Doomsday Warrior 06 - American Rebellion (19 page)

“Yes, power,” Shecter said, his eyes focusing on the ceiling and his own plans for building the bionic appendages. “Yes, I’ll need power—lots of it—to get going on my new schematics. There’s much to do, much to—” He began getting agitated and coughed several times, lying back down on the bed.

“Slow down, big fellow,” Rock said, patting the gray-haired man on the shoulder. “Don’t reap your petri dish before it’s cultured,” he smiled at Shecter, quoting one of the scientist’s favorite aphorisms that he himself used at least five times a day on his science teams.

“Yeah, you’re right, Rock,” Shecter said, breathing out, trying to make himself relax. “I ain’t going nowhere. Just a couple more days and I’ll be on my feet. But listen, do me a favor—on the way out could you give a good karate kick or something to that Dr. Stronson so he won’t come in here and give me another one of those damned needles in my buttocks.”

Nineteen

T
here was a tremendous amount to be done to get Century City back into even a semblance of its previous high-tech functioning. At a meeting early that afternoon, Rath explained his main concerns as security director.

“We have strong reasons to believe that the N-bomb attack on the city was purely accidental. We’ve been lucky for nearly a century down here—this time we weren’t. But my gut tells me the Reds know that they caused us damage.” Rock and the rest of his team, along with the top civilian and military leaders of Century City were all gathered around the conference room table trying to figure out just how to proceed from their present devastated state. “Now, every one of you keeps coming up to me and saying,
your
sector,
your
department of the city needs top priority. Everyone from Folger in hydroponics to Smithson in baby formula supplies.” The gathered brass snickered. “But I’m here to tell you there are in my mind just two immediate concerns. Getting the thermal generators back in working order and getting our security and detection devices functioning again. If the Reds made a move against us now we’d be defenseless, might as well just throw in the towel.
Nothing’s
working right now—not our anti-aircraft batteries, our radar and sonar early warning systems for intruders or our booby traps around the city’s entrances. And everything—I repeat gentlemen—everything is dependent on getting that thermal generator functioning again.” He paused to see how his words were going over. Although the brass looked a little skeptical, if out of habit more than anything else, they listened attentively. “Now, in order for Rockson and his team to go down there into the caves, to check out the thermal units and see if anything is blocking the volcanic heat from rising, we’re going to have to divert all our emergency power down there.” Half the room let out a loud groan as they visualized what little power they had left to operate each of their sectors, being taken away. “Groan, please let’s all groan now and get it out of the way. But the fact is, it’s going to be pitch black and extremely dangerous down there below Ice Mountain without lights or power going through the auxiliary cables so they can get the damned things started again.”

Rockson listened to Rath’s words with rapt attention. The man seemed to have risen above his previous hard-edged demeanor. Sometimes it took a great crisis to bring out the best in a person. He had expected to find himself in vehement disagreement with the Intel chief from his first sentence. But instead he agreed with every word. It was logic, pure logic. Nothing could be put back in order without the subterranean power plants.

The debate, as was not uncommon for the vociferously democratic Ruling Council, was loud and tense, but in the end, with Rockson putting his two cents behind Rath’s plans, the proposal was voted on and passed. Now, the future of C.C. rested on deeds, not words and it was Rock and his men who would enter the steaming hell below to see if they had a prayer of setting things right again.

Luckily the storage area for the asbestos-lined heat-suits had been in the part of the G-14 area dug out just the day before by the restoration crews. Rockson, Detroit, Archer and Chen, along with five of the city’s generator technicians went to the large crate and picked out the least damaged of the somewhat cumbersome silver-white suits. Their ultra-high temperature shielding of asbestos and volcoron, a Shecter plastic alloy, could withstand heat of up to 2000 degrees—but not for very long. They also grabbed some shielded oxygen tanks that could be strapped on the suit’s back, if the going got rough due to poisonous gases.

