by James Axler
The Pegasus started to accelerate toward the island as a fresh wind blew over the companions, forcing the balloon onward. The twin volcanoes rumbled softly, sounding like distant thunder, their ragged tops lit from internal fires, wisps of yellow sulfur fumes rising to the sky. The firelight actually reflected off the thick layer of storm clouds. Two volcanoes so close to each other seemed unlikely to Mildred, and she postulated they were simply the planet trying to-clean itself from deadly residue of multiple nuke hits.
“Found them,” J.B. announced, holding the brass telescope to his face. In a valley set between the volcanoes were the ruins of a large predark metropolis sitting on top of a short mesa. The buildings were only silhouettes in the ambient light, black shadows as still and dead as the ferro-cement from which they’d been built.
As they continued closer, details came into view, a huge waterfall rushing off a tall cliff to their left, the smashed wreckage of a Navy yard to the right, the buildings and rusted hulks of warships partly swamped in a bay full of violently swirling water. The whirlpool made more noise than the waterfall, as it raged out of control.
Something large winged across the dark ruins, and Doc rubbed his eyes to see clearly, but the apparition was already gone. Tightening his lips, the time traveler wondered if he had just actually seen a pterodactyl, a winged lizard from the Jurassic period. No, quite impossible.
“May I be so bold as to strongly suggest that if we encounter anything exceptionally large,” Doc said, checking the load in his LeMat, “shoot only for its head? Nowhere else.”
“See something?” Krysty asked in concern, staring at the approaching land. Seemed rugged and wild, but ordinary enough.
“I do not know for sure, dear lady,” Doc muttered, frowning. “And that is what quite worries me.”
“Rad pits coming,” Ryan announced as the ebony night thinned about the island showing reddish-green glows dotting the landscape, and completely covering the Navy base. Quickly, Ryan checked his rad counter and saw the readings steadily climb toward the danger zone.
“Fireblast! It’s hotter than Washington Hole,” he stated, shifting his arm about. The clicks of the device seemed slower to the left, toward the valley that cut through the mountain range. That was the location of the mesa. But this was no place to make a guess.
“J.B., check my readings,” Ryan said urgently.
“Yeah, valley seems okay,” J.B. added, his own rad counter out and sweeping for danger. The sides of the mesa were sheer vertical stone. A bitch of a climb to make, but no problem to reach from the air.
“Okay, start wetting those blankets and try angling us toward the mesa,” Ryan directed, sliding on his backpack.
“No need,” Mildred replied. “The wind has shifted again, and we’re heading straight for it.”
“The volcanoes are making a current for us,” Krysty said, frowning slightly. “Taking us right there.”
Tucking away his sharpened knives, Jak scowled. “Somethin’ wrong.”
Mildred shuffled around the rope basket and checked the weight bags. Each was tied firmly in place.
“Millie?” J.B. asked.
“We appear to be rising,” she answered slowly. “Nothing serious yet, but we better let out some helium.”
“My job,” Doc said, pulling the sword from his stick. Reaching high, he stabbed the lowest weather balloon and it noisily deflated in a blubbery rush. But the Pegasus didn’t lose any height. Puzzled, Doc stabbed another, then another, and incredibly the airship began to rise.
“How’s this possible?” J.B. demanded, trying to see above the makeshift craft. Did something have a hold of them and was dragging the balloons skyward?
“Goddamn it, we’re caught in an updraft from those cross currents!” Mildred said, drawing her blaster and blowing away the largest balloon. It burst as the hot round tore through, but their speed didn’t slow.
Steadily the Pegasus streaked for the storm clouds overhead, and Ryan briefly considered dropping all of their excess weight to get above the clouds. Unfortunately, the sheet lightning filled the sky and they would be fried rising through the wild storm—if the rads and chems didn’t ace them first. But if they shot out too many balloons, they would plummet from the sky and crash on the rocks below. They had passed the ocean several minutes ago and were now moving over bare soil studded with boulders and rusty predark junk. The companions would be torn to pieces even if they survived the brutal landing.
