"You're looking at a sleeper cabin before the MIL-spec mods." Briggs slid into another bout of technical show-and-tell. "I made the bunk bed myself, rigged it together out of an old G-couch. These babies were designed to protect fighter pilots from the stress of all that violent hot-s.h.i.t maneuvering."

Jenner looked incredulously at the huge piece of equipment and couldn't imagine how Briggs wedged the d.a.m.n thing there in the first place. The slate-grey couch looked like it was made out of a smooth, high-impact plastic. A braid of cables stuck out from one end, clipped nubs splayed like multi-color porcupine quills.

"The main block isn't powered but I got Delkins in the motorpool to run a low-voltage line to the gelpacks. Talk about a bed that fits like a glove. A fellah lookin' to goldbrick for a few hours would be hard-pressed to find a better hiding place."

Briggs rolled a critical eye at Jenner. "Only don't even think about pulling that s.h.i.t on me 'cause that's the first place I'll look."

Jenner nodded his concession, seeing no gain to be made with a verbal response.

Briggs continued in an offhand tone. "Anyway, some of that commo s.h.i.t back there is pretty hush-hush, stuff they don't want falling into enemy hands. If you look under the G-couch you'll see how serious they are about it."

Jenner craned his neck to get a look beneath the gloss grey frame. Nestled in a coil of heavy black cable sat a bundle of bricks that looked like off-white plasticine clay. Each brick was wrapped in clear cellophane and carried the bold designation THERMALITE. A narrow metal cylinder, about the diameter of a drinking straw, had been driven through the wrapper and deep into the center of each brick. Wires ran from the exposed ends to a tight bundle that swept back behind the couch.

"That, boy," Briggs said, "is a twenty-kilo package of military-grade incendiary. As 'cindies go, Therms' the real deal. It'll do zero to three thousand degrees in a hundredth of a second. That's enough heat to turn steel into steam. If things go south in a big way, the last thing we're supposed to do is. .h.i.t the magic b.u.t.ton and the whole rig goes up in a puff of smoke."

Jenner's sense of comfort, much like a puff of smoke, evaporated. A foul edge crept back into his mood as he peered at the stack of incendiary. Three thousand degrees.

"Technically," Briggs continued with an utter lack of concern in his voice, "you could still sleep back there, but any more I just use it to store extra gear and supplies. It's amazing what you can scrounge up when you look."

As if to emphasize the point, Briggs hooked a thumb back towards the compartment. "See that?"

The crumpled ma.s.s of violently fluorescent orange was hard to miss. Even badly smudged with grease, it practically glowed in the dark. Jenner nodded absently, his eyes and mind still focused on the Thermalite.

"Well, that's a genu-wine Garsons Drysuit, just about the best deep-sea survival wear ever developed. I scored it from Koslovski in surplus for a bottle of homebrew hooch."

Jenner's brow knotted as he looked at the suit's rubbery exterior. Sealable flaps covered each heavy-duty zipper. Black-rubber fingers stuck out from one side of the bungie-corded bundle. Thick-soled boots hung from the opposing side.

"I hate to be the one to bring you a news flash Sarge, but there ain't even a lake on this hunk of rock, much less an ocean." A brief veneer of intolerance played across Jenner's face, much like a child's disdain for the unbearable stupidity of a parent.

The sergeant's eyes narrowed. "Yeah, like you'd have a clue. Do you have any idea how cold the nights get up top around here? Real cold! The heating system in that sumb.i.t.c.h will keep my a.s.s toasty in a deep-freeze. It's made of rubberized Kevlar that was designed to stand up to shark bite, so it sure as h.e.l.l will stand up to a pounding wind. Now, you tell me Mr. Brain Surgeon, if we get stranded somewhere up top and have to bail this beast, what are you planning on wearing-- a T-shirt?"

A retort formed on Jenner's lips that he just as quickly discarded. Instead, he looked sullenly at the bare metal floorboards, muttered something under his breath, then fell silent.

