the trade in body parts that had centered around old military installations, it
was not a thought on which to dwell.
“Stupes may not be so stupe after all,” Ryan murmured. “The only thing we can do
is keep moving to the armory, then be on triple red for an ambush. Seems to be
the only place it can happen.”
They advanced in line, still keeping alert. In all their travels they had yet to
come across a redoubt where the vanadium-steel sec doors could be closed in any
other way than by punching in the code on the wall-mounted panels. It seemed
unlikely, then, that they could be trapped by their enemies sealing off a
section of corridor by remote triggering of the doors. Then again, they’d never
jumped into a redoubt that had a population that was actually maintaining it, or
seemed to have any idea how the old comp systems worked.
All the corridors were deserted. The only signs of life were the detritus of
people moving out in a hurry: a clipboard and pen that lay on the floor; another
mop and bucket similar to the one belonging to the chilled maintenance man; a
frayed and worn service cap, with a threadbare insignia.
It seemed obvious that whoever commanded the redoubt had pulled out all
personnel to some secure place without sounding an alarm. That indicated a
strong sense of discipline among that personnel.
By the time they reached the location of the armory, all of them were feeling
strung out. The complete silence was unnerving. In other redoubts it had been
normal, but here—where they knew the redoubt was still a base of some kind—the
silence was eerie.
The sec door to the armory was raised. From their oblique approach angle, Ryan
could see into the room. It appeared unoccupied, the ranks and boxes of
blasters, grens and ammunition undisturbed by human presence.
There was, however, still half of the armory that was hidden from view by the
angle.
“Too quiet,” Jak mouthed into Ryan’s ear. “Too empty. Want us there.”
Every instinct told Ryan that Jak was correct. The armory, too, was deserted.
Dean stated what they were all thinking. “If it is empty, that’s ’cause they
want us in there. Once we’re in there, we’re trapped.”
All it would take would be the release of the sec door to the armory, and all
seven of them would be trapped inside. They’d have all the weapons in the
redoubt, but it wouldn’t do them any good against being starved to death, or
gassed by a nerve gren or by some kind of nerve-gas supply fed into the air
circulation. From bitter experience they all knew that no gren or plas-ex could
penetrate the vanadium steel—always assuming that they could have survived the
impact blast from inside the armory. Or that it wouldn’t trigger off every other
gren, shell, cartridge or piece of plas-ex in there.
“Simple solution,” J.B. told them. “Half of us stay here on watch. At least that
way some of us will stay on the outside.”
“Mebbe,” Ryan answered. “But mebbe that just leaves us trapped in different ways
and our forces halved. Better we stay together right now.”
“But for what?” Krysty asked with a shiver. “We’ve come up against some real
evil, but this is triple weird. This is just so…so innocent somehow. There’s no
sense of pleasure in chilling going on here.”
As she spoke, they became aware of the rumble of heavy wheels on the concrete
floor, and the high whine of an electric engine.
“Krysty, there’s nothing innocent about that baby,” Mildred husked in an awed
voice as a bizarre wag turned the far corner of the corridor.
IN THE WEAPONS-DEVELOPMENT lab, Gen Wallace perched his enormous bulk on the
groaning stool, its wheels squeaking in protest as he rocked the stool back and
forth. His fingers hovered nervously over the keyboard, using the keys to guide
the remote wag. It hadn’t been used for several generations, and it was only
thanks to the continued diligence of the weapons-development team that the wag
still worked. They hadn’t actually developed any weapons for five generations,
but the blueprints left by their ancestors were used to assiduously strip and