Their eyes met across the roof of foliage. Jak signaled ten to Dean, indicating that they should both attack after ten minutes tracking the party. Dean nodded, then was gone. Jak grinned, teeth drawn back in a predatory smile, then returned to his group.

 

 "Well?" Downey asked as Jak came into view. When the albino had explained the position, he added, "Okay, we'll trail them and then go for it. If we take them from behind,it'll buy us that extra few fractions of a second."

 

 "Mebbe more," Ryan added. "The stickies will be too freaked to react that quickly. Good call."

 

 "Thanks for the praise," Downey returned sarcastically.

 

 As they moved off, Krysty noticed Alien casting a quizzical eye over the sec man, obviously bemused by his comment to Ryan a few moments before.

 

 Her hair coiled tight, and she knew it had nothing to do with the current chase.

 

 MILDRED FACED Harvey with anger blazing in her eyes.

 

 "What the hell do you mean, leave it until they've made the first push? They'll be expecting us to go in ten and be backing them up. Why let them take the brunt?"

 

 "Why not?" Harvey replied calmly. "I just say that we wait until the muties've got their attention focused one way, then hit the fuckers from the other way."

 

 "But without them knowing, there's no telling—"

 

 "Listen, bitch," the sec chief snarled, "who the fuck's in charge here?"

 

 J.B. stepped forward and pulled Mildred back. "Not now, Millie," he said, adding in a softer voice when the sec chiefs attention was taken by one of his own men, "Who says we do what the bastard says anyway?"

 

 Mildred grasped the meaning behind the Armorer's words and gave the briefest gesture of agreement. Independently, Doc and Dean had come to the same conclusion.

 

 "We can't let that happen," the youngster whispered to Doc.

 

 The old man cradled his LeMat and said with mock sadness, "Ah, but these old weapons, and indeed the old men using them, can be a trifle erratic at times."

 

 RYAN CHECKED his wrist chron and stole a glance at Alien. The Raw baron was stone-faced, any emotion he may feel about going into a firefight tightly reined in. By his side were Jak and Blake. The small, wizened sec man seemed to grow in stature as he felt the time for battle come near; he was breathing slowly and deeply, his eyes faraway and focused on what was to come.

 

 Looking around, Ryan could see that the rest of the sec men were also readying themselves in their own way.

 

 Beside him, Krysty was hunkered down, her Smith & Wesson blaster clenched in her hand, her fingers coiled around the barrel and through the trigger guard with a deceptive languor.

 

 The flame-haired beauty turned to him. "Not now, but later…then we need to worry," she mouthed.

 

 Ryan nodded, then checked his chron again. It was time. They had been following at a distance, observing the mutie raiding party. Two of the muties had fallen by the wayside already—one of the Sunchildren and a stickie,—chilled by the random blaster shots from the hyped-up muties. Given a long enough approach to Raw, they could probably do a very good job of chilling themselves.

 

 But there wasn't the distance. And now the time was up, and Harvey's men should also be ready. Ryan looked at Downey. The silver-maned sec man caught Ryan's eye and nodded.

 

 "It's time," he said simply, throwing the comment over his shoulder. "Let's go get them."

 

 And it began. Ryan sprang forward, the taut muscles on his thighs and the strong, powerful calf muscles propelling him forward in an explosive burst. He brought J.B.'s M-4000 across his chest, keeping a firm hold as he broke cover. Downey was beside him, moving over the ground as though he were hovering above it, snapping back the Sharps and chambering the first round ready for a mutie.

 

 They broke cover in two waves, spread across a distance of only a few yards. Jak had moved through the ranks from his position beside the baron, the Python .357 in one fist, a leaf-bladed knife in the other. Blake was almost level with him, the small man showing a surprising turn of speed, the slim and elegant lines of his 9 mm Walther PPK seeming huge in his small hand. He trusted Jak totally, there having sprung between them an unspoken bond—the bond of two men who knew their job and were masters of their art.

 

 Among the other sec men breaking cover was Jake, the huge bearlike man who dwarfed the Heckler & Koch he grasped, swinging it around as soon as he broke cover and had sighted the rear of the mutie party. He roared as his finger tightened on the trigger, loosing his anger and adrenaline in one blast.

 

 First chill, however, went to Jak. A stickie at the rear of the party turned and lunged toward the ambush party. Not wasting a shot at this point, Jak's knife flashed through the space between them and connected with the stickie, slicing through the jellylike, pale flesh at the creature's throat and producing streams of thin, watery blood that ran down the creature's neck and chest.

 

 The stickie stopped in midstride, confusion and pain written across its features, the blank eyes and sharp, needlelike teeth identifying it as a mutie even before its mottled, irradiated skin could be properly seen. He tried to scream, but a thin, pained keening was all that emerged, followed by a gurgle as it drowned on its own blood, falling forward as consciousness slipped away.

 

 By the time the stickie hit the carpet of creepers across the forest floor, the majority of the ambush party had passed it and were in the middle of a firefight.

 

 Downey and Ryan were side by side, the sec man snapping off shots from the Sharps that took out confused muties as they attempted to turn to face their attackers without careening into each other. Ryan targeted a densely packed area of mutie flesh with the M-4000 to cause the maximum impact.

 

 "We fighting on our own, Downey?" the one-eyed warrior heard from beside him, interrupted by random burst of fire from an Uzi. It was a familiar sound, but an unfamiliar pattern, and Ryan guessed that it had been a long time since Alien had regularly used a blaster. And if they made it back alive, Harvey may have a few uncomfortable moments.

 

 "That's a good question, Baron," the sec man replied, his tone still laid-back. "I'd sure as shit like to know the answer to that myself."

 

 FROM THEIR COVER, the second ambush party saw Ryan and Downey emerge, saw Jak claim first blood, saw the heaving mass of muties turn to face the sec force.

 

 "It'll be a massacre," breathed one of the sec men. "It must be four-to-one out there."

 

 "Wait," Harvey said softly, a hard edge to his tone.

 

 "No way," the Armorer muttered, readying the Uzi. From the corner of his eye, he saw that Mildred had already sighted one mutie from this range, possibly at the edge of target range, but her practiced eye gauged that it was just close enough for her to get a lethal shot. The Czech-made ZKR was a good blaster, with the high degree of accuracy demanded by its previous life as a competition weapon.

 

 "Go, Millie," the Armorer breathed as his thin and wire-strong limbs shot him forward and out of the undergrowth. He heard Harvey curse at the same moment as the crack of Mildred's blaster resounded in his ears.

 

 J.B. broke cover about fifty yards to the left of the other sec ambush party. He raised the Uzi and cut loose, the 9 mm rounds tearing at the exposed flesh of the Sunchildren and the stickies.

 

 J.B. didn't know if the rest of the sec force had followed him, or if he faced the muties alone on this flank. Perhaps not quite alone. The roar of the ancient LeMat sounded near him, first once and then a second time in quick succession as Doc unleashed ball and shot, dispensing death and agony into another group of muties. The sound was followed swiftly by the crack of Dean's Browning Hi-Power as he picked off the most dangerous of the mutie party from this angle—those who were quick enough to turn and had avoided the rain of death from J.B. and Doc.

 

 The Armorer sensed rather than saw Mildred appear from the foliage, adopting the same technique as Dean. They had the advantage of surprise on their side, which gave them the time to pick their targets as the slow-witted stickies and the confused Sunchildren had to adjust to the fact that they were being attacked from two directions.

 

 More blasterfire rent the air as Harvey, now unable to hold back his men, led the rest of the ambush party into the fray.

 

 Both ambush parties were attacking the muties from closer quarters now, and while handblasters were essential, it would have been madness to use the M-4000 and the LeMat at such close range. The risk of chilling their own forces would have been too great. So Doc produced his swordstick, the silver lion's head grasped tight while the razor-sharp blade carved through the masses.

 

 Ryan unsheathed the panga on his thigh, and used it as though the mass of mutie flesh were just so much foliage that needed chopping out of the way, hacking through limbs and torsos that blurred so much that it was only the bright robes of the Sunchildren and the hideous suckered and splayed fingers of the stickies that told them apart.

 

 On the other side of the rapidly thinning mutie war party, J.B. had his Tekna knife in hand, thrusting with a cold and calculating precision, thinking not of the lives he was taking, but only the ones he was preserving back at Raw.

 

 In the middle of the throng, Jak's white hair whirled around his head Like a whip as, dervishlike, he dealt death in close combat with the leaf-bladed knives, a flick of the wrist carving swathes through the war party, the Python safely holstered to enable him to ply his deadly trade.

 

 Despite their greater numbers, and the fact that they were to some degree armed, the muties were unable to make their numbers count. Those surviving Sunchildren, including Sunchild himself, beat an early retreat, leaving the unarmed stickies to take the brunt of the attack. But not before Sunchild had imparted a chilling message.

 

 The mutie leader had been considered a congenital idiot, and perhaps he was: but not so much that he couldn't sidle up to Alien in battle. Before the baron had a chance to chill him, he hissed, "Big chill come your way soon." And even as Alien leveled his blaster, the mutie leader was gone.

 

 Ryan was close enough to hear, and wondered what the mutie meant by his statement. But that was for later. Now there was chill or be chilled.

 

 The battle was over as soon as it had begun.

 

 "Leave them," Alien roared as a few of the sec men turned to pursue the straggling stickies who were able to make their escape. "There has been enough slaughter. Let's collect ourselves and return home. They won't come back in a hurry."

 

 Ryan gave the baron a quizzical look. Would he mention the mutie's threat to Harvey later, when they had privacy?

 

 Even as the baron spoke, Mildred began the task of attending to the wounded. There were two sec men with blaster wounds, four who had knife wounds of varying degrees, one of who would need to be carried home, and twelve minor bite-and-scratch lesions. Blake was one of these, with two scratches on his face and a bite out of his left arm. Jak also had scratches on his face and on his neck, the red weals standing out ugly on his white skin.

 

 "Hey, Jak, think those'll turn us into stickies?" the sec man joked.

 

 "Chill me if fingers start to suck," the albino returned good humoredly. He admired the way the sec man fought, and felt a rare trust to have the wizened warrior at his back.

 

 Alien took one end of the improvised stretcher holding the seriously wounded sec man. "Come, let's return," he said simply.

 

 Ryan, admiring the way the baron automatically took the load, grabbed the other end of the stretcher and followed Alien as he led the way back.

 

 The one-eyed warrior pondered Sunchild's warning, and also the dark glances Harvey received from J.B. and Mildred. Things were perhaps coming to a crossroads.

 

  

 

 Chapter Eleven

 

  

 

 There were celebrations in Raw when Alien returned with his sec force. Celebrations that were obviously muted for the baron by the injury to one of his men. While the majority of the ville celebrated in the central hall with the help of their local brew and a band of musicians whose sobriety and ability to keep in tune was severely called into question by the end of the proceedings, the baron was at one point noticeable by his absence.

 

 The reserve that the majority of the inhabitants of Raw had held for Ryan and his people evaporated on the strength of their performance during the firefight with the mutie raiding party. Blake in particular, his arm around Jak partly from comradeship and partly from the need to hold himself upright, was vociferous in retelling the events of the day.

 

 There was no mention of the fact that Harvey had attempted to hold his men back from the attack, although J.B. did notice that Downey and Rankine, after an intense discussion, had thrown a few askance glances in the direction of the sec chief. It was something worth noting for later, something he would discuss with Ryan. That was, if he could find his friend and leader.

 

 Ryan had slipped away from the celebration. He had noticed Alien exchange a few words with Jenna, who had nodded dismissively, before the baron had unobtrusively left the proceedings.

 

 The one-eyed warrior was curious: why would a victorious baron wish to leave a celebration that was basically in his honor? Following him to find out would leave Ryan open to trouble if he was caught, and the baron had slipped away for some reason that was dangerous to himself and his companions. But if it wasn't, then Ryan was sure he could talk his way out of trouble. Ryan had more to his armory than his fighting skills.

 

 The baron moved through the near deserted corridors of the subterranean ville, his ceremonial cloak of faded, wine-stained damask billowing behind him, his hair moving in rhythm with the heavy tread of his bulky frame. Only those citizens with vital tasks to perform weren't in the main hall, and the baron greeted them cordially as he passed. They returned his greeting, then quizzically viewed Ryan as he followed a few yards behind. He made no attempt to conceal himself, as that would only have been ridiculous given the geography of the ville.

 

 After five minutes' striding through the maze that was Raw, the baron came to a halt in front of a unit that had a ragged curtain across its entrance. With a delicacy and care that surprised Ryan, Alien lifted the curtain and looked in. Ryan heard him whisper "Good time to see him?" and wait for a mumbled reply before stepping in.

 

 As he did, he turned to the one-eyed warrior. "You may come, as well, if you wish, Ryan Cawdor."

 

 Ryan, feeling like he did when Baron Titus of Front Royal—his father—had caught him at mischief when a child, followed Alien into the sparse unit.

 

 It was obviously a medical-care center, equipped as best as possible, and scrubbed clean, possibly by the woman who tended to the wounded sec man. He was unconscious, but seemed peaceful. Alien asked a few questions of the pale, haggard woman who tended him, listening intently to her answers before wishing her well and leaving, beckoning Ryan to follow.

 

 Outside, Ryan felt an absurd need to explain himself.

 

 "I wondered what you were doing, if there was anything wrong—"

 

 "And besides which, it doesn't hurt any to keep an eye on a baron in a strange ville when he wanders off in the middle of celebration." He waved silence as Ryan attempted to speak. "No, save your words. I would do exactly the same in a strange ville. You have your people to worry about, just as I have. I like you, Ryan. Most barons—and that is what you are in your own way—are concerned only with their own power, not with using that which they have. I know my ways may seem strange after all you have seen, especially if the stories traders bring with them about other villes and other barons are true. But I feel that you will understand me."

 

 The one-eyed man assented. "Mebbe I do. What you were taught you believe, and you try to live right by it. A man can do no more than try to live right by his code."

 

 The baron smiled, almost to himself. "A rare thing, to find two such as us together. Not a boast, but a sad reflection, I think." He looked back over his shoulder. "That young lad hasn't been under Harvey's charge for long, and it's doubly hard for his mother as she is one of our medics. Her own son… It's right to celebrate defending our way of life, though." He clapped Ryan on the shoulder, almost to bring himself out of his reverie by a forced goodwill. "Come, let us return."

 

 THE CELEBRATIONS continued for some time, with almost the entire ville drinking themselves into a stupor. For the companions, it was difficult to stay sober. The ville's own brew was a sweet vegetable liquor, with a syrupy texture, and was deceptive in its taste. It was, as Jak noted, far more potent than most brews they had encountered, and after a certain amount induced a mild hallucinogenic euphoria due to fungal spores that had crept in with the vegetable matter.

 

 Despite their best efforts to stay sober, only Dean managed to remain upright by the end of the celebration. He had a reason: the young Cawdor was suspicious not of the baron, but of his wife. Neither did he trust Harvey. Whether this dislike was exclusive, or whether it was because they were allied in some way he didn't know, but one thing was for sure: he would never get a better chance to explore the ville and find out what—if anything—the baron's wife was plotting.

