James Axler - Deathlands 19 Deep Empire

/* /*]] */ dummy1 The sea around Krysty was flat and undisturbed. Michael had vanished. Before her mind started to cope, Ryan was in motion. He struck the water to Krysty's right, heading for the spur of rock that marked the sunken entrance to the redoubt.

J.B. was a moment behind him, followed immediately by Dean. Krysty drew breath, ready to duck dive after them, when Doc exploded into the sea only a yard away from her.A moment later Doc's head broke the surface, his white mane pasted to his thin skull. "No sign," he bellowed."He'll be" Doc began, striving for a note of reassurance, the sentence dying stillborn as Dean, J.B. and Ryan appeared from the cavernous redoubt. With no sign of Michael."Oh, Gaia!" Krysty's voice was harsh with shock. She stood, pointing toward the western horizon, her face frozen. "Look out there!"There was a massive eruption about three hundred yards from shore. White froth and a burst of spray soared into the sky. All that they could make out, writhing at the core of the thrashing disturbance, was a giant, sinuous shape."Sea snake," Ryan said. "And" He broke off as the creature crashed back into the water again, rolling to reveal, for the first time, its hideous head.And the limp body of Michael Brother clasped in its blunt, hoglike jaws A GOLD EAGLE BOOK FROM WORLDWIDETORONTO NEW YORK LONDON AMSTERDAM RARE SYDNEY HAMBURG STOCKHOLM ATHENS TOKYO MILAN MADRID WARSAW BUDAPEST AUCKLANDIf you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book."This one has to be for Chris Priest who has succeeded in taking me, gibbering, to reveal the singing chasm of infinity. Well, he knows what it means! Thanks, squire.Second edition April 1999ISBN 0-373-62557-XDEEP EMPIRECopyright 1994 by Worldwide Library.All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Worldwide Library, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.and TM are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.Printed In U.S.A.There are those who see the future as a place of sunshine, honey and sylvan glades. Others see it as a time when eggs moulder in their shells, corpses lie rotting in the streets and the little children weep. Who is to say which is correct?From Smiley Smile Or Breaky Heart ?by Jeremy Christian, Ortyx Press, Coburn and the pursuing posse were closing fast through the snowy Colorado evening, but Ryan Cawdor and his companions had made it to the massive locked sec doors of the redoubt. All of them were close to the ragged edge with fatigue and the effects of the altitude. Doc Tanner was on hands and knees, breath rasping in his throat, shoulders shaking with exhaustion."By the three Kennedys, my brothers and sisters," he panted, "but somewhere to lay this old gray head would be most damnably welcome to me."Ryan reached up and pressed the control panel at the side of the right-hand door, punching in the familiar code of 3-5-20."Open sesame," Mildred said.The whole group was filled with a tense energy, knowing that the horrors of the past couple of weeks were safely behind them and security lay just ahead."What?" J. B. Dix asked.Ryan pressed the numbers again.And again.Nothing.He tried a fourth time, though he was only too aware of the futility of the gesture. If the comp lock hadn't worked the first time around, then it wasn't going to work at all.Nothing happened. The vast sec-steel entrance remained immovably locked against them."Fireblast!" Ryan swore.There wasn't time for much of a discussion or argument. J.B. summed it up in his usual combat-wise, concise way. "Coburn won't risk coming closer. He knows we're well armed and hold the high ground. Can't get behind us. Can't get above us. He'll figure we're stuck up here, like hogs on ice. So, we got the dark hours on our side."Ryan nodded. "They can't easily get up at us. We can't move down from this place. Only hope is for one of us to climb up the cliff face. In through where the earth slip opened the interior corridor walls. Try and open up the sec doors from inside." He paused a moment. "Have to be me."Dean's face was a pale blur in the icy gloom. "But, Dad. The worms.""Yeah, son. I know."None of them could forget the worms.THE TRADER USED TO SAY that if a man was going to get hurt, then waiting wouldn't make it any better. Ryan left the walnut-stocked Steyr SSG-70 bolt-action rifle behind with the others, taking the SIG-Sauer P-226, snug in its holster, and his old and trusted eighteen-inch panga in its oiled sheath on his left hip. His thin-bladed flensing knife was concealed in the small of his back.The snow was falling again with a serious intent, settling on the rocks all around him, on the faces of his