“If we’re real lucky, men,” Rock told the assembled team, “the breaks won’t be down in the volcanic area but near the underground waterfall, Lincoln Falls.” Detroit and Chen gave Rockson their usual somewhat cynical looks, knowing that the best laid plans of mice and men inevitably went awry. But they would follow the Doomsday Warrior into hell itself were it necessary. Every one of them had expected to be dead long before this. One more dangerous journey was just par for the course.

McCaughlin, who accompanied them as they gathered their equipment, kept complaining about not coming along, making rather disparaging remarks about Archer’s lack of scientific ability—or even literacy. The huge near-mute picked up the meaning of the words if not their exact content and snorted,
“Meeee strooong. Neeeed Aaarrrcher!”

“That’s right, big bear,” Rock said slapping McCaughlin on the back. “You’re strong too, and literate as hell, but Archer’s a goddamned bulldozer—the only kind of bulldozer we can get down those tunnels. You’ve got to admit you can’t toss boulders around with the kind of ease Archer here can. And since I suspect most of the problem down there is rockslides, we’re gonna need bulls not finesse.”

“Okay, okay you bastards, go and have your little fun without me,” McCaughlin said, his rather large bulk poking out from time to time from beneath his dirt-coated sweatshirt. “But I swear if any one of you dies down there, I’m gonna kill him.” He headed off to help the digging squads who still had countless tons of rubble to clear from much of the city.

With some trepidation the Rock team minus one and the five electrical technicians headed down the sloping, green-lit tunnel carting their suits and oxygen units in packs slung over their backs. The trip down to the deep caverns was going to be rigorous enough by itself so Rock decided they wouldn’t put them on until it was impossible to go on without them. Each man carried small arms, and Chen his usual assortment of star-knives and god-knew-what-all beneath his black jumpsuit. The extra weight was regrettable but the Doomsday Warrior, like Rath, had a certain clenched feeling in his guts and he was a man who followed his feelings down to the wire.

At first the going was easy as the main tunnel was wide enough for them to go around portions that had caved in but when they reached the beginning of the smaller tunnel system under Ice Mountain the going got much rougher, until at last the debris from the collapsed cave walls virtually stopped their progress. Rockson pulled out the blueprints of the elaborate tunnel system and searched for an alternate. There were hundreds of passageways, many of them built when the original highway had been constructed nearly 130 years earlier when the original Interstate had been bored beneath Carson Mountain. Tunnels for ventilation, electrical and access to different sections of the two-mile long structure. In addition, nearly 30 other smaller shaftways had been dug out over the last century by the early builders of the Freefighting city. Crews that handled the operation of the thermal generators had always just come through the main shaftway, large enough to drive a car down. But now that was inaccessible due to wreckage from the neutron blast. The blueprints in Rockson’s hands gave him an instant headache for so much building had been done, so many additions made, that the map now looked like a maze to test the mental endurance of rats. Not only that but as he scanned the thing closer, holding a small flashlight over it, he saw that many of the passageways had been crossed out, x’ed over with pen years before. God knew which ones were still functional and which had fallen in years before.

Without any particular logic to the map, Rock decided to trust in instinct. His mutant abilities gave him what had euphemistically been referred to as “Mutant’s luck”, an uncanny ability to just somehow know the right thing to do—from the gut, not the head. It had rarely failed him. He prayed it wouldn’t today. They started down what looked from the print to be the largest of the ancient tunnels and made good time until after about a half mile the damned thing just stopped, a solid granite wall blocking them. Rock glanced back at the nearly faded blueprint, folded it up and put it in his pocket.

“Well, this thing ain’t worth a snar-lion’s tooth,” Rock said with disgust to the team. “We’ll have to, what they called in the old days, wing it.” They backtracked about 200 yards and found a very narrow passageway that at least didn’t seem to have been affected by the atomic blast and headed down it at slow descending angle. There were no lights in this part of the subterranean system so the men made their way cautiously along the razor-sharp stalagmite covered ground. After 15 minutes the temperature began rising, a good sign to Rock as it meant they were drawing closer to the dormant volcano that powered the thermal units. The air grew thick and the men began sucking in rasping breaths, beads of sweat covering their faces.

