Buck Roger XXVC #01 Martian Wars #01 Rebellion 2456 Page 2

  “You’re right on both counts. There are five centuries of ruins piled on top of us. N EO started these bases from scratch. There’s twenty years of construction in these rooms and tunnels.”

  “If the RAM Terrines are such a super police force, why haven’t they cleaned you out?”

  “It’s just not worth their while ”to expend the manpower and munitions to destroy us. As long as they don’t want us too badly, we’re safe.”

  “Yeah, you’re stymied. You can only cause RAM a little bit of trouble, or you risk being destroyed. You make waves, big waves, and they come after you and smoke you out. They know about this place, then?”

  “We doubt they have exact plats, but they know approximately where and who we are. They know our approximate numbers.”

  “If it were me, I wouldn’t like that.”

  “I’ve never really thought about it.”

  “If it were me, I’d try to hit RAM where it hurts.”

  “In the pocketbook? That’s an old joke, but in RAM’s case, it’s true. That’s one of the greatest difficulties confronting us. RAM not only controls the military, it controls something much more important: our economy. All the money is in RAM’s hands, and that means food and shelter and medicine.”

  “And drugs?” asked Buck. “You’re talking about Doxinal.”

  “Yes.” “RAM has found it useful in controlling its minions.” Orwell’s answer was flat.

  “I don’t like that either.”

  “None of us do.”

  “Gossip, gentlemen?” asked Wilma Deering, stepping into the lounge.

  “Ears burning?” replied Buck flippantly.

  Wilma looked over Buck’s head at Orwell.

  “I was just filling Captain Rogers in on NEO’s position,” he said smoothly. “Will you join us, Colonel?” Orwell’s chair scraped back as he pushed himself away from the antique oaken table. He rose and offered Wilma his chair.

  “Sit down, George.” Wilma pulled a chair from a nearby table. Her flaming auburn hair was loose on her blue uniformed shoulders, and the artificial lights of the cavern made it sparkle with crimson hot spots.

  Buck let his chair ease down to the floor. “Nice meeting?” he asked conversationally, but there was a trace of challenge in his voice.

  “Dull meeting. All about you,’ ’Wilma returned.

  The amused lights rose again in Orwell’s eyes. “Touché, Colonel,” he said.

  Buck was undaunted. “If it was about me, it must have been fascinating.”

  “Hardly,” said Wilma dryly. “We were deciding Your fate.”

  “How interesting. Who’s ‘We’?”

  “The Chicagorg congress.”

  “And what did you decide?” Buck inquired.

  Wilma sighed. “We decided that, for the time being, at least, I’m going to be stuck with you.”

  I don t recall getting a vote,” said Buck. “How perceptive. You didn’t.”

  “Oh. I thought I missed something. Well, if I didn’t get a vote, then I’ll vote now. No.”

  “Don’t be childish.” Wilma’s patience was thin Acclimating Rogers to the twenty-fifth century would curtail her active involvement with NEO’s War against RAM.

  “You people are fond of quoting history,” said Buck. “Well, here’s one for you: seventeen seventy-six.”

  Wilma arched an eyebrow. “The American War of Independence,” she cited.

  “Yes. I just declared it again.” Buck leaned forward, his blue eyes boring into Wilma’s hazel ones. “I may be a relic, out of place in this century, but I’m my own man. Remember that! I will not be bought or sold or used.”

  “You’ve got it wrong, mister. I’m not your jailer, I’m your tour guide.” Wilma couldn’t keep a certain amount of bitterness out of her voice. Buck and his world fascinated her, but she’d been distracted by a man one time too many in her life, and her curiosity with Buck was peripheral to her goals. “I have been assured the assignment is a temporary expediency,”

  she said. “Sorry to be a bother.” Buck’s eyes twinkled. He was anything but sorry.

  “I’ll bet you are.” Wilma looked away at the rest of the room. The roughly plastered dome arched over industry and sloth with equal indifference. There were twelve people scattered around the lounge. Tom More sat in a far corner, sloshing a cup of coffee as he went over a stack of reports. The scars that crisscrossed his face were a map of his encounters with RAM. Two men Wilma didn’t know were having a heated discussion over a game of checkers. Their gyro rifles leaned casually against the table that held the checkerboard. Tremain, the boy who delivered her note, was folded up in a chair, his pistol in his lap, pretending to read a book, but covertly watching Buck.

