Now, it was bedlam. The smell of the charnel house permeated the air, cutting through even the few measures that he had the time to take against the odor of chilling and decay. Every bed was full, and there were pallets in every available space, each with its own patient slowly fading. It was quiet within the four walls, but not silent. Low groans of agony, the murmurs of delirium, and the hushed talk of those who were still aware and of the ville healer himself mixed together in a low level burble of anguished sound.

 

 It looked as though the ville women who had previously aided the healer had either succumbed or opted out of helping, as he seemed to be coping almost by himself. The only assistance he had right now was that of Doc and Krysty, who were doing their best to fill the breach, even though the old man himself had begun the first stages of the disease.

 

 "Shit," Jak whispered softly to himself, getting an unwelcome picture of what was ahead.

 

 His distinctive voice cut through the burble and caused both Krysty and Doc to turn and face the door.

 

 "My dear lad," Doc began, "are you here to assist, or because you yourself have taken a turn for the worse?"

 

 Jak didn't answer—seemingly didn't hear—as he surveyed the carnage spread across the beds and floor space of the med building. But Dean was quick to reply.

 

 "I've come to round you all up—found Jak, now you two. We're going to get the plan of action."

 

 "We're ready to move already?" Krysty asked, not looking up from the patient she was tending.

 

 "The Gate are assembling, and we're all getting a full briefing."

 

 Krysty smiled crookedly, and said wryly, "Probably the sort of language those coldhearts use about planning a fight."

 

 "Yeah, but if we're gonna best them, then what better way to think of it?" Dean replied.

 

 Krysty turned to Hector. "Reckon you'll be able to cope until we get back?"

 

 "You think you will?" Hector looked at her, his eyes deep into his head, shot through with red and lined with black and discolored skin. He had the initial stages of the disease, and was still working himself harder than his sick body could cope. He knew that his time was limited, but he was determined not to give in to the pox until he had no choice.

 

 Krysty shook her head. "Mebbe, mebbe not. I don't want to give you a false hope. All I know is that we'll fight to the last one of us to try and get out of there with the antidote, and with any disease they have in there completely destroyed. Because if we don't, then we're all chilled anyway."

 

 Hector's face creased into something that may once have been a smile, but in his weariness and illness came out as more of a grimace. "Well, if you're going to do that, then I guess the least I can do is try and keep it together here until you get back."

 

 "Good man. Now we'll have to move," Krysty replied, bidding him farewell as she and Doc joined Dean and Jak, leaving the hospital and making their way rapidly toward the center of the ville. As they went, Dean explained that the wag was ready, and told them that J.B. and Mildred were waiting while Ryan went in search of Gloria and Tammy.

 

 RYAN CAWDOR WONDERED what Gloria and Tammy had been up to when he had left J.B. and Mildred, heading toward the north end of the drag. After the firefight that had resulted in the chilling of the Illuminated Ones, and it was clear that the battle was over and won, the Gate had massed in the center of the drag, waiting for word from their leader. Gloria had come and surveyed the chilled, and had then disappeared toward her people. They had moved up toward the north end of the drag, and—Ryan assumed—Robertson's people had taken away the corpses of the Illuminated soldiers when they cleared their own chilled.

 

 It was only when Ryan approached the cluster of Gate people that he realized that something else was going on. He could hear the crackle of flames, and from the center of the group a light began to rise and illuminate the area around, silhouetting the warriors as they stood. There was also a low mumble, like a chant he couldn't understand.

 

 Ryan pushed his way through the throng, the Gate people giving way easily when they saw who was trying to move through them. The one-eyed man reached the center of the gathering, which had circled around a rapidly built fire. Gloria and Tammy were in the middle, leading the chanting. In front of them lay a pile of corpses. From their pale skin, mixed sex and the tightly cropped hair, Ryan guessed that these must be the corpses of the Illuminated Ones. But where were their uniforms?

 

 Gloria was still chanting, almost in a trance, but Tammy was aware enough to see the one-eyed man as he emerged at the front of the crowd. She left her queen for a moment and approached him.

 

 "What's happening?" Ryan asked, indicating the fire and the pile of corpses.

 

 "You know our tradition," Tammy replied. "We burn the chilled, as we're always on the move. And although these people were our enemies, as they enter the next realm they are warriors stripped bare of allegiance, just like ourselves. It's the least we can do to give them a noble departure."

 

 "I appreciate that, Tammy, but we can't waste time. The wag is ready to roll, and we need to all know what we're doing triple fast if we're going to move and be in place before sunrise."

 

 Tammy nodded. "It'll be okay, Ryan. We're nearly through."

 

 Ryan cast his eye over the corpses. "Yeah, I don't want to fuck with your ways, but what have you done with their uniforms? We're really going to need those."

 

 Tammy grinned. "You don't need to be dressed to enter the next realm, for fuck's sake. We stripped them 'cause Gloria figured you'd need them. I'll get them for you."

 

 "That would be good. Then I'll leave you to finish in peace. But tell Gloria we can't waste time."

 

 "She won't want to," Tammy answered before departing swiftly to collect the uniforms. Within a couple of minutes, she had returned from the other side of the circle and handed a pile of clothing to Ryan.

 

 "Now go. We'll be with you soon, and we'll bring the headpieces with us. They're too many for one to carry, and besides you need to figure who'll fit these," she said.

 

 Ryan nodded, then left the Gate people to their ceremony.

 

 "What the hell are those women doing?" Yardie asked as Ryan passed him with the uniforms.

 

 "Something that's none of our business," Ryan snapped, "so leave them until they're done. Then we go over the plan. Everything set?"

 

 The fat sec man nodded. "We've handed as much of our ammo and blasters over to J.B. as we can spare—we have to keep some kind of sec for ourselves, just in case—and any wags or other transport that you need has been readied."

 

 "Other transport?" asked the one-eyed man, baffled.

 

 The fat sec man nodded. "We've got a few horse-drawn carts, and the horses for them. I know the Gate have theirs, but I figure they may be useful. Some of us want to volunteer to go with you, as well."

 

 "But you said—"

 

 Yardie held up his hands. "I know what I said, and I wasn't wrong. You and the Gate are far better fighters than we'll ever be. But that don't matter. We can help, and if we don't, well, that might be the margin between winning and losing. Between us all having a future or not. And that's a gamble I ain't willing to make."

 

 Ryan grasped the fat man by the arm. "Shit, you got more balls than I thought, and I'm sorry I doubted and misjudged you."

 

 Yardie gave a short laugh. "Dunno about that—I got more balls than I thought!"

 

 Ryan grinned. "Okay, you gather everyone from Crossroads who you can, and we'll meet at the south end of the drag as soon as the Gate have finished. I mean everyone, too. Even those who'll be staying here. I want everyone to know what's going on. It's not a difficult plan, but so many people involved makes it that way."

 

 Yardie nodded his understanding and left the one-eyed man as he went to gather any of the Crossroads dwellers who were still standing and fit enough to take part in some way in the action ahead.

 

 Ryan headed back to the wag, where he found Mildred had been joined by Jak, Dean, Doc and Krysty.

 

 "Fireblast! Where the fuck has J.B. gone?"

 

 "Armory," Mildred answered. "They're turning guns and ammo over to us, and John wanted to see what we had before we started."

 

 "There isn't time. When everyone else is preparing—"

 

 "—I can check the weapons and get them working then," J.B. finished, coming up as Ryan spoke. "I just wanted to get an overall idea of what we had."

 

 "Which is?" Ryan asked.

 

 The Armorer shook his head. "Not much. But the Gate have enough of an armory as it is, and we'll be okay. Plus there are some more laser blasters from the chilled Illuminated Ones."

 

 "Speaking of which," Mildred interjected, "what are we gonna do about those?" She indicated the uniforms Ryan was carrying.

 

 "That's a good question," the one-eyed man said softly. "I figure we can only divide these up according to who they fit. They won't notice anything at first, as long as the uniforms fit."

 

 "What about the helmets?" Krysty asked.

 

 "The Gate will bring those. They're not so important, and I'd guess they're all one size but adjustable, if they're anything like the ones we've come across before."

 

 "Okay," the red-haired woman agreed. "I guess we'd better get these fitted up if possible, then."

 

 She took the uniforms from Ryan and began to hold them up, one by one. They were marked by the burns of the laser blasters that had chilled their original occupants, but the biggest problem was their size. Some of them were large enough for Ryan or Krysty to fit into, but a couple of them were too small for Dean or Doc.

 

 "Shit—I really didn't want to leave any one of us out of the wag," Ryan said. "Any of the Gate may be able to cope with the wag and keeping up the deception until we can get those sec doors open, but…"

 

 "But you would rather have people around you that you can trust totally, and who you know will cover your back?" Doc queried.

 

 "Guess that's it," Ryan agreed. "After the things we've been through, I can second guess what any of you will do in a situation and back you up. And every single one of you could do that for me. For any one of us."

 

 "Well, it just ain't gonna work that way this time, however we might like it," Mildred mused, "and just maybe that's for the best."

 

 "How d'you mean?" Dean asked.

 

 Mildred leveled a gaze at all of them, moving from one to the other as she spoke in an equally level tone. "The fact of the matter is, Doc, Jak and myself are buying the farm. Even as I speak, we're creeping nearer. That's just the way it is, and right now we can't do anything about it. The disease seems to be affecting us to a lesser degree than I've seen it in any of the Crossroads people who've been infected, and I can only guess at why this may be. Whatever, it seemed to have delayed and slowed the progress of the infection, but it certainly hasn't chilled it.

 

 "I'll be honest with you guys—I feel like shit, and I'm acting like it. Everything is slower, more difficult. I'd guess it's probably like that for Jak and Doc, too. But that makes it dangerous to trust us totally in a firefight situation, because we're not the same people right now. Maybe if you have to have Gate warriors, you won't trust so much on instinct, and that may be better."

 

 There was a pause while Ryan considered this. Finally, he said, "Yeah, mebbe you're right about that. It's not something any of us want to face, I guess, but if we're gonna stay alive and smash those bastards, then we've got to think about it."

 

 "Okay," Krysty murmured, seeing the concern on her lover's face. "Mebbe the best thing to do is wait till we've run through the plan, then pick who comes with some of us."

 

 "Yeah," Ryan agreed reluctantly, "that seems the easiest way. Meantime I guess we'd all better get acquainted with the wag's comps, seeing as any of us may or may not be in the wag now."

 

 It seemed like a good idea, and there was time while the Gate finished their ceremony. That they neared completion was made obvious by the thick smoke that rose from the fire at the far end of the ville, rising into the rapidly darkening night air, filling it with the sickly sweet smell of roasting flesh.

 

 There was room for all the companions to fit inside the wag, and Mildred and Dean quickly ran over the contents of the comp board. Much of it was no longer operational due to the shorting out of the electrical cable beneath the chassis, but some parts were still in operation. The interior lighting and directional controls were intact, operating on the emergency system, but the parts of the comp that were linked to the redoubt were dead, as indeed was the radio that had kept them in contact with the redoubt and with the other wag. Dean and Mildred—who between them had the entire system figured—gave the others a crash course in how to turn off the operational systems, and also how to use them if it became necessary. They also made sure that the nonoperational sections were completely detached from the working parts.

 

 By the time the friends left the wag, the Gate had moved down the drag, led by Gloria and Tammy. Two of the warriors were carrying the helmets that accompanied the uniforms, and they laid them down by the wag, where Ryan and Krysty had left the uniforms ready for allocation. The Crossroads people had gathered with the Gate people, and they were facing Ryan and the companions, waiting to see what would transpire.

 

 Ryan spoke. "I don't need to tell you the importance of what's going to happen. We believe that the disease that's infested this ville, and which these people we know as the Illuminated Ones plan to spread throughout the whole of these lands, has its root in an underground base not far from here. We want to break into that base, chill every last one of those people before they can do any more harm and wipe out all traces of the disease that's there. We also believe that they have an antidote. They'll have that to make sure they didn't get it.

 

 "We know where this base is, and we have experience in fighting these people. You Crossroads people who join us are taking a risk, and we appreciate that. If we leave soon, we can reach the base before sunrise, and that'll be the best time to take them.

 

 "My plan is simple—some of us will use this wag and the uniforms taken from the chilled, and we'll attempt to enter the base as the missing wag crew. The radio was shot out, so they won't know that we're fakes. The rest of you will follow at a distance, keeping to cover. They have sec cameras around the entrance to the base, so in order to maximize cover and lull their suspicions we need to act swiftly and take advantage of the darkness.

 

 "We can get in, and once there we need to stall them long enough to open up the doors to the base so that the rest of you can get in and help us. They're not good fighters, but they may have better weapons, and we have no idea at this stage of how many we face.

 

 "Your task is to drive them back into the heart of the base—Crossroads people, let the Gate lead. Like us, they have an idea of how these places are constructed. Others of us will set out to find the disease cultures and the antidote. We know what we have to look for. We need you to help us fight against the numbers.

 

 "Basically, those of us in the wag will seek the disease. The rest of you, keep to cover until we can open the sec doors. Then follow us in and blast those fuckers into oblivion.

 

 "There are no guarantees of success, but this is a one-shot chance, so we need to have clear heads and chill anyone who does not belong to us. Is that clear?"

 

 There were murmurs of understanding and approval from the crowd.

 

 Ryan nodded firmly. "Okay. We know what we have to do—let's get ready to move."

 

  

 

 Chapter Nine

 

  

 

 J.B. wasted no time in linking up with Jon to get an overview of the combined armory. The young Gate Armorer had gathered the cache of weapons from the Crossroads armory with his own and was checking them with the aid of Cat and Dette.

 

 "How's it going?" J.B. asked, noting the looks of concern on their faces.

