by James Axler
The door reached the halfway point, and locking solenoids clicked into place. Kane made a motion-detector sweep and cautiously edged out onto a broad shelf extending from the rock-ribbed recess.
At the lip of the tumble, he stopped, scanning in all directions. He saw only barren flatlands. West and east, the view was identical. Southward, he saw a vague black line, a hint of the vast crater that had replaced Washington nearly two centuries ago.
Looking down at the base of the slope, he stiffened, eyes slitted. A double set of treaded tracks was visible in the dry earth. He followed them with his gaze to a heap of slag, metal that had turned molten, then hardened again. It had no identifiable configurations, but Kane guessed by the tracks the slag had once been a Sandcat. Sooty steel fragments lay scattered around it. A looping, crescent-shaped scorch mark had fused the ground to black glass, and it intersected with the heap of metal.
Creeping out farther on the ledge, Kane looked straight down. Spread out over the boulders at the foot of the slope, he saw a splattering of obsidian gel. By staring hard, he was just able to discern what might have been a forearm and hand, now glued to the bulwark of stone.
"Kane?"
Brigid's voice transmitted into his ear caused him to jump and bite back a startled curse. "Here," he said.
"We're nearly there."
"Acknowledged."
He returned to the redoubt, leaving the sec door halfway up. The diffuse sunlight was an improvement over the pallid illumination provided by the ceiling light strips, though it didn't penetrate very far down the corridor.
By the time he came around the corner, Lakesh and Brigid were already standing over the stunted corpse. In a flat, quiet tone, Lakesh declared, "Advanced achondroplasia, with indications of acromegaly."
"I know achondroplasia is a form of dwarfism," said Brigid, "but I'm not so sure about acromegaly."
"It's a disturbance of the growth process affecting bone and muscle development. Usually it's the result of oversecretions from the pituitary gland." Lakesh adjusted his eyeglasses, frowning over the rims. "I'm no expert, but generally acromegaly is associated with giantism, not dwarfism."
"Whatever, he's an ugly little spud," commented Kane. "What about his feet? Ever see anything like them?"
Lakesh shook his head. "Not on Homo sapiens . Obviously a mutation, but whether it was deliberately induced or simply a freak of nature, I hesitate to say. It is apparent, though, that the foot bones have been re-modified to become hand bones, suitable for gripping."
"Gripping what?" Kane demanded. "Self-heat-ration packs?"
Lakesh regarded him with an irritated glance. "I don't know. We'll take him back to Cerberus with us for a full examination and postmortem."
"We know what chilled him," retorted Kane. "Too much lead in his diet."
Brigid indicated the open doorway with a nod. "Let's give you a look at our other mystery."
If Lakesh had been fairly phlegmatic upon viewing the bullet-riddled troll, his reaction upon glimpsing the sludge spread out over the corridor floor was the exact opposite. His expression registered incredulity, then horror. He stared unblinkingly at the black protoplasm, reaching out to touch a smear of the substance on the wall, then jerking his fingers back before they made contact.
"An MD gun," he said in a heavy, halting voice.
"Almighty God. I can scarcely believe it. An MD gun!"
"What's an MD gun?" Brigid asked.
Lakesh wet his lips nervously. "Molecular destabil-izer. A weapon that was in development by Overproject Whisper's Operation Eurydice in the late 1990s. As far as I knew, it never evolved beyond a few rudimentary prototypes. Bulky things, requiring superconducting battery packs. I saw a couple of tests."
Kane eyed the ooze, then Lakesh. "How do they work?"
"By the application and release of subatomic particles. Organic tissues and structural matter experience molecular de-cohesion, almost as if every binding atomgluons, they're calledunravels."
"Is the MD gun Archon technology?" demanded Brigid.
"The basic principles, probably," Lakesh answered dolefully. "All attempts at miniaturizing them failed...or so I was told."
Kane gestured to the floor. "We've got wheel tracks. Maybe the MD thing was mounted on some kind of small wag." He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. "Outside I found what's left of a Sandcat and another Mag. Both of them had been unraveled."
Lakesh nodded thoughtfully. "Dispatched from Sharpeville, no doubt. They found more than they were looking for."