 

 So when Krysty had settled a maternal eye on Dean and warned him against the brew, he was only too happy to play along with her for once, and swear off the alcohol. He carried a small cup with him for most of the evening, to ward off those who wanted in their exuberance to thrust it on him. He tried a sip, but found his abstinence helped by the fact that, to him, it tasted like he imagined sugared horse piss would taste. He feigned intoxication, and with almost everyone around him blissfully drunk, he was able to get away with it easily.

 

 As the celebration died down, the drunken revelers either found their way back to their own living units or just collapsed on the floor, resting happily among the debris. One of those sprawled in this manner was Jak, unconscious and beyond being roused. Dean discovered this with rising dismay, as he had hoped that the albino would take him to the section of the ville where he had discovered the locked room. For some days, Dean had been brooding on this, and was sure it held the answer to whatever questions he was asking.

 

 Now he would have to find it on his own. That was one problem. The other problem—perhaps two—consisted of Harvey and Jenna. Dean had kept a wary eye on both, and had noted that neither seemed to be drinking in any great amount. Both were now absent from the hall, and in the chaos he hadn't seen them leave, so was ignorant of their sobriety.

 

 If they were both alert and going about their business, then that could prove a possible danger to him. But Dean knew in his gut that he would never get a better chance to answer any questions he may have. So it was now or never.

 

 He had been slumped against one wall for some time, feigning drunken stupor and sleep, using it as a shield from those who would try to get him drunk, and as a cover from which to observe his surroundings.

 

 The hall was now quiet, the silence broken only by snoring and sleep-addled mutterings. Carefully, Dean rose to his feet and picked his way over the prone bodies until he was out of the hall and into the maze of tunnels, basements and units carved in the walls that constituted Raw. His playground for now: a playground for a most serious game.

 

 Dean remembered Jak telling him that the room was located on an outer corridor, almost as far as the pipes would run, and that it was in the opposite direction to that in which they entered the ville.

 

 It wasn't much, but it was a start.

 

 Dean walked casually through the central sections of Raw, trying his best to create the impression of someone who was drunk and trying to find his way back to his unit. He had realized that there would be members of the community who had abstained from the celebration because of their duties, and he had no wish to attract their attention to him in any way other than that of being another reveler.

 

 It worked. The few people who saw him as he wandered around the tunnels smiled indulgently and left him to his wandering, thinking him drunk. His staggering gait also enabled him to wander down some passages and then out again without attracting attention to his methods. He wished that Ryan or Krysty were with him, as he felt the need of some kind of backup. He had seen them leave the celebration, as he had seen Mildred and J.B. leave. He guessed that they were snatching a few moments of relaxed peace together, and had no wish to disturb them until—or unless—he found something to justify his suspicions. Even Doc would have been good as backup; but he had seen Doc unconscious on the floor in the same manner as Jak, and so knew there was little hope of reviving him until he had slept off the brew.

 

 All the time he was thinking, he was searching, crossing off corridors in his mind, exploring nooks and crannies to see where they took him. He had plenty of time. A celebration like the previous night's would take a long while to sleep off, leaving him free to explore.

 

 One direction had been closed to him by Jak's words. That left three directions out from the area around the central hall. Three directions, all of which had more than one corridor or passage that led off like spokes from a wheel.

 

 But Dean knew what he was searching for: the metal door that Jak had told them about. That held the key, and that narrowed his search. Still so many corridors and passages, but at least he knew what he was searching for.

 

 His patience and nerve were beginning to wear thin when he finally found it. He shivered as he walked down the deserted corridor, feeling the drop in temperature and also feeling that his search was nearly over.

 

 The lamps were still lit, not having been doused because of the celebration, the lame lamplighter now lying drunk in the main hall. But although still alight, the oil was nearly used, and the lighting was dim, some of the lamps along the corridor guttering and casting a moving shadow across the wall. Dean found the corridor as eerie as Jak had done before, an atmosphere chilling the air more than the cooling pipes. The fact that, as he turned the final corner, he could see that there was no place to hide made the corridor even chillier for the young Cawdor.

 

 Dean lost the drunken gait, his footfalls now kept as quiet as possible and his posture changing. He walked now on the balls of his feet, his balance thrown slightly forward, springing on each step. He quieted his breathing until he could almost hear the blood flowing in his veins.

 

 The metal door ahead loomed large in his vision. Dean looked over his shoulder, and paused midstride. There was no sound behind him, and he could see nothing. He looked ahead at the patchwork metal door and took a deep breath.

 

 Stepping up to it, Dean reached out a hand, fingertips extended. His fingers touched the cold metal, pushing gently.

 

 He didn't expect the door to yield, but to his surprise it swung open on well-oiled hinges, belying its looks.

 

 The room inside was well lit. And empty. The door swung right back to the wall, confirming this.

 

 It was all too easy. Dean stood on the threshold, wavering for one moment, and then he was in.

 

 Dean advanced to the middle of the room, keeping alert for any sound or movement other than his own. It was only when he was certain that he was alone in the room that he allowed himself to relax enough to take in his surroundings.

 

 The room was lit by a number of lamps suspended from a beam across the ceiling. They were in a line, laid out to cast their light directly down on a workbench that occupied the center of the room. It was a scientist's bench, with retorts and tubes fashioned from junk. A closed book stood on one corner.

 

 Looking around the room, Dean could see that there was little else inside apart from a table that had not only been scrubbed clean down to the wood grain, but also had leather restraints for ankles and wrists. Just seeing it made Dean shiver with a barely restrained fear. His thoughts turned to the stories of predark whitecoats that Doc had told him.

 

 There were two other doors, one leading off each side of the room. The far wall, opposite the door he had entered, was a blank wall of concrete.

 

 Dean went to the door on the left. It was wood, with a bar lock that worked from his side. Listening up against it, he could hear faint sounds of breathing, sighs of sleep. Carefully, with infinite care lest he cause a sound, Dean removed the bar from its brackets, placed it against the wall, then opened the door. The room was in darkness, broken by a beam of light that streaked across the floor from the open door. Dean stepped into the room and saw that there were five sets of bunk beds. Eight of the ten beds were occupied by small children. Without disturbing them, Dean could see that they all were blond, but not if they were male or female. One thing for sure, though: he was certain that if he could have looked, he would have seen that they all had blue eyes.

 

 Unwilling to awaken them and cause a disturbance that would alert anyone to his presence, Dean crept out of the room, shutting the door carefully and quietly behind him before replacing the bar.

 

 So now for the other door. Dean shook his head to clear it, to focus his mind as he crossed the workroom floor. Why was Jenna producing little blond children? For he was sure that the baron's wife was behind this. Come to that, how was she doing it? He paused by the workbench and examined some of the tubes standing on the pitted and scarred surface. He tentatively sniffed at the chemicals in the tubes, and hurriedly looked away, nose wrinkled and eyes smarting at the tart and acrid fumes.

 

 Dyes of some kind. Dye the children's hair and perhaps injecting dye into their eyes?

 

 He reached the other door. It had a bar lock similar to the opposing door, and as Dean removed the bar he could hear whimpering from within the room. Whimpering from more than one voice, mingled with the low hum of a hard-fuel-driven generator. What it was powering, he couldn't imagine. Neither did he want to imagine what was whimpering.

 

 He would find out soon enough.

 

 Laying the bar up against the wall, Dean carefully opened the door.

 

 The room beyond was well lit by fluorescent tubes powered by the generator. Old tech equipment with digital displays and flashing lights stood against one wall, flanked by the generator. Cables and thinner wires ran from the equipment toward two beds that were against the opposite wall. The whimpering came from the beds.

 

 The two beds stood side by side, old hospital beds with Perspex sides raised above mattress level, obviously rescued from the remains of the city above ground. The Perspex was scored and scarred, which made it difficult for Dean to see what was lying on the beds, whimpering pitifully.

 

 Apprehensive, and feeling the bile of anticipation rise in his throat, Dean advanced toward the beds.

 

 When he was able to see over the Perspex, he wished he hadn't bothered.

 

 How the creatures in the beds had been conceived and birthed he couldn't begin to imagine, but it certainly hadn't been a natural process. They were children, but only just. The heads were too large for the stunted and twisted bodies, with overly large foreheads to which clung wisps of hair. Both had small torsos, with shortened arms and only vestigial fingers. The legs were withered. They looked almost identical, like twins or clones. They were pincushions for a number of tubes that fed liquid into them, then extracted it. They were the results of an ongoing and not particularly successful experiment.

 

 But they were still human beings, and their eyes showed constant pain.

 

 The bile rose in Dean's throat, choking him. He tried not to make any noise as the creatures looked at him with fearful eyes, and yet begged for pity. He couldn't face them any longer.

 

 Dean turned on his heel to leave, but was brought up short by the figure looming in the doorway. Silently, and with an infinite stealth, his pursuer had encroached on the room. Harvey.

 

 The sec chief stood easily, hand on hip, scratching his head. Neither hand was anywhere near the snub-nosed Colt Magnum Carry that was his chosen blaster. This was snug to his hip in its combat holster. "Well, son, looks like you've really blown it this time. You should have been more careful, like your pa. If you ever stumble on something, you don't pry and you don't snoop. That way you might actually get to stay alive."

 

 Dean was aware of his Browning Hi-Power. He could feel its shape and weight. Could he outdraw the sec man? Certainly, his body weight was much more poised and alert, whereas Harvey seemed much too relaxed.

 

 Uncannily, it was as though the sec man could read his thoughts. Without moving a muscle, except to lower the hand that had been scratching his head, Harvey said, "Now, you see you could try and draw, mebbe risk beating me. But if you do, then you've awakened the whole ville, and have to answer why you've chilled the sec chief. And that wouldn't be easy, 'cause my Jenna, well, she can wrap that old fool Alien around her pinkie."

 

 Dean made no move, but neither did he relax. His adrenaline was racing, and time seemed to be moving at half speed as he frantically searched for a way out. His eyes searched past the sec chief to the room beyond. It seemed empty.

 

 "You're right," Dean said simply. "I'd have to be triple stupe to try and chill you. But on the other hand, you'd have to be more than that to chill me. You know there'd be trouble if I went missing."

 

 "You forget that you're on my territory, boy. Your father and his few rad-blasted scum against the whole of Raw? What kind of odds are those?"

 

 "Odds I'll have to take," Dean breathed almost to himself, conserving his energy for his spring forward. He had estimated that one break, like starting a sprint in training at the Brody school, would propel him forward with enough force to catch the sec man in the midriff and push him back. Harvey would land, hopefully winded, on his back. Dean would roll forward from the thrust and be on his feet first, heading for the corridors. His only hope was to head back to his father and his companions. Harvey would then be in a difficult position. He may have to act covertly, which would hamper his ability to do them harm, especially if they were on triple red.

 

 All these thoughts raced through the boy's head in a fraction of a second as he threw himself forward, lowering his head to catch the sec man off guard and in the solar plexus.

 

 Which was exactly what he did. Harvey had instinctively read the movement of Dean's body, and was ready for the attack, but was a fraction of a second slower than the youth in reaction time. A vital fraction of a second as Dean's head caught him beneath the breastbone, driving the air from his lungs with a gulping gasp as the sec chief tried to replace the air almost immediately.

 

 But Dean was already in a forward roll, his legs cutting through the air, using the prone Harvey as a cushion against his impact on the hard floor.

 

 The young Cawdor sprang to his feet, almost stumbling as his ankle twisted on the uneven floor, but managing to stay erect with only a sharp knife of pain, too brief to stop him, to mark the stumble.

 

 He had made two steps to the door, leaving a floundering sec chief twisting on the floor, cursing and trying to pull his Colt from where the holster had slipped on his belt, almost underneath him, when he was brought up short by a wave of paralyzing fear.

 

 Dean had seen rabbits before they were chilled, frozen in a sudden burst of light. He had seen a mutie fox, so terrified at being cornered that its muscles were almost frozen in rigor before its chilling; but he had never experienced such a crippling fear—nor did he think it was possible for a human being.

 

 But now he knew differently. Try as he might, he was unable to move a muscle voluntarily. They trembled and quivered in his legs as though they would, at any moment, dissolve to liquid. Although he could hear the cursing sec chief struggle to his feet, although he could hear him free his blaster, still Dean Cawdor was frozen, unable to move from his absurd position of being midrun.

 

 And it wasn't just his being frozen; it was the fear itself. He had been scared before—terrified, even. His father always told him that fear could be a positive thing in a dangerous situation. It would help you clarify and make priorities when things were tough. But this was a different kind of fear. This was a blind, all-encompassing terror that made it impossible for Dean's mind to focus on one thing, flitting as it did from moment to moment between abject terror at dying, fear of torture, and even a ridiculous scaredness at wetting himself in his terror, feeling the urine flow down his leg.

 

 "Well, I'll be fucked by a mutie leper!" Harvey exclaimed. "The little fucker can't even move—and he's pissed himself. I've got to hand it to you, babe…"

 

 Dean was confused. Who was Harvey talking to? And then she entered the room. Although Dean couldn't conquer the fear, or think clearly through it, a part of his brain suddenly realized why he was so scared.

 

 It was Jenna. The baron's mutie wife stepped through the outer door. She had obviously been waiting for Harvey to clean up the situation, but since he had failed she had decided to step in herself. Both Jak and Krysty had mentioned her obvious feelie ability, and now Dean was aware of how strong it could be when she chose to exercise the faculty.

 

 Her sharp, pointed face was clouded with anger as she stood in front of the boy. The raven eyes glittered with nothing so much as childish petulance, and the dark curtains of hair that hung down over her shoulders only accentuated those eyes…the eyes that bore into him.

 

 Dean's fear grew to the point where he wanted to gibber and moan with fright, even though some still rational part of his brain frantically tried to scream to him that it was all manipulation.

 

 Jenna's face, which could, if not clouded by her twisted nature, have been beautiful, contorted with hate as she spat into Dean's face. Her acrid spittle stung his eyes, but he was unable to blink, his vision blurred by the liquid.

 

 "Harv, you're a fuckwit," she said in a quavering voice. "You can't even get the better of a whelp like this. You know I hate using the taint in my soul unless I have to, so why make me have to?"

 

 "Kid took me by surprise," Harvey muttered in return.

 

 "Yeah, right," she said, sneering. "Nothing to do with you getting old and useless." Harvey, now in front and facing Dean, tried to slip an arm around Jenna's waist. "That's not what you say when—"

 

 "No, not now," she screeched, shrugging him off violently. "You moron, you always were led totally by your dick."

 

 Harvey's face hardened, but he said nothing. Dean figured that he would be the one to pay for the sec chiefs humiliation, and knowing this didn't help the fear that was still flowing through him.

 

 Jenna stepped back from them both and crossed her arms, looking askance at the young Cawdor.

 

 "You're obviously a bright boy, like your father. And you'll grow to be as handsome as him… No, you won't, because you won't live that long. Shame. Mebbe I should take your father instead of old Harv here," she said mockingly.

