Instinctively, Ryan edged back a bit, J.B. right beside him. Although he didn’t fear anything living on this hell-blasted planet—after all, if it breathed, he could chill it—the soulless machines created by the predark whitecoats were something else entirely. Often just one breath away from a malfunction, they had to be handled with extreme care just to keep them running.
Ryan had seen plenty of comps shut down in showers of bright sparks or go what passed for crazy when touched. In the back of his mind, he feared one of these days the incomprehensible machines controlling the mat-trans would malfunction and tear them apart molecule by molecule. If that ever happened, he hoped he’d already be unconscious before it started.
Shaking away the thought, he returned to the here and now, staring at the glowing countertop.
J.B. rubbed his chin as he studied the machine. “Never saw anything like this before. What do you think?”
Part of Ryan wanted to have nothing to do with the strange console, but he also understood it might be the way to fix that elevator—if they could make it work. “Guess we should enter something.”
“No shit. What’d you have in mind?”
That question was worth all the jack in the world, or at least the way out of this nightmare tunnel, which would be just as good. What would the passcode be?
What word or numeric string would be the magic key to unlock this thing’s secrets?
Tentatively Ryan reached toward the console, his fingers hovering above it. “If each button represents a letter…”
His index finger stabbed the button with the letter
c
.
A small, black dot appeared in the rectangle.
Ryan slowly tapped out the rest of his guess, one button at a time: e-r-b-e-r-u-s.
Nothing happened. Ryan noticed the lowermost right button on the pad, marked enter, was flashing.
“Mebbe this’ll do it.”
He pressed the flashing button.
The entire screen flashed bright red, startling both of them. New letters appeared on the screen: Invalid Passcode Please Try Again
“At least it’s polite.” J.B. noted.
“Yeah, but not enough to let us in easy. You got any ideas?”
“How about the entire program name, you know, Project Cerberus.”
“Yeah, that might work.” More confidently, Ryan pressed the buttons to spell out the word, then pressed the enter button again.
The screen flashed red again, and the warning appeared again, with more writing: Invalid Passcode Please Try Again Warning: Third Failed Attempt Will Result In Activation Of Security Procedures/Automatic Lockdown Mode.
J.B.’s face darkened. “I don’t like that.”
“It probably doesn’t mean anything. It might just try to summon long-dead guards.”
“Or it might gas us and the others in the elevator. Or
seal all the doors and pump all the air out till we black out and die.”
The Armorer’s bleak scenarios stopped Ryan’s finger as it was about to touch the surface again. He took a step back and racked his brain, trying to do the impossible—think like a whitecoat.
The majority of the men and women claiming to be scientists that Ryan had encountered during his travels often had a few things in common. They were highly intelligent and inbred, often living sequestered from the rest of the population in hidden laboratory redoubts. They were usually very dedicated to their work, whatever it might be, often bordering on passion—or mania.
And they were often crazier than shithouse rats.
“The code would be most likely be something simple, easy to enter, easy to remember. Something you could punch in almost without thinking—”
His breath caught in his throat. “Could it be that bastard easy?” he whispered. No sooner did he think it than his fingers stabbed the buttons—3-5-2
The general access code to open the doors of the redoubts.
“Here goes nothing….”
Tensing, Ryan pressed the enter button.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then the screen flashed a brilliant, deep blue and a new menu appeared.
Access Granted
Welcome To Fort McCoy Redoubt Main Menu
“Looks like number five is out.” J.B. noted.
“Yeah.” Ryan ground his teeth in frustration. In every base they’d jumped to, he had always been on the lookout for more information on the mat-trans units. How they worked, and more importantly, how a person could control where they jumped.
He’d come close a few times. Once, in an abandoned space station high above the planet, he’d had to leave a file full of documents behind just as the station comp began its self-destruct sequence. Another time, in the desert of what had been New Mex, he’d run into Major Drake Burroughs, from predark, who knew how to direct the jumps, sending a squad after Ryan and his companions when they escaped captivity. Someday,
Ryan wanted to go back there and find out exactly what Burroughs knew. But that was another day…
Right now he still needed to figure out what to do about the elevator. They’d been lucky enough getting into the general system—trying to guess the passcode to access the mat-trans info would be like firing a bullet into the air blindfolded and still expecting to hit your target.
Wiping his forehead, which was now damp with sweat, Ryan ran his finger down the choices. “Security’s probably passcoded as well—they never trust anyone. Mebbe maintenance?”
“Good as any.”
