Текст книги "Hastrom City Rising (The Adventures of Letho Ferron Book 2)"

Автор книги: Doug Rickaway

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

“Finally, you’re being honest,” she said. “But you know, you are always berating yourself, and I… I’m sorry to say that I have berated you as well. I mean, you’ve screwed up pretty bad a few times, but look. We’re still alive. That thing you did back at the school was pretty damn brave. We would all be dead if you hadn’t done that. That’s something. Maybe if you believed in yourself just a little, others might too.”

There was a sudden shared awareness of their proximity to one another. Like two magnetic fields repelling each other with inexplicable force, they both pulled back—but who was faster in their reaction?

“Thanks, Thresha. It means a lot to me.”

There was nothing more to say. She had retired to the corner of her cell. She turned her head, over her shoulder, and smiled at him, but her eyes were now distant, vacant. As if on cue, or a merciful segue sent by a benevolent force, the crackle of a walkie-talkie drew Letho’s attention. There was a knock on the door and Zedock entered, looking mildly flustered.

“Saul needs us in the meeting room up top, right now. Whole complex is in a tizzy.”

EIGHT – Guerrilla Tactics

“Okay, Saul, just what in the hell has been going on? I’m gone for five minutes and all hell breaks loose!” Zedock shouted, pounding his fist on the oak table. Thankfully, it was built to withstand even Zedock’s temper.

“Well, Dad, if I can even still call you that,” Saul said, pausing for effect. The way his face reddened, the timbre of his voice—they were so similar to Zedock. How could they not be blood relatives?

Nature versus nurture, Letho supposed.

“Now don’t start in on me with that horse manure, son. Ain’t a damn thing changed between you and me,” Zedock said.

Neither Letho nor Saul needed Thresha’s mind-reading abilities to see that this was untrue. Blood always trumped any sort of political or word bond between people. It had been so since the dawn of Letho’s race, and would always be.

Saul glared at Letho, who only shrugged. He was doing a lot of shrugging these days. The mark of a true leader.

“Well, if I could continue, good sir,” Saul said, casting his laser gaze at Zedock, “people are a little pissed that you brought a Mendraga in, regardless of her special relationship to your blood relative. They aren’t rioting yet, but they might be soon. We have to do something to calm them down or distract them.” Saul laughed, scratching his chin. It was a tell, a madman’s tic. “I mean, what the hell did you think was gonna happen when you brought her in, exactly?”

“Look, boy, like I said before, I’m about done with your back talk,” Zedock said, refusing to advance his gameboard pieces forward and instead sticking to this archaic expectation of deference to authority.

“If I might interject?” Letho said. “The Mendraga in question has been successfully detained, and unless they have evolved the ability to transform into a mist or something, she should be pretty well detained for the foreseeable future. So what’s the problem here?”

“It’s not a question of the Mendraga’s security, Letho,” Saul retorted. “We stand against the Mendraga, their values, and their way of life. How can we bring one of their own into our safe place, and expect no one to get pissed off?”

“What would it take to get you to trust her, Saul? Besides me telling you that she saved my life, and that she’s definitely on our side?”

Is she really, Letho? Are you sure?

Shut up!

Letho was thankful that he had not actually addressed the copilot out loud this time.

Saul said nothing, just stared at the floor with a look in his eyes that was rather unsettling. It looked simultaneously angry and empty. Worst of all, he was smiling. After a few beats he looked up at Letho, still smiling, his eyes piercing yet vacant, his grin much like that of a dog baring its teeth.

“I need to see it for myself. Bring her on a raid with us,” he said.

“Fine!” Letho said, slamming his hand down on the table, holding back just enough to get his point across without shattering the table. It was a very nice table, after all. “What’s a raid?”

“You know, that’s actually not a bad idea,” Zedock said. “It would go a long way to making the people feel a little bit better about her being here. I know it would make me feel a damn sight better.”

Saul grinned triumphantly. “Recently Abraxas has started setting up communities outside of Hastrom City and connecting with the few settlements that have sprung up on their own. He calls them ‘settlers,’ but they’re really prisoners, sent out into very unforgiving country crawling with mutants to reclaim small towns and communities, usually with just a few of Abraxas’s men on security. Some of ’em have actually succeeded, and they grow stuff as best they can. Most of ’em die though. Most of ’em are people that have committed crimes or lost favor with Abraxas.”

“How do you know all of this?” Letho asked.

