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  Crabbe, keeping a constant vigil, could see these changes. He would give them time, sure, but no more than he would deem necessary.

  And so they were cloistered together in an uneasy and unwilling alliance, neither side wishing to be in the room, for their own reasons.

  Eventually, it was too much for the baron to bear. He sighed heavily before crashing his fist into the side of the comp console, swinging his arm to the side so that the edge of his hand dented the metal casing. In the quiet into which the room had sunk, it was a startling sound, breaking the silence with a sudden explosion.

  “Enough of this shit, now,” he growled. “I want this over and done with. I’ve waited too long to fuck around.”

  “Too long to see it done right?” Ryan asked, keeping his tone as level as possible, even though he was seething inside.

  “Damn right,” Crabbe snapped. “A man don’t wait this long and then let someone else yank his chain for him. Not if he’s any kind of a man, and that’s what I am. I’m baron here, and don’t you forget it, Brian. Millicent was right, but fuck it. I want some action.”

  Mildred sighed. “You’re a fool, but you hold all the cards. It’s your problem if we don’t get you want you want.”

  “No, missy, it’s your problem,” he rejoined, “and don’t you forget it.”

  Mildred ignored him and turned to Doc. “You and me again, Jock,” she said with heavy emphasis. “You ready for this?”

  “No, my dear Doctor, indeed I am not,” Doc said sadly, shaking his head, “but our wishes and desires are of no consequence. We shall depart as soon as we have been reimbursed with our defenses,” he directed toward the Baron.

  Crabbe looked at him blankly.

  Doc kissed his teeth. “Our weapons, man,” he said shortly. “Come, you cannot expect us to pitch ourselves into the maw of the beast without an adequate means of protection.”

  Crabbe snorted. “Jock, you are one crazy stupe fucker. But I can’t help admire you.”

  “I could only wish that the feeling were mutual,” Doc muttered.

  McCready directed his sec men to let Doc and Mildred leave the group and collect their individual ordnance from the stock he was keeping secured on the tarp. Without another word, and without looking back at their companions, they loaded their blasters, checked their weapons with an almost insolent ease, then moved toward the mat-trans door. They didn’t look back until they were in the doorway. Doc was in front, with Mildred standing behind him. Doc’s hand rested on the door, and he took a slow, searching look around the control room, his gaze raking over everything within, pausing only to linger on Ryan and Jak. Krysty now stood near the comp desk. Doc’s gaze, steady and clear as only he could be when his mind was fully focused, met hers.

  She knew exactly what he was saying to her. She nodded imperceptibly.

  With no indication that he understood that gesture, Doc turned his back on them, his hand still resting on the door. As he pulled it shut, only his bony, gnarled fingers were visible before they, too, relinquished their grip and the door softly sucked and clicked as the airtight seal slotted into place.

  Chapter Twelve

  Mildred’s mind was spinning like a whirlpool that would pull her deeper, making her thoughts all the more difficult and insane to hold together. Fragments of life from her past and maybe even her future whirled inside her skull, there at the periphery of her consciousness but never quite close enough for her to take hold of and fully understand. The thoughts jumbled and flung together before being ripped apart and flung into the deepest recesses and furthest corners of her skull, she felt like her very being was being swept away. If only she could surface, take a deep breath, get some air in her lungs and oxygen in her brain before she went mad…

  The physician could hear herself gasping, noisily sucking air into her lungs to the point where she might hyperventilate, even before her eyes had opened. For a moment she didn’t know where she was, thought that perhaps she had been dropped into a deep well and her body was reacting to the change in pressure by giving her the bends.

  It was only when she felt Doc’s hands on her, bony yet strong, lifting her so that was sitting upright, his calm voice urging her to breath slower, more shallowly, that she started to remember where she was and how she had gotten there.

  She looked around at the interior of the mat-trans unit. It was like waking into a nightmare. Drowning would have been a preferable option.

  “I know,” Doc said softly, as though he could see into her mind. “It is, is it not?”

  She managed a wry smile. “No time to worry about that now.” She let him assist her to her feet. She felt shaky, but the act of standing in itself seemed to buoy her. She frowned and turned to him. “Don’t take this wrong, but—”

  “You would have expected me to have been mewling and puking on the floor like an infant?”

  Her smile broadened. “Well, yeah, Doc. I did.”

  Doc sucked his teeth in rumination. “I must confess, I would agree with you. But I actually feel rather well. It is as though the act of a second jump so soon has pushed me beyond the usual barriers. Perhaps there is a point at which the body exceeds its own pain barriers and comes full circle?”

  “That’s not a thing I ever came across in all my years in medicine, but that was a long time ago, and there isn’t anything that would surprise me now, Doc.” She shrugged.

  “Good,” he said brightly. “I think it is always rather splendid not to be too blasé at life. After all, you never know what it may throw at you. Shall we ready ourselves to exit this shell?”

  Millie grinned. “Sure,” she said. “I’ll take point.”

  “Then I shall deem it an honor to provide adequate cover, my dear Doctor.”