Ryan hit number four, leading to yet another menu:
Maintenance Menu
Ryan sighed. “Feels like we’re wading two steps forward in shit, only to slip one step back.”
“Already done that today. Keep going. I think you’re almost there. Try number five. Mebbe we can tell it to unlock the sec code on the elevator.”
Ryan pressed the button. This made the console change again. Now a keyboard appeared, along with the usual horizontal rectangle, and a command: Enter Maintenance Task
Ryan looked at J.B. again, who shrugged. “Don’t look at me. You’re the one talking to it.”
“Some help you are.” Holding his breath, Ryan stabbed keys: Repair Matter Transfer Elevator.
The screen flashed, and more text appeared: System Diagnostic Running Matter Transfer Elevator Operating Normally. Last Inspection Of Matter Transfer Elevator Performed On 9/10/2000. Elevator Inspection Overdue. Do You Wish To Send Elevator To Maintenance Level For Visual Inspection?
Ryan grinned. “That sounds about as good as anything we can expect. Maintenance level’s got to be near the surface.”
“Makes as much sense as anything else we’ve seen so far.”
Ryan entered yes. A line of text appeared, with an entry rectangle underneath: Please Set Time For Elevator Inspection.
Ryan’s smile dropped off his face. “Nuke shit. How do we do this?”
“Hey, check the lower right-hand corner—some sort of timer.”
Ryan glanced down, and sure enough, there were numbers there: 13:37:10. As he watched, the last pair counted up to sixty, then the next pair to the left added one, and the rightmost pair started counting up from one again.
“Looks like that’s the clock. Ten minutes should be enough to get out of here and back to the elevator, right?”
“I’d say so.”
Ryan entered the time: 13:48:00, and hit Enter.
All of the earlier text disappeared, replaced by four lines: Countdown To Matter Transfer Elevator Inspection: 00:09:59 Please Ensure That All Personnel Are Clear Of Elevator Before It Departs.
Ryan slapped J.B.’s shoulder. “Time to go.”
The other man held up a finger-sized lump of plastique. “Ready. Hope we find some more of this soon. It’s my last detonator.”
“We’ll know soon enough.” Ryan trotted back to the access door.
“It’s a four-second fuse, so when the doors open wide enough, I toss it, wait for the boom and we go.”
“Three…two…one—” Ryan stabbed the keypad.
The door cycled open again, and as soon as the crack was wide enough, J.B. pitched the explosive into the corridor, calling “fire in the hole!”
Both men spun away, covering their ears and opening their mouths again. Seconds later, the C-4 detonated, sending a spray of pig-rat parts into the formerly spotless mat-trans control room.
Ryan peeked out to see yet another, deeper puddle of mutie pieces, blood and feces in front of the door. The pig-rats milled and scurried beyond, unwilling to approach at first, but fast losing their fear as they began scurrying closer.
“Go!” Ryan stepped out and leaped for the pipe again, his fingers already aching as they gripped it. Swinging his feet up, he pushed along it to make room for J.B., who keyed the door closed before jumping up just as a pair of muties sprang at his legs.
“Dark night!” J.B. lashed out wildly, catching one of the creatures in the face with his boot, and sending it crashing into the wall, where it fell back into the rodent army. The other one, however, latched on to his pant leg with its sharp claws and sank its tusks into his leg.
“Nuking hell!” Hanging on with one hand, J.B. drew his flensing knife with the other and stabbed the beast in the neck, blood spurting over his fingers and wrist.
Sawing with the blade, he severed its head from its body, which fell away, leaving the jaws still locked on his thigh. Hammering at it with the butt of his dagger, grunting with each blow, J.B. broke the mutie’s jaw after several blows. Inserting his blade between the pig-rat’s open lips, he pried it off and flipped it away.
Meanwhile, Ryan hadn’t been a passive observer during the pitched battle. As soon as he heard J.B. curse, he’d looked over, seen the problem and acted. Drawing his SIG-Sauer, he’d raised the blaster over his head and fired several rounds into the swirling, squealing vermin below, ensuring that their attention was on their wounded and dying brethren. The hammer of his blaster had just clicked on an empty chamber when J.B. had finished removing the gruesome head of his attacker.
“You okay?”
“Yeah—for now.” J.B.’s face was flushed with the exertion of killing the mutie while hanging on the pipe, but he nodded. “Move out.”
“Give me a sec.” As fast as he dared, Ryan slung his forearm over the pipe to hold himself up, ejected the empty mag from his blaster, tucking it into his pocket, and replaced it with a full one—his last. Holstering his weapon, he reached up to secure his hold on the pipe with his free hand. “Ready.”
