Setting off without a word, he began to propel himself forward. He trusted the abilities of the Gate warriors to follow, even at the speed he was setting for them.

The first drop had to come soon. The light was so poor that even with his eyes adjusted to the almost total blackness, picking out more than normally pigmented eyes would be capable of, Jak found it hard to see where the darkness of the cold concrete floor became the darkness of an empty s.p.a.ce.

Except that there came a point where the draft from the shaft behind them became mixed with the eddying current of air that was traveling from the opposite direction. These currents met in a swirl that bespoke of one thing alone -a shaft leading down toward the purification plant.

Jak slowed his pace, aware that a wrong move could plunge him headfirst down a sheer drop, with not enough room to twist and save himself.

"Wait," he said softly to the party at his heels.

The Gate warriors slowed to a halt while Jak edged forward to the point where the air currents appeared to meet.

His fingers felt in the darkness and found the uneven and slightly jagged lip of a shaft. Inching his torso forward, he peered down, the crosscurrents of gently rippling air making his hair swirl gently around his head, white even in the lack of light. He couldn't discern anything beneath. There was only a total blackness.

"This way down. Not know where lead, so be careful," he said softly over his shoulder, eliciting the barest murmur of agreement from those to his rear. Aware that any sound would travel along the shafts, and perhaps even be amplified by a trick of acoustics, all were concerned with keeping noise and communication to a bare and essential minimum.

Jak contorted his wiry frame, straining muscles so that he could bring his knees up beneath his chin and pivot on his tailbone, ignoring the temporary pain on the hard surface. He wanted to turn his whole body in the narrow shaft, so that his feet instead of his head would hang over the lip of the downward shaft.

He could feel the sweat gather in a pool down the small of his back, could feel the camou jacket sc.r.a.pe against the concrete walls, the metal patches sparking with the force of their contact, could feel the muscles in his thighs cramp and burn as he pushed his body around so that he was facing the direction he wished.

Finally he was there. He paused to exhale slowly and deeply, allowing the adrenaline pulsing through him to calm, and for the fire in his tortured muscles to subside. He knew they would soon be protesting again, and for far longer and a far better reason.

Breathing slowly and deeply, Jak extended one leg across the shaft. It was about three feet wide, and would be about the right width for the maneuver he planned. Sliding over the edge of the lip, and bringing his knee up so that it tensed and supported his back against the wall that slid up behind him as he began his descent, Jak began the slow and painful descent toward the next level. From previous experience, he knew that the downward shafts were always staggered, so there was only the slightest chance that he was taking them down into the purification plant. If the shaft led straight down, there was no way anyone's muscles would last the distance. It was a necessary risk.

"NEARLY THERE," Dean whispered to the Gate warriors descending from above him.

Like Jak, Dean had led a Gate party through the shafts. He had felt a sense of unease as he entered and began the trek. The last time he had been in such a situation also involved the Illuminated Ones-or at least, a connection to them- when he escaped from the mad mutie queen Jenna and her tame sec chief back in the ville of Raw. That time, Dean was weakened by the torture that Jenna had put him through in the name of her experiments with genetics. This time he was rested up and at a peak of fitness. But still, all the old fear came flooding back to him as he made his way through the narrow concrete shafts.

Ultimately it made him more determined to focus on the task ahead, and when Dean came across the first downward shaft, he didn't hesitate in negotiating it. Unlike their opposite party, Dean's band of Gate warriors was lucky in coming across two downward shafts soon after entering the maze of the air conditioning. As a result, they made good time and were now close to the point where the air conditioning and purification shafts ran parallel with the first level of service ducts for the redoubt.

Dean's left foot moved downward and hit empty air. He almost lost balance, as he had on the first downward shaft, but recovered with ease, extending his foot to judge the drop to the bottom of the shaft below. His toe touched without too much of a stretch, and he followed it, letting his other leg fall and taking the impact lightly.

"Bottom," he whispered up the shaft above him, preparing his fellow travelers for the drop.

Crouching to one side of the shaft, Dean could see nothing in the complete blackness. Unlike Jak's pigmentless eyes. Dean's...o...b.. were at full dilation and yet could still see nothing. He could, however, feel the air brushing his cheek and rippling the down of hair on his forearms. From this, he knew the direction in which the air was being drawn, knew this would take them toward the heart of the redoubt.

