Invasion from Uranus (12 page)

Walking closer, I heard the boots of my powerarmor clank on something hard instead of thumping on dirt and saw we were walking on a prewar road of smooth concrete. Hadn't seen one of these in a while. The concrete strip cut along the edge of a high cliff, a beautiful blue water lake to the right, the low

waves cresting over the roadway to cascade down the other side in a steady rumble.

As I watched, a fat trout leapt from the lake and caught a crow in its fanged mouth. The black bird screamed, wildly flapping its wings, as the carnivorous fish gracefully dove back into the water with its living meal and vanished from sight.

With a flick of my wrist, I opened a small service panel in Hobart's thick metal arm and checked the indicators. "No radiation," I announced with a sigh of relief. "For a moment I was afraid we had walked straight into another nuke crater. Just like that one near Seattle."

IT'S CALLED SETTLE NOW, he scrolled politely, the words repeating as a whisper in my earplug.

"Yeah, right," I said with a weary smile. "Sorry. I keep forgetting."

WELL, THE WORLD HAS CHANGED A LOT SINCE YOU ESCAPED FROM THAT CRYOGENIC FREEZER UNIT LAST YEAR.

True enough. I had been visiting a cousin who worked at a military lab when the nuclear warhammer fell. We each grabbed a cryogenic chamber to ride out the atomic firestorm, and I awoke 500 years later in another section of the country. Where my cousin was located now, or even if she was alive, I had no

idea. Digging my way to the surface I found a brand new world, most of it delighted to try and eat me. Or worse, put me in chains. According to the history records, during the Cataclysm some sort of genetic virus had been unleashed to infect the flora and the fauna of Earth, mutating most of it into new species, some benign, some deadly; intelligent lizards, animated plants, giant spiders, devil bunnies, you name it. Next came the bonus of hard radiation from the nuclear holocaust of the Three Day War. Then add all of the bizarre technology left over from the Shadow Age, and anything was possible these days. Here I was, Jason Montgomery, a video store clerk from the 20th

century, walking around in my 22nd century suit of sentient powerarmor in the 25th century. Welcome to Gamma Terra.

In the beginning, I did a lot of running away from stuff until accidentally finding the H*O*B*A*R*T class powerarmor in a moldy junk yard. What the letters stand for was long gone into the mists of time, and my buddy wanted to discover their meaning just as much as I would like to find my lost cousin. Or go home. But that was impossible. This was my new home, for better or worse.

Careful of my footing, I stole a glance over the edge of the cliff. Whew, that was a long way to the bottom, bare rocks jutting up from the misty stream below like the teeth of a dead dragon. "Hobart, could we survive such a fall?"

Mathematical equations briefly scrolled on all three of the monitors set above the faceplate of his helmet. NOPE. WE'D BE SPAM IN A CAN, PAL.

So Hobart did have limits. That was important to know. Maybe the ancient techs of the Shadow Age clearly weren't as amazing as all the old legends claimed.

Something odd about the falling sheet of water caught my attention, and studying the overflow I noticed the side of the cliff was smooth and gently curved like the string on a bow, with patches of concrete visible amid the dense array of leafy vines covering the titanic structure. Hey, this was no cliff, but a dam! The thick carpet of greenery successfully masking it as a natural waterfall. Hmm, the ancient gov of Washington had erected dozens of dams across the state, most of them blown to smithereens by the nukes. But this one seemed in excellent condition, almost pristine, aside from its ivy toupee. "An intact dam," I mused. "Maybe, a hydroelectric dam?"

COULD BE. MOST DAMS WERE CONSTRUCTED TO BE POWER PLANTS.

Listening to the falls thunder over the top of the concrete barrier, I felt my heart start to beat faster. Wow. This could be of incredible use these days when a lot of folks used candles to see at night, and ice was only a myth. A steady supply of electricity would be the hallmark for returning civilization

to this whole valley. There would be refrigeration for food, heat in the winter, hot water for baths, electrified fences to keep out the nasty mutants, lights, machines, computers! Heck, electric was civilization, even more so than fire.

"This is a dream come true!" I cried, spreading my arms. Hobart's massive limbs exactly copying the motion, but on a much grander scale.

THAT IS, he scrolled hesitantly. IF THE WATER HASN'T GOTTEN INSIDE TO RUST THE MACHINERY AND GENERATORS SOLID.

