Palaces of Light (12 page)

“Dark night!” he said once more, his capacity for anything other than exclamation taken away by the sheer weirdness of this experience. It was like no other kind of fight they had ever—willingly or unwillingly—entered into. “It’ll take them about an hour before they make the circuit and hit where Ryan and the others are. Time enough for us to get in and out. Let’s move it.”

Jak merely grunted his agreement and continued his climb. Krysty, at his back, wondered if Ryan and the others would still be on the ascent, or would assume that the riders had somehow vanquished them and be on their way to find out. It was something that wouldn’t ever have occurred to J.B. and made him wonder what was going on in Krysty’s head. She had been the one most affected by the weird mind games of the trip to the canyon, and now it seemed as though it was making it hard for her to focus. It should have been obvious from the fact that there had been no firefight that Ryan and the others wouldn’t assume the worst, and would carry on the mission trusting to the companions on this side to make the ascent unharmed.

He said nothing to her except to assure her that Ryan would continue, but kept to himself the doubt about her being one hundred percent on the game. It was a worry that, as they reached the last few hundred yards and could now smell and hear the city just ahead and above them, was a concern.

Jak indicated that they should halt and hold back. They were at a slight bend in the canyon wall, enough to shield them from view and also to block their own view of the city as it awoke to the day.

The smell was appalling. In contrast to the gleaming appearance of the buildings from a distance, close up they could smell the blood and rotting flesh, the stench of dirt and feces, and the strong ammonia of urine that hadn’t been cleared. In the rituals of the day, there was obviously little room for simple cleaning.

No, the ville elders had higher, better things to occupy them. The ritual slaughter was part of that. And that was what made them truly dangerous.

“What do we do now?” Krysty asked quietly.

“We wait,” J.B. replied simply. And trust in Ryan, he added to himself.

* * *

R
YAN
, D
OC
AND
Mildred now found themselves in a similar position on the far side of the city, except that they didn’t have the luxury of cover. Their path, though winding in its progress, now led them on a straight line toward the first of the mysterious palaces. Like the fighters on the far side, they were struck by the disparity between the appalling stench of the city as opposed to the gleaming beauty of the old buildings.

Any such further reflection was driven from their minds by the appearance of a man in front of them. He was wearing a multicolored coat, and his pockmarked, blank visage was betrayed only by the burning fire that made his black eyes gleam, hinting at a barely controlled savagery. Without even having time to consciously think about it, Ryan realized that this was the puppet master who had worked his insidious magic before the world went black for Baron K and his people.

More than that, as he stared at them without blinking, it seemed as though his hand merely twitched, and a blaster appeared in it. Long-barreled and heavy, it was a revolver that J.B. would have pinned down in a second. Ryan, for his part, took an educated guess at a Colt .44, accurate in a strong hand and liable to make a nasty hole in a man, even at the range that loomed between them.

How the hell had he managed to get that into his fist so bastard quick? Ryan was a good draw, but even so he had barely pulled the SIG-Sauer from its holster, and was in no position to fire first.

He should have been. The blaster should already have been in his hand before they reached this point. Something was slowing him: tiredness, torpor or some outside malign force, perhaps. It didn’t matter. It was about to cost him his life.

Or at least, that was what he thought before the quiet of the morning was shattered by the sharp crack of Mildred’s Czech-made ZKR. At his back, Mildred had been faster, and more alert. She was also a far better shot, at this distance, than any of them.

The barrel of the Colt .44 jerked up in the air, then drooped downward and fell as the pockmarked man’s lifeless fingers let free their grip on the blaster. It fell to the ground, hammer cocked, and exploded into life as it hit, the slug harmlessly gouging out a chunk of the rock floor. As for the former wielder of the blaster, his impassive face showed a sudden and almost comical surprise as a small round hole neatly appeared in the center of his forehead, a small trickle of blood bubbling around the bottom edge of the hole. It was only when he crumpled and hit the ground that the wet slap of the back of his head hitting the rock revealed that the exit wound from the small-bore caliber of the ZKR had made a more considerable impact on exit.