It was the best direction to take. The farther they got into the redoubt, the better the chance of finding a panel connecting the air shafts and the service ducts.

"This way," he whispered, crouching lower and beginning to walk on. This far down, the shafts had grown taller and wider, and progress was easier, a byproduct of their need to be bigger in order to incorporate the necessity to pull in more air and dissipate the resulting pressure.

There was still no light, but Dean used his fingertips to feel along the walls. He was searching for a point where the cold roughness of the concrete was replaced by something icier and smoother-the panels connecting the two openings that were supposedly airtight, and had been placed in all the redoubts for purposes of service and maintenance.

He walked only a short distance when his fingers brushed across something that felt like the rounded end of a rivet or smooth nut. The roughness of the concrete ceased and was replaced by the cold smoothness of metal.

"Found it," he breathed, stopping. Sensing him halt rather than seeing him ahead of them, the rest of the party slowed until they were cl.u.s.tered behind him.

"So this is it, babes," whispered the Gate warrior nearest to him. "Tell ya something-if we've kept quiet for them up to now, there ain't no way that we can keep this next bit quiet."

Dean grinned at her, even though he was sure that she couldn't see him. "Who gives a s.h.i.t," he said in return. "This is where the action begins."

J.B.

HAD BEEN ALLOTTED to a party that would take one of the stairwells. Because of his experience in combat of this sort, the others in his group deferred to him. As one of them remarked, "You don't get sec stairwells and s.h.i.t like that in the jungle, honey."

J.B.

adopted a slightly different tactic than the other parties with regard to the sec cameras that lined the route to the hidden sec entrance. He and one of the Amazon warriors had gone ahead of their party and shot out all the cameras and then returned to their companions. The Armorer then held them back for a short while.

"They'll have been expecting us straight away, as soon as the sec monitors went down. We hold back, and their nerves will be shot to s.h.i.t."

Timing himself on his wrist chron, J.B. counted in his head, then finally nodded. The taciturn Armorer didn't bother to offer instructions beyond what the Gate tribeswomen already knew from the briefing.

"Just follow and watch, stay frosty," was all he offered them.

It was all there was to say.

They made their way briskly but without hurrying to the sec door that stood between them and the stairs that spiraled hundreds of feet down into the earth. They had no idea where there would be a sec defense waiting for them, only that there would be, inevitably, at some point.

There was only one thing to do. J.B. punched in the code and heard, in the tense silence, the soft click of the sec lock as the door became accessible. The Armorer shifted his Uzi onto continuous fire and looked over his shoulder at the Gate women behind him. He gave a brief nod that was partly a gesture to them, and partly an affirmation to himself.

He pushed open the door, flattening himself to the wall, the rest of the group following suit When there was no immediate chatter of blasterfire, or the coruscating beams of the laser blasters raking the now empty center of the corridor, J.B. waited a couple of seconds before inclining his head toward the empty stairwell and leading the war party.

AS J.B. HEADED OUT, Mildred was already halfway down to the first level, leading her party down the twisting concrete spiral that was lit in a dim glow by recessed fluorescent lights placed at regular intervals. Some of the tubes had blown out over the years, and Mildred was surprised that the sec force hadn't thought to either shoot out the rest of the lights or simply to turn them off at source. But she was glad that they had overlooked that, as it made progress easier.

One of the warriors, close by Mildred's elbow, leaned over a little farther and whispered in her ear.

"Guess they're waiting at the bottom for us-a last line from the first."

"Best not to a.s.sume that, girl, but I reckon you could be right. Just what the h.e.l.l are they playing at? It's almost like they want us to walk into there."

"Could be 'cause we can't really go back," the woman replied. "You and me would make more fight of it, but mebbe they figure they're like spiders, and we're the willing flies."

Mildred looked down at her Czech-made ZKR. "Then we'd better be the kind of flies that have a nasty bite."

Chapter Seventeen.

"Fireblast! What are they doing?"

Ryan's bewildered yet triumphant cry cut through the sound of blasterfire and acted as a rallying call to the rest of his party. The triumphant whooping of the Amazon queen at his shoulder bolstered the spirits of the attack party yet more, and they tore into the opposition with relish.