  Without another word, he moved into position as she made for the unit door. The walls of the mat-trans were opaque, but any excess of movement from outside could at the very least be detected, particularly as the lighting on the other side of the walls was strong, and the inside of the unit was now dark. However, they were only too well aware that the flash of intense light that greeted their arrival would have alerted anyone who happened to be in the control room.

  Mildred took a deep breath as she took a grip on the door. Her fingers tensed slightly around the grip and trigger of her Czech-made ZKR target pistol. Not the most prolific of weapons, but with her eye more deadly than any SMG with a spray ’n’ pray finger on the trigger, it became a tool of instant chilling.

  Always assuming she got out of the mat-trans in one piece and was able to use her talents….

  Doc stood at her back, ready to grasp the door and use it as cover. The LeMat grasped in his bony fist was exactly the kind of weapon that was the antithesis of her own approach. But no matter. With it, Doc could more than do a job.

  She nodded shortly, her beaded plaits bobbing as she pulled back the door and shot out, keeping low and secure in the knowledge that Doc was covering her back. The desks in the control room offered her some vestige of shelter, and she rushed forward to cover. Coming up to scope the area, she whistled softly.

  It was, frankly, a miracle that the mat-trans had acted as a receiver to the signals sent from Crabbe’s redoubt. The equipment had been well and truly trashed at some point, and it was little short of astounding that anything was working. As it was, the few winking lights were desultory in the banks of dead comp banks. Many of them had the panels ripped from them, their electronic entrails spread across their surfaces, trailing to the floor.

  It was silent in the control room, but there was an air of menace that suggested danger might not be too far away.

  “Clear,” she said simply, coming up to her full height and lowering the ZKR, “but keep it frosty, Doc.”

  The old man stepped from the mat-trans, taking a long look around him as he joined her. “Someone, it would seem, was less than keen on the idea of predark tech surviving,” he said softly. “And whilst I cannot disagree with their sentiments, the manner in wh
ich they have realized those sentiments could well give us warning.”

  “Uh-huh… Can you feel it, Doc?”

  “The savagery?” he questioned. Then, when she had nodded, he added, “I can indeed. There is an uneasy feeling here… It’s… Lived in, is, I suppose, the phrase for which I search. Not down here. No, they’ve finished with here. But not, perhaps, with the parts of the redoubt that may be of some use to them.”

  “That’s exactly how I read it, Doc,” Mildred agreed. “In which case we’d better watch ourselves. We’ve got—” she checked her wrist chron “—twenty-seven minutes to scout and get the hell out.”

  “Then let us not waste any more time,” Doc agreed.

  The access door to the corridor was open, and a swift recce ensured that they were able to move into it with no danger. In truth, there was nothing to suggest danger as they moved up a level. The corridors were clear, with the rooms on either side of the concrete run open. Inside, the room had been looted and trashed, but in what appeared to be a more constructive manner than the mat-trans control room. That bore the hallmarks of a savage burst of temperament. These rooms had been turned over in a much more methodical fashion. Pulled out and looted for anything of value, and then left.

  There had been no wanton destruction. The rooms were trashed, but anything that couldn’t have concealed something of worth had been left. The lighting above them and in the interior rooms had been left alone. The air con and purification system still worked.

  Coldhearts, bandits in search of loot—had they found it and then gone?

  A prickling at the base of her neck told Mildred that this wasn’t the case. There was someone still here, somewhere, waiting for them. For she had little doubt that whoever they were, they knew that they had visitors. Looking up, she could see the blank fish-eye lens of the sec cams for the corridor. If the lighting and air systems were operational, she had no doubt that the cameras were also operable. So if they had half a brain, all they had to do was sit, watch, and wait….

  As they moved up another level, she turned to Doc, indicating the sec cams with an inclination of the eyes. His nod was barely noticeable, though she could tell from the gleam in his eye that he had been ahead of her in working it out.

  They were now coming up to the level where the armory was situated. From the size of the trashed dorm room, she knew that this was a small redoubt. Its purpose was alien to her, and she had no concern about finding out. What she did work out was that the armory would be correspondingly small. Therefore it was more likely to have been stripped to the bone, rather than merely cherry-picked. And the medical facilities? Normally that would have been her primary concern. On this trip, and with their current imperatives, it barely registered.

  This was a time for focus.

  She indicated to Doc that he should keep point while she looked into the armory. He agreed, and stood against the wall, the LeMat grasped in both fists, head swaying side to side to take in where they had come from as much as where they were headed. He knew of old that most redoubts had maintenance shafts that bypassed the corridors. The idea that anyone would have the knowledge, or indeed inclination, to use these was remote. The sense of fear, however, lingered on. There was something here to out them on edge, and to ignore such an instinct was foolish.

  The door to the armory was open. Not damaged, or rendered in any way. Merely open, in a way that suggested it had been looted methodically.

  Mildred sighed as she stepped through the door and took a look around. Her instinct hadn’t failed her on this. The room had been stripped bare, with not even any discarded boxes or jammed ordnance to show that it had ever been stocked. She cursed under her breath and stepped back out, meeting Doc’s questioning glance with a resigned shrug.

