make it snap.
Like the sudden flare of light from the mat-trans unit, momentarily blinding them as it signaled the return—he could only hope—of J.B. and Krysty.
And then there was silence and stillness. Crabbe watched the door with an intensity that was almost frightening. Ryan watched him with something that was equal, but different in intent. The baron couldn’t take the strain much longer, and neither could his sec chief. The longer that the unit stayed still and silent, then the more likely it grew that the eventual explosion of violence would be cathartic and final.
It was just a matter of time…
INSIDE THE MAT-TRANS, Krysty and J.B. were coming around. The Armorer took off his battered fedora and rubbed his scalp vigorously, as though that might, in some way, make him recover with a greater speed. Krysty stood and shook herself with the kind of shiver that usually presaged a portent of dread. That was fine. It mirrored how she felt. She turned to the unit door, expecting it to open. If things went to the pattern established by the previous five jumps, then someone would come for them if they waited long enough. One of their own, with armed sec on their ass. That was the last thing she wanted. J.B., too, she was certain. That would just contain them in the confines of the mat-trans walls and make it easy to pick them off. And it would keep them from firing for fear of hitting one of their own.
No, the only way to tackle this would be to move quicker than those on the outside and come out firing. She was almost willing herself to shake off the nausea and torpor of the jump.
J.B. was doing much the same. He felt like he’d left half his guts back in the other redoubt. But there was no time to worry about being at the top of his game right now. Speed was the essence. He looked across at Krysty as he racked the mini-Uzi. She chambered a round in her blaster and gave him the briefest of nods.
Neither of them was really ready, but it had to be now.
“DON’T JUST STAND there, get them out. They must have the disk. Don’t let them just sit there,” Crabbe yelled, gesticulating wildly toward his sec men and the three prisoners. Mildred, close by, instinctively stepped to one side, distancing herself.
That would make the already jumpy McCready move, if nothing else did, Ryan figured. With a flicker of the eye, he was able to take in almost from the periphery of his vision that the sec chief was momentarily distracted and wasn’t watching them. He reached out, his iron grip closing around the calf of the sec chief, squeezing for the muscle. It was a simple maneuver to cause him so much pain that he would yell and lose focus while paralyzing the muscle momentarily and make him topple. What would happen then was another matter.
McCready fell backward, yelling in surprise and pain, his SMG angling upward and arcing a spray of fire into the control room, bringing down dust and deb
ris while blasting out some of the lighting, plunging the room into a semigloom. There were confused shouts from his men, unsure of what to do. Should they concentrate on the prisoners, or was this the chance they should take to rid themselves of the baron?
The loudest shout came from Crabbe, unable to take in what was happening around him. Even more so, as he caught sight of the mat-trans door opening. The disk was within his grasp, and now for this to happen! He held out his arms in unthinking imprecation to the salvation he expected from the mat-trans.
It was salvation of another sort that greeted him. Steeling themselves despite the dizziness and gnawing nausea that beset them, J.B. and Krysty emerged from the redoubt with blasters blazing. The first volley was intended to go over the heads of their enemies while giving them the chance to take in their bearings.
Without even pausing to take in what J.B. and Krysty were up to, Doc had decided to act. The gas gren that he had kept secreted in his frock coat pocket was swiftly palmed, the pin pulled and the deadly package rolled across the room.
“Gas,” Doc yelled as he loosed the gren, knowing that the one word would be enough for his companions to take the appropriate measures—that was if they could hear him over the chaos.
Jak was about to contribute his own hidden surprise for the baron and his men—or, to be more accurate, the sec chief and his acolytes. As smoothly as Doc had palmed the gren, it was nothing compared to way in which the lithe albino teen produced the laser from the place in which he had hidden it. The power pack was the only thing that gave him concern, but he kept a firm grip on it to keep it connected. Using one hand for that, and keeping the nozzle mechanism of the weapon in the other, he aimed the beam of light it was emitting toward the two men who were standing guard over the captured ordnance. Still confused about the sudden explosion of events, and torn about who to aid—the baron or their own sec chief—they were frozen for just a fraction of a second. It wasn’t much, but it was long enough for Jak to achieve his aim. Both men yelled in sudden shock and anger as the red beam of the laser cut across their bodies, burning a searing line across their chests. More importantly, it cut diagonally across the two men, taking them at the shoulder down to the elbow on one, and then the forearm and wrist of the other. Even if they could have gathered what remained of their senses enough to raise their weapons and fire while the heat of the laser began to cook their internal organs, the fact that their tendons, muscles and nerves had been severed by the intense heat of the beam was enough to render their upper limbs useless. They fell away from the weapons they guarded, both of them screaming in incoherent high voices raised by pain.
Krysty and J.B. fanned out so that they would be a harder target. At the same time, they focused their fire on the doorway to the control room.
Terrified by what was going down, and seeking only to escape a fight in which he had no interest or wish to take part, Sal had found himself running right into the onrushing sec men who had been stationed in the redoubt corridor. The first rounds of blasterfire had brought them running, and now those closest to the control room had reached the doorway. The mechanic ran straight into them and frantically tried to scrabble past them. They, in turn, had tried to push him back so that they could pass, and in consequence had done little more than push him back into the hail of fire that had been intended for them. Sal, who had only ever wanted to be able to continue his work in peace, bought the farm in a hail of bullets.