As the elevator doors had opened, Ryan flattened half of the party into the recesses at the left-hand side of the car, while beckoning Gloria to do likewise on the right. As the doors opened with a gentle hiss of hydraulics, a crackle of laser blasts rent the air, and the beams uselessly hit the back of the car, scorching the metal and making it glow white with heat. The party within the car was. .h.i.t by the wave of heat as it spread around the metal of the car, and huddled as close to the metal as they dared without actually touching it.

But this initial blast was followed by a confused silence as the secluded defense force on the outside wondered what to do.

Ryan was loath to put that down to incompetence, and felt it safer to figure on a plan that would lure the attackers away from the elevator car and into a trap. There was only one course of action. Pulling a gren from one of the vest pockets stuffed with ammo and weaponry, he pulled the pin and stepped back a pace, enough to give him an angle to toss the gren out into the corridor without revealing enough of himself to be a blaster target.

The gren sailed through the air almost in slow motion. Using a gren in such a confined area was a risk. A quick enough reflex could pick it up and toss it back into the car before it went off, leaving the inhabitants of the car entirely at the mercy of shrapnel in the explosive charge.

The one thing he hadn't bargained for was what happened next. Instead of trying to clear the gren, someone in the defending party thought it would be a great idea to shoot it out of the air.

A laser blast ripped through the empty s.p.a.ce between the elevator car and the concealed position of the defense force. Unfortunately for the sec man who chose to fire, it took him too long to level his laser rifle and take aim. So long, in fact, that by the time the laser blast reached the gren it was already too close to the defense nest. The laser hit the gren full on and caused it to explode before the fuse had expired. The shrapnel within the explosive charge was charged white hot and molten by the extra heat of the laser as it hit home, and the resulting shower and spray of semisolid, semiliquid metal, spread out over a wide arc by the explosive charge, came down on the defense force.

It could have been worse for them, but not by much. The defense post was situated behind a support pillar, like any of those that were built into the corridors of a standard redoubt to support the circular structure of the tunnels. It wasn't wide enough to shelter the full complement of the party, and so a makeshift barrier against standard blasterfire had been built up from old sandbags that were usually used to sh.o.r.e up those parts of the redoubt that hadn't been properly finished before the nukecaust and so were p.r.o.ne to leakage from the earth beyond the walls. The material encasing the sand was porous and fibrous, and the shower of hot metal set fire to the thin covering. Although the sand underneath would rapidly extinguish the fire, it wouldn't do it quickly enough to stop the spread of the flames onto the one-piece uniforms of the sec crew.

Originally all the suits worn by the Illuminated Ones had been coated with a fire-resistant chemical that was a safety measure. Unfortunately for the sec force right there and then, the coating had worn over the years, leaving the artificial fibers of the suits p.r.o.ne to catch fire at the slightest spark.

The cries of the sec men hit by the molten shrapnel, or suddenly finding themselves on fire, acted as the spur Ryan needed.

"Now!" the one-eyed warrior roared before stepping into the middle of the elevator car, Steyr raised and finger flexed on the trigger. It was then that he exclaimed as he saw the devastation outside.

The triumphant Gate warriors didn't stop to question the poor tactics and spontaneous idiocy that had led to the sec force ruining their own sec post. They rushed past the startled Ryan, leaving him-for once-lagging a split second in the wake of his fellow warriors as they blasted those Illuminated Ones who were still able to raise their laser blasters.

It crossed Ryan's mind that if it was to be this easy, there had to be a catch somewhere. Fate never made anything this simple without some kind of payback.

THE DIMLY LIT STAIRWELL was empty, and echoed even to the soft footfalls of the attacking party.

"They have to be beyond the lower level door," J.B. murmured as quietly as he could to those behind him. "The one way to do this is to trigger the sec door and then fan out two at a time, heads down, with those at the rear providing covering fire."

There was a general murmur of agreement from those behind him, and the Armorer continued down, a step at a time, until he reached the final bend before the first-level sec door. The lights below had been either shot out or had burned out over the years-all of them. Something twitched inside J.B.'s gut, and he stopped the party's progress with an outstretched arm. For all the lights to be gone at such a crucial spot was a little too much of a coincidence for his liking, a growing suspicion that was enhanced when, after everyone had stopped, the sudden lack of footfalls in the shaft made whoever was waiting get a little too daring.