companions and on the flaming hair of Krysty Wroth."Take care, lover," she whispered, kissing him once on the cheek, her lips like fire on his skin."Don't I always?""What if you can't get in? Or you can't make it to the main doors? Or you can't work the lock from inside?" Michael Brother bit his lips. "What then, Ryan?""Then, young fellow, you'll all have some tough decisions to take."Doc shook him by the hand, his grasp surprisingly powerful for such an old man. "Test every foot and handhold, there's a good chap. Some mountain-climbing fellow told me that, back in about 1890. Or, was it 1980? I fear that I disremember, Ryan.""I get the message, Doc. Thanks." He looked at the circle of friends, nodding to Mildred, who gave him a thumbs-up sign. "Right. Here goes."ONCE HE WAS ouT of the shelter of the plateau, Ryan encountered the full force of the wind, biting in from the north. It plucked at his long coat, ruffling the white fur that trimmed it, and made his good right eye water, probing under the patch across the raw empty left socket.Despite the bitter cold, Ryan knew better than to try to climb with gloves on. Though his fingers were cold, he kept moving them, fighting off numbness. In the shrieking maelstrom of the blizzard he couldn't see how far he'd climbed, nor how far there still was to go up the jagged face.His memory put the ascent at two or three hundred feet. He moved cautiously, making sure that every foothold was secure before shifting his boots to the next one, testing the crevices and outcrops of granite with his fingers. Ideally he knew that he should always have either a foot and two hands on, or a hand and two feet.Logical advice didn't always help.Ryan was losing track of height, space and time. He hadn't checked his wrist chron before leaving the others, but he guessed he'd been working his way up the side of the mountain for the better part of a half hour.Twice he'd slipped as icebound chunks of rock came loose under a foot or hand, sending him sliding yards down the cliff.The noise of the wind was constant, filling his ears, blurring his concentration. All around him there was a whiteout, snow swirling into his mouth and eye, the force of the blizzard threatening to pluck him into the abyss.Ryan paused and flattened against the stone, fighting for breath. It had occurred to him several minutes earlier that there was a serious risk of his climbing past the cleft in the granite face, going on up and up, like a blinded, bottled spider, trapped in the storm, doomed to scramble on until exhaustion and the weather brought his lonely ending.He tried to replay in his mind the look of the hillside when they'd stood outside the entrance doors of the redoubt and stared upward. It seemed to him that it might have been a little more to the"Right," he whispered.But he knew well enough how conditions like this could totally addle a man's sense of direction.There'd been a motor mechanic from War Wag One, somewhere near the big lakes of the northeast. He'd been plagued with a virulent dysentery and had disdained the common latrines, choosing instead to go a few yards into the surrounding forest.And the snows had swallowed him up.Only when the blizzard ceased, thirty-six hours later, had they found his frozen corpse, less than fifty feet from safety.Ryan steadied his breathing, trying to use the power of Gaia, the Earth Mother, that Krysty had taught him. But it was so hard to concentrate.Just for a moment the memories of the old war wags brought a fleeting thought of Abe, his old friend who had chosen to go off into Deathlands to try to find whether the Trader was dead or alive. That had beenBut Ryan's memory wouldn't function. All there was in the universe was cold and wind and an infinity of white.HE WAS OUT of the blizzard.Ryan found himself lying down, knees drawn up under his chin, a thread of frozen spittle linking him to stone. To concrete.It was entrancingly comfortable.Warm.It felt so good that there was a temptation to simply lie there for a few more minutes and rest. Surely that couldn't do too much harm, could it?Maybe even sleep."Fuck, no!" Ryan shouted, his voice hardly reaching his own ears.There wasn't a lot of sensation left in his hands, but he pummeled himself in the face, eye closed, kicking out with his frozen feet, forcing the pain of recirculating blood, mouth open in a rictus of agony.Finally he found that he could see, make out the dim shape of passage walls on either side of him, and a domed roof.He'd managed it, blundering into the redoubt by a heady mixture of luck and judgment.Ryan pulled himself upright and stared into the curving darkness of the corridor.That was the easy part done. Next page