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Chapter One

Ryan Cawdor opened his eye.

A sharp, stabbing pain shot through his head, piercing to the back of his brain like a red-hot needle pushed through the center of that diamond-hard blue orb.

No matter how many times he made the jump using the mat-trans, no matter how often he steeled himself for the inevitable agonies of recovery and regaining consciousness, it still amazed him that it could hurt so much. He’d lost count of the number of times his scarred and pitted torso had been injured in combat, racked with pain in torture; still, any of that seemed preferable, right now, to the agonies of regaining full consciousness after a jump.

Ryan’s muscled body, honed by years of travel and combat, trained to cope with a harsh existence, complained in no uncertain manner as he rose from his prone position onto one elbow. His curly black hair, matted with sweat, hung down over his active eye and the empty socket, protected by a patch and scored by a long, livid and puckered scar.

The lead in his muscles moved as the lactic acid dispersed, and the oxygen from the stale air he breathed so heavily started to traverse his bloodstream. He looked across to the seemingly slight but deceptively wiry frame of J. B. Dix, the man known as the Armorer, a position he had fulfilled for Trader, and where Ryan had first met the man he could call friend in a land where such things were rare.

John Barrymore Dix was slumped across the frosted floor of the mat-trans chamber, across the now still disks that glowed when the chamber was about to activate. A faint tang of ozone remained in the brackish air, a sign that Ryan hadn’t taken long to regain consciousness after the final stages of the jump. J.B., on the other hand, was still out cold, his chest moving visibly as he tried to gulp in air. His precious and battered fedora lay beside him, along with his Smith & Wesson M-4000 scattergun, his Uzi and the Tekna knife that had been invaluable when the aging tech of the blasters had given trouble.

Not that it often happened. The Armorer was an artist, if such a thing could be said to exist in the Deathlands. His eyes would sparkle behind his wire-rimmed spectacles—now safely stored in his pocket against the trauma of the jump—when he talked of weaponry, and his knowledge of blasters, grens and any other weapon was second to none. He made sure that the group with whom he traveled kept its weaponry in excellent condition at all times, taking pride in his work. A pride that was far from idle, as a misfiring blaster in the middle of a firefight would mean buying the farm when survival was much the preferred option.

Beside the prone J.B., her hand reaching out to him protectively, was Dr. Mildred Wyeth. Sometimes cynical in the face of adversity, her phlegmatic attitude in some ways echoed that of the Armorer, and had led to their relationship and understanding deepening over their travels. Despite the horror of the post-apocalypse world into which she had been thrown, Mildred’s predark idealism still powered her onward. Trapped in cryogenic suspension following complications during a minor operation, Mildred had awakened into something that for her was a nightmare. Initially, she had clashed with Ryan Cawdor, questioning his right to assume leadership of the group. But Ryan’s fighting skills and survival instincts had won her respect, as had his strong sense of justice, albeit tempered by necessary pragmatism. Besides which, she noticed that although assuming leadership and thus having the final say, Ryan believed strongly in teamwork, and played to the strengths of his companions.

Mildred’s beaded plaits hung over her dark face, almost a pallid gray as the waves of nausea from the jump dragged her toward consciousness.

A low moan, tortured and like a wailing lost soul seeking rest, drew the one-eyed warrior’s attention, causing him to turn slowly. As it came from the inside of the chamber, and was in a tone he knew well, he allowed himself the luxury of taking his time, allowing his still complaining equilibrium to adjust to the movement of his head. If he hadn’t recognized the sound, or if it had originated outside the chamber, he would have steeled himself, ignored the sudden dizziness and nausea and reached for his panga and his 9 mm SIG-Sauer P-226 blaster.

This time there was no need: the moan emanated, as he knew it had to, from the bony and angular figure dressed in a frock coat who lay propped against the far wall of the chamber. Dr. Theophilus Tanner was, in real time, somewhere in his mid- to late-thirties. Yet his real age was incalculable, as he had been plucked from his own time into another, and then tossed back into the stream of time. Doc’s muddled and bemused memories told of a time before the turn of the twentieth century, when life was sedate and ordered. The unwilling and unwitting subject of an experiment by the whitecoat scientists of a time immediately prior to skydark, Doc had proved too quarrelsome, too much trouble, and had been used as a test subject in an experiment to project forward in time.