To the Armorer's amazement, the glint of a laser blaster cut through the darkness, the leaking light from the upper level of the stairwell catching on the metal of the barrel for a fraction of a second.

They were actually waiting on the stairwell, at a point where they would have to come into the open to attack, and from below. It crossed the Armorer's mind that the rad-blasted children of pox-ridden gaudies would have had more sense than that, but he wasn't about to let a golden opportunity to get the enemy pa.s.s him by.

J.B. raised his Uzi and without a word of warning to the Gate people behind him let fly with a stream of blasterfire that raked the darkness below. Because of the bend in the stairwell, he judged that it would be harder for the sec force below to fire back from seclusion than it would be for his attackers. J.B. could rake a wide field of fire with the Uzi, and also use the concrete walls to ricochet sh.e.l.ls into the angle beyond the line of fire. He couldn't shoot with accuracy, but that wasn't necessary. It would cause confusion and retreat, and that was enough at this stage. For the one thing that immediately sprang to his steel trap of a mind was this: the laser blasters could only fire straight, and if they hit the concrete walls surrounding his party, then they would score the walls with their laser heat, but they couldn't ricochet. As long as his people stayed back and out of direct line, there was nothing the sec force could do except step out directly into the line of fire to get at them.

The Amazon warriors behind J.B. didn't need to be told what was going on. Seeing the way in which he angled part of firing sweep, two of them used their blasters to try to ricochet off the walls. The others held back as the line of firing would be too crowded, and would necessitate their coming out into the open. They could hear cries of pain from below as blasterfire bit home.

The area below was suddenly lit as the sec door to the first level was keyed open, and light from the corridor beyond filtered into the darkness.

"Hold fire," J.B. cried, ceasing his own efforts. The echoes of the bullets died away, and the attacking party could hear the sounds of a hurried retreat into the corridor below, along with the moans of those members of the attacking party who hadn't been chilled, but had been wounded enough to necessitate their companions dragging them to safety.

"Forward-triple red," J.B. commanded. "They may have time to get into a defensive position, so tactics as before, but hit the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds hard. With luck they'll be right open."

THE SERVICE HATCH into the corridor was cobwebbed on the inside, the dust motes reflected in the beam of artificial light that bled through the grille and into the narrow duct where Jak was crouched, almost bent double.

On the other side of the hatch lay a corridor that should, if his sense of direction was as good as he believed, be on the first level of the redoubt. The tortuous climb down the shafts and the blind gropings in the direction of the airflow had led them to a point where the concrete of the walls had been replaced by smoothly riveted metal. Tight, but of a questionable thickness, the rivets had given way quite easily under pressure and a few well-placed kicks from Jak's heavy combat boots. Having made it thus far with little noise, it seemed almost absurd to then create such a loud disturbance. However, there was no option, and at least they were now in the final leg of the journey. By the time any noise was detected, located, and forces sent to intercept, they should be out into the open and ready to fight.

It was a notion that didn't bear too much examination, but so far it was holding up.

Jak looked through the grille onto the corridor outside, twisting his neck until the muscles screamed at him for relief, trying to wring every last degree of turn and view out of the restricted window.

The corridor was empty. And quiet.

Could it be that their breakthrough had been undetected? Jak sniffed at the air, trying to separate the scents that drifted through the grille. There was no fear, no sweat that was fresh. No smell of oil or cordite, no smell of tingling ozone, which he'd noticed faintly after the laser blasters had been fired. And the sound: there was quiet and there was silence.

Jak's ears were those of a highly attuned hunter, and his sense of sound was heightened by the compensation for the lack of pigment and oversensitivity of his albino eyes. They were ears that could hear the scuttle of a c.o.c.kroach at a hundred yards, and pinpoint its direction.

There was something; not near, not yet, but moving his way. Whether to intercept them or by chance he couldn't tell. That didn't matter. He judged they had time to get out of the duct and into the corridor.

He spoke as he began to probe the edges of the duct with busy fingers, information gathering on its strong and weak points.

