"Of course we know, stupidworks," she said slowly, as though spelling it out. "Why d'you think we're here? It's because it's near to their redoubt. And I'll tell you as much as this, too—we're going to get back in there and chill those fuckers once and for all. For us—for the Gate—it's part of our destiny. We've come this far, and we're near the ultimate goal. There's no way they're gonna stop us. But now it seems that's there's even more of a reason. If we don't stop this disease, then there won't be any land worth our inheriting when our destiny is fulfilled. No riches have meaning without people to use them."
"Glad you feel that way," Ryan commented.
"Speaking of that," Mildred said carefully, "have you had any problems with the way you're all feeling?"
Gloria eyed her suspiciously. "In what way d'you mean that?" she asked sharply.
Mildred kept her gaze level with that of the Gate queen. "The mat-trans jumps can have a bad effect on the body. It isn't supposed to go through the stresses it does with each jump. Jak always suffers very badly, and most of your people have the same type of body build."
Gloria considered this. "Some of the guys have got little blisters, and feel like they've got some kind of bug. You know, like a winter sickness or bad food. But that's it, really. None of the women felt anything."
Mildred forced a smile. "That's good. We all need to be a hundred percent for this."
"Too right, honey," Gloria replied, "and you need to rest a little more after that landslide. We should take a few days—recon the redoubt with both us and yourselves. That way we can really work out a strategy."
"That sounds good. We should get that together as soon as possible. But first we should rest," Ryan said.
Gloria agreed, and the companions were shown to a part of the camp that had been prepared for them. Ryan was relieved when Jon and Tammy left them alone, as he needed to question Mildred urgently, and did not wish them to overhear.
But it was J.B. who spoke first, as Tammy and Jon moved out of earshot.
"What is it, Millie? I saw you and Doc look at each other," he said in an undertone.
Mildred shook her head, plaits gently shaking around her. "I can't be sure. It was when Gloria mentioned the Gate being trapped and then being soaked by such a gentle rain. It sounded to me like some use of a saturation technique—"
"No, back up a little," Ryan interjected. "Run that one by me again."
"It seems to me likely that the Illuminated Ones used the virus in a solution of water to soak it into the Gate, and try to spread it that way. There were too many of them to inject or infect individually, as they seemed to do with the baron's daughter. This way they hit the whole tribe in one go."
"Except that it doesn't seem to have affected them," Krysty added. "But why, if that was what the Illuminated Ones intended, hasn't it worked?"
"Perhaps they have some kind of immunity," Doc posited. "After all, I can remember when I was young that there were always cases of a disease spreading over a whole community, and yet some remained untouched."
Mildred assented. "It's possible that the Gate has some kind of immunity built into their genetic code, and it's stronger in the women than the men. It sounds like some of the men have developed mild initial symptoms but no more."
Ryan nodded slowly. "So you're saying that mebbe they have it, but it just doesn't affect them?" And when Mildred nodded, he added thoughtfully, "But it's still in them, so they can still give it to others, right?"
"Yeah." Mildred sighed softly. "Which makes the Gate more deadly and dangerous."
"And makes it more imperative that we get into the redoubt and find the cure," Ryan stated.
Mildred agreed, adding, "That's if they actually bothered to cook one up. They seem so crazy they might just have forgotten to do that…"
IT TOOK the companions no time at all to renew their ties with the Gate. Having rested, they renewed old friendships and fell into training with the warriors. J.B. inspected the armory, and was impressed with the work Jon had been doing. Jak sharpened his knife work with the Gate warriors, and Ryan talked tactics with Gloria. Krysty and Dean worked on their marksmanship while Mildred did some body work on rebuilding the muscles bruised in the landslide. Which just left Doc, who wandered around brooding about the past. The sudden reappearance of a disease, the like of which he had thought eradicated by the nukecaust, made him think about the life from which he had been dragged kicking and screaming by the horrors of Operation Chronos and the time trawl that had taken him from the nineteenth to the twentieth century, and then beyond to his present state.