“Come on,” Ryan yelled, charging forward, as much to rouse himself from the momentary shock of staring death in the face as to whip up Mildred and Doc. The time for subterfuge had passed. Now they had to hit and hit hard, hoping that Jak and the others were ready in position.

As the pockmarked man hit the deck, Ryan was already past him, blaster now in hand and his mind refocused on the task ahead. Doc and Mildred were at his heels, each knowing what had to be done. They had to hit hard and get out fast. Their task was to cause chaos and pull back so that they could rendezvous with Jak, J.B. and Krysty…and hopefully the children of the ville.

The crack of the blaster had attracted some unwelcome attention. Ryan had hoped that they would be able to create chaos before they drew fire, but it was obviously not going to be their day for luck. For, as they moved from the canyon and onto the ledge of the city itself, they could see that there were already armed assailants coming to meet them.

The city extended for almost five hundred yards along the ledge. To create a diversion that would be of some use to their companions, they would have ideally liked to have made some ground along the ledge before having to tackle any opposition. It wasn’t to be.

A wave of young men and women exited one of the buildings. There was no time to scan their faces to see if there was anyone among them who could be in their target group. The young people poured from the doorway and the windows of the building, yelling incoherently. They weren’t armed with blasters, but they carried the tools they had been using to construct the circle and the makeshift altar that had been the sacrificial site.

Wave upon wave descended on them. The sheer weight of numbers threatened to overwhelm Ryan and his people before they even had a chance to move. Nonetheless, survival was paramount. With a muttered curse Doc put paid to the charge with a blast from the LeMat. The shot spread out over the distance between them, the hot metal scorching as it rent flesh and bone. The screams of agony cut through the cries of attack and caused the crowd to pull back, allowing the three fighters to move forward with a little more ease. Mildred and Ryan used their handblasters to pick off the more dangerous elements—those who would have the extra courage to move past the pack.

They had to move in a manner that was by its nature perilous. The clear pathway ahead took them along the lip of the ledge. One charge regardless of personal safety could take them over the edge and back down the way they had come. Yet this was the only way that was unobstructed, taking them as it did over the sacrificial circle with a sudden drop in temperature that only registered subconsciously but nonetheless spurred them onward.

Now it was getting harder. The noise had brought out more people from the buildings, so that the ledge was swarming with hostile opposition. Ryan felt as though they were being pushed to the edge, with nothing but empty air at their backs. Among the faces that blurred into a mass in front of them, weaving in and out of the younger crowd, Ryan could see older men and women, with a harder edge to their eyes that made them stand out. They were moving faster, and with more purpose. Soon, they would be on the three companions, and it would be too late to take action.

The one-eyed man cast an anxious glance to the side of him. In just a snatched second it was almost impossible to tell how far along the ledge they had come, but the back of his brain worked furiously. From where he knew the circle lay after their forty-eight hours of observation, and from how far they had moved beyond it, he was able to make a rough guess that told him they were almost central to the city itself.

He could only hope that Jak and the others had taken their cue from the first blasts of the firefight and had moved into the city on their part of the mission, using the cover that Ryan and his team was providing. Fireblast! he thought. It certainly seemed as though they had drawn most of the populace down on them.

Even as these thoughts went across Ryan’s mind, he was picking off those of the mob in front of them who would dare to step forward. Flanking him, Doc and Mildred were doing the same.

But that couldn’t continue indefinitely. Indeed, even in the short time they had been firing, the crowd had crept palpably closer.

Why hadn’t the older, harder-eyed members of the crowd blasted them? They carried blasters, after all. Ryan could see that as he stared into the mob.

