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  The figure in black shot over the lip of the whirlpool and vanished into its yawning maw.

  Jak's target didn't make a break for it until Mildred actually nudged the other wag. She put her front bumper against its front bumper and began to push, feathering her speed to keep her wheels from spinning and losing traction. She found the wag's gearshift and dropped the transmission into low to get more torque.

  The other wag was lighter, since it was unloaded, and even though its parking brake was on, it started to move in reverse. Slowly at first, as Mildred got a feel for how much pressure she could apply.

  Seeing the roadblock being pushed out of the way, being pushed toward a bend in the road that emptied onto a deep divide, the trooper behind the glass fence fired a last, futile shot, then broke from cover. He had fifty feet of open ground before he reached the next safe spot.

  From under the wag, Jak took a swinging lead on him and touched off a quick shot. The trooper went down flat on his belly, but he wasn't hit. He squirmed into a prone position and returned fire, trying to keep Jak pinned by hitting the cargo box on that side.

  Doc moved under the truck and added his weapon's shrill squeal to the mix.

  The trooper rolled away, unable to maintain his position in the cross fire.

  The other ore wag was moving nicely now, even though the brakes were locked. Its rear wheels bumped up and over the shoulder. Mildred kept pushing. Its middle wheels hopped the shoulder, and she gave a final shove.

  As the front wheels popped off the road, the rear wheels hung in space. The balance point was on the middle wheels, and they were sliding. With a tremendous groan, the ore wag tumbled into the chasm beyond. A second later there came a loud crash.

  "We've got a clear road ahead," Doc said. "We can leave our battlesuited friend right where he is. No need to spend another moment in his dubious company."

  Jak and Doc scrambled out from under the far side of the wag and climbed up onto the side of the box.

  "Go, Mildred!" Jak said, pounding on the cab roof.

  She accelerated up the grade, away from the ambush site. Around the next bend, out of range of the trooper, Mildred stopped and got out.

  She and Dean joined Doc and Jak as they looked into the cargo box. More slaves were dead, hit by the beams directly, or horribly burned alive when the sides of the box heated up. Those who survived were badly shaken.

  "Look!" Dean cried, pointing at the pair of black gyroplanes sweeping down on them.

  The companions dropped from the cargo box and jumped into the cab. Laser cannons flashed from the noses of the aircraft. The streaming energy pulses hit the ore wag's EM shield directly in front of the driver seat and sheered off to either side.

  It was a wake-up call.

  The gyros hovered, holding their fire as Mildred got the wag moving again.

  "The cargo box doesn't have an EM shield," she said. "If those pilots wanted to, they could hang right over it and chill all of the slaves. Maybe they're as valuable as the road."

  "Difficult to run a mine without workers," Doc said. "As difficult as it is to move ore without a road."

  As Mildred continued to climb out of the bowels of the crater, the gyros retreated along with her, maintaining position and distance.

  Then, without warning, the cannons fired again, simultaneously. The two pulses hit the same spot, and the energy flare off the cab's shield was ten times brighter than before.

  "Damn!" Mildred said, rubbing her eyes.

  "They can't hurt us," Dean said.

  "Or they don't want to yet," Doc told him. "They could have something up their sleeves, just biding their time until the proper moment."

  As it turned out, they had nothing up their sleeves.

  The gyroplanes suddenly rose in the air, wheeled around and sped back toward Slake City.

  "I'm sure glad to see their backsides," Mildred said.

  "Did we win already?" Dean said. "Is it over?"

  "I am sorry to say that it has not yet begun," Doc replied.

  More black wags appeared on the road above them. These weren't ore trucks; they were attack wags and they were closing fast.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  "I wouldn't do that if I were you."

  Krysty looked over her shoulder as the speaker entered the room. The she-he had close-cropped blond curls and pale blue eyes. The charcoal-gray T-shirt the creature wore was skintight over a wide, muscular chest. What startled Krysty the most was the width of its neck. The trapezius muscles formed a broad triangle from below the ears to the rounded domes of its shoulders.