 

 "Shall we just say that these people are kinda triple stupe when it comes to keeping their weapons in good condition?" Dette spit without looking up from the Sharps rifle that she was attempting to clean. "If some poor fucker actually fired this thing, it'd be more likely to blow up in his face than chill some enemy."

 

 J.B. bit his tongue and caught Jon's eye, barely suppressing a grin.

 

 Jon shrugged. "She's not choosy with her words, but she does have a point," he admitted. "I guess they don't get much of a call for combat around here."

 

 "I don't think they do," the Armorer agreed. "Mind, they're brave enough to join us when they know they're shit at firefighting."

 

 "Either brave or really, really stupe beyond belief," Cat remarked.

 

 "Whatever, they're with us and they've given us these weapons. So let's stop bitching and try to get this sorted, okay?" Jon snapped.

 

 There was a moment's tense silence as the two Gate women stopped and glared at their Armorer. There had never been a man taking such a position within the tribe before, and they were still unused to the concept of a man wielding authority. J.B. waited, interested to see how Jon handled the situation.

 

 "You can stop that shit, too," he directed at them. "Gloria put me in charge, and we've got work to do. Who do you think's doing the right thing here?"

 

 "You, I suppose," Cat said grudgingly. "Guess we do need to knock these into some kind of shape and triple fast…and I suppose arguing about it don't do any good."

 

 "Exactly," Jon replied. "So what about you, Dette?"

 

 "If you say so, I guess," the woman answered, still with a hint of hostility in her tone. "I suppose we should get this done."

 

 Satisfied that the situation was under control enough for him to speak without interfering, J.B. moved over to where Jon sat, loading a Walther PPK handblaster that he had just cleaned.

 

 "So, if you need to get these done triple quick, a helping hand could be useful."

 

 Jon looked up. "I'd appreciate that, J.B.," he replied simply, indicating the pile of blasters and ammo still to be checked. "Just grab one and get checking."

 

 With the practiced eye and hand of the Armorer to assist, the four of them soon cleared the backlog of Crossroads blasters, ignoring the sound and movement around them as the warriors prepared for battle. When the Crossroads armory had been cleared, it was time to move on and check the Gate armory.

 

 Despite it being more than twice the size of the ville's armory, it took a fraction of the time for the four of them to run through the handblasters, grens, plas-ex, machine blasters, gren launchers and laser blasters that the Gate had amassed. The condition of the armory, and the inventory, was so well kept that all they really had to do was to check the laser blasters used in the earlier firefight.

 

 "They seem okay, but I sure as shit wish that I could tell how much charge they had in them," Jon said ruefully when they had finished.

 

 J.B. shrugged. "Trust to luck. They're not our main weapons. We really rely on our usual blasters. And we picked up a few more after the firefight."

 

 "Yeah, I know," the young Gate Armorer replied, "but they'll be a useful weapon when we get beneath ground, especially if we need to get through some of those sec doors."

 

 "Then we use them sparingly and only bring them out when they're really needed." J.B. shrugged again. "I know what you're saying, but the fact of the matter is that we can't keep wishing and hoping. We have to build the shack with as many bricks as we've got, and no more."

 

 "Guess I still need to learn that."

 

 "That's experience. Just stay frosty and alive long enough," J.B. told him. "We're set here. I need to check our own inventory right now."

 

 Jon bade the Armorer farewell as J.B. headed back toward the companions in order to fulfill his duties on their blasters.

 

 FIGURING THAT SHE wouldn't be needed urgently, Mildred slipped away toward the med building, determined to see Hector before they set off.

 

 When she entered the building, she was appalled by the overcrowding and the conditions, even more so when she saw Hector tending to one of the pox victims who was close to the end.

 

 "Lord save us, man, you'll be gone before anyone else if you don't rest," she said quietly.

 

 "If I try and rest, every time I close my eyes all I see is the suffering," he replied in a flat tone without turning to face her.

 

 "And you'll be better off buying the farm that bit sooner?" she queried in return.

 

 "Mebbe it'd be better to go out quicker trying to make it better for some than just hanging around a bit longer to see a few more poor stupe bastards in agony."

 

 "You don't think we'll make it?"

 

 Hector didn't answer immediately. He finished tending to his patient, then turned to face her. Mildred was shocked by the change in his appearance. It wasn't just where the tiredness and the disease had started to take hold of him; it wasn't just the dark under his eyes. It was the dark within them. Just a few days, a week or so, earlier, Hector had been a man who had belief in his task. He had tried his best for the people of Crossroads, and was willing to try more in the efforts to overcome the mysterious disease that had hit the ville. But now his eyes were dark pits of despair, holes in the earth that had seen into the abyss and echoed this with their own empty caverns of dark.

 

 He had given up hope, but his basic humanity and devotion to his task wouldn't let him give up until he himself had dropped from the disease and exhaustion.

 

 Finally, after what seemed a painful eternity, he answered Mildred. "I don't see how any of us can make it."

 

 "You don't think we can make it in and out in one piece, let alone find the antidote?"

 

 Hector looked at her blankly. "What?" he asked simply.

 

 Mildred shook her head, plaits feeling heavy as the disease took more of a grip on her weary frame. "You mean to say that you haven't heard of the attack plan?"

 

 Hector shook his head, but there was a vague glimmer of something that may just have been approaching hope deep within his eyes. He stepped forward, hesitating as though unsure what to do or say next.

 

 "I just knew there was a firefight, and that you and the women arrived in time to drive the wags away. Krysty and Doc were here, but—"

 

 "Ryan and Gloria have a plan of action, and Baron Robertson is backing it. It's not much as hopes go, I guess—all if's and buts—but it may be all we have. Take a rest, man—just for a few moments—and I'll tell you about it," Mildred said rapidly.

 

 Hector allowed her to lead him to the rear of the med building, where there were a few chairs pushed to the wall to make way for more pallets. Sitting him down, Mildred explained the projected campaign to the bewildered and exhausted medic, who had trouble taking it all in—particularly when she had to go back and explain how both her companions and the Gate tribe knew so much about the underground base. She was sure that Hector had been told this before, but it all seemed new to him, possibly the disease and exhaustion were leading to short term memory loss. Certainly, as she spoke part of her ran a professional appraisal on the medic. She was sure that, unless they were able to fulfill the plan rapidly, it would be too late for Hector. He was working himself to death, and nothing would make him pull back.

 

 "Do you understand what this means?" she asked as she finished relating the details of the forthcoming attack.

 

 He nodded slowly. "Yeah, I think so. If we can just keep it together here, then we may be able to stop the spread."

 

 Mildred assented.

 

 "But if we can't…" He shook his head. "Guess there'll be nothing to do except work till I finally keel over."

 

 Mildred allowed herself a wry smile. "Guess not, and I guess I'd do the same in your position," she concluded.

 

 Hector paused, lost in thought for a moment. Then, with a surprising suddenness, the rangy healer rose to his feet. "Best to get going, then, Mildred."

 

 As she rose, he grasped her by the shoulders and looked her in the eyes. His gaze was now fiery and intent, the previous blackness now illuminated by a light of hope.

 

 "Look, if we should never meet again, for whatever reason…" He trailed off, not sure how to continue, before taking a deep breath. "Listen, I realize that there's a lot about you that I don't understand and never will, like how you and Doc seem to know so much about what happened before the nukecaust, and how come you know stuff about medicine that seems, well, why that is I don't know, and I don't really want to. All that matters is that I learned more about being a healer from you in a few days than I ever had, and it's helped me more than I can say over the last few weeks. And if you don't get the hell out of this with the cure, it won't be for the want of trying. I guess all I'm trying to say is that I'm glad I had the chance to learn from you before all the shit hit the wall."

 

 Mildred hugged the man. "Keep hoping we get back, and for God's sakes keep yourself alive until we do. It'll only be a day or so if we're coming back," she said as she held on to him.

 

 She let him go and stood back. "Keep yourself alive—we'll be back. And get some rest! That's from one doctor to another."

 

 "I'll try, but you know how that is." He shrugged.

 

 Mildred shook her head. "Damn fool."

 

 Hector stood at the back and watched as she left, answering her departing gesture with a small wave of the hand.

 

 As soon as the door of the med building was closed, he forgot all idea of rest and returned to his patients.

 

 THERE WERE SEVEN SUITS and helmets from the chilled Illuminated Ones that would be worn by those who would travel in the wag and make the initial entry to the redoubt. Not all of the companions would be able to make the cut, partly because of the problem of matching available suit sizes to the individual, and partly because of the possible failing health of Mildred, Doc and Jak.

 

 Yet the argument for noninclusion because of health was that the infected companions would be slower, and not so reliable and quick to react as usual. Therefore, the usual—and almost psychic—level of cover between them may be broken. However, it occurred to Ryan that if some of the Gate traveled with them, then this reliance would already be broken, and perhaps the infected companions would be able to make the trip— or, to be more specific, one of them: Mildred.

 

 The companions had gathered by the wag and were making their own preparations for battle, checking their weapons and restocking on ammo and grens from the traveling supply that J.B. always carried with him. Mildred had joined them and was shocked when she heard Ryan state that she should travel in the vanguard of the attack.

 

 "Why? I'm in no fit state to be trusted. God alone knows I would gladly go if I felt— Ryan, my reflexes are shot to shit and I'm slow."

 

 "But you've got something much more important that that," the one-eyed man said calmly. "You're the only one among us who would be able to tell the disease cultures and the possible antidote in the Illuminated Ones' laboratory."

 

 "You're right, of course," she stated. "But you could bring me in on the second wave, and I could lead the search when they've been driven back. I just don't trust myself in combat, the way I feel right now."

 

 "We can't take the chance that they would destroy everything as they pulled back. Whatever else they may be, they aren't stupes. They'll know that one of the reasons we've come is so that we can try and snatch the antidote from them. Chances are that they'll try and get rid of it before we can get it. That's why you need to be in the front line. We have to increase our chances to the max."

 

 Mildred bit her lip, thinking hard. She tried to tune out the world around her and listen to her body—to assess the degree to which the disease had taken hold of her so far, to see how much she was aching, to see how slow it had made her.

 

 Finally, she nodded to herself and then at Ryan. Fixing the one-eyed man with a steely glare, she said, "Okay, You're right on the reasons. I figure I may still just about have it together enough to hold my own in a firefight. I'll do it."

 

 Ryan clapped her on the back. "Good. I know you'll be okay, because you have to be."

 

 "I wish I could share your confidence in me," Mildred replied.

 

 "You'll be all right, Millie," J.B. said. His face was as impassive as usual, but Mildred could see in his eyes that he was worried about her. A worry tempered by the fact that they had no choice in the matter, the struggle had to go on. The Armorer looked away after their eyes met, and directed his attention to Ryan.

 

 "Okay, so that's one of the uniforms taken," he said laconically, "and I'd guess that you take another—" he looked for the one-eyed man to affirm this "—so what do you want me to do?"

 

 "I'll need you to take overall charge of the ground operation that follows the wag," Ryan told him.

 

 "Won't Gloria be in charge of that?" J.B. asked.

 

 Ryan shook his head. "It's best if she and Tammy come with us. They're good fighters, and they'll rally the Gate from the front when we get the sec doors open. They can then lead different branches of the attack from within, as I figure that we'll have to split into factions once we get down past the second level. If this redoubt is anything like the one they left, then it'll be even more of a maze than they are usually."

 

 "That's four of the suits gone," the Armorer said. "Three to fill."

 

 "Not me," Jak said suddenly, shaking his head as he looked at the uniforms. "Two things—feel shit to be in lead, and too small for these."

 

 The albino lifted two of the suits. They were the smallest, and were obviously the ones that would be taken by the Gate queen and her second in command. The other suits were all much larger and would swamp the wiry Jak.

 

 "Good point," Ryan agreed. "I figure you'd be better helping J.B. anyway. It'll take two of you to keep an eye on this amount of ground forces."

 

 "Okay, three suits left, then," Mildred murmured. "Who else?"

 

 J.B. broke in before Ryan had a chance to speak. "If I'm not going to be in the front line, then I reckon you should take Jon."

 

 "Jon? Why?" Ryan queried. From the surprise in his voice, the name of the young Gate Armorer was the last that would have occurred to him.

 

 "He'll be invaluable in assessing the weapons they're bringing up on us…and he knows those laser blasters better than any of us, me included. I tell you, Ryan, you'll need someone with the touch who can make a quick decision about which weapons will do the job. Especially if you need to get through sec doors without causing too much damage to the structure or the people in an enclosed space."

 

 "Okay—he's in," Ryan agreed. He had known J.B. too long, and trusted his old friend's ability to judge another Armorer too well, to argue with the choice.

 

 "So who gets the final two places, lover?" Krysty asked.

 

 "I figure you and Dean," Ryan stated. "You're good fighters, I know you, and between you there should be no problem with any of the onboard comp equipment, or taking over driving the wag if either me or Mildred have to be away from the wheel. I don't know if Gloria, Tammy or Jon have ever driven a motorized wag, let alone one like this," he added. "We can't find ourselves fucked because they don't know how to put a wag into reverse!"

 

 "That's a good point," Mildred noted, adding, "but mebbe you should put it a bit more delicately when you tell Gloria."

 

 "Yeah, mebbe avoid fight before start," Jak said with a rare glint of humor in his cold, red eyes.

 

 Ryan agreed. "Okay, but you get the point. So we now know where we are. If we get ourselves together and wait for Gloria and Tammy to—"

 

 "We are, perhaps, not quite as ready as you think, friend Ryan," Doc piped up. He was leaning heavily on his cane, and looking down at the ground as he spoke, but there was a hardness in his tone that none of them had heard for a long while.

 

 "What's up, Doc?" Mildred asked, feeling suddenly and inappropriately absurd at her turn of phrase.