As they rose still higher, Krysty cried out in pain, then the rest rubbed their arms and faces, skin prick-ling from the deadly proximity to the heavily polluted clouds. Just then, both of the rad counters began to wildly click ever faster.
“If we enter those clouds,” Doc warned in a stentorian tone, his eyes painfully tearing, “none of us shall ever leave it alive!”
With no other choice, Ryan drew his blaster and started firing, the spent brass kicking over the side of the basket. Fireblast, he thought, the problem with balloon wags was supposed to be keeping them afloat, not getting them to come down. Just one solution for that. The red-hot rounds from the SIG-Sauer easily punched through the tough polymer sheeting, deflating balloons far out of the sword’s reach, and the craft instantly slowed. Then it began to descend, and soon the itchy crawling feeling of radiation was fading away. Only now the island was rushing toward them with nightmare speed as the Pegasus descended out of control.
“Too fast!” Jak stated, slashing through the ropes. The heavy bags fell, and the Pegasus continued to drop.
“Shitfire, we’ve slipped out of the thermal!” Mildred warned. “Now we’re too heavy. Toss everything overboard!”
The companions slid off their backpacks and heaved them away, but the reduction in weight made no real difference. Too many of the balloons had been destroyed in their efforts to avoid the death clouds. But the airship was also still moving inland. The moonlight heralding their way, the terrain became grasslands, then a forest with a stone arch extended across the valley, connecting one mountainside to the other. A natural limestone bridge flew by.
“Get ready to jump,” Ryan ordered, climbing the ropes.
The others copied his actions, but the Pegasus swung past the bridge moving way too fast, the bottom of the plastic pallet scraping across the limestone for the briefest instant before they were past the obstruction and over the trees again.
“Fireblast!” Ryan spit, falling back into the rope basket.
Incredibly, from somewhere below an alarm bell began to ring, and blasters crackled from the dark trees as cannons roared from hidden bunkers on the shadowy mountainsides, their discharges throwing tongues of flame that illuminated the valley.
“It’s another ville!” J.B. snarled as a cannonball rushed by, buffeting them with the wind of its passing.
“Water!” Krysty shouted, pointing ahead.
There was a wide break in the stygian forest, where a calm river traversed the valley floor. Unfortunately, the river was narrow, with sharp rocks lining both shores, with more trees returning on the far bank. Their target was a slim area of flat mud between the rocks, impossible to hit at their current speed.
“That is our best chance!” Ryan shouted, slashing away the side ropes, open air directly before the man. “Wait for it…Now!”
In unison the companions dived from the pallet, and a split second later the Pegasus rammed into the trees and was torn apart by a thousand sharp branches.
Only the babbling of the shallow river disturbed the heavy silence of the muddy banks. Then swatches of light bobbed through the darkness, and armed men stepped from the rushes along the riverbank to stealthily approach the deathly still figures sprawled in the bloody mud.
THEIR BLACK PLUMES trailing across the starry sky, the four PT boats steamed across the ocean, their engines thumping loudly.
A number of dolphins swam alongside the lead petey, occasionally lifting their bottle-nose heads to give a stuttering squeal. With both of his wounds stiff and aching,
Mitchum slid the longblaster off his shoulder, pulled back the heavy hammer and shot one. The creature moved sideways from the impact of the .75 miniball, human-red blood spraying from the gaping wound. The entire pack dived out of sight instantly, and as the chugging fleet left them behind, the dolphins returned to circle the dying mammal, gently nudging it with their stubby noses. Then a female gave a long howl as if in mourning as the gut-shot male rolled onto its back to expose its pale belly to the air. The rest of the pack circled their dead friend once more, then swam away, leaving the lifeless meat to the endless scavengers. But more than one of the dolphins turned to stare at the noisy dead thing that thundered over the water, watching the two-legs with intelligent eyes full of raw hatred.
“What was that?” Glassman demanded, lowering his plate of beans and dried fish.
“Some kind of baby shark,” Mitchum said, purging the longblaster before refilling it with powder, lead and cloth wad, then carefully tramping down the fresh charge with a blunt nimrod. “Who cares? Just a fish. Ain’t got no brains or human feelings.”
With a shrug, Glassman returned to his meal.