His lifeless body, for a second kept upright by the force of the rounds that poured through it, was an obstruction that prevented the sec men in front of him from firing on Krysty and J.B. for that moment when they were exposed. By the time that it had fallen, the two companions had taken cover, and it was the sec men who were now exposed, those following at their backs doing little more than forcing them into the room and the burst of bullets that greeted them.
While that was going on, Mildred had acted to take out the baron, even though she was unarmed and had moved away from him at that moment when she judged that McCready was ready to blast him. But now she could see that the sec chief had other concerns as he grappled with Ryan, the one-eyed man rising to his feet even as the sec chief sank, so that the two of them came face-to-face, gritted teeth and steely gazes fixed on each other.
That left both of them unaware of and undefended against the baron. Crabbe, aware that his carefully constructed and plotted world was suddenly falling around his ears, was determined to extract some kind of vengeance. Whether he suspected that his sec chief was plotting against him and that now was the time to act—and surely he could not have remained baron for so long without some kind of insight—or whether he had decided that Ryan had outlived his usefulness and was the catalyst for the disaster now befalling him, and as such worthy only of chilling was immaterial. Perhaps it was both, and he had decided to chill two birds with the one slug. Either way, he was drawing a bead on them while both, immersed in their own struggle, were unaware of the hot metal that awaited them.
Mildred had to act. Crabbe wasn’t looking at her, and she used that to her advantage. Two steps, a swing, and with the full force of her weight behind it she slashed the straight edge of her hand toward the area just behind the baron’s ear. He had to have sensed it, perhaps felt the draft of the approaching blow, as he tried to turn and duck. But too late. The blow caught him in the soft tissue area at the base of the skull. Before he had a chance to turn his blaster on Mildred, the light went out in his eyes, which rolled up into his head as, with a soft grunt, he slumped to the ground.
In the midst of the chaos, Doc and Jak were now on their feet, pushing past the still-writhing corpses of the laser-carved sec men, and had gathered the tarp that contained their personal weapons. They knew without exchanging words that there was no time to distribute the armory and use it in the battle that was raging. With an anxious glance at the clouds of gas that were starting to spread and clog up the air in the room, Doc knew that they had to get out. The filters in the air recycling system were taking out some of the toxins, but the majority was now beginning to blanket the room.
Doc’s shout had been taken in by his companions, albeit on a subconscious level, and so they had tried, despite their exertions, to breathe shallowly as they fought. But even with this precaution, some of the choking gas was in their lungs and was absorbed through their skin, making their movements uncertain and erratic. To linger too long would risk the gren causing them as much damage as it was now inflicting on the remaining sec men, who had been breathing as normal, and the baron himself.
For Crabbe, by some supreme effort of will, perhaps at realizing that his dream was slipping away and determined to try to salvage something from it, had forced himself to struggle, still groggy, to his feet. He still grasped his blaster, waving it in a haphazard manner as though unable to control his muscles, which, if he had breathed in enough of the gas, was probably the case.
The door to the mat-trans unit was still open, and it was obvious what needed to be done. Doc and Jak half carried, half dragged the tarp with their weapons toward the mat-trans. The room was now a stinking mess of cordite smoke, nerve gas, and the stench of roasted flesh and bloodied wounds.
Ryan was grappling with McCready, the two men locked into a struggle where Ryan’s injuries equalized his power against the smaller, stockier man. The one-eyed warrior was holding the arm that grasped the sec chief’s SMG in a locked position, so that no matter how hard he might try, he couldn’t level it at the man for whom his hate was almost palpable. As he breathed fumes of hatred and anger in Ryan’s face, it was almost a physical presence.
“Fucker. Could have taken Crabbe. Could have been the baron. But you had to come along.”
“I didn’t want to be here. I don’t want to be here now. Won’t be.” The one-eyed man was aware that Jak and Doc were readying to leave. The gas was growing, and he could feel it take hold of his body. There was little time. If he was going to end this, he had to end it now. For a moment he relaxed h
is tense muscles, allowing the sec chief to believe that he had the upper hand. McCready’s grimace shaped to a grin and he pressed forward. It was what Ryan had wanted. The one-eyed man stepped back suddenly and pulled, toppling the sec chief off balance, bringing up his knee so that it caught the sec chief in the solar plexus as he fell forward. McCready grunted as the air was driven from his lungs. The SMG loosened in his grip and Ryan seized it, swiveling it and tapping a burst that took off the back of the sec man’s head. Before he had even hit the floor, Ryan headed to the mat-trans, yelling to Mildred to join him.
But the physician had a task of her own to finish before she was ready to go. Unarmed in the midst of the chaos, she had taken cover, and had been able to observe what was going on in a way that none of the others could. J.B. and Krysty had wiped out most of the sec men, and were laying down a covering fire that was keeping the remainder outside the control room. Inside, there was no opposition left other than the baron, who was so dazed that even though he waved his blaster around, it was aimless and posed little danger. Ryan was about to join Jak and Doc in the mat-trans.
So she had to make sure that none of the remaining sec men, or the Baron, could follow. Once they were inside the unit, a random jump would occur. Her task was to make sure that this destination couldn’t be followed. She dropped to her knees and crawled to where one of the fallen sec men had dropped his blaster. She took it and turned, tapping a volley that took out the computers in a shower of sparks. The baron was caught by some of them, turning and letting fly a shot that flew high and wide before he fell backward.
She didn’t wait to see where he landed. Before Crabbe had even hit the floor, she was already in the mat-trans with Jak, Doc and Ryan.
“Come on, dammit,” she yelled at Krysty and J.B., aware that the gas was starting to permeate every part of the control room.
