Outlanders - Ghost Walk, page 16
Varnley did not respond. He strode to the screen and began stroking keys on the board. Two squares flashed with a flat, sandy expanse of unbroken desolation.
“I thought all the spy-eyes were inactive,” Grant said.
“There are many electronic eyes and ears throughout this installation,” Varnley declared. “Even if Breech knew the location of all of them, it would take him several years to deactivate them all. And that would be by working at the task full-time.”
Brigid put on her spectacles and peered at the screens. The glasses weren’t for appearance only. After years of sifting through nearly illegible predark documents, books and computer files, her vision had weakened. Eyestrain often led to nagging headaches that spread from her eye sockets up into her skull. A few years before Brigid had suffered from a serious head injury, and it seemed her vision had been further impaired by the wound that had laid her scalp open to the bone and put her in a coma for several days. Now the only sign of it was a faintly pink, horizontal line on her right temple that disappeared into the roots of her hair. Although her recovery time had been little short of phenomenal, she had noticed she needed her glasses more and more in the months following her release from the infirmary. Slowly Brigid scanned the bowl-shaped dead lake bottom. Groom Lake was surrounded on all sides by looming mountain chains, making it the ideal location for the predark military to conduct its experiments in secrecy. About five miles away, a scattered collection of structures, control and guard towers rose from the ground, reminding her of the broken-off stumps of teeth. The line of structures was completely dwarfed by a building so tremendous in size that it was easily seen without the aid of the binoculars. Lakesh had said the largest aircraft hangar of predark days was built in Area 51, but large didn’t even begin to cover it. Brigid estimated it was over three-quarters of a mile long, a quarter-mile wide and at the very least a hundred feet tall. The cavernous hangar could comfortably house the entire Cerberus redoubt, with room left over for Cobaltville’s Tartarus Pits. The other structures were nearly obliterated by wind-blown sand. It was difficult to tell where the lines of the buildings had fallen. Everything was half-buried. The region exuded an atmosphere of abandonment, of not having seen a living soul in many, many years.
“Nothing out there,” Erica said with a touch of asperity.
“I did not expect to see anything, but it is best to check,” Varnley replied calmly. He touched another key and several others screens flickered. One was almost black, and for a moment they didn’t see anything. Then they caught a hint of movement that resolved itself an image of men passing through the shadows of a vault-walled chamber. Four men in coveralls walked across a huge room, through a set of double doors with wire shields in front of them.
Varnley leaned forward, eyes intent. After a few seconds of silent studying, he said, “That is the section known as the Prometheus wing. It is located several levels below this one.” “Prometheus?” Erica echoed. “Why is it called that?”
“In the ancient Greek myth Prometheus had challenged the lightning of Zeus and brought fire down to Earth to warm the hearts of men,” Brigid said.
Erica regarded her superciliously. “I know that. Don’t confuse me with the dullards you have to associate with. I asked why the wing was called that, not for a lesson in mythology.”
“From what I recall,” Varnley said, “it was the facility where the final phase of testing took place.”
“All things being equal,” Grant said, “the Prometheus wing is where we’ll find Breech.”
Eric suddenly drew in a sharp breath. “And other things, too.”
On the screen, the viral spun before the shielded double doors. The orbs danced, they twisted, they flashed in pinwheels of light.
Chapter 24
“I don’t get this at all,” Grant complained as he marched down the corridor. “Where are those goddamn plasma bees coming from? Is it the same swarm that chased us in New Mexico?” Brigid’s lips pursed in thought. “I don’t see how. They must reproduce in some way. I have to agree with Spiros Marcuse’s theory that they’re combination of radiations and plasma waveforms held together by a magnetic field.”
The five people reached a big elevator, which they all entered.
Reaching out for a polished brass handrail, Erica said, “That wouldn’t account for their apparent intelligence. And why they’re green.”
Kane pressed a button on the wall. A pair of heavy doors rumbled shut, and an overhead light came on.
The elevator shot upward at breathtaking speed, making Kane’s stomach feel as if it were sinking into the soles of his boots.
