James Axler – Stoneface

Doc resheathed his sword, armed himself with one of the machine pistols and moved toward the door. “I could still do with another cup of coffee.”

The streets of Helskel were no longer empty. People were converging on the eatery from all points of the compass, some shouting questions, others looking only mildly interested. Krysty, Jak, Doc and J.B. held them at bay with gun barrels and threatening scowls.

They trotted up the street, trying to cover all directions with their eyes, ears and blasters. Their pace wasn’t slow, but it should have been faster.

From ahead, they heard the sec men running to cut them off, the creak of leather boots, the thud of footfalls and the metallic clink of weapons. There were over a dozen of them, racing from the direction of the wag compound. They fanned out in a circle, gun barrels bristling, eyes glinting with the desire to kill.

Krysty took it all in, surveying the blasters and the men behind them. “Time for a judgment call,” she announced.

Her Tec-10 dropped into the dust, and she placed her hands on top of her head. One by one, her companions did the same.

Chapter Twenty-One

Mildred and Ryan looked about them. The floor was surfaced with a highly polished light blue material, as were the smooth, curving walls. Bending, Ryan rubbed his hand over the floor, then looked at his fingers.

“Clean. You could eat off it. Looks like it’s made of some kind of vanadium alloy. How do they keep it this way?”

Mildred squinted at the floor. “A low-level electrostatic field, probably. Right before skydark, hospitals were experimenting with similar devices to keep operating rooms completely sterile. The field in here prevents dust and foreign particles from entering, pushing them toward the tunnel, like a giant whisk broom. That’s the detritus we walked through when we came in.” Though they looked for them, there was no indication of spy eyes or security cameras. They moved carefully among the boxes, crates, vehicles, sculptures and tables holding electronic parts and even more crates. There seemed to be an order in which the artifacts were stored, though none was cataloged by name or even number. It required all of Ryan’s willpower to resist the temptation to stop and examine everything.

“Kind of reminds me of crazy old Quint’s redoubt in Alaska,” Ryan said. “Except this place seems even bigger, and the relics aren’t touched by time. Mebbe that electrostatic field you mentioned protects them.”

Mildred only nodded. She remembered J.B.’s tales of the strange complex operated by an incestuous madman.

As they wended a path through the artifacts, both noticed it was growing colder. The temperature seemed to have dropped by ten degrees. Ryan finally put on his gloves, the ones with the index fingers snipped off to allow easy access to triggers.

“Any ideas on how they keep it so cold in here?” Ryan asked.

“Must be a huge air-conditioning system,” Mildred answered, “with giant circulating fans somewhere, like the blast freezers they used to have in food-processing plants. Must be a terrific energy drain to pump air this frigid through the entire complex.”

“Probably have nuclear power, like most of the redoubts we’ve seen.”

They passed several yellow four-wheeled contraptions outfitted with long, front-projecting prongs that Mildred identified as forklifts.

“What happens to the people when we knock out the cold circulation system?” Ryan wanted to know.

Mildred shrugged. “That depends.”

“On what?”

“If their metabolic rates have been artificially reduced, through cybernetic alteration and organ transplants, just so they can survive in such low temperatures, the result of raising the temperature could be catastrophic. Depending on the age of their original soft tissues and organs they could begin to decay almost immediately. That’s what happens in cryonics when a subject is accidently thawed out.”

They continued walking through the vast space, the floor and walls echoing oddly to their footsteps.

Mildred craned her neck, looking up at the ceiling. “The shielding in here must be fantastically absorbent, not just for radiation, but for sound.”

Gesturing behind him to a long, massively built wag bearing a chrome-plated Winnebago logo, Ryan said, “There’s got to be a big cargo mat-trans gateway in here. There’s no way a fleet of that many wags could have gotten up here any other way.”