 

 Doc looked up at all of them, not answering her directly but sharing his gaze with all of the companions. "I am not content with the arrangements," he began. "In fact, I think it would be fair to say that I have an intense displeasure at the manner in which any claim I may have to be a part of the initial bridgehead has been summarily dismissed without my even getting a hearing."

 

 "Doc, what are you taking about?" Dean asked, studying the old man's face. It was pale, spangled with a sheen of perspiration and the mane of hair that fell about his face only accentuated the darkening patches beneath his bloodshot eyes. He seemed more lined and pale than usual, and he resembled someone who had long since bought the farm but refused to lie down. Which, perhaps, was exactly what he was at this time. His eyes blazed into the companions, driven by some inner fire that was consuming him, even though his body was racked with agonies.

 

 "I will tell you, my dear young Cawdor, to what I refer," Doc stated, the words coming low and harsh, seemingly forced from the back of his throat. "I refer, quite simply, to the manner in which I have been seemingly dismissed from the plans of your father, as though I were a feeble old man who no longer had any worth…or, indeed, any existence."

 

 "Doc, what the fireblasted hell are you talking about?" Ryan asked, confusion written across his face.

 

 "I refer, my dear boy," Doc snapped, "to the way in which everyone has been assigned their tasks, and yet I was not even spoken of, let alone considered for the bridgehead party."

 

 "Doc, you've got the disease, and you've been hit hardest by it," Ryan said, trying to keep his voice level and calm. "You are the most vulnerable of all of us. You know that as well as I do, as well as any of us. And by keeping you back I was giving you a chance to fight while maximizing the range of fighting ability in the wag. Mildred is only with us because—"

 

 "Because she is a doctor! I know that—I am not a fool," Doc raged, quivering with a barely suppressed anger that was quite unlike anything that any of the companions had seen from him before. "But I have a reason to be there, too."

 

 Mildred studied Doc. He was touchy and oversensitive because of how sick he was, she was sure of that. Certainly, a fit and well Tanner would never overreact in such a manner. But she also knew Doc well enough to know that under the hysteria there was a reason struggling to be heard.

 

 "So tell us the reason, Doc," she said quietly.

 

 He turned to her. "Madam, my reason is quite plain enough to see for those who have eyes. These appalling specimens of a bloated and distorted humanity, these dregs of filth that chose to live underground and operate in such a cowardly and callous manner, they are the last embodiment and manifestation of the evil and depraved imagination that led to us living in such a wasteland…a wasteland that will be eradicated beyond any further recognition by their sordid little schemes. They are the last in a long line of those who 'felt they knew best,' and who would seek to impose their perverted logic upon the rest of us, an unsuspecting populace.

 

 "I have been dragged from the bosom of my family and taken through an experience that no one should have to face, to be finally left here, in a time and world completely alien to me, that is about to be eradicated by their last, perverse turn of the cards.

 

 "If anyone has the right—nay, the imperative—to be in the vanguard against these coldhearted scum, then it is myself. Who but I has the knowledge of these whitecoats and their distorted vision of the Totality Concept? Who else among us has the firsthand experience of their ways? Who else has met with them face-to-face as people, though it pains me to dignify such scum with the same genus as the rest of us. I am close to my own end, with the clock ticking away precious seconds. I have the right, dammit, to attempt an act of vengeance before that most grim of reapers finally casts his shadow upon me, and takes me to his lair."

 

 There was a silence following Doc's words. It was an emotion that was exacerbated by his current condition, but nonetheless one that had an undeniable validity.

 

 Finally, Ryan spoke, choosing his words with care. "Doc, none of us can ever understand what you've been through. If not for the things we've seen, then it would be easy to dismiss it as the ravings of an insane man, as it seemed when we first met. And you're right—if I was you, I'd want to go in with all blasters blazing and take revenge. But this isn't just about us. It isn't just about the Gate, or about Crossroads. It's about whether we're going to have a future. So however good your reasons, I can't let them get in the way of what I know is the right thing to do. And if you stop and think, you know that, too. Look at how ill you are, Doc…"

 

 The old man said nothing, his body quivering with a barely suppressed rage. Tears of frustration and anger welled in his eyes.

 

 "Dammit, the worst of it is that, no matter how much I would wish to deny it, I know in my heart that you are right."

 

 He turned on his heel and marched away from them.

 

 "Want me follow him?" Dean asked.

 

 Ryan shook his head. "Let him work it out. He'll be ready when we are."

 

 "Not blame him being cranky," Jak said, watching Doc disappear into a crowd of Crossroads dwellers. "This ache drive mad…" He winced, suggesting that the disease was making greater inroads into his body and mind.

 

 "All the more reason to get it right," Ryan commented.

 

 From out of the crowd, Gloria and Tammy strode over to the wag, the Gate queen going straight to Jak.

 

 "Hey, honey, how you feeling?" she asked, hugging him. "Let's go get those fuckers."

 

 She turned to Ryan. "We're ready, and the Crossroads guys are as ready as they'll ever be. So let's get the plan sorted."

 

 Ryan told her first about the allocation of Illuminated uniforms, and the manner in which he wanted the attack to be led. He was concerned that the Gate queen would be unhappy at leaving her people in the charge of J.B. and Jak while she, her second in command and her Armorer all traveled on ahead. But Gloria had an instinctive tactical sense, and could see Ryan's reasoning.

 

 "That's fine. My girls like Jak and J.B., and they trust them as if they were of us. We trust all of you as if you were of us."

 

 "That's good. We need that complete trust if this is going to work," Ryan said. "So now we need to plot a course that will take us all close to the redoubt without being spotted by sec patrols or cameras."

 

 Gloria chewed on her bottom lip as she considered this. Finally, she said, "As to patrols, we know from watching them that they don't come out that often. I guess they may send some out to try and scout for this wag," she said, slapping the side of the wag they were to use as a Trojan horse, "but I don't reckon they're that brave. We can send scouts on ahead to report back, as we always do. Give them enough advance and there's no reason why the wag should be spotted anywhere near the rest of us. Sure as shit easy enough to hide ourselves."

 

 "What about cameras around the redoubt?" Krysty asked Gloria and Ryan.

 

 It was Tammy who interjected. "We need to find a route that'll keep us close to the wag and give us cover. Wait…"

 

 The Gate warrior fell to her knees and began to trace a semicircle in the dust, marking a point within. "That's the hill where the redoubt is, yeah?" she said. Then, drawing a small circle some way away, she added, "And that's where we are now, right?"

 

 "Agreed," Ryan murmured. "So it's the problem of how we get from there to there—" he indicated the two points "—without running the risk of being spotted."

 

 "Right," Tammy said. "Well, I've been on a lot of recce patrols around there, and I reckon there is a way of using the cover we've got."

 

 And as the companions and Gloria watched, Tammy sketched in the wooded area where the Gate had originally camped, the hill where Mildred had encountered the landslide and the crops of scrub and trees that lay between.

 

 "If we use the outriders to make sure we aren't spotted along the way, then we can use the cover until we reach this point," she said decisively, indicating a line of scrub and sparse woodland that ran almost parallel to the slope of the hill where the redoubt entrance was located. "From here, the wag can carry on down to the redoubt alone, and get let in—that way, we can use this cover and the darkness to remain hidden. No way will any cameras pick us up in the dark and at that distance."

 

 Ryan looked at the crudely drawn diagram in the dust. "Still some distance from the entrance, though. When we get the sec door open, we won't be able to hold them long unaided if we're heavily outnumbered. And if we're wiped out and the door is closed again, then the whole mission is fucked. You'll have to be able to move everyone pretty damn quick," he said to J.B.

 

 "I figure me, Jak and Doc could do it," the Armorer stated. "And I'm pretty sure that the Gate can." He cast a quizzical glance at Tammy and Gloria.

 

 "Honey, you don't even have to ask," the Gate queen said with a smile. "To get a crack at those scum fuckers, my girls would crawl over broken glass and walk on fire. A few hundred yards of flat land sure ain't gonna stop them."

 

 "That's what I was hoping to hear." J.B. grinned. "I figure that as soon as the sec door starts to rise, we just go hell for leather. The light will give us an early warning for when it's starting to go up, leaking out of the redoubt. And they'll be too busy with you guys to try and stop us," he added.

 

 "That's the idea, sweets," Gloria agreed. "So are we ready to move out?"

 

 "Soon as we get these damn suits on, and your people are up to speed," Ryan answered.

 

 With the briefest of nods, Gloria and Tammy went off to give the Gate and the Crossroads dwellers their final briefing, including handing over the chain of command to J.B., Jak and Doc.

 

 While Ryan, Mildred, Krysty and Dean struggled into the uniforms of the chilled Illuminated Ones, J.B. and Jak went in search of Doc. They found him seated on the porch of a house, only a few hundred yards from the main drag.

 

 "Good evening to you, gentlemen," Doc said as they approached. "I fear I must apologize for being a cretin."

 

 "I reckon I'd take that apology if I knew what the fuck you meant," J.B. replied, "but right now I'm just glad we've found you." The Armorer briefly relayed the final plan of action to Doc, ending, "I know you feel like shit from this pox, but me and Jak need you if we're gonna pull all these people together."

 

 Doc rose to his feet, much more composed than when last they had seen him. "Gentlemen," he said slowly, "I allowed my rage and frustration to overtake me. I am in no fit state to be in the vanguard of an attack, but if you think for one moment that I shall be found wanting in my moment of trial, then you are very sorely mistaken. Lead on, my dear John Barrymore. If I do not help attain a cure, I shall at least buy the farm with my own coin."

 

 "That mean yes?" Jak asked J.B.

 

 "Resoundingly," Doc replied.

 

 The three companions returned to the center of the ville to find Tammy and Gloria squeezing themselves into the clinging material of the Illuminated uniforms. It was hard to get the suits to fit, as they were made of a stretchy material, and so had to be molded to the body in a way that clothes usually weren't, particularly for the Gate women and Jon, who hardly wore any clothes at all. In fact, the only one to slide into the uniform with ease was Mildred, who had worn such types of uniform in her predark sporting days.

 

 "Are we ready?" J.B. asked.

 

 Cursing the uniform, Gloria half turned to him.

 

 "Sure thing, sweets. Everyone knows the plan, knows who's in charge. The only thing stopping us now is these motherfucking clothes," she added, trying to get her arm into the material without it twisting and becoming constricting.

 

 J.B., Jak and Doc moved to join the convoy that would follow the Illuminated wag, mounting the horse drawn wags that would carry the armory and some of the Crossroads dwellers. The Gate warriors would either ride the back of the wags, go on foot or, in the case of the outriders, were mounted on swifter steeds.

 

 The fake Illuminated Ones donned their helmets, securing them so that they lost all identity. Seeing them standing there, about to embark in the wag, it seemed to J.B. that his friends no longer existed. The only giveaways were the scorch and burn marks, and subsequent holes, that scored the uniforms. Hopefully, when they entered the redoubt and disembarked from the wag, these could be put down to superficial injury just long enough for the vanguard to take the initiative.

 

 Without a word—after all, speech would be almost impossible from behind the dark visors of the helmets—the advance war party got into the wag, the door closing behind them and sealing them off from the outside world. The engine of the wag was fired up, and the vehicle began to move slowly forward, turning so that it could head in the right direction. Directed by J.B., the wags and horses of the following war party parted to enable the wag to pass through unimpeded, and lead the way. As soon as it has passed through, the convoy closed behind it.

 

 As the war party began to move, J.B. suddenly became aware of someone calling his name. Looking around, he could see that Baron Robertson was coming from his dwelling. He looked pale and drawn, and was coughing, hawking onto the ground as he walked across.

 

 "We're moving off," J.B. shouted, stating the obvious so that the baron could see that he could not wait.

 

 "Good," the baron said simply. "You've got the best we can give you, and I just wanted to wish you luck."

 

 "Certainly need that—always helps," the Armorer replied,

 

 "Look, it's too late for my daughter, and I reckon mebbe for me, as well," Robertson said, walking beside the slow moving wag and gasping for breath as he tried to talk and keep up. "Look…" He pulled open his shirt and showed the Armorer a network of pox and scabs that hadn't yet reached his face.

 

 "That's tough," J.B. said. "Mebbe we can get back in time."

 

 "Not for me," Robertson cut in. "Weird thing is I don't give a shit about me. Never given a shit for anything, really. Tell you what, though—I look at the way this ville has been ripped up, at the amount of people that have bought the farm, and are sick and suffering, and suddenly I find that I do care somehow. I want those coldheart bastards to suffer, and I want my people to get better. So give the fuckers hell—you got our best, 'cause we won't need it if you don't come back."

 

 "We'll just see," he said dryly. "Now we've really got to move."

 

 Aware that the wag was starting to pick up speed, J.B. twitched the reins on the horses drawing the wag, and it began to pick up speed to match, leaving the baron gasping for breath as it pulled away from him.

 

 Leaving the main drag behind, the motorized wag and the convoy behind began to pick up the pace, heading down the blacktop until it could turn for cover and head toward the redoubt. As the speed increased, the outriders let rip with shrieks that ripped across the quiet of the night sky, spurring their horses to a gallop as they headed off to recce the territory ahead.

 

 The chase was on.

 

  

 

 Chapter Ten

 

  

 

 It was as the Illuminated wag turned off the blacktop road and started to roll across the fields toward the beginnings of the wooded areas that inspiration struck Dean. The younger Cawdor had been keyed up, like the others in the wag, and while the others had made little attempt to alleviate their boredom, he had been moved to tinker with the section of burned out comp that was near his seat.

 

 At first, they had tried to keep the Illuminated helmets in place, to acclimatize themselves to the constriction so that it wouldn't prove a handicap when they had to assume their disguise entering the redoubt, and wouldn't slow them unnecessarily when it came to a firefight. But the heavy metal shells and the Plexiglas visors were too irritating to the wag's inhabitants to be endured for long.

