Eden’s Twilight Page 19

  “How’s the ammo?” Ryan shouted, firing single rounds at any large item in the street. A wooden bucket jerked skyward to crack in two, a wicker basket tumbled away, spilling out tatters, then a shoebox abruptly detonated, bent nails zinging outward in every direction, several of them embedding in the Lexan windows.

  “Last belt!” J.B. replied, burping the Fifty to conserve ammo.

  He paused as a herd of terrified horses raced by, then cut loose at the gang of sec men trying to sneak up on War Wag One by using the animals as cover.

  A glass bottle crashed onto the windshield of the UCV, and orange fire covered the thick Lexan plastic. Temporarily blinded, Jak stayed on course. With nothing to feed upon, the flames soon died. With a curse, Doc tossed aside the exhausted M-16 and pulled out the LeMat. Now he would have to open a window and invite return fire. Then inspiration hit, and he holstered the blaster to rummage through the clothing of the aced men on the floor. In triumph, Doc unearthed a pair of 9 mm Heckler & Koch pistols and spare clips. Removing the homemade silencer from one of the blasters, he tucked the other away, then returned to his blasterport.

  By this time, the ville was in total chaos, the dead and the dying everywhere, the air thick with smoke, a score of buildings behind the war wags blazing with wildfires. Converging blasterfire came from a dozen windows, but wherever it did, the grimy crews of the war wags replied with bursts from the machine guns, the steel-jacketed rounds punching clean through the ancient bricks and the men behind.

  Unexpectedly, the radio crackled.

  “Scorpion to convoy,” Roberto said calmly, the sound of a discharging fire extinguisher in the background. “Our flank is clear. Repeat, the flank is clear. Time to go for the hill!”

  “Confirm. Big Joe takes the point!” Scott declared, and the war wag lumbered to the front. War Wag One and the UCV assumed flanking positions, and War Wag Three covered the rear, the flamethrower sending burning sprays at anything coming from behind.

  Advancing along the main street of the ville, blasters crackled at the convoy from nearly every window, and pipe bombs rained down from the rooftops. But the convoy ignored that and concentrated on moving faster and reaching the baron. That would be where the real fight would start. They all knew it was possible to leave at any time now, the ville was in flames and the wall guards were aced or running. Nothing barred their exit. However, Baron Conway had violated the one unbreakable rule in the Deathlands, never jack a trader, and now he had to pay the price.

  Rumbling along, the four war wags maintained a diamond formation, their blasters sweeping for targets. However, the night was quiet, and there did not seem to be any activity near the baron’s fortress, which made Roberto and Ryan uneasy. The baron had either run away, or they were heading straight into an ambush.

  A rocket streaked from the ville to miss War Wag Three by only inches. However, Diana withheld return fire as there was no way to tell where the attack came from. Twice more, rockets zoomed out of the darkness, then the convoy was among the greenhouses and the attacks stopped. Rolling through the eerie calm that always filled a pause in battle, everybody took the opportunity to reload their blasters.

  In the urban combat vehicle, the companions also got rid of the aced sec men, relishing the rush of fresh air from the open doors as it removed the stink of blood, cordite and gunpowder from the mixed rounds. But then the war wags moved past the rows of greenhouses and there was only flat open ground extending all the way to the somber fortress on the hill.

  Instantly, the four drivers turned off their headlights and drastically slowed their advance, letting their sight adjust to the dim glow of the moon. The darkness would offer them some degree of protection from incoming fire, but it also made them extremely vulnerable to traps. This was another shatter zone, just like the one outside the ville wall, a chilling field to slaughter invaders.

  There was a loud bang from underneath War Wag One, and the whole vehicle shook as a tire was blown off.

  “Land mines!” Roberto cursed over the radio. “Frag it, these defenses are too good. Everybody head back to the front gate! We’re leaving.”

  “Then wait for us outside!” Ryan snarled into the mike. “The UCV is bomb proof. It was made for this sort of combat! Follow us and we’ll plow you a path straight to that mansion!”

  “This is Big Joe. Are you insane?” Scott demanded, the words almost lost in the crackle of background hash. “You aren’t a fragging tank!”

