Doc sighed. "I've been outside of this mechanism. Have you?"

 

 "Of course. Before we were attached—"

 

 "I'm talking about since," Doc snapped. "You've been in here over a hundred years. How could you possibly know what has happened?"

 

 "Because the simulations and simulatory models fed into our mainframe covered every possibility."

 

 It was a circular argument, and Doc could see no way of countering it. He threw up his hands in resignation and exasperation. "Have it your way, gentlemen. Have it your way."

 

 "Oh, but we will," said the Air Force officer. "After all, there is one flaw in your argument."

 

 Doc was about to explode in fury and say that it wasn't a debating society, he was talking about reality, when he realized that for these men, the rarefied air of abstract argument and simulation had become the only reality they knew. So he said simply, "What, pray tell, is this flaw?"

 

 "Simple. If the outside world is so irrevocably changed, then why do we still exist? Who is keeping us maintained?"

 

 Doc shook his head, refusing to answer, to debate. It didn't matter. Fate had decreed that he be locked inside this machine, perhaps forever. If it came to that, what was forever in a realm where there was no such thing as time?

 

 "Gentlemen, I acquiesce," Doc said with a bow. "As I am here, you may as well show me where I am to live."

 

 "Very well. We know you are Dr. Theophilus Tanner, but we have no names. We are one with the mechanism, and something you will have to realize is that you, too, will become one. You will cease to have the trappings of individual ego and meld into the amorphous brain of the rat king. We are one, and you will be one with us. When that happens, then the mechanism will once again be in full working order."

 

 Doc resisted the urge to ask why the Moebius MkI would need to be in working order when there was nothing for it to do anymore, no world into which it could possibly fit. Instead he merely nodded, and allowed the other members of the rat king to lead him from the chamber.

 

 As one they filed toward the door into the anteroom, moving in a close mass that seemed to shimmer in Doc's mental vision, so that they—at moments—appeared to meld into one creature, rather than a collection of individuals. Doc followed, wondering what was waiting for him through the door…

 

 "REALLY, DR. TANNER, this just won't do."

 

 "Why not? I have nothing to lose, do I? After all, this Alice-in-Wonderland hell of absurdity is not a world that I know. It is not a world that I care to know. My only desire is to return to the bosom of my family… to my own time, to my own world. Is that really so much for a man to ask? If you were in my position, would you not ask the same?"

 

 The whitecoat scientist blew out his cheeks and scratched at his balding pate. He'd been warned that the only success for Chronos was a problem in the flesh, but he hadn't expected an argument of this sort.

 

 "Doctor, you aren't a stupid man, are you?"

 

 "That, my dear man, is possibly my great curse." Doc sighed, settling back on the bench in his cell and hearing the chains on his manacles rattle. It astounded him that, more than a hundred years after his birth, the military was still so unimaginative as to resort to chains when trying to confine one man. He mentioned as much to the whitecoat, who gave a short, barking laugh.

 

 "I like that. You realize, of course, that we only use these on you because you've been such a problem. We've never had to resort to such measures before."

 

 "I'll take that as a compliment," Doc replied.

 

 His captor looked at him with a puzzled frown that was partway between exasperation and admiration before turning on his heel and leaving the room.

 

 "YOU SEE, we can trawl these memories from you," came the voice of the rat king. Unlike before, it was a sinuous voice that seemed to be all of the men talking as one. It wormed its way into Doc's brain, eating at the corners of his mind and reminding him that he wasn't actually in the 1990s, but over a hundred years ahead, not really in this cell, but strapped to a couch with electrodes connecting him to a mainframe computer.

 

 "To what end?" Doc asked of them, speaking aloud, even though he knew didn't have to in order to communicate with them.

 

 "To show you how powerful the mechanism is. To show you what we can do. To show you what you can do, if you join us. Not that you have any choice in the matter. You will be absorbed eventually. We all had our qualms and doubts to begin with, but in the final analysis we became as one. And it is glorious, Dr. Tanner, it is glorious. But allow an indulgence…"

 

 DOC FOUND HIMSELF back in Baron Teague's hellhole ville, strapped to a table and subject to the attentions of the hideous Cort Strasser.

 

 Pain racked Doc's body, even though he knew this to be ridiculous. He was inside a computer, and the computer was inside him. He wasn't in any real danger, although it did cross his mind momentarily that the computer could be stimulating his cortex in such a manner as to simulate pain.

 

 He was unable to detach himself from the searing agony of torture enough to work these thoughts through logically. The memory was too much. Of course they knew that he had ended up in Strasser's hands after being flung forward by the whitecoats at Chronos. Of course they knew that this was where Ryan Cawdor and his band of survivors had entered Doc's life. Of course they knew that this was where he was about to escape, to be set free. They couldn't change that…could they?

 

 Strasser was silent as he prepared the next torture. He had already burned Doc, and the frail man's limbs were aching where he was stretched out on the torture table, tied so tightly that he felt as though his wrists were about to burst with pent-up pressure, and his fingers were numb where the circulation had been stopped.

 

 "It's a pity you've lost the sensation in your fingers," Strasser said quietly as he picked up a pair of pliers. "It won't be quite as effective as it would have been if you still had feeling there. Ah, well, it'll just be a delayed torture for you, won't it? You'll just feel the benefit of the pain when you've been untied and left to rot for a few hours…when the feeling returns."

 

 "What do you want from me?" Doc husked, aware that his throat was dry and sore.

 

 "Want?" Strasser asked in surprise. "Who says I want anything? I enjoy doing this. That's reason enough."

 

 "I know, you ugly, stupid fool," Doc whispered hoarsely. "I wasn't talking to you."

 

 "Not talking to me?" Strasser said, a flicker of a smile crossing his face. "I knew you were crazy, old man, but I didn't think it would amuse me so much."

 

 "Shut up. You will be overwhelmed soon enough when Ryan and Krysty arrive." And the short, rounded Finnegan, with his tall black friend Hennings—good warriors, long since lost but not in this moment of time. A silent tear left Doc's left eye and trickled down his cheek as he remembered their chilling, and the chilling of Lori, and the others who had traveled with them across the Deathlands but had bought the farm before reaching this stage. Good people.

 

 Doc was unaware that he had rambled all of this in an undertone the whole while, and that Strasser was looking at him with a bemused expression.

 

 "You're beyond crazy, old man," he said softly. "I can't enjoy my work if you don't shut the fuck up. So I guess I'll just have to shut you up myself, won't I?"

 

 He took the pliers, and instead of grasping one of Doc's hands, he used the powerful fingers of his free hand to pry open Doc's jaw. Doc was so weak that he couldn't resist Strasser's grip, and moaned incoherently as his jaw was held open.

 

 He felt the cold metal of the tool's nose as it touched his tongue, felt the cool scrape as Strasser opened the nose. The tickle of the metal as it searched for the edge of his tongue, one half of the nose slipping underneath his tongue, the other sliding over the top surface. He felt the pinch as the two halves of the nose started to move together, the pressure on the top of his tongue turn into a cutting edge that drew salty blood as the nose began to bite into the flesh.

 

 The pain shifted gear, moved into another dimension as the pliers took a firm grip, and Strasser started to exert pressure. He pulled on the pliers, the tongue moving out of Doc's mouth, extended at the root until the pulling was painful to him. Until he felt the flesh and tendon at full stretch.

 

 Until he felt the tendons start to tear, the flesh start to rend, the pain start to drive him over the edge…

 

 But this was a false memory. It hadn't happened like this. So why was it occurring now?

 

 "To show you our power to alter reality—to be reality. We are the rat king, we are God. And you will be a part of us."

 

 Doc heard the words echo in his head, louder than any outside volume; louder than it would take to rupture his eardrums and make them bleed; louder than his own thoughts, drowning them and overrunning them, blotting out his own self.

 

 Doc clamped his hands over his ears, screwing up his eyes to shut out all light. Why, he didn't know. It made no sense, as he wasn't a physical body at this moment And how could he cover his ears when his hands had been tied but a moment before?

 

 Come to that, why was his tongue no longer hurting?

 

 Doc opened his eyes and let his hands drop. In yet another strange twist, he found he was standing upright instead of lying down.

 

 And he was in a room full of people.

 

 "THIS IS OUR TRUE PURPOSE."

 

 Doc turned, no longer surprised. Behind him was the cabal of men that comprised the rest of the rat king. Doc suddenly thought to ask a question that had been running through his head for some time.

 

 "Just tell me—before we go any further—what are your names?"

 

 The Army man clenched his fist and looked troubled. "We don't have names, Dr. Tanner. Not anymore. I used to, but we are Moebius now, and it is us. You will be part of it, part of us."

 

 "I feared as much," Doc murmured, turning back to the activity behind him. It seemed to be something that he had seen before, in his days as a prisoner of the whitecoats. It was old tech in full flow: banks of terminals, lights winking, phones ringing, answered by men in military uniform or in shirtsleeves, one eye always on the large screen that stood at the front of the room, display rapidly changing.

 

 The display itself was a map of the world, laid flat, with different-colored lines running from continent to continent. Doc wondered idly what shape the continents would show now on such a map, so long after the events of skydark had reshaped them.

 

 This display showed no signs of acknowledging any change. Why should it? Moebius had been cut off from the outside world, had never known the changes triggered by the nukecaust.

 

 The LED display that made up the graphic changed the trajectory of the lines as more information came through. Fresh lines began to spurt from the old USSR and its satellites, traveling toward the U.S.A. Lines from the U.S.A. and some of its European allies began to travel, in different colors, in the opposite direction.

 

 The virtual staff manning the computer consoles looked alarmed, sweat and fear distorting their faces.

 

 "This is how you—I mean, we—amuse ourselves, is it?" Doc asked.

 

 "It's not a matter of amusement. We exist for this purpose, and the simulations are to keep us up to scratch, to keep our minds sharp for every eventuality. The only task we are called upon to perform at present is to keep the redoubt running and in good order. This seems to be harder than previously, and we suspect the technicians are slacking because of the lack of war footing—"

 

 Doc remembered the inbred and mutie technicians he had seen in the redoubt. Of course Moebius, cut off in its own world, could not know of this.

 

 "But still, it takes but a fraction of our power to keep the redoubt in working order, waiting for the call. In the meantime we keep sharp by running these simulations."

 

 Doc held up a finger to silence the collective voice.

 

 "One point," he said softly. "If you are Moebius, and Moebius sets the simulation, then how can it ever outwit you, since you are it?"

 

 He was met with silence. The men in front of him exchanged puzzled frowns, muttered the odd word that he couldn't make out, and seemed to take some time to work out the logic of what he was saying.

 

 Finally the Air Force general turned to speak to Doc.

 

 "You make a valid point, Dr. Tanner. Our very insularity could, it seems, be a disadvantage. This is no doubt where the hand of chance takes a turn. It has given us you at a most opportune time. Come and be absorbed. Join with us now and you will bring in another intellect, another point of view. A fresh input to the mechanism, making it stronger."

 

 He held out his hand in a gesture of supplication.

 

 "Do I have any choice?" Doc asked.

 

 "Only the choice of making it difficult or easy."

 

 Would Ryan lead his friends back to rescue him? Were they even still alive? Doc had every confidence in their ability to survive, but not so much in their ability to reach him. Indeed, as there was no time as such inside the rat king, he had no idea how long he had been inside the brain of Moebius, and how long the brain of Moebius had been inside him.

 

 "I acquiesce," Doc said quietly. "I will join with you, if not willingly then with no resistance. I fail to see what else I can do."

 

 He moved toward the outstretched hand, and as his fingers touched those of the Air Force general, he felt a charge shoot through his whole body…or his psyche, represented as his body.

 

 The universe became a blur of color, too fast for him to assimilate detail. Inside his head ideas and images whirled too quickly for him to grab hold of them. It seemed that everything was passing him by, and he was marooned in a sea of thought.

 

 The blur stopped. A whirling kaleidoscope of color was fixed and fused in front of him, frozen in a moment of time. It stayed for what could have been a fraction of a second, what could have been a month or a year, beautiful and solid. Then it melted, slowly dissolving to reveal a whiteness born of a brilliant light. A light that gradually decreased in intensity, that gradually dimmed until Doc was able to make out details.

 

 The first thing being that instead of facing the group of men who comprised the rat king, he was now one of them. He stood in the middle of the group and could feel his links to them in this physical representation. It was as though they blurred into one, visually, from the waist down.

 

 More disturbing was the fact that he could feel them inside his head. He had memories and thoughts bubbling to the surface that weren't his own; a kitchen in Washington, arguing with a beautiful woman who was about to throw a juicer at him, crying and asking why he had to volunteer for a mission that would take him away again; a childhood that wasn't his own, riding a bike through suburban streets, disco music blaring from a radio hanging off the handlebars, people washing cars and trimming lawns shouting greetings to him; a fight in a bar, himself and two other grunts holding a long haired and bearded man over a pool table, taking turns to smash a pool ball into his face, his mouth a bloody mess of broken teeth and pulpy flesh.

 

 DOC RECOGNIZED the area. It was Washington, D.C., and he rounded the corner with the rest of the rat king, adopting the shuffling walk that kept them all together. They were on Pennsylvania Avenue, heading for the White House.

 

 The air was still, almost static and charged with lack of motion. Doc listened, but there were no birds singing. A creeping horror made him feel nausea rise from the pit of his stomach. Still he kept moving with the others.

 

 They turned into the driveway that led up the immaculately manicured grounds to the White House. There was no sign of guards. The immaculately trimmed lawns were dead and brown, scorched beyond redemption. Looking up, Doc could see that there were no windows left in the White House. Glass and frames were all gone: the building was nothing more than a shell, a faint black-and-brown patina covering the surface of the stone.

 

 Without having to ask, Doc knew that they were examining the damage caused by an initial nuke hit. He knew without question that the shadows scorched into the ground were all that remained of the sec men who had guarded the White House, a futile gesture in the face of such destruction.

 

 "As expected. An initial target. Compute follow-up damage from a series of hits at such strategic points. There will be some disturbance of the land—"

 

 "Some?" Doc interrupted. "Half of the continent is unrecognizable out there. The other half is radically changed. In reality this place is nothing but a huge hole. Do you realize what this means?"

 

 "It means that we have to strike back. This is the first strike in the chain. The beginning of the simulation. Now we work."

 

 THEY WERE BACK in the control room, the LED screen winking and changing rapidly as the rat king barked orders to the virtual staff, ordering them to program strikes on East Bloc targets. Doc found himself joining in without thinking, just knowing by some osmotic process what the others were thinking, ideas and strategies flying from mind to mind, altering according to different perspectives and ideas, forming into a single thought that flew to the consoles as an order.