  The scene might have been any village on Earth, except for the weapons. Orwell had a laser rifle hooked over the back of his chair. Wilma ran her hand over the laser pistol strapped to her shapely thigh. “Let me repeat something you’ve undoubtedly heard before: NEO won’t stop until every RAM lackey is off our planet. And I am a line officer, not a wet nurse,’ she informed Buck

  Buck’s eyes narrowed “You’ll find I can take care of myself.”

  Wilma’s tone was mildly sardonic. “So I’ve seen. You only almost got yourself and the rest of us killed--how many times?”

  Buck ignored her reference to the few unpleasant times they’d had since his arrival. “However,” he continued, as if she had said nothing, "if you insist on playing the role, I might be persuaded to participate.” A smile returned to his face.

  Wilma lifted her chin in defiance, but the pink in her cheeks spoiled the effect.

  “I think you invited that one, Colonel,” said Orwell.

  “Nevertheless ” Wilma’s voice was hard. “Captain Rogers, I am responsible for you, and I must ask you to cooperate, or suffer the consequences.”

  “Which are?”

  “Severe. You could face incarceration. Your position depends largely upon my evaluation. I cannot let you jeopardize an entire organization out of some outdated notion of masculine superiority,” she said.

  “You’re a poor judge of character, Colonel.” Buck’s chin was as elevated as Wilma’s, but the color in his cheeks came from anger, not embarrassment. Orwell looked on with amusement. He found the exchange between a dangerous superior and an unknown quantity entertaining.

  “I have done considerable research on your century I am aware of the unjust discrimination between the sexes” Wilma caught herself admiring Rogers’s stubborn independence It was a mirror image of her own.

  “Yeah, those feminists were a rude bunch, but I don’t hold a grudge. As far as I’m concerned, there are only two kinds of people: those who can cut it and those who can’t. Care to try for a category?”

  “I do not approve of pigeonholes. . .”

  Buck was not listening. “What was that?” he asked, looking past Wilma into a corridor.

  “Sewer rats. Big as a house,” she answered absently, caught up in the conversation. Then she, too, heard the reverberation.

  Orwell sat up suddenly. “That’s a dredge!” He slipped his rifle from the back of the chair and began to get up, but the earth shook under his feet.

  The reverberation was a deafening rumble. The walls moved. Plaster dropped in powdery clouds from the ceiling Ancient tin signs and framed photo graphs tumbled from the walls Beams split and fell. The lights dimmed and emergency generators kicked in. Every man reached for his weapon.

  “What the. . .?” Buck’s words were lost in the roar.

  Wilma, swaying with the uneasy movement of the earth, screamed over the noise as she drew her pistol “RAM!”

  Chapter 3

  The tunnel rocked violently under the assault of eighteen tons of heavy artillery. The “dredge” plowed through centuries of accumulated debris, boring into historic trash with flaw grant disregard for possible treasure. It was RAM’s equivalent to the, Sherman tank, made to penetrate the layers of a modern city as easily as its "
ancestor negotiated underbrush. Its squat, manta-ray-shaped body culminated in a blunt nose Set into the nose was a circular cap with a raised rim. Lasers were set twenty-five millimeters apart around that rim. As the dredge moved, the rim turned, every other laser emitting a pulse, then recharging while the alternates punched holes in the ground. Behind the lasers were three more circular rings, the first and last whirling clockwise, the second counter to them, collars of claws that caught the loosened material and threw it aside. The dredge rammed itself into the narrow channel it dug, its huge wheels with their broad herringbone tread turning slowly as they scraped along the tunnel walls.

  The thunder of the juggernaut’s engines pounded through the earth; the crushing weight of its wheels sent rolling vibrations through the ground. Deeper and deeper into the litter, with no pause for rest or breath-no vulnerable moment-it drove. The lasers punched holes through the Walls of a tunnel close to the heart of NEO’s Chicagorg headquarters. Scalding red light from the tunnel’s emergency luminaries poured through the holes, making the disturbed dust sparkle. The dredge paused. It was at right angles to the corridor. It backed up.