 

 Harvey was stone-faced, his attention fixed on Dean.

 

 Jenna continued. "I suppose you feel disgusted by what you've seen here. And I'll grant that my experiments have not been that successful as yet. But progress takes time, and that fireblasted war came far too soon. You see, boy, one of the little projects the Illuminated Ones were working on was the creation of the perfect human being. It wasn't a widely known project, even within the group. Everyone has their secrets. But my father worked long and hard on it, trying to rebuild what his father had started, and what had been smashed when they left the redoubt and came into the open. Oh, yes, there were many little wars within the group, some of which even Alien knows nothing…despite what the fool thinks."

 

 "You sure you should tell him this?" Harvey asked, still stone-faced, his eyes fixed on Dean.

 

 Jenna shrugged. "He's going nowhere. Anyway, I want him to see that this has an aim, a point." Her eyes began to shine. "Some of the Illuminated Ones were against the idea of the perfect human being, but those with vision could see it was the only way forward. A way that became more of an imperative when skydark happened. How else are we ever going to rebuild? It's too late for me, cursed as I am by these mutie traits. But for others? Those children are the future. They may not be perfect yet, but they tell me much for the next time around. And when I have reclaimed that lost knowledge, then…"

 

 She trailed off, lost in thought. Dean struggled to assert his will over his own body, hoping that her reverie would cause to weaken—if only for a moment—her grip on his mind.

 

 He was right. It took an immense effort on his part, but he managed to move his limbs, could feel the strength start to flow back into his muscles. He made as if to move forward.

 

 But he was too sluggish, still too much in thrall to Jenna. He was far too slow. Harvey stepped forward and punched Dean, using the time the boy's sluggish movements allowed him to draw back his arm and put all his weight behind the blow, knowing that Dean wouldn't be able to move his protesting body quickly enough to protect himself from the blow.

 

 Dean saw it coming toward him, but was unable to get out of the way. The fist hit him like a jackhammer in the face. He felt the blow as if in slow motion, blood filling his mouth as one tooth loosened and others bit into the flesh of his cheek. The bone of his jaw groaned and grated in protest, perhaps at breaking point.

 

 He was aware of the evil smile on Harvey's face as consciousness slipped away from him.

 

 RYAN WAS AWARE of the jackhammer pounding in his brain as he slowly slipped back into consciousness. He slowly lifted his head, which felt as though it had little connection with the rest of his body. Looking around the sleeping unit, he saw that he and Krysty were alone.

 

 The flame-haired beauty was wrapped around him, her body heavy with sleep. As the one-eyed man slipped from beneath her, he remembered with a smile the way they had made love, long and passionate, savoring the opportunity to take a few moments of peace and use it in that manner, knowing that they could—just for the moment—let down their guard on the outside world and be totally wrapped in each other.

 

 But before that? The celebration was little more than a set of random images, each distorted by that fearsome brew and its incredible strength. As Ryan planted his feet on the ground and felt the impact travel up each calf, he wondered how the others felt as they awoke.

 

 JAK HAD AN aching head, but the will to dismiss it. Too long had he spent hunting and living in hostile territories to let a hangover get to him. He smiled as he spotted Doc, attempting to rise among a heap of bodies. Considering that the surrounding ville dwellers were used to the brew and mostly much younger than Doc, it was a measure of the old man's constitution and wiry strength that he was conscious before the majority of them.

 

 The albino stepped over the bodies and assisted Doc to his feet.

 

 "My thanks, Jak," Doc said, wincing at the apparent loudness of his own voice in his aching head, "I fear that I—in common with most—imbibed far too much last night."

 

 "Not much celebrate in this place," Jak commented. "Why not enjoy?" he added.

 

 "True, true…but there was something troubling me last night. Something I felt I had to speak to Ryan upon… But I cannot for the life of me remember. Where are the others?" Jak shrugged. "Too busy to notice."

 

 "A fair point." Doc grinned. "I have not been that drunk since New Year's in Vermont. For one wild, intoxicated moment I could almost have been back there…" His eyes misted over as he recalled his beloved Emily, and his children, Rachel and Jolyon, long since dead and buried even before skydark.

 

 Jak took the old man's arm. "We find them," he said.

 

 Doc looked confused for a moment. "What? Why, yes. It was just that I could almost see them, before that hard rain began to fall and— Wait!" He gripped Jak's arm so hard that the albino felt Doc's bony fingers bite into the muscle. "The hard rain—Sunchild. That's what I wanted to remember. Something I saw at Samtvogel. They have more than just blasters, and now that they have been routed, let us pray that he does not know how to use it, or that it isn't operative."

 

 Jak frowned and took Doc's chin in his free hand so that he could focus his red eyes directly into Doc's.

 

 "What worry you?"

 

 Doc seemed to struggle for the words. "Hard rain…like the cursed whitecoats and their appalling methods of destruction. It must have come from the redoubt or a silo nearby. Thank whatever God is left that they didn't somehow detonate it then."

 

 "Doc!" Jak barked, snapping the old man back to attention. "What it?"

 

 Doc's voice was reduced to a whisper. "A nuke, my friend. They have, in the middle of their ville, a nuke. The very thing that created them. A splendid irony, is it not?"

 

 WHEN DEAN REGAINED consciousness, he felt no pain from the blow that had rendered him unconscious. He felt no headache, nor any of the pain and nausea from concussion or waking from unconsciousness. In fact, he felt as though he were adrift on a sea of wool, muzzy but completely happy. He felt drugged.

 

 He slowly realized that had to be the case, as he became aware of the fact that his wrists and ankles were secured and that he was lying on the table in the middle of the room.

 

 Turning his head, he saw Jenna. There was no sign of the sec chief. Dean smiled stupidly at her, unable to do anything else.

 

 Jenna returned his smile, but with a sinister edge. "As you may have guessed, young Cawdor, you've been sedated to keep you quiet and make you more malleable. You'll make an interesting experiment. I've never had a subject as young or as fit as you, nor one from outside this gene pool. I hope you're not hiding any mutie traits, or that the redheaded mutie bitch isn't your mother. Unfortunately, it's not easy to synthesize the drugs that were used on previous experiments, not with what I have available at the moment. But I do my best. I think you'll find the chemicals I'll be using on you will perhaps hurt more than they should, which is why I've put you under such a heavy dose. We'll begin tonight, after I've appeased my idiot husband for disappearing from his stupe celebration last night. Until then, rest well, my little one."

 

 She came over to him and kissed him gently on the lips before turning to go.

 

 Dean smiled stupidly, although every fiber of his being screamed silently, unable to find release through the drugged haze.

 

 He was still smiling when she locked the door, imprisoning him until his ordeal would begin.

 

  

 

 Chapter Twelve

 

  

 

 "Ryan, my dear boy. The teeth of the hell-monster are forever housed in slavering jaws that await nothing more than our perennial destruction. We are forever condemned by our past to not only repeat its mistakes but to enlarge upon them, increase them in volume to a deafening roar that cuts across the world—such as it now is—in a wave of increasing fear and loathing, even in Las Vegas, that will—"

 

 "Doc!" Ryan roared, taking hold of the shaking, rambling man and holding him still, trying to penetrate his wild-eyed gaze with the steely glare of his good eye. It was no use. Doc's head was rolling wildly from side to side as the old man was gripped in a convulsive anxiety attack.

 

 He had burst into the sleeping unit a scant few seconds before, disturbing the peace. Krysty had joined Ryan in the land of the waking, and like him was suffering from the results of the potent ville brew. It was unlike any white lightning or spirit they had encountered across the Deathlands, and for the first time in what passed at this moment for a memory, she had a hangover, her head thumping and the lights seeming too bright.

 

 She and Ryan had conversed in muted, hushed tones, trying not to trigger each other's headaches. They both recalled similar segments of the previous night, and there was enough time for a moment of fond remembrance—a time that was in short enough supply.

 

 Their muted reverie had been broken by the return of J.B. and Mildred. They had found an empty unit for themselves, wanting their own privacy as much as granting Ryan and Krysty theirs, but in contrast, both seemed to be suffering no ill effects from the spirit.

 

 "Simple," Mildred said when Krysty asked her. "Just a lot of water and some juice. It may be mutie fruit, but it has something resembling vitamin C in it."

 

 Krysty remembered back in Harmony, when Uncle Tyas McCann had taught them something similar. But it had taken Mildred's predark medical-trained and methodical mind to remember this, even in the midst of such a celebration.

 

 "So do we go on or do we stay?" J.B. asked eventually, polishing the minisextant he carried with him.

 

 Ryan was aware that the Armorer's producing the instrument as he posed the question was by way of a hint, and not a very subtle one. But then, J.B. was a straightforward man, not given to subtlety…unless it was in the line of a booby trap.

 

 "I think we should go, move on. These aren't the Illuminated Ones. Yesterday's firefight would have been a lot easier if they had been. These people have little old tech remnants, and even though that doomie wife of Alien's gives me the creeps as much as all of you, I think Alien's on the level. He's a good man, doing his best to live by the code they set up here. There's no great stockpile, no Erewhon here." J.B. nodded agreement. "Harvey's a coldheart who doesn't like us around. I don't like the idea of wasting time and ammo on an unnecessary firefight. That's triple stupe, but that's what it'll come to if we stay." Mildred agreed, and was about to tell Ryan and Krysty of Harvey's willingness to leave them to fight alone the day before, when she was interrupted by the sudden appearance of Doc, bursting in wild-eyed and anxious.

 

 And now, after he had blurted out his half story, Mildred was helping him to one of the beds. He was breathing fast and heavy, sweat spangling his forehead and sticking strands of snow-white hair to his skull. His head turned wildly from side to side as he lay, the whites of his eyes all that showed as his eyes rolled in their sockets.

 

 "Shit, the old fool's really got himself worked up about something," Mildred stated. "I need some kind of sedative to calm him. His heart will burst, the way his blood pressure's going."

 

 Ryan crouched beside them. "No. He was trying to tell us something important. The last thing we need is him out of his head on something."

 

 "Ryan, I'm not disagreeing with you," Mildred said through gritted teeth, "but unless we get him calmed down, we'll never find out what the old fool means."

 

 The one-eyed warrior nodded. "I know where the medic is in this ville. I'll take you."

 

 Mildred rose to her feet, turning to Krysty. "Keep an eye on him," she said with a trace of worry in her voice. "It'd be just like the crazy buzzard to buy the farm before telling us something important."

 

 JAK KNEW exactly where he was headed. He had listened to Doc's story, and although finding it hard to fully understand the rambling tale, he could grasp enough through the old man's excitement to realize that it was vitally important that Ryan know of it. So he sent Doc back to the unit to tell his tale, while the albino took it upon himself to find Dean.

 

 As with many things, Jak would have found it impossible to explain why he knew Dean wouldn't be with the others. But something was telling him that Dean had gotten himself into big time trouble. He knew that his little exploration of a few days before had whetted the boy's appetite for the ville, and for nosing out his suspicions of Jenna and her activities. In a way, Jak wished he hadn't mentioned the metal door at the end of the isolated corridor.

 

 Sure, the albino had gotten drunk the night before, completely insensible. But not before some alarm bell in his brain had registered the fact that he had seen Dean wandering on the periphery of the main hall. The youngster wasn't taking the opportunity to get drunk—in fact, there had been a clearness to his eyes and bearing, even at such a distance, as to suggest he was staying sober for a purpose.

 

 And although Jak hadn't mentioned this to Doc, he had an idea what that purpose may be.

 

 Jak's instincts had imprinted the route to that isolated corridor on his mind, and he had an almost perfect recall. The fact that he still had so much alcohol running through his system failed to slow him.

 

 There were few people about; only those who were going about their daily tasks, those vital to the running of the ville. The other inhabitants were still shaking off the aftereffects of their celebrations. So Jak had few people to delay him, or to ask awkward questions.

 

 But a few could be more than enough. On the way to the corridor he sought, Jak made a few detours— mostly to throw off the suspicion of any who may be observing him, and partly to scout any areas where Dean may have ended up if he had taken a wrong turn. The youngster was good, but not yet that good.

 

 Jak had hoped to find Dean lost, as he worried about the time lag between Dean's disappearance and his search beginning. If the boy had found the door and had gotten beyond, then his not reappearing was a bad sign.

 

 A bad sign that got worse as Jak neared the beginning of the corridor. It led off the last few desultory units, occupied by those who could no longer complete any useful tasks for Raw. They were given food and shelter still, but necessity and the harsh mode of life—even in such a fair and ordered society—meant they were exiled to areas where others didn't wish to live.

 

 From the units, Jak could hear snoring and groaning as the celebrations took their toll on the old and infirm inhabitants. It would be useless to ask them if they had seen Dean. Even if it wouldn't arouse suspicion, it was doubtful whether many of them could remember their own names at this point.

 

 But at least it left the way clear for Jak to move on unobserved…or so he hoped.

 

 As the albino approached the curve of the corridor, a figure stepped from around the curve and into the poor light.

 

 "Hey, Whitey—what y'all doing here, then? Get a little lost or something?"

 

 Jak stopped, his pitted and scarred white face set like marble, giving nothing away.

 

 Harvey stepped forward. His gait was casual, but there was a faint tenseness to his body language, a tightness to his movement that told Jak the sec chief was anxious beneath his seemingly calm demeanor. "Y'all not talking to me? I didn't know you white muties got mute, as well as mutie."

 

 Jak's anger rose like a thick bile from his stomach to his throat. His fingers twitched toward the concealed knives. With an effort of will, he stayed his hand.

 

 Harvey walked slowly around Jak. The tall sec chief towered over the albino, but Jak knew that he was quick and strong enough to take the sec man if he pounced.

 

 If… It would be stupe of Harvey to do this now, not with Jak so close to the metal door.

 

 "Look for Dean. Young, not drunk before."

 

 Harvey laughed. It was forced. "Well, I guess there always has to be a first time. And the kid has gone missing, eh? You won't find him here. I've just been patrolling this sector, and I haven't found him."

 

 "That so?"

 

 Harvey's tone gained a hard, threatening edge. "That's so, Whitey. So if I was you, I'd get back to the old man and tell him his whelp is still lost. Or you could look somewhere else."

 

 "Mebbe do that," Jak said slowly. His eyes blazed as they fixed on the sec chief. Harvey looked away. He knew Jak had seen through him. But Jak didn't have the full story, and the albino knew he would have to be contented with that for now.

 

 He turned, every muscle on triple red in case Harvey should try to attack. With every step he took from the corridor, even as he passed the first of the dwellings, he could feel the sec chiefs eyes burning into his back.

 

 Burning like the slugs Harvey would want to put there from his Magnum Carry blaster.

 

 As Jak passed the first of the dwellings, he knew that their stay in Raw could become very bloody indeed.

 

 DOC LAY SEDATED, whimpering softly while Mildred tended to him. The nurse whose son had been injured the day before left the unit, accepting with a sad grace Ryan's best wishes for her son. The one-eyed warrior could see her sorrow, and after hearing Doc's story had the uneasy feeling that it would only be added to in the short time to come.