 

 The rainbow patterns of mutually assured destruction sprang up over the globe, running in lines of brilliant color until the whole LED map was a bright blaze of moving color. It reminded Doc of the kaleidoscope that had formed around him when he was being absorbed, and with horror he realized that was exactly what it was supposed to be—a visual representation of the ultimate purpose.

 

 "But don't you fools realize what this means?" he screamed, feeling sure that this time he would surely lose whatever fragile grip on sanity he still possessed.

 

 "This…"

 

 DOC RECOGNIZED the place. It was Moscow. He remembered too well their attempt to recover the soiled and abused American flag that had hung by the tomb of Lenin, in a glass cage covered with generations of phlegm and spittle. He remembered Major-Commissar Gregori Zimyanin with a shiver. A worthy man in his own way, as honorable in his own cause as Ryan Cawdor in his: a man to have on your side rather than fight against.

 

 It was only with some effort that Doc remembered that this was a simulation, a virtual Moscow, where there would be no need for him to fear running across Zimyanin.

 

 Besides which, there were no people around. The city was freshly nuked, too hot for any pockets of survivors to crawl from hiding. Or for most…

 

 Doc felt bile rise in his gorge, an instinct of revulsion as he spotted the mewling, puking thing on the steps of the Kremlin. It was naked apart from a few charred rags. As they drew nearer, he realized that the rags weren't clothing, but strips of skin and charred flesh. It had no face, no hair, and very little in the way of skin. It crawled on the steps, dirt and dust blowing onto the exposed flesh in the storm that was brewing in the aftermath of the bombs, in the beginnings of the nuclear winter that had formed the Deathlands.

 

 The thing that had once been human kept crying voicelessly and incoherently, not noticing the filth that blew into its flesh, all nerve endings stripped away with the epidermis, maddened beyond pain by the experience of being nuked and yet still living.

 

 "Interesting. The fact of survival is in itself a superb demonstration of human tenacity. If this thing—" the voice of the rat king paused, momentarily at a loss whether to describe the now genderless creature as male or female. "—is able to survive on ground level, compute the possibilities of underground bunker survival."

 

 "If our resources for a postholocaust survival factor are stronger, then ultimate victory is assured."

 

 Doc found himself agreeing, his mind and intellect being sucked out of him by the greater power of the computer. Remembering Emily; remembering his beloved Rachel and Jolyon; remembering the sweet Lori; remembering the strength of Ryan, J.B., Krysty, Mildred, Jak and Dean; remembering others like Finnegan and Hennings, Abe, Trader and Michael Brother, who had been lost along the way. Remembering all of them, Doc fought to retain a vestige of his own identity.

 

 "No," he screamed, "no. This is all wrong. You— collectively—are mad. A senile, grumbling old machine that remembers battles never fought. Condemned by fate to run down slowly, maintaining a redoubt full of fools, never fulfilling your task. Frustrated by fate, spinning out fantasies of pornographic destruction to appease your impotence."

 

 "No. Our time will come. You will see. You will be."

 

 The voice of the rat king was calm, implacable, as though it expected this outburst and didn't care. Doc was terrified by hearing—he was sure—his own voice in the blended tones.

 

 "You will be one."

 

 He didn't know whether to surrender or fight, whether to hope for the best or give up hoping.

 

 His mind began to slip into the madness of Moebius, to lose the slender thread with which he kept a grasp on his sanity.

 

 He was tired of fighting and tired of giving in.

 

 If only something—someone—would make the decision for him.

 

 "We will. If you let us. Join and be one. Without all the links, we cannot survive."

 

  

 

 Chapter Eighteen

 

  

 

 Taking the small population of the ville, training them and waiting for J.B. to improve was a slow and painful process. It took almost a week, and a day didn't fail to pass where they all thought of Doc and what had happened to him.

 

 Abner had some old dilapidated predark books salted away in the rusty metal chest that lay under his bed. As a token of his trust in them, he let Mildred and Ryan look at what he kept in this time capsule.

 

 "This is my heritage," he said proudly, in a tone of voice that suggested his father had said it to him and his father to him, and what the wordheritage meant had long ago been forgotten.

 

 The papers were fragile, yellowing and crumbling with age and neglect. Mildred lifted them out with a delicate touch, hardly daring to breathe. Ryan stared over her shoulder in the dim light of the room, his eye glittering as he strained to see what relics of the past would be revealed. He had always relished the chance to catch a part of the past, to read about the old days.

 

 The first thing Mildred retrieved was aHustler magazine. The pages were stiff and stained, and she looked at Abner with an arched eyebrow.

 

 "Don't look at me, missy. They're all too old for my liking."

 

 She laid the magazine aside with distaste. The next magazine was an oldNational Enquirer for January 1998, with Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee on the cover. She smiled as she remembered the soap-opera lives of the rich and famous. She hoped that they had perished quickly in skydark, as they would never have been equipped to survive in the days after. TheEnquirer joined the skin magazine on the bed, and she came to a pile of crumbling paperback books.

 

 "Stephen King—I've seen some of his books before," Ryan said quietly, gently taking the book with a reverence and gentleness that surprised Mildred.

 

 "That's his analysis of horror on film and in books," Mildred remarked. "Danse Macabreindeed. I wonder what he'd make of all this."

 

 "Real terror springs from the same well the storyteller draws from," Ryan stated, remembering the stories he had heard as a child in Front Royal, and how they had scared him more than his first taste of battle.

 

 Mildred said nothing. Ryan wasn't the sort of man to say something so profound unless he had drawn on something deep. She wanted to leave him with those memories, whatever they might be.

 

 "This guy was quite some King fan," she observed, gently lifting out several paperbacks by the author. There were also some old science-fiction paperbacks about a character called Simon Rack and some books about the Hell's Angels.

 

 But the real treasure lay at the bottom—a guidebook to Kansas City, annotated in a spidery hand, the black ink faded to a purple indentation by age and neglect. The trunk had a small hole at the bottom, and some damp had started to seep in, causing the back pages of the book to stick together.

 

 Mildred pried them open as best she could, but soon found that it was at the front that the real prize lay.

 

 "Well, look at this," she breathed.

 

 Ryan peered over her shoulder and saw a map of the state. Scrawled in pen was a roughly circular shape, shaded in with cross-hatching. "We are here" was written in, with a page number. Mildred delicately turned the pages until she came to the right one.

 

 It was an in-depth map of the part of the state shaded in on the previous page. It showed that they were fairly near to Kansas City itself, and the nearest town was Tonganoxie. Outside the town, in the scrub country, small farms and settlements of self-built houses stood along the main roads. There were photographs of some of them. Outside one stood a couple with a small child. The girl was angelic, with golden curls that tumbled over a solemn face with just the hint of a hidden smile in her large blue eyes. The couple was leaning into each other in the way that only those in love could do. He was tall, with short hair and a full beard, a rifle casually canted over his shoulder. The woman was almost as tall, with a full figure, a shining, smiling face and incredibly long, chestnut-brown hair that was whipped around her in the breeze.

 

 They looked blissfully happy.

 

 The photograph was so evocative that it took a little while for either of them to realize that it was the map that was the reason for the page being indicated. It was a relief map of the area around Tonganoxie, and had been altered in the faded purple-black ink to indicate the way that the earth had moved after the upheaval of nuclear war. The valley, the lip of which they were currently inhabiting, had been formed out of a shallow basin, seeming from the scribbled map to have dropped at least a hundred feet, more in places, with the underground construction of the redoubt causing an instability that had led to an additional small drop that formed the enclave.

 

 "Now we know where we are," Ryan said, indicating the area with a chipped and calloused finger, "this'll be a bastard place to move through without a wag of some kind. We need to get back into the redoubt for transport or a jump. Otherwise we're stuck here, and it's a long haul out."

 

 Mildred looked over her shoulder. Abner was making a poor show of trying not to eavesdrop.

 

 "But we don't move until we're through here," she said slowly and firmly.

 

 Ryan guessed whom she was looking at, and smiled wryly. "We've got unfinished business, and so have they. A bargain's a bargain."

 

 MILDRED WASN'T SURE if it was the antibiotics or the poultices that Krysty had slaved over, marshaling the ville dwellers into the collection of herbs before boiling and straining them to make the stinking poultice. Something, though, had been working. In two days J.B. had come out of his fever, slept so much that they feared he would never wake and had opened his eyes to show a glittering, biting edge to his gaze.

 

 "Ryan," he murmured softly, catching sight of his old friend first, "what's been going on?"

 

 Ryan filled him in. The Armorer, more taciturn than usual in his just awakened state, contented himself with a muttered "Dark night!" as his only comment. On Mildred's recommendation, he didn't try to get out of bed right away, although it was obvious from his restlessness that he was itching to get into action.

 

 By the following morning, J.B. could stand it no longer. Yelling at Dean to help him until the youngster gave in, J.B. got up and hobbled out of the shack and into the center of the ville, where he sat on an upturned box and watched in disgust as Jak attempted to teach some of the local fighters the finer points of hand-to-hand combat. Even pulling his punches, Jak had in the past hour injured two of them enough that it would take them several days to recover.

 

 The Armorer pulled his fedora down so that the snap brim shaded his glasses from the ever present swirl of dust. Watching Jak, and remembering something Dean had said to him as he assisted him into the wan sunlight, J.B. commented, "Now do you see why Mac was allowed to live?"

 

 Dean nodded. "I do now, seeing this bunch of stupes." He kept his voice low so as not to antagonize the ville dwellers, but it didn't change the way he felt. "It just seemed weird, 'cause Dad's drummed it into me that you never leave enemies alive. And don't tell me the story of the little girl who ripped out someone's jugular with her teeth, 'cause I've heard that one too many times," he added with a grin, preempting J.B.'s launch into a Trader story.

 

 The only advantage of J.B. telling it rather than Ryan was that the Armorer was more terse in the telling, and it was a much shorter story.

 

 "Trader was right, though," J.B. said softly in reply. "Then there's always one exception to any rule. Being too rigid can be as dangerous as being too slack."

 

 Without answering, Dean knew what the Armorer meant as he watched Mac take on Jak.

 

 The fat man outweighed the slender Jak by almost double, and was several inches taller. His head was still scarred by the blow he had taken outside the shack, and from the look on his face he was expecting to get some revenge in a one-on-one fight.

 

 They circled each other, watched by the crowd of men and women who were there to learn. The tension grew as they circled, until it seemed that no one in the crowd could draw breath until the first strike.

 

 It came from the blue, still unexpected despite the close attention and anticipation of the crowd. Jak feinted to the left, drawing Mac's attention, then followed up to the right with a kick that took the sec man's legs from under him.

 

 Instead of falling heavily, as would be expected, the awkward-looking sec man let himself flop to the ground, relaxing his muscles to avoid the rigidity that broke bones. He rolled as he hit the dirt, out of the range of Jak's follow-up kick. Instead of connecting with his jaw, the albino's foot carved a space in nothing but air. It was only Jak's immense control and balance that stopped him falling flat. Instead he used the momentum of the kick to pivot, taking him out of range of the thundering roundhouse blow Mac aimed at his body. The sec man was more powerful and agile than he looked, but his notion of fighting was basic—he aimed for the body with a succession of kicks and blows designed to cause maximum damage.

 

 Jak avoided all of those with twists and turns of his body, staying out of range and letting Mac expend energy. Then, when the sec man was puffing and blowing, slowing slightly, Jak darted in beneath one of the blows and delivered a hard jab with his extended fingers, sinking them into the soft flesh above the sec man's ribs.

 

 Mac shot backward through the air as though a jolt of electricity had been forced through him. He tumbled over, falling naturally by instinct. Jak stood back, waiting for the sec man to get up.

 

 "Less…more," he said simply as Mac shook his head to clear it.

 

 The sec man gave him a vulpine leer that passed for a smile. "I hear ya, whitey," he grated, his breath still coming hard.

 

 They closed on each other, circling tightly, neither willing to make the first move. Jak feinted, then lunged. Mac second-guessed him and blocked the straight-fingered blow by trapping Jak's arm in both of his own, crossed to strengthen them. He stepped back, allowing Jak's momentum to carry him forward. The albino sailed past Mac, hitting the dirt face first.

 

 Like the sec man, he allowed himself to relax as he hit, but Mac had anticipated that and followed up in the millisecond while Jak was prone and—momentarily— defenseless. His heavy boot thudded into Jak's face, splitting the albino's lip and causing blood and spit to fly into the dust.

 

 "Water the earth, you mutie bastard," Mac whispered, his anger expended. "We're quits."

 

 He stood back, allowing Jak to get up. The albino wiped the blood from his face, hawked up a bloodied glob of phlegm and spit it into the earth.

 

 "Yeah, quits." The albino laughed. "Learn quick, fat man. Why think I let live?"

 

 Mac laughed, a big guffaw that stunned the crowd and Dean. But not J.B.

 

 "Always a reason to break your own rules," he said. "Except that it has to be a good one."

 

 MILDRED AND KRYSTY were given the thankless task of trying to teach the ville dwellers to shoot straight. It seemed almost alien to them that anyone in the Deathlands could survive without any kind of shooting skills. Blasters were second nature to the postskydark generations.

 

 Nonetheless, the dwellers of this pesthole that didn't even have a name—"what do we want names for, friend? We know where we are," Abner told them— had few blasters, and they were in poor condition. Most of them relied on explosive power rather than accuracy, and it was dispiriting for a crack shot like Mildred to have to train such an inept group of fighters.

 

 So she was glad when J.B. hobbled into the fray to offer his services. The Armorer still couldn't get around at great speed, but the ankle was healing as he was resting it. Ironically the time of his fever and semicoma had been beneficial to his damaged ankle, allowing the initial sprain time to mend. The reticent Armorer had once again muttered an oath and little more when Dean had shown him the tumbledown shack that passed for an armory. His response to taking a look inside had been to moan gently and to shake his head sadly.

 

 There wasn't much J.B. could do to assist them. Most of the time he was under orders to do little except sit all day. However, having cursed the way in which the ville dwellers looked after their blasters, J.B. decided that the best thing for him to do would be to try to lick the armory—such as it was—into shape.

 

 A small group of women and children gathered around J.B. as he sat on an upturned box, stripping the blasters and polishing them, greasing them as best as he could and putting them back together. Along the way he found that some of the blasters were entirely homemade, while others were comprised of separate parts that had been forced and welded together to make a complete blaster. Why these hadn't exploded in the faces of those who fired them was a complete mystery to him.

