Deathlands 124: Child of Slaughter (26 page)

Now, if only that mutie army wasn’t quite so big. Whittling it down a few heads at a time with sniper fire wasn’t shrinking it fast enough.

Fortunately, Hammersmith had the right idea. After taking a moment to reload, he fired the rocket launcher directly into the approaching front line. Muties blew apart
in the blast, sending body parts churning into the air and leaving a nice gaping hole in the middle of the line.

Keep it up, Doc, Ryan thought. Even as the thought crossed his mind, he chastised himself. That man with the rocket launcher might call himself a doctor, but he would never be Doc.

As bullets from the muties below hissed past him, Hammersmith fired another rocket. This one opened an even bigger hole in the front line, scattering twice as many muties as it blew them to pieces.

Ryan saw fresh confusion in the ranks as the battle’s momentum shifted. Some of the shifters turned and fled, unable to take the heat now that the enemy had a big blaster of their own.

But not all of them retreated. A large contingent moved up to fill the gaps, focusing their fire on the man with the rocket launcher.

To his credit—or the credit of the drugs in his system—Hammersmith stood his ground and calmly reloaded. But he wasn’t bulletproof, and Ryan knew he wouldn’t last long.

Running around and down the hill, Ryan retrieved Union’s H&K from the ground where it had fallen. Charging back up the slope, he found his Scout longblaster and grabbed it, then made his way back around to the hillside above Hammersmith.

Picking a spot with good visibility of the approaching force, Ryan hunkered down with the longblasters and went to work. Cranking off round after round from the H&K’s drum magazine, he knocked down key shooters who were going after Hammersmith. The heads of determined shifters popped like balloons along the new front line; apparently, the H&K’s magazine was currently loaded with explosive rounds.

Meanwhile, Krysty picked up on what he was doing
and joined the action from the next hill. Her shooting was almost the equal of his own as she did her part to shield Hammersmith. The snipers gave Hammersmith time to fire another rocket at the crowd, turning a slew of muties into blown-apart fragments and fluids. This time, the slaughter gave more of the shifters pause; again, a group of retaliators moved forward, stomping on their comrades’ remains in their push to the front line, but there were only half as many as there had been last time. And the slow leak of retreating fighters from the rear echelon had become a steady pour.

Ryan kept shooting, but he knew what the end of a battle looked like. The tide had turned, and there would be no further reversals.

All that was left was the cleanup—speeding the enemy soldiers’ retreat until they’d all abandoned the field of battle. Then Ryan could turn to the next problem on his list, the one he’d stepped away from long enough to give Hammersmith the cover fire he needed.

Union.

Chapter Forty-Two

“Hand me that circuit board,” Fixie said. “I’m almost done with this thing.”

Doc did as he was asked, handing over the circuit board in question to Fixie, who was half-buried in an access hatch at the base of the transmitter.

“Thanks.” The circuit board quickly disappeared inside the access hatch, just as numerous tools and parts had done over the past half hour. Fixie had done most of his work inside that hatch, which he said contained the heart of the transmitter’s control system.

Though, for all Doc knew, it could just as easily have been the core of some doomsday device that Fixie was nursing back to health. He seemed trustworthy, but anything was possible, and Doc was on guard.

“There, that did it.” Fixie popped out of the hatch and handed several tools to Doc. “The transmitter has been restored to the operational state that Dr. Hammersmith intended. Once we connect the mat-trans system to the nuclear batteries and throw the switch, everything will finally be running perfectly.”

“The nuclear batteries?” Doc repeated. “I take it that is our next order of business.”

“Yes, and we need to get to there fast.” Fixie boosted himself out of the hatch and planted his feet on the floor. “People will start noticing things soon, if they haven’t already. Like the fact that we’re not where we’re supposed to be, for example.”

“Are there regular check-ins with the people manning this facility?” Doc looked across the room to where the three workers were bound and tied to iron cleats mounted on the wall.

“I’m sure there are.” Fixie gathered up his gear in a hurry. “All the more reason for us to get moving.”

Doc gathered up the rest of the gear and headed for the ventilation duct, but Fixie stopped him with a loud whistle. Turning, Doc saw him gesturing toward a closed door on the far end of the vault.