Varnley cocked his head at a puzzled angle. “I don’t understand.”
“What’s to understand?” Kane countered.
“You say the viral is green but they are all different colors,” the hybrid stated matter-of-factly. “They only look green to us,” Grant said.
“Not to me. My eyes see in a far broader range of the spectrum than yours.” Varney replied.
Brigid nodded musingly. “That may mean something.”
“Like what?” Erica inquired. “If the viral is composed of radiation, then Breech might have a method of controlling it using high-frequency radiation in the radio-wave spectrum.”
Grant grunted. “So he may be using them as a pack of hunting dogs.”
“Or,” Varnley ventured, “they may be intelligent but their intelligence might be a different order than what we human beings understand.”
Kane repressed the urge to smile at Varnley’s inclusion of himself as a human. Eyeing the hybrid surreptitiously, he again wondered just how many truly human people populated Earth, but there was no way to hazard an accurate guess. Even the intelligence-gathering apparatus of the Magistrate Divisions in the villes could not learn with any certainty about what was transpiring beyond the continental boundaries of the country. Radio waves would not reach across the sea because lingering radiation and atmospheric disturbances disrupted shortwave carrier bands. After two centuries, the aftereffects of the nukecaust and the skydark were more subtle, an underlying texture to a world struggling to heal itself, but the side effects of the war still let themselves be known from time to time, like a grim remainder to humanity to never take the permanence of the planet for granted again. One of the worst and most frequent side effects had been chem storms, showers of acid-tainted rain that could scorch the flesh off any mammal caught in the open. They were lingering examples of the freakish weather effects common after the nukecaust. Chem storms were dangerous partly because of their intensity, but mainly because of the acids, heavy metals and other chemical compounds that fell with the rain possessing the corrosive potency to strip flesh from bone in less than a minute. Fortunately, chem storms were no longer as frequent as they had been even a century before, but there were still a number of places where the geological or meteorological effects of the nukecaust prevented a full recovery. These regions were called hellzones, areas that not even the passage of time could cleanse of hideous, invisible plagues. The cargo elevator jolted to a stop and the doors opened up on a huge, dark space.
Varnley led them into a multileveled man-made cavern so vast its true dimensions could not really be gauged. The far end ran away into the murk, and the ceiling was lost in the shadows. Large rectangular containers were arranged in orderly fifty-foot-tall aisles, stretching as far as they could see. The containers were made of lightweight, corrugated metal with hinged lids. Smooth ramps sloped between levels, and were wide enough to permit forklifts and motorized dollies to carry their loads. At regularly space intervals were wide square apertures leading out of the huge chamber. Gleaming monorail tracks laced out in every direction, plunging into the apertures. On one track stood a small shifter engine with a chrome nose coupled to a flatcar holding three metal crates.
Kane walked over to it and glanced up and down the narrow track. “Which way?” he asked. Varnley nodded in the direction the nose of the engine was pointed. “There.”
“There’s no passenger car,” Erica pointed out.
“You’re not too special that you can’t ride on the flatcar,” Brigid retorted. “You haven’t been the imperial mother or Tui Chui Jian in a long time.”
“Yeah,” Kane remarked snidely. “You’ll make good ballast.”
Erica’s eye widened and her mouth opened to voice a profane rejoinder when Varnley waved her to silence. “I hear something.”
Kane tilted his head first to one side, then the other. “I don’t.”
“Nevertheless.”
As Kane stepped to the rear of the flatcar, he put a foot on the metal rail. A steady vibration shivered through it. Then, from an opening in the wall two hundred yards away plunged a blunt-nosed shifter engine. He glimpsed three men wearing dun-colored coveralls seated within it. He didn’t need to see the Calico subguns in their hands to know they wielded them. A series of whipping cracks reverberated in the cavernous chamber, and bullets ricocheted from metal. The echoes of the shots were swallowed up by the high ceiling.
