by James Axler
"Because we'll need the tires to operate it ourselves," she spit in uncontrolled fury. "And that large a size is hard to find intact. Those are military tires, not merely ones from a truck. Destroying the tires would be stupidity. Removing them will retard any attempt to escape."
"Yes," he said, smiling slowly. "I see. It should take them at least an hour, perhaps more, to put them back on. And in fifteen minutes we could flood the entire ville with gas."
Richard took her hand and kissed it. "So wise, and yet so beautiful. You will be a worthy queen."
"If we survive," Amanda replied sourly, reclaiming her hand. It was sloppy with spit, but she dared not wipe it clean.
"If? But surely everything is under control."
"Not quite. We have the tank in our possession, true, and are finally inside, but we still can't turn on any of the systems!"
Richard dismissed the matter with a cavalier wave. "Ryan, or one of his people, will tell us where the hidden switch is located. Or the correct command code to type in, or whatever the secret start-up procedure is. If not, then I'll assign our best techs to the problem."
"Best remaining techs," she corrected hotly.
"The experts were killed trying to get through the booby-trapped hatch in the floor. We need Ryan alive, just in case. Or else all of this might prove to be pointless. We'll own the ultimate weapon, but won't be able to turn it on!"
"Annoying, but true," Richard said thoughtfully.
"However, I might have an answer to that. How long till sundown?"
She looked at the sky. "An hour or so. Why?"
"Captain of the guards!" Richard barked loudly. From out of the shadows, the robed fat man scurned over. "Yes, my lord?"
"Summon criers and have them spread the word. At the evening bell, we'll kill a random slave every hour until Ryan and his people are turned over to us alive. Alive, mind you. If they're dead, then every child in the whole ville will go to the twist-em!"
"At once, your highness," the trembling man said. He bowed and scuttled inside the prison fortress.
"Brilliant, dear brother," Amanda breathed, sitting upright from eagerness. "The slaves will have no choice but to give us the outsiders."
"With Ryan comes the tank, and then we'll have the Wheel, and the world beyond."
She laughed. "Ryan might even turn himself in to save innocent lives!"
"The fool." He chuckled. "And then, he is turned over to Eugene?"
"Of course, my sweet," Amanda purred. "But not before we play with him for a while."
"Excellent," Richard said, giving a feral grin. "Excellent."
RICHARD AND THE OTHERS were testing their supplies and strapping on weapons when J.B. and Mildred burst into the tunnel.
"Have you heard?" J.B. asked. "Mildred and I were checking on the molds for the explosives when a miner brought us the news."
"A slave killed every hour!" Mildred explained. "They must be insane!"
"Desperate and insane," Ryan agreed, pumping his shotgun to chamber a round. "That's why we're hurrying."
"We have forty-five minutes remaining," Krysty said. "How did the molds come out?"
J.B. and Mildred slid the bulky packs off their backs and laid the canvas satchels gently on the stone floor. "They're okay," the Armorer replied. "A few cracked, but, dark night, is sugar candy hard to work! Forms at 314 degrees and blows at 316. That's why I had it made in a side tunnel far away from us. Could have ignited during the pouring. Or the cooling, or when I opened the mold."
"Forty-five minutes to do what, exactly?" Mildred asked sternly. "Escape?"
Ryan used a strip of black cloth to tie his hair back off his face. "To attack the Citadel."
"Now? Hours ahead of the plan?"
"Yes."
"You're insane," Lisa said, as if it were a fact beyond questioning.
Leaning against the stone wall, Troy nodded his agreement.
"The sooner we hit," Doc countered, smearing lampblack over the silver head of his cane, "then the less prepared they are."
"And the lower the chance that a slave will crack under the strain of seeing friends and family die, and betray us to the ward." Finished with his preparations, Ryan walked over. "How many bombs cracked?" he asked.
J.B. removed his fedora and scratched his head. "Six. Can't use them for anything but fireworks. They won't explode, only spray out wads of sparks."
"A diversion?" Dean asked, loading another clip for his Browning Hi-Power and shoving it into his lumpy vest.
"Too chancy," Ryan decided. "Better leave them behind."