While the others were occupied, Doc grew more morose, and so was glad when the chance came to go out on a recon patrol with some of the Gate women. It would be the first chance any of the companions had to view the redoubt where the Illuminated Ones had their base, and Doc was determined to bring back a full report for the others.
Apart from himself, there were three others in the patrol: a brown-skinned, haughty warrior named Dette, a blonde named Nita who was taller than her compatriots and stood out because of that and her mane of flowing blonde hair, and Cat, who was perpetually nervous and whose hair had been hacked back close to her head, which would have made her look like a boy if not for the obvious assets of womanhood she possessed.
The patrol was to set out in the late afternoon, as the sun began to move down in the sky. That made Doc anxious.
"Will we be able to reach our destination before the dusk makes it too hard to define the area?" he asked as the sec patrol left the camp, the camouflage screens moving back into place behind them.
"Say what?" Nita asked with a frown.
"He means will it be too dark before we get there," Cat explained, adding to Doc, "She's not the brightest of the bunch, you know what I'm saying here?"
"Ah," Doc said simply, not wishing to offend anyone at this stage.
"You saying I'm stupe?" Nita asked in a peeved tone.
"I don't really have to say it, do I?" Cat replied.
Dette turned on them, her large brown eyes flashing anger. "Will you two shut it? Why the fuck I get sent out with a pair of stupes like you I'll never know. Keep the noise down and let's just get moving, okay?"
The brown-skinned warrior turned away without waiting for an answer. Doc cast an eye over all three of the Gate warriors, and wondered why he seemed to have been landed with the three women who seemed to be the most disagreeable of the tribe.
Despite his doubts, the rest of the trip to the redoubt area was uneventful. After their initial spat, the three women worked together well, each one taking a turn to scout ahead for the rest of the party, reporting back so that they could move safely. In deference to Doc's comparative lack of agility, they traveled on the ground across the woodland, rather than using the treetops in the way the sec party had when the companions had been discovered. It made progress a little slower, as the territory had to be secured more assuredly, but there was still full daylight when they emerged at the edge of the woodland.
"Here's where it gets tricky, my old bud," Cat said to Doc as they hit open land. "There's not a lot of cover, and we're only a mile or so from the entrance to the redoubt. So it's got to be triple red from here."
Doc nodded slowly. "I appreciate that—and I do also appreciate that my comparative age and the fact that I am not one of your good selves does make things a trifle more complex than would be usual."
Cat grinned. "You do like your own voice, don't you?"
Doc shrugged and returned the smile.
"Come on, then," she said, punching him playfully on the arm. "Let's get moving."
The territory was sparsely covered, and if the Illuminated Ones had sec vids surveying the area, then the chances were that they would be spotted—especially with Doc in tow. However, Dette, always going on ahead, chose a route that maximized the potential of the cover, and they made it to the edge of the land without any apparent detection. From the brow on which they stood, the earth fell away into a small va
lley, much like the one that the companions had found themselves in when leaving their own redoubt some weeks before.
"Down there, hidden into the side of the earth, that's where the entrance is," Nita explained.
"I figure he could have worked that out himself," Cat prodded.
The blonde looked at Cat with a fiery anger, and Doc feared that they were about to start a fight at the most inopportune time. However, a whispered imprecation from Dette halted them.
"Shut it—movement."
The four explorers stayed silent and watched as the sound of a sec door rising came from beneath them, followed by the low rumble of a wag, which then came into view.
"Usual?" Doc whispered.
" 'Bout every fourth time they're recced," Cat replied with a shake of her head.
Doc kept his eyes fixed on the wag. It didn't go far—about five hundred yards before coming to a halt. The doors opened, and three Illuminated Ones left the interior. While one kept watch with a laser blaster, the other two proceeded to take samples of the air and the soil, marking the containers before getting back into the wag, the watcher taking point.
