Desert Kings (29 page)

The cyborg grinned in delight. Excellent! Now he could chill the fools and take their horse for his escape. Raising his hand, Delphi aimed the Educator, and his hand flinched as a hole was blown clear through the palm. A rolling boom echoed from the cliff overhead, telling of a sniper, and pain racked Delphi as fat blue sparks started crawling over his flesh from a short-circuit. Mentally, the cyborg screamed for the autorepair systems to fix the device, but there was no response.

Staggering away from the shore, Delphi tried to raise his force field to no avail when something tightened around his leg. Looking down, the cyborg saw it was a slimy tentacle extending out of sight under the scummy waves. Other tentacles were wiggling along the bottom to haul away the scattered bits of Rogan. The fresh blood had to have attracted the attention of some underwater scavenger! Glancing at the Webley only yards away, Delphi attempted to break free of the undulating limb, but the grip was like iron. Thrusting his damaged hand into the water, he hoped the short-circuit might drive the mutie away, but the tentacle only tightened more, nearly crushing his leg, and began to inexorably pull him away from the shore and deeper into the toxic chem lake.

Reining in the wounded horse, Ryan and Doc jumped to the ground and advanced upon the cyborg, steadily firing their blasters. Lead plowed into the scummy water, blowing away small pieces of the cyborg. Hydraulic fluid and blood seeped from the punctures, staining the lake mottled colors.

“Wait!” Delphi yelled as the waves lapped at his chest. “Save me, and I’ll tell you the secrets of the redoubts! I know it all! I know everything!”

Ignoring that plea, the two grim men continued to trigger their weapons as the tentacle bodily hauled Delphi back under the water and out of sight.

Turning on his eyes, the cyborg saw that the creature seemed to be composed of nothing but tentacles and a large sloppy mouth that opened and closed constantly. Fumbling for the decorative knife on his belt, Delphi unexpectedly felt the hard slaps of hot lead hit him again. Suddenly he understood that the outlanders were not trying to ace him, but to cripple him. Served to the lake mutie like tossing a dog a bone!

Madness overwhelmed the cyborg as his laboring lungs began to throb with the need for air. Then his internal systems came online, and flapping gills opened in his neck, brining new strength with a rush of oxygen. Redoubling his efforts to escape, Delphi slashed at the tentacle. Incredibly, the ropy limb withdrew, only to be replaced by a dozen more tentacles that wrapped tightly around his arms and legs, pinning the cyborg helpless. As if it were some ancient Kraken from predark myths, the aquatic mutie dragged the squirming Delphi into the shadowy depths of the lake and stuffed him whole into its gaping mouth.

Screaming curses, Delphi thrashed madly as a thousand tiny fangs pierced his flesh and hardened gums began to slowly grind, ripping away layer after layer of clothing, skin and muscle. Pain filled his world. Still alive and horribly conscious, Delphi began traveling down the putrid gullet as searing stomach acids washed over his helpless form as the cyborg entered a new type of hell.

“And so ends Delphi,” Doc said, holstering the smoking LeMat. “I would have preferred to take his life personally, but nothing is perfect.”

“Near enough.” Ryan grunted, holstering the SIG-Sauer and sliding the Steyr off a shoulder to work the arming bolt. Patiently, he waited for the cyborg to rise again from the scummy waves. But after a few minutes, the man eased his stance and clicked on the safety.

“Satisfied, my dear Ryan?” Doc asked, arching an eyebrow.

“Near enough,” the one-eyed man replied, almost smiling.

A clatter of loose stones from behind made the two men turn and grab for their blasters, but the noise only proved to be the rest of the companions clambering down the sloping embankment of loose salt and sandstone. Everybody seemed undamaged, except for Chief Stirling, who had a bloody arm stuffed into his shirt for support. A LAW rocket was strapped across his back, the launching tube cracked but still serviceable.

“That pays a lot of debts,” the sec man boss stated, giving them a hard smile. “Never thought I’d see the day. When Rogan and I found that fragging droid in a cache of predark blasters, I thought I was on the last train west for sure.” The man grinned. “Then the nuking thing gave a bow like we were barons and asked for orders.”

“So you told it to come along, and help ace Delphi,” Mildred guessed, hefting the med kit slung over her shoulder.

“Yep. Worked, too, although damned if I know why.”

“How find?” Jak asked, his long hair billowing in the breeze.

“Doomie told us back in Two-Son.”