Lisa and Troy both spoke. "We'll take them."
Ryan waved them on.
"Six are broken, which leaves us with..." Doc prompted.
"Nineteen." J.B. rammed his hat back on. "It's not plastique, but when it goes, it'll sure ruin somebody's day."
"Shrapnel?" Jak asked, holstering his .357 Magnum pistol and drawing the oversized bowie knife.
"Couldn't find any nails, so I used broken glass. Rubbed the pieces with sewage, too."
Jak stopped honing the curved blade. "Sewage?" he repeated, taken aback.
"The sewage infects the wound," Mildred explained. "Kills the victim days later."
Ryan clapped his hands. "Heads up, people.
We're moving fast and don't want to leave anything important behind. Everybody give me an equipment check."
"Got the bombs," J.B. said.
Jak patted a pocket. "Garrote."
Dean raised his butane lighter. "Ready, sir." With Krysty's assistance, Mildred shrugged herself into her med kit "Flashlight is fully charged."
"Lisa, are your people prepared to do their jobs?" Ryan asked. "We only get one shot at this, and we're behind schedule already."
"We'll be there when called," she stated. "Have no fear about that."
Ryan looked hard at the slim brunette. "If we fail, you fail," he reminded her.
Lisa didn't reply, but stepped closer and placed a tiny vial of milky fluid into his hand. Troy watched the passing with something akin to anguished grief.
Ryan pocketed the vial and moved toward the hidden doorway of the tunnel. "Let's go kill a baron."
WHEN THE COMPANIONS were gone, Troy reached into a pocket and withdrew a small packet of cloth. Accepting it, Lisa unfolded the piece of soft linen, exposing a small red piece of plastic with wires.
"We removed it from under the control board," Troy said nervously.
Holding it by the edges, she lifted the square for a closer view. The details of the workmanship were amazing. "And the armored vehicle won't start with this missing?"
"So far, yes."
Troy blurted out, "We should destroy the thing! Whitecoats brought down the sky and killed our forefathers. All science is evil!"
"Perhaps," she admitted, carefully laying the red square back on the protective linen. "Yet this is how we control the wasteland fighters. They'll do as we ask, but only for as long as we have possession."
"And when this is over, then what?" he asked, fighting the urge to smack the thing from her grip and grind it under his sandal. "We just give this to Ryan and let them leave?"
With a neutral expression, Lisa gingerly wrapped the delicate piece of predark technology in the cloth and said nothing.
Chapter Seventeen
"I got him!" cried a dirty slave, bursting into view from the mouth of the coal mine. "Me! I got him!"
In a brick kiosk, the sec man on duty spun at the shout, a hand on his blaster. He scowled at the scrawny man running toward his post. Hopefully it wasn't another flood. The water that seeped through the stone walls of the mine was the ville's only reliable source of drinkable water. Filtering by a couple hundred yards of stone removed most of the pollution from the acid rains of the outside world.
"Got what, slave?" he demanded, then gave a start. "Not Ryan?"
"Yes!" the man replied proudly, coming to a halt "We were mucking against the winter damp and there he was! So I shoved over a timber
and the tunnel caved in. He's trapped in a deadhead with no way out. Come and see for yourself."
The sec man grabbed his long blaster and shoved the slave ahead of him. "Show me, and you better be right"
"The ward promised a reward of freedom for capturing the outsider," the slave said over a shoulder.
"And you'll get it," the guard growled, prodding him with the muzzle of the blaster. "If it really is Ryan, and he's still alive. If not, your own children will be the first killed."
"He's alive. You bet! This way, sir. This way!" At the entrance of the mine, the slave grabbed an oil lantern from a half-filled rack of them and lit the wick with a glowing piece of oakum. Directing the cone of light ahead of them, he scrambled into the main tunnel, with the guard following close behind. They went down several levels, following a zigzagging maze of ever-narrowing tunnels, until reaching a branching intersection of tunnels. Here a dozen lanterns hung from wooden rafters supported by buttressed timbers anchored into the living stone. Milling about was a crowd of slaves clustered in front of a recent collapse, the tools of their lowly trade still in callused hands.