  “No matter,” he said in a tone that gave lie to his words. “There may yet be something left in this god-forsaken place.”

  “Yeah, try to sound like you mean it, Doc.”

  “May as well check the medical facilities while we are here, dear lady,” Doc added. “Who knows, we may be able to overdose the good baron on headache pills.”

  She shook her head and laughed, seeing the twinkle in his eye. “Yeah, why not.”

  Yet when she entered the medical room, through doors that were once more already gaping, she cursed, louder, this time, before coming back out.

  “Son of a bitch! Whoever they were, they were thorough, I’ll give them that. There’s jackshit left in there, too.”

  “They had some knowledge, then,” Doc stated. “It takes that, and perhaps some intelligence, to want to clear out both. Indeed, to know what they could use the meds for.”

  “That’s what worries me,” Mildred replied, her eyes traveling up to where the sec cams were located in the ceiling. “If they’re that bastard smart, and they decided to hang around…”

  “Then they’ll be watching, and wondering just how we got here,” Doc finished. “Funny, is it not, how we’re assuming they’re still here.”

  “I know they are. I can feel the fuckers,” she said flatly.

  Doc looked her in the eye, a vulpine grin spreading across his face. “Then why do we not find out? After all, we have—” he checked his chron “—at least twenty minutes in which to go apeshit crazy. Perhaps we will strike lucky. If they are here, then that which they have plundered cannot be too far away. If we take them off guard, then there may be something we can use.”

  Mildred was taken aback. What Doc was suggesting was almost like voluntarily putting a down payment on buying the farm, knowing that the settling of the account wasn’t far away. Yet he might just be right. If the feelings they had were down to the proximity of some coldhearts, and they were being observed, then nothing in their behavior so far would prepare their observers for an all-out attack.

  And if all they could feel was the residual presence of people long gone?

  Then they’d feel pretty stupid. But that was all. And that wasn’t so bad.

  “How many levels you reckon there are here?” Mildred asked.

  Doc squinted, as if in deep thought. “It is not big—about the size of the one we have come from, I would say. Maybe another two levels before we hit the surface, which means that if they’re here, then they are not far away.”

  Mildred’s face split into a leering grin. “Let’s get them, then.”

  They set off suddenly, picking up pace as they hurried up the corridor floor, trusting that their sudden turn of speed would carry them into a fray before their potential enemies had a chance to consider their own actions.

  It was insane. They were running headlong into a firefight that might not even be there, and for what reason?

  Reason: a very good word. It crossed Mildred’s mind that the effects of two mat-trans jumps so close together might have resulted in what she would, at any other time, consider derangement.

  But right now, she didn’t care. Crabbe and his sec boss, McCready, and the way in which they had treated the companions since their capture, had done nothing more than rile her up to the point where she just wanted to kick ass. Regardless of whatever the consequences might be.

  Damn, she was getting as crazy as Doc.

  They had made it up to the next level before there was any indication of life. Until then, there had existed nothing more than the fragile whisper of instinct, murmuring fear in their ears if not their hearts. But now there was something more tangible.

  “Hear that?” Doc gasped.

  “Uh-huh,” Mildred grunted, unwilling to waste her breath for the fight that was to come.

  For their unseen and only suspected enemy had now become tangible, out of hiding and on the offensive themselves. In the distance they could hear the sound of feet pounding on the floor of the corridor. As hard as it was to differentiate between the thudding footfalls, Mildred was sure that there were more than five pairs of feet. She could pick out rhythms with an ear long born of experience. But how many more than five she couldn’t tell. Did it matter? W
hatever happened, they were more than two-to-one in odds. The feet were the only clue, as their enemy approached in silence. No giving themselves away by voices.

  Coldhearts maybe, then, but not stupid.

  She should have kept that in mind.

  “Ready?” she gasped as they continued to run.

  “Not really,” Doc replied with a manic cackle.

  They were approaching the dogleg in the corridor that would lead them up to the next level, and from the sound of the footsteps that were pounding toward them, their enemy was about to meet them head-on at the point where the dogleg took an angle.

  “Now,” Mildred snapped when they were within a few yards of the bend. At the command, Doc stopped and flung himself against the wall, dropping to one knee and hugging the wall, raising the LeMat so that it was muzzle up to any approaching danger. Mildred took the wall nearest to her, pressing flat against it so that she was ready to spin around the angle and start blasting when Doc gave the word. She held the ZKR muzzle upward, breathing in tight, controlled pants that took oxygen into her lungs. She could hear her heart pounding in her ears, feel it thudding against her ribs.

  And she could still feel and hear it, even after she should have been throwing herself into action. The sound of approaching footsteps had reached a crescendo. By rights, the coldhearts should have passed them by now, and yet…

  Then the sound ceased.

  She looked over at Doc, her face telling a story that didn’t need words. His answering expression told likewise.

  “Nothing,” he said simply, breaking the silence.

  “What?” She was incredulous.

  Doc shrugged. “No sign.”

  “What the fuck have those bastards been doing?” she muttered almost to herself. She came around so that she could see the corridor beyond, just as Doc.