“Suit time,” Rock said, stopping. It would make the going a little tougher but the gases released by the volcano were poisonous and undetectable by smell. The men took out the bulky suits and with some difficulty in the narrow tunnel put them on. They walked for another five minutes until they came to an intersection for five different passageways all leading off in different directions.

“Great,” Rockson said, as they stopped and gazed off down the pitch-black stone corridors. He was concerned not just about reaching their goal, but about finding their way back.

“Jesus, Rock,” Detroit said, “a man could get lost down here for the next thousand years.”

“A little pre-planning is always a good idea,” Chen spoke out, his voice muffled behind his oxygen mask. “I brought some nylon line, only a hundredth of an inch thick, but we can unravel it, and find our way back later. An old Ninja trick,” he said, taking out the spool and tying it around a stalagmite.

“Now, why didn’t I think of that?” the Doomsday Warrior said.

“Because you’re not an inscrutable Oriental,” Chen answered. Rock checked the blueprints again and this time they did show the five intersecting tunnels, two of which appeared to lead to their destination. He looked down both, felt a certain tingling about the one to the right and headed the men in that direction as Chen attached the coil of nylon filament to his waist utility belt and let it unravel. The ceiling of the stone pathway grew lower and lower as they moved on until the men were bending over to avoid bumping their heads. Archer seemed quite uncomfortable as he was almost doubled over and the men could hear what sounded like snarls coming from within his mask. He remembered a rather nasty experience in the subways of Moscow and didn’t like cramped underground spaces one bit.

They walked on at a slow pace, careful not to rip their shielding suits on the sharp rock walls. Even the tiniest of tears could mean death, and the temperature gauges on their belts had already risen to 130 degrees. Rock relaxed when he dimly heard the bubbling volcanic roar of the pit, a giant lava dome under Ice Mountain ahead. At last they reached it, suddenly emerging from out of their cramped passage into a large cavern, its jagged ceiling nearly a hundred feet high. And just ahead, the round top of the crater from which clouds of steam rose through crevices to the surface nearly two miles above. The team moved carefully ahead to the nearly 1,200-foot wide pit which glowed with an eerie reddish-orange light from the churning lava miles below. And above the pit, mounted all around it were 20 immense electricity-producing heat generators. Really nothing more than 30-foot long propellers mounted in steel casings, they sat above the rising steam clouds, just reaching out over the volcanic dome and collected the immeasurable amount of energy that was being put out. The steam and the rising air turned the alloy blades with tremendous velocity, causing an electromagnetic generator, placed some 50 feet back from the edge of the dome, to turn out a constant, eternal source of power. So successful were the heat motors, designed by Dr. Shecter nearly 30 years earlier as one of his first, but not last, technologies contributed to Century City, so much power was produced by the generators that only half could even be used. In fact, when everything was functioning, there was a surplus that was stored in cadmium/radion batteries and used for powering mobile equipment. Only now nothing was working. The generators were dead, the windmill-sized blades still as dead branches on a windless day.

Rock hoped it wasn’t the blades themselves since they didn’t have the equipment for that kind of work. They edged closer nervously as the roar from the sleeping volcano ahead was almost deafening. The heat gauges on their suits went up nearly ten degrees every foot they drew closer to the edge until at 20 feet away the meters read out 230 degrees. Even inside the suits they were starting to sweat.

“What the hell could it be?” Rock asked the head technician Rogers. “All the blades stopping at once like that.”

“There’s a safety mechanism built into them,” Rogers answered yelling above the spiraling clouds of steam ahead, already fogging over their face masks. “Electrically powered. Actually what it does is send them a little zap of electric power every 1/10th of a second. This allows the blades to continue rotating. But if the power stops even once, they’ll come to an instant halt. It’s a good idea, theoretically anyway.”

“So it’s that safety that’s out?” Rock asked as the rest of the team gathered round to listen.

“Gotta be,” Rogers said. “Either the computerized timer or the main cable that feeds into them. And that, I’m afraid, is all the way around the other side of this rather hot barbecue pit. It’s easily accessible from the main tunnel—but from here . . .”