Chapter Twenty-Six

 

 

Clove passed through the gate warily, easing through the sliding iron bars. His eyes burned as he stared at Mildred. Then, as he drew closer, lust and curiosity stamped out all other feelings and emotions.

 

Mildred let him come, quelling the instinct inside herself to recoil from the young Celt's advances. She didn't want him touching her, nor did she especially like what she had planned for him. However, getting out of the cell required both.

 

Reaching out to her, Clove cupped one of her breasts timidly.

 

"Like what you got hold of, Clove?" Mildred asked. She let the desperation inside her block out any remorse or humiliation.

 

"Yeah," Clove said huskily.

 

Mildred remained in her seated position, not wanting to do anything to startle the boy. "You just be patient, though. Let me take care of you."

 

Clove shook his head. "There's no time. Someone could come"

 

Mildred grinned up at him as she reached for the front of his breeches and opened them. " That is the idea." Then she had his cock in her hand, stroking it firmly.

 

"Oh, blessed Lugh," Clove said, suddenly sucking in his breath, "that feels so good."

 

"You ain't felt nothing yet," Mildred promised, shifting.

 

 

 

BOLDT FELT THE PANIC rise in him. The strangers were inside his fortress. Never in all his years had the complex ever been invaded. He allowed in only those whom he wanted in.

 

"Merlin, close down the nerve center."

 

Steel plates clanked down over both doors, closing them off from the two points of egress. Farther out in the underground root system, other sections would be shut off, as well.

 

"Done," the computer responded. Boldt studied the monitors before him. He could easily identify Gehrig's men among the battling seed heralds and Celtic populace. Leaning on the machines, he forced his breath in and out, maintaining the adrenaline rush. Strong emotion had always been an addiction for him. It was when be most felt like his father.

 

Boldt searched the screens, watching as the skirmish lines Pepper and his men had set up suddenly gave way in front of the New Londoners' vehicles. "Referencethe people who first breached the integrity of this complex."

 

"Searching." One of the monitors suddenly started cycling images as Merlin flipped through the banks and cameras available to him.

 

Boldt watched the carnage unfold on the screen. The fires had spread across the houses, whirling infernos that at once covered over and backlit the struggle. One of the jeeps from New London got too close to a tangler bed. A plant shot out, and as the cameras outside picked up the motion and cataloged it, Boldt saw the poisonous thorn ram deep into the man's throat.

 

The dead man lost control of the vehicle. It skidded and overturned, flipping and tearing through one of the burning homes. Embers and flaming debris were scattered in all directions, setting off even more fires.

 

"There are three groups," Merlin replied in the mechanical voice.

 

"Where?" Boldt demanded.

 

A map formed on the monitor that the computer had been directly accessing. Boldt recognized the layout at once, realizing the strangers were closer than he'd imagined.

 

"Sec post 8 has been breached," Merlin said. "Uplinking video now."

 

"Has the system been shut down at that sec post?"

 

"Affirmative. Less than five seconds ago. Following primary security programming."

 

Boldt followed the maze of lines, locating the two groups of bright dotsone paired, the other in a triangular groupingthat were headed in opposite directions. The three were closing in on the cell where the woman was being kept under guard.

 

The pair was making the turn at the far end of the corridor that would bring them to the outer door walling off the nerve center where Boldt stood. Somehow they'd found him.

 

"Are there any video uplinks for the other two groups?" the Celt prince asked.

 

"No. Surveillance is managed by sensor implants in the root walls."

 

Boldt looked at the approaching two lights. They were too close now for any other defenses to be used to shut them out. Unconsciously he turned and glanced at the steel door closing the room off from that direction. It would hold. Even if they had explosives, it would hold.

 

And he wasn't going to be there anyway.

 

He glanced back at the monitor. A window had opened up, showing him strangely garbed men whom he'd never seen before going through the firepit left in the sec post. The way they set up told the Celtic prince that they were no friends of the earlier groups. They looked to be more interested in defending themselves from the strangers who'd been with Mildred Wyeth.

