Chapter Three

      Sucking in a lungful of warm air, Ryan struggled awake and looked around the mat-trans chamber. So soon after the first jump, the second one had hit them like a gren. He dimly remembered their arriving, and then nothing.

      Shaking his head, the one-eyed man rose onto his hands and knees, shook his head to try to clear his mind. Fireblast! He had to get sharp. Had to make nuking sure they weren’t in the same redoubt again. Repeat jumps were rare, but they had happened before. Brushing back his wild mane of hair, Ryan focused his eye and grunted in relief at the sight of the chamber walls. They were a lime green with horizontal red stripes. It was a redoubt they had never been to before.

      As the life support system sent a clean fresh breeze of sterilized air into the unit, painful groans started coming from the rest of the companions.

      “Green walls,” Mildred said, fumbling to un-screw the cap off a canteen at her side. “At least we’re someplace new.” Letting the cap drop to the end of the little chain that attached it to the military canteen, the physician took a small drink from the contents. For quite sometime she had been trying to find an antidote to the jump sickness, but so far she had nothing more effective than a mix of coffee and whiskey.

      Unfortunately, both of these items were few and far between. The current brew was an herbal tea laced with something called spike, a raw liquor distilled from cactus. The moonshine had a tremendous kick, but there was never a hangover the next day, and it was a wonderful neural inhibitor and painkiller. Mildred had traded a small fortune in .22 bullets for three precious bottles. This was the very last of the Spike.

      Hesitantly, everybody took a sip of the brew, making sour faces. Giving back the empty canteen, Ryan started to speak when he saw Krysty staring behind him. Dropping the canteen, he spun in a crouch with his blaster out and ready.

      That was when he saw the corpse.

      Holstering his piece, Ryan shuffled over to the body leaning against the exit door, one of its desiccated arms parched on the lever that opened the oval portal. The corpse was dressed in a predark military uniform, the patches and medals meaning nothing to the Deathlands warrior. But the flap was open on the holster at its side, and the handblaster was gone.

      Scowling, Ryan noticed that the corpse appeared to be blocking the door.

      “Bastard died trying to hold the door closed,” Ryan muttered, glancing at the portal with growing unease. He wondered what was on the other side.

      Staring at the closed door, Krysty rubbed her temples as if in pain.

      Ryan noticed the gesture. “Got something?” he asked tightly.

      The redhead paused, then shook her head.

      That didn’t reassure the big man much. The woman’s psionic abilities were sometimes blocked.

      Kneeling alongside the grinning corpse, Ryan checked the ammo pouch and found only one spare clip where there should have been three.

      “Must have been a hell of a fight,” J.B. said, moving closer. The Armorer clicked the safety back on his Uzi machine pistol and let it drop at his side.

      “We better take it slow, just in case of a booby,” Ryan warned, rubbing the scar on his cheek. He sure wasn’t ready to do another jump. “If this guy was trying to keep folks out, whatever was on the other side might have had the same idea.”

      “Woman, not man,” Jak added, pointing. “Ears pierced.”

      Tucking a strand of beaded hair behind an ear to get it out of the way, Mildred hid a smile. “That didn’t mean a thing in the modern American Army, my friend.”

      Taking the corpse by the shoulders, Ryan gave a gentle tug and the withered arms broke off with a snap. They slid out of the loose sleeves and stayed attached to the rifle as he carried the body away.

      Placing it against the wall, Ryan saw the identification tag on the chest. S. Jongersonsten. Damn name was too long for them to add the first. Mebbe it was a woman. No way to tell now.

      Carefully breaking the fingers, Mildred got the ancient arms free and put them with the body.

      Going to the door, J.B. pulled out some tools and checked for any traps. The rest of the companions formed a defensive arc behind the man, their weapons ready.

      “It’s clean,” J.B. finally announced. He tried to move the lever. The mechanism worked smoothly as if freshly lubricated, the internal bolts disengaging with dull thuds.

      “Ryan?” J.B. asked, tugging his fingerless gloves on tighter.

      Working the bolt on his Steyr SSG-70 rifle, Ryan said, “Go ahead.”

      The Armorer pulled the door aside on silent hinges. He stayed crouched behind the door to give his friends a clear field of fire, ready to throw his weight forward to close it again fast if something tried to come through. But there were no blaster shots, only mutters of surprise.

      Swinging his Uzi machine pistol to the front, J.B. clicked off the safety and stepped around the door just as Ryan and Krysty walked through into the antechamber beyond.

      Following close behind, Doc, Mildred and Jak blocked his view. But as the companions spread out, J.B. saw the place was full of corpses. Old corpses. Dozens of them. And the floor was covered with the empty brass casings of spent ammunition. Most of the bodies were in pieces, and there was a smudge on the inside of the vanadium steel door suggesting that a gren had been used to try to blow it open, resulting in a spectacular and deadly failure.

      “What the fuck went on here?” Ryan growled, sweeping the room with a stern gaze. The body in the jump chamber had been desiccated to the point of mummification, but these looked as if they were only a few years old! The wrinkled skin resembled leather instead of ancient parchment.

      Careful of where they stepped, the companions moved through the antechamber and entered the control room. There were more bodies here, all of them showing signs of death by violence. Bullet holes, knives in chests, and one poor bastard bent over the control console with a fire ax buried in his back.

      “Check the comp!” J.B. ordered. “If that’s damaged, we’re not going anywhere.”

      Holstering her weapon, Mildred went to the control board while Ryan stepped to the master computer. The lights still rippled across its face as always, but he found a line of dents across the front of the machine. Somebody had fired a full clip from a machine gun, but the rounds hadn’t gotten through the thick metal housing of the mil comp.

      “The government really built these redoubts to last, that’s for damn sure,” Mildred whispered. “Well, the controls aren’t damaged, aside from a busted monitor.”

      “Good show, madam, then we can still egress as desired,” Doc