An ominous groan echoed through the tunnel, and the pipe Ryan and J.B. clung to dropped an inch, then another before shuddering to a halt.
“Pipe’s breaking! We’ve got to move!” Ryan began, hand-over-handing it as quickly as he could, sensitive to each shudder and jar as he clambered along the metal tube. He thought about telling J.B. to put some more space between them, but dismissed the idea. Every second they spent here was more stress on the pipe, and if it gave way, there was only one place to end up—straight down into the hundreds of slavering maws of the muties below.
So Ryan kept moving, trying to crawl as lightly as possible, if such a thing could be done while hanging from a pipe with his two-hundred-odd pounds pulling on it every time he braced a hand or foot. With every yard he gained, the pipe swayed and creaked ominously, and Ryan half expected that each time he reached up to grab the slick metal, it would be his last. The horde below was erupting into a frenzy, the pandemonium overwhelming, even to their carpet-stuffed ears. As he pushed forward, Ryan swore he felt something brush his back more than once.
“Ryan…hold up…need to rest…” J.B.’s voice, already weak, drifted to him above the shrieking of the muties.
“No, J.B., keep moving! We’re almost there. If you stop, you drop!”
“Gettin’ tired…”
“Keep moving.” Dipping his head, he saw the elevator doors about ten yards away. “We’re almost there!”
“All right…”
Although his fingers felt like numb pieces of wood, Ryan kept bulling forward. Stretch, grab, pull, stretch, grab, pull. Once more, and he was at the door. Drawing his blaster, Ryan hammered on the door with the butt.
“Clear the entrance, we’re back! Open the doors!”
The muties were screaming so loud now that Ryan couldn’t hear if anyone replied from inside. He was about to beat on the doors again when the pipe dropped another six inches with a shriek of rending metal.
“J.B.! Get on top!” Reaching around, Ryan threw a leg over and pulled himself up on top, just as he felt something scrabble through his hair, followed by the click of teeth snapping near his ear. “Fireblast!” The moment he was secure, Ryan brushed a hand through his hair, making sure nothing was about to tear into his scalp.
“Ryan…can’t make it…up…”
The weak shout made Ryan whirl to see J.B.’s hands slipping. Throwing himself forward, he stretched out full-length, his hands reaching out to grab the other man’s wrists. The pipe screamed at the impact of his body, but still held, even under their combined weight. He grabbed J.B.’s arms a moment before he would have fallen to the floor.
“You aren’t leaving this place without me, you hear?” Ryan gritted between clenched teeth. His hands and arms, already sore and unfeeling from the trip to the mat-trans control room and back, radiated pure agony as he held J.B. in place. “On three, I’m going to lift you, and you’re going to grab this pipe with both hands and hold on with everything you got, you understand?”
“All right… Don’t have to yell…”
Ryan braced himself for was he was about to do. “One…two…three!” He heaved up with every ounce of strength he possessed, muscles cracking under the strain. One inch, two, three…
Straining until he thought his arms were going to tear out of their sockets, Ryan pulled J.B.’s arms up until he could get them wrapped back around the pipe, then he grabbed the scruff of the other man’s battered jacket and, with the last of his strength, hauled the man up so he was half on, half off the pipe.
A feral chitter from J.B.’s knees made Ryan slowly raise his head. There, with its front claws dug deep into the other man’s left leg, squatted a pig-rat easily two feet long, drool oozing from its two-inch tusks.
“Ryan, what—”
“Don’t…move…” Ryan stared at the mutie only three feet away from him, pinning it with his hardest stare. The beast gave as good as it received, its large, black eyes gazing back into his, as if it knew it would have to fight to keep this meal.
Not taking his eye off the abomination, Ryan’s hand slowly crept toward the handle of his panga. The pig-rat tensed in anticipation, hindquarters lowering to J.B.’s stained, bloody pants as it prepared to spring.
Their eyes locked one last time, and Ryan moved the millisecond he saw the pig-rat jump.
As the brute pushed off, Ryan drew the heavy blade and brought it around in a short, vicious arc. The flat of the machete smacked into the rodent’s head right before it would have sank its teeth into Ryan’s face. The blow sent the creature hurtling away, falling with a startled shriek into the ravenous crowd below.
“Thanks…fucker clawed me bad…”
Ryan nodded, unable to speak, and more so because he had no idea what to say. It didn’t seem like Krysty or the others had heard him inside, and the pipe was about to break loose at any moment, sending them down to a very short, one-way trip to be a feast for the rad-blasted muties below.