“Ahoy, the captain!” a sailor called out from an aft PT boat, a hand pointing to the sky. “Two o’clock high!”
“It’s them!” Mitchum snarled, lifting his long-blaster, but withheld firing. The weird air wag was bobbing along in the sky without a care in the world. The sec chief trembled with the urge to kill, and had to mentally force his hands to lower the flintlock.
“Well, don’t stand there gawking like virgins in a gaudy house!” Mitchum snarled, stalking along the deck. “They’re getting away! Load the .50 cals! Ready the Firebirds!” Nobody moved to obey the command. The sec chief fumed in his impotence, and bit back words he knew would only get him aced.
“Land ho!” another called in warning. “Breakers at our noon!”
A corporal backed away from the sight. “That’s Forbidden Island!”
“What?” a sec man gasped, spinning in shock.
On the horizon was a long landmass with two live volcanoes. There could be no doubt as to which island that was.
“Nuke me, it is!” Glassman shouted, throwing away his plate. “Emergency stop! Cut all engines!”
The crew rushed to the tasks, and soon the boats were anchored relatively motionless in the waves. Reaching into an equipment box, Glassman pulled out binocs while Mitchum limped to the forward bow.
Illuminated by the silvery moonlight streaming through the rumbling clouds, the men watched as the distant air wag abruptly rose high into the sky, then dropped toward the ground, narrowly rushing over a stone bridge. Cannons roared at their passing, and the air wag disappeared into the darkness beyond.
“Did you see those cannons?” Mitchum growled, fighting a wild mix of emotions. “This must be a pirate base!”
“No,” Glassman corrected, lowering the binocs. “It has to be their main base. This is the home of the pirate fleet!”
“Where are the ships?” a young ensign asked, bewildered.
An older navvy grunted in reply. “Don’t be stupe, ya feeb. Think they’d leave the fleet in plain sight? It’s probably anchored on a nearby atoll where we can’t see them.”
“Which means,” Mitchum said, grinning and cracking his knuckles, “that they can’t see us, either.” For some reason, that seemed important to the sec man.
Just then the island trembled slightly and seconds later a wave lifted the ships yards high, then lowered them undamaged. The navvies paid it no attention. Just a quake wave, and they rode them out all the time. Nothing to be concerned about.
“Skipper, the outlanders are pirates?” a navvy asked.
“Looks like. Must have been testing out their air wag before starting a war,” Glassman said, tucking the binocs away. “On the other hand, lads, we just found their home dock. We’re rich! Kinnison will make every one of us a baron for finding this!”
“But Ryan escaped! They’re on the island!” Mitchum raged, gesturing with a clenched fist. “We have to land immediately and run them down!”
“Without wags?” Glassman reminded him harshly.
Breathing raggedly, Mitchum said nothing. He had taken a gamble and lost.
“Besides,” a navvy said knowingly, resting a boot on a coil of rope, “they’re dead by now from the rads.”
“Ass, the pirates live here,” Mitchum retorted with a sneer. “So the outlanders will be fine.”
“Mebbe,” the other recanted unwillingly.
Which raised an interesting point for Glassman. The air wag gave the outlanders a ride over the rad pits, but how did the pirates manage to do it every day?
“There’s got to be some kind of safe passage through the craters,” Mitchum stated, obviously following the same train of thought. “But how the hell can we find it?”
“First we lift anchor,” Glassman said, taking the captain’s chair and settling into place. “Bosun, take us back to Cascade. Best speed.”
“Aye, aye, sir!” the navvy replied, and got busy at the control board. Soon the engines were thumping alive once more.
“You’re leaving?” Mitchum demanded furiously. “Well, put me on the beach. I’ll stay.”
“Can’t. I need you to help oversee the handling of the slaves. You’ve done it before—my sailors haven’t,” Glassman said, waving over a young sailor. “Donovan, send off a messenger falcon to Kinnison. Tell him what we’ve found and request the entire fleet. Every ship we’ve got that can carry cannon or Birds.”
“Aye, aye, sir!” the man said, hurrying below-decks at a run.
Mitchum limped closer to the captain. “Slaves?” he asked in confusion.