 

It was all too much for Boldt to puzzle out. None of it would matter after the next few minutes anyway, not once the plague had been set free. The Prince glanced back at the monitors displaying the bloody action taking place out in the valley. With the flickering firelight and the muzzle-flashes from the various weapons, it was impossible to say who was winning.

 

In the long run the battle was more than Boldt could have hoped for. Ideally the plague would have been released only on the people staying in the valley. But with the seed heralds trapped outside when he released it, as well, and the fact that both the seed heralds and the villagers would know that the valley was no longer inhabitable, they would spread in opposite directions. Their enmity wouldn't die.

 

The presence of the New Londoners was a gift from whatever gods there might be. Win, lose or draw, the survivors from the battle would flee back to the thorpe, spreading the disease around the British Isles even faster than the fleeing Celts would have. The pestilence would take hold firmly. Boldt knew from his spies that New London was a port city. The plague would have a good chance of establishing itself in a number of areas before anyone even knew it was among them.

 

"Sound the general alarm," Boldt commanded, "and open the cryo vault."

 

A harsh Klaxon siren suddenly rent the air in great whoops. The Celtic prince walked forward and stepped through the passageway that appeared in front of him. The tunnel was long and narrow, lighted by the glowing fungus pods. He went into it.

 

Whoever won the battle outside would have no bearing on his world. Once he was inside one of the cryo chambers, the years would roll away while the plague did its job. The planet would become a blank slate again as far as human life was concerned.

 

And this time it would be done right. Victor Boldt would see to it himself.

 

 

 

"NO SIGN OF THEM, sir."

 

Conte had to agree with Turley's assessment. Scanning the interior of the security room, all he saw were the bodies of the guards working at the underground complex. He glanced at Whittaker. "You're sure you heard their voices?"

 

The rat-faced man looked sullen. He didn't like being doubted. "Sure as I'm hearing you now."

 

Conte himself had heard nothing. He waved at the smoke obscuring his vision. Tears ran down his face from the burning, but he ignored them. The complex proved Cawdor knew more about high-tech areas than they'd at first surmised. The man was decidedly dangerous.

 

"Sarge," Henderson called, "I found a tunnel over here."

 

Conte went over to join the man and found himself peering down the opening barely illuminated by their hand torches. "Cawdor?"

 

"No sign of him, sir."

 

Conte flicked his torch back over the dead men in the room, then the empty frames of the computer monitors.

 

Someone had killed the guards and jammed the door to slow them down.

 

"People coming," Aames said from his position at the door.

 

Conte looked at Henderson. "You've got point. The rest of you follow in single file. Aames, you've got the rear." The sergeant was second man through the opening, feeling the downward grade of the tunnel kick in. Getting out was going to be a bitch. But following Cawdor served two purposes. If he caught the man, Conte was determined to see him dead. The up side was that the sergeant didn't figure the Deathlander to be stupid enough to head into a blind alley. Cawdor had to know security would be breathing on his heels. The man thought he had a way out. Conte was sure of that.

 

 

 

KRYSTY FELT Ryan slow before she saw it. So attuned was she to her lover, that she knew there'd been an unexpected obstacle.

 

"Fireblast!" Ryan swore as he swept his flashlight over the steel surface in front of him.

 

Metal sang in a heated rush behind them. Fast as she was, her mutie sense giving her an edge her lover didn't have, Ryan was faster.

 

He brought up the SIG-Sauer in a two-handed grip, firing at the barely discernible motion humming along the ceiling. Brass spilled out, spitting and striking the wall before tumbling to the floor and slithering away.

 

Less than twenty yards distant, another of the sec drones went to pieces in a flaming gust. It was the third one they'd encountered since taking the latest branch of the corridor.

 

"There'll be more of the bastard things," Ryan said, turning his attention back to the steel door blocking their progress. "If we stay here, we're sitting ducks until one of them chills us. And we've blazed a trail for those White Sands soldiers to follow if they've a mind to. Don't much care for our chances, but we'll make the most of them all the same."

 

Krysty approached the door, her blaster still in her hand.