“I’ve got a guy on the inside,” Saul said. “Owes me a huge favor. He works in an office somewhere in Abraxas’s compound. Gives us lots of choice info.”

Zedock had a strange look on his face, and Saul looked a little too pleased with himself about this supposed inside guy. There was something that Saul wasn’t telling them, and both Zedock and Letho could sense it. Letho wished for Thresha’s mind-reading abilities again. Unfortunately, though many of the Mendraga gifts overlapped with his own, telepathy was not one of them.

“So what do you say, Letho? Want to give it a shot? Or are you too afraid your little girlfriend will cut and run the minute we take her topside?”

Letho felt anger well up in his cheeks, burning hot in his belly and clouding his thoughts. He was standing in front of Saul before he even knew what he was doing.

“Hey, buddy, if I remember correctly, you were the one who voiced that very same concern as a reason not to let her come inside in the first place. Why the sudden change in heart?” His chest was heaving, and he hoped that his eyes looked as menacing as he was willing them to be. He gritted his teeth and furrowed his brow—it was not so much a natural response to his anger as it was an intentional flair for theatrics.

Saul didn’t back down. He had no doubt heard the stories of what Letho was capable of, had seen his work first-hand in the form of a pile of mutant bodies. But still he didn’t back down. Did Saul really think he could actually win against Letho in a fight, or was he just insane? Wait—could he win against Letho in a fight? He had drawn that pistol pretty fast.

“You got a better idea?” Saul said, doing his best to appear taller, though even if he were to stand on his tiptoes he would still be half a head shorter than Letho.

“That’s enough, boys. Let’s act like men. Split it up,” Zedock said, putting his hands on their chests and pushing them apart.

Letho just glared. Saul smile remained, a grin devoid of any sort of emotion. Zedock stepped in between Letho and Saul and placed his hands on Letho’s shoulders.

“Letho, you okay with this?” Zedock asked. “It’s your call. We don’t have to if you don’t want to. But I really think it’s a good idea.”

“Does Thresha get a say in this?” Letho asked. The two men said nothing. “Well, what the hell. What’s the worst thing that could happen? Let’s do it.”

****

The twin suns of Eursus were high in the sky, blistering everything under pale, unblinking eyes. Letho felt a little exposed venturing out into the planetscape in broad daylight, but Saul assured him that it was safe—that the creatures he referred to as “muties” were predominantly nocturnal.

They had emerged out of a great exhaust pipe that had been repurposed as an exit hatch for their all-terrain vehicles. There was an entire hive of these giant tunneling pipes, and they snaked and twisted away in a confusing tangle that didn’t give away the silo’s location. They had even fashioned faux terrain coverings to mask the doors at the end of each tunnel. They trundled through long abandoned housing zones, across the broken backs of forgotten highways, sometimes cruising down them for a bit, other times taking a more off-road tack.

Their ATV was nicknamed “the razorback,” and to Letho the moniker was fitting. It was all angular edges and military frugality, and it looked like it had seen many heated conflicts. Letho noticed the fender and sidewall on his side were torn by four parallel slash marks.

“Hey, are these claw marks?” he shouted.

“WHAT?” Saul shouted back. The open canopy of the vehicle and the wind howling all around them as they tore down a particularly desolate highway made it very difficult to hear.

“NEVER MIND!” Letho shouted. He went back to running his fingers along the jagged serrations in the side wall.

It was just the three of them: Saul, Thresha, and Letho. It had turned out that Thresha wasn’t too keen on Saul’s great idea, but she had ultimately seen the reasoning behind it and had begrudgingly accepted. She sat in the seat next to Letho, anger spread across her face. But to Letho it seemed as if she was struggling to keep up the grouchy facade. It felt great to be out in the bracing chill, sucking in sweet, fresh air after a day or two of canned oxygen; surely she felt that too.

The scenery rushed past in a cracked brown-red blur. The lush greenery and swaying trees that Letho had seen in so many videodocs were nowhere to be found. He had no way of knowing if the whole planet was like this, but the sheer absence of life around him made his stomach churn. He thought about the all the propaganda he had been subjected to as a citizen of the Fulcrum station. Rebuilding the planet, saving the human race. Your offspring will someday return home. Fulcrum stations, united under a mission: finding new planets to colonize and preserving humanity until Eursus is fit for our return.

Letho looked down to see that he had been pressing a little too hard and had created a small gash in his finger. He rubbed the blood on his pants, then went back to scanning the arid scenery.