 

 While Ryan and Mildred were gone, Doc had gasped out enough garbled detail, in with his ramblings and memories, for Krysty and J.B. to grasp what he had seen in Samtvogel.

 

 When Ryan and Mildred returned, while the nurse and Mildred sedated Doc with an opiate taken from a mutated strain of poppy that was grown above ground, J.B. and Krysty had filled in the few details they had gleaned.

 

 Mildred left Doc and turned to her companions. "You know, it's a shame they couldn't harness some old tech from the redoubt down here. If they had some kind of hydroponics plant, they could grow those damned poppies instead of having to risk going aboveground to collect them. It's the strongest— What's wrong?" she added, changing the subject rapidly when she caught sight of their grim faces.

 

 Ryan explained as briefly as possible. Mildred whistled to herself. "Shit, that really does upset the cart. If there's even the slightest chance that Sunchild knows how to activate that nuke, he may just be pissed enough to do it after yesterday."

 

 "Right," Ryan agreed. "And there's too many good people down here to expose to that danger. And ourselves. Even if we left now, then there's no way we could get out of range quickly if he decides to act soon."

 

 "Only one thing for it, lover. You've got to tell Alien this, and we've got to go in and get it," Krysty said grimly.

 

 J.B. pushed his wire-rimmed spectacles up on the bridge of his nose, a nervous gesture in times of stress. It was the only sign the ice-cold Armorer ever showed.

 

 "Chill a whole ville? Wipe them out with whatever we can find in the armory here? Without knowing, that's a hell of a task."

 

 "We've been in worse than this," Ryan said simply. "I'll go to Alien as soon as we've told Jak and Dean. Fireblast, where the rad-blasted hell are they? Always when you need him, Dean is off somewhere getting himself in shit!"

 

 "Like his father?" Krysty murmured.

 

 Ryan looked at her. "Guess so… Okay, I'll go and see the baron now. If Dean and Jak should bother to let us know what the fuck they're doing, then tell them—"

 

 But the one-eyed warrior didn't get a chance to voice his thoughts, as Jak burst into the unit.

 

 "Ryan, trouble," he said shortly, gulping breath from his journey. As soon as he was sure he was out of Harvey's view, he'd run back to the unit.

 

 Jak explained what had happened in his search, ending with "So need get Dean out."

 

 "Sec chief behind Jenna, that's gonna mean a whole lot of trouble," J.B. muttered. "Especially if Alien's in on it all."

 

 Ryan shook his head. "I don't think so. Don't ask me why, but I just trust him, and it feels right. What do you think?" he directed at Krysty.

 

 "I'm kind of with you on that, lover," she agreed cautiously, "but Jenna's got me worried. It depends what kind of a hold she has on the baron."

 

 "True. I guess we'll just have to play this one by ear," Ryan mused.

 

 ALIEN WAS in his unit, although being the baron of Raw, the termunit was perhaps inappropriate. It lay at the rear of the main hall, with the entrance behind the long table and the old drapes. Raw being the kind of ville it was, he had no sec guard, and when Ryan cautiously pulled back the drapes he found the baron sprawled across his large bed, covered in the finest linen and velvet that could be found in Raw. The covers were thrown back, revealing the baron's torso, running to middle-aged flab, but still heavily muscled and crossed with scars that attested to his courage in leading his people. His long beard rested on his chest, his long white hair untied and covering his face. He was snoring and wheezing softly. In stark contrast to the white of Alien, Jenna was a dark pool on his skin, her jet-black and flowing hair spreading in tendrils across him, her darker skin smooth and young against him. Ryan found his eyes drawn to her small breasts, her dark nipples erect where they brushed against her husband.

 

 She was awake, her glittering raven eyes catching Ryan's azure blue orb, twinkling at him with a superior smile that made him suddenly look away.

 

 In her triumph, she sent out a psychic wave that made Krysty feel nauseous and ill at ease.

 

 "Well, excuse us…" Mildred spoke to allay the rising gorge within her. She didn't have Krysty's seeing power, but as when she had first seen Jenna, she felt the same wave, albeit in a milder form.

 

 Jenna rose from the bed, making no attempt to cover herself and knowing that her petite and shapely frame was drawing the eyes of the three men present, feeling their gaze run down from her sharp face, to her erect nipples and down to the black nest of her pubis. Knowing that they would want her instinctively, and drawing on that for her own strength.

 

 "Do you make a habit of insulting your hosts?" she asked with an artificial sweetness to her tone.

 

 "There's no insult intended," Ryan said slowly, picking his words and trying to focus. He knew she was deliberately toying with him—with them all— and attempted to overcome that feeling. "We just need to speak to Alien. Urgently."

 

 "But as you can see, he's asleep," Jenna returned.

 

 Alien grunted, showing no signs of being awakened by the disturbance.

 

 "Then mebbe you should wake him," Ryan said carefully, pitching it somewhere between a request and an order.

 

 Jenna's raven eyes gleamed and glittered, flashing a mixture of hatred and lust at the one-eyed warrior. For a moment there was a stalemate. Then, just as suddenly as she had begun, Jenna averted her gaze and shook the slumbering baron.

 

 "Wake up!" she snapped in a tone of voice that suggested she harbored nothing but contempt for him.

 

 Alien awoke with a groan, mumbling and rising on one elbow to stare blearily at the sight before him. He was only half awake, and unsure why there were people in his rooms. His brow furrowed as he recognized the intruders.

 

 "What is the meaning of this, Ryan Cawdor?" he asked.

 

 "We need to talk to you," Ryan replied, holding up both hands, "and there's no need to reach for your blaster."

 

 Alien smiled and withdrew his hand from under the cushions and pillows that covered the far end of the bed. As he had been questioning the one-eyed man, he had slipped that hand—unobtrusively, he hoped— toward the cushions in search of the concealed blaster.

 

 "How did you know I had one there?"

 

 "Even the fairest baron in the most peaceful ville can't take chances against an enemy from within," Ryan replied simply. His eye flickered toward Jenna as he spoke, almost involuntarily. If she noticed, she gave no sign.

 

 "Very well. Then tell me what it is you're wanting," Alien said, now fully awake and alert.

 

 So Ryan began. Doc described what he had seen in Samtvogel, and when Jenna interjected with a query as to how the old man knew so much about predark tech, Doc bluffed his way out of it with a story about finding a stash of old vids in a ville during his travels. She didn't seem convinced, but Mildred hurried the proceedings along with a query to the baron as to whether they could attack Samtvogel with any degree of stealth.

 

 Alien stroked his long beard, twisting it between his fingers in intense concentration. "I'd have to consult Harv to be really sure, but there isn't any safe way of hiding a large sec force along that route. It's too open. But those mutie fucks don't come out of their ville that often, so mebbe if we sent scouting parties ahead…"

 

 "We have to get that nuke," Ryan said urgently. "Sunchild is pissed off, and if he has any idea how to use that thing…"

 

 "I agree," Jenna interjected. "We should get that as soon as possible."

 

 And as she said it, Krysty shuddered, her hair coiling about her neck. The titian-haired woman's seeing traits rose to the fore as Jenna sent out an unconscious wave of pure hate. She wanted that nuke for her own purposes. Krysty knew at that moment that recovering the missile from Samtvogel would be but the beginning of their problem.

 

 While this raced through her mind, Ryan had swiftly moved the subject on to his missing son. It was a difficult matter to broach, as Ryan's people were all firmly of the opinion that Jenna had him secured someplace. But it was up to Ryan to raise the matter without arousing the dark mutie's suspicion.

 

 The one-eyed warrior outlined the barest details of Dean's disappearance, and the baron was suitably sympathetic.

 

 "We'll get Raw searched while we raise a raiding party," he stated. By now he had risen from the bed and was dressing, pulling on the freshly cleaned fatigues that marked him as the baron. Others in the ville had clothes that were patched and darned many times, repaired and faded. But as baron, Alien had the pick of any new stock from a passing trader.

 

 When he finished, he picked up a cupped speaking tube and blew down it. Jak had noticed many small runs of similar tubes during his explorations of the winding underground ville, and had wondered what they were for. That question was now answered. They were a means of quick communication between links vital to Raw's sec.

 

 A whistle from the far end of the speaking tube announced that the sec chief had answered. From where the companions stood, it was difficult to make out what he said, but there was no mistaking Alien's meaning from his loud bellowing. He ordered the sec chief to get his ass over right away, and before he had finished lacing his boots, the sec chief appeared in the doorway.

 

 Jak wasn't the only one to notice that the sec chiefs eyes dwelled lustfully on Jenna's naked form. There was a look in his eye that also suggested a familiarity with her form. For the albino, this added a few things together in his mind.

 

 Alien barked out the situation to the sec chief, beginning with the missile and ending with Dean's disappearance. The sec chiefs next words surprised everyone:

 

 "Perhaps the muties got Cyclops Jr…"

 

 "Dark night!" J.B. whispered to Mildred. "Has the triple stupe got a dose of rad poisoning?"

 

 Ryan stared at the sec chief coldly. "You going to explain what that means?"

 

 Harvey matched Ryan's stare. "Just exactly what I say. Chances of the boy going astray in Raw are next to nothing. Where the hell could he be? I reckon there was a revenge party out for more kids—mebbe some kind of sacrifice to appease their gods or something—and young Cawdor got caught."

 

 Alien looked thoughtful. "You could be right there, Harv," he replied at length. "Sure as shit can't imagine where he could be in here." The baron looked at Ryan. His face was so open that the one-eyed warrior had no doubt he believed the sec chief completely. "Mebbe we should get that party under way and land two prizes."

 

 "And if Dean isn't in Samtvogel?" Mildred pressed.

 

 Alien shrugged. "Then we'll mount a search when we return. Trust me, Ryan Cawdor, there's little harm the boy can come to in Raw."

 

 "I trust you," Ryan said slowly and pointedly. "I trust you completely. That's not the problem."

 

 His eye met Jenna's gaze. She seemed to peer deep into him, and despite himself he felt a stirring in his loins. It took some effort to look away.

 

 THE RAIDING PARTY assembled in the main hall about two hours later by J.B.'s wrist chron. The Armorer had taken more of an interest in these proceedings than in the assembly of the interception force from the previous day. There were a number of problems that presented themselves to any sec chief who wanted a raiding party of sharpness and quality assembled at such a short notice.

 

 To begin with, the Armorer doubted that the previous day's blasters had been stripped and cleaned. One of the first things he had learned during his time with Trader, before Ryan had even joined the infamous party on Trader's War Wag One, was that pre-dark blasters needed regular cleaning and overhauling. When the large stockpiles had first been found, the weapons had been taken from their packing cases, and in some instances were immediately capable of being fired. But for many, the years of being stacked and inactive had led to the grease drying out, the bearings seizing, working parts becoming fixed and dangerous.

 

 Every new blaster that had been acquired by Trader, whether secondhand or fresh from a stockpile, had been stripped, cleaned and greased before being reassembled and tested before being handed out for use in an everyday or combat situation.

 

 And regular stripping and cleaning became even more important in some areas of the Deathlands. The nuke-raddled landscape and tainted air meant that in some areas the blasters were more susceptible to conditions. Blasters though cleaned and greased were prone to corrosion and drying out, conditions that made combat dangerous. Many had bought the farm from a misfiring or exploding blaster. But not many of those had traveled with Trader.

 

 So J.B. was interested to see how the armory at Raw would cope with this, given that the celebrations had begun almost as soon as they arrived back, and many in the newly constituted raiding party had been forcibly turned from their beds and even now were showing signs of still recovering from their drunkenness.

 

 This was no idle curiosity. He knew that his own weapons were in the best condition. He knew that Ryan also kept his weapons that way. As for the others in their party, none would have survived as long as they had without that discipline being second nature. Neither would Ryan allow any to endanger the others by risking a misfire during a combat situation. They could back up one another all the way, but now they were also dependent on the inhabitants of Raw, a ville of which they knew nothing.

 

 Therefore, J.B. resolved to keep an eye on the armory, to spot any weak points and if necessary to step in, to insure his friends' safety as much as that of the Raw dwellers.

 

 When he arrived at the armory, he found that the small group of men and women who acted as Armorers were hard at work. There were five of them, two men and three women. The men were stacking small piles of plas-ex and grens to be distributed, while a selection of handblasters, semiautomatics, machine guns and rifles were neatly laid against the wall, the women working their way through the task of cleaning them with as much rapidity and accuracy as they could muster.

 

 J.B. was pleased to see that everyone seemed to have checked their blasters in for maintenance. He recognized Downey's Sharps rifle, which stood out as it was the only Sharps in the armory. The two shotguns belonging to the dreadlocked twins, Ant and Dee, stood to one side, their appalling condition causing the Armorers to set them aside, perhaps for special treatment, perhaps because of a fear that their dirt and poor condition may spread to the other blasters. He recognized Blake's 9 mm Walther PPK by the nicks on the walnut stock. They formed a starlike pattern that was distinctive and obviously of meaning to the sec man.

 

 On his previous visits, he had been treated distantly but politely, even though his vast knowledge had been recognized.

 

 "Welcome, friend," one of the female Armorers greeted him, looking up briefly from the blaster she was greasing. She was small and rotund, with apple cheeks that should have marked her down as a cook rather than the mechanic she undoubtedly was. "Have you come to aid us in this preparation?"

 

 "If you want," J.B. replied in a laconic tone. "You didn't seem too keen when I came around before."

 

 "Nothing personal," she replied warmly, "just as we like to keep to our own tasks is all. But if you know your business, then we can use you now."

 

 "Be glad to help."

 

 She held up the stripped blaster she was holding. "Just as a matter of interest, what would this be?"

 

 J.B. eyed the blaster before replying. It was a large weapon, of the type used for static positions rather than carrying in combat. Just from that, the Armorer was able to guess part of Harvey's tactic for the raid. But that was for another time. For now… J.B. grinned.

 

 "That's light machine—RPK, drum fed. Supposed to go on a tripod, which I guess you've got stacked somewhere. Shit useless on the run, but okay if you mount it somewhere to provide cover. Course, it's supposed to do 660 rounds in a minute, but it never works that way 'cause the stupe bastards who designed it didn't figure on how hot the barrel would get. You do too much and the mother heats up the ammo in the drum and sets it off. Then you can't stop it firing, no matter what—and you got no control over it."

 

 The fat woman whistled. "You sit your ass down here and start helping, son."

 

 J.B.'s wry grin broke into a smile as he joined her. He felt confident that no matter what the state of the people in the raiding party, the blasters and grens wouldn't let them down.

 

 IN A FEW SHORT HOURS, the party was ready to leave. The previous day's party of twenty sec men had assembled, minus the injured man who was still unconscious in the hospital unit. Alien headed the nineteen, bringing them to twenty. With Ryan's party, minus the missing Dean, they numbered twenty-six.

 

 Added to this were thirty men and women from Raw, all taken from their regular tasks in order to augment the raiding party, and give strength in numbers to the attack on Samtvogel.

