Dark Reckoning by James Axler

“Sheffield,” Ryan muttered, filing the name away.

“An advisory note. There is a pistol in the CO’s office. Do not use it for the obvious reason. And do not use the door in the bottom level. The predark tunnels are full of savage muties, but light scares them away. Well, most of the time.”

“Thanks for the info,” J.B. muttered.

“If it’s true,” Mildred warned.

The screen crackled for a moment. “The mutie outside the redoubt is for Ryan and the others. Hopefully, it will kill them as painfully as possible. If possible, I’ll cage a puma in the art vault as a backup trap. Certainly there are lots of them to capture in the nearby woods. If there is time, I will also have the machines haul over more supplies and weapons from redoubt 5. The code for gaining access to the main armory is tattooed on my leg at the hip. Simply reverse the numbers, or else the sec hunter droids will attack.”

“Crafty old bastard didn’t trust a soul,” Krysty observed.

“Except this Sheffield,” Ryan commented coldly. He was listening to the vid, but also paying close attention to the room behind the man. It looked like a tech lab, with lots of comps, and a stack of rainbow disks was visible in an open desk drawer. There was a window covered with iron bars and the silhouette of a man holding a longblaster. This was inside the Complex they had seen before, the old bastard’s private rooms.

Pausing to mop sweat off his brow, Silas blew his nose and tucked the cloth away. “I hope that I was able to watch Tanner die screaming for mercy.” He twitched. “Maybe the sight will even make my nightmares stop and I will erase this disk myself. Sleep, oh, God, what I would give for some sleep without dreams of Tanner and his bitch killing me over and over again.” The man slumped and shook as if with fever.

“I wish you well completing the Great Plan. Once the atmosphere is clean again, normal rain will wash away the radiation, feed crops and the population will grow quickly. Soon there will be hundreds of thousands of healthy people to become citizens of the New America. Our America. An America of absolute law and order.”

“Baron Silas,” Jak said, curling a lip.

The picture of Silas leaned toward the screen. “On a matter of security, Front Royal defied our authority and killed our representative, Major Overton. As soon as you have killed Dr. Tanner, assuming that I did not, then I strongly suggest you melt the ville into the ground. It would not be wise to let the word spread that anybody challenged our authority and lived.”

“Think the ville is still there?” Krysty asked anxiously.

Trying to control the fury within, Ryan merely shrugged. There was no way of knowing if Front Royal still stood or was only a smoking hole in the ground. Hopefully, the unexpected death of Silas and the hunt for the companions screwed up the plans of the blues. There may still be a chance of saving his ancestral home. Load in another reason to ace the blues.

The vid of the old man paused for a few moments, as if to allow Sheffield to write down the idea, then continued. “Now a couple of suggestions. Never let the people know where you keep the computers that control the dish. Always make somebody else your public ruler of the baronies. Let any assassin go after him, and you can rule forever as the power behind the throne of New America.”

There was a long pause. “I guess that is all. Good luck, William. Godspeed.” The picture on the monitor flickered. “Greetings,” Silas said.

With a fast jab, Doc hit the Escape key and the vid disk stopped, frozen in the middle of a word.

“Arranged for his own successor,” Mildred mused. “But only told the man bits and pieces of how things work to keep him faithful. What a paranoid.”

“I liked hearing about the nightmares.” J.B. grinned. “Seems as if they were driving him insane from lack of sleep.”

“Good,” Doc said grimly. “Dad, if this Sheffield isn’t here,” Dean said slowly, “then mebbe Silas never gave him the password.”