The wag rolled off into the distance. The land was flat, and the light still good. The wag traveled in a straight line for about two miles, and was still visible when it halted again and the same procedure was repeated. Still the Gate patrol stayed silent and still, observing. The wag started up again and disappeared into the distance.
Doc looked toward the women. Dette met his eye and shook her head. Doc assented his comprehension and settled down to wait.
The dusk was falling as the wag returned to the redoubt. The Gate warriors waited until the doors had ground shut and into silence before moving.
"That's the action for today," Cat said softly.
"They probably won't break cover again for a few days."
"But what the fuck are they doing?" Dette said, almost to herself.
"Taking samples," Doc replied in a flat tone. "They wish to see how far their pernicious poison has spread. May we leave? They make me feel a little ill…"
DOC'S REPORT on the activities of the Illuminated Ones gave both Ryan and Gloria pause for thought.
"Those triple-sick bastards," the Gate queen spit. "We should go and blast the fuckers into infinity."
"Yeah, I agree," Ryan said a little more calmly. "But we're so close, it would be a waste to blow it. Not after we've waited so long."
"But sweetie, you were the one who was pressing me to fight," Gloria said, a little confused by what appeared to be a sudden change of mind.
"And I still am," the one-eyed man assured her. "Thing is, that redoubt will be a bastard to get into, and just the act of busting in will give them time to get their defense ready. We need to hit them when they're on their way back from one of these missions. Hit them as they enter and the way is free. That way we can stream in and take them out before they have a chance to hit back."
"I can see the sense in that," the queen replied. "But how the fuck do we get our forces in the right place at the right time without being spotted?"
Ryan smiled. "That's why I want us to wait. We establish their routine, then fit in behind it and hit them when they're at their most vulnerable." Gloria returned the smile, her crooked grin lighting up her face, her vulpine teeth making her look like a predator about to spring.
"Now, that, I like the sound of…"
IT HAD BEEN A ROUTINE sec patrol. Ryan was accompanying Tammy and two other Gate warriors on a mission that took them close to the blacktop that ran in from the south toward Crossroads. It was the first time that the one-eyed man had been near the blacktop since leaving the ville, and he idly wondered what Baron Robertson thought of their disappearance. Then he remembered the speed with which the epidemic was spreading, and his face hardened.
Soon…
His train of thought was disturbed by the distant rumble of wags.
"Convoy," he whispered.
"Yeah," Tammy replied, gazing into the distance at the dust raised on the road by the wags. '"Bout four, I'd guess, two trade wags and a couple of sec, mebbe."
Ryan nodded. "That'd be about right. Let's secure cover and watch them pass. Poor bastards must be on their way into Crossroads."
The Gate party retreated from the blacktop and was hidden by scrub and stunted elms as the convoy drew level with their position.
But as they became aware of another sound, coming from behind them: the drone of two wag engines, setting up an unholy harmony as they sped across the scrub toward the blacktop.
"Illuminated wags," Tammy breathed. "What the fuck do they want?"
"Mebbe… No, I don't know," Ryan said quietly. "They don't usually want to be seen."
As he spoke, the Illuminated wags parted from the course they had followed, diverging so that one was headed for each end of the trade convoy.
"They want to stop it," Tammy murmured. "Why would they want to, unless—?"
"Unless they want to try and infect the men on the convoy," Ryan finished.
As they watched, the two Illuminated wags adopted a pincer movement, moving around to cut off the blacktop to the front and rear of the convoy, the wag at the front assuming a position across the blacktop while the wag to the rear followed up to tighten the gap between the two. The trade convoy slowed to a halt, unable to drive off the road because the wags containing the trade materials were too big and clumsy to cope with the rough terrain and the ditches along the edge of the blacktop.
The convoy came to rest. There was little ground between the sec wags at the front and rear of the convoy and the Illuminated wags that stood silent and menacing before and aft of them.