 

 "Sure all know what doing?" Jak whispered to Ryan as they assembled in the main hall for a briefing from the baron.

 

 The one-eyed warrior replied softly. "If they match Alien for courage, even if not for fighting skill, then they'll be hard enough to chill. What we've got to think about is the strengths of Samtvogel."

 

 While they exchanged these comments, Krysty was looking around the hall for Jenna. The baron's wife was nowhere to be seen, which wasn't what Krysty would have expected from her on the verge of such a battle. But then again, that completely summed up Jenna's attitude to her husband and to her people.

 

 All the same, the flame-haired woman would have liked to have had Jenna where she could see her for as long as possible, for she was sure that the baron's wife was holding Dean captive, and she wanted Jenna to have as little time as possible with the boy until they were able to find him.

 

 Mildred, too, was unhappy about unfinished business. Standing beside J.B., she murmured, "John, do you think it would be possible for one of us to stay behind and look for Dean?"

 

 The Armorer tried to hide his surprise. "How the fireblasted hell would we work that?"

 

 "I don't know, but if only Jenna and Harvey know what's happened to Dean, they couldn't say much about another one of us going missing without giving themselves away."

 

 "I suppose so," the Armorer muttered in reply, polishing his spectacles before placing them back on the bridge of his tanned and scarred nose. "But with all these people around, you've left it a bit late to just slip away. We're going to have to roll with this."

 

 Meanwhile, Alien was outlining the situation to his people, skimming over the potential destructiveness of the nuke in favor of the advantages of getting it away from the muties. He then had Harvey outline the plan of attack—two scouting parties would go in advance of the main group, in order to prevent any outriding parties from Samtvogel spying the main party and taking advance warning back to the ville. Once at the valley, they would surround and attack as soon as they could get in position, using the RPKs and grens to blow an advance path for the first warriors down the slopes and into the heart of the ville. It all seemed straightforward enough, but relied heavily on surprise and not allowing the Sunchildren time to defend their ville. If Harvey had a contingency, then he was keeping it to himself for now…which, to Ryan's mind, was a bad idea. Any force could only be effective if it had a clear idea of what it was doing.

 

 Then again, it did cross the one-eyed warrior's mind that this would be the perfect opportunity to "accidentally" get rid of Alien if Harvey and Jenna had any notions of ridding themselves of the baron. Finally, Alien mentioned the disappearance of Dean, asking if anyone had seen the boy since the night before. From the muttered conversations, Ryan and his people gathered that few had any clear recollections at all of the previous night, let alone if they had seen a lad they barely knew.

 

 It was unsatisfactory to leave the situation like that, but Ryan and his companions were forced to let the matter rest. At least, for now…

 

  

 

 Chapter Thirteen

 

  

 

 It was daylight aboveground. The forest was lit with a radiant, twilight glow that was as bright as the day would ever be. The humidity was intense, and Doc could almost feel the drops of moisture in the air, causing him to wipe his face every few minutes. Moreover, as he breathed, the air seemed to scald his lungs, making him cough. He could almost see the droplets as a fine, drizzling rain around him.

 

 Mildred had hung back to keep an eye on Doc, wary of how the trek would affect him, hitting such humidity so soon after so much alcohol, lack of rest and the psychological stress he had endured when remembering the nuke. Doc was incredibly strong, but had moments of contrasting fragility that meant he always walked a tightrope, balancing precariously. The last thing Mildred wanted was for Doc to fall off the rope at that moment.

 

 They were in the center of the group that marched through the forest, using the well-worn paths. They had already passed the area where the previous day's firefight had taken place, picking their way over the corpses that were still strewed across the path. The Sunchildren hadn't returned to claim their dead, and the corpses were already bloated and rotting in the heat, swollen with gases that emerged as moans when the dead meat was touched by a passing foot, making the ordinary ville dwellers jump with fright and the hardened sec men laugh. It helped to relieve the tension for the sec men, who in their view had a whole heap of inexperienced chill fodder to nursemaid, as well as attend to their own task.

 

 The sickly sweet smell of death blended with the scents of the flowers, following them for some way down the path. Krysty had noticed how the creepers across the forest floor had already started to entwine around the corpses, preparing to bury them beneath, turning them to a mulch that would fertilize the earth. How long, she wondered with a shudder, before the vines got greedy and started to ensnare the unwary and alive as they passed?

 

 The party was large, and even moving in almost total silence made a considerable sound in the quiet forest. The creeping vines squealed in echoes as the footfalls of the war party crashed down time and again. The undergrowth on both sides of the narrow path was pushed back with a rustle as people passed, then sprang back for the next member of the war party passing to push it back once more, creating a continuous wave of sound.

 

 That made Ryan uneasy. He looked back over his shoulder and caught J.B.'s eye. The Armorer made a small inclination of his head, a minute gesture that communicated his displeasure with the circumstances of their progress. The sounds of the creepers and of the moving undergrowth could mask any sounds made by an ambush party.

 

 Ryan had mentioned that to Alien as they began their journey, but the baron had deferred the matter entirely to his sec chief. Harvey had listened to Ryan's concerns, then dismissed them out of hand. "Those fuckers'll be back in their shitpit still licking their wounds and asking their dumb god what the fuck to do, Cyclops. Trust me—I've been here all my life, and you ain't been here for shit."

 

 There had been an implied threat and put-down in the words that Ryan noted but chose to ignore for now. At one time, his hot blood and temper would have pushed him into a fight with the sec man. But now there was too much at stake for a battle with an uneasy ally. Save that score for later.

 

 So Ryan and his people concurred with Harvey, and joined the vast war party as it tramped through the forest. All the same, Ryan didn't have to tell any of them to be on triple red, just in case Sunchild wasn't as dumb as Harvey supposed. There was no way Ryan could call Sunchild using more stickies than his own people for the retaliatory raid a stupe move. Sunchild may well be an insane mutie, but that wasn't quite the same as being dumb.

 

 The trees and shrubs closed in on them, seeming somehow to loom overhead with a hidden threat as the war party made its way through the forest. The flowers, with their heavy scent, swayed in the ripples of the massed movement, their heads bobbing as though to strike. The moving forest canopy overhead created a disorienting strobing of what little light could penetrate if you looked up too long; yet to look down you could see the creepers moving beneath your feet, bending and twisting under the heavy tramp of rough-shod feet.

 

 The humidity seemed to wrap them in a blanket of damp mist, clinging to the pores of their skin and preventing them from sweating.

 

 "There's too many of us in too small a space," Ryan said softly to Krysty, who was walking at his side. She had left her heavy coat back at the ville, knowing that it would be more of a hindrance than an aid. Her jumpsuit clung to her body, molded to her shape by the damp air and the sweat of exertion. Her titian hair was plastered to her head, the limp tendrils swirling against the skin of her throat and neck.

 

 "Makes the forest heat worse," she agreed. "Trouble is, I can't say I'll be glad when we're out of here, 'cause it just goes from one set of problems to another."

 

 Ryan nodded. "I'm not sure we should do this during the day. It'd be much cooler in the night, and offer us more cover."

 

 "Night by the time we get there—mebbe that's what Harvey's figuring on," Krysty mused. "Mebbe he feels we'll all have cooled down by the time we get there. Except that we'll all be exhausted."

 

 "Trouble with that coldheart is that every time he says something, you get the idea that there's a whole lot more he won't say," Ryan mused quietly, keeping his phrasing a touch cryptic in case he should be overheard too much.

 

 Krysty silently agreed, a feeling of nausea sweeping across her when she considered Harvey and Jenna. What kind of a power base were they attempting to build, and would the sec chief use this attack as a means of getting rid of his baron? They continued in silence for some time. Gradually, the path grew wider, the shrubbery and undergrowth less dense. The ruins of the buildings that constituted this section of old Seattle became more and more visible. They were also more whole than the fragments that remained deeper into the forest.

 

 The path widened into an old road, with the fragments of a sidewalk still barely visible through the creepers. Storefronts and apartment buildings became apparent, and once again the city took on the aspect of what, in the predark world, Mildred had heard of the remains of Angkor Wat, the Vietnamese city in the jungle. Vietnam had been a buzzword for the generation before her, and was now just a memory, but for Mildred as she looked around, she figured she had an idea of what the ruined city had to have looked like to U.S. Army units who had stumbled on it in the middle of war.

 

 Except that Angkor Wat had taken thousands of years to evolve to the ghostly jungle city, whereas the nukes and rad mutation had achieved this in a fraction of the time.

 

 In the silence of the march, J.B. had time to think. The difference between this section of old Seattle and the area where he and Ryan had met up with Trader and Abe again—it seemed like forever, though it couldn't have been that long—was immense. The way in which rad-ravaged nature set up areas of complete contrast was frightening. The way there had been dense forest on one side of the redoubt and virtual desert on the other when they had arrived…

 

 The train of thought brought the Armorer back to the Illuminated Ones. He didn't entirely share Ryan's views on the remnants of the old secret society. Although the bizarrely clothed sec force they had encountered on the old blacktop had arrived in a working wag that sounded well tuned, and they had the laser blasters that worked okay, still it seemed to J.B. that they had been far too keen to firefight and ask questions later. They seemed to have the tech, while Alien's ancestors had kept the ideals. So even if there was a stockpile of old tech they were sitting on, even if their Erewhon was the promised land away from the struggle and shit of everyday Deathlands living, there was no guarantee they would want to share it. And if there were more of them, with those laser blasters, then it would be a very uneven firefight to get pulled into.

 

 He knew Ryan better than almost anyone. He trusted him, both as a man and for his tactical judgment. But even so, the Armorer's more suspicious and cautious nature could see them getting themselves caught beyond a rock and a hard place.

 

 His train of thought was lost as the war party, straggling slightly but still fairly compact, turned a corner and reached an old intersection he recognized too well.

 

 On the left was the old apartment building where they had stood on an upper floor and observed the Sunchildren. Ahead of them stretched the road out of the old ville. The two-lane blacktop was about an hour's march away, and on the other side of it the ville of Samtvogel.

 

 Say an hour and a half at their current pace. J.B. breathed in the hot air. It was less humid now and would soon become dry. The heat would also be direct as there would be no deflecting vegetation.

 

 It was going to be tough. They would be exposed, and although there was no chance of their being ambushed, it did mean that they would have to stand and fight if a rival party advanced. There would be no cover.

 

 Which was why an advance scouting party had been sent ahead.

 

 J.B. wondered how they were faring. Obviously, there was no trouble as they hadn't doubled back with a warning. But they had been in the heat a whole lot longer.

 

 "EASY ON THE WATER, Whitey. We need it a lot more than you."

 

 "Why?"

 

 " 'Cause there's a whole lot more of us."

 

 Ant creased up with laughter, Dee cackling and shaking his head, dreadlocks flying in the arid air.

 

 "Man, you are one stupe mother," he gasped between the laughter. "Any fool knows that us brothers got the skin for this rad-heat weather. Shit, we already got tans. That was Mama's gift to us."

 

 "Will you two shut the fuck up?" Blake yelled. "We're supposed to be an advance scouting party, and here we are making enough fuckin' noise to drown out a gaudy house."

 

 "So who's yelling, man?" Ant asked in a mocking soft tone.

 

 Blake narrowed his eyes. "They should have left you guys back at Raw. You're still jolted out of your fuckin' skulls."

 

 Dee smiled, his eyes sparkling with the chemical high. "True, my friend, true. But that's kind of good in a way, you know? It means we won't give a fuck if some mutie son of a bitch takes our legs away. Just keep fighting."

 

 Jak sealed the canteen of water and returned it to the pouch that was slung around his waist. Despite the heat, he had kept on his camou jacket, protecting his white skin as much as possible from the searing sun. One of the problems of his albino heritage was that he burned easily, and in the cancerous sun of a postnuke atmosphere, he had to be careful. Sunstroke was a minor thing, but it could get you chilled if you weren't one hundred percent focused during a firefight. For the twins, it wasn't a problem. Their dark skins were better adapted than Jak's to the sun, the extra pigment giving them that fraction more protection. As for Blake, his wizened and weathered brown skin was a testament to the number of patrols he had undertaken in the sun.

 

 The advance scouting party was four strong. Harvey had picked Ant and Dee because they survived better in the sun, and because they were junkheads who were still high on jolt. The powerful narcotic had a tendency to affect people in different ways, perhaps because of the different and minute mutations that had followed the period of skydark. In the case of the dreadlocked twins, it acted as a stimulant to their senses, and dulled their perception of danger. They were ready to fight.

 

 Blake was one of Harvey's senior men. He had survived longer than anyone except the sec chief himself, and had spent a long time in the desert regions. He was the obvious party leader.

 

 It was Blake who had insisted that Jak come with them. His admiration for Jak's fighting skills, and the bond that had formed, told the experienced sec man that Jak's instincts, along with his own experience, would act as a perfect foil for the twins' jolt-enduced recklessness. The albino, trusting the sec man's judgment, had agreed.

 

 The scouting party had set out with forty-five minutes head start on the rest of the war party. That was enough time for them to get a good lead, but not so long that they would be out of reach should they discover anything.

 

 The journey out through the forest had been uneventful. The twins were high, and chattered incessantly, yielding little to Blake's pleas for them to keep the noise down. He and Jak said little, trying to block out the prattle of the twins and try to discern any sounds from the undergrowth that may speak of a mutie raid. It wasn't an immediate worry, but there was a chance that Sunchild had rallied his people immediately on his return, and was planning yet another, larger retaliatory raid. There was also the chance of a random mutie party in search of sacrifices. If they chanced on the advance scout party and the noise the twins were making acted as enough cover, then the scouts wouldn't even make it out of the forest.

 

 But things were quiet, and the twins only ceased to talk incessantly when the scouting party had traversed beyond the edge of old Seattle, entering the fringes of the desert area.

 

 "Typical of you stupes," Blake remarked, "to stop fuckin' yammering when it don't matter no more."

 

 "It's the heat, man," Ant replied.

 

 "Kind of dries your throat too much to talk," Dee finished.

 

 So, apart from a few outbursts actuated by things like Jak taking water, the party continued in silence. They trudged wearily across the arid desert, the few scraps of scrub tree and mutated, twisted cactus providing not even the briefest respite from the sun, burning orange and purple in the chem-stained sky.

 

 After the twins' last outburst, they continued in silence for some time. Jak kept his eyes, aching from the bright light, cast down apart from the occasional sweep around and a very occasional glance up to judge the position of the sun.

 

 It was sinking lower in the sky, although the heat at this point was still harsh, beating down hard.

 

 "Soon be dark," he husked through a phlegm-blocked and dried throat.

 

 "Not soon enough for me," Blake replied. "Too exposed out here in the day."

 

 "What you moaning about, man?" Dee questioned him. "We don't have to fight them. We see a party coming, we just turn tail and head back with the information, covering our asses on the way. Shit, they can't ambush us here, can they?" he added, opening his arms expansively to the empty wastes of the desert.

 

 Blake shook his head. "Nearer we are to them, the tireder we are and the fresher they are. Get that through your jolt-fucked skull and think about it."

