Ritual Chill

Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter One

Blackness whirled around, some parts darker than others, some so deep they were no longer black but something else, something to which he couldn’t put a name. Something that was sucking him in and tearing him apart at the same time: inclusion and expulsion in the same breath. Breath of what? This was just darkness: but a darkness that seemed to have sentience and life of its own.

Like a bellows that fanned flames, it seemed to puff and blow until finally it expelled him, sending him spinning upward, dizzyingly until…

He opened his eye, wincing at the light. It was, to all intents and purposes, muted, but to his vision seemed harsh and glaring. The icy blue orb watered as he blinked, slowly adjusting.

Fireblast, would there ever be a time when the mattrans jump became easier? Would there ever be a time when he could look at the opaque armaglass and the disks inlaid on the floor of the chamber, without a feeling of revulsion or nausea? Without—yes, he had to admit it—fear? Fear that he wouldn’t awaken from the vivid nightmares of the jump, fear that his disassembled being would be scattered into a dimension he couldn’t comprehend, let alone name. A fear that the solution was becoming worse than the problem.

The problem being that to escape whatever firefight they had become embroiled in, to escape whatever wasteland they had been traversing, they used the mattrans in the redoubt from which they had initially emerged. Of course there were exceptions: sometimes the redoubt had been destroyed in action, sometimes their journey had taken them far from their initial point of contact. Mostly, though, they would return to the chamber to effect an evacuation.

So where would they end up? They never really knew, only that there was a good chance it would be better than where they had recently departed. That’s if the redoubt hadn’t been damaged and they weren’t transmitted into a mass of rock or a watery grave. Which was always a possibility. But it hadn’t happened yet, and a continued existence was about riding your luck and playing the odds.

Sometimes, though, in the seconds that seemingly stretched into agonizing hours as they began to emerge from the unconsciousness of a jump, Ryan began to wonder about the effect it had on their bodies and their minds. To have your very being disassembled, scrambled and shot across vast distances before being reconstituted once more: what kind of damage did that do over time?

Ryan Cawdor pulled himself to his feet, shaky and unsteady, the world around him spinning rapidly one way, then slowly the opposite, as it gained equilibrium. He felt a rise of bile in his throat and spit a gob of phlegm onto the chamber floor, hoping it would halt the rising nausea. Breathing deeply, closing his eye, he felt his guts settle.

Around him the others were beginning to stir. Krysty and Mildred were the sharpest, dragging themselves from their stupor, climbing unsteadily to their feet and checking their weapons and themselves, in that order. J. B. Dix took a little longer, choking slightly as he came around, his unfocused eyes seemingly small and beady without his spectacles, only coming to life when he placed them on his sharp nose.

Which left Doc and Jak, always the last to come around. And, as always, Jak greeted their new surroundings with a spray of vomit, bile spewing from his guts as he tried to adjust himself to being made whole once again. His body shook with the spasms as he braced himself, on all fours, against the floor of the chamber before heaving. Watching him, Ryan wondered how much more of this the albino could take before he was running on empty, with nothing left to do except to spew himself inside out.

But what options did they have? Without this mode of travel, they would have bought the farm long ago. There were too many enemies, too many troubles behind them to stop running, even if it did sometimes seem as though they never actually moved.

Doc muttered to himself, only the odd syllable breaking surface and making sense. Sense in that it was something recognizable, not that there was any kind of logic running through his discourse. Sweat plastered his hair to his forehead, smearing streaks across the pale skin, a pallor like a man who was already chilled.

Mildred moved across to him, slowly, still feeling her own way out of the jump.

“I don’t know why he’s still with us,” she muttered almost to herself. “By rights, he should have crumbled to dust a long time ago.”

Ryan gave her a skewed grin. “Doc’s got no choice, like all of us. Stay with it or buy the farm. Who’d want to do that by their own choice?”

Eventually, Doc’s eyeballs turned from in on themselves and slowly began to come to terms with the world around him.

“My dear Dr. Wyeth.” His voice sounded husky as Mildred solidified in front of his eyes. “I had the most wonderful dream. That I was free—”

“You’re free now,” Mildred said softly. “At least, you’re with us and you’re okay. And you’re still alive.”

Doc grimaced. “Is that how you define freedom? Does it not occur to you that we seem to be at the mercy of some blind idiot deity who pushes us on, even when we would wish to stop? An entertainment for Olympians who would wish us to fight the same battles once and again, for all eternity? Never resting, never stopping, always being driven on to constant, repeated combat for nothing more than their own gratification.”

“I don’t think I would have put it quite like that,” Mildred mused. “But I do wonder how much more of a battering a body can take before it just gives up. And for what?”

“Staying alive,” Ryan answered. “That’s all. Anything else is—shit, what did that old book say? Gravy.”

Krysty gave him a curious glance. “What kind of an old book was that, and what the hell did it mean?”

Ryan shook his head, regretting it as some of the dizziness returned. “It was just some old book that I found once, but I figured that what it meant was that keeping out of shit was the main thing, and anything else good was extra and should be appreciated.”

“Nice sentiment, strange expression.” Krysty shrugged.

“Yeah. But any kind of words won’t secure this shit, so let’s get to it,” Ryan replied, figuring that it was time to stop thinking and to see where they had landed.

IT WAS A SHOCK. All redoubts followed similar patterns, were designed from the same predark plans that meant the old predark sec forces could move from redoubt to redoubt and familiarize themselves with the layout immediately, know where everything was in the case of a sudden alert. Not that it had done any of them much good when the nukecaust had come, because no matter where you were, you had to surface sooner or later. And if you were sec, you were supposed to be fighting this war.

But within the fantasy world of the twentieth-century military, it all made sense: keep these things to a basic design and U.S. soldiers could live down there for as long as it took.

Which was, ultimately, good news for the companions, who could find their way around any redoubt in which they landed. Except that this time they wouldn’t have to: they already knew it.

There were many similarities, but all the same every redoubt had its differences and unique points. Some of these were to do with the specific function allotted to the base in its predark life. Some were to do with the ravages of time in the period since. It meant that each redoubt that existed, no matter how long it had been silent, still had its own specific character.

This one hadn’t been empty that long. No sooner had Ryan and the companions carried out basic maneuvers and secured the area than the familiarity of this particular redoubt impressed itself upon them.

“Can’t be,” J.B. said. “Hasn’t happened all that often.”

“If you consider that there are only a finite number of these infernal places and that the laws of probability dictate—”

“Doc, shut up.” Mildred cut across him. “Are you saying that we’ve been here before? ’Cause I sure as hell don’t get any bells ringing.”

“You haven’t been here before,” Ryan answered with emphasis. “Neither has Jak. But the rest of us know this place only too well.”

“Only too well indeed,” Doc echoed with a touch of melancholy in his voice. He began to wander down the corridor outside the mat-trans control room. He appeared to know where he was going.

“Safe doing that?” Jak questioned.