"Shit, the tension is chilling," murmured Sandy, the dark haired woman who was squatting beside Tammy in the undergrowth.
"Part of the plan," Ryan commented. "If it's chilling you, think how the sec on the convoy must feel." He could remember his own days riding shotgun for Trader, and yet it was this memory that enabled him to keep his cool. He could remember Trader telling him about ambushes such as this. The older man had said, "They say, 'Don't shoot until you see the whites of their eyes.' I say, 'Don't shoot until you can shoot the whites out of their eyes."
It was a maxim worth pondering. The convoy sec had nothing to aim at except an armored wag. They had no choice but to sit and wait.
Not true. They had a choice. They could either sit tight, or they could do totally the wrong thing. Unfortunately for them, they chose to do the wrong thing.
From the front and rear of the convoy, the sec men tumbled out of their wags, some rolling across the blacktop to the ditches at the sides, where they would provide covering fire for their comrades who followed, attempting to mount an attack on the Illuminated wags.
"Fireblast!" Ryan swore. "The stupe bastards are walking right into it."
In the semiexposed ditches, and on the blacktop, the sec men presented an easy target for the laser blasters of the Illuminated Ones. Coming from the back of their wags, and using the doors as cover, the Illuminated war party was able to pick off the convoy sec with a minimum of effort, the laser blasters slicing through clothing, skin, flesh and bone with a precision that the machine blasters of the convoy sec could not hope to match.
"Fuck it, we've got to get in there and sort it out," Tammy cried as they witnessed the carnage. She began to move, but Ryan stayed her with a hand on her arm.
The woman looked at him, and with the fire of battle on her eyes it seemed, for one moment, as though she may just lash out at him if he tried to stop her. On either side of him, Sandy and Stef—the other warriors who comprised this sec patrol—stiffened, as though ready to chill him and follow their leader.
"Just say the word," Stef muttered in a deceptively gentle tone, her jet black hair falling into her eyes, her small bosom heaving as she kept her viciousness barely in check. "We'll take him and follow you down."
"No." Tammy shook her head and relaxed. "Ryan's right."
But it was d
ifficult for the one-eyed man to even accept his own judgment as they watched what followed.
With the convoy sec now wiped out, there was only the trader and the crew on the two trade wags to be dealt with. The wags offered little protection against the laser blasters, and the Illuminated Ones advanced on the wags with an air of confidence about them.
"Oh, fuck, it'll be a massacre," Tammy breathed.
"We can't interfere. We can't let the Illuminated Ones know we're in the area," Ryan reminded them.
The trader and his crew spilled out of the two wags. They were prepared to go down fighting, as they came out with blasters blazing. But it was obvious to the Gate recon party that the trader and his crew were doomed.
They caught one of the Illuminated Ones with their fire, the bizarrely clad and helmeted figure crumpling onto the blacktop. But there was only time for the one casualty. The laser blasters cut down the crew until there were only two left standing. Advancing quickly, choosing those two who wavered in directing their fire and so presented the least threat, the Illuminated Ones used the butts of their rifles to drive the two men into the ground.
It seemed that the two convoy members were unconscious, but from their startled screams when one of the Illuminated attackers produced a syringe and injected them, they were obviously still conscious.
"What are they doing?" Stef asked, perplexed.
Ryan's face was grim. "They're infecting them. The bastards are giving them the disease, and then they'll set them free in the direction of Crossroads."
The prophesy of the one-eyed man was proved correct as the two men were bundled into the front sec wagon, and the engine fired up. The Illuminated wag at the fore of the convoy drew back, and the two survivors—distrustful but not prepared to think about it until later—hared away from the scene of the massacre.
As the convoy wag disappeared along the blacktop, the Illuminated Ones collected their fallen member and withdrew from the scene of carnage, leaving the chilled and their wags behind.
Axler, James - Deathlands 60 - Destiny's Truth Page 9
