James Axler - Eden's Twilight

“I’d heard that the UCV program was only in the testing phase,” Mildred continued, walking around the massive wag. On the side was a brass plaque that read, Mark II. “This must be the next model!”

“Looks like tank, without gun,” Jak said, neither impressed nor disappointed.

“That’s pretty damn close.” Mildred smiled. “Looks like these things could literally drive through a brick building without slowing down. Aside from not having a cannon, this is a tank, it even has the same size motors, Allision transmission, everything!”

“Why no blaster?” the teen asked quizzically.

“Money, probably,” Mildred said.

“Those windows some sort of Plexiglas?” Ryan queried.

“Lexan plastic, tough as cast iron, and it looks like the blasterports are arranged so that you can actually see what you’re shooting at, unlike a LAV-25, T-80 or Bradley Fighting Vehicle.”

“So there was no need to expose yourself to enemy blasters to fight back,” J.B. said, stroking his jaw. “Pretty sweet. Those blades in front for stabbing folks or carrying supplies like a forklift?”

“Oh no, the program said they were for digging up buried land mines. And see the bottom? The armor is shaped to deflect the force of the blast outward, instead of taking it flat. Even the tires could take a 40 mm gren without going flat.”

“Madam, please,” Doc said skeptically. “Are we also to believe that it can fly to the moon on gossamer wings?”

“No, honestly,” Mildred continued. “This thing has got so much reinforced armor, packed on top of armor, that most of the wag is engine and fuel tanks. It only holds a crew of eight.”

“Eight?” Krysty asked, craning her neck to try to see inside. But the windows were a good six feet off the floor. “This thing should hold thirty troopers easy.”

“Nope, only eight. See for yourself!” Reaching out, Mildred tried a door handle, but it was locked solid. Damn!

“Let me try,” J.B. said, passing Doc the flare and pulling out some tools. A few minutes later the Armorer had to admit defeat. None of the armored doors could be picked or forced open. The military vehicles did not have mechanical locks, but alphanumeric keypads hidden under sliding steel plates, very similar to the ones the companions used to gain entry into a redoubt. There were millions of possible combinations, and it would take them years to try every one and any attempt to rig a short circuit or to hack the lock would probably trip a self-defense charge and weld the doors closed forever. On a whim, he tried the access code to enter a redoubt, but nothing happened.

“Forget it. This baby is sealed tighter than a crab’s ass at a bean-eating contest,” J.B. reported, tucking away his equipment.

“Pity,” Doc said. “It would have been nice to ride to the next redoubt in comfort.”

“Really think still function?” Jak asked incredulously. The companions sometimes found working predark vehicles stored inside a redoubt, but those were sealed deep underground, far from the rads, acid rain and thieving coldhearts.

“Probably not,” Ryan started, but then changed his mind. The canvas sheet that had been covering the vehicle was filled with holes from blasterfire, needlers and the laser weapons of the droids. Yet the wag didn’t have a scratch, and shone as if freshly polished. Could it be self-repairing like a redoubt? Fireblast, what a find that would be!

“Then again, it never hurts to do a recce,” Ryan said, shouldering the Steyr. Going over to the nearest Hummer, the Deathlands warrior climbed on top of the tilted wreck and found that he was now high enough to see directly into the urban combat vehicle.

“Well, I’ll be a son of a bitch,” Ryan muttered, scowling.

“Trouble?” Jak asked, a pale hand going to his blaster.

“Come see for yourself!”

In short order, the others soon joined the big man on top of the aced Hummer. The flare threw strange shadows inside the UCV, but they could still see that there were no bodies or skeletons inside the vehicle, no mounds of supplies or crates of weapons. However, lying nestled between the back row of jumpseats were three large white containers, the exposed control panels twinkling with colored lights, alive with power.

“Cryo units,” Mildred whispered, clutching her med kit. So this was what the droids had battled over, ownership of the cryogenic units! They had to contain people from her own time, fellow scientists, or even the technicians who had helped build the redoubts!

“John, we must get inside and rescue them!” she said excitedly.

“Don’t see why, they’re sure not in any danger,” J.B. stated callously, adjusting his glasses. “However, I can clearly see U.S. Army backpacks tucked under the front seats, and those always contain MRE packs, spare ammo, medical supplies, lots of good stuff.”

“Food…” Jak said, putting a wealth of emotion into the single word.

“Not to mention the fact that we have some serious mutie territory between us and the next redoubt,” Ryan added, feeling his own stomach rumble at the notion of eating. “Sure be nice to have some steel around us for a change.”

“Indubitably, sir!” Doc said, inhaling as if to say more when the flare sputtered and died.

In the wan glow of Mildred’s old flashlight, the companions dug out some spare candles and got them working. Outside, the storm continued to rage, but the sounds were softened and less threatening this deep in the base.

“Okay, any ideas on how to get inside the wag?” Ryan asked pointedly, tucking away his butane lighter.

“Well,” Krysty said slowly, her hair flexing thoughtfully. “Mebbe we can use the droids to get inside.”

“They busted to drek!” Jak stated. “How use?”

The redhead smiled and started walking. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

Weakly, the dull red sun shone down upon the frozen landscape of western Pennsylvania, the tainted light reflecting off the blanket of snow covering the ground to almost blinding levels.

Tall mountains rose in the far distance, the jagged peaks lost in listless clouds of toxic chems and radioactive isotopes. Softly, a low breeze whispered across the arctic landscape, rustling the needles of the pine trees and kicking up some flakes that swirled around the U.S. Navy battleship lying on its side on top of the mesa. Icicles hung off the long barrels of the cannons, the decks thickly coated with frost, and bird nests festooned what little rigging remained. Inside the bridge, several corpses lay in a pile jammed against one corner of the sideways room; nearly every bone visible was cracked into a jigsaw puzzle. The complex bank of controls was dark and lifeless, only the gauges for the nuclear power plant buried in the hold still registered any activity. The massive navy powerplant was still dutifully generating electricity for a crew, machines and engines no longer in working condition.

Caught in an offshore nuclear blast, the crew had perished instantly as the huge vessel was sent hurtling through the sky to finally crash into the western woods, leaving the vessel lying in a crude patch of bedrock.

A low rumble shook the forest, disturbing the serene tranquility like a stone dropped into a lake. The sleeping birds were roused, conies popped their heads into view, elk raised their antlers high, and something stirred in one of the lifeboats of the great ship. A human eye was pressed to a hole in the canvas covering the sideways boat, and it glared with hostile intent.

Just then, throwing out a wide contrail of black smoke and loose snow, a convoy of armored war wags thundered over the horizon.

The flanking vehicles were modified Mack trucks, the bodies made of overlapping sheets of iron, steel, aluminum, tin, whatever could be scavenged in the ruins of Deathlands. A dozen blasters jutted from blasterports, and each vehicle was topped with a pneumatic catapult, a brace of .308 machine guns and edged with coils of barbed wire. They were war wags, death machines, armed escorts.