"Only one way to find out," I agreed reluctantly, slowly glancing about. There was no sign of a door, or any windows under the dense growth of ivy, but there had to be an entrance somewhere. "Guess the first thing would be to find some way inside and check to see how bad things are."

THEN OPEN THE FLOOD GATES TO MAKE THE LAKE WATER RUSH THROUGH THE SLUICES, INSTEAD OF OVER THE TOP.

"You know how to do that?"

CHECKING ONBOARD ENCYCLOPEDIA...YES, I DO.

"Great," I said, rubbing our gauntlets together. "Okay, let's go see, what we have."

COULD BE OCCUPIED ALREADY, he warned.

"Then we apologize for intruding and leave."

FAIR ENOUGH.

Watching our steps, I carefully waded through the overflow, fighting against being pushed towards the deadly edge of the dam before eventually reaching a dry area where a large clump of ivy afforded some protection from the steady wash. Then Hobart gave a beep. I glanced at the array of controls arched around me. Was he overheating? Low on power?

INCOMING! THREE O'CLOCK!

I spun around, my huge metal fists raised and ready for action. With a whine of servo-motors, Hobart turned me around to face in the proper direction.

Bursting out of the bushes came a creature that resembled a cougar, or a leopard maybe, but twice the normal size, with two extra legs and a writhing nest of tentacles sprouting from its torso. Another mutie and it didn't look friendly. As I raised Hobart's arm to fire his laser, its square goat-like eyes narrowed in raw hatred and it charged. Fast. Faster than I thought anything not rocket propelled could move. Twenty meters, ten....

Palming the control in my gauntlet, the Bedlow laser stabbed out twice, the scintillating energy beam shimmering into visibility as it cut through the moist air. In spites of its speed, I caught the thing once in the shoulder, and snipped off the tip of a tentacle. But a split second later, it hit us

like an express train on steroids. Hobart went over backwards, a dozen indicators on the control boards flashing red, the vid displays on all three of the overhead monitors turning into scrambled hash.

AYE CARUMBA!

Swinging a leg thick as a garbage can, I almost kicked the beast in the head, but it nimbly dodged out of the way, raking its claws along our side. I scrambled to my feet, firing the laser wildly, searing potholes in the concrete, sections of the runoff water exploding into steam. But I scored no hits.

WARNING, Hobart scrolled along the three monitors, the word repeated as a whisper in my earplug. SENSORS INDICATE DAMAGE TO MY DURALLOY HIDE.

"You mean this thing can actually hurt you?" I asked incredulously, dancing about trying to keep the mutie in front where I could see it. I fired the wrist laser again, and missed completely. Fast. This thing was really fast!

GIVEN TIME, THIS MUTANT COULD RIP ME APART, he scrolled in a serious font. THEN YOU.

Firing again, I used a word that had made my mother wash my mouth out with soap when I was a kid.

AN INTERESTING VISUAL, BUT HARDLY APPROPRIATE AT THIS JUNCTION.

Snarling and hissing, the leopard dove forward. I sidestepped, trying for a karate chop to its neck like they do in the movies. But I was no Jackie Chan and only slammed Hobart's metal hand into his own leg.

HEY!

Then the creature leapt on our back, wrapping its tentacles about Hobart's arms and head. My pal revved his stabilizing gyros to keep us standing while the cat savagely raked its claws along the outside of the powerarmor, seeking a quick kill. A lot of the pinhead camera lenses were now covered with fur, two of my monitors showing only fuzzy tan. Swell. I was half blind, and the cat was too close to use the sonic Screamer cannon built into Hobart's helmet. The feedback would have scrambled me like an egg in the shell.

Reaching out with my gauntlets, I grabbed the mutant and tried to throw it away. Now the writhing nest of tentacles began beating at the powerarmor and ripping off loose items. My canteen went flying, followed by the handaxe, then our bag of trade goods, books and spare ammo flying everywhere.

Flexing my muscles, I put on the squeeze, and the cat's weird eyes started to bulge.
Take that, kitty
! Then its tentacles rose and stabbed downward, denting Hobart in several places, one barbed tip actually piercing the shell of my buddy. I could only make an inarticulate noise as I stared at the foot of tentacle wiggling about inside the helmet only inches away from my face.