 

 Gloria removed hers first, shaking loose her long, flowing red hair, and scratching her itching scalp.

 

 "Gaia, I don't know how they put up with that," she spit.

 

 "I'll go for that," Ryan agreed, taking his hands off the wheel long enough to remove the encumbrance before correcting the wag's course once more. "If I kept that on for the entire journey, I'd be too triple crazed to think straight in a firefight anyway."

 

 They continued, the tension of imminent battle putting paid to all conversation. All would be glad when the journey was over, and the battle about to begin. Each fighter was wrapped in his or her own private world: Mildred concerned with the virus; Gloria and Tammy thinking about the Gate, following close behind; Krysty concerned with the health of her friends; Jon, the first Gate male to really take part in such an action, wondering if he was up to the challenge ahead—Ryan concerned with whether his plan would work; and Dean…

 

 The comp near him was the communication and directional system. He was seated where the Illuminated One who operated the system would work, the swiveling seat turning to face the now dead control panel and screens.

 

 To alleviate the tedium of the journey, and so as not to dwell on the firefight ahead, Dean began to take an interest in the comp. Losing himself in the old tech, he began to tinker with the panel. Beneath the desktop arrangement of the comp was a maintenance panel inset into the desktop itself, lying flush. Running his fingers along the smooth metal, Dean found a catch that enabled him to spring the panel open. Sliding off his seat so that he was kneeling on the floor and was therefore able to see the underneath of the desktop, he pulled down a series of fiber optic cables that connected the dead system with the electrical supply cable that had been shot out beneath the wag during the earlier conflagration.

 

 Tammy, noticing what he was doing, came over and knelt beside him.

 

 "What are you doing, sweets?" she asked him.

 

 Ignoring the sudden rush of feeling as she referred to him thus—and that made him almost forget what he actually had been about to do—Dean concentrated on the cables and pulled at the loosest. A long stream of cable came out from beneath the desk until it spooled on the floor around them, ending with a burned out and severed end.

 

 "See this?" he asked her. "This is the cable that powered up the comp and the radio. It got shot out when the wag was in Crossroads. But I reckon that, if I reroute the emergency into here, then mebbe we can get the comp working again."

 

 Tammy gave him an askew glare. "Okay. And why would you want to do that?"

 

 Dean shrugged. '"Cause I'm bored, and it'll take my mind off things. That's all."

 

 Tammy smiled. "Good a reason as any, I guess."

 

 Then, while the Gate warrior watched, Dean took one of the other cables, which he had traced by feel to be running toward the front of the wag, and pulled at it.

 

 "Watch you don't blow the wag's backup power," Krysty said with some concern as she watched from the front of the wag. "We don't want to get stranded while you have to patch up your own mistakes."

 

 Dean grinned ruefully. "I wouldn't risk it if I thought it might do that. This cable'll just allow me to tap into the power, it won't make the engine cut out. I figure they'd have more than one outlet from the backup as a kind of fail safe."

 

 "Yeah, remind me of that if Ryan has to stop and reroute it all again because of you," Krysty replied, wincing as Dean tugged and snapped the cable, a shorter length of it coming out from beneath the desk, so that there were now two spools of cable around him and Tammy.

 

 "Tammy, you take this for a moment and keep it out of my way," Dean requested, handing her the shorter length. Then, while the woman was holding the cable aloft, he took the useless, burned out cable and pulled it loose from the desk. Discarding the long loop of redundant fiber optic, he took the cable from Tammy's hand and stripped the covering back, so that the loose strands of fiber optic sprayed out in a fine mist of substance around his hand. Selecting some of the ends, he delved beneath the desk and attempted to connect them to the junction from which he had ripped the useless cable.

 

 "This'll either work or give me something to think about," he muttered as he tried to make the two pieces connect.

 

 "Shit, it's actually working!" Gloria said as the desktop comp spluttered twice, the lights flaring up briefly before dying away once more.

 

 "Do we actually want it to work?" Mildred asked Ryan, who so far had said nothing, concentrating on the dark terrain ahead, barely lit by the wag's headlights, one of which had been shot out, the other of which was only on the emergency power supply.

 

 "Why not?" the one-eyed man queried.

 

 "Because if the redoubt has been trying to contact the wag, won't they think it a little suspicious if it suddenly springs back into life when it's headed toward them. Won't they want to ask questions about what happened, and why it's been silent for so long?"

 

 "Not necessarily. They may just be glad to be back in touch. They may assume that their own people have just done exactly what Dean's doing—sorting it out when they're safe away from the ville. And anyway, even if they can contact us, will they know it's up and running again unless we answer? We're not being forced to respond, after all."

 

 "No, that's true enough," Mildred pondered. "But what if there's an automatic tracker that comes to life when the comp is booted up? That'll betray us, sure as shit."

 

 Ryan furrowed his brow, considering this. Finally, he said, "Assuming that it does come up functional, and assuming that they contact us, we can use it to our advantage. A confused message, saying something garbled about injuries and damage, and they'll be prepared to receive a group of incoming injured, rather than an unknown quantity."

 

 Krysty interjected, "Okay, lover, but how the hell are we supposed to disguise our voices?"

 

 Ryan chuckled. "Okay, okay, but let's just see if it actually works first."

 

 At that point, it didn't seem likely. After its brief flowering, the comp had stayed dead while Dean groped under the desktop in an effort to get it going.

 

 He was, possibly, more surprised than anyone else when the comp suddenly spluttered back to life, beeping as the safety scan began to run. Even more so when a disembodied voice came from the radio.

 

 "Evan, what the hell are you guys doing still out there! I thought your beacon flashed a few minutes back. You're still alive? Respond, dammit, respond."

 

 THE CARAVAN OF horse drawn wags that made up the Gate and Crossroads war party followed the wag as it progressed down the blacktop, then followed it with an equal ease as it left the road and traveled across the fields, using a turnoff to access the field areas and avoid the treacherous ditches that ran alongside the blacktop itself.

 

 "Been easy so far," Cat said to J.B. as they sat at the front of the armory wag.

 

 "Make the most of it," the Armorer replied quietly. "It sure ain't gonna be that way for long."

 

 "I know that. Think I'm stupe or something?" The Armorer looked at her, taking in the indignant note in her voice, and opted to refrain from reply.

 

 "Oh, shut up, you asshole," Cat said huffily, turning away.

 

 "I didn't say anything," J.B. teased. Like the Gate warrior, he was reveling in the laid back atmosphere that seemed to permeate the caravan. There would be enough tension later, without adding to it at this early stage.

 

 On the wags behind, Crossroads volunteers for the war party were getting to know those they would fight alongside, and the prospect of making new acquaintances had lightened the grim atmosphere that had permeated the ville. The fact that most of the Crossroads fighters were men, and they lusted after the lithe Gate warriors, was certainly a help.

 

 "Make merry while you can, children," Doc murmured to himself as he watched from another wag. "The real work will come soon enough."

 

 The Illuminated wag passed the hill, and was soon at the edge of the wood. From here it would take less than an hour to reach the redoubt using the route mapped by the Gate. It would be hard for the motorized wag to go this route—through the woodland itself—so it had been arranged for the wag to drive around, slowing to give the Gate and Crossroads fighters enough time to make their way on foot through the woods.

 

 The last thing J.B., or anyone, expected was for the wag to come to a complete halt.

 

 "Dark night, what the fuck could have gone wrong already?" the Armorer breathed.

 

 "SOMEBODY HAD BETTER SAY something," Mildred remarked as the disembodied voice on the radio spoke again, requesting information on the condition of the wag crew.

 

 "They'll know it's not the real crew as soon as someone does speak, though," Tammy said.

 

 Dean shook his head. "Not necessarily. Hang on…"

 

 The younger Cawdor found the transmitter-receiver mike and speaker on the comp desk, and rapidly unscrewed the cover. Underneath were the wires, boards and chips that controlled the mike. Loosening a connection, Dean caused the reception to go slightly awry, so that the urgent voice was no longer clear, but distorted. He then tapped the board to which the wire was attached, causing the transmission to cut in and out.

 

 "Should work," he muttered before switching the radio to transmit and speaking in a louder, strained voice, as though he were in pain. "Problems with the electrics…hard to get away…some injured…"

 

 He winked at Tammy as he switched off the transmission.

 

 "Evan? That you, son? You sound like shit… Look, save the explanations till you're back. You're going a weird course, boy. What's happening out there? Has the direction finder been off-line, as well?"

 

 Dean switched back to transmit and adopted his sore throat voice. "All off…just managed to get back online…electrics shot out, had to reroute power…"

 

 "That's a real award winning performance you're giving," Mildred remarked as Dean switched back to receiver. Any other comments were cut off by another interjection from the receiver.

 

 "Evan, listen to me. Bear north-northeast, and you'll be fine. I don't know what visibility's like right now, but it's sunup in about an hour, so if you haven't sorted out your direction by then, we'll send a wag to collect you."

 

 "Fireblast and fuck it," Ryan swore. "That's the last thing we need—an escort that'll realize we're not the real thing before we get into the redoubt."

 

 "But they won't be sending anyone out until sunrise, and we were planning to mount the raid before then, Ryan," Gloria said. "So what's the problem?"

 

 "The problem is that we no longer have any slack, and we've really got to move. We also need to let J.B. and Jak know what's going on, so they can spread the word in case the wag comes out to find us before we put the plan into action. We've got to stop soon, before we part company with them."

 

 "Better do it soon, then," Krysty commented, taking a look out of the armaglass windshield at the terrain ahead. "We'll be past the woods soon, and they'll be in there."

 

 "Okay," Ryan said, pulling up the wag. "Let's hope they haven't already gone off on another path."

 

 AS THE WAG HALTED, and J.B. dismounted from his own wag, the outrider patrol came back to report.

 

 "Why's everyone stopped now?" Dette asked, pulling her horse around to trot alongside J.B. as he headed for the Illuminated wag.

 

 "That's just what I'm hoping to find out," he replied. "Stick around and we might both learn something."

 

 "Make that three," Jak muttered as he sidled up to them, even in a nonthreatening situation able to move with an uncanny invisibility.

 

 As they approached the Illuminated wag, the back opened and Ryan climbed out. In a few brief words he filled them in on recent events. When he had finished, J.B. shot a glance toward the horizon.

 

 "If they really do leave it till sunrise, then we can just about do it. You head off now, and me and Jak will get the Gate and the others to move it some. Keep up your current speed and head straight for the redoubt. We'll be behind you. And another thing, when you head for the entrance keep to the track."

 

 "Why?" Ryan questioned.

 

 J.B. shrugged. "Dunno, just a feeling. I could be wrong, but what if the area around the track is booby trapped?"

 

 Ryan pondered this for a second. "Could be. That would explain why they never really send out sec patrols, even though they must've been aware that the Gate were close by."

 

 He turned to Dette. "Did any of your recce riders ever go near the entrance?"

 

 "Hell, no," the brown skinned warrior replied. "We're not that stupe. We always stayed up around the back or took the cover that there was."

 

 Ryan nodded. "Yeah, we can't be sure, then."

 

 J.B. agreed. "You take the track, and we'll work a pincer movement to try and come round the edges of the hill. Still gonna be a problem getting that far, but what the hell." He shrugged, acknowledging that it was a necessary risk.

 

 "Okay, you spread the word, and I'll get the wag into position," Ryan said decisively. "See you on the inside of the redoubt."

 

 "Count on it," J.B. answered.

 

 DETTE TOLD THE OUTRIDERS about the amendment in the plan, and they rode off to scout the area for the war party, which was now dismounting the horse-drawn wags and readying themselves for battle. There was a change in the atmosphere. A tension crept into the party that spoke of the danger to come. There was also a sense of camaraderie that had been fostered by the first stage of the journey, and as J.B., Jak and Doc—who had been rapidly informed of the changes by the Armorer—moved amongst the war party, bringing them up to speed, they were aware of the feeling of determination that had spread among the warriors. The forest became alive with the movement of the war party as it moved over the tangled roots and rich soil, any light filtering through from the moon above drastically reduced by the canopy of foliage overhead from the stunted dwarf elms. The small mammals that inhabited the forest and roamed it by day hid from the imminent danger as the Gate skipped over the obstacles with ease, the Crossroads dwellers following a little less surefooted. The outriders scouted the far edge of the woods, where it emerged onto the open ground leading to the hill and the ingress in its side where the entrance to the redoubt lay.

 

 J.B. and Jak led, with different sections of Gate following varying routes through the wood that would enable them to flow smoothly, without engendering a jam of warriors in some of the narrowing paths. Their progress was rapid, and the leaders of each faction soon reached the edge of the woods, where they were joined by the outriders who were lurking just within cover.

 

 "All clear everywhere," Dette reported. "The motor wag is on its own out there."

 

 J.B. chewed at his lip. "Good. We wait till it starts up the trail, then move each section to cover there and there—" he indicated small crops of shrub and tree that took an arcing path around the lower slope of the hill "—so that we're spread along as near as possible, still in cover, and we avoid the open area. When the wag gets to the redoubt, we wait until it's in, then prepare to move as soon as it starts to open again."

 

 "What if it doesn't?" Dette asked.

 

 He shrugged. "We think about that when it happens, 'cause that'll just be a full frontal assault. No other options."

 

 The sound of the Illuminated wag approaching the track leading up to the redoubt could be heard.

 

 "Here comes," Jak said. "Go, yeah?"

 

 J.B. agreed, and the group leaders returned to their warriors, relaying the Armorer's instructions and taking their people forward to the farthest reaches of available cover.

 

 As the wag rumbled up the path toward the redoubt, the sky began to lighten where the morning sun began to rise above the horizon. The groups of warriors, spread out along the side of the hill in their makeshift cover, settled to wait. There was nothing more they could do right now.