  For forty meters the great wheels rolled backward, then a port opened below the nose cone. It contained a single laser, which cut into the side of the channel. The claws whirled and the dredge began to dig another passageway, set to intersect the NEO tunnel at a smaller angle. It broke through a second time and slipped into the tunnel, clearing the walls by centimeters. Once inside, it stopped again, its engines pulsing.

  At the rear of the flattened body a hatch slid back. Out of it tumbled a detachment of Terrine guards, in full armor and bristling with weapons. The hatch closed, and the dredge began to roll.

  The Terrines fanned out, flanking the metal monster, their laser rifles ready, pistols strapped down. At each man’s belt was a throwing knife-they were armed for close combat. At the intersection of two corridors, the Terrine force split, letting the dredge roll on. A detachment of Terrines went down each side of the intersecting tunnel, firing at anything that moved.

  A woman burst into the corridor, her pistol spitting at the attackers. She handled it with her left hand. In her right hand she clutched a gas grenade. As she raised her hand to throw it, the rifles drilled a hundred holes in her chest. She lurched into the pitch and sent the grenade into the Terrines’ midst as her chest exploded. One of the Terrines knocked it aside and continued on.

  The Terrines kicked open doors leading off the corridor as they went. They surprised one man in bed, his ears plugged with cotton so he would not be disturbed by the twenty-four-hour round of NEO’s operations. The soldiers shot him as he reached for his weapon, a gyro rifle propped by the edge of his cot.

  “Supervisor,” said one of the Terrines, identifying his victim. “Private quarters”

  Three NEO sharpshooters jumped out a door on the opposite side of the corridor into the laser fire. They wore blast helmets with lowered shields and NEO’s utilitarian blue uniforms. The lasers bounced off their protective covering, splintering into the walls and knocking down a film 0f dust. One man flattened himself against the wall, answering the Terrines’ fire with a steady barrage of laser pulses. When two laser blasts met, there was a white explosion. Were it not for the face shields, both sides would have been blinded.

  Under cover of his companion’s attack, another NEO guard jumped across the corridor and took up a similar position. They now had the Terrines in a crossfire, but its effectiveness would be short-lived. They needed immediate victory. The third member of the NEO team launched himself into the middle of the hall, diving for the earth. He hit rolling, stopped, and propped himself up on his elbows. Under the rain of fire, he took careful aim and sent a deadly laser pulse into the throat of a Terrine, slicing under the projecting base of his helmet. The man dropped in his tracks.

  The sharpshooter aimed again, as his companions continued their barrage.

  “Hurry up, Alex,” one of them called. “I’ve got to recharge!”

  Alex hit another Terrine as the man turned to bark an order. The movement made his helmet shift, and Alex’s shot caught him between the edges of the helmet and his shoulder. Because of the low angle, the laser punched through his neck. As the Terrine fell, Alex’s companion expelled a. clip from his rifle, shoved another home, and resumed his attack. It was beautiful shooting, but the three NEO guards were outnumbered thirty to one.

  The Terrines kept pumping fire into the three men, knowing they were draining power from the NEO uniforms’ shields Finally the lasers penetrated the protective fabric,*and the man on the left fell.

  Alex saw one companion fall and saw the lasers pumping into the other. He rolled over as he felt the searing burn of his uniform giving way. He cut a wide swath into the Ceiling, trying to bring it down on the Terrines. A cloud of powdery plaster dust and fine debris fell as the first Terrine stepped over Alex’s body.

  The entire conflict took seconds. Buck, Wilma, and George saw it all through the arched open doorway. George raised his rifle and fired. A Terrine went down within inches of Alex’s body, his uniform shields destroyed by the powerful charge from Orwell’s laser rifle fired at short range. George pumped out a stream of laser pulses, and the Tenrines’ front ranks fell back. In George’s hands the rifle was a scythe, cutting the enemy down like grain.

  “Get out of here!” he yelled over his shoulder. “I can hold them for maybe a minute.”

  “Not on your life,” said Buck, his antique Colt .45 blasting into the Terrines’ ranks like thunder.

  Wilma, her laser steadied with both hands, took careful aim at a Terrine. “We’ve got to get out of here,” she said. “There are too many of them. George, run!”