"Here! Right here!" the slave announced, moving through the crowd. He patted the sloping pile of pale rocks, tan stone and ebony-colored coal-bearing ore. "He's behind this!"
The sec man scowled. The debris reached from floor to roof and looked as solid as the mountain it came from. There wasn't even a breathing hole drilled in the walls, or a single crack to let air through, and that was bad.
"Start clearing it away," he ordered. "We've got to get some air in there before he dies!"
"Yes, sir!" The slave placed the lantern into a niche, positioned to shine on the avalanche. "Will you be getting more guards?"
"What in hell for?"
"He has a blaster, sir. A big one. But it didn't go off like regular one. It stuttered like an old man."
"Machine gun," the guard muttered, clutching his bolt-action rifle. He wanted the reward from the heirs of no duty for a year to the guard who found Ryan alive, but he had no intention of dying for a year of relaxing.
With a stabbing motion, he pointed at the cluster of slaves. "You, you and you, start digging. You and you, get more timber and shore up the roof! We don't want another collapse. You, go get the duty sergeant and summon more guards. I'll stay here."
The slaves moved with unusual haste, but the sec man never noticed, already dreaming about a full year of sleeping late and bedding any female slave he wanted.
Ryan! Alive! It was a miracle.
FIVE HUNDRED YARDS away, a crowd of slaves was shouting and jumping about in wild excitement.
"Over here! Here!" a woman cried, a nearby group of slaves rolling hogshead barrels and dragging wooden boxes over to block the sagging door of a splintery barn. "We got him trapped inside!"
Sitting on a plow, sipping a cup of field coffee to stave off the nighttime cold, Sergeant Kissel gagged and spit out the brownish fluid. "Ryan?" the sergeant demanded. "You have Ryan?"
The slaves stood in front of him, dancing from foot to foot. "Found him in the silo! I want the reward!"
"I found him," a young man countered rudely. "I want the reward."
"Me!"
"I!"
Standing, the sergeant cuffed them both to the ground. "I'll decide who found him after we got the bastard in chains! Understand?"
They whimpered acknowledgment as a shot rang out from the barn.
"Shitfire, he's armed and that's a .45," Kissel cursed. A large-caliber slug like that would go straight through his flak jacket at close range. "Sentry! You there!"
In the distance, a guard pointed a questioning finger toward himself.
"Yes, you, you damn fool! Bring troops and alert the Citadel. We got Ryan boxed!"
The sec man's face contorted with greed, and he took off at a frantic run.
Kissel checked the load in his blaster and worked the slide to chamber a round, then eased back the hammer into the firing position. "Frag Anders and the bike he rode in on," Kissel growled. "I'll make captain of the guards by midnight. And then it's payback time."
DEEP WITHIN the Stygian shadows of a filthy alleyway in the marketplace of Detail, David wrapped the eyepatch around Clifford's head, while Kathy artfully arranged his wig of long black curly hair. It was the flank skin of a sheep, but from a distance, nobody should be able to tell. Charcoal lines made Clifford's face appear older and heavily scarred. Dressed in repaired clothes from the guards' laundry, the skinny man held a rifle of ancient manufacture that was so badly rusted most of the internal parts no longer existed. It was beyond unrepairable, but still looked deadly potent. But the S&W .38 revolver in his belt was fully functional, even if it only held three live rounds.
"Done," Kathy said, knotting the black string used to hold the wig in place.
"Ready?" David asked.
Breathing deeply to charge his lungs with oxygen, Clifford nodded yes, then paused. "If..." He started again. "If anything happens, tell Troy I love him."
In the darkness, David gripped his shoulder. "Of course, my friend, but you'll be fine as long as you keep moving and stay on the route we mapped for you.
All over the city alarm bells sounded, causing enough noise to wake the dead.
"Hurry," Kathy urged. "One of the Ryans has already been found. You must go now!"
"Death to the heirs," Clifford said, then took off into the street. Instantly a hue and cry formed in his wake.
"It's him! It's him!" cried dozens of people. "Invader! Outlander!"