“Move, move!” Grant bellowed, jumping onto the flatcar, his Sin Eater slapping into his palm. Erica and Varnley climbed into the engine compartment while Brigid and Kane joined Grant on the flatcar, squeezing between the crates. As they did so, the bullet-shaped engine emitted a high-pitched whine. The whine quickly rose in pitch, and with a slight lurch the train slid almost silently along the rail. More autofire rattled and bullets hit the floor around the rail, gouging scars. Another bullet punched a dimple in the side of a metal-walled crate.
“Hang on,” Varnley called.
All of them felt a shock of acceleration as the train plunged into the tunnels. Overhead light fixtures flicked by so rapidly that they combined with the intervals of darkness between them to acquire a strobing pattern. The monorail car carrying the millennialists came rocketing after them a few seconds later. The bores of the weapons in their hands spit tongues of flame. Little spouts of concrete sprang up the right of the flatcar. Brigid positioned herself to return fire, squeezing off three rounds from her TP-9 in such rapid succession they sounded like one extended report. The Calicos of the millennialists continued to hammer, and bullets smacked into the flatcar with flat clangs. Kane cursed and ducked instinctively. He squeezed off a short triburst from his Sin Eater. The rounds struck sparks from the nose of the pursuing train. The track curved to the left, and Grant, Kane and Brigid grabbed the edges of the flatcar as the boxes went sliding. Bullets rattled loudly all around them, sparks flaring from the points of impact. Gritting his teeth, Kane felt as if he were trapped in a recurrent nightmare where the same things happened over and over again, no matter what actions he took.
“They’re obviously willing to kill us,” Brigid commented. “Not just slow us down.”
Pushing himself to one knee, Kane called to Varnley, “How far is the Prometheus wing?”
“Not much farther,” Varnley shouted back. “Perhaps only five miles.”
The pursuing engine screamed along the track like an out-of-control express train.
“Only?” Grant echoed incredulously. “We can’t keep this shit up for five miles.”
“What do you suggest?” Brigid asked.
Reaching into his war bag. Grant pulled out a canister-shaped RG-34 high-explosive grenade. “This will stop the chase pretty conclusively.”
“Yeah,” Kane agreed, “providing you time the throw just right.”
A bullet struck the crate beside him and he ducked. “I think the time is right.”
Grant pulled the pin, then dropped the grenade. It bounced along the rail for several yards, then exploded. The pursuing engine drove straight into the bloom of flame and concussion. The car leaped from the rail, flipped, rolling end over end. The men inside were catapulted out, their limbs flailing the air like those of rag dolls. Metal fragments clattered and clanged loudly all along the tunnel.
“That,” Brigid said flatly, “as they say, is that.”
Kane rose up and turned around looking over the heads of Erica and Varnley. As their train went around a curve, he stiffened. “Ah, hell.”
Brigid and Grant looked in the direction he stared. The plasma swarm glowed in the center of the tunnel, exploding like silent sky rockets.
“They’re multiplying,” Erica cried out, her voice hitting a high note of fear. “To trap us!” “Maybe another grenade would work,” Grant said, although he sounded skeptical.
“I don’t think so,” Brigid replied. “The explosion would get us, too.”
“Do we take the chance of smashing through them?” Kane demanded. “Or stopping and surrendering?”
Grant snorted. “I don’t think viruses take prisoners.”
“Me, neither,” Brigid put in. “Let’s keep going.”
Erica pushed herself up from the passenger compartment. “Let me out! I’ll take my chances!” Reaching over, Kane slammed her back into her seat. “We do this together. You wanted to come along and now you’re in it as deep as we are.” He clenched his teeth as the engine arrowed straight for the cloud of green-glowing orbs.
Chapter 25
The bullet-shaped engine plunged on like a missile. The swarm of orbs did not shift position. “I don’t think we can bluff them,” Grant said tensely. “And slowing down won’t do any good.” Varnley half rose, light glinting from the slender infrasound wand grasped in his right fist. The humming, shivering tip inscribed a blurry semicircle. The viral cloud suddenly quivered, then the orbs in the center of the swarm spun away, leaving a large gap. The monorail car plunged through the hole in the green-glimmering cloud. Glancing behind him, Kane watched the swarm spiral first to the right, then to the left, but not re-form into a cloud shape. “They don’t appear to be coming after us,” he announced.