"Corridor empty, but sec on way. From quarter mile at double speed. If can get this f.u.c.ker..."

As he spoke, his fingers found the nuts that secured the grille on the inside to metal brackets. They weren't set exactly in the corners, but indented slightly. The nuts were loose, the screws oxidized over the years by air that was more contaminated than the redoubt's designers would have wished.

Strong white fingers gripped the nuts, taking two at a time. The tension and power in his grip made what little color there was in his skin bleed out at the knuckle joints, so that in the dust-moted beam his fingers seemed to glow incandescent. Under such pressure, the nuts gave easily, and Jak shuffled back, kicking at the grille with a force muted by the constrictions of s.p.a.ce. He hoped that the screws securing the outer part of the grille were also in such poor condition.

The grille crashed to the floor, and Jak propelled himself forward and out onto the corridor floor, snaking upright with a grace and ease that made of it one sinuous movement. The Gate warriors in his party followed, each of them displaying the same grace and ease of movement, belying the strain of being cramped in the shafts for so long.

"Sec from down there," Jak said tersely, indicating the corridor leading off to a T-junction on the left. "We take these pillars as cover. Sound like just running-hit f.u.c.kers hard."

With only the briefest of acknowledgments and the maximum of speed, the Amazons joined the albino in taking cover behind the pillars, the same tactic used by the sec force itself in the detachment that, at that moment, was being decimated by Ryan and Gloria's war party.

"This too easy," Jak breathed, almost to himself. It was part triumph and part disbelief, a sense that something had to surely go wrong. If not in battle, then in their ultimate aim. For a split second, the mat-trans dream that had seemed to spark off this whole sequence of events went through his head. His friends chilled, and Gloria walking off in another direction. Could that have some meaning, some hidden truth? Jak was a simple man in that way. He didn't deal in symbols. But nonetheless, something could screw up, now that they were so close to what both parties wanted so badly.

He shook his head to clear it and focused instead on the sound of running feet as they came toward him. He could even hear the heavy breathing of the running sec force, unused to such exertion.

In a flash, he could see that was their problem: no real combat, probably in their lifetime. No wonder progress was so easy. He smiled, lips drawn back over his sharp white teeth, his hunting and predatory instincts taking the foreground.

"Ready to chill," he whispered to the Amazons. He could feel them around him, their instincts also heightened. The air was full of the scent of the hunter, discernible only to those who were born to chill.

He raised his Colt Python, clicked back the hammer, his finger taut on the trigger, ready to apply pressure at just the right time. He was hidden from the junction by the pillar, and as the sec force rounded the corner, he let them advance a few yards into the corridor, so that the rear of the party, which, at a quick head count, revealed twelve in a loose formation of threes, was around the angle of the junction and unable to duck back easily. Without even bothering to give instruction, he knew that the Amazons would also sense the best tactic and hold their fire until the last sec man was clear.

Jak cleared the pillar enough to raise and sight his blaster. A scream of pent up fury escaped his lips and rent the air as the first shot boomed from the Magnum blaster. It hit the middle sec man in the front row full in the chest, leaving a bloodied and ribboned mess of flesh and bone where an orange one-piece suit had once been. The man jerked back, his own forward, running momentum countered by the superior momentum and force of the slug.

Around the albino the sound of fire from the Amazon's handblasters rent the air, a volley of continuous explosions that filled the air with the bitter smell of cordite.

It was over in a matter of seconds. The entire sec party was wiped out without a returned shot of any kind. Like pins in a bowling alley knocked out by a ball of infinitely greater force than they could imagine, the sec team had been taken by surprise and their reaction time found wanting.

And this was no exercise.

Jak skipped over the chilled bodies, checking that none was alive, and also to see if any had a conventional blaster that he could use to augment the Gate's own weaponry.

There were only the laser blasters, and Jak gave a sharp glare at one of the Amazons who followed him and picked up one of the rifles.

"Margia's got some, and she reckons they could be okay," the small blond warrior said to him. She had short, spa.r.s.e hair framing large eyes that were questioning even as she spoke. Jak had trained with her and knew she would accept his word.

"No, Cat, not in real firelight. Seen it, can't trust it. Better with what know right now, with what reliable." He patted the Colt Python that he still held.