Guards charged out of doorways with blasters in hand, but hesitated to fire. To kill Ryan meant their own deaths from the hated and despised Eugene. Shoving slaves out of their way, the sec men desperately tried to follow the darting man, his telltale eyepatch identifying the outlander to them in a single glance. A wild chase began.
HIGH ATOP the parapets of the Citadel, a lone guard standing near the alarm bell shivered from the cold in spite of the thick bearskin coat he was wearing.
Retrieving a hand-rolled cigarette from a pocket, he placed it in his mouth and lit the tip from a match, cupping both hands around the tiny flame as protection from the wind. On the ground they might only be getting a mild breeze, but way up there with nothing to act as a buffer, he was washed in a steady stream from the mountains.
The cigarette finally caught, and the guard inhaled the smoke with true satisfaction. He smiled in contentment, then frowned and started to wave his arms and legs about. He tried to grab for his blaster, but it was buried deep under multiple layers of fur and leather, impossible to reach with any speed. The precious cig dropped from his gasping mouth as he continued to dance above the floor. After a few minutes, his struggles lessened and finally stopped as he went limp, but didn't fall.
Grunting from the effort, Ryan finished tying off the wire garrote around the man's neck, the strands buried deep in the mottled skin. The corpse stayed where it was, firmly attached to the flagpole.
Ryan whistled twice. Moving out from behind the chimney flue, the rest of the companions got to work. With a soft clatter, J.B. removed the cover from an air vent and stepped aside. Stripping off his vest and weapons, Dean gave them to Krysty and wiggled into the opening. The boy just barely managed to crawl inside the cramped aluminum duct. When he was safely inside, J.B. secured the cover back on and the rest departed for the ground.
In the yule below them, alarm bells were ringing, the soft crackle of small-arms fire sounding steadily, and an irregular splotch of light seemed to be a barn engulfed in flames.
IN THE AUDIENCE ROOM of the Citadel, both the massive fireplaces loudly crackled with huge fires, slaves wearing only loincloths constantly adding small logs to maintain the conflagration. Tables laden with different types of food were arrayed before the dais, and the heirs supped off golden plates held by silent slaves. Taking one bite from a succulent beef rib, Richard tossed the morsel aside and laughed as the dogs fought over it. Amanda was chewing her way through a pile of ch
icken legs, her lovely face scrunched into a thoughtful scowl.
"Have we done everything we can?" she asked, swallowing a tiny mouthful.
Richard belched, and wiped his mouth on a silk sleeve. "Yes, of course we have. Now shut up. The slaves will bring us Ryan within the hour."
"And if they don't?"
"Then we start killing them." He took another rib. One bite and it went to the dogs. Their stomachs grumbling with hunger, the slaves in the room struggled to keep themselves from diving to the floor and fighting the pit bulls for the food scraps. They would be allowed to eat after the heirs were done, even if it was only bread and bloody juices mopped from the dirty plates.
At the other end of the room, the iron-banded door slammed open and in rushed Captain of the Guard Ian McGregory. The bald man came scurrying toward them at a full run, his robes of state billowing around his legs. He jerked to a halt before the dais and bowed almost as an afterthought.
"My lord and lady!" he panted, flushed with the exertion of running. "I bring bad news! There have been reports of Ryan being captured."
Sucking loudly, Richard freed a piece of meat from between his teeth. "That's good news, you ass. Are you so feeble a short run has scrambled your brain?"
Toying with a strand of her blond hair, Amanda took a sip from her silver goblet. "Or did you mean to say, he is dead?"
"The reports say alive," McGregory gushed, bowing apologetically. "However, I have received reports of him in the east, north and southern sections of Novaville, all at the exact same time."
"What? Impossible!" Amanda stated. "Has this information been confirmed?"
"I double-checked before reporting. It's true. A one-eyed man with black hair and blasters has been seen."
"It's a feint," Richard declared, wiping a band clean on his shirt, "to lure us away from the south wall."
Petulantly, Amanda dashed her chalice to the floor. "Or more likely, the fuel storage dump."
"He's going to ignite our stock of gasoline to cover their escape!"
"Or as a prelude to their attack."
"Where is Anders?" Richard demanded, standing and buckling on his blaster belt.
McGregory smiled uncertainly. "Unknown, my lord."