“All they have,” Glassman answered grimly as the petey began to turn a slow curve in the waves. “And if the ville hasn’t got enough, we’ll also take every citizen and sec man. I’d say a hundred should be enough.”
“Enough for what?” Mitchum asked, frowning.
“To use as a key,” Glassman said cryptically, studying the compass to check their course. Straight ahead, dawn was starting to tint the eastern horizon with rosy light. Behind them, night still ruled in absolute authority.
But not for long.
Chapter Six
Ryan’s dreams were wild nightmares of falling, then suffocating, loud noises, pain, laughter, bad smells and now endlessly rocking….
The Deathlands warrior awoke with bright sunlight shining in his face, and he sat up to see where they were only to slam his head against something hard. Trying to rub the spot, Ryan found his hands were bound with ropes. He tried to break the strands, then realized it was some of the plastic rope from the Pegasus. Fireblast! So those dreams had been real. They lived through the crash, only to be taken prisoner.
Gathering his wits, the one-eyed man saw he was in an iron cage on the back of a wooden cart, the steady sound of horse hooves on stone coming from the front. As his vision cleared, Ryan saw he was traveling through a ville full of people. Streams of men and women were moving past the cart on both sides, children were playing in the mud, barking dogs running about, farmers selling produce from wheel-barrows and in the distance he could hear a muted work song from slaves. Then the cart rolled by the bloated corpse of a woman hanging from a rope, Disobeedeant scrawled on a placard hung around her swollen neck.
Ryan checked his clothing, but his blaster and gun belt were missing. Along with his backpack, panga and everything else. Even his eye patch was on backward and his clothes in disarray. He’d been searched, and anything that could possibly be a weapon was gone.
Surreptitiously, Ryan checked the laces of his combat boots and was pleased to note the laces were still tied with the double knot he regularly used. Okay, not completely unarmed then. But nothing he could reach fast.
The thick bars of the cage cast most of the interior into shadows, so Ryan crawled across the cramped quarters to check the other passengers. Rolling over a man, he saw it was J.B., with everything gone but his glasses. T
hat was odd. It had to mean something important, but what?
Lying nearby were Doc and Dean, in a similar state of disarray. They had each been stripped clean; even Doc’s walking stick was gone. Fireblast, they had to have found the sword inside.
But the rest of the companions were missing. A flood of blood pounded in his temples, and Ryan fought to control his terrible temper. Whatever was happening to his other friends, there was nothing he could do about it at the moment.
Going over to J.B., Ryan placed a hand on the man’s mouth and shook him awake. Instantly, J.B. flicked open his eyes and reached for a blaster, his hands jerking to a stop by the ropes binding his wrist to his ankles.
“Stay quiet,” Ryan whispered into his ear. “We’ve been captured.”
J.B. nodded in understanding as Ryan scooted around for Doc, but the scholar winked at him and slowly sat upright.
“I, too, am alive,” Doc rumbled softly, wincing as if with a terrible headache. “But only technically, I assure you.”
Patting the man on the back, Ryan checked Dean and found his son also awake, only pretending to be unconscious.
“How are your boots, Dad?” he said eagerly. “Mine are okay!”
The man shot the boy a stern look, and Dean blanched at the stupid mistake he’d just done. What a feeb! They were in a cage and the unseen driver could probably hear everything they said. Hot pipe, he might have already given away their only chance at escape!
“They’re both okay,” Ryan said, pointing overhead, then pressing a finger to his lips.
Awkwardly shuffling to the bars, J.B. studied the lock, then turned away in disgust. There was no lock, just a length of steel chain bolted in place. No way he could open that from the inside, even if he had a wrench big enough to do the job.
Looking at the passing ville outside, he saw the houses were predark, rebuilt into decent condition. The road was paved, broken sections patched with pieces of sidewalk giving the roadway an odd checkerboard appearance. Chained slaves were everywhere, small children whipping a crippled old man who was trying to sweep a dirty floor with his bare hands. A squad of sec men marched a badly bleeding man toward a hangman’s gallows. In a tavern, a young girl stood silently weeping with her serving tray held high as the drunken customers pawed at her budding breasts.