 

"You remember another way?" Ryan asked. "A way around, mebbe?"

 

She shook her head. Her hand slid across the smooth, chill surface of the steel. It felt greasy, solid, with real depth. "No." Her voice was hoarse even in her own ears.

 

"Then we've got no choice. We'll go back, see if the others got Mildred, then try to get the hell out of here."

 

"What about the plague?" Krysty asked.

 

"Can't chill what you can't get to," Ryan replied. "And a man nine days dead himself can't do much of anything at all."

 

But the red-haired woman knew her lover was upset, as well. He was just more pragmatic in his outlook, knew where his reach ended and didn't try to foolishly exceed it. "All those people out there. Not even knowing what this monster has in mind." She felt her rage growing inside her.

 

"I know. Mebbe there's another way."

 

"Yeah, but possibly no time." Krysty curled her fingers inside the crack where the steel plate met the door frame. There was barely enough room for her to force her fingertips inside. It was painful keeping them there, and the pressure was complete enough to cut off circulation.

 

"We can try," Ryan said.

 

"Gaia, help me," Krysty whispered forcefully, drawing on the secret teachings her mother had given her. "Give me the strength to protect the Earth Mother and the innocents who succor her."

 

Krysty was never able to adequately describe how the power came into her. But it did come, rolling in to fill her with liquid fire until it was a part of every fiber of her being.

 

She set herself, holstering her blaster, then placed one foot against the door frame and shoved the other hand to join the first in the crack. The pain was the first thing to go away. She pulled with all her strength.

 

With a shriek that sounded like a lost and tortured soul, the steel door began to peel back. Light flooded into the dark tunnel.

 

 

 

CLOVE WAS IN A STATE of bliss, and Mildred knew the time had come. The sudden squall of the Klaxon siren sounding the alarm almost caught her off guard, though.

 

Startled, the young Celt started to pull away. "What's going?"

 

Mildred closed her hand tight over his hard cock, making sure she had his scrotum. With only a little guilt, she squeezed his balls tightly together. It wasn't enough to rupture them, but it was enough to bring severe pain to the guard.

 

With a shrill scream of fear and incredible pain, Clove reached for his trapped cock.

 

Mildred didn't release it. Her escape depended on it. She gave a final squeeze that rendered the younger man unconscious.

 

Pushing herself to her feet, Mildred hiked up her pants and streaked for the door. Clove had left his rifle there, and she took it up at once, slipping off the safety.

 

Mildred figured guards would show up in short order. There was an ammo belt for the rifle on a chair against the wall. She pulled it over her shoulder, then tried to open the cabinet where she'd seen an earlier guard store her pistol.

 

The cabinet was locked.

 

Moving back, she shouldered the rifle and aimed at the lock. She squeezed the trigger smoothly, taking the recoil expertly against her shoulder.

 

Sparks jumped from the cabinet. The bullet left ravaged metal behind as it whined out the other end of the row of cabinets.

 

This time the door opened after she yanked on it. The ZKR 551 Czech pistol was inside, wrapped in her gun belt. She wasted no time in draping it around her hips.

 

Footsteps warned her of the approaching sec men. Two of them entered the lockup area as she faded to the side of the room and dropped the rifle into position. She didn't try anything fancy, just dropped the sights over the center of the guard who entered first.

 

The lead man took in the unconscious form of Clove lying in the cell, both hands holding on to his genitals as if for salvation, and the open cell door. He came around, going into a crouch as he brought the gun in a sweep with him.

 

Mildred fired without hesitation.

 

The bullet caught the lead man in the abdomen with enough force to bend him over and send him stumbling back into his partner. Both men went down in a confused tangle of arms and legs.

 

"Throw the blasters away," Mildred ordered, "or I'll chill you where you lay." She kept them covered with the rifle.

 

The second man tossed his pistol away without objection. The injured man kept his arms wrapped around his stomach, blood glistening on his clothing. "You shot me, Ivory Ginnifer take your soul and damn your eyes!"

 

"Do it again if I have to," Mildred promised. "Breathing or chilled, it doesn't make any difference to me. I count three and you're still carrying, you're dead right there."