  Instead of swinging the chair down on the comp, Krysty pivoted her hips and brought it crashing against the she-he, who raised both forearms to block the attack. Although the blow forced the she-he to take a step back, the chair bounced off.

  Bounced off and flew across the room as if it had rocket-assist.

  "Not nice," the she-he said.

  Krysty winced. Apparently, she had done herself more damage than her intended target. Her hands had gone numb to the wrists from the shock of the impact.

  "Come here," the creature said playfully, crinkling an index finger toward herself, "come to Mero. We'll take you back to your cell."

  As Krysty retreated and the she-he turned, Krysty got a look at the mass of weeping sores on the side of Mero's neck. "What's that you've got there?" she asked. "It looks plenty bad. Probably hurts like hell. Did you spill a bucket of battery acid on yourself?"

  "Don't worry about that," Mero replied. "Just get your butt over here. Don't make me chase you around the room."

  "Not up to it, huh?"

  Mero lunged for her. Krysty easily moved out of the way, sidestepping the outstretched hand. As she came around on the balls of her feet, Krysty launched a side-kick into the back of the she-he's weight-bearing leg. Mero staggered forward, throwing both arms in the air to keep from falling. Krysty spun 360 degrees and power-kicked the she-he in the throat. The toe of her boot bored deep into the soft tissue.

  For anyone else, it would have been a killshot.

  Mero lurched backward, but in so doing managed to grab hold of Krysty's ankle. With one hand, the she-he almost casually flipped the redhead onto her back.

  Krysty landed on her kidneys. The impact with the floor knocked the wind out of her for a second. Long enough for the she-he to get a better grip on her left foot, wrapping fingers of steel around her instep.

  The redhead reared back and kicked Mero in the face with her free leg. Her heel made a satisfying crunch as it crushed and spread the fragile cartilage.

  As Mero's head flew back, bright blood squirted from both nostrils. The she-he coughed, spraying blood mist. Staring down at the red streaming through her fingers, Mero withdrew.

  "You shouldn't have done that," the she-he said. "You really, really shouldn't have done that."

  Krysty was already on her feet, and moving towards the wall of electronic equipment. She couldn't reach the monitor with the manacles on it without coming into Mero's range, but she could reach the one with the infrared scan of the oceans. She tipped the screen to the floor, and it landed with a crash, hissing, sputtering and arcing power. "I probably shouldn't have done that, either," she said.

  Mero hooked the fallen chair with her foot and kicked up from the floor, at Krysty's head. As the redhead ducked and turned, the she-he closed on her. The fingers of steel caught her wrist and twisted it behind her back. With the other hand, Mero grabbed the back of Krysty's head, digging fingers into the mass of her hair, which separated into tendrils and coiled around the she-he's thick wrist like miniature pythons.

  "My, my, what do we have here?" Mero said.

  Krysty said nothing and she didn't struggle. The she-he held her arm at the dislocate point. Another ounce or two of pressure and it would have popped out of the shoulder socket.

  Mero played with the mobile strands. "Does it do any other tricks?"

  "Let me go and I'll show you."

  "No, I
don't think so. I think we're going to go back to your cell. Don't worry, you won't be there long. We sisters have all agreed that you're coming with us when we make the next jump, which should be any minute now. We think you'll make a fine incubator for our offspring. Actually, you're going to be the only incubator for the foreseeable future. We had planned to recruit many dozens of Shadow World females for the job, but under the circumstances there isn't time."

  Krysty tried to twist away, but Mero tightened the hammerlock. The pain shooting through her shoulder made her groan.

  "When you're nine months heavy with my baby, mine and Shadow Man's," Mero said, "you're going to be a lot less troublesome. Less likely to spin-kick, that's for sure. I know you're going to make a good mommy for my baby. For all our babies."

  Krysty growled a curse, then tried to crush the she-he's toes with the heel of her boot. The two of them danced around for a minute before Mero once again got the upper hand.

  As the she-he pinned her face against the wall, the door to the room opened and two troopers entered.