It was an irony that the experiment had probably saved his life, landing him as it did nearly a century after the devastation of the nuclear war known as skydark. However, the damage to his physical and mental states was a subject of speculation. Mildred often referred to him as a crazy old fool, but was the first to own that this was merely irritation with his more unstable moments. The truth was that the Oxford- and Harvard-educated Tanner had weathered experiences that would have broken a lesser man. He looked weatherbeaten and aged—strangers would take him for twice his probable age—and from time to time was inclined to ramble in a seemingly senile and illogical manner, though these bouts were not as common as they used to be.

Yet he was also capable of a tenacious and wiry strength, and possessed a razor-sharp mind that could cut through the stress and strain of his most unusual life. For a man whose first experience of the Deathlands had been near death under torture at the hands of Baron Jordan Teague and his psychopathic sec chief Cort Strasser in the ville of Mocsin, Doc was surprisingly able to hold his fragile sanity together.

“I know—how much more of this can he take? Right, lover?”

Ryan turned back at the sound of Krysty Wroth’s voice, which sounded like a sonorous bell in the enclosed space, clear and ringing, yet quiet and controlled. The flame-haired woman was sitting with her knees drawn up to her chin, wrapped in the bearskin coat that hid the toned and shaped curves of her body. She flashed Ryan a smile that sparked through her green eyes. Yet she still showed signs of the strain caused by the jump.

Ryan allowed himself a smile in return, and cursed as he felt the muscles of his face ache as they moved. “Always read my thoughts,” he replied. Then he indicated Doc. “It’s true enough. Hurts bad for us, let alone what Doc’s been through.”

“Crazy old coot’ll outlive us all, you’ll see…” Mildred tentatively raised herself onto one foot, remaining half-kneeling until she was sure of her balance. J.B., still on his back but now conscious, allowed himself merely a grunt of assent.

“Okay, people, how are we doing?” Ryan asked. It was a rhetorical question. They were doing well, so far.

By now, Ryan and Krysty were on their feet, both massaging life back into their aching and dulled limbs. It was a luxury they knew they could allow themselves. J.B. was checking his blasters, which was no more than second nature to him. Mildred was checking Doc, pulling back his eyelid to see his rolling eyeball as his muttering grew less incoherent.

“My dear woman, I would appreciate a less heavy hand on my optic nerve,” he murmured from his incoherence, the eyeball beginning to still and focus.

“No thanks, not a bit of it,” Mildred replied with an indulgent smile, breathing silent thanks that Doc had made it once more.

There were still two members of the group who had failed to completely surface from the jump. Jak Lauren, the whip-thin and immensely strong albino, still lay on the floor of the chamber. His patched camou jacket, littered with the leaf-bladed throwing knives that were his specialty, seemed almost to smother him. As always seemed to happen during a jump, he had vomited, wretched strings of bile that dripped from his nose and mouth, forming small acrid puddles around his face. His breathing was regular and shallow, and he showed little sign of regaining consciousness. The boy beside him, however, was beginning to stir.

The casual observer would think that it was Ryan Cawdor who was prone on the chamber floor, then would notice that under the black mop of curly hair, the chiseled face was bereft of scarring and still held two eyes. The limbs were rangy, the musculature strong but still taking shape. But there was no mistaking that the boy was of Cawdor blood.

Dean Cawdor, recently turned twelve years old, was his father in miniature, and for Ryan it was an uncanny experience to look on his son and see himself some twenty-odd years previous. He even recognized the bridling brashness and overconfidence in his abilities that Ryan himself had been prone to at that age—except that Ryan had gone through this stage in the comparative safety and security of Front Royal, under the patronage of his father, the ville’s baron. Dean had to go through this learning experience in an environment where one wrong move could mean instant death, or worse…a lingering, tortuous death. So perhaps sometimes the older Cawdor was harsh in slapping down his son’s brazen self-confidence, but only because he was aware of what was happening inside the boy and felt an urgent need to quell the impetuousness that could be Dean’s undoing.

Even as this passed through the one-eyed warrior’s mind, Dean groaned softly and raised his head slowly, opening his eyes and then raising himself in the same manner as his father.

With Doc also now on his feet, Mildred devoted her medical attentions to taking care of Jak. The albino’s tolerance to the bodily stresses of the jumps was lower than the others.