 

 J.B. cleaned the weapons and explained to his audience why it was important to keep the blasters clean and oiled. He tried to explain to them the concept of different calibrations on weapons, the differences in ammo and their respective firepower. His eyes shone behind his glasses, and he didn't notice that some of the women and children looked at him blankly, not understanding him.

 

 It didn't matter. He told them all that he could, hoping that enough would penetrate to keep the blasters in good working order for the final confrontation.

 

 While he did that, Jak and Dean took turns to coach people in unarmed combat; Krysty and Mildred tried to improve the shooting of the ville dwellers. As all this was going on, Ryan was far from idle.

 

 The one-eyed warrior had been thinking and planning. He could see that his forces, even swollen by the ranks of the ville dwellers, would be no match for Murphy's men once they were inside the redoubt. Outside they had matched the well-equipped sec men by virtue of their being adapted to the conditions. Inside they could hit big trouble.

 

 Ryan spent most of his time with Abner, learning all that the old man knew of the redoubt forces, all that he knew of the surrounding terrain. They called in Mac, who had been in more expeditionary raids on the territory than any other sec man in the ville. Ryan picked their brains, put forward his plans, making sure that Abner and Mac thought that they had come up with half the ideas themselves.

 

 Finally the baron called together his people in the rough ground they called the center of the ville. He outlined the plan he and Mac had come up with to help the outlanders. Krysty, knowing Ryan, smiled to herself as Abner claimed Ryan's best strategies as his own. It didn't matter, as long as they got the result they wanted.

 

 Ryan listened to Abner and looked at the ville dwellers. They were muties, inbred, and not used to hard, hand-to-hand fighting. He felt a twinge of conscience, briefly. Did they realize what they were getting into?

 

 It would be difficult, hard and bloody. That much Ryan knew. But it was necessary, for their long-term survival as much as that of Ryan and his people.

 

 And they were ready. Or as ready as they'd ever be.

 

  

 

 Chapter Nineteen

 

  

 

 The worst part was the waiting. Ryan and J.B. stood, at night, staring into the darkness beyond the beacon fires that marked the ville's boundaries.

 

 "Think we're ready to attack those bastards and get our ticket out?" Ryan asked.

 

 J.B. took off his glasses. "Ready as ever," he replied, pausing to polish them and replace them on the bridge of his nose before finishing the comment. "Though that's not saying much."

 

 Ryan nodded. "Either we're outnumbered or we hope that they can pull together long enough. Some choice."

 

 "Just don't expect firepower miracles, that's all."

 

 "I know. It's enough to make you cry." Ryan smiled. J.B. answered him with the kind of look that could pass between old friends but would have started a fight between strangers in any bar or gaudy across the Deathlands.

 

 "Question is, when do we move?" J.B. continued.

 

 Ryan stared out into the dark, squinting his good eye to try to focus on the swirling darkness. The storms made the night seem like a solid thing he could reach out and touch, like a physical barrier between themselves and the redoubt. In some ways that's exactly what it was.

 

 "Got to trust Abner on that one," Ryan said quietly.

 

 "If nothing else, his people know the valley. We have to go with them."

 

 "Sure, but excuse me if I get an itchy feeling down my spine when I think of it," the Armorer commented with a dryness that made Ryan laugh out loud.

 

 Wiping a tear of laughter from his eye, Ryan said simply, "Yeah, sure be good to move."

 

 RYAN SOUGHT OUT out Abner the next morning, coming on the baron as he was still in the rusty iron bed, with the latest in a long line of girls young enough to be his granddaughter. Hell, for all Ryan knew, they might well be. It wouldn't be the first time he'd come across that sort of sickness. He remembered Baron Willie Elijah and his wives Roonie, Toonie and Poonie, and their daughters Roonie-Two, Toonie-Two and Poonie-Two. Fireblast, they were all from the same wife that Willie had first taken.

 

 "Morning, One-eye," Abner grunted, stretching so that his fat belly wobbled, farting so that the girl next to him giggled. "Shut up, girl," he commented in an offhand manner before returning his attention to Ryan. "So what can I do for you, friend?"

 

 "I was talking to my people last night. We want to move as soon as possible."

 

 Abner pulled a face. "I don't know about that, friend Ryan," he said sweetly. "See, it's got to be the right conditions. Otherwise my people stand a chance of getting chilled big time."

 

 Ryan pulled the panga from along his thigh, slowly so as not to alarm Abner or the girl. Nonetheless the long and wickedly gleaming blade made her eyes widen, and Abner looked distinctly uncomfortable. His hand reached under the covers, and Ryan heard the muffled click of the hammer on the blunderbuss he kept down there.

 

 Ryan began to pare his chipped and hardened nails with the panga, smiling over the top of the blade. "I'd be careful with that blaster, Abner. One day it might go off and blow your pecker clean away. And you wouldn't like that, would you?" he continued, switching his attention to the girl. She shook her head, wide-eyed with complete incomprehension.

 

 Ryan looked quickly back to Abner—not from any sense that the baron would pull the blaster on him, but more to escape the waves of revulsion that overcame him, seeing the young girl next to the old man.

 

 "Just what do you want from us now, One-eye?" Abner growled.

 

 Ryan shrugged, still paring his nails. "Nothing. Just a chance for us both to get what we want. And don't worry, I'm not going to try to kill you. I know Mac's back there just itching to put a hole in me."

 

 A grating, humorless laugh came from the doorway where Mac had his blaster trained on Ryan.

 

 "I like you, One-eye. You and your people got balls, even the women. Sure learned a lot from you. Still more to learn if you don't get yourself chilled too soon."

 

 "I've got no intention of that," Ryan said in a level tone, not taking his attention from Abner. "All I want is to know when we're going to move."

 

 "Can't yet," Abner said tightly.

 

 "Why not?" Ryan asked with a studied casualness. He suspected the baron of cowardice, and he didn't want that to hold up their chances of getting out, perhaps even rescuing Doc if the old man was still alive.

 

 Abner stayed silent. It was Mac who answered.

 

 "The storms, Ryan. We get a nose for them here. Guess we have to if we're going to survive. They're always here, but some are worse than others. If you look out east from here, you can see the swirls of dust rise up mebbe twenty, thirty feet into the sky. That means we got some real sons of bitches out there. Whip your skin off you in five minutes. Can't move through them at any kind of pace without your legs turning to jelly. No way we'd be in any fit state to fight, even with your training."

 

 Mac's tone had been level, reasoned. Even the way in which he had addressed Ryan by name rather than as "One-eye"—as everyone in this rad-blasted pesthole had since he'd arrived—convinced the one-eyed warrior that the sec man was leveling with him. Ryan didn't trust him, but he felt certain that the sec man had a respect for his skills that Ryan felt was mutual. Mac was as good as they got in this nameless ville.

 

 Slowly, keeping a watch on Abner's hand hidden beneath the blanket, Ryan resheathed the panga.

 

 "So how long do those kind of storms usually last?" he asked, directing the question over his shoulder at Mac rather than at the baron.

 

 "Hard to say exactly. The storm ain't exactly a believer in accuracy. It doesn't carry a wrist chron, you know."

 

 Ryan smiled. "Roughly, then."

 

 Although he couldn't see, he could almost feel the sec man shrug. "Mebbe a day, mebbe a week. This one…I dunno, it might not be long one. Can't rightly say why, but when the dust gets that high, it usually means that the storm blows itself out pretty quick. Don't hold your breath, though."

 

 Ryan nodded and turned slowly to face the sec man. "Don't fret yourself, Mac. There's no chance of me doing that. Every breath is precious," he said carefully before walking out of the shack, past the fat sec man, who shuffled out of the way, lifting the long-barreled blaster to allow the one-eyed warrior to pass.

 

 When Ryan was out of earshot, Abner slowly let back the hammer on his blunderbuss. "Bastard outlanders. I'll be glad when that mother and his people are gone. If we're really lucky, the insiders will chill them while they chill the insiders, leaving it all nice and peaceful for us."

 

 "Don't hold your breath," Mac muttered softly, echoing his words to Ryan.

 

 THE STORM WAS RAGING. The wind whipped dust and dirt through the air, which was almost solid with the force of the howling winds. Small stones and pebbles rattled off the reinforced windshields of the wags, bouncing off the metal-and-canvas covers that Murphy had made his men erect before leaving the redoubt. They had wags that weren't convertible in such a manner, but Murphy—like the Murphys before him—felt safer if his men could see around for 360 degrees. The metal, covered-in wags might protect them better from the worst ravages of the storms, but they sure as hell didn't help them see outsiders creeping up on them. When the storms lessened, the covers came off. They were only used in the most violent of storms.

 

 Murphy sat in the lead wag with a group of five men, a driver beside him and four men on the bench seats that lined each side of the wag. There were three other wags, each with similar personnel, which totaled twenty-four. Not exactly a large task force, but enough for their needs.

 

 The outsiders really were stupid, Murphy mused as the wag bounced over the terrain. They never expected a raid when the storms were this bad, despite the fact that it was always the time that Murphy picked. He'd have thought that even the most stupid of them might have caught on by now.

 

 It never occurred to Murphy that it wasn't that simple, that the outsiders couldn't see them coming, and that they couldn't mount solid defenses because they didn't have enough old tech to compete.

 

 "Bridge coming up, sir." The driver, Pri Firclas Bailey breathed hoarsely. The dust always got into his lungs, making him hawk and spit and fight for every breath. But he was a good soldier and never complained. Murphy admired that. That was why Bailey was one of his chosen few.

 

 "Very good. Take it slow, as usual."

 

 "Sure thing, sir. Not much chance of there being any of that scum around, not in this," Bailey wheezed between coughs.

 

 "Nah, why else choose a shitty time like this?" Murphy replied with a grin. He picked up the handset of the crackling radio. "Alpha One to Beta, Gamma, Delta. Praise the Lord, there's a bridge coming to take us to the promised land. Follow the one true path. Don't go for the endless sleep. Over and out."

 

 He put the handset back, only half listening to the crackly and distorted replies from the other three wags. He knew that they would be following orders and following him. He trusted his men implicitly in a combat situation. They knew the penalties for deviation—always assuming that they could get back to base.

 

 The bridge across the chasm was camouflaged. Murphy's grandfather had built it about as far away from the old two-lane blacktop as he could, then covered it with a camouflage paint that made it hard to pick out from a distance. He figured that the outsiders always followed the line of the old road, wary of straying too far because of the mutie wildlife. To build the road here made sense, and the camouflage paint was the final touch. Although such paints had already existed in pre-dark times, this was something special. This had a chemical in it that made it adaptable to weather conditions and levels of humidity, with a life of a hundred years.

 

 Which meant that it had a couple of decades left before it became visible for any outsiders brave enough to wander this far. Hell, Murphy thought, in a couple of decades there wouldn't be any of that scum left.

 

 The wags rattled over the bridge, which sagged ominously as the first wag hit the metal. Even though he trusted it implicitly, Murphy's guts still gave a little tremor of fear every time he hit the bridge.

 

 Over the chasm, they headed onward through the storm. Wallace wanted a fresh supply of body parts, and Murphy had a blood lust to quell. The unfinished business with Cawdor and his people was still eating at him. Hell, he might even find them there, if they'd managed to avoid getting chilled by the outsiders. The thought of it made him feel warm inside.

 

 The wags were now careering through the brush where the mutie squirrels lived. The evil little critters evinced a certain death wish. Their territory was being invaded again, and they didn't like it.

 

 The wags rattled and thumped as the bodies of the squirrels hit the sides, high-pitched squeals of pain and anger, fury and death penetrating the canvas-and-metal shell. Small rips appeared where the most tenacious of the creatures managed to get its jaws into the sides of the wags.

 

 "Those little fuckers never learn, do they?" Bailey commented.

 

 "They certainly don't, son," Murphy replied impassively. "Stupe bastards'll probably make themselves extinct at this rate. But you've gotta admire their guts, Bailey."

 

 "Something like that, sir." Bailey coughed, fighting to keep control of the wag as the wheels skittered on bloody corpses.

 

 "It's okay, Bailey. We'll soon be past the brush and into the homestretch. And that's where the action really begins." Murphy unholstered his blue 9 mm Beretta and kissed the barrel.

 

 That had never failed him yet.

 

 JAK WAS SQUATTED on a mound of earth just past the last beacon fire, now damped down for the daylight hours. Dean was with him. While Jak was still and impassive, staring into the storm, Dean was itchy and fidgety, unable to settle.

 

 "I'm still not sure what the hell it is we're supposed to be keeping a lookout for," he complained. "Nothing can move out there, not in that."

 

 "Not want stay, not stay," Jak commented quietly. "Not forcing you."

 

 "I know," Dean replied, struggling for the right words. "I kind of don't want to, but feel like I should."

 

 "Why?"

 

 "Because you feel like something's going to happen."

 

 Jak turned to Dean, and for a moment there was a hint of suspicion in his red eyes. "Not a doomie," he said tersely. "Just bad feeling. Not know what, why."

 

 "Not just you," Dean said. "Krysty's had a weird feeling today. I heard her tell Dad before he went to see that bastard Abner. Krysty doesn't get bad feelings for nothing."

 

 Jak didn't reply, but now he knew why Ryan had picked today to find out when Abner was actually going to act. The bad feeling returned to him, intensified. It wasn't a doomie feeling, not like those Krysty had.

 

 No, this wasn't a doomie feeling. It was more the kind of gut tension you got before a fight. The feeling that a chilling was in the air.

 

 Jak returned to his vigil, Dean settling in beside him. Both of them ignored the wind and dust that stung their eyes, keeping watch for the slightest sign of activity.

 

 Such as flurries of dust where there were previously none.

 

 "Over there," Jak said pointing, squinting to try to get a better look.

 

 Dean followed the line of Jak's bony white finger, not quite believing what he saw. Out of the dust clouds emerged a war wag. No, more than one. He counted four of them.

 

 "I don't believe it," he whispered. "Four wags?"

 

 "How they cross chasm?" Jak murmured.

 

 "That's what I'd like to know," Dean replied.

 

 That shook Jak from his reverie. He hadn't realized that he was thinking aloud. In one graceful, fluid movement he rose to his feet, placing a hand on Dean's shoulder.

 

 "You keep watch."

 

 "Yeah, you go and fetch Dad and the others. They need to see this," Dean said.

 

 "Already there," Jak replied as he disappeared like a wraith.