Briggs snorted again. "Uh-huh, thought so." His teeth worked the cigar with a fervor that appeared to match his level of agitation. Jenner fixed his eyes on the dash and a long wordless interval ticked by before Briggs rummaged through some of the other junk in the darkness. "Got some other stuff, spare parts, shotgun, stack of MREs, couple grenades--"

"Oh great", Jenner spat, "what goes better with twenty keys of Thermalite than a couple of grenades? Guess the PX was out of nukes that day, huh?"

Briggs rolled his eyes. "Geeze boy! You always this whiney?" He didn't wait for a reply. "Listen, that compartment is sealed up as tight as the d.a.m.n tank, maybe tighter. As far as HQ is concerned, the electronics back there are more important than we are so they're not about to let 'em get toasted by accident. The walls are reinforced and the wiring is top-grade. The detonator is on it's own power source and it's shielded all to h.e.l.l. You can't flip the switch cover without a key and without the switch you'd have to shoot the d.a.m.n Thermalite to get it to cook off." He leaned forward, his bloodshot eyes fixed on Jenner's, "and we're not about to start firing guns in here, now are we?"

"No."

"All right then, quit yer sissy-a.s.s bellyaching and start paying attention. Come tomorrow we're gonna find out just how good a driver you are."

CHAPTER 5.

Jenner sighed wearily as an arc of yellow light swept through the darkness, rotating to the pulsing drone of a warning claxon. With a hammer-on-anvil ring, hydraulic rams withdrew a dozen steel lugs back into the reinforced doorframe. A widening shaft of light poured out as the sixteen-ton doors parted with a deep, grinding rumble. With a final, metallic clang the elevator doors stood open.

The surge of relief helped him ignore Briggs' most recent jab. "What'd I tell ya? Out and back. That wasn't so bad, was it?"

Truth be told, Jenner thought, "miserable" would have been a better description.

Driving the huge truck out to the chem facility had been a constant struggle, followed by a long wait as the empty hex tank was swapped for a full one. After wrangling a swimming pool full of hex back across the rough terrain, the lights of the compound looked like heaven.

Most of the tarmac was framed by a thick berm of gravel and slag that had been bulldozed into an expedient barricade. The top of the berm was laced with twisted coils of razor-ribbon. A pair of concrete guard towers rose above the makeshift wall, defining the forward edge of the courtyard.

The southern edge backed directly into the base of the mountain. Tons of stone had been cut away to create a sheer wall that rose nearly thirty meters. Centered in that flat expanse of granite, a lone window gazed down upon the courtyard. The wide elevator door centered directly below the window.

Orange-vested figures emerged from the mammoth elevator, followed by two small yellow tractors that bristled with antannae. The vehicles moved to either side of the truck while technicians scurried about hauling power lines and air hoses.

Jenner tossed a weary nod, "What's the deal?"

"Security runs a scan of the tank," Briggs replied. "Gotta make sure we didn't pick up anything like a tracking device or a bomb."

"Aside from the one we packed ourselves?"

Briggs gave two rapid strokes on the fetid cigar but otherwise ignored the comment. "That scanner can look clean through the truck, it'll even spot cracks in the tank wall. Better to know out here before we haul this thing into the shaft. Last time we had a leak was when some idiot opened the pressure valve on the input line without checking to see that the backflush had been set." Briggs paused, watching Jenner process the information. "You wouldn't happen to know what happened next, wouldja?"

"No backflush," Jenner chewed his lip and squinted. "Well, the Hex would have run through the lines under pressure, but instead of flowing into the tank it would have bounced at the backflush valves and routed into the overflow tank."

"Yeah..." Briggs coaxed.

"At normal line pressure the overflow tank would have maxed out pretty quick. The extra would have nowhere to go but out, and end up as spillage." The private looked up to see Briggs staring blankly. Jenner grimaced, wondering which part of the process he had botched.

Before Jenner could utter a retraction, the grey stubble on Briggs' craggy jaw parted. Slowly, unbelievably, a grin crawled across the sergeant's face. "Well I'll be d.a.m.ned son, you go off and read a book or something when I wasn't looking?"

Jenner exhaled fully and smiled in return. "Nah," he replied off-handedly, "I've got a harda.s.s boss who beats this c.r.a.p into my head."