 

 Jak silently agreed with the older sec man. They were beaten down by the sun and weary from the journey. It was possible that an outrunning mutie party could catch them up and force a stand before they reached the main war party.

 

 On the other hand, so far there had been no sign of any activity. With luck, the Sunchildren were still licking their wounds from the previous day's firefight.

 

 It was only when he looked up and saw the pall of smoke seemingly rising from the earth that Jak realized how well protected the valley of the Sunchildren was. On their previous, dark-shrouded excursion, he hadn't realized that the sudden dip of the valley, almost a hollow crater, made the ville invisible on three of its four sides.

 

 They were approaching obliquely, Blake leading them out in a southwesterly direction so that they couldn't be seen from the gentle incline that formed one side of the valley and serviced the only road into the ville.

 

 The twins had fallen silent as they drew nearer, their attention becoming more focused on their task. It was eerily silent, despite the nearby presence of the ville. The bowl of the valley acted as a sound barrier, and kept the sound contained within its natural walls.

 

 Blake indicated for the twins to spread out to his left, and for Jak to move across to the right.

 

 "I just want us to have a look-see what they might be doing down there. Don't do anything to attract their attention, for fuck's sake. We just want them to go about their business, see what they're about, then get the hell back to the main party."

 

 "Why can't we just give them a little taste, dude?" Ant asked, running his hand lovingly along the barrel of his newly cleaned shotgun.

 

 Blake shot him a warning glance. "I know you boys got a reason to hate the muties, but there's still just four of us. We can't keep them all down there until the others arrive. Besides, Harv wants us to scout out trouble and report back…and he's the boss, right?" The twins didn't answer immediately, so Blake rapped again. "Right?"

 

 "Guess so," Dee murmured. His brother nodded.

 

 "Okay, so let's do it," Blake said softly.

 

 Jak moved away from the other three, leaving them in the rapidly darkening light to move around the rim of the valley. Despite the fact that it would have been almost impossible for him to be seen, he still kept low to the ground, moving in a light-footed crouching run that raised little dust from the dry earth around.

 

 Dropping to the ground so that he was on all fours, then lowering himself so that he was on his belly, Jak advanced to the lip of the valley. The dust itched on his exposed skin, granules of the dry earth insinuating themselves under his clothes and irritating him. He blinked the dry dust from his eyes, which were itching and raw. The tears ran down his cheeks where his eyes watered. Not content with this, the dust caught in his throat and clogged his already dry mouth.

 

 But it was worth it. Anything that cut down the chances of being spotted was worth the effort and discomfort he may have to endure. He could only trust that the twins were doing the same. He knew Blake would be, recognizing another born survivor in the wizened sec man.

 

 Jak carefully picked his way over the wire fencing that ran around the top of the valley. He ignored the stench of the rotting bird corpses that were speared on the wire at regular intervals as a deterrent. He had no fear of dead things, only a caution against cutting himself on the wire and letting any infections from the dead creatures enter his bloodstream.

 

 He took his time, negotiating the wire carefully. There was no one in sight, and no need to hurry. Once over, he picked up speed once more.

 

 As he neared the lip of the valley, the sound increased. Most of it consisted of the everyday sounds of living, amplified and distorted by being trapped within the confines of the valley's bowl. Sound overlapped on sound so that it was difficult for Jak to pick out individual noises. He was, however, aware that in the mainstream of the noise were the sounds of some chanting.

 

 It was only when he was in a position to look over the lip and down into the valley that the source of the chanting became identifiable.

 

 The vast majority of the Sunchildren in Samtvogel were going about their business in a manner that changed little, whether norm or mutie: children ran and played, women cooked and made clothes from the rags, men fashioned weapons from what was at hand or made tools. But in the center of the ville, something a little out of the ordinary was taking place.

 

 The main arena, where Jak and the others had recovered the chilled children, was mostly empty. Only mostly. A small group of Sunchildren—all male, were gathered in their bright robes, their assortment of salvaged and homemade knives visible on their makeshift belts. They were chanting along to cues from their leader.

 

 Even at such a distance, Jak could see that the mutie leader now only had the use of one arm, the limb that had been grazed by a blaster shot now limp and possibly gangrenous, covered by a primitive dressing. If it was infected, then Samtvogel would soon lose its leader, which may mean that he figured he had nothing to lose on one last throw of the dice.

 

 This notion was amplified by the fact that the mutie leader was standing in front of the painted and decorated predark nuke, gesturing to it while he led the chanting, as though offering it a prayer.

 

 There was nothing in his action to indicate that he knew how to arm and trigger the nuke, or even that its old tech was still operable. But it wasn't a certainty, and they couldn't depend on anything except certainties.

 

 Jak withdrew his head and crawled back from the edge before raising himself from the dust so that he was on all fours rather than flat to the earth. He snorted the dust from his nose and throat, hawking a lump of blackened phlegm onto the ground with a noise that sounded louder for the quietness around.

 

 He headed back to the wire, and over it. Once more he avoided contact with the insect-crawling bird corpses. Jak would much rather have fought a dozen stickies than an infection. Once over the wire, he looked back to the valley.

 

 They were beginning to light fires and lamps down in Samtvogel, the smoke of the cooking fires being joined by these, and the light reflecting up a little way, prevented from spreading out by the enclosed valley. It seemed to form a small dome of light over the valley, a dim beacon in the encroaching dusk.

 

 A light they would have to extinguish.

 

 Jak heard a low whistle coming from Blake's direction, followed by two, more distant, replies. For his own part, Jak whistled low, cracked by the dryness of his mouth and throat. He turned and headed back to where he had left the others, maintaining his crouching run even though it was almost certain that they were alone along the top of the valley and were safe from observation.

 

 Ant and Dee were already with Blake when Jak arrived back. The four men quickly exchanged what they had seen. It all added up to the same thing: Sunchild had something in mind, but there was no immediate attack and there was no increased guard.

 

 "Okay," Blake decided, "we head back to the main party, tell them what we've seen."

 

 "They'll be exhausted after coming through in this heat," Ant began.

 

 "Mebbe Harv'll let them rest before the attack, cool down in the night."

 

 Blake laughed shortly. "Hell no, boys. You know Harv better than that. He'll just want to go in hell for leather. Hit 'em hard and hit 'em fast. Just in case."

 

 Jak kept silent, but wondered why Harvey would want to risk additional losses by sending in people who were tired and not one hundred percent after such a long journey. He suspected it may have something to do with the fact that Alien would, as the fair baron he was, put himself in the front line of the action. The older man would be weary, and Jak knew that he wasn't a good fighter. More than that, the baron had a woman back in Raw who was in some way connected to the sec chief, and to whatever was going on behind that metal door.

 

 And just mebbe it had something to do with that and with whatever had happened to Dean. Because Jak was as certain as could be that the boy wasn't in Samtvogel.

 

 All this went through his mind as they began the journey back toward the two-lane blacktop. They had spent almost half an hour on their survey, which meant that the war party should only be about fifteen minutes away. If the light had been better, then they could possibly have seen the party advancing. But as it was, the sun had now set, and the cold air closed around Jak like a vise, colder somehow after the intense heat of the day.

 

 As they marched back, it was as much the thought of Dean being trapped still in Raw as the fall in temperature that made the albino shiver.

 

 THERE WAS A BLACKNESS.

 

 A blackness like the thickest blanket placed over him, a blackness that enveloped his face, cutting off air, as well as light, wrapping itself around his head until it blocked out sound. Blocked out everything, so that the only impressions he had of anything around him were the faintest of impressions, muffled in the blackness.

 

 But gradually it improved. Gradually, things began to filter back. Slowly at first, but then with an increasing speed until the sound became too loud, every last breath from his own body like the rasping of a saw on metal, every step in the room like the pounding of a hammer on a wall. The light became stronger than staring directly into the sun, creeping through his closed eyelids until he screwed his eyes tight, so tight that he felt he would pop his eyeballs back into his forebrain.

 

 And the taste. Like raw earth and salt as his own sweat and dust from the air around coated his tongue, matting on his taste buds.

 

 The air suddenly came back to him, acrid with sweat and fear, great drafts of air, the slightest breeze like a hurricane in his nostrils, the previous struggle for air now replaced with the fear that he would drown in the onrush of oxygen.

 

 All the time he tried to move his arms and legs. But they were constrained still. At first he couldn't tell, as his body felt detached from his consciousness, and then as his body and senses became overly sensitized it felt as though every muscle and tendon were borne down by their own weight, pained by its own sensitivity.

 

 Somewhere deep within him, he clung to the knowledge that he was still alive, and that he wasn't mad. He knew that this had to be part of the drug testing he had been told about, and that these sensations would soon pass. The balance would soon be restored.

 

 That part of him that wondered if she really knew what she was doing, and if he would make it back still sane or still alive, he quelled with a ruthlessness he could only find from the knowledge that giving in to it would mean certain insanity.

 

 So he clung, and rode the wave.

 

 However long it may take. That is, assuming he had any real idea of what time was anymore.

 

 WHEN HE FELT it was safe to open his eyes, she was looking into them.

 

 "Ah, so you're still with me, young Cawdor. For a while there, I thought you might be lost…alive, yes, but reduced to something less than a vegetable."

 

 Jenna smiled. Her sharp features were softened by her broad mouth. She had even, good teeth, and although her lips were thin they were red enough in contrast to her dark complexion to warm her features. Even her hard, glittering black eyes seemed for a moment to become warmer.

 

 "I don't want you to become that," she continued. "I have other ideas for you." Her voice took on a husky edge, clogged with desire.

 

 Dean felt his body respond to the change in her voice, rising to the occasion. It was when he felt her hand fondling him that he realized he had to be naked. At some point in his drug-induced journey, he had been briefly unshackled and stripped.

 

 Jenna laughed softly, feeling the change in him. "So you're pissed at missing a chance of escape, eh?" She gently manipulated him back to his former state.

 

 "What… Why?" Dean croaked, unable to voice the questions that raced through his head, his parched voice failing to respond with the requisite speed.

 

 "You'll find out in time," she replied softly. "The good thing is I don't need to change your eyes, already blue like your father, like the perfect ones. Pity about the hair. Mebbe the genetic modifications I've been trying will help. Old gene tech is a bit unreliable still, even though I've been trying to pull all the old notes, research and equipment together. Still, you've responded well so far."

 

 Dean couldn't keep the fear out of his eyes. What had she been doing to him?

 

 Jenna sensed his unease. "Just a few modifications, sweetie. They won't kill you. Mebbe make you more productive. I'm going to need a good stud, and you're old enough to produce. I know you are, because I've already milked and tested you. You're not firing blanks, boy."

 

 Dean looked away, feeling his cheeks run hot. Her hand was still stroking him, keeping him erect, and he felt strangely ashamed at the way Jenna had used him while he was unconscious.

 

 The woman kissed him gently on the cheek. "Don't feel upset, sweetie. That raddled and seedless old fool I'm married to can't give me the child I want. Besides, it'd be impure. So would Harvey's, despite the enjoyment I get from him. But he's a moron. You and your father, though…I can see the both of you giving me the progeny I need. With you or your father to give me the new barons, and my experiments to perfect and clone the others…life'll be peachy again."

 

  

 

 Chapter Fourteen

 

  

 

 "Dark night! But it's cold and I'm tired," the Armorer chattered through frozen teeth.

 

 "Why, John, that's almost a joke," Mildred commented mildly, looking up at the stars that still shone in the clear sky. Funny how it always surprised her they were still there. Just because the whole damned world had changed, why should they?

 

 She was cold, as well. Like Krysty, she had left her jacket back in Raw, unwilling to face the humidity of the forest and the heat of the day with the thick protective covering. Problem was, the night had come down too quickly, and they still had distance to cover.

 

 "What is Harvey's little game here, John?" she continued. "Wouldn't we have been better setting out at night?"

 

 The taciturn J.B. nodded. "Mebbe it suits his purpose better. Certainly not for the good of all."

 

 "Which should be his job…" Mildred looked ahead of her. The moon was only a crescent, casting little light on the arid and flat plain. The fact that they hadn't been visited by the scouting party suggested the way ahead was clear. But how far did they have to go now before reaching Samtvogel.

 

 The same question was crossing Ryan's mind as he marched beside Alien. The baron was breathing hard with the pace of the march, and the one-eyed warrior was concerned that the man would be too exhausted to fight well when they reached Samtvogel. Like J.B., Ryan wondered if this was part of some hidden agenda from the sec chief, a way of disposing of a popular baron without raising any suspicion.

 

 "Hey, Harvey," Ryan called, keeping his voice low but loud enough to carry, "how far now?"

 

 "About a mile and a half, mebbe two miles, Cyclops. Why, you getting tired there, boy?"

 

 "No, but mebbe others are."

 

 The sec chief looked back over his shoulder. The light was poor, but Ryan was sure that Harvey's gaze was on the baron rather than on himself.

 

 "No time to rest," the sec chief said simply. "We just gotta press on."

 

 Krysty felt her hair tighten about her as the whispered words reached her ears. She was cold, shivering and tired, but still her mutie sense was sharp enough to pick up on Harvey's intent. At the same time, she felt a sudden lift within her.

 

 "Jak," she whispered.

 

 "The scouting party is near," Doc called, walking close to Krysty and catching the lilt in her voice.

 

 Within a few minutes, black shapes appeared against the darkness of the night. Two large, two small: the scouts.

 

 The war party halted under the stars, gathering around the scouting party while Blake relayed the information gathered. There were no guards or patrols, but it seemed that Sunchild himself and a few trusted Sunchildren were preparing for something.

 

 "Did they look like they were ready for an immediate attack?" Ryan asked, aware of the stare Harvey gave him, aware that by speaking before the sec chief he was speaking out of turn.

 

 Jak shook his head, the pure white of his flowing hair seeming almost incandescent, like a flare in the darkness.

 

 "No. If Sunchild know to trigger nuke, it gone by now."

 

 Doc interjected. "May I?" he asked politely. Then without waiting for an answer said, "Did Sunchild have any kind of computer tech visible? Or perhaps he had the cone of the nuke open. Some of them have the tech within, so that they could be set off in the silos in the event of an invasion. Or it could be a remote control, handheld. But then he may have to—"

 

 "You know a fuck of a lot about this shit," Harvey growled, interrupting Doc.

 

 "I have had, um, some experience, you may say," Doc said softly, avoiding eye contact with the sec chief.

 

 He returned his attention to Jak. "Was there anything like that?"

 

 The albino shook his head. "Look like muties praying to it like god."

 

 Doc nodded, ignoring some of the nervous laughs from the war party. "This is good. I would say that we are in no immediate danger. Perhaps," he added, eying the baron speculatively, as well as a few of the older members of the war party, "we could rest awhile."

 

 Harvey shook his head. "Hit hard, hit fast and don't let the fuckers even get the slightest clue as to Sunchild what's happening to them. We rest, they could send out their own scouting party."

 

 "That's unlikely," J.B. murmured. "And if they do, then we just chill them. No one'll notice until it's too late."

