James Axler – Stoneface

Howard fidgeted with his tie. “Are you done with me?”

Ryan ignored him, running around the console and grabbing the handle of the gateway chamber. Mat-trans jumps usually had a debilitating effect, making the jumpers weak and often sick for a while. Ryan hoped that this short jump wouldn’t incapacitate his friends. He might need their firepower.

When he popped open the door, he saw Jak, Krysty, Doc and J.B. struggling to rise. They looked a bit dizzy, a little disoriented, but not faint or sluggish. Ryan helped Krysty to her feet, and she held him in a crushing embrace.

J.B. struggled to his feet, helping Doc up. He grinned, but there was worry in his eyes. As was his habit, he had taken off his spectacles before the jump. “Good to see you. Where the hell’s Millie?”

“Right here, John.” Mildred pushed her way into the chamber and grabbed J.B.’s face with both hands, kissing him passionately. Ryan noted that it was probably a good thing J.B. wasn’t wearing his glasses. Mildred’s face was caked with dried blood, and she was covered by what looked like a gray dust. The plaits of her hair were snarled in a wild, Medusa-like tangle.

She met Ryan’s glance, looked him up and down and said, “You look like shit.”

Jak and Doc, feeling a little left out of the reunion, moved to the chamber door, peering around it at the control room beyond. The alarm Klaxons had fallen silent, and the abrupt quiet was almost as nerve-scratching as the warbling tones.

“What’s plan?” Jak demanded. “Take over place, give up or what?”

“I hope it’s a ‘what,’ ” Doc muttered, blowing on his hands. “I do not find the climate congenial.”

“I want to get the fuck out of this frozen nightmare,” Ryan declared. “We can make a direct jump back to that installation in New Mexico from here. Just have to punch a key with that strange triangle symbol.”

“What’ll keep the freezies here from following us?” Krysty asked.

Ryan shook his head. “Luck mebbe.”

Jak, in an urgent whisper, said, “Men with blasters, creepy-crawling here.”

Ryan cursed, peering over Jak’s head. A few of the Anthill’s staff had recovered from their shock, armed themselves and were moving toward the gateway.

J.B. dug around in his sack and with a triumphant snort produced a small plastic-shelled sphere. “Here’s a piece of luck, Ryan.”

Looking at it, Ryan said, “A gren. We’ll need more than that.”

“This is more than that. It’s a Misar MU 5-G fragger, with a kill radius of about thirty feet. We’re talking about a handful of hell here. More than that, it has a time pencil fuse.”

That captured Ryan’s attention. It was an old device, developed over a hundred years before. A thin-walled metal tube, similar in shape to a pencil, was inserted into the gren, and a turn of a small screw atop the MU 5-G crushed the tube, releasing a corrosive liquid, which then ate through a wire restraining a sprung firing pin. It was the next best thing to a clockwork time bomb.

“Great,” Ryan said, taking it from J.B.’s hands. “I’ll ask you later where you picked it up. The rest of you cover me and get ready to jump.”

Ryan shouldered the door of the chamber open and made a run for the console. In a far corner, a trio of men had barricaded themselves behind an overturned table. One of them saw him and shouted. Gun barrels shifted his way.

Emptying the Walther’s clip in their direction, Ryan saw wood shredding and bodies twitching. A few bursts of gunfire came from across the control room, and he triggered the SIG-Sauer as he ran. He heard J.B.’s Uzi and Krysty’s Smith amp; Wesson blasting from behind him. The big room trembled with shattering glass and the sound of metal being punctured. Bullets punched through the air around him, ricocheting away from the armaglass of the gateway chamber.

Skidding to a stop at the console, Ryan ducked low as he worked with the gren, turning the knurled timing screw until he heard a crunch. He placed the sphere on the floor next to the hard plastic support pedestal, then raised his head up to punch in the destination. As he did, movement flickered across the monitor.