 

The second man reached forward and stripped the other man's weapon, then threw it away, as well.

 

"Get into the cell," Mildred ordered. Common sense told her it would be better to chill all three of the guards, including Clove, before she took off. It would have at least tipped the odds in her favor a little. But with the cell handy, she had the option.

 

The uninjured guard had to help the wounded one inside, dragging him. A blood slick smeared behind them.

 

Once they were inside, Mildred slammed the door shut. She turned and ran down the hallway, cursing because she should have searched the guards for a light.

 

Unexpectedly a torch beam flashed over her, blinding her. She brought up the rifle, intending to go down shooting. She aimed for the center of the light.

 

Then J.B.'s voice said, "Don't shoot, Milly. Last I heard, we were on your side."

 

Suddenly Mildred found herself laughing, and it surprised her that tears were running down her face as she hurried to her friends.

 

 

 

VICTOR BOLDT HAD only been in the cryo vault a half-dozen times since he'd reawakened into the world to find his father dead.

 

Computers and machinery covered two of the walls, extending up every inch of the twenty feet until they met the ceiling. Stainless steel gleamed, reflecting a panoramic rainbow of colors from dials, switches and buttons. Most of them he couldn't fathom at all. The systems were controlled through Merlin, and through that cybernetic intelligence, ultimately by Victor Boldt.

 

The cryo chambers were built into the third wall, to his right and behind him. All he had to do was activate the plague program, then crawl into the cryo crypt and let Merlin put him away for the next few decades.

 

He walked to the fourth wall, which held a hydroponics vat that stretched nearly a hundred feet back, carved from the rock walls outside the root branch. Thick, nutrient-rich liquid filled the various chambers, throwing out smells that were both intoxicating and repellent.

 

The vats were seven feet deep, the bedding grounds for so many of his father's hybrids and creations. The liquid was soupy, greenish black and sometimes bubbling white froth.

 

Boldt climbed the ladder beside one of the glass sides, ignoring the churn of vegetable matter only inches from his face. At the top he stepped out onto the narrow runway going across the heart of the hydroponics vats. Hoses and nutrient tubes depended from the ceiling in a spiderweb of chemical support.

 

The hydroponics experiments had been his father's greatest love. It was here, in this self-contained world, that he'd had control over all the variables that turned life into a thing of chance and random mutation.

 

Boldt stood out over the genetic stew. He could feel eyes upon him, knowing his arrival had been noticed, then feeling guilty because his visits had been so few. But he'd been told to stay away, to leave things alone.

 

And, in truth, knowing what lay here, he'd been happy to do that.

 

He gazed down into the swirling organic mix and fought the urge to wretch. The old fear, from the time he'd been a child looking at some of his father's creations, returned. He felt it crawling under his skin.

 

"Father," he said, "I have come." He waited. The lights were dim across the hydroponics tanks, mimicking a night cycle. Mostly long shadows lay undisturbed.

 

At first it seemed as though nothing would happen. It was possible. Years had passed since the last time he'd been here. Still, Merlin would have notified him if something had gone wrong.

 

Then, incredibly, a vine-veined bubble oozed to the top of the hydroponics glop. It popped at the surface, throwing root-haired tentacles into the air ten feet up. In a matter of seconds the tentacles wrapped themselves into a vaguely humanoid shape, complete with a head, chest and arms. The legs were hinted at by definition, but bled back into the hydroponics glop. Chunks of the glop shot up the tentacles, fleshing out the hairy root infrastructure.

 

The thing looked nothing at all like the elder Boldt, but there was a presence that had always been there. It had been one of his father's most macabre experiments, even by the precedents already established a combination of plant cells and the elder Boldt's own DNA, fired by solar energy stored in the hydroponics tank and aided by a computerized memory dependent on Merlin. It was intended to be the first evolution of an environmentally correct life-form. If successful, the elder Boldt had intended to replace humankind altogether.

 

"I am here, Victor," the plant-thing said.

 

Boldt's mouth was dry. "The plague, Father. It is time to set off the plague."