 

 There was a murmur of agreement among the weary war party, stilled by a gesture from Harvey.

 

 "Who the fuck is the sec boss here?" he hissed at the Armorer. "We do what I say…right, Alien?"

 

 The baron looked uneasy. "Well, I feel like the rest would do me good. But in these situations, I put you in sole charge, and it would be wrong of me to override this just for my own convenience."

 

 "Okay," Harvey snapped, casting an eye over the assembled party. "Then we carry on."

 

 ANOTHER FIFTEEN MINUTES of marching brought them close to Samtvogel. With Blake in the lead, they took the same oblique course as before, leading off and away from the sloping side of the valley and toward the obscurity of the steep inclines. The glow of the ville's lighting cast a wan illumination over the immediate area.

 

 As they stood outside the corpse-covered wire, two of the three women in charge of the armory came forward. They were each carrying one of the drum-fed RPK machine blasters. J.B. could see the mounting tripods, folded, in backpacks. The fat woman who had questioned the Armorer about the blaster to test his knowledge spared a second to wink at him before speaking to Harvey.

 

 "If you want us to set these up on this side and that—" she gestured to the far side of the valley. "—then you need to give us help. We'll each need someone to help set and mount these bastards, and to first get us over that wire. Awkward with this," she finished, tapping the heavy blaster.

 

 Harvey agreed and detailed Ant and Dee to assist. The heavy sec men were agreeable, and adjusted their wrist chrons so that they would be able to synchronize the beginning of the attack.

 

 "That's how long we've got now, people," Harvey noted as the four people went forth to set up their posts. "Time to get our shit together. We know we can whip their asses—we just need to get it right."

 

 The sec chief divided his forces, detailing parties to fan out and cover all along the bowed ridge of the valley, ending with two parties to take either side of the only road out.

 

 "The plan is simple. We go in when the covering fire has started. That'll be over our heads, and will cease when we get into Samtvogel itself. We want the nuke, and we want Sunchild. We also want to find Cyclops Jr. dead or alive. We take him back no matter what—agreed?"

 

 The last was directed at Ryan. Harvey was eying him carefully as he spoke the word, searching for the slightest sign of reaction. Ryan remained stony-faced, controlling the emotions that ran through him, knowing that the sec chief was looking for the slightest sign of weakness. Ryan was sure that Dean wasn't in the valley, but he was still his son, and the thought of him chilled like the children they had recovered previously made him shudder inside.

 

 But not outwardly. Harvey turned away, dissatisfied by the lack of reaction. He continued. "When we've secured that objective, we trash the place. Completely. For once and for all we rid ourselves of the mutie scum—no offense, Whitey—and drive them out. If possible, we chill them all. Every last shitter."

 

 "Are you certain about that?" Alien asked, his voice strong and firm in the night. "We have never, in Raw, acted in such a manner—"

 

 "Baron, you want them to escalate, get more and more trouble? If so, then fine. But you put me in charge of sec, and I say we ice the fuckers once and for all."

 

 The baron demurred. "Very well."

 

 Ryan felt J.B.'s hand on his arm and his breath in his ear.

 

 "What's the idea, Ryan? The longer we stay around, the more of us stand to buy the farm…or is that the idea?"

 

 "Mebbe. And mebbe not just Alien. Triple red, J.B. That coldheart may just decide to chill us at the same time."

 

 The one-eyed warrior felt, rather than saw, the assent from the Armorer as he melted into the crowd to spread the word to Mildred, Jak and Doc. Krysty had been close enough to hear.

 

 "Okay, let's get to it," Harvey commanded.

 

 The flame-haired woman lightly kissed Ryan on the cheek. It was a cover for her to whisper, "Be careful. Dean's not here, and we've got to get back to find him."

 

 THE RPKS WERE set up on each side, the drum-mounted ammo in place. On their respective side, Ant and Dee both secured the tripods, and left the two Armorers seated, with the blasters at the requisite angle. The two dreadlocked sec men then both moved away as one after the final check, readying their shotguns and checking their wrist chrons.

 

 Around them, stretching in a thin line around the lip of the valley, the war party readied their own weapons.

 

 On opposite sides of the valley, the dreadlocked sec men checked their wrist chrons. As one, they turned to the Armorers seated behind the RPKs. "Now!"

 

 The firing began in short, controlled bursts, the twin machine blasters rending the air with tracer fire and peals of noise, louder for the quiet that had preceded it. As J.B. had pointed out when questioned earlier on the blasters, they were capable of 660 rounds per minute, but to fire at such a pace would heat up the barrel to such a degree that it would ignite the ammo left in the drum and set the blaster on a rapid and uncontrollable fire.

 

 So each Armorer kept her firing to short bursts, rattling off fifty or sixty rounds before pausing and counting to ten. Then another fifty or sixty. The barrels of the RPKs were soon red-hot, but not the white-hot that would ignite the drum. The pauses were enough to keep the barrel just beneath that crucial temperature.

 

 The tripods were raised at an angle that would keep the fire going over the heads of the war party as it descended the steep slopes that formed three sides of the valley of Samtvogel. The majority of the ammo would land toward the center of the ville, where the majority of the men were clustered. The outlying areas were where the women and the children were sequestered in their tents and shacks. Some of the shells cannoned into the faded and peeling stucco of the ranch houses, chipping off plaster that raised choking dust in the smoky light.

 

 As he scrambled down the side of the valley, Ryan could see that the muties gathered in the center of the ville were thrown into confusion by the sudden attack. Some of them gathered around Sunchild in an attempt to shield him, but the mutie leader roared and directed them away. Some of them disappeared into one of the ranch houses, and Ryan guessed that was where they kept their small armory. They had already proved themselves next to useless in a firefight, but nonetheless it could prove a problem in close quarters, where a stray blast could go anywhere.

 

 As he reached the bottom of the incline, he was pulled up short by the figure of a mutie looming up at him out of the semidarkness. There were fewer fires at the edges of the ville, and longer and deeper pools of shadow. This was the danger zone, as the invaders were still descending and could be caught easily as they reached the valley floor.

 

 The one-eyed warrior was ready for this. Although the SIG-Sauer was in his hand, he couldn't rely on finding much time and space to reload, so was unwilling to waste ammo. As his combat boots thudded on the dirt floor, his hand snaked down his thigh and withdrew the panga.

 

 The mutie was screaming wordlessly, a high note of fear mixed in with the savagery. As the misshapen creature approached, Ryan could see that it was a woman, the pendulous and wrinkled breasts riding free of the stained and patched dyed robes that she wore. She had only half a face, the majority of her lower jaw and one side of her cheek being a mass of scar tissue and weals. She was virtually bald, and her toothless mouth was open in the scream, strings of drool running between her lips.

 

 Her eyes were lit by hate, fear and a light of pure insanity. She was brandishing a large, scythe-shaped blade that had a small wooden handle. The blade, even in the poor light, seemed to be stained and pitted with something that was probably blood.

 

 Ryan had no intention of letting his own blood be added to that which had dried on the blade. He held the panga in front of him, across his body, waiting for the optimum moment.

 

 The mutie approached him in an open stance. She was shuffling rather than running, which slowed her enough for him to relax into the move rather than hurry it, for she was holding the blade above her head, ready to bring it down in a sweep.

 

 This left the right-hand side of her body completely exposed to attack, the line down her arm and ribs undefended from any blow that may be struck.

 

 Ryan stepped forward, ducking under the blow as her arm fell uselessly past his shoulder, the scything blade hacking at empty air. At the same time, he brought his own blade across and up, so that he sliced beneath the ribs, carving open the soft flesh and spilling the mutie's intestines into the dirt with a slooshing sound and a rise of steam as the warm flesh and blood hit the cold night air. The blade continued its upward thrust, carving into vital organs before being withdrawn as Ryan stepped back.

 

 The mutie woman stood for a moment, a bewildered light in her eyes. Then the light died, and she tumbled forward onto the ground at Ryan's feet.

 

 JAKE, THE HUGE, bearlike sec man, roared loudly and had a blood lust in his eyes. Like the berserkers of Viking legend, he had almost tranced himself into a state where he had no feelings or emotions, no sense of morality or justice, nor even any sense of his own being beyond being a killing machine.

 

 Which was exactly what Harvey wanted from him. The sec chief had seen Jake in this state before, and had spent no little part of the journey persuading the sec man that he should adopt this persona for the raid. The bearlike, grizzled fighter had taken little persuading, and had spent the few minutes at the top of the valley, waiting for the signal of covering fire, to put himself into that state where he saw only fresh meat for the chilling.

 

 And now he was in full cry, a deep-throated roar escaping him, barely registering the sweeping knives and rough-hewed blades of the muties as they attempted to stop him. He had discarded his Heckler & Koch blaster in favor of two long samurai-type swords, the strangely shaped blades arcing through the air before him in a complex pattern, sweeping and crossing in a way that prevented the mutie Sunchildren from getting too close. There were a few random stabs that penetrated his defenses, and the jagged edges of blades had cut and marked him, streams of blood ribboning down his chest and back. He seemed not to register them, except that it spurred him to greater savagery.

 

 The flashing blades cut through soft mutie flesh, hacked at jagged bone, with barely a pause.

 

 "DARK NIGHT! Could have sent that big bastard in on his own," J.B. muttered.

 

 "Be fair. You don't want him to have all the fun, do you?" Downey replied, snapping off another round from the Sharps, scoring cleanly through the forehead of a passing mutie. The mutie staggered on for a few steps, not seeming to realize she was dead, before crumpling into a heap.

 

 "Fun?" the Armorer grunted, rattling off another short blast from the Uzi into a group of muties emerging from one of the ranch houses. He and Downey had both gravitated toward covering the ranch houses, the two of them assuming that any blasters the Sunchildren had would best be stopped as soon as they came out of what passed for an armory, rather than let loose as a random factor into the firefight—except that it was much more of a night chill than a firefight. J.B. had descended the eastern slope of the valley almost on his butt, sliding down through a cloud of dust and feeling the rough earth tearing at his fatigues. It didn't matter if he ripped some skin on the way down. If he was going to use the M-4000 to maximum effect, then it was necessary to arrive as quickly as possible.

 

 Hitting bottom at a run, the Armorer had headed for his self-appointed task: the ranch house armory. There was still confusion as he sprinted through a crowd of mutie Sunchildren, using the Tekna knife to carve a path. The blade was razor sharp, the muties keen to avoid it. He was relying on the element of surprise and the fact that others were following to cover his back on the outer fringes.

 

 But now he was coming into the main area of light, lamps and fires making the central arena of Samtvogel seem almost in daylight. There was a clutch of muties around the ranch house, blocking his way.

 

 Without breaking stride, J.B. sheathed the knife, and brought up the M-4000, which he had been cradling in his left arm, so that he grasped it with both hands. He stopped for a moment, planting both feet firmly to take the recoil, and fired the charge of barbed metal flechettes into the packed group of Sunchildren, who were too bewildered by this sudden apparition to move.

 

 The white-hot metal, shot at enormous velocity and spreading over a wide area as it left the confines of the barrel, bought death and pain to the group, which disintegrated suddenly into a mass of writhing, bloodstained flesh. Some of the muties at the front of the group took the full brunt, their faces and torsos ripped to shreds by the load. Their already chilled remains were flung backward into the group, the force pushing other muties down and saving their lives—at least temporarily. They thus avoided the main load of death, but were still wounded by the storm of flechettes that had spread low and wide.

 

 The Armorer had wasted not a second in slinging the M-4000 and bringing the Uzi into play, his short bursts directed at mopping up those sections of the heaving mass that still seemed to be alive and dangerous.

 

 Passing the now chilled pile of mutie flesh, the Armorer established a safe position by a sheet-metal shack, firing a quick blast through the opening to clear the inside of any possible danger. Covering his back, he began to pick off any muties that passed his view, with his attention primarily focused on the ranch house windows and doorway, from which the wood and glass had long since disappeared.

 

 "Only me," a breathless cry had announced as J.B. had whirled to greet the sounds coming up behind him. "Had the same idea, eh?" the sardonic Downey announced, settling himself in beside J.B. and sweeping the long, iron-gray hair from his sweat-spangled face. Somewhere along the line, his habitual ponytail had come loose, and the strands of hair across his vision were both irritating and dangerous.

 

 J.B. could smell the powder and heat from the discharged Sharps, and knew that the sec man had been busy at his task, and that he, too, had the foresight to target the ranch house.

 

 "Better to chill them as they emerge, not let the bastards get those blasters all over the show." The sec man grinned in answer to J.B.'s unasked question.

 

 And now they were picking off passing muties and had a group holed up in the ranch house, loosing blaster shots that whined high and wide past the sec men.

 

 There were also shots from inside the ranch house itself.

 

 "Think we could leave them to chill themselves like that?" Downey questioned. "Guess I'm getting cramp around here."

 

 "Could risk a gren," J.B. answered. Squinting through his spectacles, the Armorer took a hand from his Uzi to push his fedora back on his head and scratch idly at his forehead. "Doesn't seem to be too many of ours around this point, and the house looks strong enough to contain the blast. Problem is, what if they've got a stock of grens in there themselves?"

 

 "Good call," Downey replied thoughtfully, realizing why the Armorer hadn't risked a gren before. He looked around. There was no localized righting. The ville was small, but large enough for there to be none of the war party within a radius of about fifty yards. "Wouldn't they have blown themselves up by now, if they had any?" he asked.

 

 J.B. pursed his lips and blew. "Odds are," he said simply, reaching into one of the pockets stuffed with ammo and grens that littered his jacket. He produced a gren, pulled the pin and rose to a standing position. A seemingly lazy swing of the arm, along with a perfect eye for distance, saw the gren arc in the air and land through one of the windows.

 

 "Down," J.B. commanded, pushing Downey to the rear of the shack.

 

 The explosion was muffled, only the open doorway and windows allowing the force to escape. The structure of the building seemed to blow out, almost to the point of crumbling, before returning to normal. The sound of the ammo supplies firing off filled the immediate area, and then died.

 

 The building was darkened and still, all the more obvious in the light and confusion surrounding.

 

 "Guess that's seen to that," Downey remarked. "Let's go and get that mother nuke, my friend."

 

 J.B. grunted his assent, and they left the shelter of the tin shack to enter the fray.

 

 KRYSTY FOUND herself alongside Rankine and Bodie. The rangy sec man was striding through the mayhem with ease, firing off shots from his .303 Lee Enfield and then swinging the stock to club Sunchildren out of his path.

 

 "Impressive dude, eh?" Bodie panted in Krysty's ear, the exertion showing on his fat face. He was using his blaster sparingly, a Tekna knife like the Armorer's clasped in his other pudgy hand. "Me, I'm not really much of a fighter. Always get nerves, you know? Talk too fuckin' much, like I am now. Nerves, y'see?"

 

 Krysty raised her blaster and took off the top half of an advancing stickie's head with one shot. There were still a few of the stickies that had been in Sunchild's attack party at the ville, and they were now robed like the other Sunchildren—although instantly identifiable from their tiny eyes, needle-sharp teeth and splayed sucker fingers, as well as their almost bizarre lack of hair.