He sighed wearily. "Let's get out of here. I left the memory matrix downstairs."
Kane started down the passageway. "Give me a minute to lock up."
He stepped over the decapitated Mag, turned the corner and walked quickly to the sec door. He paused before pulling down the lever, his ears catching a faint, rhythmic swish of sound from outside.
EasirTg his body beneath the half-raised vanadium slab, Kane duck-walked out onto the shelf and peered over the rock-littered edge. His heartbeat sped up, and he shivered as a jolt of adrenaline shot through his system.
Three Deathbirds alighted on the ground near the slagged remains of the Sandcat. Dust devils corkscrewed in the rotor washes. All three of the compact craft were streamlined and sleek, painted a nonreflec-tive matte black.
The reengineered Apache gunships carried two full pods of missiles beneath stub wings, and multibarreled .50-caliber Chain guns protruded from turrets beneath the tinted foreports. Kane knew the choppers were equipped with infrared-signal-processing circuitry, and like a stupe, he had exposed himself and his body-heat signature to their sensors.
Even while the vanes still spun, black-armored men tumbled out of the craft, all of them wielding Copperheads, deadly Mag-issue subguns. Chopped-down autoblasters, only two feet in length, the gas-operated Copperheads had a 700-round-per-minute rate of fire. They were equipped with optical image-intensifier scopes and laser autotargeters.
From the center Bird bounded a blond man wearing a ridiculous-looking coverall garment. The breeze churned by the rotors set the fringes hanging from his belled sleeves to dancing and looping. Even from a distance, Kane recognized the gracile body structure, prominent facial bones and big slanting eyes of a hybrid.
From another chopper slid a grotesque man-shape, powerfully built around the arms and upper body, but sickeningly diminished below the waist. His bare legs looked like afterthoughts. They flopped flaccidly behind him as he crawled headfirst out of the aircraft.
The Magistrates fanned out in a wedge formation, facing the base of the slope. Kane didn't wait to see what they did next. Backing swiftly away from the edge, he ducked back beneath the sec door and pulled down on the lever. Then he turned and ran down the corridor, hearing the portal drop down to floor level with a faint crunching thud. He knew the Mags had the code to open it from the outside, but even slowing down their progress a half minute or so could buy precious time.
Lakesh and Brigid must have heard his drumming footfalls, since when he rounded the corner they were waiting for him, faces taut with questioning anxiety.
"Mags on their way up," he grated. "A hybrid with blond hair is with them."
Turning toward the doorway, Lakesh said grimly, "Baron Sharpe."
"Do you know him?" asked Brigid.
"I saw him at the Dulce facility a couple of years ago, during the barons' annual genetic treatments. He's mad, like Emperor Caligula was mad. He never goes anywhere without a crippled doom-seer called Crawler."
"I think he's with him, too," Kane said.
Lakesh gestured to the body of the dwarf. "Friend Kane, if you would be so kind as to carry the corpse of our departed troll, we will exit, stage down."
Kane hesitated, then bent and hauled up the little body. It came free of the tacky pool of semidried blood with a sticky smack. The dwarf weighed very little, probably no more than sixty pounds. Still, it was sixty pounds of dead, unresponsive weight Kane settled over his shoulder in a fireman's
carry.
The three people retraced their steps, moving as stealthily and swiftly as they could manage to the stairwell.
Ericson hadn't worn the battle armor in a number of years, and far from feeling nostalgic about being encased in the polycarbonate exoskeleton again, he was distinctly uncomfortable. In fact, he hated it. Sweat seeped beneath the Kevlar-weave undergarment and his skin, making him feel like he was wearing a swamp. His own admonishments to his men about enduring hardships came back not to haunt him, but to laugh in his face.
If that weren't irritating enough, Baron Sharpe countermanded his every order with exuberant whoops and the maddeningly repetitive chant of "C'mon, boys! Today is a good day to cross over!"
The baron bounded up the rock face like a bipedal mountain goat, and at his heels Crawler dragged himself up and over the chunks of stone. Ericson's warning that the on-board sensor circuitry had detected a human infratrace made no difference to Baron Sharpe.