 

 The next move was firmly in the hands of the seven warriors in the wag that now reached the entrance to the Illuminated Ones' redoubt base.

 

  

 

 Chapter Eleven

 

  

 

 Inside the wag, Ryan turned to his fellow warriors.

 

 "Better cover up now. We know what to do if we have to be the chilled ones?"

 

 "Keep as quiet as possible, and keep these damn helmets on," Mildred muttered with disgust in her voice, adding, "And I'd better hope that they don't look at the rips in this suit too closely. There weren't any black sec among the chilled."

 

 "We'll just try not to give them time to look," Krysty said with a determined manner.

 

 For a second, all the inhabitants of the wag took a last look at their companions before the large black helmets, with their impenetrable tinted visors, were put in place. A last look to confirm who they were, before their identities were erased and replaced by the threatening blandness of the visors.

 

 As they became Illuminated Ones, the wag radio crackled into life again.

 

 "I'll be damned. You actually managed to find your way home before sunup—and without the comp," came the distorted voice that had spoken once before. Ryan frowned as he heard it. Was there a subtle difference in the tone of that voice? He glanced around unthinkingly to check with Krysty, but found himself staring at the empty visage of a black visor.

 

 Damn and fireblast. He'd have to trust his own instincts, which were screaming at him to be triple red right now, and hope that the others would catch the inflection of the voice.

 

 Because—and he didn't know how—something seemed to have gone wrong.

 

 There was no more time for reflection, or for any kind of consultation, as the outer sec door began to open. The light from inside the redoubt—a fluorescent strip that was garish in the outer, predawn atmosphere—spread across the wag and the surrounding ground. Ryan had to squint as the light penetrated the windshield of the wag, and for a moment he was unable to see clearly into the tunnel of the redoubt. He blinked quickly, willing himself to be able to see into the tunnel.

 

 The sec door opened to its full extent, and the light from within lit the area, extending to the edges of the cover where the Gate and Crossroads warriors waited. J.B. cursed the extent of the light, as he was sure that there would be sec cameras scanning the immediate area, and the light would make them more visible than he would have wished. But the Gate were experts at making the most of any cover given, and as he glanced around, he felt sure that their security had been maintained.

 

 In the wag, Ryan's eyes adjusted to the light, and he could see that the corridor ahead was clear. There was no welcoming party, hostile or otherwise, and the empty corridor extended for a couple of hundred yards before coming to a close at the next set of sec doors.

 

 Thinking rapidly, Ryan considered it likely that this would be a regular precaution: to not open up the rest of the base until the outer doors had been secured. But something still didn't seem right. He was distracted by a tap on his arm and turned to face Dean, who was gesturing toward the radio speaker.

 

 Ryan listened. The distorted voice was hard to understand, even though the earpieces on the helmets did allow outside sound to filter through, amplifying it to allow for the layer of metal and insulation between the hearer and the outside world. The problem was, they seemed to be individually adjustable, and there hadn't been enough time to set the level as each of the companions in the wag would have wished. Ryan had to strain to hear.

 

 "Evan? What the hell is wrong with you people? Am I supposed to keep the doors open all damn day? Get your asses in here!"

 

 Unable to voice his feelings or canvas opinion, Ryan swore softly and put the wag into gear and advanced into the corridor of the redoubt.

 

 STILL OUTSIDE, watching the wag enter and the outer sec door close, bringing the darkness of predawn down upon them once more, Yardie turned in his hiding place to face Doc and Nita, who were waiting with him.

 

 "Shit, what do we do now?" he asked.

 

 "We wait until they get the door up again, and then we fight," the blond Gate warrior replied.

 

 "But what if they don't?" the fat Crossroads sec chief asked.

 

 Doc smiled slowly and without humor. "Then, my dear sir, we have a conundrum to which we have to find a solution within a very small time frame."

 

 "Eh?" An uncomprehending Yardie looked pleadingly at Nita.

 

 "I think he means we have to move triple fast and work it out as we go along," the blonde replied.

 

 "Succinctly put, my dear," Doc said with serenity. "Now let us keep watch, so that we may not miss any opportunity."

 

 PULLING UP just inside the main sec door, Ryan kept the engine ticking over and waited. He felt the need to keep the wag near the main sec door so that one of them would be able to key in the sec-door code and open it up as quickly as possible. He also had a knot of tension in the pit of his stomach that told him not to get too close to the menacing blankness of the next sec door. He had a feeling that his battle plan was about to throw a loop. His instincts were telling him that the Illuminated Ones had tumbled to their true identity, though he couldn't work out quite how they had given themselves away.

 

 The seconds crawled past with an agonizing slowness, the tension in the wag making it seem all the more oppressive. Cursing to himself again, louder this time so that it could be heard—albeit muffled—by the others, Ryan pulled off the metal and Plexiglas that had been stifling him.

 

 "Fireblast, that feels better!" he exclaimed.

 

 "Something's wrong, right?" Krysty asked as she removed her helmet, shaking loose red, sentient hair that refused to unfurl and uncoil. It was obvious that her mutie sense had picked up some danger, and it only confirmed Ryan's own suspicions.

 

 "Reckon so," the one-eyed man replied. "Why aren't they here to greet us, if we're the long lost wag crew?"

 

 "Hot pipe, it's my fault," Dean said bitterly. "If I hadn't got the radio going again they wouldn't have had the chance to get in contact, and they wouldn't have figured out that we weren't the real deal."

 

 Ryan shook his head. "No, I figure that mebbe that didn't matter too much. Without the radio, they still could have been suspicious about us. Blaming yourself is just going to waste time and energy. We're here, we need to get the sec door open again and we need to cover our backs while we do it."

 

 "One thing," Tammy said in a small voice. "Even if we get the sec door open again, what's to stop them shutting it like they did when we came in?"

 

 "She's got a point," Mildred said. "If they're using a remote system, we need to keep the door up once it's up."

 

 Ryan turned to Dean. "Would a remote system and the manual keypad be on the same circuit?"

 

 The younger Cawdor, who had learned some pre-dark electronics at the Brody school, pondered this for a brief moment. "Mebbe, mebbe not. Even if it isn't, you shoot enough of a charge into the hardware and you'll blow out all the circuits. Get it up, then use the laser blaster on the keypad and the resulting charge should short out every piece of fiber optic or wiring in the system."

 

 Ryan nodded. "Okay, so we know what to do when the door is up. Let's get to raising it."

 

 "Wait! What the fuck are they doing now?" Gloria asked, staying the one-eyed man with a hand on his arm.

 

 While he had been speaking, Ryan had been facing away from the windshield, with the other occupants of the wag watching him. Only the Gate queen had been watching through the windshield, keeping her eyes on the sec door that lay a couple of hundred yards from them.

 

 At her words and her touch, Ryan swung around, bending low over the dash to get as wide an angle as possible on the area in front of them.

 

 The sec door was beginning to rise. For the first couple of inches, there was little that could be seen through the narrow gap that made any sense. But as the door rose higher, the one-eyed man was able to discern several pairs of legs, and also the wheels and undercarriage of what seemed to be a small wag…not a personnel carrier of any sort, but rather some sort of attack wag, possibly heavily armed and wheeled for ease of transportation.

 

 It was not a sight that boded well.

 

 "Shit, we've got real problems," he said quietly. "It looks like they're bringing up some heavy hardware."

 

 "And we're sitting targets in here," Gloria added. "Guess it's time to check our own hardware."

 

 "You got that right," Ryan agreed as he checked the laser blaster, and also his SIG-Sauer and Steyr, which had been sitting on the floor of the wag. All those in the Illuminated uniforms had brought their own blasters with them, keeping them in the wag. The original plan had been to exit the wag with the laser blasters and with the helmets in place, apparently the returning Illuminated crew. Only when they had opened the sec door and begun to establish the bridgehead in the redoubt would they collect their own blasters, with which they felt much more comfortable in battle. But now, if they were going to stand any chance and come out fighting, then the only thing that they could do was to load up with their own trusted weapons and hit the ground firing.

 

 It was as they were checking their own blasters that the voice came to them, blaring and distorted over a loudspeaker from beyond the opening inner sec door.

 

 "Whoever you are, come out without your weapons and you won't be harmed. We have no wish to chill you, only to expel you from our base."

 

 "Yeah, right," Mildred muttered, "maybe you do, but only when you've dosed us with your foul pox so that we can spread it."

 

 "I'd rather go out fighting than let them do that," Tammy agreed. "They've tried that shit on us already."

 

 Ryan looked at the warriors gathered around him. His face was set and grim. Were they ready? He turned to look out of the windshield at what they would encounter. The inner sec door was now almost fully raised, and he could see that there were twelve Illuminated soldiers lined up against them, with the center of the corridor taken up by a motorized blaster that was on wheels because of its sheer size. Like a laser cannon, it stood imposingly dead center, manned by two Illuminated Ones, making a total of fourteen adversaries that the companions on the wag were facing.

 

 Ryan was aware of a presence at his side and inclined his head to see that he had been joined by Jon. The young Armorer was appraising the laser cannon, and although he had been silent up to this point, he now felt on territory where he had a right to comment.

 

 "See that giant bastard?" he asked rhetorically. "If that has power in relation to size like these—" he patted the laser blaster he was holding "—then we are in deep shit if we stay in here."

 

 "Even with the strength this wag has?" Ryan queried.

 

 Jon nodded curtly. "I've tried and tested these fuckers to see what they can do, and if that works on the same principle, with it being that size, it'll either cut through us like a panga through mud, or it'll heat the metal so much that we'll fry in here."

 

 "Not much of a fireblasted option either way," Ryan gritted. "There's only one thing that we can do."

 

 "Sweets, I think we've all gathered that," Gloria said. There was a resignation in her tone that was belied by the flush on her cheeks as she turned and kicked open the back of the wag. "When there's no chance, honey, then there's nothing to lose," she yelled as she jumped out of the back of the wag and dived for cover behind one of the reinforced concrete buttresses that held up the roof of the redoubt. They were positioned every few yards, and had often been of use as cover in a firefight.

 

 Never more so than now. The Gate queen was in position before the Illuminated Ones had a chance to register her action, and she moved from cover long enough to loose off a couple of laser blasts in their direction.

 

 There was no time for her to take aim, but the Illuminated soldiers were so densely clustered on either side of the laser cannon that it was inevitable that a double blast in the general area would do some damage. One soldier was chilled as he was taken unaware by a blast that hit him directly in the middle of the chest, burning a hole in his uniform and flesh that caused a plume of smoke to rise from him as he fell, his scream high and anguished. Inside the redoubt, although still in the one piece uniforms, the Illuminated soldiers were without the protective helmets they wore on the outside, and so it was easier to see which were male and which female.

 

 It was a woman who escaped a little more lightly with the second burst of fire. Realizing that Gloria's aim was restricted, and therefore more likely to be in the same area each time, the other Illuminated Ones who were clustered on her side of the laser cannon began to seek cover, either falling flat or running to dive behind a concrete pillar. It was while attempting to find this cover that the Illuminated woman was injured. Tall and heavily built, with long blond hair that was tied back in a tight ponytail, she was slightly slower than her companions, and as she dived for the cover of the concrete, she twisted awkwardly in the air. Although that didn't save her from great pain and injury, it did possibly save her life, as Gloria's second laser blast cut through the air and scorched across the woman's shoulder as she twisted. If her passage had remained straight, it would have burned through her ribs and barbecued her internal organs. As it was, her scream and subsequent sobs as she hit the floor told of an injury that was painful, but not fatal.

 

 Gloria's covering fire was the cue that Ryan needed to rally his troops.

 

 "Tammy, other side, yeah?" he yelled. The Gate number two assented and dived out of the back of the wag, throwing herself in the opposite direction to her queen so that she could take the other flank of the Illuminated Ones. She rolled and came up firing indiscriminately, three sharp bursts that went over the heads of the soldiers as they took cover, but nonetheless prevented them from firing on her as she gained cover.

 

 The Illuminated soldiers on the laser cannon directed the nozzle toward the wag and let loose a burst of laser fire. The air seemed to become dry and charged as the cannon prepared to let loose, and in that fraction of a second Gloria yelled, "Jump!"

 

 In the interior of the wag, none of those left needed to be told that an exit was imperative.

 

 "Go! Go!" Ryan yelled, pushing toward the rear of the wag.

 

 Mildred and Dean were nearest the rear. The young Cawdor leaped out, landing on the run, keeping to his feet and turning to fire a covering charge from the laser blaster as he sought cover. It diverted fire from Illuminated soldiers who were aiming at himself and Mildred—they pulled the shots upward as they dived to avoid Dean's blast, and their charges hit the ceiling, bringing down a layer of concrete dust and plaster on Mildred, who wasn't so fortunate as she left the wag. Her reflexes and balance upset and slowed by the onset of the disease, she landed awkwardly, stumbling and falling on her side, her elbow twisting inward to knock the breath from her. She seemed to have no energy as she tried to rise to her feet, everything seeming to happen about her in slow motion.

 

 She was vaguely aware of the strong hand that gripped her upper arm, hauling her up and flinging her against the wall behind Tammy. Panting heavily, Mildred focused on Krysty, who had followed her out of the wag and had grabbed at her as she passed by.

 

 "Thanks," Mildred gasped. "Told you I wasn't up to it."

 

 "I'll cover you. You're the only one who can find the antidote," Krysty replied, snapping off a couple of bursts at the Illuminated Ones, who were now also safely in cover.

 

 Jon followed Krysty and dived to the other side, coming up behind Dean and Gloria, firing as he arrived in cover.

 

 Which only left Ryan. The one-eyed man was last out, and was reaching the rear of the wag when the air ceased to crackle and hum, and the brilliant laser burst of the cannon was loosed on the wag, the air split by a high pitched whine and the singing of overheated metal as the charge hit the wag full on.

