Point Apocalypse (34 page)

"I see," I
paused and cleared my throat. "And the farm woman? Her children?"

"
All alive. Akhmad died, though."

"I know."

From under his pea-coat, Fritz produced a Parabellum handgun. He stepped through the entrance and peeped down the hallway but recoiled and waved his hand in front of his nose.

"
You can't..." he swallowed, "you can't breathe in there! How did you survive?"

Without answering,
I took the flask offered by Jim and gulped down half its contents, then cleaned my face and eyes with the rest.

"I fired a thermobaric round down
there! At twenty paces," Fritz said.

"Leave him alone," Georgie said. "The guy needs a breather.
"

"Later," I
handed the flask back to Jim and pointed toward the entrance. "There're Wladas and Kathy down there."

"
No! That ass of a clone is still around!" Georgie stepped toward the opening but I held him back by his shoulder.

"She is, and she
's saved my life."

"Long time no see!" I heard
from behind my back. Lars Swenson approached us accompanied by a few young armed militiamen.

"You've done it
, Private. Congrats!" he shook my hand without stopping.

"
Too early to congratulate," I squeezed his broad palm. "Clones and the cyber troopers are now heading for New Pang. They're driving to see McLean who's going to help them ship their cargo to the Fort. The cargo contains an assault virus destined for Earth. It'll cause the death of millions. We need to contact the Fort and warn them about it."

Lars' face didn't twitch.
After a moment's thought, he said,

"There's only one option, right? We have to stop the cybers, is that what you mean?"

I nodded. He was quick on the draw. No need to give him the details.

"When and how did they leave?"
he asked.

"They left before sunrise, in combat vehicles."

"We just missed each other," he turned and shielded his eyes looking at the sun hovering over the horizon. "We won't make it," he turned back to me and shook his head. "If they have combat vehicles, we'll need an airplane to catch up with them."

"Don't you have the radio? Y
ou can contact the jumpgate and pass the information on to their commander."

"Won't work," Lard shook his head. "
It's not strong enough. I'll need a signal amplifier to reach them. And the amplifier is at McLean's place."

I cursed through clenched teeth and looked at the
militants crowded around me.

"Be prepared to defend this place, just in case. When cybers don't
receive the next guards' report, they might come back."

"What do you suggest?" concern clouded Lars' face.

"Just dig in and hold the entrance. Make sure not one of the motherfuckers gets into the building."

"And you?"

"I have an idea. Bur first, I need to get to the tanker. How far is the riggers' base?"

"Twenty-five miles or so," Fritz said.

"Are there any emergency exit systems left there?

Fritz
nodded.

"
You think you can spare a fast car?"

Again he nodded.

"Let's go then," I stepped toward the platform. "Shit," I stepped back. "I have two people left inside. A man and a woman. Georgie and Jim know them. Also, two neurotechs we've taken prisoner and a hell of a lot of equipment worth keeping."

Lars' eyes glinted when he heard about the equipment.
He glanced at Georgie. Fritz chuckled: he, with his technical and entrepreneurial skills, didn't want to let this booty slip through his fingers. The last thing I needed was a loggers and riggers' squabble over the loot.

"Best not to touch anything until I'm back," I tried to sound convincing
. "Don't try to turn anything on or off. Apart from the lab equipment, they also have the Forecomers machine that could take us all back to Earth."

Georgie's jaw dropped. Fritz cleared his throat. Lars ran his strong hand across his face and beard.

"Jim," I continued. "You go down first. Tell Kathy and Wladas that they're safe."

"Sure."

"Lars, you make sure our Georgie here doesn't smoke the girl. They feel too strong for each other."

Georgie
darkened.

"Promise to make sure they're okay?" I asked him.

Lars grunted. "The word of the King of the Forest."

"
Let's go, then? " I turned to the red-headed Fritz.

He stared at the ruins
and the remains of the solar panels scavenged by the riggers. The guy in the captain's cap was dishing out orders.

"I'll give you a thousand gold pieces," Lars said unexpectedly. "We can deal with your captain later. Now go, we don't have much time."

Fritz nodded with a lopsided grin.

"Take Georgie with you," Lars added
, winking at him.

He knew where his interests lay, I thought as I followed Fritz
out to the car. Lars tried to keep everything under his own control. He knew the stakes had risen very high indeed.

Chapter Four

As the Crow Flies

I
t took our open-top Willys less than an hour to get to the desert. I thought at first that the ragged brown outline that caught my eye behind the smooth dunes was a far-off mountain. Then I realized that it was in fact our destination.

Fritz
drove. I kept glancing back from my passenger's seat checking for Blank's reserve combat vehicles. Georgie sat in the back. The old Army jeep groaned as it rocked over the dunes. The windshield was folded forward but the desert air flow didn't bring relief as the sun stood high at its zenith beating down like a blow heater. We were approaching the riggers' base, or rather, the stranded
Samotlor
tanker that I had mistaken for a mountain.

I'd seen a few large vessels in my lifetime. Atomic cruisers and
submarine missile launchers, and even Chinese intercontinental clone carriers. But they'd all been sitting in the water hiding the bulk of their body from view.