 

 Bodie whistled. "Nice shootin', babe."

 

 The titian-haired woman turned to him. "Don't call me 'babe.'" Then added, "Look out!"

 

 Distracted by his nervousness and the finely muscled female fighting machine at his side, Bodie hadn't noticed a robed Sunchild come flying at him from his unprotected left-hand side. He was turned toward Krysty, and although her cry had made him turn, it wasn't quick enough. The mutie was on him in a flying leap, bellowing wordlessly as he clawed at the sec man, attacking even while still in midair.

 

 The two hit the hard-packed earth with a thud that drove the air from both their bodies. Krysty couldn't blast the mutie as he and Bodie were too entwined, so she grabbed a handful of robe and flesh from near the mutie's neck and heaved upward.

 

 The muscles in her arms stood out, and the cords on her neck grew taut. Her flaming hair whirled wildly with a life of its own as the mutie flew back in the air.

 

 While he was still above the ground, she had leveled her Smith & Wesson blaster, putting a slug into his soft chest.

 

 "Wow!" Bodie exclaimed. "That was something else!"

 

 Krysty shook her head in amazement. "Just be careful unless you want to be chilled. I won't be beside you all the time," she added, chucking his chin as though he were a child.

 

 Before Bodie had a chance to say much else, Krysty had disappeared into the fray, leaving him to watch his own back.

 

 DOC HAD BEEN one of the last to hit the floor of the valley, picking his way down carefully so that he wouldn't fall and either chill himself or be a burden for any well-meaning Raw dweller who was close.

 

 He needn't have worried. When he reached bottom, Mildred was waiting for him, using her ZKR to pick off approaching muties.

 

 "By the Three Kennedys! Could it be that you are awaiting mine own humble presence?" Doc muttered as he righted himself.

 

 "Well, I figured a crazy old buzzard like you may need some nursemaiding," Mildred said.

 

 "Less than graciously put, my good woman, but nonetheless I appreciate the sentiment."

 

 "Then stop talking and let's get moving," Mildred said quickly. "I figure it would be best for all concerned if you and me got to that nuke first, seeing as we're the only ones present who may have some idea of the tech."

 

 "If Harvey is that close to Jenna, then he'll know of the technology involved," Doc replied. Then, as Mildred spared him a glance, he added, "Although I agree that such a thought only reinforces your point."

 

 They began to move into the main body of Samtvogel. By the time that Doc had descended, the battle had moved inward, the advancing force pushing back the surprised Sunchildren until they were almost entirely contained to the central clearing, around their sacrificial altar—and, more importantly, the totem-decorated nuke.

 

 Progress for Doc and Mildred was easy…almost too easy, so much so that an attack from the rear was so unexpected as to almost catch them off guard.

 

 Almost, but not quite. They advanced through the slaughterhouse that was the outer reaches of Samtvogel, stepping over the chilled corpses and the dying, none of whom were conscious or fit enough to put up any kind of fight. Doc cradled the LeMat and had the swordstick unsheathed, but to preserve ammo Mildred picked off the few muties that came within range with her ZKR. There were other pockets of attack who, like themselves, had arrived after the first wave of attack. The main body of fighting was in front, as it was up to the stragglers like themselves to mop up resistance.

 

 It was only because the sounds of strife were in front, and had the echo of distance, that Doc could differentiate the sound of movement from behind them. He whirled with a speed that belied the care with which he had advanced.

 

 Behind himself and Mildred was a group of five muties, three men and two women. Two of the men were wounded, one dragging a heavily bleeding leg, the other with an arm hanging limp and useless. But all five had the fire of battle in their eyes, and were brandishing blades of varying sizes. They were only a few yards away, and advancing rapidly.

 

 Mildred began to turn, but Doc snapped at her, "Eyes front, Doctor. Leave this to me. I would like to feel useful to some degree."

 

 As he spoke, Doc raised the LeMat, and his last words were almost lost in the explosion of the percussion pistol.

 

 The round caught the mutie with the injured arm full in the face. His head disappeared behind a spray of blood, flesh and bone. The woman to his left— perhaps his mate—screamed as she saw him disintegrate in front of her. It was a scream cut short by Doc's next shot, which caught her throat, ripping out her larynx and almost severing her spinal column. The rest of the shots were evenly spread over the group, cutting them down and either mortally wounding or instantly chilling them.

 

 "Onward, onward, Doctor," Doc commanded.

 

 "Yes, sir," Mildred murmured.

 

 JAK HAD BECOME a fighting machine once more. Like Jake, he was primed, honed and let loose on an enemy. But unlike the giant sec man, Jak still kept his entire wits about him. There was a coldness within the albino, as icy as the whiteness of his hair and skin, that enabled him to stay detached in the middle of battle.

 

 The mutie Sunchildren around were no match for the fighting skills of the albino. Eschewing the .357 Magnum Colt Python in a close-fighting situation, he used the leaf-bladed knives to slash his way through the collected tribe, with only one objective in view. Harvey had wanted the ville trashed and scattered, but Alien wanted information, and had made a request of the albino he had noted as such a strong fighter.

 

 "Over to the left, Jak," Blake shouted from a few feet away. He still gripped the 9 mm Walther PPK he favored, but had let off few rounds, preferring to use the long, double-edged bayonet that was in his other fist, the honed blade almost as long as the small sec man's forearm.

 

 Jak moved gracefully and seamlessly away from his compatriot, and to the right of the nuke.

 

 Three passing moves with the knives disposed of dull-witted guards, too slow to even move before their lifeblood pumped from severed arteries.

 

 Sunchild raised a rusting sword and bellowed in rage and frustration at his crumbling empire. He brought the blade down toward Jak's head, but the albino skipped around the blow, allowing the momentum to carry Sunchild forward…enough for Jak to chop at the exposed back of his neck, rendering him unconscious.

 

 "Need alive…for now," the albino muttered as the mutie leader hit the ground.

 

 HARVEY WAS in trouble, and it was all the fault of his own arrogance.

 

 The sec chief had led the charge down the sides of the valley, arriving on the earth-packed floor only shortly after Ryan had chilled his first Sunchild. Like the one-eyed warrior, he had cut a swath through the surprised muties by using his Colt Magnum Carry blaster sparingly, and mostly chilling his opponents with the knife he always carried with him. The old Emerson CQC-7 was a highly prized tactical folding knife, and the razor-sharp blade was maintained by the sec man in the same chisel-sharpened state as when he first acquired it from the armory. Somehow—and the facts were vague enough to be worrying to Raw's baron if ever he heard them—the knife had found its way from a passing trader to the armory via the sec chief himself, with no questions asked or answers wanted.

 

 Harvey had wanted the knife, and he had taken steps to acquire it. As with everything, his attention was focused. As it was now focused on attaining the nuke.

 

 But that focus could be one-dimensional, and as the sec chief cut through the swarm of muties, he didn't notice that one of the Sunchildren he had cut wasn't quite chilled.

 

 Ryan was in the vicinity, having fought his way through toward the nuke. Looking across, he saw the injured Sunchild drag herself up from the earth, her robes splattered with blood. A slash from the Emerson had cut her throat, and she had collapsed from the shock. But only veins had been cut, not an artery, and although she would eventually bleed to death, she was mustering all the strength she could for one last assault on the sec chief.

 

 Ryan was in hand-to-hand combat as he saw this, and guessing what was to happen, doubled his efforts to dispose of the mutie he was battling. Shifting his balance, he knocked out the grip the mutie had on him by thrusting his arms up and out. While the Sunchild was off balance, Ryan's own powerful forearms crossed, catching the mutie's head in the middle of the cross. A flexion of the powerful muscles and a twist of his body weight insured that the mutie's soft-boned neck broke.

 

 He was dead before he hit the dirt, and Ryan had already turned his attention to Harvey's predicament.

 

 Ryan covered the few yards in a matter of seconds, but he was still not quick enough. His SIG-Sauer was holstered, and by the time it was unsheathed a clean shot would have been impossible, with the Sunchild and the sec chief too entwined.

 

 Harvey, for his part, was taken completely by surprise. The Sunchild threw herself about his neck, attempting to drag him backward. His attention focused entirely on what was to the front of him, it was only the wiry man's strength that stopped him tumbling back under the sudden force from behind.

 

 Harvey could feel the warm blood trickling from her, her fetid breath in his ear and on his neck, the panting and grunting of her breath as she tried to pull him down with all the strength she had left in her body.

 

 The sec chief fought against it, pulling himself forward and attempting to throw her over his shoulder. But her weight was centered too far down her body, and the whole force was dragging too much for him to get any momentum on his own movements. Even more urgent was the fact that her arms were locked around his throat, and he couldn't breathe properly, gasping for breath. He hacked at her flesh with the Emerson, but in her dying condition she seemed impervious to pain, and not even the razor-sharp blade cutting through the flesh of her fingers could force her to relent.

 

 Ryan could see the difficulty the sec chief was having, and unwound the scarf from his own throat. The long scarf was weighted at each end by carefully concealed and secured weights, which made the scarf a useful and unobtrusive weapon.

 

 Useful like now. With a flick of his powerful wrist, judging the distance exactly with his practiced eye, Ryan kept hold of one end of the scarf and sent the other shooting toward the mutie. The tip of the scarf, weighted as it was, gained momentum in flight and cracked against the temple of the woman's head. A large bruise, weeping a thin trickle of blood, grew up almost as soon as the weight hit home, and she grunted heavily, her consciousness dimmed by the blow.

 

 Harvey heard the crack, felt her heavy breath as she grunted, then felt her grip ease as her weight increased and became dead. She slipped away from him and down to the earth, still bleeding from her throat wound, and now with no consciousness to impair her way to death.

 

 "Thanks, Cyclops," Harvey said hoarsely, rubbing his sore throat.

 

 Ryan retrieved the scarf and wrapped it around his neck once more. He fixed the sec chief with a glare. "Don't thank me. Just remember you owe me," he said shortly, before plunging on into the fray.

 

 Mebbe—just mebbe—that favor would count for something…

 

 THE BATTLE WAS finally over. It had been short and bloody, and the vast majority of the casualties belonged to the Samtvogel dwellers.

 

 "When I was still a fairly young man," Doc remarked to Krysty as they watched the Raw war party moving among the chilled Sunchildren to gather blasters or to chill any muties who might still be alive and therefore a threat, "when I was still in that time before the whitecoat horrors, they would take the Native American and treat him like this."

 

 "Uncle Tyas McCann used to tell us of those days," the flame-haired woman replied. "He used to say that the law of dog-eat-dog was all that ruled. And the inherent stupeness of it was that he'd never seen a dog eat a dog unless they were put into a ring to fight for men."

 

 Doc smiled. "An interesting point, my dear. And appropriate, I think. Yes, in some ways. Fear can do strange things. Is this the way a man like Alien seems to rule the rest of the time?" he questioned, sweeping the area with the end of his walking stick. "Was it necessary to lay waste to their lives? Certainly, they had coexisted long enough."

 

 "Sure, but that was before the nuke."

 

 "Before the whitecoat horrors," Doc said softly. "They will always return to haunt us, I believe."

 

 "And your point is?" Krysty asked. "Sometimes we have to do things we don't want, or don't like, just to survive. You know that as well as anyone."

 

 "But at what cost to ourselves?" Doc looked her in the eye. His own gaze was clearer and steadier than she had seen it for several days. "Consider that man," he said slowly and with measure, indicating Alien. "A life spent living a certain way, questioned and perhaps destroyed in a night. Consider the people. This was… easier?"

 

 Krysty looked at Raw's baron. He stood in the center of the ville while his people scavenged, and a party of sec and some of the stronger ville dwellers— the blacksmith and the armorers among them—rigged the nuke with ropes and makeshift platforms to effect a way of carrying it back to Raw.

 

 Alien was bowed, more like the vanquished than the victor. This was in contrast to Harvey, who was directing operations as though he, himself, had assumed the baronial role.

 

 Krysty's musings were stopped as Mildred came up to them.

 

 "No sign of Dean," she muttered shortly, keeping one eye on the party securing the nuke. "I've looked all over, and so has John. Haven't seen Ryan or Jak yet, but I'll bet you a whole heap of self-heats that I know what their answers will be if you ask them."

 

 Krysty nodded. "He never left Raw. That's something I guess we'll have to deal with when we get back. And quick, 'cause I think the power base may be shifting in the ville before long." She gestured in Alien's direction with a slight inclination of the head. Mildred took in the situation at a glance.

 

 The conversation was repeated almost word for word when Ryan, and then Jak, returned from scouting the remains of Samtvogel. But Jak had something more to add.

 

 "Only Sunchild alive." He looked over to where the mutie baron was trussed, like a wild animal, tied to a stake driven into the ground while the nuke was secured. "Because Alien say."

 

 "What about any survivors?" Mildred asked.

 

 "Didn't you see them chilling any who hadn't already bought the farm?" J.B. asked softly.

 

 "I meant those who may have got out of the valley during the fighting."

 

 "None," Jak said simply. He indicated the road out. "Sec chill anyone reach there."

 

 "Harvey's certainly made sure of this one," Ryan said grimly.

 

 The one-eyed warrior led the way over to where the sec chief was preparing the nuke for the return journey. He seemed to be assuming sole charge of the nuke, while the baron—who should have been directing or overseeing operations—was standing to one side, seemingly lost in thought.

 

 "Anything we can do to help?" Ryan asked.

 

 Harvey cast an eye over the companions. "Not here," he said with an undertone in his voice. "Mebbe you could help fire the place."

 

 "Fire?" Mildred asked.

 

 "Damn, but I thought you blacks were smart," Harvey replied, ignoring both Mildred's angry look and the fleetingly hostile glances from Ant and Dee, who were busy with the nuke, but not so busy as not to hear. It didn't escape Jak's notice that Blake also cast a glance in the sec chiefs direction.

 

 Perhaps there was an ally there when the crunch came down.

 

 Harvey continued. "Look, this place ain't got no one left alive. It's just some charnel house shitpit for the buzzards. Who knows what disease could spring up here unless we clean it up. Cleanse the area, y'know?"

 

 "Alien's orders?" Ryan asked.

 

 "Sure," Harvey replied. He called over to the baron. "Fire the place, Alien?" The baron replied with a noncommittal wave of his hand.

 

 Harvey grinned. "Sure as shit good enough for me, Cyclops. So you want to do this?"

 

 The sec chiefs insolent and superior gaze met the rock-steady steely blue eye. Ryan's gaze was stronger, harder. The sec chief looked away. "Find Cyclops Jr.?" he added as a final shot.

 

 "No, but I think you knew that," Ryan replied. "I know he'll turn up. But not here."

 

 Ryan turned to his friends. "We might as well get this over and done with."

 

 None of them were happy with the circumstances surrounding the firing of Samtvogel, but the catch was that the sec chief had a valid point. Samtvogel could become a hotbed of disease with so many rotting chilled corpses within the valley, and this disease could then be borne to the forest by the bird life. So it was essential that the valley be cleansed with fire.