 

 Dean kept his gaze locked on the wags as they careered through the dust storms. At that speed it wouldn't be long before they were at the ville.

 

 JAK SPED through the twisting lanes and paths that comprised the streets of the ville, making his way to the adobe hut where his companions were still billeted. Their training of the ville dwellers hadn't led Abner to give them better accommodations. Then again, looking at the sty in which the baron lived, perhaps there wasn't anything better.

 

 When Jak reached the entrance to the hut, he could hear J.B., Mildred and Krysty talking about the possibility of making a mat-trans jump without being physically sick at the other end.

 

 The albino burst into the adobe shack, his sudden appearance causing surprise that turned to a crackling, palpable tension as his body language communicated his urgency.

 

 "War wags coming. Counted four. Dean still watching. Where's Ryan?"

 

 "With Abner, last I knew," J.B. told him, reaching for his Uzi and the M-4000, checking their load and readiness for action.

 

 "I'll get him," Krysty said, heading for the doorway and passing Jak. "You get the rest of these stupes ready. They never said anything about war wags."

 

 J.B., grim faced, nodded. It was true that Abner, Mac and others they had spoken to had said nothing about Wallace's men coming by wag. Because of the chasm, they had all assumed that the attacking forces had to come on foot. That would make them easy to spot and easy to make a head count. But in wags?

 

 "Round them up," J.B. said, striding toward the doorway. He had barely the trace of a limp now, but was still a little concerned about putting too much strain on the ankle. He'd have to watch his positioning as much as was possible in any firefight. "We'll take it in three. Okay?"

 

 Mildred and Jak agreed. The ville was small enough for them to divide and alert the population quickly enough. So far they'd heard no alarm being raised, so did that mean that the ville was usually completely unprepared when Murphy's sec men were sent by Wallace?

 

 J.B. marveled at the fact that there was still a ville at all as he went from shack to shack in his allotted section of town, yelling that an attack was on the way. He could only put their continued and precarious survival down to the protection of the elements that seemed to work against their survival in so many other ways.

 

 RYAN WAS JUST LEAVING Abner's shack when Krysty found him. He was itching for a fight, the baron having irritated him with his offhand manner.

 

 "What is it?" he snapped as he saw her rush toward him. It was a reaction caused by a deep sense of foreboding and the beginnings of an adrenaline rush. Action was imminent. He could tell by the way that her hair had coiled at her nape, and by the depth of concentration in her eyes.

 

 "They're coming, lover. Jak and Dean have seen them approaching."

 

 "How many?"

 

 "Can't tell. They're in wags. Four, they counted."

 

 "Fireblast!" Ryan whirled back toward Abner's shack, mounting the veranda and grabbing Mac through the open doorway. The fat sec man had his back to Ryan and grunted with surprise as the one-eyed warrior pulled him through the doorway. Ryan spun the man so that he faced him. "They're coming. Why didn't you say they used wags?"

 

 Mac looked at him blankly and said ingenuously, "But you never asked. Besides, they've never come in storms this bad. Not often."

 

 Ryan cursed. No matter how much a person trained someone, a stupe was still a stupe. Taking a deep breath and marshaling his thoughts, which raced on a rush of adrenaline and his fighting instincts, Ryan said, "Okay, you know the plan. We let them come and then attack. We need sec uniforms to get into the redoubt, and we need one of them alive. Getting a wag will be a bonus, I guess. Let's go."

 

 Ryan and Krysty left Mac to prepare his sec forces— such as they were—while they raced on the double to the mound where Dean was waiting. Krysty told Ryan briefly how J.B., Mildred and Jak were rounding up the ville dwellers. Indeed, the ville was now a hive of activity, with the armory broken open and the dangerous homemade and altered blasters being passed out among those who had trained to shoot under Krysty and Mildred.

 

 Ryan and Krysty reached the mound where Dean was waiting. He didn't turn as they approached, keeping his eyes focused on the approaching wags.

 

 "A couple of minutes, no more," he said without preliminaries. "They're making good time. No more than four wags. Do we still follow the original plan, Dad?"

 

 "Even more necessary," Ryan replied.

 

 "Right. Got to get the bastards out of the wags first," Dean replied.

 

 "Okay, son," he said. "Let's fall back and get into position."

 

 THE WAGS RATTLED PAST the embers of the beacon fires, past the earthen mounds that circled the ville and along the main track that led into the heart of the ville.

 

 Murphy frowned as he peered out of the dirt-splattered windshield. The heavy-duty wipers were going at full speed, the washers squirting detergent-laced water onto the glass. But all it did was produce a muddy smear that made it hard for Murphy to keep surveillance and for Bailey to drive.

 

 "This is weird shit," Murphy whispered to himself.

 

 "Sir?" Bailey risked a sideways glance at his superior, having to throw the wheel to the left to correct the steering as a result.

 

 "It's probably nothing," Murphy replied, still peering intently through the mud streaks. "It's just too damn quiet out there."

 

 "They're hardly trained soldiers like us, sir," Bailey said intently. "Probably all still in their shit pits, sleeping or rutting like the animals they are."

 

 Murphy grunted. "And we have to use them for stock. Not for long, Bailey, not for long."

 

 "No, sir!" Bailey breathed, bringing the wag to a halt in the center of the ville. The rough circle that served as the meeting place was deserted, the shacks and huts ringing it dark.

 

 "I sniff Cawdor in all this," Murphy said quietly. "I just hope they've left the one-eyed bastard for me." He picked up the handset of the radio and opened the channel between the wags. "Listen here, people. I smell trouble, and if you don't, then what the fuck have you been doing all your lives? I don't know what we should expect, but look alive. Dismount and proceed with extreme caution."

 

 He didn't bother with the call signs, an indication of his own nervousness and wariness. It communicated itself to all the wags, where the military remnants of the old ways gathered their standard-issue Uzis and H&Ks, checking that they were ready for tiring. No one spoke.

 

 In the lead wag Murphy turned to the four soldiers behind him, who were also in the process of checking their weapons.

 

 "Let's go, people. Follow me, with extreme caution. Terminate with extreme prejudice. I think we can forget breeding stock this time out, unless we get lucky. Remember, aim for the head. We want those organs undamaged when we gather the harvest. Okay, let's go."

 

 He spun the sec lock on the wag's door and slid down onto the dirt floor of the circle, keeping watch all around him for any signs of life. There were none, not even the mangy hounds that they raised in this pesthole for watchdogs, and meat when the animal grew old. There was nothing at all.

 

 Murphy heard the clicking of other sec locks, as the rear door of the wag opened and the four men in back jumped out, fanning out around the wag to keep it guarded—to keep one another guarded. The men in front and back of the other wags followed suit, until all twenty-four men were in the circle, surrounding their wags.

 

 Still there was silence, as though the very atmosphere of the storm itself was holding its breath, waiting for the first move.

 

 RYAN SETTLED the Steyr against his shoulder, nestling the butt of the blaster into the hollow. His finger caressed the trigger, while he sighted with his eye, drawing on the driver of the last wag into the circle as he dismounted. He'd thought about taking out Murphy first—he had a score to settle with the sec chief from the redoubt—but decided against it as Murphy might be useful in getting them back into the redoubt.

 

 The man in his sights looked around slowly, his Uzi leveled, his eyes glittering and alert. It caused Ryan only a ripple of surprise to see that the driver was, in fact, a woman. And a ripple of surprise only because she was larger, heftier and more muscular than any of the men in the detail.

 

 It might be doubly useful to take her out first. He wanted to chill a driver so that it freed one wag for them to capture. Ryan assumed that the other sec men in the wag wouldn't be able to drive. He'd gathered enough about the redoubt to assume that each handed-down position was specialized and jealously guarded as such. The woman looked stronger than many of the men, so it would be good to get such a formidable opponent out of the way.

 

 "Keep staring right at me," Ryan whispered to himself, so much under his breath that it only emerged as a sigh. Keep staring, keep giving me a great view of your face, a clean and simple target…"

 

 Ryan squeezed gently on the trigger, shoulder braced for the recoil, squeezed until…

 

 Ryan was already on the move when the shot hit home, killing the driver. He tapped the ville dweller next to him on the shoulder to let him know that he was to maintain the position, then jumped off the roof of the shack and headed out along the back alleys of the ville.

 

 He heard the burst of Uzi fire, and the eerie scream of a man with no tongue as the sec man he had left behind caught the ricochet of Uzi fire. There was no way it would be directly fatal at that range, no way anyone could have got an accurate shot in with a machine pistol. The poor stupe had to have just been unlucky.

 

 First blood to Murphy's men.

 

 Ryan had memorized the alleys until he felt that he'd lived in the pesthole for years. The rest of the companions had done the same, preparing themselves for when the attack came.

 

 It wasn't unfolding as he'd hoped. Murphy's men were grouped in the center of the ville. That much, at least, was according to plan. But they had wags to protect them, which would make attack much more difficult.

 

 J.B. was waiting for him at the arranged point, by Abner's shack. The Armorer had been assigned the task of covering the far sector of the ville simply because he couldn't guarantee his mobility would be one hundred percent. By dropping back, he protected himself and also decreased the chances of being a liability to the others.

 

 "Had a look at them?" J.B. asked.

 

 Ryan nodded. "Four wags, six men per wag. Only twenty-three now, though."

 

 J.B. chewed his lip. "Wish we had some plas-ex. The wags give them too much cover. We need to draw them out."

 

 "If you come with me, that's just what I intend to do," Ryan replied, instantly changing plans.

 

 MURPHY FELT the cold sweat of fear ran down his back. His eyes stung with perspiration and dust, but he didn't dare relax his grip on the blaster for the fraction of a second it would take him to wipe the sweat away.

 

 After he heard the ricochet of the Uzi fire, and the scream from the direction of the initial shot, there had been nothing. Murphy didn't know that the ville dwellers, hidden away but watchful, had been itching to fire back, stopped only by the knowledge drilled into them by the one-eyed man and his compatriots—the knowledge that a war of attrition would have a better long-term effect than a blind firefight.

 

 If Murphy had known that, he would have gladly told them it was working just to goad them into some action. He glanced around at his men, who were looking as jumpy and wired as himself. Whatever had been going on here, that bastard Cawdor and his crew of scum had trained the outsiders well. He regretted the fact that he and Ryan were so opposed. Cawdor would be a good man to have on his side when the crunch came with Wallace.

 

 The quiet was becoming oppressive, the howling wind seeming to grow in volume, distracting as Murphy tried to listen for any sound that could give the ville dwellers away. There was nothing.

 

 He couldn't hear Jak, silently gliding around the back of the wags, with a leaf-bladed knife in each hand, ready to take out anything that got in his way. He couldn't hear J.B., moving around to inform Mildred, Dean and Krysty of Ryan's change of plan. He couldn't hear the ville dwellers as they moved into their new positions.

 

 Murphy had never had to deal with the ville when it was prepared for action. He had never been on the defensive, and he didn't like it.

 

 RYAN COULD FEEL the tension coming off the sec chief. Murphy knew he was giving it off.

 

 So Ryan felt at ease when he stepped out of the alley, shielded by the back of a shack that faced directly onto the circle. Murphy was to his left, about twenty yards away. There were six sec men between them.

 

 Ryan carried the Steyr on his right shoulder, an H&K hanging by its strap from the other shoulder. He stepped into the rear of the shack, shrugging loose the Steyr and leaving it on the dirt floor while he slid the H&K into his hands, preparing to fire. He looked around at the interior of the shack. It was adobe, reinforced by old corrugated-iron sheets.

 

 He had been counting in his head the whole time. He was up to five hundred. It should have been plenty of time for the ville dwellers to take up their new positions.

 

 Now it was show time.

 

  

 

 Chapter Twenty

 

  

 

 Mildred was surprised by the silence in which the ville dwellers could move. After receiving word from J.B., she had begun the slow process of quietly informing the armed people under her command of the move around one side of the rough earthen circle. The way in which they had responded was amazing. It was almost as if, realizing that this could be their chance to rid themselves of the menace of the redoubt sec men once and for all, they were determined to be organized and careful.

 

 Mildred brought up the rear following the last of her people in time to catch a glimpse of Krysty down one alleyway, doing the same with her people.

 

 The plan itself was simple. J.B. had directed Mildred and Krysty to one side of the circle, at ten o'clock. Jak and Dean led their people to two o'clock. The two new groups formed a pincer movement to close on the sec men when their attention was distracted, and they had been drawn away from the cover of the wags by Ryan.

 

 Which should be about…

 

 Now!

 

 MURPHY HEARD the familiar click of the H&K and located it in a second.

 

 "There—fire at will," he screamed, opening fire with his own Uzi on the shack. He sprayed it with rapid-fire rounds, moving forward on the run.

 

 As Ryan had hoped, Murphy's men followed the lead, shaken and rattled by the unexpected response in the ville, and following their commanding officer's orders blindly, as it said in the regs. Not thinking for themselves. Being stupid.

 

 Breaking cover.

 

 "FIREBLAST!" Ryan exclaimed, throwing himself to the dirt floor as the H&K shells started to punch holes in the adobe shack, spraying straw and dried mud around him. There was whining and ricochets as some of the fire hit the sheets of corrugated iron that helped support the shack walls. Ryan could only hug the ground and wait out the barrage.

 

 The walls of the shack were beginning to gape large holes, the mud and straw building up on the floor, covering him. Mud clogged his nose, stung in his eyes, filled his mouth with its bitter and musty taste. Lizard-like, Ryan crawled across the floor, taking the Steyr from where he had left it. In his other hand he still held his H&K—he hadn't even fired a single shot, certainly hadn't expected Murphy to fall for it quite so completely.

 

 The noise in the shack was intensely loud, vibrating on the corrugated iron as if it were directly on Ryan's eardrums. The shots blurred into one continuous noise, the mixed H&K and Uzi fire concentrated on him and his hiding place—a hiding place that was rapidly becoming a filled grave, as the shack tumbled around him, and onto him. They were still firing high, as though he were standing. But the continuous fall of mud, straw and now the sheets of corrugated iron pried loose from the walls they had been supporting, was threatening to engulf him as he made slow progress toward the back door of the shack.

 

 KRYSTY WATCHED in mixed horror and awe as the sec men advanced on the shack where she knew Ryan was holed up, spraying it nonstop with blasterfire, pumping ammo into it as if they had an endless supply. There was no letup. When one sec man had to reload, there were at least ten others who were still on rapid fire.

 

 A bile rose from deep in her gut, burning in her gullet, mixing with the burning that seared her eyes as she blinked back tears. She felt as if she were watching her lover being chilled in cold blood. And she was now helpless to stop it.