 

 "Holy shit—look at it!" Mildred yelled at no one in particular, shocked at the way the charge affected the wag. Jon had been right in his supposition that the laser charge would either split the wag in two or cause it to act as some kind of superconductor, heated beyond belief by the charge that coursed through and across the alloy shell of the vehicle. The metal glowed red then white, the heat making the air around them shimmer, causing minute blistering on any exposed flesh on the arms, legs and torso, and making their faces red and burned, singeing hair.

 

 "Ryan!" Krysty yelled, unable to tear her eyes away from the sight, even though her eyeballs felt as though they were dried out by the suddenly hot air around her.

 

 For a fraction of a second, in the brightness of the glowing wag, it seemed as though there was no way that the one-eyed man could have escaped. But only for a fraction of a second.

 

 As the charge was loosed from the wag, Ryan was but two steps away from diving out of the wag and hitting the concrete floor at the rear. His intent, knowing that the others were safely out and covering their positions, was to head directly for the outer redoubt door, hit the code and then short circuit the system once the door was fully raised. He knew that it would leave him exposed while he was at the sec-door panel, but figured that the others could cover him, and any stray fire that hit him would be down to fate.

 

 Fate had something a little more convoluted in store for him. As the charge hit the wag, he was preparing to throw himself out of the back, his muscles tensed to make the leap. He was suddenly aware of a cone of silence that enveloped him, as though he were at the eye of a storm. He felt an immense heat grow rapidly, the metal under his feet and around him seeming to expand as time itself seemed to slow. The inside of the wag glowed red through to white, spreading along the length of the wag interior, and as his last footfall hit the floor of the wag, it seemed that his sole and heel burned red-hot and painfully through his heavy combat boot. The expansion of air, like the metal, that had spread along from the front of the wag hit him as he started to leap, carrying him out of the back of the wag as though a giant hand had taken him and shoved hard in the small of his back, propelling him in a manner that left him with no control over his final destination.

 

 The heat and force drove the air from his body, his lungs sucking painfully for what they could extract from the superheated air surrounding him. He shot across the concrete, landing heavily and coming up with a sickening thud against the door of the redoubt, the concrete and metal somehow strangely soothing to his burned and heat sensitive flesh. His ribs cracked and strained at the impact, having no air to drive out, but not allowing any more to enter.

 

 Such had been the momentary brilliance of the blinding light that none of his companions had seen him leave the wag and land so badly. But neither, also, had the Illuminated Ones who opposed them.

 

 Expecting a hail of fire to hit his exposed position at any moment, Ryan fought against his own body to try to pull himself to his feet. His skin was hypersensitive and his muscles ached. His ribs protested and his knees refused to unbuckle, but still he persisted. There was no fire directed toward him, and he had to use every last moment he had to try to get the door open.

 

 There was no fire for the simple reason that the Illuminated Ones were as blinded by the laser cannon fire as their opponents. Until their eyes had adjusted to the sudden diminution of light, there was no way that they could see the wag as it went rapidly back from white to red to black, let alone see Ryan struggling to his feet and moving toward the sec-door panel.

 

 Too shocked to scream at the thought of losing Ryan, Krysty was the first to spot him, willing herself to see through the red mist of dots that speckled her vision postblast.

 

 "Gaia," she whispered as she saw Ryan moving toward the sec-door panel. She turned her head, her skin sore from the burns, and could see that the Illuminated Ones were as blinded, and in no position to fire on Ryan.

 

 Which meant that they were also in no position to see if anyone was ready to fire on them. If she got everyone to move triple quick, the companions could turn this to their advantage.

 

 "Mildred, we've got to move on them now. They can't see!" she hissed in her friend's ear.

 

 Tammy heard, as well, and replied, "I can't see them, either, but fuck it. If we come out blasting they won't have a chance to return it, will they?"

 

 "Go, girl." Mildred grinned. "As long as we blast in the right direction…" She left the rest of the sentence unsaid. In the first place it wasn't necessary, and in the second her throat felt red raw as she tried to speak in the still hot and dried out air.

 

 With a hoarse whoop, Tammy began to advance, reeling off blasts of laser fire in the direction of the opposition. She was followed by Krysty and Mildred, who also began to fire in the general direction of the Illuminated Ones.

 

 Tammy's whoop and the sounds of laser fire acted as a galvanizing influence on Gloria, Dean and Jon on the far side of the wag.

 

 "Hey, the wee one's going for the big one," the Gate queen yelled at the men with her. "Our Tammy's going forward. Let's get in line and get after her."

 

 "I still can't see too well," Dean said urgently. "How the hell can I aim?"

 

 "I can't see too well, either," Jon answered, "but we just need to keep firing in the right direction. Try and keep it low. We need to put that fucking big bastard blaster out of action, and there's no way we'll do it any damage unless we can knock out the tires. If it can't move, or if we can get it to pitch over, then it won't be of much use to them."

 

 "Okay, let's do it," Dean said, following Gloria and Jon as they progressed. They had no idea that Ryan was trying to open the sec door, but figured that one of the other party had to be trying, as there would be no sense otherwise in a forward push.

 

 Back at the sec door, Ryan had pulled himself upright, and was painfully aware of how vulnerable he was. He stood by the keypad that accessed the door code, squinting to try to read the numbers that were scratched on the metal plate in which the keypad was housed. The fact that human nature didn't change, and that worried sec foot soldiers still found it a fail-safe to scratch the access codes on the interior plate of every door, was something that the one-eyed man felt thankful for as his eye began to return to its normal vision, and he was able to read the numbers as he keyed them in.

 

 The sec door began to open, groaning into action, and he leaned heavily against the concrete pillar that framed the door. His heart was still pounding, but he could feel strength begin to flow back through his limbs as he began to breathe more normally, the oxygen reaching muscles filled with lactic acid that could now disperse, the shock of the flight and impact beginning to lessen as his resilience took over.

 

 Blowing hard, he turned to watch the light flood the immediate outside area. The question was, how long would it be before the remote was activated and the door began to close again? For he was sure that it would, and it was playing percentages to see if it would rise enough for the oncoming attacks to gain access before the remote kicked in.

 

 The door, seeming to rise with an infinite slowness in his impatience, reached the height of Ryan's head. Let it rise a foot or two more, and that would be all that was needed.

 

 His attention was distracted by the furor occurring farther down the redoubt tunnel. The onrush of the six people dressed in Illuminated uniforms had taken the actual Illuminated Ones by surprise. Their vision and reactions hadn't recovered as quickly as those of their opponents, and they had been completely caught out by the sudden barrage of laser fire. To this was added conventional blasterfire, as Gloria and Tammy clutched their laser rifles in one hand, and used their free hands to take pot shots at anything they could see.

 

 The Illuminated soldiers were unable to compete with this sudden onslaught, and were thrown into confusion by the attack. Unable to return fire, other than the desultory blast as they pulled back, the Illuminated Ones were driven farther into their own lair. Jon and Dean, keeping their blasts low, were able to blow the tires on the cannon's wag, and as the first tire went the wag tilted, throwing off the cannon crew. They didn't bother to try to remount, scrambling backward to escape the oncoming war party.

 

 Three Illuminated soldiers went down, injured or chilled, as laser fire cut through their flesh and bone. There was little blood, as the heat of the beams cauterized the flesh as it cut through. The others pulled back to the next sec door, taking up defensive positions as the companions advanced. Once they were safely behind the sec door, it began to descend.

 

 There was no way that the advancing party would reach the door before it closed, and no way that they could open it from their side…and if they did manage to get beyond, they would be at the mercy of whatever reinforcements were being sent along, having to defend their position while reopening the sec door for the Gate and Crossroads warriors who would follow.

 

 "Fireblast," Ryan cursed softly to himself as he tried to reason the best course of action. He had to make sure that the advance party didn't get trapped, and also keep this sec door open. His mind raced. There was only one chance, but it depended on a long shot.

 

 Looking up, Ryan saw that the sec door was at an optimum height. If Dean's theory proved correct, he could shoot out the circuits now and freeze the door open. He stepped back and turned, leveling the laser blaster at the keypad. How would he know if it worked or not?

 

 The question was answered for him as the door shuddered and then began to descend. A remote system had been used to reverse the door. Now he had no choice. He leveled the laser rifle and fired a charge into the keypad. Sparks flew as the circuit shorted out, but Ryan's eye wasn't on his target, but rather on the door. For a fraction of a second it kept moving downward, but then, with another shudder, it stopped. The one-eyed man breathed deeply, willing the door to stay put. When it remained, he let the breath out with a sigh. The light from the redoubt spread out over the territory beyond, lighting the way as dawn broke.

 

 The next move from outside would have to be left to J.B. There were more important matters to attend to. Ignoring the pain that still seared through the muscles along his ribs as he ran, Ryan sprinted back to the wag and jumped in through the open rear door. Inside, the circuits on the comp looked blown, blackened around the grilles and keys. The electrical starter system was probably blown, as well, which may ruin everything. Would he have time?

 

 Ryan seated himself behind the wheel. If the alloy shell had acted as a conductor for the blast, if it had acted in the same way a normal wag shell acted when lightning hit, then it may be that the engine systems had escaped, and the comp systems had blown independently because of the break in the maintenance ducts beneath the chassis.

 

 No time to try to figure it out. He could only to hope for the best. Ryan hit the self-starter.

 

 Once more, fate was on his side. The engine caught at the third attempt, firing into life. Ryan put the wag into gear and eased the vehicle forward. The wheels, now tireless after the jolt it had received from the laser cannon, ground on the concrete floor, sending up sparks as the wheel rims bit into the redoubt floor.

 

 Ahead of Ryan, through the shattered armaglass shield splintered by extreme heat, was a clear run through to the closing sec door…at least in terms of his companions, who were taking cover as they fired at the Illuminated Ones, and were almost at the point of making it past the closing sec door. The only thing that lay in his path were the few corpses and wounded, and the laser cannon itself, deserted and standing at an oblique angle, still in the middle of the corridor.

 

 Ryan ground his teeth as hard as he went through the gears, picking up speed rapidly as the wag's powerful engine gunned into full life, the axles protesting against the battering they were taking from the twisting wheels as they bit into the concrete floor, the contrary twists of the angles at which they cut into the concrete stressing the axles until it felt as though the four-wheel-drive were taking the wag in four different directions, pulling the steering almost out of the one-eyed man's grasp as he tried to keep it on a straight course.

 

 The cannon was a big weapon, but nothing against the gathering speed and momentum of the wag as it hit it full on, battering the chassis of the cannon to one side, the barrel flying off in the opposite direction. The power source of the cannon ignited and blew on impact, almost blinding Ryan as he covered his face with one hand, the wag veering to the left as the steering pulled at the hand left grasping the wheel. The armaglass may have been shattered, but it was still just about strong enough to protect him, and he was able to get past the cannon without too much loss of time or speed.

 

 "What the fuck is Ryan doing?" Gloria yelled as she heard the wag gun into life, turning to see it advancing rapidly.

 

 "Blocking the sec door to stop it being closed," Dean snapped breathlessly. He added, "Drive them farther back until he gets there!"

 

 The warriors continued to fire on the Illuminated Ones, who were now also entrenched in defensive positions, and were returning fire. The tactical blunder in leaving the cannon behind was amplified for them as the blasterfire from the laser rifle bounced ineffectively off the alloy of the wag body.

 

 Ryan urged as much power as possible from the wag as it headed for the ever narrowing gap between the bottom of the descending door and the concrete floor. It was a race against time, and measured in a matter of seconds. If the door descended too far, then the wag would just hit it and be crushed in the impact. Ryan had to get the wag underneath the descending door before it was too late. That was the only way that he could jam the door and maybe short the mechanism—certainly keep it open until they could secure the position and raise it from the other side of the sec door itself.

 

 The door loomed large across the armaglass windshield, the vista of the door and the corridor beneath— itself a narrowing band of vision—filling the whole of Ryan's vision.

 

 "Fuck!" he yelled in shock and surprise as the front of the wag squeezed beneath the door, beating the descent by a fraction of a second. It was also a cry of adrenalined terror—a declamation of being galvanized into action as he realized what had happened. The wag had jammed beneath the door as it fell, but the momentum of the wag had been arrested as the descending door halted the vehicle in its tracks, making the wheels scream and squeal as they bit into the concrete, forced lower by the descent of the door as it pushed down, squashing the front of the wag.

 

 Ryan leaped from his seat, fighting the jolt caused by the wag's halted momentum, and threw himself backward, barely keeping his balance as he reached the back of the wag.

 

 The sec door crushed the roof of the wag at the front, shattering the armaglass windshield beyond all recognition, driving metal onto the seat where the one-eyed man had sat a few moments before. The sec door squealed and scraped like the metal it crushed, its momentum halted by the mass jammed underneath.

 

 Grabbing his laser rifle—the other blasters already secured on his person—Ryan leaped from the back of the wag and raced back to cover, where he joined Krysty, Tammy and Mildred.

 

 "Glad you could drop in, lover," Krysty said dryly.

 

 "Just had a few things to do," he replied. Looking ahead, he could see that the crushed wag—driven down with such force that the rear wheels had left the ground—held the sec door open for a gap of three or four feet. There was little indication of whether the Illuminated soldiers beyond were still in cover, or whether they had retreated.

 

 Looking back, he could see through the open outer door, into the dawn light beyond. The larger war party was advancing.

 

  

 

 Chapter Twelve

 

  

 

 J.B. watched the door rise from his position of cover. All around him, in the semicircle around the recessed entrance of the redoubt, he could feel the tension rise, and the anticipation of the warriors for battle. And yet, it still nagged at him that there seemed to be no defenses between the covering foliage and the entrance itself. The wags always seemed to follow a well worn track, which had to, by necessity, be free of traps. Yet it would be folly to send their entire force down that track. It would make taking them out just too easy.