  "Good," Mero said, hardly glancing at them. "You can help me with this hellcat. Get hold of her legs."

  The taller of the two troopers stepped closer. When Mero turned again, he used his helmet like a cudgel, headbutting the surprised she-he in the middle of forehead.

  Knees buckling, eyelids fluttering shut, Mero dropped like a stone.

  "Krysty, it's us!" J.B. said, using his hands to block her flurry of full power punches to his chest.

  She stopped fighting. "Ryan?" she said to the taller trooper. "Is that you?"

  "Of course," he said. The one-eyed man unscrewed his helmet and took a breath. His long, black hair was damp with sweat. "Where's the comp?"

  "Over here, I think," Krysty said. She pointed to one of the monitors. "That shows all the slaves. Green zone is safe. Red zone isn't."

  "This must be the CPU," J.B. said after taking off his helmet, too. He indicated a cube from which all the monitor cables emerged. "Should we just unplug it from its power source?"

  "No, I've got a better idea," Krysty said. She picked up the chair and smashed its legs down on the CPU. The first blow made the images on the bank of screens quiver wildly. It took two more blows to crack the comp's plastisteel housing, but on the second one, all the screens went dark.

  For good measure, Krysty hit the thing a few more times, breaking the internal contents into numerous small pieces.

  While she was doing this, Ryan and J.B. booted the monitors into similar fragments, turning them into heaps of electronic rubbish.

  "We've got to see if we're safe," Krysty said. "Let's get one of these manacles off. We can cut it with that tribarrel of yours, J.B. Do mine first."

  "Wait a minute," Ryan said. "Something just occurred to me. There could be a backup system for the cuffs somewhere else in the compound. We haven't searched the whole place yet."

  "Well, we can't just stand here," Krysty said.

  "J.B.," Ryan said, "cut one of mine first."

  "No, Ryan."

  "Do my left hand." Ryan took off his gauntlet, exposing the dull silver band.

  J.B. didn't hesitate. It wasn't the kind of decision made easier by a pause to reflect. He angled the muzzle under the manacle. When he pressed the trigger, the green beam sawed through the cuff, cutting a neat slot across it about an inch wide.

  "Guess we chilled the bastard," Ryan said as he twisted the smoking thing off his wrist.

  "Which means we can help free Mildred and the others," J.B. replied.

  "There's something else we've got to see to first," Krysty told them. She quickly explained what had happened to her, why she had been kidnapped and what Dredda and the she-hes intended to do with what they had stolen from her, and from Ryan.

  Krysty pointed at the she-he on the floor, who was just beginning to stir, and said, "That one told me they were getting ready to make another jump."

  "From what's going on outside, that sounds about right," J.B. said.

  "No way am I going to father an army of these hell bitches," Ryan told them angrily. "Before they jump, we'd better find that damned stuff and destroy it."

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Four black wags skidded to a stop on the long straightaway above Mildred. There was nowhere for her to go. She couldn't back up and she couldn't proceed. As she braked the ore truck, the first two attack wags pulled side to side, so both could bring their forward weapons pods to bear. The cannons locked on target. The range was 150 feet.

  "Oh, man," she groaned, anticipating annihilation.

  When the cannons fired, they did so simultaneously. The double flash exploded into a blinding wall of green as the pulses slammed the ore wag's EM shield.

  This was serious weaponry.

  The impact of the cannon beams against the shield made the ore wag jolt backward, despite the fact that Mildred was holding down the brake. The six locked wheels slipped in reverse a good twenty feet, making a grinding noise on the road as the truck slewed slightly sideways.

  "I hesitate to bring up the matter," Doc said, "but there's a bit of a drop-off on this side."

  Mildred glanced over his shoulder and got a powerful adrenaline rush. "A bit of a drop-off!" she exclaimed.

  What loomed just off the shoulder of the road was a yawning crevasse. It looked bottomless. If they tipped over into it, they weren't coming out again. Ever. Craning her head around to look behind them, Mildred saw that the chasm necked down at its Ground Zero end, its ragged lips coming together, melding into a flat, glassy field. Even from where she sat, she could see the field was split by wide surface cracks.