 

 There was no doubt that his plan to draw the sec men away from the wags had worked. Murphy had led the way, striding toward the shack, across the circle of earth. The whole crew of sec men had spread out in a fan formation, pumping fire into the shack, forgetting that they were after only one man and that the whole population of the ville was unaccounted for. All led by Murphy's panic.

 

 Some of the ville dwellers, blasters at the ready, looked at her. She looked at J.B., standing at a junction in the alleyways of the ville where he could keep visual contact with both herself, Mildred, Jak and Dean.

 

 The Armorer exchanged rapid glances with both sides, then signaled.

 

 Krysty nodded at the faces turned to her.

 

 The ville dwellers, faces flushed with a mixture of fear and excitement, took their cue. A bloodthirsty yell of revenge and bravado rent the air as the ville dwellers charged, those in front firing their blasters at the sec men.

 

 For a first front-line assault, it was a good result— five sec men hit the ground, chilled or about to catch the last train west, shells from the large-caliber rifles or shot from the scatterguns riddling their bodies.

 

 Two of the sec men were chilled by their own people. Hearing the yell and the roar of blasterfire from behind them, the men next to them had turned while still firing, cutting their own men to shreds.

 

 "Spread out… Lay down a suppressing fire… Chill the fuckers!" Murphy yelled, panicking as the unexpected action left his mind racing. He had no idea what to do. Nothing in the manual or regs covered this. Nothing he had ever experienced, or had been passed down from his forebears, had prepared him for such an action.

 

 He reloaded rapidly, fumbling in his terror as he sped toward the wags, right toward the angry mob of ville dwellers. Looking up, stumbling across the earth, he was sure he saw the albino bastard's white hair and flashing red eyes appear in the crowd.

 

 "No blasters," Jak yelled, "too close. Hand to hand."

 

 Leading by example, one of the leaf-bladed knives left his hand, flashing through the hot, tense air and hitting a sec man beneath the eye, chipping the bone beneath the socket and deflecting upward to lodge behind the eyeball and into the brain. The ruptured eyeball spilled down his cheek as he hit the earth.

 

 Murphy's men didn't eschew the use of blasters. They still tried to fire into the crowds. It was bloody and wasteful. Although several ville dwellers were chilled or injured as the shells ripped into them, the spray of fire also took out three more of their own men.

 

 "Cease fire! Retreat!"

 

 Murphy's voice penetrated the noise, a high, keening, hysterical edge to his yell. He was frightened beyond any capacity for tactical thinking. He just wanted to get the hell out of there.

 

 That was okay by his men. Eleven of the twenty-four were down, nearly half the force wiped out. Two of the drivers were amongst those chilled, which meant that only two of the wags could return.

 

 Some of the ville dwellers pursued the sec men as they piled into the wags, but most remembered that part of the plan was to let them escape if possible.

 

 Because they were the way into the redoubt, even though they didn't know it.

 

 Dean, looking desperately around, caught sight of the ruined shack. "Hot pipe! Dad!" he yelled, running toward it while keeping himself covered.

 

 RYAN HAD MADE IT almost to the back of the shack, and the safety of the open doorway, when a sheet of corrugated iron had fallen from the wall and pinned him. It didn't have enough force in it to knock him out, but it did slow him down. The rusting metal sheet was thick and heavy, but he was glad that the fates had let it cover him, as he felt the impact of ricochets scream off the metal. The force was still enough to make him wince as he felt one slug punch the metal into his kidneys, a wave of hot nausea sweeping through him.

 

 He stayed still for only a moment, allowing the wave to sweep over him and die. It subsided, and he made a decisive move. The iron lay heavy on him because he'd been crawling across the room, but it wasn't so heavy that he was unable to move at all. Bracing his hands on the dirt floor, feeling the grit and stone fragments in the dirt bite into his palms, Ryan began to push down, his biceps straining as they took the whole weight of the sheet. His back ached, the muscles pulling hard as the weight of the iron was lifted on his back. As he gained more height, so the weight spread down the line of his body, the muscles rippling on his torso as they began to relieve his arms and spine of the strain. His thighs lifted off the dirt, his combat boots biting into the earth floor as he pushed up…

 

 The sheet fell off him with a crash, tumbling to his left. Ryan gasped and fell forward, propelled by the sudden lack of resistance to his straining muscles.

 

 Gasping for breath, the one-eyed warrior allowed himself no time to recover, as there was none. He had to get out of the shack before he was chilled. Gathering the Steyr and the H&K, Ryan scrambled to his feet and made the few strides to the back doorway of the shack, the hole gaping open.

 

 He threw himself through it in a forward roll, pitching onto his shoulder and coming up with the H&K in his hand, leveled for any enemy that may be in view.

 

 "You're covered, Dad," Dean said calmly, his Browning Hi-Power in his fist. "I was worried about you. Murphy's turned tail and is ready to run."

 

 "Any wags we can use?" Ryan asked, his mind racing to cover all possibilities. If they could get on Murphy's trail in a wag, he could be their ticket into the redoubt without needing the sec men's uniforms.

 

 "How much of a head start have they got?" he asked.

 

 The boy grinned. "Nothing yet. Take a look."

 

 Ryan followed Dean around the alleyway and onto the edge of the center of the ville. Two of the wags lay abandoned, and through the press of bodies he could see the uniforms of dead sec men. The mass of bodies, however, was gathered around the two wags whose engines were whining in high gear, wheels spinning and kicking up earth at the back, front wheels raised from the ground by the press of bodies.

 

 Ryan grinned. The superior power of the wags would crush the crowd beneath their wheels before too long, but the delay might be just long enough.

 

 Jak appeared like a wraith from the crowd. "Ryan, good you alive. Two wags we use, but need speed."

 

 Ryan nodded agreement. "Get the others, split between the two wags. I can drive one, you or J.B. the other. I need to find Abner and Mac, and quick."

 

 The albino didn't waste time, disappearing into the crowd without a word. Ryan turned to his son. "Try and find Mac or Abner, get them to me. Let's go!"

 

 Dean nodded his agreement and melted into the crowd while Ryan turned his attention to the sector of the crowd not covered by his son. It wasn't hard to spot Abner, as the old baron was relishing the victory over the insiders, gesturing with his blunderbuss and yelling incoherently at his people. He was a sitting target if Murphy or any of his men chose to take a shot from inside the wags. But the sec man didn't make a move.

 

 Ryan fought his way through the crowd to Abner, grabbing the baron and unceremoniously pulling him to one side. The old man was so drunk with the atmosphere that he didn't even show any anger at being treated in such a disrespectful manner.

 

 "We've got the bastards on the run, friend Ryan," he yelled, his eyes gleaming. "They're dead meat."

 

 "But we don't want them to be," Ryan yelled back, desperate to make himself heard above the screams of the crowd. "Listen to me—if we follow them back to the redoubt in the other wags, we can strike inside and destroy them like we planned. Remember?" He spoke in simple terms to try to bring the old man out of his blood frenzy, to remember the plans and strategies they had discussed.

 

 Abner paused. For a moment he looked blank, as though assimilating his thoughts. In that moment Dean appeared with Mac.

 

 "Ryan," the fat sec man said with a face-splitting grin, "it goes well, my friend. I understand from the boy that we follow them back and hit 'em hard. Yeah?"

 

 "Yeah," Ryan said simply. Dean had done a good job of explaining the situation. There was nothing else for him to say to Mac. It just remained to be seen if Abner had caught the drift.

 

 "How many people you want?" the old baron said suddenly, everything falling into place for him.

 

 "You, Mac, mebbe ten others at most. With us that makes eighteen in two wags. It'll be uncomfortable in there."

 

 "I can handle a little of that—you get the best," Abner snapped at Mac, "and tell these mothers to let those wags go!"

 

 "GO, GO, GO!" Murphy screamed at Bailey, his hapless driver.

 

 "Can't, sir. These scum are holding us off the ground, and this is a front-wheel drive, sir."

 

 Murphy cursed. There were four-wheel-drive wags back at the redoubt, but they were totally enclosed. His desire to be as open as possible for recce purposes was going to be his undoing.

 

 "What about Avallone?" he shouted, referring to the driver of the other wag.

 

 "Can't see, sir," Bailey replied.

 

 Murphy swore loudly, picked up the handset for the radio and barked into it. Avallone's fear-struck voice replied that he was having the same problem.

 

 "Shit. We're fucked now, really fucked," Murphy said, almost to himself, realizing that blind panic and losing his cool had gotten them into a no-win situation. What they needed was a miracle.

 

 "Son of a bitch," he breathed in sheer disbelief as the whine of the engine suddenly became a roar. The wag bucked as the front wheels hit dirt and it began to move, skidding across the circle, through the main alley and out past the beacons.

 

 "Sir, we're free and right behind you," Avallone's voice crackled over the radio, relief in every breath.

 

 "Sir, why did they let go?" Bailey asked.

 

 "Don't ask why, just be thankful that they did," the sec chief breathed.

 

 RYAN AND JAK HEARD every word over the radio in their respective wags. J.B. had decided that Jak should drive rather than risk his ankle, which still gave him cause for concern if strained, on the pedals of the wag.

 

 Jak drove silently, concentrating on the trail ahead of him, following Murphy and Avallone in their wags. He carried J.B., Mildred, Mac and five ville dwellers. They crouched and squatted in the back, crushed together as the wag bumped over the plains.

 

 In the other wag Ryan carried Dean, Krysty and Abner along with five ville dwellers. Like the other wag, they traveled in a tense silence. They were going into the heart of the enemy's territory, something none of the ville dwellers had ever dreamed of doing.

 

 Ryan and Jak kept close to the tail of the other wags, so that they could locate the bridge. Once they were over that, it was a matter of keeping them in sight.

 

 The enclave housing the entrance to the redoubt came in view. In the driver's seat of each wag, Jak and Ryan could feel the tension grow behind them.

 

 They heard Murphy yell over the radio for the sec door to be opened. Ryan and Jak gunned their engines, getting every last ounce of power from the wags so that they could tailgate Murphy and Avallone, beating the sec door as it started to fall.

 

 In each wag fighters prepared themselves. Once the wags rolled to a halt, then all hell would break loose.

 

  

 

 Chapter Twenty-One

 

  

 

 The wags screeched to halt inside the redoubt. The sec door to the enclave closed behind the four wags, leaving Murphy with the wags driven by Ryan and Jak between himself and the sec lock that would open the door once more. The sec door directly in front of him was also closed.

 

 Wallace's voice came over the radio, now that the wags were inside the redoubt and in the range of the failing old tech. There was little doubt that the Gen had observed the return of the wags, and the manner in which they had screeched to a halt.

 

 "Murphy, what in the holy hell is going on down there? Did you get the parts?"

 

 "You could say that… Yeah, you could fuckin' well say that." the rattled sec chief replied. "The back two wags have got Cawdor and his scum, with some bastard outsiders, and they've been trained to fight. I lost half my men out there."

 

 "Then don't lose this half. I'll be down with reinforcements," Wallace barked.

 

 Murphy looked at the handset in his sweating grip. It occurred to him that if Cawdor had the radio sets switched on, he would have heard it all—the reinforcements and his own panic.

 

 Shit, blast and damn them all to the deepest rad pit.

 

 RYAN GRINNED as he heard the exchange between Wallace and Murphy. There was nothing like knowing in advance what the enemy was going to be doing. He turned to the back of the wag.

 

 "Okay, everybody out, blasters ready. Keep alert or be chilled. We've got time—not a lot, but just enough— to take up positions. Let's do it."

 

 As they left the wag, he saw that Jak had directed the passengers of his wag in a similar manner.

 

 Reinforced-concrete arches stood near the entrance to the redoubt, buoying the doorway and keeping its shape intact. None of them had seen anything quite like this in previous redoubts, but the workmanship on the arches was rough and ready, not the work of skilled builders. Possibly it was the work of sec men shortly after sky-dark, refashioning the arch when the first wave of quakes had swept the land.

 

 For whatever reason they had been built, they now proved to be a piece of serendipity. As silently as possible, moving from the back of one wag to another, Ryan came to where Jak had marshaled the people in his wag. As with the front wag, they were currently standing to the rear, covered by the vehicle. Ryan directed them to spread out to the arches, using them as cover, those at the back of the wag covering the progress of those heading for the arches.

 

 The people in his own wag were doing the same.

 

 Ryan swiftly repositioned himself behind the forward arch, where he was joined by Krysty and Mac.

 

 "They're too quiet, lover," Krysty whispered, not wanting to break the heavy silence that had fallen. The engines of all the wags had ceased, and there was no movement from the two wags with Murphy's men.

 

 "Mebbe Murphy's too scared," Ryan mused.

 

 "Mebbe he has a plan that Wallace doesn't know about. When that door goes up, that's when we'll know for sure."

 

 The one-eyed warrior gestured with his Steyr at the sec door beyond the two wags. It had closed as soon as the wags had screeched to a halt. Beyond it lay the rest of the redoubt, the mat-trans they needed to get out, and Wallace…

 

 Ryan cursed the fact that they had lost their contact with the Gen's plans by having to leave the wags and the radio, but they would have been a sitting target. At least out there they were spread out, and Wallace would have a clear shot at the enemy when they came.

 

 MURPHY SAT in his wag, biting his nails and thinking as swiftly as his terror and the changing circumstances allowed him. This could be his big chance. Most of the military was on his side, plus some of the civilian scientists. It was a good opportunity. Wallace had never had anyone invade his base before. Let him make a mess of things, then step in to clean up. That way Murphy could avoid any blame, as well. He allowed himself a brief wave of optimism. This might just go his way.

 

 "Murphy!" Wallace barked, his tone harshened by the reception of the radio. "Get yourself ready, boy— we're coming in…now!"

 

 He turned to the other sec men in the wag. "This is it, men, Operation Munich."

 

 The sec men exchanged puzzled and worried glances. "Now, sir?" one of them asked in a nervous quiver.

 

 "Hell, yeah!" the sec chief exclaimed, trying to hide his own nervousness behind an exterior of bravado. "What better time? These scum can fight it out with the Gen and his people, then we pick up the pieces and take control."

 

 "Uh, how do we let the others know?" one of the nervous sec men asked.

 

 "Word of mouth, boy," Murphy replied. "Now, heads up. It's all starting to come down."

 

 The sec door was grinding to life, rising slowly.

