Siren Song

Krysty brought up her blaster and squeezed the trigger. The .38 fired at point-blank range, but the bullet deflected on a callused section of her attacker’s armor-like flesh. The scalie howled in pain and, in the same instant, reached out with his free hand and grabbed Krysty’s blaster by the muzzle, shoving it aside.

Krysty groaned as her wrist was bent backward. The scalie’s grip was as strong as a vise and she could feel the bones of her wrist grinding together as he clenched tighter.

Looming above Krysty, the mutie brought his glass blade down toward her face, hissing through clenched teeth in some eerie victory trill, the blade racing toward her.

Gaia help me, Krysty thought as she watched the blade carving the air. Hear my prayer and come to my aid in my time of need.

Then everything seemed to slow down; the blade hovered in the air as if it was a static object.

Krysty had grown up in Harmony ville where her mother, Sonja, had taught her how to tap into a wellspring of energy that she called Gaia power. Quite how that ability worked, no one could explain, but it drew on the Earth Mother herself to feed her with a burst of incredible strength and stamina. That “Gaia power” had saved Krysty’s life on numerous occasions, but it came at a cost—each time she used it, it ran out fast and she was left as weak as a kitten. Right now, Krysty figured that cost was worth it.

As she focused on her chant, Krysty could feel the power of the Earth Mother race through her like an electric current charging her veins. Krysty’s emerald eyes seemed to shine as she snatched the scalie’s wrist and pulled, altering the angle of the stabbing knife and yanking the scalie with such force that he went sailing from her with a howl of surprise. An instant later the scalie’s flying body slammed against the trunk of a nearby orange tree, and Krysty heard his neck snap.

She lay there breathing hard as the Gaia energies coursed through her, making her feel every whisper of breeze, every blade of grass, as it seared through her body like a fire. Moments later the power ebbed, then was gone.

Still lying in the grass, Ryan picked off the last few stragglers of the attacking party, watching through the scope as the remaining scalies ran for the safety of their pyramid-like home.

“You okay?” he asked, his single eye still fixed on the rifle’s scope.

“Been better, lover,” Krysty replied weakly. She was shaking, and her voice had that familiar tremble, the result of using the Gaia force.

When he looked at her, Krysty was checking her right wrist where the scalie had tried to break it.

“Time to go,” Ryan said.

Krysty nodded. Her wrist was still working, although she may sport a bruise there for the next few days. Ryan bent to help her to her feet. He put his arm around her shoulder and they headed toward the redoubt.

* * *

THEYCONVERGEDONthe redoubt entrance. Doc was using his faithful LeMat to, as he put it, “dissuade the locals from investigating too thoroughly.”

“Good thing, too,” J.B. said as he carried Ricky through the doors and into the corridor beyond. “Wouldn’t do for muties to learn about the mat-trans system. Before we know it, the redoubts would be overrun with crazed scalies only too happy to consume or destroy anything they come across.”

Other than sending another warning shot into the trees overlooking the redoubt entrance, Doc didn’t bother to reply. He pulled back from the entrance, his LeMat still jutting out the doors in search of new targets.

A moment later Ryan appeared with Krysty at his side. As they entered the redoubt, Krysty looked exhausted; her hair hung limply now and her movements were slow and heavy, as if she was underwater.

J.B. caught Ryan’s eye, an unspoken question there.

“She’s fine,” Ryan replied. “Just a little knocked out from her Gaia power.”

When J.B. said nothing, Ryan smiled.

“Had a bit of trouble finding a good spot,” Ryan said. “Did you miss us down there?”

J.B. shrugged. “I figured you’d come through for us,” he said. “Just, you know, quicker would have been better.”

Ryan nodded. “I’ll keep that in mind the next time I save your life. Ricky, are you okay?”

“Millie’ll look him over,” J.B. replied for the teen, “once we’re away from this rad-blasted pesthole.”

Doc punched in the code to close the doors. Once he had done that, he turned to his companions and touched his free hand to the brim of an imaginary hat. “I trust we are all ready to leave?”

Less than a minute later the five companions joined Jak and Mildred in the anteroom, then they all entered the mat-trans unit and sat on the floor, except for Ryan. The one-eyed man was last in, and he firmly shut the mat-trans door, initiating a jump. He quickly made his way to Krysty’s side and sat beside her. The mat-trans powered up.

All seven companions disappeared, leaving only the wispy trails of cooling gas and the whine of the air vents in their wake.