“Thank Gaia for that,” Krysty said, finishing reloading her S&W revolver and closing the cylinder.

“Yeah, good thing doomies are on our side,” J.B. drawled, resting the Uzi on a shoulder. “Be a triple-bitch to fight an enemy who knew what you were going to do, even before you did!’

“Got that right,” Stirling agreed, rubbing his arm.

“I can fix that,” Mildred said, reaching into her med kit. “Only take a few minutes.”

“Sounds good,” the sec man replied, easing the limb from within his uniform. “It’s going to be a long walk back to Two-Son without horses or wags.”

“First, we have to recce that island,” Ryan said, walking to the edge of the beach. Now that Delphi was gone, he couldn’t take his sight off the place. So near. He was almost there. Adjusting his eye patch, Ryan noted that down here he could even see the white adobe building with the strange design above the doorway, and now he knew what the symbol stood for.

“Get ready, TITAN,” the man whispered softly. “Here I come—”

There was a flash of bright light and a moment of disorientation.

As his vision cleared, Ryan blinked at the sight of snow covering the landscape, reaching all the way to the craggy black mountains on the horizon, the snowcapped peaks and tors, challenging the heavens above. The sun was high overhead, and a shaggy goat stood on a nearby tor, chewing on some flowery weeds growing out of a small crevice. Fireblast, it happened again!

Hastily looking around, the Deathlands warrior was relieved to find the rest of the companions standing waist-deep in snow only a few yards away from the towering black doors of a redoubt.

“Dark night! What the fuck just happened?” J.B. blinked, startled. He removed his fedora to brush back his hair and jam the hat back on good and tight. “Must have been TITAN’s defense mechanism. Mighty nice of them to send us here, rather than the moon.”

“Where is here?” Jak asked with a scowl, trembling from the bitter cold. “Alaska?”

“Tell you in a sec,” J.B. replied, tugging the minisextant out from under his sandy shirt.

“More important, where is Chief Stirling?” Doc asked, his words foggy in the cold air. Hastily, the old man began to button his damp coat.

“Probably back at Two-Son ville,” Mildred guessed, stuffing her hands into pockets. “And I strongly suggest that we get our damp asses out of the cold before we all catch pneumonia and die.”

“Well, I see no place else to go,” Krysty observed dourly. Walking to the keypad, she tapped in the entry code. After the usual pause, the massive blast doors rumbled aside and a great exhalation of warm air rushed out to greet the companions.

“Okay, this is…Siberia,” J.B. said slowly, then double-checked the figures. “Yep. We’re smack in the middle of nuking Siberia, about a thousand miles from Moscow.”

“You sure about that?” Mildred queried. “Why would there be a redoubt here?”

“Who knows?” the Armorer replied, tucking away the minisextant. “We’ve been in redoubts outside Deathlands before. Who knows why any of them were built.”

“Siberia. The other side of the world,” Mildred said in a soft voice that was almost a whisper. “You know, to anybody with brains, this would be seen as a warning to never trouble the folks on that island again.”

“Guess so. Last time they sent me back to the Trader,” Ryan added, studying the landscape. “This time, halfway around the globe. Brass will get you powder that the next time, we’ll be aced. Chilled to the bone.”

“So the next time, we get them first,” J.B. said confidently, walking into the access tunnel. “Smash the island to drek, before getting close. We’ll figure out something.”

The companions hurried into the redoubt’s access tunnel.

Stomping the snow off his shoes, Doc looked at the distant Russian mountains lost in somber contemplation. Cort Strasser was aced, as was Silas, and now Delphi. When would enough blood be spilled to pay his debt to the universe? When would sufficient lives be lost to redress the balance?

“When will I be allowed to go home!” Doc bellowed, shaking a fist at the morning sky. The shouted words echoed across the snowy field and down into the river valley, seeming to repeat forever. But if the universe heard, or cared, there was no reply.

With a sigh, Doc turned away from the barren wasteland and started into the foreign redoubt to rejoin his friends, the only real family he had anymore. A few moments later, Krysty keyed in another code and the titanic blast door closed with a hollow boom.

T
HE MOON WAS STILL HIGH
in the nighttime sky when the green layer of scum covering Bad Water Lake started to ripple around the small island. Then, incredibly, the land mass began to slowly move away from the pebbled beach until it was in the middle of the lake, very far away from the dark shore.

