“Cold?” he finally answered. “Yes. Big nightmare. Living corpses that. Why?”
“We all did,” Dean said. “Real rocky horror-show stuff, Dad.”
“But we all made it through the jump.” Doc, leaning against one of the chamber’s walls, idly tapped on the floor with the ferrule of his ebony sword stick, his gnarled fingers gripping the silver lion’s-head hilt. “The mental process was peculiarly unpleasant, possibly because of the partly open doorway. But that was then.”
“And this is now,” Ryan completed. “Someone give me a hand so I can get up?”
Krysty and Jak responded first, each of them stooping and helping Ryan to a more comfortable position, sitting with his back against one of the sky blue walls.
“Thanks. Thought for a moment there that I was going to throw up my last meal. Whatever that was.” He managed a thin smile. “Whenever that was.”
“In another country,” Doc said sonorously. “And besides, the wench is dead.”
Ryan didn’t feel like unraveling one of Doc’s runic sayings right then, so he let it pass.
“Anyone done a recce at all?” he asked.
J.B. replied. “Not yet. Haven’t even moved the door. Didn’t want to open it or close it until you got back with us. Couldn’t tell what might happen.”
Ryan nodded, wincing at the smothering pain that welled up from the back of his skull at the moment. “Safer.” He looked across the chamber, seeing that the heavy door still stood a few inches open. It had been a close call, and a lesson for any future jumps that they might make. If the gateway door had been left open just a little bit wider, Ryan suspected that none of them would have survived the jump.
Fighting to overcome a tsunami of nausea and vertigo, he heaved himself upright, closing his eye for a moment to check the mat-trans unit from rolling and rocking around.
“You all right, lover?” Krysty asked, her steadying hand on his arm. “Take it easy.”
“Be fine.”
“Want door open all way?”
Ryan nodded. “Might as well. Everyone get ready.” Suddenly he realized he was still unarmed. “Can I have my blaster back, J.B.?”
The heavy SIG-Sauer felt good in his hand. The Steyr SSG-70 was on the floor of the gateway, and he stooped to pick up the bolt-action rifle, slinging it across his shoulder.
The albino teenager stood by the armaglass door, the Colt Python cocked and ready in his right hand, left hand on the door, he waited for Ryan to give the signal.
“Yeah,” the one-eyed man said.
THE ANTEROOM WAS DIRTY, with piles of plaster and dust that seemed to have fallen from the cracked ceiling. There was a dartboard on one wall, the concrete pitted all around it by near misses. Three darts were still stuck in the board.
“Twenty-six scored,” Doc said quietly.
“Looks like this place took a pounding.” J.E pointed into the control room, where a third of the overhead strip lights had malfunctioned.
There were long cracks in the corners, and more of the ceiling had come down, laying a film of white dust over the flickering dials of the control consoles.
“Amazed it’s still running and working.” Ryan bolstered his blaster, seeing that the double sec doors into the section were firmly closed.
“Buried deep.” J.B. brushed a finger through the dirt. “Don’t know what we’re going to find up top. Could be that the rest of the redoubt’s been wiped.”
Doc groaned. “May all of the Saints-who from their labors rest-preserve me from having to make yet another jump out of this place.”
“No hurry to decide.” Mildred tapped one of the desk monitors that had been standing dull and silent. For a moment it flickered into a frenetic life, colored lights glowing and dancing, disks whirring, digital display changing faster than the eye could catch.
Then it ceased to work. It simply stopped.
“Sec cameras all dead,” Jak said, pointing to the small electronic ob boxes placed in the high corners of the big room.
“You feel anything, Krysty?”
She shook her head. “Nothing of life, lover. Nothing of the living. Just see a sort of fog of ancient dust. Place has the feel of a very old tomb.”