Desert Kings (27 page)

In spite of the weak moonlight, the one-eyed man could still make out a lot of the features of the little ville. It was surrounded by sand dunes set so perfectly around the adobe buildings they were obviously fakes. The streets were empty, devoid of wags, carts of any kind. The only movement came from some torn curtains fluttering in the evening breeze. A large Yucca tree grew inside a broken house, the branches going out the windows, the roof seriously off-kilter. Not a damn soul was in sight. No sec men or civilians. Not even a horse, dog or chicken was visible. Just a couple of fat Gila lizards lounging near some cactus plants. Forked red tongues lolled from the open jaws, and the rainbow-speckled hides of the lizards glinted brightly in the moonlight as if they were made of polished metal.

“Easy swim to island. Any sharks?” J.B. asked, scowling at the featureless gray expanse.

“No, just game fish,” Mildred replied. “Nothing dangerous that would frighten the tourists like pike, or barracuda. Much less a great white!”

Just then, something broke the surface of the lake, causing a low swell to rise and move across the water for a long distance, then disappeared into its depths once more.

“Then again, I could be wrong,” Mildred relented sagely, rubbing the back of her neck.

“Don’t…don’t I know this place?” Doc asked so softly the words were almost lost in the breeze.

That made Ryan pause and lower the Navy telescope. Those were almost the exact same words the old man had said when they’d met for the first time. Suddenly the one-eyed man had the feeling that huge pieces of the puzzle about skydark and the redoubts were moving closer together, almost near enough for him to get a glimpse of what was actually happening….

Squinting hard, Krysty suddenly pointed. “What’s that?”

Bright lights suddenly appeared across the bay.

Moving fast, the companions dropped flat to the ground, drawing their blasters and clicking off safeties.

Adjusting the focus on the scope of his Steyr, Ryan swung back and forth in gentle arcs until locating the array of lights.

“Wags,” he whispered unnecessarily, knowing the distance was far too great for the sound of a voice to carry. It would probably take a blaster shot a second to get there, if it could reach that far.

“How many?” J.B. demanded, wiggling his glasses for a better view. But it was hopeless. To him, the lights were merely bright smeary blobs.

“Four sets of headlights,” Ryan reported, sucking a hollow tooth. Then he got them in focus. Shitfire, those were LAV 25 armored personnel carriers. Two of them had 20 mm Vulcan miniguns mounted on top, while the others had something else, but he wasn’t sure what they were. The hulls were camou-colored, the splotches of green, red and brown dotted with gray smears from soft lead bullets ricocheting off the resilient predark armor. All of the machines were equipped with tires and treads, making them able to drive on land or across water. Suddenly that island didn’t seem so distant or unreachable.

“Whoever these folks are, they riding in LAVs,” Ryan stated bluntly. “Two with a Vulcan, and two with what looks like…” There was a bright flash of red and orange. “Yeah, they’re flame-throwers. A screamwing attacked and they fried it in flight.”

“Damn good shooting,” Mildred praised in a growl. “This has gotta be Delphi.”

“Makes sense.”

“Gaia, we have no chance against four of those predark war wags,” Krysty stated bluntly. “Remember those electric motorcycles Delphi gave the Rogan brothers to try and ace us? If these are mil versions of anything like those, I say we scrub this recce and leave.”

“I agree,” J.B. said, the words tasting like ash in his mouth. “We are outclassed and outgunned. I’d go up against one, or even two of them, but four…” The man didn’t finish the statement. He really didn’t have to.

Infuriated, Ryan was forced to agree and started to say so when door opened in the rear of the armored wags and people climbed out and into the light. There was a score of men in matching camou jumpsuits, along with a busty blond woman carrying several blasters. She seemed to be in charge; everybody jumped when she pointed at something. Then a thin man stepped out of the crowd and walked to the very edge of the cliff to stare down at the island.

Cold adrenaline flooded Ryan at the sight. The fellow was tall and thin, with blond hair plastered against his head. His clothing was different from the others’, a smooth tan in color clear. A holstered blaster at his hip, and there was some sort of glass, or crystal rod, tucked into a shoulder holster. Walking along the precipice, the man moved with a slight limp, then he turned away from the others and raised a hand and studied the glowing palm in private.

“Delphi,” Ryan whispered, putting a wealth of raw emotion into the single word. Working the arming bolt of the Steyr, the Deathlands warrior set the crosshairs directly on the chest of the hated cyborg. The wind was puffing from the left, which wasn’t good, but he could compensate. The range was extreme, but he’d once aced an enemy even farther away. One pull of the trigger and it was all over. Doc would be free, and the danger ended. The coldhearts would fight among themselves over control of the LAVs, probably destroying the machines and one another. It couldn’t be better. Then I’d be free to recce the blasted island, Ryan thought.