Slowly, Jak came round, wiping the sticky mucus and bile from his face with his sleeve, and hawking a glob of phlegm from his throat.

“Okay to go?” Ryan questioned him.

Jak nodded. “As ever be.”

“Let’s do it.”

THE DOOR to the chamber had unlocked automatically when the jump had been completed. It was a safety facet of the mat-trans system that the doors on both the sending and receiving chambers had to be shut before the transfer could take place, and that the comp systems would automatically lock and unlock the doors when the transfer got underway and ended. Or at least, the aging and mostly uncared-for tech had worked that way thus far. Any deviation was beyond their control, and so not really worth consideration or worry.

They exited the chamber singly, checking the immediate area as they went, prepared to provide cover and defense for those who would follow. As always, Ryan took the lead, with J.B. at the rear.

The anteroom and control room outside the mattrans unit were empty. The comp consoles winked and chattered softly in the semidarkness, with much of the lighting having fallen prey to the passing years and lack of maintenance. The lack of dust was due to the antistatic air conditioner, which still worked.

There were no signs of life.

It took little time for them to ascertain that the redoubt was, on these lower levels at least, completely deserted. It was in a reasonable condition. There were signs of stress in some of the walls, suggesting that earth movements resulting from the tremors and quakes following skydark had made some impact on the redoubt, but most of the lighting was still working, and there was some circulation of air through a purification plant. The air was clean, but a little thin, suggesting that the plant was damaged.

“Can’t stay here too long,” Mildred remarked as they explored the empty rooms. “The air’s fine now, but it won’t last that way forever.”

“Why not?” Dean countered. “It’s been okay up to now, right?”

“Think about it, my boy,” Doc interjected with a sardonic note. “The air is, shall we say, a little thin down here. Suggesting, I should imagine, some malfunction of the ancient technology keeping this place alive, albeit perhaps in a wheezing and somewhat dubious manner…A little like myself, in fact.”

“So?” Dean prompted, still in the dark.

“So, it’s thin and strained when the redoubt is empty. But now it has seven people breathing in at a ridiculous rate. A rate made, with some irony, even faster by its very paucity.”

“Big words for say we use faster than made,” Jak commented with an amused look at the old man. Doc merely shrugged.

“So how long you reckon we got?” J.B. asked Mildred.

She shook her head, the ends of her plaits moving rhythmically as though caught by a much needed draft of air. “Couldn’t say for sure, John. It’s like being at a high altitude. I don’t think we’d suffocate for a few days, but the more rarefied it gets, the more it might affect us. Hallucinations, maybe.”

“Great. Like jolt only not so good,” Jak muttered in a dour tone.

“Think we can risk a night?” Ryan asked Mildred. “I’d like us to get some rest before tackling whatever may be out there or risk another jump.”

“I’d say we could do that,” Mildred replied after some thought.

“Good. Now let’s try and find the shower stalls, mebbe some clean clothes. That’d make me feel better for a start,” Krysty added.

“Right. Stink like mutie polecat on heat,” Jak grunted.

It didn’t take long to find the shower stalls and washing facilities. Like most redoubts, this one was laid out to a specification that had been generally used. There had been exceptions, but for the most part it could be assumed that if a person had explored one redoubt, he or she had a fair chance of navigating every other one he or she came across.

The showers were still working. As with several of the redoubts they had encountered so far, the lighting in this one was erratic. But the water was still on, and the heaters still worked. The first streams of water were lukewarm, flecked with some decay and foreign matter from the pipes, but after a minute or so by Ryan’s wrist chron the water was clear, flowing freely and of an even temperature.

They took turns to shower, keeping a guard at all times. It seemed that the redoubt was deserted apart from their presence, but they could never be too sure. The friends had been taken unawares on a previous occasion.

It was a simple matter to find clean clothing. The store rooms for all redoubts were situated in the same place, and in this redoubt they were lucky enough to find underclothes and thermally insulated outerwear that had lain unused for over a century. They took the opportunity to change clothes and would later launder what they usually wore.

One strange thing, though—the clothes weren’t the usual regulation khaki and olive-green, or white. Some of the clothes were in colors that seemed, under the dim lighting, to be black or a dark blue. Some of it, under the better lighting of the corridor, even revealed itself to be purple, a color rarely if ever seen in predark sec conditions. And the lighter colors were yellows and sky-blues. It was a small but significant difference.