“This way,” Fixie said.

“Are there no guards?” Doc asked.

Fixie shook his head. “I don’t think most people even know that the batteries exist.”

Doc looked back at the duct opening. “Maybe it would not hurt to be on the safe side anyway.”

“Go that way if you want, but I’m taking the hallway, Theo.” Fixie laughed and headed for the door.

Doc still worried they might come across trouble that way, but he followed Fixie. Splitting up didn’t seem smart at that stage, and besides, he had no idea how to find the nuclear batteries via the duct work on his own.

Luckily, Fixie was right. No guards or workers awaited them at their destination.

After a short trip down the corridor, Fixie opened the door on a much smaller room, at most, a fourth of the size of the transmitter vault.

The room was brightly lit and lined along three walls with various monitors, displays and control panels. The fourth wall looked like heavy armaglass, but it was completely transparent and without color. On the other side of the armaglass, Doc saw a water-filled space. Opaque gray cubes the size of refrigerators occupied the area, suspended from long metal racks and wired together with cables and conduits that hung in sagging loops like vines in a jungle.

“The batteries are underwater?” Doc asked.

“For cooling purposes.” Fixie immediately marched over to a panel on the wall and went to work, fiddling with knobs and dials. “The batteries produce far less heat than the reactor, but the heat they do generate has to be controlled and dispersed. Otherwise, big problems.”

“I see.” Doc walked the perimeter of the control room, stopping at the window wall to place his palm against the glass. The surface was warm to the touch.

“This shouldn’t take long.” Fixie finished tweaking the panel he was working on and moved to another. “I’ve already done most of the work to make the changeover possible. The transmitter takes an enormous amount of energy, but the batteries are more than up to the task. We just have to adjust a few things, disconnect the reactor feed and switch to the battery feed. Then it’s smooth sailing after that.”

“Smooth sailing.” Doc pulled his hand away from the glass. “The fulfillment of the true Dr. Hammersmith’s dream. But why?”

“Why?” Fixie looked at him and frowned.

“He fired you, didn’t he? Because you tried to help perfect his system. So why do you have any interest in his dream?”

“Why not?” Fixie shrugged and went back to work. “It’s a good dream. Making the Shift a better place is a
very
good dream, if you ask me.”

Doc thought for a moment. He had questioned Fixie’s sincerity, but maybe there was no reason to doubt him. “It does seem like a most worthwhile goal,” he said. “I only hope we both live to see it come to fruition.”

“Have faith, like I do,” Fixie said. “We’ll figure out an escape route, or one will present itself. We’re doing good work, and we’ll be rewarded for it.”

“Faith? I had a great deal of it once. Not so much any
more.” Doc gazed at the rising bubbles behind the armaglass wall and remembered going to church in the days before his travels through time. It had filled a void inside him, one that had been empty since his arrival in the Deathlands. “I do not object to it on principle, though. I must admit, I would like to think it has a bearing on our destinies.”

“Then, I’m feeling better already about our chances.” Fixie grinned and extended a hand. “Now, how about giving me the needle-nose pliers so we can wrap this up?”

Chapter Forty-Three

“So tell us,” Ryan ordered. “Tell us everything.”

Union, who sat on the ground with her hands and feet bound securely, just glared up at him. She glared at all of them in turn—the team members she’d betrayed, who stood in judgment in a semicircle in front of her now that the battle with the shifter army was over. The muties had fled toward the core, leaving behind their dead and the scattered pieces of their shattered artillery…also leaving behind Ryan’s team, which had nearly been shattered by Union.

“Why do it?” Jak’s voice bore an extra layer of tension. Of all of them, he took her betrayal the most personally. “Why lead into mutie trap?”

Union turned toward him, then winced as the movement set off pain in the bullet wound in her shoulder, which Mildred had bandaged. “Why lead into mutie trap?” She repeated his words mockingly, in a heavy Russian accent, then shook her head and laughed. “Albino moron.”

Jak scowled. He was furious at what she’d done, yet also deeply hurt, though he kept up as stoic a front as he could for her benefit. “You traitor from start?”

“What kind of question is that?” Union laughed again. “I fed you to the wolves. Of course I was ‘traitor from start.’”

“What about other women in head?” Jak asked.