Pulling in a long breath, he held it for a moment, then stroked the trigger. The muzzle-flash was still visible when he tracked the longblaster to the left, where the wounded man would fall, and he fired again, then shifted to the right and fired twice more.

The shots were executed swiftly, and Ryan rode out the recoil of the last shot as the first 7.62 mm hollow-point round arrived like silent thunder. Doubling over in pain, the cyborg grabbed his stomach as blood gushed from the hideous wound. Stumbling to the left, Delphi recoiled as the next rounds arrived, but there was no blood, and he didn’t seem affected in any way.

That was when Ryan saw two black blobs hovering in the air just in front of the cyborg, and instinctively understood those were his bullets. Fireblast, the bastard had turned on his force field! the one-eyed man thought.

Slowly straightening, Delphi removed his hands from the bloody cloth, apparently undamaged, and brushed away the bullets hovering in front of him like flies stuck in amber.

The big blonde and the other uniformed sec man were running around in confusion, firing their BAR longblasters at nothing in particular. Swinging his head back and forth like a droid scanning for targets, Delphi suddenly paused and looked directly at Ryan far across the midnight bay, and smiled.

The sight was unnerving, but Ryan fired two more rounds directly into cyborg’s face, the 7.62 mm slugs slamming to a dead stop inches away from his grinning visage.

Delphi shouted something over a shoulder, and the two war wags with cannons on top began to spit flames.

Bursting into action, the companions rose to race away from the edge of the cliff, but the rain of 20 mm shells arrived a heartbeat later and the ground erupted in powerful explosions. Salty dust filled the air as a section of the cliff broke away with Ryan yards away from safety.

“Gaia, no!” Krysty screamed, advancing a step. But there was no reply from within the swirling dust cloud.

From within the moonlit cloud, a hand raised into view and grabbed hold of the sawgrass. As they clenched into a fist, blood seeped from between calloused fingers as Ryan pulled himself over the precipice and got an elbow onto solid ground.

Finished reloading, the 20 mm miniguns began to hammer away once more as the rest of the companions rushed forward to grab the one-eyed man and haul him away from the crumbling edge. Scrambling to his feet, Ryan charged for the war wag a second before the shells arrived, the barrage of detonations throwing up gouts of flame and creating a dense swirling cloud of dirt and salt.

Taking refuge behind the war wag, the companions heard a low rumble and another section of the weakened cliff broke away to plummet to the shore in a stentorian cascade. After a few minutes, the incoming fusillade of shells stopped and an eerie silence covered the land. There was only the panting of the companions and the soft pattering of loose rocks tumbling off the cliff to the shore below.

“Dark night, that was close.” J.B. exhaled, wiping his face with the back of a gloved hand. “Too damn close for my taste!”

“Well, I wasn’t going over a second time.” Ryan coughed, then hocked and spit brown onto the rocks. “That was for nuking sure!”

“Now what?” Jak asked in real concern, hefting his Kalashnikov rapid-fire. “Blasters chew Mack apart when get close!”

“And there’s no damn cover to hide behind!” Krysty cursed. Each of the companions was coated in grainy white, looking like something that escaped from a shallow grave.

“Doesn’t matter if we run or stay to fight,” Doc rumbled darkly. “In just a few moments, we shall be in plain sight.”

“Which leaves us only one choice,” Ryan declared grimly, pulling a butane lighter from his coat pocket.

T
HE SOUND OF ENGINES
filled the air, constantly punctuated by random blasterfire as the four predark war wags rolled along the edge of the cliff. Oddly, the dust cloud located where the outlanders had been was thicker than ever, the grayish white of the salty sand rapidly becoming an impenetrable brown.

“I don’t like this,” Delphi muttered, squinting at the thickening clouds. “Full stop!”

“And hit the headlights,” Cotton added grimly, looking suspiciously through the windshield. Between the airborne salt and smoke it was impossible to see a thing in the night. Visibility was less than twenty paces.

“Sure thing, Chief,” Jeffery said, braking the lead war wag to a full stop and pulling out a switch on the dashboard.

Instantly, four sets of brilliant beams stabbed out into the thickening fumes. There were only vague shapes shifting in the dark cloud, then flames rose high, adding a bright halo of illumination that silhouetted what remained of the big Mack rig and wooden flatbed.

“Holy nuking hell, their wag is on fire!” Jeffery shouted in delight. “No chance of the bastards getting away now!”