Before I could shout a command, Hobart went into action. The power gauges blazed with a surge of electricity as several hundred volts from the synergy cells of his atomic batteries were shunted to the outside of his armor. Crackling tendrils of blue crawled over the beast, igniting its fur. The cat yowled in pain, releasing its hold on us.

As Hobart raised a gauntlet, I palmed the switch in the gauntlet and fired the laser on its widest setting, maximum power. The beam caught the beast full in the face, its bizarre eyes instantly cooking white. Screaming insanely, the mutant crouched low in shock, then dashed away, colliding into trees and rocks as it raced back into the forest.

WELL DONE!

"Medium rare at best," I grunted, trying to catch my breath. However, there was a steady stream of cold air through the ragged hole in the armor, and a spot of sunlight on my denim shirt. A chill went through me that had nothing to do with the outside temperature. I grabbed the S&W .357 Magnum revolver

from its holster and held it a while for no sane reason.

"Any more coming?" I asked nervously.

ALL SENSORS SHOW CLEAR, Hobart scrolled. Then added aloud, "But they were clear just before the cat attacked. Maybe it doesn't register on infrared." He knew that speaking aloud reassured me.

"Great," I muttered, holstering the Magnum. "Just great."

Returning to the search, I grabbed a handful of ivy and ripped it free but found only blank concrete underneath. The next handful uncovered a sign too faded with age to read. It took an hour, but I finally found the entrance to the power plant. The door was a metal oval like one of those watertight hatches in a submarine, with a rotating wheel-lock to open and close the

portal. Pretty smart. Flooding was a natural threat to the equipment of a dam and the designers seemed to have planned for the worst.

The wheel-lock was rusted solid. A short dose of the Screamer shook it loose, but Hobart still had to exert maximum force to turn the stubborn mechanism. The door loudly creaked in protest as it opened, and we slipped inside with only a small crest of overflow following in after us. Inside the floor was an open grate for a couple of yards, additional protection from flooding, and the water flowed down and away, gurgling along the dusty pipes. Beyond that was a plain terrazzo floor stretching along a dim corridor with vague doors on both sides. Hobart clicked on his halogen forehead lights, and I checked a few

of the doors to ascertain they were merely offices full of ancient paperwork.

The water coolers were full of dead mold, and skeletons lay sprawled on the desk tops, the yellow bones and tattered strips of clothing disintegrating into dust at the arrival of fresh air.

At the end of the corridor, we broke apart a turnstile way too small for Hobart to pass through and walked past a guard station full of more crumbling bodies. I said a silent prayer for the deceased technicians, and moved on.

Another corridor led to a locker room full of safety shoes and hardhats, but since I was already wearing superior protection, we didn't stop. A set of double doors swung easily aside and we walked onto the main floor of the hydroelectric power plant.

The room was gigantic, banks of exposed relays and busbars lining the far wall, another full of meters and countless circuit breakers. Dominating the center of the plant were tremendous humps of metal rising meters high, each surrounded by an iron pipe railing marked with bright black and yellow warning

stripes. Those were the outer housings of the main generators sunk into the thick concrete floor. Big stuff, but then it was built to supply power to whole cities. A tiny dust devil danced along the floor from the breeze of our entrance, but nothing else stirred.

"Look at this place," I snorted in disgust. "Every piece of machinery and equipment is coated with cobwebs the size of the Kingdome."

SURE HATE TO MEET THE COB THAT MADE THOSE.

"Oh hush," I said, turning around to glance over the dead plant. The silence was almost deafening, not even the thundering waterfall could be heard. For one terrible moment, I had a flashback to being inside my cryogenic freezer, but shook it off.

"I wonder if this place has ever been discovered before?"

IF NOT, THEN IT'S OUR PROPERTY BY RIGHT OF SALVAGE.

"Possession is nine-tenths of the law," I agreed wholeheartedly.

"The other tenth being firepower," Hobart said aloud.

"Sad, but true."

Corrugated metal stairs led to a catwalk on the next level. Behind a dusty expanse of plexiglass was the main control room. Bingo. The door was locked, but Hobart simply turned the handle anyway until the sheath of the spindle cut through the bolt and we entered without any trouble.

"Child's play," I grinned.

EASY AS 3.14159!

The control room looked like the inside of Dr. Frankenstein's castle in those old black and white movies. There were dozens of consoles, monitors, gangbars, dials, lights, indicators, buttons, levers, keyboards, and a bazillion switches filling the control panels on three walls.