Thresha turned to Letho, her eyes glimmering with lust, her tongue flicking behind her lips. Letho stuck his finger in his mouth and sucked the blood away, and when he pulled his finger from his mouth, the cut was gone. Thresha’s eyes dulled for a moment, and she shook her head, looking like someone who had just woken from a dream. She said nothing, for they had already discovered that communication in the rush of air all around them was difficult if not impossible.

Saul brought the vehicle to a stop just under a rocky outcropping a few meters from the highway they had followed. He placed a finger to his lips and gestured for the others to waitHe then leapt out, circled around the vehicle, and began to rummage in the razorback’s cargo hold. When he popped out with a small triangular metallic plate he looked up at Letho, grinning ear to ear. Then he took off up a jagged slope and out of Letho’s sight. He returned a few moments later, dusting off his shoulders, still smiling.

“What now?” Letho asked.

“Shhhh!” Saul hissed. “Keep your voice down. When you hear it, make for the road up there.”

“Hear what?”

“You’ll know.”

Just then there was a rumble of low-frequency sound, and the sound of an engine revving. “GO!” shouted Saul, no longer concerned about staying quiet.

They leapt from the ATV, Thresha and Saul clutching assault rifles. As Letho slid through the open canopy he drew his sword and his Black Bear, enjoying the rush of adrenaline that filled his body.

“All right, Saladin, let’s do this!” he shouted.

Letho made his way up the hill in one swift leap, rising up and over Saul. Thresha was already there. A large truck hovered in midair in the center of the highway. The wheels still spun, and the driver and his passenger were cursing and gesturing at one another in the truck’s cab. The triangular device that Saul had pulled from the trunk was somehow holding the truck perfectly in place, most likely with a magnetic field, Letho thought.

“That’s it?” Letho asked. “What did you even need us for?”

Letho’s question was answered by a strange sound that began to rise from the distant horizon. Letho turned to look, and could see something moving along at rather quick clip and fairly low to the ground. As it drew closer, a low roar filled Letho’s ears. It was some sort of recon vehicle, alien in nature. In fact, it looked like a miniature version of Abraxas’s ship, though when it reached them, Letho saw that it was still large enough to dwarf the captured truck, which it now hovered over.

A door slid open and Mendraga soldiers garbed in crimson armor began to spill out, leaping from heights that would shatter the legs and backs of normal men. Saul immediately dropped to one knee and formed a tight V with his sinewy forearms, with an assault rifle at the apex. As it began to bark, Mendraga began to fall, their heads popping like overripe melons under the parching sun.

Thresha leapt into the air high above Letho and tackled a Mendraga in the hatch, slamming him onto his back. A blast from the Mendraga’s own rifle, quickly snatched from his grasping hands, silenced him.

“What’s she doing, Letho?” Saul shouted between shots from his gun. There was an uncharacteristic tinge of alarm in his voice that set off Letho’s own concern. “What the hell’s she doing in that ship?”

“She’s just taking care of business, Saul,” Letho shouted.

One of the Mendraga fired, and its aim was true. Letho staggered back, blood welling from a wound in the thick meat of his shoulder.

“GRAAAAAH!” Letho roared like a Tarsi and crouched down low, then launched himself into the air, impossibly high and with a kinetic force that would make a ballistic missile envious, if missiles were capable of emotion. When he came down, he planted his feet on the Mendraga and rode atop him like a waveboard as the lifeless creature skidded across the dusty earth. Then he leapt again, raising Saladin over his head, and brought it down in a terrible arc that split another unfortunate Mendraga from head to toe.

Letho felt a few bullets whip past him, and he wheeled around to look at Saul. The man grinned and offered Letho a mock salute. A gagging sound drew Letho’s attention, and he turned to see a large Mendraga clutching his throat. A menacing knife dropped from the creature’s unfeeling hands as he collapsed.

Letho and Saul scanned the area for more targets and found that they had won the battlefield. They moved toward one another, Abraxas’s ship hovering over them.

“We need to get up there and help Thresha!” Letho shouted, his voice barely audible over the roar of the enemy ship’s engines.

“No way!” Saul shouted. “She got herself up there, she can get her damn self down! No way I’m walking into a trap like that!”

Letho was just about to jump when the ship began to turn its nose in the direction of what Letho guessed was Hastrom City.

His head vibrated with conflicting thoughts and images. His insides felt as if he had swallowed a frozen anvil.

They’ve overpowered her! You have to save her.