No, they had other ideas—capture and keep. Well, he had no intention of having his heart ripped out while it was still beating. It was time to create the real diversion, spread confusion and get the hell out. If they could…

He turned to Mildred and yelled at her. It came out as a wordless imprecation, but she knew what it meant. Letting her ZKR fall, she dipped into a pocket and her hand emerged with two gas grens.

In one fluid movement she pulled the pins with her teeth and tossed the bombs high and far into the crowd, noting with an amusement she hadn’t the time to feel the looks of confusion and bemusement on the crowd as the grens casually dropped into their midst.

And then, with a dull thump, they detonated… .

Chapter Eleven

“Now!”

As soon as the first crack of blasterfire had sounded, Jak led his companions into the middle of the city. They moved swiftly and with an assurance that almost seemed to make them invisible. Calculating that the sudden chaos caused by the diversionary attack would provide cover, they made their move. As the people began to pour out of the buildings and onto a ledge that was actually far too narrow for the numbers that were now jostling shoulder to shoulder with the interlopers, it became apparent that to move with any attempt at subterfuge and hesitation would make them stand out among the chaos that reigned around them. So to move swiftly and decisively, as though belonging in that space, would be by far the best thing to do.

It was difficult enough to keep an eye out for one another as the young people rushed aimlessly around them, let alone to try to spot the ones they were searching for. But they had little time, and in the middle of the panic, their sense of purpose seemed to give them the calm to focus on what they needed to do.

While the kids were thronging around them, too, they had the advantage that the elders of the city wouldn’t be able to spot them so easily. Those who had emerged were concentrating on moving across to the area where Ryan, Doc and Mildred were mounting their raid. For now, Jak, Krysty and J.B. had free rein.

It soon became apparent from the way that the groups of young moved around them, only parting to let them through in certain patterns, that despite the influence they may be under, they were still bonded and ran together in the groups by which they had been abducted. So it was that, in the midst of the formless shouting and the stench of fear that added to the already overpowering odor of the city, they could see individually that their prey would most likely still be gathered in an almost feral pack.

J.B. doubted that would make it easier, and was beginning to doubt the sense of their course of action, when out of the milling throng the solution almost literally bumped into him. There, in the middle of a pack of kids ranging from about twelve to eighteen, was a tall, rangy girl with tangled flowing black hair, a chiseled nose, and eyes that were almost as wild and dark as her mane.

He’d never seen the girl before, but she was so much like her father and the description he had provided that there was no doubting that she was Baron K’s daughter. And, by the same token, those around her had to be the rest of the kids who had been taken, and who they had been dispatched to find. She was about to brush past him when he reached out and grabbed her by the shoulders, swinging her around so that she looked him right in the face.

Or should that be looked right through him. Her eyes were sightless and piercing, focused on something that only she could see. For a moment she was still, and then she started to squirm, her mouth contorting in a formless wail of anger and frustration as she tried to pull herself away.

J.B. could see that whatever else she may be, she was in no fit state to be receptive to anything he might have to say. He tried to hold on to her, even though it was like trying to keep a grip on water, and turned to yell for Krysty and Jak, hoping that he could make himself heard above the general melee. He called, staring around and hoping that he would be able to catch sight of them. And that it would be quick. In response to the girl’s wordless cries of distress, those who had been moving in a pack were turning on J.B., jostling around him. They weren’t hostile—they moved too slowly and in too much of a stupor for that—but nonetheless they still had weight of numbers, and he tightened his grip on the girl as he felt fingers and hands clutch and pull at him, trying to separate him from the girl.

Dark night! he thought. Jak and Krysty better hurry. He could see two tall, older men moving through the throng with a greater deliberation. Although he had never seen them before, K’s description had been vivid enough for him to know they were two of the men who had visited the ville and spirited away these youngsters.

If they reached him, then the game was up.

“Come on, J.B., don’t make a big deal of it. She’s only a little girl after all.”

He felt two pairs of hands ripped away from his arm and chest before he heard Krysty’s wry tones. She joined him at his side, pushing back the kids who threatened to overwhelm them.