 

 FROM HIS POSITION behind the arch, Ryan could see how slowly the door was rising. And to his amazement he could see the sec men on the other side just standing there, waiting for the door to finish its job. Standing unprotected and without cover. He risked a backward glimpse, catching the astonished faces of J.B., Jak and Dean. It seemed so incredible that for a second they were all frozen to inaction by the idiocy of Wallace's tactics.

 

 Given time to reflect, Ryan would have realized that Wallace considered the outsiders, and the friends, as no better than dirt. He was so obsessed with his own superiority in the position of Gen that he couldn't believe anyone could out think him. And he was slack from lack of actual combat.

 

 But there was no time to reflect. There was only time for action. It was Mildred who broke the spell. While the others gaped, she raised her ZKR in a two-handed competition stance, feeling sheltered by the arch, and took aim.

 

 The crack of the ZKR was high and clear, breaking across the low rumble of the opening door. It was followed by the high-pitched scream of a sec man hitting the concrete floor, his kneecap shattered into a bloody mess of shards by the high-velocity bullet.

 

 It broke the spell. Falling to his belly, the Steyr raised slightly on his shoulder, Ryan fired. Simultaneously J.B. had moved forward to get a better sweep of fire with his M-4000, the barbed steel flechettes loaded into his blaster spreading out in a deadly hail that ripped at the knees, thighs and groins of the sec men on the other side of the door. The flechettes spelled death rather than pain as they gouged at high velocity into faces and throats, ripping out flesh and artery.

 

 The door was now three-quarters of the way up, the bodies of the sec men still standing now fully exposed. In the confusion and mayhem, some of them still had their blasters down. They died in a hail of slugs and shells from the homemade blasters of the ville dwellers.

 

 The shooting was erratic, and some of the raiding party forgot the tactics they had been taught, lost in the blood lust and the heady excitement of a victory that seemed within their grasp. They stepped into the open and were mowed down by the surviving sec men, Uzi and H&K fire sweeping across the space between the arches and the wags. Four of the raiding party caught the last train west, and in his wag Murphy wondered what the hell was going on. He and his own men were trapped.

 

 Mildred continued to pick off sec men with clean, precise shots, as were Krysty and Dean. Jak was distracted by the need to try to rein in some of the raiding party before they were all wiped out, lessening the chance of recovering Doc and reaching the mat-trans.

 

 "BACK… BACK NOW!" The distorted voice of Wallace, using a bullhorn to issue commands crackled and barked over the noise of blasterfire. In confusion the remaining sec force started to pull back, covering themselves.

 

 "Perfect," Murphy whispered to himself. "Go, go now. Let's get out of the immediate area and get organized. I couldn't have expected more," he said to Bailey, the driver.

 

 "Sir, those are our men," Bailey replied in a quiet, shaken voice.

 

 "Mebbe, but if we don't move, there won't be any left, will there?"

 

 Bailey didn't answer. He slung the vehicle into first gear and touched the accelerator. The wag moved beyond the open sec door, skidding on the concrete floor, which was slick with the blood of their dead fellows. The second wag automatically followed.

 

 It left the raiding party on its own, suddenly cut off without a visible enemy and the echo of the firefight still ringing in its ears.

 

 "HAVE WE GOT THEM on the run, or is there something going on here that we don't know about?" Mac asked Ryan, looking puzzled. "There's no way that this is the end, right?"

 

 Ryan nodded. "Reckon there's something going on between Murphy and Wallace. If we're lucky, then it might help us get what we want."

 

 "And if we're not?"

 

 "Then we might buy the farm," Ryan replied grimly.

 

 They turned back to where J.B. and Jak were trying to subdue the triumphant outsiders. Abner was one of the most vocal. Ryan cast a quizzical glance at Mac, who shrugged.

 

 "The old man hasn't been in a firefight for years. Guess he's just overexcited," Mac said.

 

 "He'd better calm down, or he'll get you all chilled," Ryan murmured.

 

 Mac nodded.

 

 When they reached the group, clustered in front of the wags, Abner and the others had been calmed considerably by words from Krysty and Mildred. For some reason they were more inclined to listen to them than to Dean or Jak.

 

 "It's because they look on them as kids, despite the fact they could outfight most of us," Mac commented.

 

 J.B. stood a little apart from the rest, checking his Uzi, then reloading the M-4000. He beckoned to Ryan, who left Mac and went to join his old friend.

 

 "What is it?"

 

 J.B. took off his glasses and cleaned them, then pushed back his fedora and scratched at his forehead.

 

 "I'm worried," he said simply.

 

 "About these stupes?" Ryan asked, indicating the raiding party with an incline of the head.

 

 "Nope. Me. This ankle. If I get left behind, don't worry about me too much. I'll find a way—"

 

 Ryan clasped his friend on the shoulder. "No. We split up with different objectives, but no one gets left behind. Fireblast, we might even find Doc."

 

 The Armorer allowed himself a wry smile. "You think he's still alive?"

 

 "Wallace wanted him for a reason. He's not likely to have chilled him just like that," Ryan said, snapping his fingers.

 

 The one-eyed warrior turned his attention back to the main group. Going over to them, with J.B. close behind, Ryan said, "They're on the run, but not because of us. There's something else going on here, and we need to find out what it is."

 

 "WE ARE UNDER ATTACK. Wallace is not the man he was. We sense that he isn't the same man. How much time has passed since we were joined together? What has occurred outside in that time? And part of us wants to know why, when we have this capacity, we spend our time using just a fraction of it to run this base?"

 

 The amorphous mass of men moved across a landscape of burned-out rubble and rotting corpses. Doc had discovered that this was how the Moebius MkI spent most of its time—if time was a concept that could exist to something so alien to human experience—moving across the logical conclusions of its purpose, simulated in a vista that continued forever.

 

 And now there was real danger on the outside, and the mechanism was powerless to do anything about it. It flailed about in its imaginary landscape, recording and assimilating impressions from the outside, impotent to do anything except keep the redoubt running…and suddenly realizing its impotence as it came under attack for the first time in its long life.

 

 Doc, knowing from the assembled data, who was invading the redoubt, tried to block that knowledge from the rest of the mechanism, to stop it using all he knew about his companions to defeat them.

 

 "We are dividing. Why does Dr. Tanner wish to leave us?"

 

 WALLACE WAS in his office when Murphy burst in with six armed soldiers behind him. The Gen was sitting at his desk, calmly reading the regs, as though they comprised a holy book, which, to him, it was.

 

 "Ah, I was wondering when you would get here," he said calmly, an edge of ice to his voice.

 

 "You guessed, then?" Murphy asked him, the blue 9 mm Beretta trained on a spot between the Gen's eyes.

 

 "Oh, I knew that you had plans. Very well, you think that you can usurp the chain of command? Let's see what you make of these outsiders."

 

 "More than you have. There were some good men mowed down out there," Murphy replied.

 

 Wallace gave him a stare to chill his blood. "If you expect me to believe that you really care about those men, you must think that I'm a bigger stupe than the outsider scum. You have a wooden heart, and your men will learn the hard way."

 

 Murphy ground his teeth, repressing the urge to rant at the Gen, to pistol-whip him now that he had him at his mercy. Instead he turned to the men behind him. "You and you," he snapped, gesturing at two of them. "Guard him. The rest of you come with me. Spread the word that we're in charge now. Things are going to be different."

 

 He turned back to Wallace. "I'll deal with you when I've dealt with the outsiders."

 

 "I wish I had your confidence in you, boy," Wallace said with a sneer as Murphy left the room.

 

 Murphy's plan was simple—position sec men so that he could guide the raiding party down a certain path, insuring that they could be trapped and chilled with the minimum of fuss. After all, they had only seen the redoubt once, so they would have no idea where they were going.

 

 This overconfident reasoning neglected the fact that he had witnessed their ability to find their way around the base when they had earlier escaped from his guard. But Murphy was high on his own sense of victory, and his memory had become selective.

 

 RYAN AND J.B. HAD SPLIT the forces. The Armorer and Mildred had taken three men and were to try to locate Doc. Their objective after this, regardless of result, was to secure the mat-trans unit. Ryan and the others, including Abner, Mac and the other three ville dwellers, were to try to eliminate Murphy and Wallace, and use the plas-ex that they knew to be in the armory to mine the redoubt and bring it down once and for all.

 

 The combined party made its way down the corridors of the redoubt, headed for the point at which their paths would diverge. Ryan took the lead, followed by his friends and the outsiders, who were beginning to show their lack of experience in a combat situation. Their initial bravado had given way to nervousness, and their tension crackled from man to man, making them jumpy.

 

 It was something Ryan wanted to avoid: an itchy finger on a blaster trigger, and it was likely to be one of their own party that bought the farm, rather than any of the redoubt's sec men. So his people were there to calm them down, keep them relaxed by their own vigilance.

 

 But so far the corridors had been deserted. A wailing siren cut through the air, loud and insistent. It was a maddening sound, and didn't help the composure of the outsiders. Otherwise there was nothing: no sec men, no tech. Just the debris of a rapid pullback.

 

 It was something that Ryan had expected. The tactics used by the redoubt sec men seemed to be along these lines, if Wallace was running things. But if it was Murphy now? And what if the two factions were at war with each other? Ryan didn't want to contemplate being caught in the cross fire of the two groups.

 

 They came to a junction in the corridors. Ryan halted the line and flattened himself to the wall, edging forward until he was at the corner. He picked up a discarded clipboard from where it had been thrown to the floor. With a flick of the wrist, he tossed the board into the gap where the two corridors conjoined.

 

 The blasterfire was deafening. Mostly Uzi, on rapid fire, thought J.B. His keenly trained ears picked out four men firing. He held up four fingers when the one-eyed warrior looked back at him. Ryan nodded his agreement; his own hearing had picked out the same amount of fire. As the corridor ahead was clear as far as they could see, it was obvious that this was the direction Murphy or Wallace wanted them to proceed.

 

 It was taking them away from the elevators down to the armory, but there were other ways to get there. First they had to get across the junction.

 

 Ryan beckoned Mac and whispered an instruction in his ear. The fat sec man nodded and turned to relay instructions to Abner and the other ville dwellers.

 

 J.B. moved up to Ryan's side. "The usual?" he asked.

 

 Ryan nodded. J.B. shouldered his Uzi and checked the M-4000. The deadly load of barbed steel flechettes was in place. He pushed his fedora back on his head and looked Ryan in the eye.

 

 "Let's go."

 

 On the count of three, J.B. stepped into the open long enough to let loose a blast of flechettes. The four sec men were strung out across the width of the corridor, crouched behind makeshift barriers made of tables. Two of them caught the largest cluster of fire, the barbed flechettes ripping away flesh in searing agony. Their companions flattened themselves to the floor, thankful they escaped the brunt of the charge.

 

 Ryan had flung himself across the gap and stood ready to provide covering fire.

 

 The two surviving sec men opened fire. They were situated on each side of the corridor, and were well protected. J.B. cursed and wished he had some grens. But as he was relatively ill equipped, he made do with firing another load of flechettes at the nearer sec man, while Ryan concentrated his fire on the man on his side.

 

 It was enough to allow Mac and Abner to cross as one, the sec man helping his baron to make the crossing quickly, using his bulk to shield the even fatter old man.

 

 The flechettes were once more effective. By looking up at the wrong moment, the sec man in the line of fire lost both his eyes and most of his face to the barbed metal.

 

 The sec man on Ryan's side of the corridor was proving more tenacious. He kept his head down, and the barrage from the H&K picked holes around him but didn't touch him. He returned the fire sporadically.

 

 J.B. switched to his Uzi, unwilling to waste too much of his M-4000's ammo when it wouldn't be truly effective. But the sec man was lucky and hung on, managing to avoid being hit by the blasterfire from two directions. He also got off bursts of his own, making it a tricky business for the rest of the party to get across the divide.

 

 Mildred finished matters when she made the crossing. She shook her head so that her plaits swirled around her head. "That boy is really irritating me," she commented. Timing herself so that she acted in complete synchronization with Ryan, she flung herself to the floor as he swung out to fire a burst of cover. Bracing her elbows on the concrete to give her aim enough elevation, she sighted in the sec man as his head appeared to return fire.

 

 One crack of the ZKR and he was silenced, a small hole drilled neatly in the middle of his forehead.

 

 "Now let's get on," she remarked casually, getting to her feet.

 

 The remainder of the party crossed.

 

 "If the blasters and plas-ex are down there, why don't we go that way?" Abner asked.

 

 Ryan shook his head. "That way will be well guarded. We're being pushed this way for a reason."

 

 "Then surely we should surprise the bastards by going the way they don't expect?" Mac said with a puzzled frown.

 

 Ryan grinned. It was cold and deadly. "We will. But it won't be that way."

 

 Krysty gave Ryan a puzzled look for a second, then a smile spread across her face. "Right, lover. Wallace and Murphy think we only know the way we went before, so they're guiding us that way and making sure we don't take another path. But all the sec cameras are out along here because we shot them out."

 

 "Right. And these stupe bastards don't know that we've been in other redoubts, or that they're all basically the same."

 

 "You've lost me, friend," Abner said, his voice showing signs of irritation. "As far as I can see, you're just leading us into their trap."

 

 But Mac shook his head. "No, I get it. They can't watch us along here, and expect us to end up at the end. But we won't, 'cause you know how there's another way out." He laughed.

 

 "Got it in one," Ryan replied. "Now let's go."

 

 They proceeded along the corridor strung out in formation, as before. The sec cameras were all inoperable, and there were no more corridor junctions for some way. Nonetheless to relax vigilance for one second was something that Ryan and J.B.'s instincts wouldn't allow them to do.

 

 They came to a bend in the corridor.

 

 "It should be just about here," Ryan whispered, almost to himself as he cautiously scanned the curve of the corridor before leading the party around.

 

 It was there. "Got it!"

 

 Mac frowned and looked around. "Think I must be double or triple stupe, but I can't see what you're getting excited about," he said quizzically.

 

 "Up there…" Ryan gestured with his H&K toward a maintenance hatch on the ceiling.

 

 "What good does that do us?" Abner sniffed.

 

 "The maintenance ducts follow the line of the corridors. We can come out onto the elevator shaft, get down into one of the cars, then surprise these fireblasted stupes when we get to the right level."

 

 Abner grinned. "I like it, even though it sounds like it's going to be hard work."

 

 "No one said it was going to be easy," Ryan replied.

 

 Jak was the first to climb into the duct. Ryan cupped his hands to give the albino teen a foothold, and then he sprung up to the hatch with grace and ease, using the end of one of his knives to loosen the screws that held the hatch in place. Once it was open, he pulled himself inside and wriggled around, reaching down to give Dean a helping hand as the boy was next up.