 

 J.B. turned to Dette, who had ended up beside him.

 

 "Listen," he said urgently, "I want you to run and pass this on. I want Jak to lead a party down the wag track, moving triple fast and keeping triple red for any attack from the redoubt—the sec cameras will see them easily. I'm taking a group around this side, and I want Doc to bring his side around in the same way. I'm pretty sure that there'll be booby traps of some kind, so we may take casualties. The only thing is that no one do anything stupe, and move up as quickly as possible, but taking precautions. Test the ground ahead as much as possible. Got that?"

 

 Dette smiled, her eyes flashing excitement at the thought of the battle ahead. "Sure thing. Give me just a couple of minutes to get there, yeah?"

 

 "Do it quicker if you can," the Armorer advised her.

 

 "You'll know if I have, 'cause we'll be moving up."

 

 J.B. allowed himself a smile. "Okay, go."

 

 He didn't watch the Gate woman disappear into the early light of dawn, turning instead to the warriors around him.

 

 "We move in two minutes max, mebbe sooner if we see a party start for the track. Don't take stupe chances. We need all of us to fight in there. I figure there'll be mines of some kind, mebbe wire traps hidden beneath the topsoil. Use sticks and stones, prodding the ground for wire and throwing them ahead to try and find mines. Last blaster check now, and gather stones, as well. Then we move on the signal."

 

 The group around him indicated their agreement, and as the Armorer ran through a last check on his Uzi, the M-4000 with its load of barbed metal flechettes, and checked his Tekna knife was secure for any close combat, his mind was racing. He picked stones from the soil, ready to begin pitching them to test the way ahead, and wondered what was happening in the redoubt There were so many possibilities, it would be a question of thinking on their feet when they got inside.

 

 He wondered if Dette had delivered her messages yet…

 

 JAK NODDED his understanding, his impassive visage belying the attention he paid to Dette. When she had finished, he looked around at the group of warriors he headed, and asked, "Everyone get?"

 

 There was a murmur of agreement, and Jak's red eyes glittered as they searched the group around.

 

 "You know what do," he said simply. "Give Dette time, then go fast, triple alert. Get ready."

 

 The warriors around checked their blasters and prepared themselves mentally for the charge.

 

 It depended on Dette reaching Doc's group and relaying her message in time.

 

 DETTE WAS SWIFT, slowed only by the need to keep cover as she traveled from group to group. She had time to spare when she reached the cluster of warriors on the far side of the arc, where Doc was waiting for word of action, his LeMat percussion pistol loaded, primed and ready.

 

 "How charming of you to drop in," he said smoothly when Dette arrived in the clump of foliage where they were concealed. "I presume you bring word from John Barrymore?"

 

 "Eh?" Dette gasped, momentarily nonplussed.

 

 "Don't worry about it," Cat said easily from her position by Doc. "Just tell us what you've got to."

 

 Dette relayed the message from J.B. Doc checked on his old chron.

 

 "Time to spare, as well," he commented. "I would say that you've done a fine job. Pray take a second to get your breath back while we finalize our preparation."

 

 "Shit, how do you ever get your breath back, the amount of words you use," Dette panted.

 

 "Don't worry about that, either," Cat said slyly. "You got any intelligence, you soon get used to it."

 

 The two women exchanged glances of mutual loathing. Doc picked up on the atmosphere and said, "Save that for those we are about to face. I would say, from your expressions, that if you transferred that to the enemy, then you could eradicate them on your own."

 

 JAK LOOKED toward the area where he knew that Doc and his group were hiding. In the dim light he could see no sign of Dette. There was sparse cover between the two areas, and he knew he would be able to spot her moving among the undergrowth. Not many could have been so sure, but Jak's eyes were better attuned to the dim light, and his almost preternatural hunter's instincts could spot things that a lesser mortal might not.

 

 So the Gate warrior had to have reached Doc and imparted her message. The door of the redoubt had been opening as she arrived, and was now still. By his estimation, there was still a little time before the limit J.B. set for the woman would be reached. But he was certain she had reached her final destination, and was also certain that the Armorer and Doc would lead their parties out on a cue from the albino.

 

 Inside the redoubt, he heard the roar of the wag engine cutting across the sounds of blasterfire, both laser and normal.

 

 There was no time to waste. Jak made a decision and turned to his group.

 

 "We go," he said simply.

 

 Leading from the front, the albino broke cover, moving rapidly across the land between their cover and the track that led to the redoubt. He hit the compressed earth of the track, feeling the uneven surface hard beneath his feet. He was moving at speed, the .357 Magnum Colt Python clasped in his fist. He could hear the movement of others behind him, some dropping back, others keeping pace. Without bothering to look back, he could tell from the footfalls that it was the Gate warriors who were with him.

 

 Suddenly, from all around there came the sound of exploding mines, showering the runners with earth and small stones. Jak didn't flinch, knowing that they were safe from such devices as long as they kept on the track. He didn't dare to think of his friends and the other warriors, trying to traverse the booby trapped area. Instead, he could only focus his attention on the redoubt door ahead.

 

 J.B. SAW Jak break cover and lead his people forward. The albino was setting a rapid pace, and the Armorer signaled for his group to move.

 

 But first he took a handful of stones and threw them in a sweeping arc over the land ahead. Some pattered onto the earth with only a small puff of dust to mark their landing. But two of them drew results. The first mines to be encountered went off, the sudden noise almost deafening in the dawn, clouds of dirt and stones being thrown up. Other stones flew from the hands of warriors as J.B. began to move forward, marking his own personal path by sweeping the area immediately in front of him with a long branch taken from the trees surrounding.

 

 The first wire trap was found, tripped by the branch and springing up viciously in a loop of fine steel that would take off a foot at the ankle. One thing was for sure: the Illuminated Ones had guarded their redoubt well, for the mines and traps were well hidden. The Armorer just hoped that those following him would be as careful in plotting their path.

 

 The screams from behind him belied that belief..

 

 Like the Armorer, the Gate warriors were too wise in the ways of warfare to take anything for granted, and were making their own paths forward, following the direction dictated by their sweeping sticks assiduously. But the Crossroads warriors, being unused to the ways of combat, were a little more slack. They would throw the stones to try to find mines, and would attempt to sweep the oncoming path, but they had trouble sticking to that which they had tested, and it wasn't long before a stray foot encountered the edge of a snare trap.

 

 The man who had previously been attached to the foot felt a pull that, at first, didn't hurt. This was delayed by the initial shock, and it was only when he saw the snare snap back, throwing a severed foot, still booted, across the earth, that he realized it was his own foot that he was watching. Suddenly ashen gray with shock and pain, he let out a strangled scream as he fell to the ground, the area about his legs staining dark with the ebb and flow of his blood.

 

 At least he was still alive. A fellow Crossroads dweller taking part in the charge wasn't as lucky. Like his fellow, his straying foot had caught in a snare, cutting him off at the ankle. But as he fell, he landed on a part of the ground that hadn't been swept, and his head found another, barely hidden, snare that wrapped itself around his throat, biting through his flesh with ease. His screams were strangled and choked in his throat as he felt the world darkening around him. Veins and arteries were cut and severed, and the wire was sharp enough to slice easily through the vertebrae, leaving the head cleanly cut from the rest of his body. The tension of the wire, as it met with a sudden lack of resistance, catapulted the head across the ground, throwing it in front of the leading pack. It smacked to earth with a dull thump that was inaudible over the violent explosion it triggered as it hit a mine.

 

 J.B. looked up momentarily to see how far ahead Jak's group was. It was a given that they would be first to the redoubt, as they weren't slowed by the necessity to plot a safe path. However, the Armorer was concerned that the other war parties should not fall too far behind. So far, his group was keeping pace fairly well.

 

 He spared a glance to see how Doc's group was faring.

 

 "BY THE THREE KENNEDYS!" Doc exclaimed. "If this does not bring any opposition out of hiding, then nothing will!"

 

 "Let's hope that Ryan and Gloria have got them too occupied, then," Cat returned.

 

 The small, dark haired woman had been sticking close to Doc since the charge had begun. She had noticed that Doc wasn't faring as well as some of his compatriots, and she knew that—like Jak and Mildred—he had contracted a form of the pox that they were seeking in the redoubt. She liked the old man, and although Dette had been publicly dismissive of her intelligence—as well as that of her friend Nita— she was smart enough to know that Doc was more vulnerable than the others, and despite his fighting spirit may need some help along the way. So she had decided that she would be that help, and was in the vanguard of the charge with Doc, helping him forward.

 

 As on the far side of the beaten track, Doc's war party had been sweeping the ground and using the stone throwing method to try to clear their own personal paths. Doc had already been outpaced by a few of the Gate warriors, but was still near the front because of the help from Cat. She could see that Doc had difficulty moving and breathing as the disease took a firmer hold on him, and so she swept ahead for him, as well as for herself.

 

 "Come, my dear, we must make more speed," Doc implored, looking across to where J.B.'s party was advancing. "We cannot be left behind. Our strength is in depth, and we cannot let our friends down under any circumstances."

 

 Yet, even as he spoke Doc was gasping for breath.

 

 Cat took his arm. "Don't worry, Doc. You stick with me and we'll get there," she said.

 

 JAK SLOWED as his war party reached the door of the redoubt. An incredible sight greeted them. The wag had just intercepted the closing door, and as the warriors arrived at the entrance to the tunnel, they were stunned to see the wag being crushed under the descending door and Ryan leaping to safety.

 

 Taking the situation in at a glance, Jak made a snap judgment.

 

 "We go in now. Keep close to wall, keep in cover. Push up, support Ryan and Gloria soon as possible," he said rapidly, moving to one side of the tunnel himself and pushing a Gate warrior toward the other, in this manner setting up two chains of warriors to feed into the redoubt.

 

 The two strands advanced rapidly toward the point where the vanguard force had established a position, firing at the Illuminated Ones through the gap in the jammed sec door. The advancing warriors didn't fire. Until they were in position, there was an outside chance that they may hit their own people, and the gap through which it was possible to fire at the Illuminated Ones was restricted by the bulk of the wag, jammed in the center of the corridor.

 

 "Hey, Ryan—we here," Jak yelled as the first of the war parties moved up to join the advanced party.

 

 "What about the others?" the one-eyed man asked, noting that there were comparatively few warriors behind the albino.

 

 "On way," Jak replied.

 

 OUTSIDE THE REDOUBT, both J.B. and Doc had brought their war parties through the hidden obstacles with a minimum of casualties. There were numerous abrasions and small cuts from flying stones, but only five people had fallen prey to the snares, and none had been in the direct blast of the mines. It had been a much more successful assault than either could have hoped for thus far, and it was with some degree of optimism that they headed their groups as they converged on the redoubt entrance, coming off the booby trapped sides and onto the safety of the track.

 

 Ahead, they could see that the way was clear until the point where the wag sat jammed beneath the sec door. They could also see the two groups of warriors taking cover in the area directly to the rear of the wag. There were only a few desultory exchanges of fire, and both J.B. and Doc could figure that the attack was now stalled, waiting for the reinforcements to arrive.

 

 The Armorer turned to the united forces.

 

 "Go in quick, take cover to the sides—be a shame to be caught by a stray blast—and await further orders." He waved them in, and the attackers began to feed into the redoubt, flowing past him. He turned to Doc.

 

 "I figure we should see what Ryan and Gloria have to say about this. Looks good for a full assault, but—"

 

 "But it has been a tad too simple thus far, would you not say? Only a few traps to traverse? I would have expected more, which suggests that they have something in reserve."

 

 J.B. nodded. "Yeah, I'd reckon on that, too." He stopped and peered intently at Doc, who was breathing with some difficulty and being partly supported by Cat. "Doc, how you feeling? I mean, honestly."

 

 "In truth, I feel as though I have a horde of stickies with those loathsome suckered fingers crammed into my lungs, trying to prevent me from breathing. I fear that the pox is finally taking a hold on me. My skin feels chafed and sore, and look—" Doc held open his shirt to reveal a network of pustules and scabs that were starting to spread across his chest and stomach. "I may not have long, John Barrymore, and while I will fight to the last, I fear that I may not be as reliable as I would wish."

 

 J.B. nodded once. There was no way he wanted Doc to get this far and then fall at the last fence.

 

 Before the Armorer had a chance to say anything, Cat broke in. "Don't worry about old big mouth, here," she said, punching him playfully on the arm. "I'll keep him on his feet and fighting until we get through."

 

 She looked at Doc, saying, "You buy the farm, I have to buy it first, yeah?"

 

 Doc inclined his head graciously. "I appreciate your concern, madam."

 

 "Fine, but let's cut the words," J.B. said urgently. "Doc, you and Cat get to the front on one side, and I'll go for the other. We need to get the game plan sorted quickly."

 

 "Agreed," Doc affirmed. "Let's go…"

 

 "JOHN, GLAD YOU COULD make it and join the fun," Mildred said as the Armorer reached the front of the vanguard party.

 

 "Sorry, I was a little detained," he commented wryly. "What's going on?"

 

 "Not as much as we'd like, I guess," Mildred began before outlining briefly the situation as it stood.

 

 When she had finished, J.B. scratched his head, pushing back his fedora, before taking off his spectacles and polishing them, a habit that indicated he was now deep in thought.

 

 "So the number one priority is to push them back and move down into the redoubt, which we can only do if we drive them back far enough to get access to the other side of the sec door and bring it up fully. Otherwise we're sitting targets trying to squeeze through that space."

 

 "That's about it," Mildred agreed.

 

 J.B. put on his spectacles and pushed them up the bridge of his nose, his eyes shining as he viewed the way ahead.

