“It was a damn silly thing,” Mildred chided playfully, stuffing more rags into a duffel bag sitting on the floor. “Made you look a little like Lincoln.”
“A wise and great man.”
“Who got shot in the back of the head.”
“Bad luck,” Jak added.
“Man makes his own luck,” Dean stated, sounding exactly like his father.
Ryan nodded. Amazing good luck hadn’t gotten him the 7.62 mm rounds now loaded into his Steyr SSG-70. He had searched for sniper rifles among the weaponry in the Quonset hut, and near a Barrett 1-A had found a case of Steyr longblasters and boxes of ammo, along with the rotary mag they used. Nothing lucky about it, just hard work and brains, that’s all. Silas was mad, but not a fool, and he had stocked only the best weapons in the armory of his Shiloh base.
Mildred was struggling to balance her load of ammo pouches, plas charges and the med kit. Incredibly, it was from a time after she went into cryo-sleep and had some items she couldn’t identify. That made it worth more than anything imaginable. What fantastic breakthroughs had been accomplished just before skydark while she slumbered in her frozen coffin?
“Hey, what was that?” Krysty asked, snicking off the safety of the longblaster with a sweep of her thumb. She started toward the stairs in a crouch and paused at the bottom step.
The rest of the companions braced for an attack, and the redhead tensely waited, her hair motionless about her lovely face as the woman strained to catch the sound again. Minutes passed, and she slowly, reluctantly, relaxed.
“Must have been some of the automatic machinery,” Krysty said hesitantly, then glanced at the silent water pump across the room. The base did a lot of repairs all by itself, monitoring water pressure, and the elevator ran up and down every few days to keep the cables greased. Was that what she had heard?
“What did you think it was?” Doc asked, tightly gripping the AK-47. The scholar was well versed in the operation of automatic weapons, even though he much preferred the solid reliability of a revolver. Blasters like his LeMat and Jak’s Colt Python .357 Magnum didn’t even have a jam factor. They couldn’t jam, unlike a rapidfire. A person could load a revolver, stick it somewhere and pull it out ten years later to shoot. Good as gold, they were. With an automatic, a person was forced to unload the clip and ease off bolts constantly. Damn things required more maintenance than a Thoroughbred colt. But in the forthcoming donnybrook, Doc knew this was the tool needed to assure success. So be it, the LeMat was ready to go if the Kalashnikov failed.
Krysty started to speak just as the water pump for the fusion reactor began to thump softly. “Just the pump,” she replied with a sigh, her hair moving in gentle waves. “Guess I’m a little on edge. Too much coffee at breakfast.”
“You sure?” Ryan demanded, glancing up the stairs. Nothing was in sight, and no noise could be heard over the steadily working pump.
She smiled. “Yeah, I’m sure. Come on, let’s get going. We have a long walk to reach the quarry.”
Lighting their torches, the companions opened the door and were startled to see a couple of runts curled into fetal positions on the rocky ground, snoring soundly. As the fluorescent light washed over the muties, they awoke with a start and backed away, bowing and scraping to the tall norms.
“Machine god!” one cried out fearfully. “We waited!”
Ryan glowered down at the diminutive being. “As I ordered,” he said. “Has all been done that I asked?”
“Yes, god!” the other said, holding a three-fingered hand before its pale face to block out the bright illumination of the redoubt. “We obey all!”
“Show me,” Ryan commanded, and strode down the tunnel, making the runts race to keep abreast of the big man.
Once more, Dean stayed behind and watched the adults proceed deeper into the underground. Somebody had to make sure the entrance to the redoubt was still available when they returned. The heavy door didn’t even have a handle or lock on the outside. If it closed, the companions would have been forced to go outside and cross open country to enter the redoubt through the front door.