He shifted his weight to lessen the strain, but his movement only caused the pipe to groan again and drop a few more inches. With his free hand, he drew his blaster and cocked the hammer.
“This is it. I’ll break the pipe free, hope to crush a shitload of them underneath. When it drops, make for the door. We might be able to get inside before they bring us down. I’ll be shooting the whole way, so you just run. Don’t stop for anything, and that includes me.”
J.B. raised his head, and Ryan was startled to see his friend’s face flushed a bright, mottled red. “Be…right…behind you…”
“All right, here we go.” Ryan turned to face the elevator, about to throw his entire weight upon the pipe to send it crashing to the floor, when the metal doors below began to slide open.
Krysty was framed in the doorway, looking every inch like a flame-haired, avenging angel, only instead of a sword, she was holding something much better.
The S&W M-4000 shotgun was braced against her hip, ready to spew a hailstorm of metal death.
“Fire in the hole!” Ryan shouted, throwing himself back on the pipe, jamming his right ear into his shoulder and clapping his left hand over his left, just before the world split apart in explosions of thunder and flame.
His head aching and rattled from the weapon going off right under him, Ryan was dimly aware of strong
hands pulling him from the pipe and helping him into the elevator. Other hands gripped him and helped him to a corner of the small room, where he sank to his knees. “J.B.—”
Krysty’s face appeared in front of him through a pall of smoke, speaking slowly and distinctly. “We got him out—”
That was as far as she got before Ryan crushed her to him and kissed her long and hard for as long as he had air in his lungs. Her strong arms curled around his back was the best sensation he’d felt in a long time.
When they parted, he wasn’t the only one breathless. “Nice to see you too, lover,” she panted.
“Bastard good to be seen. The doors…”
“Are locked as tight as a drum, my good man.” With a courtly flourish, Doc spun his ancient LeMat on his finger, nearly dropping it before steadying it with his other hand and dropping it back into his holster. “I daresay your paramour was like a woman possessed. She swore she heard you outside the door, even when the rest of us could not through the ruckus of that hellspawn outside. At the last, she said she was going to open them, and would perforate with lead anyone who tried to impede her. Obviously she was right on the money and gave those impudent beasts the what for. While she went out and brought the two of you back, I stood guard with my trusty sidearm, and when she got J.B., I gave them something to think about with my second barrel while we closed the doors again.”
“So, we’re moving?”
“Most assuredly, my dear Ryan. However, I’m not sure you are going to like the particular direction we seem to be heading.”
Doc’s words made Ryan realize just what was off
about the movement of the elevator. It didn’t have the stomach-lurching feel of ascension at all. Pushing off the wall to his feet, he stalked to the panel with the buttons, his face darkening as he saw which one was lit.
“Fireblast, Doc, why the hell’d you press the bottom one? We want to go up, not down!”
“Easy, Ryan.” Krysty grabbed his arm, distracting him. “About fifteen minutes after you left, a recording came on telling us to clear the elevator as it was due to go to the maintenance level in ten minutes. We started counting down, and when it got to thirty seconds—well, I wasn’t leaving without you.”
“But as to where exactly we’re going, we don’t have a clue, other than the maintenance level,” Mildred said from where she was bent over J.B., field-dressing his wounds as best she could. “Jesus, Ryan, where the hell did you two go—swimmin’ through a sewer?”
“Yeah. We used a little plastique to clear the mat-trans comp room. J.B. got bit and clawed by a pair of them. How’s he doing?”
“Not good. The exertion worked the infection into his bloodstream more quickly than Jak, so they’re running neck and neck regarding who’s worse off at the moment. We’ve got to get medicine into them, fast.”
She didn’t mention the unspoken truth: if there was any medicine to be had it was in the upper levels. Assuming they made it that far in the first place.
The elevator ground to a halt, and the disembodied voice spoke again, startling Ryan, who was hearing it for the first time.
“Maintenance level. This elevator will be inoperative until the proper visual inspection has been performed, and a supervisor has approved it. Thank you.”
“Never met such polite machines,” he muttered,
slinging the Steyr longblaster over his shoulder, his SIG-Sauer filling his right hand. “End of the line, people. Krysty, you got Jak. Mildred, help J.B. Keep your blasters out if you can manage it. I don’t know what the hell we’re going to find down here. Doc, you’re on my left. Let’s get the fuck out of this metal coffin.”
Doc took his position at Ryan’s left shoulder, levering back the trigger of his LeMat with a click. “Truer words were never spoken, my friend.”
Ryan raised his SIG-Sauer and nodded at the old man. “Do it.”