He behaved as if he were on a field trip and determined to have a grand time. He saw no significance in the slag puddled where the Sandcat's tracks terminated, nor in the black goo spread out over the base of the rock slope. Ericson and his three Magistrates had no choice but to follow their lord and his high counselor, no matter where they led.
Crawler stopped his scrabbling ascent long enough to plunge an arm into a crevice between two stones.
When he withdrew it, a bloated, six-legged lizard squirmed fitfully in his fist. Without hesitation, Crawler closed his jaws over its head, bit if off, spit it out and began climbing again, sucking at the blood-spurting neck stump.
Ericson's belly turned over with cold disgust. He tried to avert his gaze from the mutie and his snack. Crawler peered at him, a mocking up-from-under look, red-filmed teeth grinning around the feebly kicking body in his mouth.
Doing his utmost to maintain a stoic expression, Ericson continued to climb. Crawler slithered and lunged beside him, the lizard's tail flopping back and forth, slapping his cheeks lightly. The doomie kept pace with him, as if it were a race to see who could reach the summit first. Ericson fleetingly considered stomping on Crawler's head, attributing it to a misstep.
By the time they reached the wide ledge, Baron Sharpe stood before the recessed sec door. He cast a smirk over his shoulder, snickered and rapped on the portal with a feyly bent wrist. "Let me in or I'll huff and puff and blow your house in."
He tilted his head, pretending to hear a response from within, then piped in a falsetto, "Not by the hairs of our chinny-chin-chins."
The three Mags gained the shelf and spread out in a semicircular formation in front of the door. Quietly Ericson said, "Please, my Lord Baron. I must insist you stand away from the door."
Baron Sharpe regarded him with ingenuous blue eyes. "Danger?"
"Quite possibly."
The baron hugged himself, fringes quivering in ex-citement. "Oh, I truly hope so. Crawler, what colors do you see?"
Crawler's lips went slack, and the lizard dropped from his mouth. The Magistrates watched sourly as the doomie went through his performance, clutching at his brow, shivering and moaning. Ericson wished the crippled bastard would expand his repertoire.
In his whispering, aspirated voice, Crawler said, "White clouds, golden sunshine and serenity. All is happy. All is golden. Friends from afar await."
Ericson couldn't help himself. His voice was a loud, harsh blare as he demanded, " What ?"
The baron's smooth features displayed his disappointment. "No danger?"
Crawler husked out, "No danger. Only friends who wish to invite you to join their games."
Ericson glared at the mutie in furious suspicion, then wheeled on the baron. "My Lord, your high counselor is mistaken. He must be."
Irritation flickered in the big blue eyes. "Why must he be?"
The Magistrate administrator groped for a response. Knowing he trod on exceedingly treacherous ground, he said matter-of-factly, "The first squad did not return from this place. There are indications that they are dead. For your own safety, I demand we operate on the assumption that we are in dark territory, regardless of your high counselor's assessment."
Baron Sharpe's lips pursed. He flicked his eyes down to Crawler's upturned face. Ericson watched the brief eye exchange between them. Crawler inclined his head in a curt nod.
The baron's shoulders slumped. In a weary, resigned tone, he said, "Oh, very well, then. Ericson, be so kind as to lend me a blaster."
Ericson handed him his Copperhead, first making sure the firing-rate selector was switched to single shot. He wasn't foolish enough to give a subgun set on full or even semiauto to a novice.
Baron Sharpe hefted the weapon in his hands, as if trying to guess its weight. Then, with smooth, deft motions, he planted the bore of the Copperhead under Ericson's exposed chin and squeezed the trigger.
The report, muffled as it was by flesh and bone, had a flat, lackluster quality to it. There was nothing lackluster about the effect of the 4.85 mm steel-jacketed round. It punched a path through tissue and jaw, driving up through the roof of the mouth and deep into the brain. Only Ericson's helmet kept his cranium casing from coming apart in fragments.
He toppled backward without a sound. All of the Magistrates saw the crimson-edged, ragged stellate wound where his chin had been. A sooty halo ringed the lower portion of his face. The sweetish odor of cordite mixed with the stink of seared human flesh.