Moments later, a dozen Krakens moved below the scum, creating low swells and they assumed positions around the island like sec men standing guard. As if compelled by a will of its own, the green scum expanded to fill in the ragged patches, and a strong wind blew in from the hills, throwing loose sand over everything on the cliffs.

Soon, every trace of the battle was erased as if the fight had never happened, and a thick silence settled over the huge artificial lake, undisturbed except for the sound of the low wind and the slap of the dirty waves against the rocks.

B
ACK IN
T
WO
-S
ON VILLE
, Edgar Franklin leaned against a low cinder-block wall and sipped warm beer while he watched the workmen toil in the ville’s greenhouses. Safe behind the wall of glass, the thriving green plants seemed almost unnatural set amid the endless desolation that surrounded the walled city. In spite of himself, the cyborg was mildly amused. Not even the legendary Dante ever imagined a lush garden in the center of Hell.

Finishing off the ceramic mug of homemade brew, Franklin set it aside and started toward his room in the basement of the gaudy house. Thankfully, everything had gone according to plan, and the grand scheme of things was finally back on schedule. He had completed his assigned task, and Delphi was dead. In the morning, he was supposed to meet the baron, but instead, he would slip out of the ville at dawn and return to the redoubt, then jump back to his base and resume his regular duties. The traitor had been destroyed, but TITAN’s bid for control of the Deathlands had only just begun.

Mildred’s Journal

The light from the campfire was low and reddish, almost as if the world had been painted with blood. A warm breeze was blowing across the Great Salt, and Dr. Mildred Weyth was sipping a hot cup of coffee, the companions taking a much-needed rest. Under her anxious fingers was a small leather journal. She had found it in the redoubt and decided it would be perfect for a codex, a sort of catalog of all the useful information that she learned during their travels. She could also record a few observations.

Not anything I would ever need, Mildred noted, but something to help some future generation to stay alive and thrive. Even in these blighted days knowledge was power, often more useful than a loaded blaster.

Opening the journal, Mildred took out a scavenged predark pen, gathered her thoughts and carefully began to write.

She then drew a crude picture to show how window glass from predark houses and office buildings could be used to build greenhouses to keep off the acid rain. That started a new train of thought, and Mildred described how to make black powder, and how to convert that into the much more powerful gunpowder, and then how to make fulminating guncotton. It was tricky, but John had taught her how and now she could pass on that knowledge.

Lifting the pen from paper, she frowned. There was so much data, so much vital knowledge that she wanted to impart to future generations, but there was no way for her to list it in any kind of order. Things would simply be listed as they occurred to her. Random knowledge for a random world. Somehow, that seemed only proper.

She paused again, feeling the warm breeze move her hair.

She paused again.

“Millie?”

With a jerk, the physician looked up and saw J.B. running stiff fingers through his rumpled hair. “Something wrong?” she asked in concern.

“Nope, it’s just your turn to get some sleep,” he said with a smile, taking his glasses out of a shirt pocket and putting them on. “What are you writing?”

“Just a poem,” Mildred lied, closing the journal and cinching it tight with a leather strap.

“Dirty?” John asked hopefully.

“Now, why ever do you ask?” She laughed, rising to kiss the man good-night.

The task took longer than expected, but nowhere near as long as they both would have liked. Eventually, Mildred left the man to his work. She didn’t know why she had lied to her lover about the journal, but in retrospect, it now seemed a wise precaution. She suspected that her companions wouldn’t approve of her writing about the redoubts as the knowledge might be used against them someday.

And that was correct, she admitted privately. This codex could end up biting them all in the ass. But it was a chance she would have to take. Her father would have called it a moral imperative.

If I hide knowledge away like a baron did his guns and food, hoarding it for my own personal use, then I’m as guilty as the fools who destroyed the world, damning the innocent to lives of brutal hardships, needless toil and abject misery.

Was the book dangerous? Hell, yes. Was it necessary? Also, a resounding yes.

Mildred admitted to herself that most likely nobody would ever see the codex, much less find it useful. But Ryan had taught her to prepare for what an enemy could do, not what they might do. Hope for the best, plan for the worst. I’ll add more as often as I can, until the book is full, she vowed.

The predark physician stood gazing at the starry sky, then looked into her soul. Somehow, there had to be a way to end the bloodshed and warfare, to return peace to the world, and she vowed to do whatever she could to try to make the dream come true.

Because in spite of everything—nukes, muties, droids and coldhearts—hope still survived, even there, deep in the heart of the Deathlands.