  “Yeah? Just watch and see,” Ryan shot back, then hung up the mike and grabbed a ceiling stanchion. “Okay, Jak, let’s see what this steel monster can do!”

  “Yee-haw!” the teenager yelled, lowering the fork and accelerating to the front of the convoy.

  As the thick metal tines dug into the soil, the UCV slowed, the angled steel throwing the dirt to the sides like a ship cutting through waves. Almost immediately, something loudly exploded, the blast obscuring the hill, and a hail of shrapnel peppering the prow. Then they were through the fiery smoke and still moving.

  “Any damage?” Ryan asked, looking around anxiously.

  “Not a scratch!” J.B. replied with a sideways grin, studying the monitors of the dashboard. “Dark night, this thing really is a fragging tank!”

  “Look at that, they took a mine without even slowing!” Tiger Lily shouted over the ceiling speaker. “Hot damn, we’re back in business!”

  “All right, form a queue to hell!” Roberto commanded. “One-Eye, you have point!”

  Rollicking over the uneven ground, Jak saw the fork detonate two more mines, the charges as ineffectual as spitting on the military juggernaut. Then the whole wag jerked, throwing everybody hard against the bodybars as the fork unearthed a tree stump. But even before the teen could touch the controls, the tandem engines revved, and the fork ripped the obstruction out of the ground and sent it hurtling away into the night. Before the fork could lower again, a blast went off directly under the right wheel. The UCV tilted alarmingly, then automatically righted itself and kept going, the tines digging in deep once more and throwing aside barbed wire, pungi sticks and what resembled bear traps. But they were gone so fast that nobody got a good look.

  In tight formation, the other wags stayed right behind the UCV, their blasters chattering away to give protective cover. A rocket streaked by the UCV, the flash of the launch momentarily silhouetting a kneeling sec man and a horse loaded with spare rounds. With ruthless accuracy, Wag War Two responded with the long spray from the flamethrower. The sec man cursed as the horse was engulfed in liquid fire, then the spare rockets detonated, both man and beast vanishing in a thunderclap.

  Unstoppable, the UCV triggered five more land mines, and then there was only silence. Now there were only a hundred yards to the hill.

  Squinting into the night, Jak held the wheel in tight hands, ready to instantly react to anything in their path. Long moments passed, and the only discernable sounds were the military tires crunching the soft ground, the low crackle of hash over the radio, and the monotone beep of the radar.

  “Scorpion to convoy, looks like we’re through!” Roberto said over the radio. “Okay, does anybody know if the baron has a family?”

  “Tiger Lily to Scorpion,” Diana replied. “That’s a negative. There is only him and the Thirty, his personal gang of sec men.”

  “One-Eye to Scorpion,” J.B. said into the mike. “I heard the same thing. Not even his sluts sleep there.”

  “Good news. Ready…aim…fire in the hole!”

  Seemingly even brighter in the Stygian darkness, the shimmering beam of the powerful chem laser extended from the top of War Wag One, but the lambent ray barely touched the fortress before it winked out.

  “Black dust, we’re out of crystal!” Roberto growled, the frustration thick in his voice. “Evasive maneuvers!”

  Quickly, the four wags darted away from each other just as a rocket soared upward from the fortress to explode in the sky, filling the field with the bright white light of a mag
nesium flare. Promptly, the mansion twinkled with blasterfire, then a huge gout of flame belched from one of the fieldstone bunkers. Half a heartbeat later, something rushed past the UCV with a low hum, closely followed by the dull report of a black powder cannon.

  “By the Three Kennedys, that was a Napoleon!” Doc cried. “Can this vehicle survive the impact of a six-pound iron ball?”

  “Not if it hits a window,” Ryan snarled, one hand wrapped tight around a ceiling stanchion.

  “Okay, Jak, run the gauntlet! We gotta get close enough to use the fork and flip those bastard cannons!”

  Hunching forward in his seat, the young man remained silent as he engaged the second engine and tromped on the gas. There was a whine as the Allision transmission adjusted, and then the UCV lurched forward with renewed speed.