Letho knew this not to be true. She had demonstrated her prowess over other Mendraga by killing her own kind time and again.

She killed Jim for me. Why is she leaving?

The cockpit came into view as the ship continued to turn, and Letho’s fears were realized when he saw a very intact Thresha at the controls of the ship. She looked at him, and she didn’t smile. She was close enough that Letho could see her eyes, but not the whites of them. She was mouthing something, but he couldn’t make it out through the marred glass of the windshield. The imagined anvil sagged in his guts, weighing him to the ground. He could have easily leapt onto the ship—in fact at that exact moment, Saladin was showing him a rapidly dwindling window of opportunity to do so. Saul was shouting something, but Letho was unable to make it out over the roar of the ship’s engines.

The ship roared off, and Letho sank to the earth, his knees hitting the sandy ground beneath him. He took one last look at the ship as itgrew smaller on the horizon, no doubt taking Thresha back to her master.

****

“What the hell was that? You could have taken that whole ship out barehanded!” Saul said, flapping his arms in rage. If the circumstances had been different, Letho might have laughed. But the part of him that would’ve laughed felt broken. He was a little surprised at the fact that he felt no urge to cry. In fact, the ragged numbness that filled his chest was comforting, like falling back into an old habit. It soothed him, this notion that the struggle to prove Thresha’s loyalty was finally over. And he no longer had to deal with his feelings for her. That, too, had been torn from him.

“Hey, jackass! We’re still on the clock! Let’s get what we came for and get the hell out of here!” Saul entered a few keystrokes into his uCom. Moments later the truck fell to the hot asphalt with a resounding crash.

Letho leapt up and fell in behind Saul. He went through the motions like an automaton, not out of loyalty to Saul, but simply because he didn’t know what else to do. Saul pointed at Letho, and then to the passenger door of the truck. Letho nodded and moved into position.

“Grab him, now!” Saul shouted, throwing open the driver-side door. Letho did the same on the passenger side. Moments later two men were being wrangled to the ground in a cloud of upturned dust. They placed plasticuffs around the men’s wrists and left them in a heap in the middle of the road.

The two men were shouting at Saul in some crude, drawling tongue. Occasionally Letho would catch a word he recognized, particularly the expletives. Saul paid them no mind.

“Wait, what are those things? Are those people?”

Saul, recognizing Letho’s complete bafflement, paused to enlighten him.

“Letho, meet Hastrom City’s servant class. Born, bred, and raised to lift heavy things, do dirty work, and not ask too many questions.”

Letho goggled at the two beings he was reluctant to call ‘men.’ It was like someone had turned back the dial on Eursan evolution, plucked out one of the precursors to Letho’s species, and plopped it down right in front of him. They were short, with blunted features and burly arms. To say they were ugly was an understatement, and the crude syllables that came from their mouths didn’t do them any favors.

Saladin felt the need to remark upon their speech. “These men are speaking a very limited form of English, with some sort of vernacular that does not show up in my data banks. Numerous single-syllable contractions of recognizable words. They seem to be rather upset that Saul has commandeered their vehicle.”

“Yeah,” Letho said, watching the crass men kick dust in Saul’s direction.

Saul drew his sidearm and threw open the truck’s back hatch. “Truck is clear. No bad guys. I’m going in. Letho, keep an eye on our two friends.”

When Letho didn’t respond, Saul took a few steps toward Letho and began snapping his fingers.

“Hey, Letho, you there? Stop moping around and do what I asked you to do. Our asses are on the line here.”

“Okay, okay.”

Letho watched as the sounds of Saul rifling through the truck’s goods filled the air.

“Jackpot!” Saul finally shouted from inside the truck. A moment later he leapt out with a wide grin on his face. “Looks like somebody raided a very well-stocked weapons cache, and we get the spoils,” he said, tossing Letho an assault rifle, which he caught with his good hand. It was rather archaic, and corroded in some places, but it had that reassuring, heavy-in-hand heft to it that he always felt when handling his Black Bear .50 caliber.

Saul seemed to be waiting for a reaction to the gift he had just given to Letho, so Letho faked a smile.

It would have to do. Even if Saul had pulled Abraxas’s and Alastor’s severed heads out of the truck, Letho still couldn’t have cared less. But Saul was right: there was a job to do. His mind was a burning beehive, full of noise and clutter, but he focused as best he could and pushed thoughts of what Thresha had done to the back of his mind.

“Is it usually this easy?” Letho asked.