  A concentrated pulse from four Terrine lasers came slicing toward the large man’s unprotected head. Bits of bone and tissue splattered against the wall.

  George’s headless body sagged to the ground. Wilma blinked to shut out the horror of the explosion. She waved an arm at the survivors behind her.

  “Escape alpha!” she called. “I say again, escape alpha!” Lasers flashed off her clothing. She grabbed Buck and shoved him back against the wall. “No chance,” she said.

  Buck nodded. “Which Way?”

  “Follow Tremain.” She gestured toward the boy who had delivered her note. “Get going’

  “Ladies first,” said Buck, whirling around the doorjamb to deliver a shot that sounded like a Cannon, then turning back to flatten himself against the wall once more.

  “I outrank you, mister. Move!”

  “Okay-together.”

  Wilma made an exasperated noise, but there was no time for a discussion of protocol. She began to back along the wall. “Once we make the halfway point, we’re going to have to run,” she said. “We’ll be vulnerable to their fire, even from the doorway.”

  As she spoke, a woman and ten-year-old boy sprinted across the room. They had not taken five strides before the Terrines cut them down.

  Buck’s lean jaw hardened. “Where’re we headed?” he asked.

  “Door with the red handle. Escape tunnel,” she answered.

  The Terrines were at the doorway, held in check by a man barricaded behind a heavy table he had flipped over. Its mirrored top acted as a deflector, and laser fire splintered off its shiny surface in white flashes. He was plugging away at them with a huge gyro rifle. It fired shells the size of a billiard ball. When one detonated, it blasted a man-sized hole in whatever it hit--a gyro shell packed too much power to be stopped by clothing shields. The gyro rifle was basically a long-distance weapon, more effective in the open than in close quarters, the Shell’s minicomputers locking in on their targets and following ruthlessly. The marksman was wreaking havoc among RAM’s minions. The man’s eyes were wild, the desperate bravado of a trapped beast. The Terrines were firing, but as long as the gyro shells held out, the men had trouble getting off more than one or two pulses.

  Buck and Wilma hugged the wall as another man made his d
ash for freedom. He sprinted across the floor, sliding on plaster dust and chunks of plaster his companions’ shells were sending in all directions. As he neared the gyro’s line of fire, he dove for the floor and was met by a Terrine’s shot. His body rolled.

  “Go behind him,” said Buck, and Wilma nodded. Keeping toward the rear of the room, they were barely out of range of the Terrines’ pistols. Stride for stride, they zigzagged across the floor, using every piece of furniture for visual cover. There was a meter of completely open ground before them. They glanced quickly at each other and leaped, diving behind the false security of a long, overstuffed couch. Huddled at the end of the couch was Tremain. Buck put a hand on the boy’s shoulder, and he jumped “Easy,” he said. “It’s me.”

  The boy steadied. “I can’t figure out how to get across,” he said.

  Buck pushed him back and crawled around the edge of the couch. The rifleman was still holding the Terrines at bay, but their lasers were slicing chips from his table. In moments, their shots would kill. The path to the escape door was broken by four bodies, and the door still was closed.

  “No one’s made it yet,” said Wilma over Buck’s shoulder. “Looks like we don’t have much choice but to try.”

  “We need to distract them,” Wilma murmured. “With what?”

  “Search me,” she said. The detonations of the gyro shells crashed around them.

  “Our best chance looks like rushing the door when one of those shells goes off. I figure we’ll have about ten seconds to make it,” said Buck.

  Wilma nodded. “You lead” She shoved Tremain between them. “Get set!” said Buck, and he crouched like a sprinter at the starting blocks.

  A gyro Shell lost its target and detonated, ripping a hole in the wall and enlarging the doorway. A cloud of dust billowed into the room. On the impact, Buck, Wilma, and Tremain shot across the floor, jumping the bodies of their fallen comrades. Tremain misjudged his distance as he negotiated the third corpse, and his heel came down on the ribs. He tripped, more from revulsion than anything else. Wilma, still running, reached forward and caught him. Out of the dusty cloud flashed a gleam of silver, and the razor edges of a Terrine throwing knife sliced through the weakened shielding circuits of her uniform and sank into her shoulder.