  The assault wags sent a second dual blast their way.

  It had the same effect.

  The huge wheels, though locked, and the cargo box, though loaded with people and ore, were insufficient to anchor the wag where it was. Like an invisible hand, the blowback from the EM shield pushed the truck farther down the road, increasing the sideways cant, bringing the back wheels closer to the edge of nothingness.

  "Another shot we go over," Jak said.

  "Fuck this," Mildred cursed. At the same instant the assault wags fired, she mashed down the joystick's speed button, plowing the nose of the ore truck into the next shot.

  The jolt sent the companions bouncing off the dashboard, but they lost no ground. Mildred crept the wag back into its original position. When the enemy tried another blast, she did the same thing, powering into the pulses. Again, she, Doc, Dean and Jak were thrown into the dash. Again, they maintained their position.

  "You know I can't keep this up," she said. "If I screw up the timing just once, we're in deep trouble."

  "Got get out," Jak said.

  "And do what?" Mildred asked him.

  "Drop road with them on," Jak told her.

  "That would certainly solve our problem," Doc said. "How do you intend to manage it?"

  "With these," Jak said, slapping the side plate of the pulse rifle he had picked up from the floorboards. "Undercut road with these. Make it slide into big hole."

  "I think our lad has something there, Mildred," Doc said. "The captured longblasters will cut through the supporting strata like hot knives through butter."

  "I'll take slaves from cargo box," Jak said. "Go around big hole. Hit road from other side."

  "What are the rest of us supposed to do while you're circling?" Mildred said.

  "Keep troopers in wags," Jak said. "All go down at once."

  With that, the albino teen popped open the passenger door and slipped out. Without a word, Dean, who was sitting beside him, grabbed a pulse rifle from the floor and ducked out behind him.

  "Dean! No!" Mildred cried. "Come back!"

  The boy either ignored her or couldn't hear her for the scream of the laser cannons that once again pounded the truck's EM shield. As the wag slid backward out of control, Dean ran past the cargo box on Jak's heels. Not only was the boy lightfooted, but he was also frisky and wild with excitement, like a pu
p who had just evaded righteous punishment.

  Jak shouted for the armed slaves to follow them. As six of the former residents of Ground Zero piled over the rear gate of the cargo box, he and Dean sprinted down the road, keeping the wag and its cab's EM shield between them and the enemy cannons. When they reached the point where the sides of the crevasse came together, Jak didn't stop but turned for the shoulder.

  "Jak, the cuffs!" Dean shouted. The albino didn't answer, and he didn't stop. There was no time to check whether Ryan and J.B. had succeeded in disabling the manacles. No time to drag out a dead body and throw it off the road. To reach the firing location Jak had in mind meant taking a treacherous route over glass. If they didn't reach it as quickly as possible, their effort would have been in vain.

  Jak took the offroad plunge in a mad leap, his eyes shut tight.

  "Jak!" Dean cried. Nothing happened.

  The teenager landed on the balls of his feet, and his feet remained attached to his ankles. His hands stayed stuck to his wrists. "Ha!" he shouted triumphantly, waving the others on.

  Dean jumped off the road, and the armed slaves followed him. Jak took them on an erratic route across the field of glass, dodging the branching surface cracks whenever he could, vaulting over them when he couldn't. The splits were only six feet wide, but they opened onto nothing. One look down told Dean that the chasm continued beneath their feet, that only thin bridges of glass separated them from the abyss. As they worked their way toward a ridge of rotten glass, its wafer-thin summit like the back fin of some gigantic sailfish, shot through with thousands of holes from a century of windblown grit, they got their first side view of the straightaway. It hung precipitously over the drop-off, sitting atop a two-hundred-foot-long mass of deeply undercut glass.

  Looking in that direction was painful.

  Mildred, Doc and the slaves in the ore truck were taking hit after hit from the first two assault wags. The green glare of deflected laser pulses was tremendous.