Saul’s face scrunched up like Letho had insulted his mother.

“Well, my men don’t have superhuman strength and speed, and jumping inside a Mendraga ship and piloting it away typically isn’t on the tactical menu,” Saul said, punctuating the last two words with quotation fingers. “So the odds are usually a little different in these little sorties. Sometimes the trucks come with the calvary riding alongside; sometimes they don’t.”

Letho nodded, then dipped into the torrent of thoughts rushing through his head. He had no idea where they were, or how far away they were from Hastrom City, but he wagered that it wouldn’t take Thresha very long to get there in her new ride. There was still a small sliver of a chance that she was on his side, that she was merely angling to get back into Abraxas’s good graces in order to assist Letho when the time came. But that seemed highly unlikely, and there was no way he could be sure. Besides, if that was her plan, why didn’t she tell him before?

Saul saved him from his thoughts by clearing his throat and blasting a wad of phlegm at a nearby rock. “All right, enough standin’ around. Let’s get this stuff loaded up in the razorback so we can get the hell out of here.”

Letho did as he was told, and the two of them made quick work of stowing the rifles and ammunition in the back of the razorback.

Before they left, Saul sauntered over to the two drivers and removed the plasticuffs from their wrists. He squatted down to their eye level and took a moment to wipe the dust from his boots. After a moment, he brought his piercing gaze to bear on the two men.

“Listen here, fools. I may not be able to understand the words coming out of your mouths, but I know you can understand mine. I want you to take the truck and get the hell out of here. We’re not going to kill you, because you’ve been real cooperative. Now go, and don’t make me regret sparin’ you.”

The two men nodded, grunted, and hurled a few choice slurs at Saul, but this time with much less gusto. Within moments they were loaded up and speeding away.

****

They made their way back to Haven in silence. But instead of traversing the floor of the canyon as they had on the way here, the return route brought them through the center of a long-abandoned suburban sprawl. Letho looked on in simultaneous awe and deep sadness as the crumbling domiciles raced by. The dryness and lack of vegetation had prolonged their existence; they stood like unblinking sentinels watching the slow erosion of the cracked earth that once teemed with lustrous green grass.

Rusted-out automobiles still sat in shattered driveways, waiting for passengers that weren’t coming back. Ruined suitcases and the remnants of tattered clothing were strewn across some of the lawns.

“Is it all like this?” Letho asked, raising his voice to be heard over the roar of the wind in the open-cabin vehicle.

“From what we’ve seen, yes. The only place that’s half-decent is the core of Hastrom City, and that’s because the hammerheads have been maintaining it the best they could for as long as anyone can remember. But even so it still don’t look much better than this,” Saul replied.

“What’s a hammerhead?” Letho asked.

“Those fellas back there, the ones driving the truck, they were hammerheads. As you can see, they’re short on brains but big on brawn. Zedock seems to think that the folks that came before somehow bred them that way, so that they would work hard and not ask for much in return.”

“Yeah, I don’t think that was something they covered in my formal ed sequence.”

“Well, people don’t talk too much about it. Hell, most people don’t even remember why the hell we got on the Fulcrum stations in the first place. Zedock knows. I don’t know how, but he knows. Tells me that it gets passed down along the Wartimer blood line.” As Saul said these last words, his face grew drawn and he looked at Letho with eyes filled with emotion. Letho was taken aback by it. “Guess that’s you, pardner, since you’re his blood and all.”

“Tell you what, if there’s some sort of knowledge that gets passed down to me, I’ll share it with you,” Letho said.

“Sounds like a plan,” Saul replied, smiling. “Look, that was a tough draw, what happened back there, with your girl.”

She isn’t my girl.

But it seemed that everyone could see through him when it came to his true feelings for Thresha.

Saul extended his hand, and they clasped hands, their biceps bulging, caked in sweat from the exposure to the sun above.

Then the razorback came to an abrupt halt as Saul slammed down the brakes, yanking Letho forward in his harness.

“What is it?” Letho shouted. But he spotted it before he had finished his sentence. One of the strange mutant creatures was sitting in the middle of the road.

“Something’s wrong. They don’t normally come out at this time,” Saul said, placing his hand on the butt of his Black Bear .50.

“He looks a little worse for the wear than the ones I saw earlier,” Letho said.

“He’s an old one, looks like. Wonder what he’s doing out here all alone,” Saul said. Letho was confused by what appeared to be genuine concern for the mutant in Saul’s voice.