"Wha-- Oh, harda.s.s is it?" Briggs snorted in mock anger as he s.n.a.t.c.hed the cap from his head and swatted Jenner's chest with a lazy backhand smack. "Well it d.a.m.n sure would take a harda.s.s to pound some sense into that thick skull of yours!"

The rough camaraderie came as close to a genuine moment of friendship as Jenner could recall, and he liked the feeling.

Brilliant light flared at the truck's two forward corners, drawing closer as the scanner units crawled down the length of the truck in tandem. As the glow intensified, Jenner noted a foreign sound over the gusting wind, a whistle that grew deeper and louder.

Briggs snapped around, his eyes flared wide. "INCOMING!"

The whistle stopped abruptly as the base of the western guard tower exploded. Huge chunks of shattered concrete skipped across the tarmac as another descending whine cut through the thunder.

"Punch it!" Briggs screamed, stabbing a finger at the elevator.

As a second explosion thundered somewhere astern, Jenner shoved the truck's throttle into overdrive. The invisible gravitic cushion swelled abruptly, rolling over one of the scanners and stamping it flat into the tarmac. Technicians scattered as the truck lurched forward.

A third round slammed high on the stone wall, blasting rock from the face of the mountain. Granite hail rained from clouds of smoke.

Briggs jerked around in his seat, eyes fixed on the wounded guard tower. With a groan, the structure leaned unsteadily. Briggs' fist beat madly on the dash as he shouted, "Go, go, go!"

Darkness swallowed the truck as it lunged into the elevator. Jenner was thrown forward as the nose slammed into the far wall, but his eyes remained glued to the rear-view screen. The ponderous doors closed all-too-slowly.

Another descending shriek was punctuated by concussion as a starburst of white heat blotted out the fuel depot. Jenner barely had time to blink before his entire world was absorbed by a ball of blinding light.

Jenner hung somewhere between consciousness and coma. Throbbing pain wrestled with oily nausea for control of what little feeling he had left. Somewhere in the distance, a dull grinding sound echoed unevenly, displaced and intangible as though underwater.

The windshield screen was cracked and lifeless. A sharp tang of ozone clotted the air, mixed with the acrid stench of burned rubber. Half the circuits in the truck had likely fried.

Still, he noted vaguely, another smell permeated the darkness, an odor that he knew for some reason should be important. Dull, coppery; a familiar smell.

With great effort, David Jenner raised a trembling hand to his face. The fingers came away streaked with blood. He stared blankly at the red sheen, unable to divine a reason for its presence. Half-closed eyes swung downward in detached curiosity, trying to see if more of the stuff was oozing from his chest or legs.

The search was purely mechanical, the act of a brain on autopilot. Past fear, past pain, Jenner tried to grasp what had happened.

Depot blew, he remembered, big f.u.c.kin' explosion.

While the doors had blunted much of the blast, the air pressure in the shaft had spiked with a terrible violence, popping rivets and blood vessels alike. Might have even popped welded steel seams. A wave of fear-driven nausea rippled through Jenner's core as his mind latched onto the implications.

A distant buzz droned angrily from the damage control screen. Hanging askew on a cracked mount, the flat panel flickered sporadically. Through one eye Jenner made out a fuzzy schematic of the truck splattered with red lights. At least three gravitic coils were dead and one section of reactive armor had cooked off.

It hurt like h.e.l.l to focus, and for a moment Jenner let the eye close once more. A moment pa.s.sed as he drew a deep breath through clenched teeth. With a grunt, Jenner opened his eye again and struggled to bring the display back into clarity, his fear of a damaged tank increasing.

He fumbled with a series of b.u.t.tons in an effort to cycle the display modes, but the procedure seemed mired in mental amber. In frustration, he banged the display with a blood-slick hand, adding several more spots of red to the image.

"She held."

Jenner's head swiveled around at the sound of Briggs' voice. The sharp movement invoked a fresh wave of nausea.

In the dim glow of flickering monitors, Jenner could see the sergeant slumped against his chair, head lolled back at an odd angle, eyes closed. A meandering red stream oozed quietly from Briggs' right ear. His skin had lost most of it's tanned-leather hue, faded now to a shade of dusty grey. He looked dead.