Chapter Two (#u582932a7-9dec-51a1-b93c-1e67f8ca06c2)

As the companions didn’t have the destination codes for the mat-trans unit, where they ended up was totally random. The jump could take them to a redoubt five hundred miles away or five thousand—or anywhere in the world, for that matter. The companions never knew where they’d arrived until they left the redoubt and got their bearings.

The effects of traveling by mat-trans made a person feel as though he or she had caught a swamp bug. The stomach rebelled, the body went weak and there was the urgent feeling that you were about to crap your pants. Thankfully, the journey itself was momentary, and once it passed—usually—so did the sickness.

The seven companions materialized in a shock of light, and even as they appeared the extractor fans of the mat-trans hummed to life, working their magic to clear the chamber of gas.

They were sitting in a different mat-trans chamber—its dimensions and design exactly like the one they had just left, the only difference being the color of its armaglass walls, which was a sort of red-violet, Ricky thought.

Breathing through clenched teeth, he clutched his side, his eyes screwed up in pain. He still hadn’t got used to the discorporation and reintegration of his molecules that was necessary for the mat-trans to shunt him to a new location, and the jarring only served to make the wound in his side feel worse. “Madre—” he muttered, doubling over in agony.

“Okay, Ricky,” Mildred said, hurrying across the small room to the teen’s side and opening her satchel of medical supplies. She moved a little unsteadily, still suffering from the aftereffects of the jump. Mildred was far more experienced in this than Ricky, but it could still catch her unawares sometimes, just the same way it caught everyone unawares sometimes. She usually had a concoction she called jump juice, which was helpful in settling the stomach, but she was all out.

As she moved, Mildred spotted the box. It loomed incongruously at the rear wall of the chamber, clicking to itself in a kind of constant hum. “Um...” Mildred began, stopping in her tracks. “Ryan? J.B.?”

Ryan was still recovering from the jump, but he moved to where Mildred had halted and scanned the device with his single blue eye. “Shit.”

It was about the size of a shoebox, roughly a foot across and half as deep, and the top was open to reveal a mass of wires and a timer. The timer was analog, like an old oven timer, and it clicked quietly to itself as it counted down.

“What the hell is that?” J.B. said, peering past Ryan’s shoulder. “Oh.”

“Three minutes,” Ryan said, reading the dial on the timer.

“Get everyone out of here,” J.B. instructed, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a tiny pair of wire cutters no bigger than nail scissors. His instruction was unnecessary. Ryan was already rousing Krysty and the others, ushering them to the chamber door. “Triple red, everyone,” Ryan ordered as he turned the door handle. They had less than three minutes. Ryan would wait. He knew why J.B. wanted to defuse the bomb—the importance of the mat-trans was impossible to put a value on. If they’d emerged in a hot zone or a settlement of crazies—or both, as they had in California—then this chamber may be their only means of escape.

J.B. had defused bombs before. They had three minutes, which meant they still had a chance.

Doc and Jak took out their blasters before they hurried through the doorway, while Krysty followed a little more slowly, still reeling from the blow of her post-Gaia comedown. Mildred helped Ricky through, glancing back at J.B. as the Armorer knelt to study the explosive device. A bomb inside the mat-trans meant someone had been in this redoubt, wherever it was.

Anyone with any brains would have gotten out double-quick as soon as they had placed the explosive, but Ryan wasn’t taking any chances. He flipped the safety off his SIG Sauer blaster, left the chamber and anteroom and marched across the control room.

It was a redoubt like the one they had just exited, as most were—concrete walls, low ceilings, anteroom and control room, with winking and blinking lights and dials and comp monitors. The lights were on, but that didn’t mean anything. Redoubt lights functioned automatically when a mat-trans fired to life, which meant that the bomber could be long gone by now. Or just around the corner.

There were several cracks that ran across one side of the room, up the walls and through the ceiling, wide enough to accommodate a person’s arm. Something had struck the redoubt at some time, and struck it hard. Ryan’s people fanned out swiftly. A layer of dust was sprinkled on the age-old com terminals, but Doc noticed immediately that several screens had been wiped clean.

“Someone tried to use these,” Doc said. “Recently, too.”

Ryan waited while the rest of his friends made their way through the room. Jak keyed in the code to open the door, then they all filed into the corridor beyond. The albino youth scouted ahead, checking the immediate rooms of the redoubt, hunting for danger and for somewhere safe to position the group should the bomb go off.

While Ryan waited in the doorway, Doc helped a reluctant Krysty down the corridor.