 

 Inside the ducts there was enough room for them to kneel without being cramped, and they had soon assisted the ville dwellers into the space, having a little trouble with Abner as the old baron wasn't as fit as he would have liked to think. But, like Mac, he was still surprisingly agile for a man of his age and weight.

 

 Ryan was the last man up, having elected to go last in order to help J.B., who was still having niggling doubts about how his ankle would hold up. Before he jumped and caught hold of Jak and J.B.'s hands, he passed up the hatch cover. When the two friends had helped Ryan into the duct, he placed the hatch cover over the hole, so at least it would look undisturbed at a cursory glance.

 

 It was dingy and dusty inside the duct. The air was thick, and difficult to breathe. It was obvious that the duct had been neglected by the techs for some time.

 

 Ryan let Jak take the lead, the albino having a sure idea of the direction of the duct. They crawled in silence, unwilling to speak in the dust and heat that clawed at their throats. It seemed to take forever, but couldn't have been more than a few minutes before a cold blast of air swept across them.

 

 "Elevator shaft," Jak croaked. "Ahead."

 

 There was a blackness in front of them, where the lighting ceased, and a grille hatch covered the exit of the duct into the elevator shaft.

 

 Now they came to the one part of the plan that relied on chance—if either of the elevator cars was below the level of the grille, then they could climb down and through the emergency hatch on top of the car. If both cars were above them, then they had a real problem.

 

 Fortune favored them, and the far car was just at the level below them. It did mean, however, that they had to scale across the cables before dropping down to its roof. Jak went first, dropping catlike onto the car, and lifting the emergency hatch with one hand, the other grasping the .357 Magnum Colt Python, poised to blow away any opposition below.

 

 The car was empty, the doors shut.

 

 Jak beckoned to the others, and they made their way across to the car, dropping down into the well-lit interior.

 

 Without a word, Ryan pressed the button that would take them down to armory and the comp room that controlled the redoubt.

 

 "What about Doc?" Mildred asked as the elevator started its descent.

 

 "We look for him later. Best to try and secure first," Ryan said tersely. He didn't want to forget Doc, but first things first.

 

 The elevator arrived at the right level, and everyone checked their blasters as the doors began to whirr open.

 

 "This is it," Ryan said.

 

 WALLACE SAT behind his desk, tapping his finger on its surface as he fixed the young private opposite him with a stony stare.

 

 "Sir, don't do that," said the private, unable to keep the tremor from his voice. Like all those in the redoubt, he had been brought up to believe in the innate superiority of the Gen, and even though he had faith in the sarj, there was something that ran deeper.

 

 "Do you really want those outsiders to make fools of us all?" Wallace said softly.

 

 "No sir, the Sarj says—"

 

 "Screw that stupe. Hand that to me, boy, and we'll say no more about it," Wallace interrupted. He held out his hand for the H&K the private held. Mesmerized by the charisma of the Gen, the private handed it over.

 

 Wallace smiled grimly and shot the boy in the chest, the force of the slug throwing his already dead body off the chair.

 

 "Never trust anyone, especially in times of war—and that's what this is," Wallace stated before making his way into the anteroom.

 

 Surveying the screens, he saw the mayhem that had broken out. He laughed gently to himself, a laugh that bespoke his slide into insanity.

 

 He'd teach the sarj to mess with him.

 

 WHEN RYAN'S raiding party had emerged from the elevator, it had been a swift and bloody race to the armory. They had emerged around the back of Murphy's men, taking them by complete surprise. The sec men had been blasted before they even had the chance to turn and face their attackers. The sec men farther down the corridor had retreated until they were holed up in the armory. Put on the defensive, they had retreated until the only secure place was the armory itself. There was no other way in. Alternatively there was no other way out.

 

 Murphy and ten sec men were in the room, surrounded on both sides by Ryan's raiders, one group led by Jak and one by the one-eyed warrior himself.

 

 With Murphy pinned down, Mildred and J.B. had set off with their small party to secure the main comp center and close down the comp systems controlling the redoubt.

 

 It was here that they got the biggest shock. Arriving at the door Wallace had guided them past during his tour, they found that it wasn't guarded.

 

 J.B. directed two of the ville dwellers to cover the corridor, while he and Mildred took the door. The third man in their party was to cover them as they went in.

 

 The Armorer could only presume that Wallace had been so certain of his plan working that he had left this section manned only by the techs and whitecoats who worked here. Still, in a redoubt they could probably all use blasters. He wasn't going to take chances.

 

 Bracing on his weaker ankle, J.B. used his good foot to kick open the door. Unlike most of the others in this section, it was a simple wooden door, which puzzled him.

 

 The door crashed back on its hinges, and J.B. sprayed a short burst into the room. There was the small explosion of destroyed equipment, and the squeal of a tech mowed down at the knees.

 

 J.B. and Mildred stepped into the room. Immediately the Armorer could see why the door was a simple wooden barrier—this was only an outer room, with the inner chamber protected by the usual sec door.

 

 "Dark night, what has that madman done?" J.B. whispered as he caught sight of the Plexiglas window that lined one wall.

 

 "What is it, John?" Mildred asked as she followed him into the room. "Wha—Oh, my God…"

 

 J.B. and Mildred stood in front of the window, staring at the rat king.

 

 And their eyes were drawn to Doc.

 

 "Sweet Jesus," Mildred husked, resisting the urge to gag. "How could they—? No, scratch that." She turned to J.B. "We can't pull the plug until I see how Doc's connected. Leave me here with two for cover. Take one and get back to Ryan, let him know what's going on, then get back here."

 

 "Okay."

 

 J.B. left: He trusted Mildred's medical skills to get Doc out of there if it was possible. Otherwise he knew she would pull the plug if she couldn't get Doc out.

 

 Ignoring the weeping tech, lost in his pain, Mildred went through the sec door and anteroom, into the main comp room where the skein of cables and wires connecting the rat king slithered across the floor.

 

 "Let's see if I can get you detached, you damn crazy old fool," she whispered to Doc, smoothing back his hair.

 

 "I wouldn't be too sure about that," said a level female voice from across the chamber.

 

  

 

 Chapter Twenty-Two

 

  

 

 Mildred froze. She recognized the voice, but couldn't see the owner as she was bent over Doc. Where the hell was that idiot ville dweller when she needed her?

 

 The outsider was standing in the anteroom, her blaster raised. A cobbled-together mix of a Smith & Wesson stock with a homemade barrel welded to it, it hadn't been tested in combat as of yet. A rifle of indeterminate origin, lost in a welter of remakes and remodels, was on her shoulder, now out of ammo.

 

 "What happened to my cover?" Mildred grated.

 

 "Missy, I can't see her!" exclaimed the outsider, her speech snuffled and punctuated by heavy breathing through her deformed nose.

 

 "Of course she can't see me," whispered the velvet voice. "You don't think I'm just going to walk in the most obvious door and be chilled, do you?"

 

 Mildred allowed herself the risk of raising her head— slowly, so as not to rattle her captor.

 

 "Shit, I should have figured you'd be protecting this monstrosity," Mildred said as she caught sight of Dr. Tricks, standing in a shadowed corner of the computer room, a 5-shot, two-inch Smith & Wesson .38 snubbie in her grip. It was trained steadily on Mildred.

 

 Tricks shrugged. "This is my territory. If Sarj takes over, then I get to devote all my time to this while he streamlines things. That suits me. I hate wasting my time on those other projects that are going nowhere. Let's be honest. Most of the people I have under me now are stupes. That's not their fault. I'm just a freak in a different way. But if I could can all the other junk and just work on this—" her liquid brown eyes lit up with a fanaticism Mildred recognized all too well. "—then we might just have the power to take this pesthole of a country and put it back where it belongs. That would be wonderful. Did you realize that the mechanism operates at less than a thousandth of its potential?"

 

 "I didn't," Mildred said calmly. "You know what I think?"

 

 Tricks shook her head.

 

 "I think you're mistaking me for someone who gives a fuck," Mildred said calmly. "Now, you can have your damn fool mechanism, and you and Murphy can do what the hell you want. But I'm going to disconnect Doc and get the hell out." She stopped speaking and leaned over the old man.

 

 "Don't touch him," Tricks yelled, an edge of hysteria creeping into her voice. "You just don't get it. The Moebius cannot operate unless it has six linked minds. He's the only match we could find, and it was only divine interventions that brought him to us at the right time. You can't disconnect him. I won't let you."

 

 Mildred moved to cover Doc with her body and hoped that the scientist was ignorant of firearms. "Lady, that isn't a military-issue blaster you've got there. I'd guess it's been in your line since before skydark, and I'd also guess that you've never used it. You do know that if you fire at me now, the bullet will go right through and into Doc?"

 

 "You're lying," Tricks snapped, her voice betraying her real indecision.

 

 "Your choice," Mildred told her, feigning distraction as she examined the wires and electrodes attached to Doc. Her mind was racing, and she found it hard to focus on her task, knowing that Tricks might just fire from panic.

 

 It was that panic that saved Mildred. Unsure of what to do, Tricks stepped forward with the wiggle that had driven the males in the redoubt mad with desire. Her intention was to bring the blaster down on Mildred's head as a club. But in order to do that, she had to step into the line of fire from the woman who was covering Mildred.

 

 In her confusion Tricks had forgotten about her. The ville dweller raised her blaster and fired.

 

 Tricks got lucky one time. There was a deafening report that made Mildred wince as the blaster exploded in the ville dweller's hand, separating it from her arm near the elbow. The flash from the explosion seared the skin from her face, enlarging the snuffling hole that should have been a nose, her ragged and matted hair catching fire and forming a halo of flame around her head. Her scream was piercing.

 

 Tricks looked in horror, momentarily forgetting Mildred. It was all the distraction she needed. Spinning, her foot followed through the momentum and caught Tricks on the wrist, knocking the blaster from her hand and cracking the fragile bones in her mutie wrist Tricks's own scream joined in awful harmony with the ville dweller.

 

 As Mildred prepared to follow through with another attack, she heard a shot that sounded like another explosion in the contained space. Tricks's face took on a pained, surprised expression, her perfect mouth forming an O of surprise, her brown eyes bulging from the sockets as her whitecoated torso became a mass of red, her back blossoming red in an outward spray as a load of shot from a homemade blaster ripped through her.

 

 The shot continued across the room, striking the mainframe, which exploded in a fury of sparks and flame.

 

 "Oh, shit," Mildred whispered before turning to the ville dweller who had entered the chamber on hearing his companion's blaster explode. He was looking at the mewling, burned frame of his dead compatriot.

 

 "Thanks for that," Mildred said tersely, "but we've just really screwed things. I should've been more alert, and that shot…no, never mind, it was the right thing. Just pray I can get Doc disconnected and us out of here before the damn thing blows."

 

 WALLACE MADE HIS WAY from his office to the armory. There was confusion all around him, scared techs and whitecoats running around aimlessly, not knowing what they were supposed to be doing. There were no orders anymore, and no regs drilled into them that allowed for such a situation.

 

 The Gen waited patiently for the elevator car to reach his level, stepped in and pressed the button for the level he wanted. His mind had completely snapped, and there was only one thing on that mind—the destruction of Murphy. The chaos all around told him that without the regs, there was only confusion. Murphy had trashed those regs, and all that remained was the court-martial and sentence. As commanding officer, Wallace had already run the procedures in his mind, and arrived at the only possible conclusion.

 

 Death. Murphy had to die.

 

 And if it took him, as well, what did that matter? He had failed in his position and wasn't worthy of living. He had let down his country and his forefathers. There was no one to carry on the line. Somehow he'd never got around to it. So why shouldn't it all end with him?

 

 The elevator arrived at the required level. The doors creaked open, and Wallace stepped out. With a disdainful sniff he smelled the cordite and stench of death in the air. He took in the corpses of his own sec men, chilled by the surprise attack of the outsiders.

 

 So much for Murphy's tactics. This was the mark of a good leader?

 

 Even more reason for him to die.

 

 Wallace strode down the corridor, his bulky waddle lessened by the length of strides. If he looked like a man in a hurry, then maybe that was because he had an agenda that made it urgent. If he didn't achieve his objective soon, then he felt as though all reason would snap.

 

 That's if there was any reason left.

 

 The sporadic bursts of blasterfire became louder as he walked through the mayhem. The armory was up ahead. He could see two groups of outsiders clustered around the entrance to the room, covering the corridor that led, at its terminus, to the armory. The entry was protected by a barricade of boxes, stacked to provide cover for the sec force holed up within.

 

 Wallace strode through the outsiders as though they weren't there, ignoring the blasterfire that rang out around him.

 

 "SIR, IT'S THE GEN." Murphy, lurking at the back of the armory, didn't at first realize what was being said. He was engrossed in his task, searching for a gren that would be powerful enough to take out the outsiders but wouldn't endanger his own men or the redoubt. A lifetime of learning about the caverns and fault lines that surrounded the enclave and the redoubt had led him to believe that triggering a large explosion would cause a disturbance that could endanger the stability of the redoubt's structure.

 

 "Sir, the Gen…" The soldier's voice was more insistent. Murphy snapped back from his preoccupation, suddenly aware of what was being said to him. He also noted that the firing had virtually, ceased.

 

 "What did you say, boy?" he asked, turning to look over the barricade. "Holy shit…"

 

 RYAN SIGNALED his force to hold its fire. On the opposite side Jak gestured for his force to also cease fire.

 

 "Who the fuck is that dipshit?" Mac whispered in awed tones, not knowing whether to think Wallace mad or brave to the point of reckless insanity.

 

 "Used to be in charge here," Ryan said tersely. "We were the excuse for him to be deposed by Murphy."

 

 "So what's he doing?"

 

 Ryan shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine."

 

 "Fucked if is," Jak replied grimly.

 

 Krysty saw Wallace remove the gren from his pocket, and she whispered in Ryan's ear, "We've got big trouble, lover."

 

 "You're telling me," the one-eyed warrior replied. "If he lets a gren loose in the armory, we need to be two levels up, or at least get that sec door down," he added, nodding toward the raised door that would close off the route to the armory.

 

 "No, it's worse than that, lover. It's almost as if the Earth Mother herself is screaming a warning to me. When he lets that gren go, we need to be as far away from here as possible."

 

 MURPHY WAS at the front of the barricade, looking over the top as Wallace approached.

 

 "What's that crazy…?" he whispered to himself before raising his voice. "Gen, what do you want?"