 

 "Leave it to me," he said simply before darting across the corridor, using the wag as cover and keeping low.

 

 "Ryan, I think I've figured a way to drive them back and keep the next sec door up while we secure this one and get it up for a full assault," he said in a rash.

 

 "Tell me," Ryan replied simply. J.B. outlined his plan, and Gloria looked at him in astonishment.

 

 "You think that'll work?" she asked.

 

 The Armorer shrugged. "If not, we're fucked anyway. We have to get past them and get that door opened. I figure this is worth the risk. It can be done if you give me enough cover."

 

 Ryan nodded. "Try it. You're the only one I'd trust with such a crazy idea."

 

 J.B. swung his canvas bag off his shoulder and began to mold a small lump of plas-ex, which he extracted from the interior. "I hope to hell that I've judged this right," he muttered as he molded and added a timer fuse to the small bomb. "If not, I'll bring down the whole tunnel."

 

 "We'll just have to trust to luck. It's got us this far," Ryan said as the Armorer completed his bomb and set the fuse.

 

 "Ready," he stated. "Keep me covered. I'll keep low, so just fire over me and try to stop those coldheart bastards firing back!"

 

 Ryan nodded. "Good luck."

 

 J.B. gave him a wry grin, then dropped to the floor, the M-4000 in one hand, the bomb in the other.

 

 Laser fire heated the air above his head as he crawled past the door stanchion and into the no-man's land beyond the trapped door. Following their cue, the war party on the other side of the wag began a heavy barrage of fire, keeping the Illuminated Ones pinned in their cover.

 

 Climbing to his knees, J.B. raised the M-4000. He knew instinctively that some of the Illuminated Ones would break cover to fire on him. As they leveled their laser blasters, he fired at them, then dropped and began to crawl again. He was already flat by the time that the barbed metal flechettes from the shotgun charge had ripped into the Illuminated soldiers, chilling some instantly as vital organs were ripped to shreds, wounding others as they were hit in the arms and face.

 

 This and the laser fire from the war parties caused the Illuminated Ones to drop back.

 

 Acting as fast as his prone position would allow, J.B. rolled against the wall so that he was covered by the buttresses, and righted himself so that he could inch along the wall until he was up against the door stanchion. Taking a deep breath, and noting that there were only seconds left on the timer fuse, he pushed the plas-ex against the stanchion, pushing the soft, puttylike explosive into the groove that ran down the length of the stanchion to allow the door to fall.

 

 He was never closer to buying the farm. Any Illuminated soldier with fast enough reflexes or who was close enough could easily have taken off his arm with a laser blast.

 

 But they were in ignorance of J.B.'s plans, and so were in no position to react. The Armorer was able to place the plas-ex, turn and fling himself to the ground, huddling close to the wall as the plas-ex blew, hoping that no flying rubble would injure him.

 

 "Damn."

 

 Mildred was the first to react after the explosion. The corridor was filled with a choking dust as the stanchion blew out, buckling the metal runners so that the sec door couldn't be lowered, and causing the Illuminated soldiers to pull back in a panicked state. Meanwhile, Mildred keyed in the sec code scratched on the key plate. When the door had risen, she blasted the circuitry with the laser rifle to prevent it being closed again by remote means. Thanking the consistency of human nature, she turned and made her way to J.B., who was huddled against the wall, coated in a layer of dust and concrete chip.

 

 "John! Are you all right?" she yelled as she reached him.

 

 Taking his arms from over his head, where he had flung them to provide whatever protection he could from the blast, he grinned at her.

 

 "You know, for a moment there I thought I might have got the amount wrong and arranged my own burial," he said matter-of-factly.

 

  

 

 Chapter Thirteen

 

  

 

 As the Armorer dusted himself off, Ryan and Gloria had already sped past him to the damaged sec door, taking cover and scanning the corridor that lay beyond. It was empty up to the point where the dog legged descent into the bowels of the earth began. There would be elevators and an emergency staircase that they would have to check out, but it would seem that their best and safest option—both from the point of view of sticking together and also affording themselves the best protection—would be to keep taking the main tunnel downward.

 

 "For fuck's sake, where the hell have they all gone?" Gloria asked.

 

 Ryan surveyed the empty corridor. Unless there was a sec squad lurking around the bend in a primitive attempt at ambush, then they were on their own. Certainly, there seemed to have been no attempt at establishing a defensive block on the corridor. It was as though the Armorer's actions had driven the Illuminated Ones back to a core defensive position.

 

 Perhaps it had. That would certainly make progress easy. Ryan outlined this possibility to Gloria, ending, "Though why they'd want to pull back so soon is something that worries me."

 

 "Why? They know they're not that shit hot as fighters, so mebbe they really see that as their best option."

 

 Ryan shook his head. "No, it still doesn't add up. There's too much tech along the way—assuming they've pulled right back to the kind of chambers we saw before…the ones you were stranded in when you landed. They must know we're after the lab, and where they keep the disease."

 

 Gloria shook her head. "Why? Why would they assume that? They might think we're just carrying on the fight from where we left it. Why would they assume that we're going to add two and two and make four? Bet you thought I couldn't do that, eh?" she added with a sly grin. And when Ryan didn't answer, she continued. "You see? If you don't think that far about me, then why should they think that far about us? They think we're triple stupe. They think everyone is compared to them. So why would they think we're after anything other than a firefight and a chance of revenge?"

 

 Ryan grimaced. "You could be right. Can we afford to think that, though?"

 

 Gloria shrugged. "We can afford nothing, honey. We've just got to go for it and hammer these motherfuckers as much as possible. Hit them hard and fast, before they have a chance to think."

 

 Ryan agreed. "But we need to divide up, so that a search party can try and find the labs where they're brewing up the pox. Mildred's not up to speed. It's taking hold on her, Doc and Jak more and more. She'll need good backup."

 

 "Then I figure we send Tammy and Dean with her, mebbe a couple of others. They're both hard and fast, they work well together, and Dean seems to know more about old tech than anyone except Mildred."

 

 Ryan nodded. "Good call." He scanned the area ahead once more. "They must have sec cameras internally—most of these places do, even if they long ago gave out. Got to figure that theirs are still in operation. We want someone to keep watch on the tunnel while we brief the others."

 

 Gloria agreed, and the two warrior leaders returned to the area where their forces were gathered. J.B. was now fully fit, having recovered from a bout of the shakes brought on by the aftereffects of being so close to the explosion. Tammy, Mildred and Dean were with him. Ryan beckoned to them. Gloria pulled Nita and Dette from the pack of impatient warriors, and put them on watch by the ruined doorway.

 

 "Looks like they've pulled right back," Ryan told them as they approached. "I figure they'll keep an eye on us, and mebbe put a few obstacles in our path, but it's time for the main party to head on and take these coldheart bastards out of the game."

 

 "What about the lab?" Mildred asked.

 

 "I was getting to that," Ryan told her. "We want a smaller offensive for the lab party. Hit hard and fast. Now, you've got to be part of that, Mildred, but—"

 

 "But I'm not on the ball," Mildred cut in. "Yeah, I know it, and that's what worries me."

 

 "Don't worry too much about it," Ryan assured her. "I figure—Gloria, too—that we keep your party small, mebbe a half dozen at most. You, Tammy and Dean. Perhaps two, three others."

 

 "Two max," Tammy interjected. "Those are small rooms, off smaller corridors. Too many of us and we'll just get in each other's way—mebbe even blast the fuck out of each other in the confusion."

 

 "I'd go with that," Ryan agreed. "You pick the two you want, okay?" And when the Gate number two assented, the one-eyed man turned his attention to the Armorer. "That was damn fine work, J.B. How are you feeling?"

 

 "Had the tremors where the explosion set my nerves jangling, but that's gone now," J.B. replied offhandedly. "I'm ready to go."

 

 Ryan nodded, clapping his old friend on the shoulder. "That's good. Let's get this show going."

 

 They joined Gloria, who had been briefing the war party on what the situation appeared to be and enlightening the Crossroads people on what they might expect in the redoubt.

 

 The Gate and Crossroads party numbered around seventy, the Gate men waiting outside with the wags for their warriors to return, as was their tradition. Running his eye over the assembly with as much detachment as he could muster, Ryan wondered whether the Crossroads fighters would be up to the task if they had to face ambushes and laser fire in a close combat situation. There was no doubting their intent and passion, as Yardie had demonstrated before leaving the ville, let alone their display in getting past booby traps the like of which were alien to them. But being hard about it, was it practical to rely on them in this situation?

 

 Mebbe fifty percent, Ryan figured. Which meant that the bulk of the action would be down to the Gate warriors and to his own people. Looking at them, it was disheartening to see how Mildred, Doc and Jak had been affected by the pox. All three were now showing visible signs, and all had made it clear that they were aware of diminished capabilities.

 

 Weight of numbers were good, but how many Illuminated Ones were there in the redoubt? If he had some way of knowing, or guessing, then he would feel much safer in making combat judgments.

 

 Gloria turned to him, interrupting his train of thought.

 

 "Next step, Ryan?"

 

 The one-eyed man clicked into battle mode and began, "You know how the redoubts are usually laid out, from what you've just been told and from what some of you have experienced. You've also been told that the Illuminated Ones appear to have pulled all their sec right back, giving us what could be a clear run of the redoubt. A party of five will be heading for the area where the labs are usually located in order to try and find the source of the disease, and also the antidote and cure. The rest of us—our task is to wipe these bastards off the face of the earth before they can do more damage. In order to do this, there will be an advance party that will scout ahead, with a runner reporting back. The main bulk of fighters will follow when the area ahead has been recced. Those of you who will be in the advance party know you have the hardest task of all—you'll be the ones who run into danger first, so we need people who can stay frosty and triple smart, keep triple red.

 

 "For that reason, the advance party will have to be Gate women. This isn't to belittle those of you from Crossroads—you don't have the battle experience necessary, is all. For the same reason, myself and J.B. may go, but not Doc or Jak. Like some of you Crossroads people, they have contracted the pox and know that their reflexes are slowed.

 

 "The aim here is to keep calm, keep it under control and risk as few of us as possible until we're in full scale combat. Is that clear?"

 

 There was a muttering and a murmur of agreement.

 

 "Okay, then it's time to pick the scout party and get moving. We've wasted enough time already."

 

 A six-woman scout team was picked, including Nita and Dette. Cat elected to stay with Doc.

 

 "Don't worry, my old friend, you'll be all right with the Cat," she whispered to him. And, in truth, Doc was glad of the support as his labored breathing and aching back and ribs made it hard for him to move swiftly.

 

 The six-woman team set off, followed by Mildred's party. They would move directly behind the scouts and then branch off when they reached the area where the lab was situated.

 

 Or at least, that was the plan. It soon became apparent that the Illuminated Ones had other ideas.

 

 As the scouts and the med group rounded the dogleg of the tunnel and moved downward, they noticed that some of the corridors leading to dorms, sec-camera monitor rooms and storage bays were cut off, their sec doors closed. Rooms that led directly off the corridor were also firmly closed.

 

 Mildred called the scout party back.

 

 "Problem?" Dette asked in an edgy tone. From the way she was looking around, Mildred guessed that the warrior was unhappy with being stuck beneath ground.

 

 "Could be," Mildred replied. "Nothing ahead, I know, but what about these corridors and rooms?"

 

 "What, you figure there could be warriors waiting behind them to spring out on us?"

 

 Mildred shook her head, pulling back her plaits. "That would have already happened. Besides, it's too close to the surface for them to do that. That'll happen farther down, when they feel we have a false sense of security."

 

 "Then what's the problem?" Dette countered.

 

 "I just want to see if any of these doors—corridors or rooms—open when we try them," she replied.

 

 "You are kidding, right?" Dette said sharply. "They'll be booby trapped, and blow us away if we're not careful."

 

 "Then we'll be careful," Mildred said coldly, not caring for the woman's tone.

 

 "For fuck's sake, we're supposed to be making an advance—" Dette began, before Tammy cut her short.

 

 "We're not doing that, either, the more you stand here arguing," the Gate number two snapped. "Let's try some of them, yeah?"

 

 Dette nodded, seething but keeping herself in check. The two parties then backtracked to a sec door leading to an ancillary corridor. Mildred checked and could see the code on the scratch plate above the keypad.

 

 "You keep back," she said softly to the others.

 

 "Hang on," Dean interrupted, staying her hand as she was about to punch the first number. "You stay back. You're the one we need to keep alive right now. Let me."

 

 Their eyes met for a long moment, until Mildred looked away, acknowledging that Dean was right. She stepped back and joined the others, who were taking cover behind a concrete buttress.

 

 Dean stared at the code and then at the keypad. He felt a trickle of sweat, cold in the small of his back. His finger trembled as he punched the first digit. Nothing happened. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and punched in the second. Again, nothing happened. He continued this for each digit until the last, when he hesitated for a moment, feeling a cold gnaw of fear in his gut. If it was going to go, it would on this—

 

 He hit the last digit of the code, flinching as his finger made contact with the keypad.

 

 Nothing.

 

 Nothing at all. Not the explosion, ripping him to shreds, that he had feared, but neither was there any movement from the door.

 

 Dean frowned and with a renewed confidence punched in the full code for a second time.

 

 Again nothing happened.

 

 He turned to the others, backing away from the door. He still kept watch from the corner of his eye, and had his Browning Hi-Power to hand, in case something should suddenly occur.

 

 "I think they've put a lock on by remote control," he said as he drew near. "Try some of the others."

 

 He and Mildred then worked their way back while the others kept watch, trying both the ancillary corridor sec doors and the closed doors to ancillary rooms. All were locked and failed to respond when their codes were punched in.

 

 "We've got a real problem here," Mildred said, shaking her head in anger as she and Dean returned to the rest of the scout and lab parties.