James Axler: Dectra Chain

"Button your lip, young fellow," Doc demanded, blushing deep crimson. "Can't we get on with going into the hornswoggled boondocked gateway?"

Jak couldn't stop giggling, leaning helplessly against one of the lockers, so Ryan pushed to the front and stood in front of the control panel. "Three-five-two to open it, Doc?"

"Who knows, Ryan? Since it has a higher security coding, I doubt very much if it will be the same numerical cipher."

Ryan reached out with the end of the barrel of the G-12 caseless and the door swung open. The silver glass walls of the gateway were shimmering, showing that it was actually in use!

"Fireblast?"

"Gala!"

"Dark night!"

"By Ysun!"

"Doc! What's?.."

"Damn, oh damn!"

"By the three Kennedys!"

It was one of the biggest shocks Ryan and his friends had ever encountered. Bigger than the mutie alligator or the stoning or the Russians in the snows.

Ryan felt for a heart-stopping moment like a fond father who'd gone up to his child's bedroom to reassure the frightened toddler that there really wasn't a bogeyman in the closet. He'd opened the door with a broad smile and seen... seen a squatting, dribbling creature, all raw head and bloody bones, reaching for him with soft fingers that ended in ravening points of ragged horn.

The armored glass walls were almost opaque, but the glowing disks in floor and ceiling flared through, and frail tendrils of white mist crept out beneath the door. There wasn't the least moment of doubt that someone, or something, was using the gateway for a jump.

"Coming or going?" Ryan asked J.B.

"Can't tell. Can't see inside. Can you tell, Doc? Doc, come on!"

The old man was standing like one stricken, hand pressed to his chest, all the color drained from his lined cheeks.

"Leave him," Ryan snapped. "Everyone out. Find cover in the main control room. Move it!"

Lori dragged Doc out on stumbling feet, through the side room, pulling him into hiding behind one of the banks of comp-disks. Jak was kneeling next to them, his pistol as steady as death in both hands. Krysty and Ryan went the other way, finding space where they could take cover and watch the main gateway chamber at the same time. J.B. and Donfil darted around the corner to wait in the other gateway, the Armorer's Steyr blaster poised like a cobra waiting to strike. The Apache held his clumsy great Sharps rifle braced against his hip.

Even at that moment of heightened tension, it crossed Ryan's mind that the tall shaman needed a decent handblaster.

"See anything?" Jak hissed. "Can't hear nothing."

Ryan held his breath and cautiously edged his good eye around the corner of a control console, peering across into the mat-trans chamber. He blinked and then checked again what he saw.

"Light's fading," he called. "Don't move yet, but it looks like whoever's going and not coming."

He counted a hundred slow, measured beats of his heart, carefully checking again, easing around the edge of the cover, not taking a chance.

One of his first memories of joining War Wag One and the Trader was a firefight against some hillies up in the Zarks, most of them armed with two-hundred-year-old muskets. The man at his side had stuck his head up a touch careless, and Ryan would never forget the warm, sticky splash of brains and clotted blood that had darted into his face as the back of the man's skull exploded.

"What's it look like, lover?" Krysty whispered at his elbow.

"Light's most gone."

"Could still be coming," J.B. called. "We get well blacked out of it when we jump. Could be they're in there."

It was a good point. Ryan kept them for another fifteen minutes, watching the clicking digits of his wrist chron. "Man hurries when he doesn't have to gets himself an early chilling and gives the buzzards a free lunch," Trader used to say.

"Come on. Cover us," Ryan said, beckoning to Krysty and J.B. to follow him.

The glass walls were blank, with an impenetrable silvery sheen. Ryan put out a hand and touched one with the tips of his fingers.

"Still warm."

When they'd been making a jump he hadn't noticed any change in the temperature, but the feeling of having your brains curdled meant you weren't too aware of what was going down around you.

"Shall I open the door?" J.B. asked.

Ryan licked his dry lips. "Guess so. Slow and easy."

"Sure."

The mat-trans chamber was completely empty, not a speck of dust or a bead of moisture. No hint that it had just been used. Ryan called for the others to join them. "Watch you don't touch anything," he warned. "This might operate differently than the other gateways."

Doc paused to study the control panel near the entrance door, shaking his head. "I swear that I have never seen aught like this. Quite different from anything I worked on with Cerberus. It has most definitely been used for transmitting someone to somewhere. But the good Lord alone might know who and where."

"No point in hanging around here," Krysty said. "Nothing to see. Best we move out. Get us some food, if there is any. Break out for the day."

"Or night?" Lori asked quietly.

Another of the Trader's rules had been that you only split your forces when there was no help for it. "Half your men and you got half your power," he would sometimes say.

Though Krysty, Doc, Lori and Jak were all for proceeding into the rest of the redoubt, Ryan insisted they first spend a little time in checking out the lockers that lined the second anteroom.

Most of them were empty. One had a porno pic of a slant-eyed girl with enormous breasts, touching herself with her left hand while the right held the engorged cock of a massive pit bull terrier. The laser-holo caught Jak's attention for several seconds.

"Never seen nothing like it," he said, turning away reluctantly.

At the bottom of one of the narrow cupboards J.B. found a spent cartridge case. "Forty-four," he said, dropping it with a metallic thunk.

The most amazing discovery was in the second last locker in the row. The lock had jammed, and Ryan had to pry it open.

"Well, look at this," he breathed.

The locker contained a black zippered bag, which looked like it contained some kind of bulky uniform. Ryan left that until last. On the top shelf was a pair of worn combat boots with steel tips to heels and toes. Tucked in behind them was an Eickhorn combat knife with a seven-inch blade, rusted and frail from being kept there for so long. A rubbed leather strap held a bolstered pistol, a customized Smith & Wesson Distinguished Combat .357 Magnum.

"Model 686," the armorer commented, hefting the gun, testing the action. He thumbed back on the hammer and eased it down, checking to see if the revolver carried a full load. "Not bad. Not bad at all. Soft on the trigger. Bit of wear around the cylinder. Got a ball catch added in the crane. Mat fiber-blast finish. Nice blaster. Got the Wichita rib sight added for accuracy. Standard six-inch barrel, six rounds. Stocked up with Silvalube bullets."

It was rare that the slightly built man ever spoke more than two consecutive sentences, other than when you got him talking about blasters. Or weapons of any kind.

Ryan took it from him. "Donfil could do with a handblaster, J.B. How'd this be for him?"

"Plenty of gun. Extra sight's a big bonus. Looks like a box of hollow-nose on that shelf up there. Yeah. What d'you think?"

The skeletal Apache stooped and took the blaster from Ryan's fingers, feeling the balance, extending his arm and squinting along the barrel. He finally nodded and tucked the gun into his belt.

"What's this, Ryan?" Jak asked, pulling out a cotton vest that nearly fell apart in his hands. There was writing across the front in faded red lettering. Life Sucks and Then You're Chilled.