“These make a change,” Dean remarked as he dressed, “but it doesn’t seem right to me.”

“You’re right,” Krysty agreed. “The armies from before skydark would never have used this.” She held up a purple T-shirt that seemed, in the light, to have streaks of a faded pattern running across it. “This is no ordinary military redoubt.”

“Built on the same lines, though,” Ryan said thoughtfully. “Odd. Most of the nonmilitary redoubts we’ve jumped to have been different. But this…”

“I know,” Mildred said. “It’s uncanny, and maybe just a bit creepy. It’s a military base, but with so many nonmilitary touches. If only it wasn’t so damned dark…I’d swear that these rooms are just a bit smaller than the usual size. It’s like someone got the military blueprints but had to downscale just a bit.” Mildred shivered. “It just gives the place a screwy atmosphere, like looking into a distorting mirror.”

Jak looked at her, puzzled. “Not feel danger here,” he said simply. “Old sec weird. Seen plenty weirder.”

Doc, who had so far been silent, leaned thoughtfully on his swordstick, hands clasped over the silver lion’s head. “I wonder…” he mused, then lapsed into silence.

“Wonder what, Doc?” Ryan asked gently, knowing that when the old man was straining to recall, it was best to keep patience and coax it from him.

“Whitecoat paranoia,” Doc continued. “You know, those fools always believed there were secret cabals out to overthrow them—private armies, hidden money and knowledge. All power, I suppose. But perhaps…”

“If this was such a place—another sec force—then mebbe it’s got a good armory.” J.B. almost smiled as he jammed his fedora onto his closely cropped scalp. The twinkle in his eyes betrayed his excitement.

“We could do with a few new blasters, mebbe some grens,” Ryan said. “Should be easy to find the armory if this follows standard layout, right?”

They all nodded agreement.

“Well, I vote we get some sleep first,” Krysty said with a sigh. “We know we can’t stay here too long, and I can’t feel any danger at all, lover.”

“Okay. We’ll search for the armory after we’ve slept, mebbe see if we can access some information. This place seems to be in good order, so mebbe the comps won’t be too fucked up.”

The weariness with which his companions agreed and the fact that the Armorer was content to leave the weapons search until after sleeping were sure signs that the friends badly needed some rest.

As they had all suspected, the dormitories were easy to find. Echoing Mildred’s impression that the redoubt was on a smaller scale than most old sec installations, the dorms housed only a few beds per room. In fact, it looked as though the total personnel of this redoubt couldn’t have been more than thirty at most.

Dean, Jak and Doc took one room. Mildred and J.B. another, leaving Ryan and Krysty to take their pick of the remaining dorms.

Shutting themselves away from the others, and gaining a rare privacy since the beginning of their travels, they settled into one of the beds. The controlled environment of the redoubt had kept the linen fresh, and little dust or dirt had accumulated over the preceding century.

Krysty moved closer to Ryan, molding herself to his body and running a fingernail over the ridges of the one-eyed warrior’s ribs.

“Still tense, lover?” she asked, feeling the knotting of his muscles.

“Mebbe it’s got to where I’ve forgotten how to relax,” Ryan replied. “It’s too quiet, too calm. I don’t like it…. It’s not right. Too easy.”

Krysty drew circles with her nail on his rippling muscles. “Mebbe so…I can’t feel anything, and I’m cherishing the calm. Gaia knows we don’t get too much of that. It’s not a calm and peaceful world, so finding an oasis of peace for just a little while…Do you think you’d be able to settle if we ever did find the promised lands?”

Ryan smiled at her choice of words, knowing that she had deliberately picked them to amuse him, relax him. “Mebbe. And mebbe I just can’t think of that now when there’s a fight around every corner. Guess I’ve spent, hell, we’ve all spent too long having to be on our guard. Peace like this just feels like the calm eye of some rad-blasted storm.”

“Well, we’re in the eye of that storm right now, so we may as well make the best of it,” she replied softly, moving on top of him, using every muscle in her body to coax the tired warrior away from his concern and into focusing on her. And their togetherness.

Krysty was so skilled, and moved so intuitively, that Ryan found his restlessness draining away, and his attention drawn entirely to his lover’s body as she roused him to a passion that they had too little time to consummate.

And afterward, he slept his first entirely dreamless and restful sleep since he couldn’t remember when.