“They don’t look like they want to go,” he muttered through clenched teeth, still grappling with the girl as he started to drag her back the way they had come.

“Whatever these coldhearts feed them, it makes them subservient enough,” Krysty agreed. “Only one way to handle this.”

Before the Armorer had a chance to realize what she was about to do, Krysty pulled back her arm and delivered a roundhouse punch to the point of the girl’s jaw. J.B. saw the light go out in her eyes before her eyelids dropped and the rest of her followed suit.

“Aw, now I really didn’t want to do that,” he complained. “Now I’m going to have to carry her back the way we came, and she’s going to be bastard heavy after a while.”

“I get the feeling that’s going to be the least of our worries,” she remarked, looking across the milling crowd at the heads of the two tall men as they moved closer. Their grim, hard stares left no doubt as to their intent. “Shit, I wish Jak would show himself,” she added in an undertone.

And then a wry grin crept across her face. The albino teen might not have shown himself, or indeed been visible, but his presence was more than adequately felt. For as she looked across at the two men, first one and then the other vanished swiftly from view. It was as though they simply crumpled and folded up on themselves. Why this should be would have been a mystery if not for the fact that a spray of red shot from the throat of each a fraction of a second before they fell. A spray that seemed to draw the eye to the briefest gleam of metal, the merest flash of bone-white skin and dark fabric that was there and gone before it could be truly registered.

“Come on, let’s move,” she said to J.B., using her elbow to deflect one of the youths who was trying to grab her from behind, and both feeling and hearing the satisfying crunch of bone on bone as the grip was loosened and a slack-jawed voice groaned in surprise.

“Easy for you to say,” the Armorer said as he hefted the girl over his shoulder in a motion that was impeded not by her deadweight but by the actions of those who still sought to claw at him. He lashed out at them but was still thwarted in his intent by the necessity of only using one hand and a foot.

Krysty understood what he meant. As soon as she had freed herself enough to move, she was at his side, helping him to free himself. She would be able to take care of one side and ride shotgun through the crowd for the hampered J.B., but she would require Jak to make his way through the crowds and assist her if they were to have any chance. Right now they were doing little more than treading water, and at that were in danger of sinking beneath the tide of slow-moving but insistent youth who milled around them.

If she hadn’t been so busy punching and hacking her way through this tide, she would have expressed relief as the path suddenly opened in front of them, cleared by the flashing blades of Jak, a knife in each fist as he fought his way through.

“What you waiting for?” He grinned as he saw them.

Krysty cursed, which only made him laugh, but was thankful as she now found herself able to forge a path forward for herself and J.B. The Armorer had his hands full—literally—as he carried the girl with one arm and fended off grasping hands with the other. If she regained consciousness before they reached the path to the canyon, and some kind of clear way where they could outstrip the slow-moving horde, then he was in real trouble. If she struggled, she would take him down, and then they would be on him before he could protect himself.

Without having the need to speak, the three companions had made a decision that the baron’s daughter was the primary target. The kids who had been clawing at them and trying to stop them were also from the ville—the way they moved as a pack made this obvious—but they were beyond help. Whatever malign force was at work in the city, it had them firmly in its grip and there was no way that just the three friends could extract all of them, unwilling as they seemed to be.

Get the girl away first and worry about the others later: that was the best option. They couldn’t harm them, as they were all equally precious in terms of the jack they were worth if the companions were to take them home. And as they fought their way through this particular pack, that was why they used fists and boots, not blasters. Jak had palmed one of his knives, and was using it to slash a path but only if it hit fleshy areas and not organs. The other hand was empty, the knife secreted away as mysteriously as it had first appeared.

Now the grens had exploded, and gas drifted chokingly across the lip of the city. There was precious little breeze in the canyon other than that stirred by the mass movement of the people who had come out in answer to the first crack of blasterfire. But it was enough to push the mist of noxious vapor over to where Krysty, J.B. and Jak were struggling to make their way off the ledge. The first drifting wisps of gas started to tickle at the backs of their noses and throats, causing them to cough and wretch. They knew they had to move fast, before it took hold of them.