  The cannon spoke again in lolling fury, but the deadly Napoleon had clearly been loaded for coldhearts, not war wags, and this time a spray of bent nails and small rocks blasted across the three machines, doing scant damage. Not a tire blew, or a window cracked.

  Overhead, the Fifty chattered and then stopped.

  “Dark night, we’re out of brass!” J.B. fumed, releasing the useless joystick.

  “Then let them eat steel!” Doc declared, drawing the sword from within his ebony stick.

  “Cry havoc!” Mildred shouted, carried away by the adrenaline rush of battle. “And let loose the dogs of war!”

  In the darkness ahead, a cannon fired, deeper, louder, the force almost palpable, then several boomed in unison. Suddenly an iron ball glanced off the side of War Wag One, denting the armor deeply. The M-60 machine guns yammered steadily and a cannonball smashed off the flamethrower on Two, pink fuel from the ruptured line spraying toward the stars.

  Spotting a suspicious dark area on the ground, Jak savagely twisted the steering wheel to the left. Another sec man armed with a homemade bazooka was visible for only an instant before going under the massive wheels with a sickening crunch. As if in reply, flames appeared from straight ahead. Jak dodged to the right and a cannonball hummed by exactly where the wag had just been.

  Clutching the jumpseats, the rest of the companions desperately wanted to help in some way, but even if they miraculously managed to hit the bunkers with their blasters, the soft lead rounds would do nothing to those fortifications. Their chance would come when the wag stopped and this fight went on the ground.

  Another cannon boomed, and even as he jogged to the right, Jak mentally marked the spot of the muzzle-flash. As the ball hummed by, the albino teen cut loose with a rebel yell, and charged straight for the cannon, gambling that the UCV could move faster than the gun crew could reload. Vague details of the bunkers and hilltop mansion started to come into view. Oddly, there did not seem to be a lot of activity for a place that was about to be invaded.

  “Ready…aim…” the ceiling speaker crackled. “Fire in the hole!”

  Checking the clip inside the Steyr, Ryan frowned. Funny, he had thought Roberto was out of diamonds for the laser.

  “Oh hell,” J.B. said in a worried tone. “You don’t think he’s crazy enough to—”

  Bright lights flashed from on top of each of the trader’s three war wags, and a sizzling trio of warbirds leaped away into the blackness.

  “Brace for impact!” Ryan shouted, dropping the longblaster and pulling down a bodybar. It clicked into place just as the missiles violently slammed into the fieldstone bunkers. The overlapping explosions ripped the buildings apart, sec men and cannons tumbling through the darkness, the entire hill vanishing in a blinding flash.

  Slamming on the brakes, Jak tried to turn away from the coming maelstrom, but it was too little, too late. A split second later, a deafening concussion arrived, and the armored wags were buffeted aside by the sheer force of the blast, headlights shattering and loose pieces of armor ripping off. The entire world seemed to be shaking, roiling, heaving…then a shotgun barrage of shrapnel: broken stones, cannonballs and grisly human remains pounding the wags. The barrage of debris built in force and fury, until it seemed the wags would be torn asunder. Then, just as suddenly as they began, the volcanic reverberations abruptly stopped, and there was only a loud ringing silence.

  Dripping mud, blood and fuel, the four wags stood motionless in the smoky darkness, their hot armor creaking softly as loose stones rolled along the churned earth, and a classic mushroom cloud began to form above the fiery remains of the hilltop fortress.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Bitter smoke lay heavy and oppressive across the battlefield, like a winter fog. Long minutes passed before any sign of life returned to the dented war wags: shapes passing behind windshields, blasters withdrawing from blasterports, muffled curses and low groans of pain. Only the heavily battered War Wag Three stayed dark and still.

  “Fireblast…A-anybody aced?” Ryan growled, blinking a few times to clear his vision.

  “Don’t think so,” J.B. mumbled, glancing around the interior of the vehicle. There was no blood showing, or at least none that hadn’t been there before. The wag was filthy from the residue of the aced sec men, some of their knives still lying on the sticky floor.