 

 "Even the score, Sarj. You have been tried under Reg 17B, Subsection A. You're guilty as hell, boy."

 

 "Shit, what are you talking about? What trial? There is no trial. I'm in command here."

 

 Wallace laughed, loud and harsh. "Command? You call this command, boy? Look at you—holed up with nowhere to run. You've lost, boy. Face it."

 

 "Bullshit. I've got the arms right here to win."

 

 "All you've got is your own sad chilling, boy," Wallace said coldly.

 

 Murphy saw the Gen hand out a gren, saw him pull the pin and lob the gren over the barricade so that it landed in the center of the room. He watched as the Gen turned and punched in the code on the sec door that made it start to close with a creak and a moan.

 

 "You bastard, you fucker," Murphy yelled, realizing that it was too late for him to scoop up the gren and throw it through the rapidly lessening gap where the sec door was closing. He raised his blue Beretta and drilled three holes in Wallace's back, throwing the Gen against the wall.

 

 Wallace turned as he slumped to the corridor floor. His eyes were fogged with the approach of death, but he still managed to force a grin and a small chuckle from his throat. His voice bubbled as the blood rose in his throat, the words little more than a whisper.

 

 "Never could get it right, Murphy. Not as smart as you thought, boy…not born to lead…"

 

 Murphy heard the words with an awful clarity as he turned to watch the gren.

 

 There was a flash as the gren exploded, milliseconds later triggering the waiting boxes of grens.

 

 Murphy was already dead by the time the sound of the explosions rippled through the crumbling corridor, a fraction of a second later.

 

 MILDRED HEARD the explosions as she attempted to remove the first electrode from a shaved portion of Doc's skull. It seemed to be held only with tape, but she was wary lest it be attached in some other way beneath. She heard the explosions as one—a dull whump that made everything in the room shake.

 

 Mildred braced herself against the couch on which Doc lay, seemingly comatose. She swore to herself, shook her head to clear it, then proceeded to strip off the tape. The electrode underneath wasn't attached directly to the brain through a trepanned hole in the skull, as she could see on the others in the room, but it did seem to have some kind of hook that bit into Doc's scalp.

 

 "Sorry if this hurts, you old buzzard," she murmured, "but your hide is so damn thick that I seriously doubt it."

 

 Gritting her teeth, she pulled the electrode free, prying the hook from the scalp. It seemed to be nothing more than a securing mechanism, coming free with just a slight twist, a trickle of blood marking the spot where it had been attached.

 

 Doc twitched.

 

 "WE ARE BEING DIVIDED. Another leaving so soon?"

 

 The mass of men who comprised the rat king stood in the comp room, watching Mildred detach Doc. The mainframe was still sparking, small fires flaring and dying as the transistor circuits on the motherboard burned out piece by piece.

 

 "We are all leaving," Doc replied. He was able to walk away from them, to stand apart. He no longer had the need to mask his thoughts. "By the Three Kennedys, that feels good," he said aloud. "For all that I had thought about it, I do not think I would ever truly appreciated the joys of individuality before now."

 

 "We can no longer read your thoughts, as you are moving away from us," said the Air Force general, stepping forward. "What do you mean, we are all leaving?"

 

 "Look at yourself," Doc answered. "You are speaking on your own, and you have moved away from the block. Just as you were when I was first joined to you. Face the facts. Without a full complement, you are separating of your own accord. Look how your imaging has focused on things as they really are. This the first time you have not been through a simulation or a model. Look at the computer." Doc pointed a bony finger at the gently smoldering mainframe. "If that ceases operation, then nature will take the course denied it for so long, and you will die. As you should. If you stop and think about it, it should be a blessed relief to you."

 

 The Air Force general frowned. "But if we die, then the mechanism dies. And if the mechanism dies, then those who are dependent upon us will also die."

 

 Doc craned forward, his body language registering the bewilderment he suddenly felt. "Those who are dependent?"

 

 "Of course. Do we not spend our time in futility, using a fraction of our capability to keep the life-support systems of the redoubt in working order?"

 

 "Oh, mercy me, has the good Dr. Wyeth thought of this?" Doc blurted, realizing what it could mean.

 

 MILDRED HAD REMOVED almost all the electrodes and was keeping half an eye on the tubes feeding Doc and cleaning his blood, wondering which she should disconnect first, when he started to writhe and moan on the couch, seemingly desperate to fight his way back to consciousness.

 

 "It's okay, Doc. Don't rush it, you old coot—more haste, less speed, as they always used to say."

 

 Doc's eyes opened, staring and unfocused, but still alert. "Haste and speed are of the essence, my dear Doctor," he croaked unexpectedly.

 

 "Calm down, you old buzzard," Mildred said softly, trying to hide the relief in her voice that he was still alive. The tubes seemed to detach easily enough, and Mildred silently thanked the recently chilled Tricks for her efficiency.

 

 "I fear you do not understand," Doc continued hoarsely. "The mainframe is dying…By leaving the others I am killing them."

 

 Mildred paused, looking at the desiccated, barely living zombielike corpses on the other couches. What had Doc been through when he was linked to that machine?

 

 "They belong dead," she said shortly.

 

 "Perhaps." Doc managed the ghost of a smile. "But they control the redoubt. When they die, it dies."

 

 "Shit," Mildred said softly, "including the mat-trans."

 

 "Exactly," Doc said with a weak nod.

 

 It was then that the first tremor began to rock the redoubt, making the couches move on their mountings, screws and bolts protesting as the floor heaved beneath their solid grip.

 

 Mildred looked up. "Oh, yeah, this is all we need."

 

 "FIREBLAST! The stupe bastard! Get down!"

 

 Ryan roared across the corridor, pushing to the ground as many people in his party as he could lay hands on, exhorting Jak to do the same, and barely believing what he had just seen.

 

 The sec door groaned into place and was dented almost immediately by the force of the explosion. The displacement of air was at such a force and speed that it bent the metal, testing its strength to the utmost.

 

 "Dark night, what was that?" the Armorer asked, arriving on the scene scant moments after the initial blast and skidding to a halt beside Ryan, who was getting to his feet.

 

 "That triple-stupe madman Wallace just blew himself and Murphy out of existence, taking the armory with them," Krysty said, her voice hushed by the immensity of the action.

 

 J.B. pushed back his fedora, ran his hand over his face and fixed Ryan with a worried look. "That's bad news," he said quietly.

 

 Krysty frowned, noticing the unspoken agreement between the two old friends. She, too, felt the sense of impending danger, but for the moment the link between the feeling and hard reality was evading her.

 

 It was Mac who voiced the question. "Friends, I might sound stupe, but why is it bad news? With Murphy and Wallace chilled, there's no one left to lead, and we can mop them up. Right?"

 

 "Wrong," J.B. answered flatly. "First thing, an explosion in the armory is bad—spectacularly bad. Mebbe there's nerve-gas grens, all sorts of shit in there."

 

 "But the door's closed, it's sealed," Mac interjected.

 

 "The air-conditioning system," Ryan said simply.

 

 "Right," the Armorer continued. "If that's still working in there, and there's no reason to think it isn't, then the gas released will spread through the entire redoubt."

 

 "How long that take?" Jak questioned. He and the other assault party had made their way across to join the others. Abner was looking particularly worried. Mac knew that the old man always looked that way when he didn't understand what was going on.

 

 "Depends on how much the system was damaged in there, and how much gas, if any, was in the armory."

 

 "So there might not be any?" Abner said, his voice tinged with relief.

 

 "We can't guarantee either way," J.B. stated. "You can close off parts of the system if you can get to the right control panel, but where that is… Anyhow, it's not just the air-conditioning that could be a problem."

 

 Krysty felt the earth shift beneath her feet, even though she knew logically that nothing was happening. It was a chill premonition.

 

 "Earthquake," she whispered. "Of course, the faults that formed the valley. And we're just deep enough for it to probably take effect if such a force started a shift."

 

 "Dark night," J.B. said softly, "Millie and Doc—"

 

 "Found him?" Jak asked sharply. When J.B. nodded, the albino looked at Ryan and said, "Let's find, get the fuck out."

 

 THE FLIGHT to the comp room was bloodless and swift. There was no resistance from the remaining sec men, who were having more trouble fighting off whitecoats and techs who saw the military as responsible for the downfall of their little civilization, and had turned on them, grabbing makeshift weapons and chilled men's blasters to fight back. As was always the way with the community, they were so self-obsessed as to ignore the small party that made its way between them. They didn't have to fire a shot in anger, which was surprising but pleasing, as it enabled them all to conserve ammo.

 

 They were almost on the comp room when the first series of tremors struck. Out in the corridors Ryan and his party stumbled as fissures appeared in the concrete floors, and dust and plaster spilled from the ceilings in a fine mist.

 

 The whole structure of the deeply buried redoubt seemed to move around them, stressed concrete groaning and complaining as the steel within started to buckle. Weaknesses along fault lines began to spread cracks that threatened to separate corridors.

 

 "We've got to get Doc and Millie and get out," J.B. said through gritted teeth, pressing on despite the fear that started to build within him.

 

 Krysty detected that note in his voice. "Me, too," she whispered to him, "but we can fight that. It's just the remnants of the torture."

 

 "I know," gritted the Armorer, worries about his ankle holding up feeding into the remains of the psychological torture they had all received at Tricks's hands. "But what if nerve gas has been released, and that's fueling it?"

 

 "Then we need to stay alert and move it," Krysty replied.

 

 J.B. nodded, wiping dust from his glasses. The comp room and lab were ahead. Almost there…

 

 THE VILLE DWELLER who had been standing guard for Mildred entered the comp room, his eyes wild with panic and fear.

 

 "This place is falling apart. We'll all be trapped," he yelled at her.

 

 Mildred ignored him for a second as she helped Doc to his feet. He looked older, frailer than he had for some time, and it was only his immense power of will that kept him from blacking out. When he was steady, she turned to the ville dweller.

 

 "We'll all get out of here if we stay calm. Otherwise we're finished. Do you understand?"

 

 The tall, muscled man with the pockmarked complexion nodded, for all his years and scarring looking like an innocent and frightened child. Which, in some ways, he was. He had never encountered anything like this before.

 

 "Okay," he breathed, keeping the tremor from his voice, "what do we do now?"

 

 Mildred looked at Doc.

 

 "The mat-trans," Doc croaked in a trembling and tired voice. "The Moebius will shut down soon, and then we will not be able to get out that way."

 

 "What about…?" Mildred asked, indicating the frightened ville dweller.

 

 "True, my good Doctor. We can not leave this poor soul to his fate. If we can locate Ryan and the others, his people should be with them—"

 

 "We're here, Doc," Ryan said as his party reached the comp room. "This place is falling apart, and we need to get out."

 

 "Certainly do," Mildred said quickly, explaining what Doc had told her.

 

 "Shit—we have to move," Ryan spit. "Mac, Abner, we'll lead you back to the wags, then we'll make our own way."

 

 "How will you do that?" Mac asked in bemusement.

 

 "Never mind. It'd take too long to explain. But trust me, we'll be okay. Now let's go. Jak, Dean, you help Doc."

 

 As the albino slipped around to assist Doc, he handed him the LeMat and lion's-head swordstick.

 

 "Where did you get these, lad?" Doc asked with a beatific smile.

 

 "Leave things lying around, someone bound to pick up," the albino said, grinning. "Now quit talking. Let's move."

 

 THE ELEVATORS were still working, but it was a rough ride up to the level where the wags had been left. The elevator shafts were reinforced against such movements of the earth, but the shock waves spread out by the explosion in the armory had started a series of tremors that were threatening to destroy the redoubt.

 

 They reached the wags without incident. Most of the infighting was concentrated on the lower levels. Mac and Abner marshaled their few people into one of the wags, and Ryan hit the outer-door sec code, praying that the door wasn't too warped by the earth shifts to be jammed.

 

 It lifted with an agonized and protesting squeal.

 

 "Are you sure you won't come with us?" Abner asked. "It's not much of a life, but mebbe we could move out with your assistance, settle beyond the valley."

 

 Ryan shook his head. "Thanks, but we always go our own way. Now move before the door comes down on you."

 

 "Can you manage this?" he asked Mac.

 

 The sec man nodded shortly and ground the wag into gear as another tremor shook the floor beneath them, the sec door dropping inches as the concrete frame split.

 

 "Goodbye, friend Ryan," he yelled over the roar of the engine and the moaning of the earth. "It hasn't been fun, but it's been good."

 

 Without looking back, he gunned the wag and drove it out into the enclave, weaving around the rocks and boulders that were tumbling down the sides of the rock walls.

 

 Ryan had already turned away, before the wag had even left the redoubt.

 

 "Let's move. Usual formation, and quick."

 

 They moved to the elevator in single file. There was no one around at that level, but they could never afford to let caution lapse.

 

 The elevator half dropped to the level of the mat-trans, the cable snagging as the car hit the buckling walls. It was time for them all to sweat, except for Doc. He was too wasted and drained by his experience to truly, at that point, take in what was happening.

 

 Ryan and Jak forced the elevator doors back as it reached the level they wanted, the door mechanism opening too slowly for their liking as the earth shook and the walls started to shed shards of concrete and plastic. The metal lining of the air-conditioning shafts had come down through one point in the corridor, and they had to weave around it, stepping over the chilled corpses of sec men, whitecoats and techs.

 

 "Ritual culling," Doc murmured to no one but himself.

 

 Finally, hearts pounding and sweat pouring from them in exertion and fear, they reached the outer chamber of the mat-trans.

 

 Krysty went straight to the comps in the control room.

 

 "Still working, lover," she murmured as she hit the code to start the mat-trans, using the knowledge they had picked up from the few units they had seen that didn't use the door closing as a jump trigger.

 

 They entered the chamber, taking their positions on the floor and preparing for the jump. Jak and Dean helped Doc to a sitting position, then huddled themselves against the wall. Mildred and J.B. sat together, holding hands, blasters close by.

 

 Krysty sat and waited for Ryan as the one-eyed warrior closed the door and spun the wheel. He turned to join Krysty, and was thrown across the chamber as the redoubt screamed in agony, walls beginning to crumble and cave in under the pressure of the shifting earth.

 

 As Ryan hit the floor, the disks began to glow, the air crackling around them with electrostatic discharge, and a white mist rose and formed around them in curling tendrils.

 

 He reached out for Krysty as the nausea rose, and everything began to fade to black. The chamber shook around them, and his last thought was a hope that the jump would be made before the chamber was destroyed by the earthquakes.