“Mutie shit, it’s a trick!” Cotton growled, grabbing the mike from the ceiling. “All wags, triple red! This is an ambush! Repeat, this is a—”

But that was as far as the woman got before the LAV 25 to their left violently detonated, a staggering fireball expanding from within in a titanic roar. Broken pieces of the armored chassis and bloody chunks of flesh slammed into the other three wags, denting one and smashing the front windshield of another.

As the wag was buffeted by the concussion, Delphi suddenly realized what had happened. Ryan and the others couldn’t run, or hide, so they’d set their own wag on fire to create a protective smoke screen in order to ambush the convoy. The plan was audacious, almost insane, but it had worked, and in a single instant the cyborg had lost a quarter of his fighting forces.

Enjoy your victory, Ryan. It’s your last, Delphi railed silently.

“Open fire!” he bellowed into his hand, the words bizarrely echoing throughout the three remaining predark wags.

It took only a heartbeat for the gunners to unlimber their blasters, and soon crisscrossing streams of 20 mm shells were randomly hammering the murky ground, throwing more dirt and salt into the air, making it even more difficult to see. Jeffery cut loose with the flame-thrower, the hissing column of fire licking across the landscape in hellish fury.

Suddenly the burning wooden wag lurched into motion and charged forward to ram into a LAV 25. The front grille of the Mack crumbled from the impact, the lightweight metal and chrome doing no damage to the heavy steel-alloy armor of the predark war machine. But the big diesel engine surged with power, the burning tires dug into the loose soil and the Mack began forcing the LAV sideways, heading directly for the cliff.

“Ace the driver!” Delphi screamed, pulling out his crystal wand and pointing it at the flame-enshrouded cab. But there was nobody in sight behind the wheel. Bastards had to have rigged it somehow, the cyborg guessed, tightening the grip on his weapons. Jammed a stick on the gas pedal and lashed down the steering wheel. Not a bad trick, but surely the LAV could easily escape such a crude trap!

Black smoke gushing from the louvered exhaust ports, the LAV lurched into action, trying to angle away from the ragged cliff. But the smashed chassis of the Mack was tangled on the armor frame of the LAV, and the battling machines began to curve into the dense cloud and out of sight.

“Harrison, shoot the outlander wag with your cannon!” Delphi yelled into his glowing hand. “Blast yourself free!”

“No need, chief!” the trooper shouted over the sound of grinding gear. “I can get us free!”

“That was an order!” Cotton bellowed, hunched over as if charging into a fight. “Use the fragging cannon!”

“Not going to waste brass for a lousy…Nuking hell!”

As Delphi switched his eyes to the ultraviolet spectrum, the cloud dramatically thinned and he clearly saw the struggling LAV and Mack truck go over the edge.

“Harrison, talk to me!” Cotton demanded, fearing the worst. “Harry!” But there was only silence.

“It’s too late,” Delphi said simply, his words almost a whisper.

Piercing screams came from the ceiling speaker of the control room, closely followed by a deafening series of metallic crunches, shattering glass, indescribable banging, clanging, then a watery splash and silence.

Stunned beyond words, Delphi could only stare at the empty section of cliff. It was incredible! Ryan and his people had taken out two of his armored personnel carriers in only a few minutes! How was that possible? Just for a second, the cyborg tasted fear, then he shrugged off the useless emotion.

If I want to live, think fast, and move faster, Delphi rationalized. This was it, chilling time. No more finesse or clever plans. Just bare-knuckle bloodletting. Get clear of the smoke, establish a new firebase, lay down suppression fire, bracket the targets, then kill them all.

“Wags, retreat at full speed!” Delphi commanded into his hand. “Don’t turn around, just move!”

“Get the fuck out of this cloud, people,” Cotton roared into the mike, “or we’re shit in a can!”

Working the controls, Jeffery didn’t even bother to reply as he threw the transmission into Reverse and tromped on the gas pedal. With a low rumble, the LAV’s engine engaged and the mil wag started moving swiftly away from the murky cliff. But it traveled only a few yards before something bounced off the windshield, then exploded, hard shrapnel peppering the armored hull. A thin crack appeared in the predark plastic and bitter smoke began to seep into the control room.

Grabbing Cotton, Delphi hauled the sec woman to the floor as two more grens hit the windshield and violently detonated. The resilient mil plastic shattered into a million jagged pieces as it blew into the vehicle, cutting Jeffery into shreds, his death cry lost in the sound of the razor-sharp debris ricocheting off the interior walls, gunracks and seats.

The shards were still falling as Dephi and Cotton crawled along the short passage out of the control room and to the rear cargo area. There were four other troopers standing near the exit hatch with longblasters in their hands, unsure of what to do.