Baron Sharpe cast a swift glance toward Crawler, his eyes shining like a pair of newly minted coins. Crawler smiled in approval. "Well played, my Lord."
The three Magistrates stood rooted in place, overwhelmed by the brutal shock of their superior officer's murder. In a clear, cold voice, Baron Sharpe announced, "All of you will follow me. New friends and games await. If you disobey me, you will not be allowed to play."
Not bothering to gauge their reactions, the baron heeled around to face the door, stepping to the keypad. With exaggerated stabs of his index finger, he entered 3-5-2.
Chapter 11
Kane's vision went dark, and the steps vanished from beneath his feet. Legs flailing, top-heavy with the dead, unresponsive weight of the troll, he pitched headlong down the stairwell. He clawed out for a handrail, missed it by inches, then tried to hurl the corpse off ahead of him.
A shattering impact numbed his body, and he tumbled head over heels into darkness, bouncing and caroming off and down the steps. Dimly, from behind and above him, he heard Brigid's alarmed, questioning outcry.
Kane slammed down onto the landing with a clatter of polycarbonate and an explosive exhalation of profanity-salted air. A flare of pain blossomed in his right knee, so fierce and excruciating that nausea surged.
He managed to push himself into a half-sitting posture, the troll's corpse still draped limply around his shoulders. He dragged it off, its skull striking the concrete with a hollow chock.
Brigid loped down to the landing, shining her light into his face. "Are you all right? What happened?"
Gingerly rubbing his knee, Kane said between clenched teeth, "My night-vision gear went out. Missed my step."
Lakesh joined them, saying breathlessly, "Taking two and three steps at a time jostled loose the in-feed circuit. Could have been worse."
Voice hoarse with barely repressed pain, Kane demanded, "How?"
"You could have been behind us. Brigid and I might have gone down with you and broken our necks."
"That puts it all in perspective," Kane retorted with icy sarcasm. Unlocking the under-jaw guard, he yanked the helmet up and off his head, glaring at the tiny image enhancer mounted above the visor. "Piece of shit."
"That piece of shit probably saved you from a fractured skull," Brigid observed. "Can you walk?"
A faint, distant murmur of voices reached them, wafting down the stairwell. He said, "Guess I have no choice."
Hoisting himself erect with the handrail and using the wall as a brace, he got to his feet. Experimentally he rested his weight on
his right leg. The pain was sharp, but not quite as knife-edged as it had been.
"I don't think it's broken," he said quietly, "but I'll slow you up. You two get going. I'll cover your backsides."
Brigid and Lakesh regarded him with troubled eyes. The muted overhead lights and the amber glow of the Nighthawk cast wavering, stark shadows over their features. Voices echoed above them, this time a bit louder, but the words were indistinguishable.
"Get going." Kane gestured to the corpse. "Leave that thing to me."
Brigid shook her head, reaching down to secure a grip on an ankle. "You don't need to be any further encumbered. Lakesh"
Reluctantly Lakesh grasped the troll's other ankle. "We'll wait for you in the gateway."
Kane nodded. "If you see a Mag that isn't me, make the jump. I may have to go to ground somewhere."
"Then what?" asked Brigid.
"You know what. If my transponder is still transmitting my vitals, then tell Grant to come a-jumping. And if they're not" He shrugged, and his teeth flashed in a hard, humorless grin. "If they're not, then tell Rouch she'll get over it."
Brigid's lips worked as if she were about to spit at him. Then she matched his expression with a to-hell-with-you grin of her own. "I will. I'll also tell her she won't be missing much."
Kane almost demanded, "How would you know?" but a scuttling noise from above turned his question into a barked command. "Go!"
They went, dragging the body with them, its head bumping against the steps with a castanetlike knocking rhythm.
Consulting the motion detector, he saw five green dots marching across the LCD. He frowned slightly. He had counted six people disembarking from the Deathbirds. At the bottom edge of the display, digits changed and flickered as the distance between him and the intruders narrowed.
The Sin Eater filled his hand, and holding it in a double-fisted grip, he looked up the yawning stairwell, waiting and listening. Shrouded as it was in murk, Kane couldn't see its mouth. Faint footfalls reached him, and then a brief burst of gay laughter.