“The jolt of infrasound probably damaged them,” Brigid said. “Maybe even destroyed a few.” “Wouldn’t that be nice,” Grant put in wistfully.
The monorail carriage swerved around a curve in the tunnel, and the viral cloud was lost to view. The shifter engine and the flatcar glided smoothly along the rail. Up ahead glowed the light of a train platform. Varnley adjusted the controls and their speed slackened. When they came abreast of the platform they saw the letters and numbers Y-95 stenciled on the wall above it. With a scrape of brake shoes, the train gradually slowed to a halt. Everyone disembarked, assembling on the platform.
Erica shook her head half in exasperation, half in relief. “That was very fast thinking, Varnley. I underestimated you.”
Varnley’s blank expression did not alter, but Kane received the distinct impression he was pleased with the praise.
Grant gazed uneasily at the corridor stretching away from the station, not liking how it plunged into darkness. “We’d better get going before the bees regroup and come buzzing after us again,” he said.
The Cerberus warriors paused long enough to put on dark-lensed glasses. The electrochemical polymer of the lenses gathered all available light and made the most of it to give them a limited form of night vision. They strode swiftly along the corridor, alert for any unusual sound. The floor sloped upward at a gradual angle. Handrails lined both walls. The group moved swiftly and fairly silently, their boots making only faint rasping sounds. They walked steadily forward toward odd, distant noises that emanated from the darkness ahead of them.
The incline terminated at a flat landing. A few yards away stood the wire-shielded double doors they had seen earlier on the monitor screen. The skin on the back of Kane’s neck tightened and prickled as he became conscious of a distant, almost inaudible reverberation on the other side of the barrier.
“The Prometheus wing, I presume,” Brigid said softly.
Everyone stood and stared, not moving. Finally Grant said, “I don’t see any millennialists or virals.”
“Me, either,” Kane muttered. “But that doesn’t mean they’re not around.”
“So far this has a convenient feel to it,” Brigid commented.
“Yes,” Erica agreed. “So we might as well take advantage of it before everything becomes very inconvenient.”
The black-haired woman took a tentative step forward, then another.
Gusting out a sigh, Kane stepped in front of her, his Sin Eater held in a double-handed grip, barrel pointing upward. Brigid and Grant automatically took up positions on either side him, weapons at the ready. Kane paused at the pair of doors, listening. The throbbing drone grew louder, like the murmur of a far-off crowd. The sound was not unfamiliar. He nodded to Grant and Brigid, then pushed open the right-hand door with the toe of his boot. It swung aside easily. Slowly, he eased over the threshold, pausing for his eyes to become adjusted to the deep gloom. It was much darker than in the corridor. He saw a chamber hung with large-scale maps of the United States and Europe. They were dimly illuminated from beneath. He quickly picked out red concentric circles emblazoned over various countries. Brigid entered and came to his side. She glanced at the maps and said quietly, “First-strike targets.”
“I figured.”
One by one the group of five slipped through the door. They walked across the chamber, toward another set of doors on the far side. As their vision accustomed to the murk, they could see rising all around them a complex array of machine relays, connectives and many pieces of electronic equipment that didn’t seem to belong. The other door opened just as easily as the first, but the light was much stronger. Kane pushed it open with a shoulder. He and his companions emerged on a broad shelf that thrust out over a cavernous gallery nearly twenty feet below. They stood at a metal handrail, staring down at the fusion generator. Twelve feet tall, it resembled two solid black cubes, a slightly smaller one placed atop the larger. The top cube rotated slowly, producing the drone. The odor of ozone was very pronounced.
“Is anybody surprised to see that?” Kane asked quietly.
No one answered. The Cerberus warriors had seen identical machines in several places across the world over the past five-plus years. The two-tiered generators derived from the same source as the light panels—the Annunaki. Long ago Lakesh had put forth the initial speculation they were fusion reactors, the energy output held in a delicately balanced magnetic matrix within the cubes. When the matrix was breached, an explosion of apocalyptic proportions resulted, which was what caused the destruction of the Archuleta Mesa installation.