Still in gear, the LAV continued to roll along backward, without direction. Every bounce shook the damaged transport, and loose items rolled around the corrugated floor to get dangerously underfoot. Strapped into position, the side gunners hung limply in their chairs, red blood dribbling from their tattered clothing, pointed pieces of windshield sparkling from the countless small cuts covering their gory bodies.

“Grab whatever you can, boys,” Cotton ordered, taking a mixed bag of ammo and grens from a peg on the wall. “These nuke-suckers really screwed the mutie when they tangled with us!” There was a trickle of warmth on her cheek, but the sec woman stoically ignored the minor wound as she loaded a clip of tracer brass into a BAR.

Wordlessly, the men nodded and started to fill their pockets with brass and grens.

“Stay low, and only shoot when you clearly see the outlanders,” Delphi commanded. “I don’t want any of my people aced by friendly fire.” Actually, he didn’t give a damn if they died. He just did not want them getting in the way when he went after Ryan and Tanner. When this was over, he’d chill everybody.

As Cotton and the other troopers got ready, Delphi yanked a panel off the wall, exposing a series of glowing buttons. “Ready?” he asked.

Taking a deep breath, Cotton worked an arming bolt. “Rock and roll, chief.”

Pressing the buttons in order, there was a series of dull thuds from the corrugated floor, and a section slid aside to reveal sandy ground streaming past the opening. Without a pause, the cyborg dropped through to hit the dirt and go flat. A moment later, Cotton dropped from the LAV, followed by the others in tight formation. Salty dust filled the air, and it was hard to see clearly, but a moment later, the shadow of the LAV 25 was gone and they were clearly bathed in the bright halogen headlights.

Frantically, Delphi and Cotton dived to the side, but the others moved too slow and blasterfire tore three of them apart before they could get out of the lethal illumination.

Triggering their Browning Automatic Rifles in tri-bursts, the troopers hammered the swirling cloud with heavy rounds. But there was no answering cry of pain to announce a hit.

Listening hard for any sound of the hated outlanders, Delphi watched the LAV 25 veer off randomly to slam into a dune. The rear hoisted upward and the wheels left the ground. Stuck in place, the machine continued to run, the front wheels starting to dig down into the crystalline soil, throwing more salt and sand into the air.

Moving away from the shuddering vehicle, Delphi saw the cliff had collapsed completely to form a sort of rough steps leading down to the polluted lake. At least I have an avenue of escape if necessary, the cyborg noted bitterly, flexing his hand. The situation was quickly getting out of his control, and a wise man knew when it was time to go. Not yet. He still had a lot of chilling to do first. But soon.

Struggling to shove a fresh clip of brass into the open breech of his longblaster, Caruthers flinched and dropped the weapon to grab his throat. Blood was spurting out in pulsating arcs, a leaf-shaped throwing blade buried to the hilt in the side of his neck. As the dying man toppled to the ground, Delphi calculated the angle of trajectory to throw the blade and sent a sizzling ray from the crystal rod in that direction, followed by a burst of fléchettes from the needler. If he hit anybody, there was no way to tell. How had this battle turned so fast against him? The convoy had four armored vehicles to Ryan’s old piece of homemade junk, and yet the outlanders were winning! It was impossible! Intolerable! The cyborg scowled. He should have been traveling with a hundred hunters, instead of leaving them to guard the redoubt. Those would have done the job, easily slaying Tanner and the others.

Then a fiery flower blossomed in the cloud. Delphi recognized it as the muzzle-flash of a Kalashnikov and instantly raised his force field. The hail of hardball rounds loudly zinged off the immaterial barrier, more coming from another direction in the night, and then still more. He replied with the needler and laser, only realizing at the last second that the bright energy beam was how they were finding him. Reluctantly, he sheathed the rod and flexed his hand to activate the malfunctioning Educator. It hummed to life inside his flesh, and he moved it in a slow arc, blindly trying for a chill. A gren came falling from above to detonate over the cyborg, the hot shrapnel churning the ground around his shield but completely failing to penetrate.

“Here I am, Tanner!” Delphi shouted. “Come and get me!” But the only reply was another thrown knife, two grens and more blasterfire.

Murky figures moved toward the trapped wag and the last LAV 25 unleashed a shuttering stream of 20 mm shells to pepper the ground and sloping dune. An anguished cry told of a hit, but Cotton grimaced when she recognized the voice as Mannheim’s. Shitfire, another man lost! The trooper tried to kept mental count of the aced, but it was hard to think. The noise of the furious battle was becoming deafening. Hot lead was flying in every direction. Grens detonated louder than thunder, and the 20 mm blaster constantly burped short bursts into the fray. But then Cotton detected a new sound among the chaos, low and dull, almost mechanical. And it was coming straight toward her.