Now it was different. The slanting
aft of the ship had grown into the sand. Its stem rose above the dunes that concealed half its body. When we drove closer, Fritz made a sharp turn and instead of driving between the dunes toward the ship's rusty side and the deck structures, steered the jeep at almost a right angle to it. The worn-out painted digits of the tanker's draught markings still showed on its bow.

I stood up
in my seat and craned my neck trying to make out the hatches of the emergency exit systems' launching tubes. I knew they had to be somewhere under the cabins. But the jeep swerved again, and the dunes swallowed up the ship.

"Sit still. You'll see it
all in a while," Fritz said.

I'd already told him on our way
there what exactly I needed parts of the launching systems for. But I hadn't yet explained how or where I was going to use them. These days, all superships were equipped with two-seat ejection capsules, located aft, that allowed the crew to abandon ship in case of fast fracture.

My idea was to remove the capsules' gunpowder engines and use them to make
a quick copy of an assault jetpack. I'd studied them at army school and knew that the thrust principle was the same in both. I also wanted to use the drag chute to decelerate in case I rocketed too high in the air. The riggers' base had everything necessary for my purpose: a workshop, tools, a welding machine and even a savvy mechanic in the shape of Fritz himself.

The jeep mounted a shallow
crest and drove along a narrow wadi between the dunes. The well-used tracks ribboned down into a deep crater.

Its shallow front edge was shaped like a horseshoe. That's why Fritz
hadn't driven straight on. We'd have simply toppled down. The tanker's enormous side loomed up from afar serving as the rear wall of the crater. The paint was peeling off in many places. Below, rough wooden ramps led to ragged openings cut into the ship's side with welding torches. Bent pipes protruded from the widest opening and led underground.

Squat sandstone structures crowded the bottom of the crater.
Closer to the entrance, two tents stood away from the rest with a swing gate between them. Further on, a rectangular platform fenced-off with barbed wire was studded with the straight rows of filler spouts of the oil containers buried below. I counted almost two dozen of them. In the center of the platform stood an unusual machine with a pivoted rod and a spool of thick ridged pipe.

"
Is that the oil tank?" I turned to Fritz pointing at the platform.

"Exactly,"
he said slowing up and shifting down.

"And where's the rig and the supply vessel?"

"I have a funny feeling you've been here before," Fritz cast me a quick glance.

"
It's not important. Just answer the question."

"The
y've dismantled the rig," he said after a pause, shifting up. "Its remains are still lying on the shore. When this shit landed here, the tanker and the tug were luckier than the rest of it. It took us five years to dig the rig out of the sand bit by bit. Finally we built the tank and pumped most of the fuel into it.

"Wise move," I nodded.
It's best to keep fuel underground in this heat. The old rig could have exploded, God forbid if they hadn't done it.

"
All right, then. And where's the supply vessel?"

"The bulk carrier? It's far from here,"
Fritz thumbed behind his back.

"Yes,"
bored by the whole trip, Georgie poked his head out from between the seats pointing back. "It took the raiders a long time to find it. We only recognized it by the mast housing above the cockpit. It stuck out of the sand in the middle of the desert."

"And how did it end up underground?" I
asked.

"
How do you expect me to know?" Georgie answered.

"Can you see how the tanker's standing?" Fritz
nodded at the behemoth in front. "Why are you asking?"

"
Fine," I sat back. "So did you dig the carrier out?"

"
You bet your life we did," Fritz grinned. "We worked three shifts shoveling sand. There was gold there. Haven't you heard? The convoy was on its way back from the Arctic gold mines when Pangea had appeared."

"And what about the tug?"
I was surprised I couldn't see any people down in the crater. Two lookouts hovered on top of the cockpit studying the terrain through their field glasses. Another one - apparently the watch commander - leaned on his elbows against the window's ragged steel edge staring at us.

"Are you talking about
Svyatoslav Norg
? The icebreaker?"

"Exactly."

"It landed right in the middle of the river. Just sat there rocking on the waves as if it had always been there. The crew didn't even know what had hit them. They stopped the engine and jumped ship, and then.."

"But where
is everyone?" I interrupted him. "Why are there no people down there?"

"Look at the sky," Georgie answered as Fritz steered the jeep along the tanker's side towa
rd a steep long gangway. "The work shift are busting their asses at the river. The others are chilling out in the cellars waiting for the heat to subside. And the rest," he nodded at the road, "are in the old city with the loggers. They're the ones who got you out of the shit."

"I see."

Fritz killed the engine, jumped out of the jeep and hurried up the gangway. We followed.

"
Slow down, will ya," Georgie limped up the steps behind us mentioning clones under his breath. "I can't keep up with you two!"

We were met by a
gaunt gray-haired little man in knee-long shorts, a torn sailor tank top, a pair of thongs and a faded bucket hat with a greasy rim.

"Why are you back, Fritz?"
he demanded casting suspicious glances at me and the wheezing Georgie behind our backs.

On his belt hung an ancient yellow-leather gun holster. A revolver handle
peeped out from under the flap, a thin leather strap hooked to a ring on it. The man, as if accidentally, lay his hand onto the gun and moved a finger unbuttoning the flap.

"Relax, Stepanych," Fritz
swept his arm pointing at us. "They're friends. We only need to get to the safety capsules. We need to remove a few things."

"Does
the captain know?" Stepanych, squinting, distrusted us. "I know you, Fritz. You want to sell the damn things. It's all right but what if we need them capsules later ourselves?"