They were fortunate in two ways: first, the gas was sucked into the lungs of the milling crowd, unaware and perhaps even unknowing of what they were breathing in, causing them to falter in their attempts to stop the intruders. Second, the echoing crack and roar of blasterfire at their backs spoke to them of the diversionary tactics that were taking place. Doc’s LeMat and Mildred’s ZKR were each, in their own manner, distinctive sounds that could be picked out from the general melee, while Ryan’s SIG-Sauer was lost in the blur of handblaster and longblaster fire that answered the war party’s cover fire.

This latter firefight had undoubtedly attracted the majority of the older inhabitants of the city—they seemed, after all, to be the only ones who carried blasters in the gleaming palaces—and so left the second attack party with only the youngsters to fight their way through. Which, considering the burden that was handicapping J.B., was a major blessing.

They were in sight of a clear path, a steep rocky incline that would enable them to gain distance on the shambling crowd on their backs, their slowness now accentuated by the gas that was starting to decimate them as it took hold, paralyzing those who breathed too deeply and making them drop to the rock floor.

In sight, but not close enough. Suddenly, a bolt of pure pain shot through Krysty’s head. She screamed, falling and flailing as she lost control, knocking J.B. to one side.

The Armorer stumbled, staggered and fought to keep his balance and on his feet. But it was to no avail. The weight of Baron K’s unconscious daughter on his shoulder was enough to tip him. It was just bad luck. If Krysty had been at his other shoulder, then perhaps he might have been able to use the weight of the girl as a counterbalance. But she was in the perfect position to tilt him in such a way that her weight only added to his momentum. As he fell, he let go of the baron’s daughter, but too late to thrust out an arm and break his fall.

The unconscious girl’s flailing knee caught him in the side of his neck as his ribs impacted hard on the rock floor, driving the breath out of him as though with a hammer. That was bad enough, but the real damage was done by the knee, which caught his carotid artery. If felt as though the impact blocked the artery for a second, depriving his brain of blood and causing him to black out momentarily. That was all, but it was enough to cause his vision to blur and mist as he fought back nausea and the taste of bile in his throat. Desperately, he tried to get to his feet, but muddled messages from his brain wouldn’t let his limbs respond.

He knew he was down, and he was sure Krysty was, too, after that scream. That only left Jak to pull it out of the bag for them.

He couldn’t see what was happening to his left, but the rising swell of triumphant moaning told him that Jak was falling beneath the sheer weight of numbers. The occasional scream told him that the albino teen was going down fighting, as he would have expected, but that wasn’t enough. Jak was overrun.

They all were. He wondered vaguely, through the mist of pain, what had made Krysty scream and collapse in such a manner. It was completely without warning, and the suddenness of it had been the major contribution in their downfall. He wondered how Ryan’s side of the operation was doing, and what they would do if they got away and found that his companions hadn’t succeeded. He wondered again about what had made Krysty suddenly act as she had. He tried to fight the flashing lights and throbbing pain in his head, to make the limbs that felt simultaneously like lead and like elastic work as he wanted them, rather than at random.

And then some bastard kid kicked him in the head. The little fucker moved slowly and sluggishly like all of them, but to J.B.’s frustration he was even slower, even more sluggish. The kid’s boot connected with his temple and the lights flared brighter for a second before going out totally.

* * *

“W
HY
THE
FUCK
are we doing this?” Murphy moaned as they traipsed across the wasteland, the flat rock spreading across the horizon ahead of them.

“Because the baron says we have to. And are you gonna tell him you really can’t see why the fuck we’re bothering when it’s his daughter we’re tailing?” Taggart, the crater-faced and rake-thin sec man who had fought with K for almost as long as Murphy, shrugged and spit on the ground as he spoke.