Saul spun the wheel to the left, edging the razorback off the highway and onto the shoulder. The mutie made no motion toward them, just followed them with its doll-black eyes, panting under the boiling sun, perhaps waiting for death.

“So what do we do?” Letho asked as they both sat in the razorback, watching the creature.

“Doesn’t seem to be aggressive. Maybe it’s sick?” Saul suggested. “Well, sicker than the rest anyways. Let’s leave him alone.”

Saul revved the engine and the wheels spun for purchase in the dust that coated the blacktop beneath.

****

When they had left the creature far behind them, Letho mustered the courage to speak.

“Saul, we could have blown that thing away. Why didn’t you kill it?”

“As a rule, Letho, we don’t kill muties unless we have to.”

Letho’s eyes widened. “What possible reason could you have to let those things live?” Letho wobbled his ruined arm for emphasis.

Saul took a deep breath and rubbed his brow in irritation. “Letho, it’s hard to say, and I don’t understand it much myself,” he began.

“Well, try. Spit it out already,” Letho said.

Saul took a deep breath. “Sometimes we find them carrying stuff, or wearing articles of clothing. Eursan clothes. They’re connected to us in some way, and like I said, they don’t normally bother us unless something stirs them up.”

The ID bracelet on its wrist. It spoke to you. Before you killed it. Do you remember, Letho?

“Uh… okay.” Letho slumped back in his seat and let this new revelation sink in. Maybe the air you’re breathing right now is turning you into one of those things, eh, Letho? Maybe if one of them bites you, you turn into them. Just like in those old movies you love so much.

Letho jerked on the collar of his coveralls, bringing the fabric closer to his face, and willed the copilot back into the recesses of his troubled mind.

****

After a short ride that was blissfully uneventful, they arrived back at the same hatch through which they had initially exited Haven, and it wasn’t as they had left it.

“Hey, why is the hatch open?” Saul asked no one in particular. The loose dust outside the hatch had been disturbed and redistributed by the passage of many feet.

“Muties!” Letho growled. As if on cue, several of them shuffled out of the hatch opening.

“Is it okay if we kill them now?” Letho asked.

“No choice,” Saul answered.

But Letho was already on his way. He surged forward, unsheathing Saladin as he sped across the dusty ground.

Saladin, he thought, let’s do this quick and clean. If Saul’s right, we should put these poor bastards out of their misery as quickly and painlessly as possible.

 

Initiating user requested protocol………

Targeting major organs………

Error: Target internal structure does not match any known biological scans………

Targeting brain, enhancing actuators for maximum skull penetration………

 

Letho’s targets lit up in orange-yellow outlines. His body moved of its own accord in that way that he had not quite become accustomed to. He felt his mind drifting as Saladin thought for him, moving his limbs, sliding him to the left as a mutant reached out to tear at his chest with wretched claws. With a clean swipe, Letho brought Saladin down on the creature’s skull, spilling stinking blood on the thirsty ground below. Another mutant came forward, and Letho swiped upward, lopping off the top of the creature’s skull. The loosed piece of the creature’s skull spun through the air, ricocheting off his next target’s head.

It was over as soon as it had begun, and Letho had painted the ground and his clothes with the stinking black blood of the creatures he had slain. He wiped Saladin on his leg, trying not to look at the dismembered bodies lying in a circle around him.

They made their way through the tunnel in the razorback, its rack of halogens lighting the way. Intermittent bursts of small-arms fire popped like joy-bangers; even if they had been lost in the massive system of tunnels they could’ve just followed the sound of explosions back to the silo’s main complex. But they didn’t get lost, for Saul seemed to know the tunnels quite well, and his steady hand on the wheel guided them home. When they reached the giant steel door, they were greeted by piles of mutant bodies and a small group of Haven’s soldiers. The men had dispatched at least a hundred of the foul creatures. The stench of their bodies was enough to cause some of the men to gag.

“Commander! The muties somehow breached the outer wall!” shouted one of the men, standing at attention.

“Yes, I can see that. Excellent work stopping them at our front door. You are to be commended for taking the initiative,” Saul said. “Any ideas how they got in?”

“No, sir. According to system readouts, shortly after you guys left the gate malfunctioned, shorted out. Maybe one of ’em chewed through the power cables?”

“Okay,” Saul said, “first priority is to get it patched up. You five, I want you to escort a work crew out into the tunnel to find the breakdown. The rest of you, get some more men up here and let’s get these bodies disposed of.”