Union sneered up at him. The braid that hung from her left temple was striped with all the colors that signaled
the presence of her alter egos. “I swear, your English is worse than mine. Would it kill you to use a fucking article or conjunction once in a while?”

“What about other women?” Jak grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. “Where Carrie, Dulcet, Rhonda, Taryn?”

Union laughed, ignoring the pain of her wound. “There’s just me in here now, boy.”

Jak shook her again, harder, as she continued to laugh, and that was when Ryan stepped in. He grabbed Jak’s wrist and shook his head once. Jak got the message and let her go, taking a step back. As angry as he was, he trusted Ryan, as always, to do what was best for all of them.

“What makes you so great?” Ryan asked. “Because this is the first I’ve heard anything about you, lady.”

“It will soon be the last. This battle was just a warm-up.”

Ryan gazed into her eyes a moment, then turned to Dr. Hammersmith. “What do you know about this Russian bitch anyway?”

“Nothing.” Hammersmith shook his head and raised his hands, palms up. “I never met her before in my life, I swear.”

“Maybe she’s some kind of dormant subpersonality,” Mildred suggested. “A kind of override routine implanted during brainwashing.”

“Or maybe you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, capitalist bitch,” Union snapped.

Mildred ignored her. “It’s also possible the other personalities were strictly camouflage.”

“No,” Hammersmith said insistently. “I know those women. They exist.”

“Make it past tense, dumbass,” Union said. “They’re long gone, you idiot pothead.”

“Perhaps they only merged,” Mildred stated. “Some kind of trigger event might have set the process in motion.”

“Does it matter why she did it?” Ricky asked.

“It does if there are parts of her worth saving,” Krysty told him.

“There aren’t.” Union spit in her direction, not quite hitting her, and laughed. “There is only one Wicked Witch of the East in here, hungry to eat your eyeballs.”

“Called what?” J.B. adjusted his fedora. “What’s the wicked witch’s name?”

“It isn’t Union. That’s all I’ll say.”

“But don’t you want us to know who finally took us down?” J.B. asked. “Don’t you want us to die with your name on our lips, cursing you for what you’ve done?”

Union thought for a long moment, then said the name slowly, like a purring cat. “Sasha. My name is Sasha.”

“So what’s coming next, Sasha?” Ryan asked. “You said the fight with the shifters was just a warm-up, so what’s next?”

“You’ll find out soon enough.” Sasha laughed loudly, as if she’d just been told a hilarious joke.

“Where will it happen?” Ryan probed. “When will it happen?”

“You won’t find out until it’s too late,” Sasha said. “But what I
will
tell you is what comes after. The new beginning that will leave you people in the dust.”

“What new beginning?” Krysty asked.

“A collective intelligence. All minds in the Shift joined together by the power of his machine.” She sneered at Hammersmith.

Mildred turned her gaze on the man, as well. “Is that even possible?”

“Of course not!” Hammersmith snapped.

“Oh, but it is.” Sasha grinned and raised her eyebrows. “And I have made certain of this.”

“What are you talking about?” Hammersmith frowned, looking confused.

“Such was my mission all along, when I served as your assistant,” Sasha said. “Using your device to bind together many minds, using my own to seed the process.”

“I don’t understand,” Hammersmith told her.

“My mind does not contain multiple personalities. Rather, it represents the integration of actual separate minds from multiple human beings. I have a collective intelligence, and I intend to use it to spark a much larger network of minds—one that encompasses the Shift. And eventually, beyond it.”

“Assuming you could even do such a thing, why would you?” Mildred asked.

Sasha looked at her with an expression of grim amusement. “I was cryogenically preserved, awaiting reactivation, then freed, dear Mildred. My home country, like yours, long ago lost the greatest war of all time and ceased to be. But thanks to me, my country will achieve the ultimate victory!

“I will create a true collective in the heart of what was once America—a collective intelligence that will give birth to a new Soviet Union. And none of you will be able to stop it!”

* * *

“W
HAT A STORY,”
J.B. said later, as he and Ryan salvaged gear from the ruined war wag. “An awakened Russian freezie out to build a collective intelligence that brings the USSR back to life in the heart of the old US of A.” He gave Ryan a sidelong look. “You believe her?”