"If she'da blown," Briggs' slurred loudly, as though unable to hear his own voice, "mosta th' cab would be dissolvin' right now."

With a charged hum, the damage console flickered again. Static writhed across the screen before it dropped to black, then blossomed back to life. Slowly, a set of familiar gauges began to resolve from out of the video noise. Clearer now, readable. Structural integrity was intact, volume was solid, internal pressure right on the mark.

d.a.m.n, Jenner marveled. She had held together.

The private leaned back and hissed a long, slow sigh of relief. Even breathing hurt, Jenner noted sourly, but it beat the h.e.l.l out of the alternative.

For several long moments the two men sat like the dead and listened to the metallic groans of the platform as it dropped deeper and deeper into the mineshaft. The normal drone of the elevator was creased by a high-pitched squeal of metal dragging on metal. A discordant vibration rattled the elevator car.

"Lift musta been damaged by the blast," Jenner mumbled. Maybe the plate of reactive armor that fired off had gotten wedged between the elevator and the wall and now dragged against the stone surface like a fingernail on an oversized chalkboard. Whatever it was, Jenner prayed that the elevator would hold out until they reached the bottom.

The truck lurched hard and the ring of steel on steel shuddered through the cab. Jenner sucked in his breath, a fresh stab of fear piercing his heart. Motion stopped. A series of smaller clangs followed in tight sequence as pneumatic clamps locked the elevator into place.

Jenner exhaled a long overdue breath. We made it.

He fumbled for the seatbelt latch but his left arm failed to work properly. Pain lanced up his entire left side as his weight shifted. In growing frustration he dragged a trembling right hand across his body to reach the aluminum clasp, which popped open with a sharp click. Jenner turned to paw at the door handle when a flashing screen caught his eye.

"Huh?" Jenner's hand froze, fingers brushing the door latch.

"What?" Briggs' lips moved, though his eyes remained closed.

"Sensors. Somethin' in the tank."

Jenner cursed quietly and blinked hard, trying to clear the cotton from his mind. He reached out with his right hand and tapped a command on the console. Glyphs skittered across the screen.

Briggs opened his eyes and with a wheezy groan leaned across the center console. "Dammit boy, it's just--" Briggs' words trailed into silence. Vibration patterns emanated from inside the tank, distinct patterns. Jenner watched as the computer filtered for echo and reflection, resolving six rough forms in the center of the disturbance. Forms with arms and legs. Jenner saw Briggs' eyes go wide.

"Briggs?" Jenner's voice was hesitant; the warning light in the back of his mind had already kicked into overdrive. "Briggs, what the h.e.l.l is that?"

Briggs' left hand slammed against the dash and the cab's rear door slid open. "Get in the back!" he shouted as he grappled with his seat restraints. The voice carried a ragged note of terror.

Raw fear burned bright in Brigg's eyes. In the s.p.a.ce of a single heartbeat, that fear jumped across the cab and buried its frigid claws along the length of Jenner's spine. The icy touch was numbing. No thought, only the need to move.

Jenner's broken left arm folded back under his weight as he scrambled for the open rear door. He pitched forward and his head crashed with a thud between the seats. For a moment he was wedged in a ridiculous, face-down posture. Panic-driven limbs flailed madly and somersaulted him through the narrow doorway. He hit the base of the gravitic couch with a thud.

"Help me!" The ragged timber of Briggs' voice spiked as he shouted from the cab. "Dammit boy, gimme a hand!"

Jenner flopped to one side and looked through the door, past Briggs. Across the cab a brilliant flash of red pulsed angrily: WARNING.

The dash seemed to draw away as Jenner's world stretched out into an edgeless blur. A hand beckoned with surreal slowness. Eddie's fingers-- no, Jenner shook his head, Briggs, Briggs' fingers dripped with dark blood. The old man's face looked back, eyes wide with terror as the claxon droned.

WARNING WARNING WARNING.

Jenner banged the switch and the compartment door slammed shut. Tears ran down his face as he fell back into the darkness, away from the screams and the pounding at the door. When the explosion tore through the heart of the truck, even the screams were lost.

CHAPTER 6.