  “No damage that I can see,” Mildred said, pushing up the bodybar of her jumpseat. There only seemed to be the expected array of bumps and bruises. Fair enough. The companions would be sore in the morning, but that was always a lot better than waking up dressed in pine. Then she scowled. “Doc, are you hurt?”

  “No indeed, madam, I am not,” the old man replied, brushing at a dark stain on his frock coat. “This is from the assassin I terminated. He perished easily, but seems to have been…well, particularly juicy.”

  In spite of herself, Krysty snorted a laugh, then cringed as her wounded hair tried to flex in response to her emotional state. The memory of the bullet passing through her hair came unbidden to mind, and for a moment the woman thought she might lose what little she had eaten for dinner. Gaia, it had hurt worse then getting shot! Krystry knew that she would be fine in the morning, her kind healed fast, but right now she had a nukestorm of a headache, her temples pounding so hard it blurred her vision.

  “What happened?” Jak mumbled, wiping blood off his mouth. The safety harness had kept him from going through the windshield, but not from smacking his head against the steering wheel. It was cushioned like the floor, but there was still a core of steel in the middle and his teeth had darn near broke finding that out the hard way.

  “Those damn missiles must have set off the stores of black powder,” J.B. said, squinting into the smoke outside. Even with the halogen lamps, it was difficult to see anything past the glass. The beams simply sank into the swirling fumes and disappeared.

  “Black powder, gunpowder, cordite, grens, brass, dynamite, and everything else Conway had jacked from traders and travelers over the years,” Ryan added grimly, releasing his safety belt. He stood uncertainly, then realized it was the UCV that was slightly tilted, not him.

  “Serves him right for storing everything in one location,” Krysty said in a throaty whisper, her fingertips massaging her temples. “The legacy of a fool is always disaster.”

  “Triple stupe,” Jak agreed wearily, flexing his hands to restore the circulation.

  “Or perhaps, merely overconfident,” Doc suggested, using his ebony stick to flick aside a boot with a foot still inside. “As the good book says, pride goeth before the fall.”

  “That Chinese?”

  “Good Lord, no! It is from the Holy Bible, Mr. Lauren. Haven’t you ever read it?”

  The teenager shrugged. “Can only read some. Not good. Not lot books to practice.”

  Checking his pockets for spare clips, Ryan said nothing. Peace and forgiveness was all right in theory, but that turning-the-other-cheek crap was for another time and another world. If there was a heaven, then the world was hell, and commandments of a long-past God didn’t apply anymore to the damned. The only rules in the Deathlands were: keep your blaster loaded, keep your word, protect kin and
stay alive.

  Striding to the door, Ryan worked the latch and stepped outside. The smoke moved around the big man like a living thing, and slowly Ryan was able to make out shapes and details. The bunkers were gone, wiped clean off the face of the world, along with the hilltop mansion. There didn’t seem to be anything remaining above the ground, except for some scraggly bushes and the bare trunk of a tree, the leaves, branches and even the bark completely removed.

  “By the Three Kennedys,” Doc gasped, looking out a side window. “John Barrymore, get on the radio and call the Tiger Lily at once!”

  “Why?” the Armorer asked, turning. He inhaled sharply. Only a few yards away was War Wag Three. Every window was shattered, there was firelight playing on the ground under the engine of the Mack truck, and a cannon was sticking out of the rear grille, a rivulet of blood trickling off the pitted metal.

  “Scorpion to Tiger Lily, what’s your status,” Roberto demanded over the ceiling speaker. There was a pause. “War Wag Three, report! Is anybody alive?”

  “Big Joe to convoy, don’t bother, they’re gone,” Scott said woodenly. “That nuking cannon cored them like an apple. I sent out a couple of my people to check, but…wait a second.”

  The second became a minute, then two.

  “Okay, they’re aced,” Scott continued softly. “There were no survivors.”

  “Are you sure?” Mildred shouted to be heard over the mike.

  Turning, J.B. passed it to her.

  “There are many injuries that can make a person seem aced,” Mildred began, but was cut off.

  “They’re fragging pulp!” Scott retorted. “There ain’t no bodies, just ooze with teeth. Savvy?”

  “Yes, of course,” Mildred said quickly. “My apologies.”