Shadow Fortress

Curiously, there was a flash of light from a cliff at the very end of the peninsula, and a high-pitched whistle sounded from the oceanic rocks as something streaked toward the Pegasus on a skylark tail of fire. The invisible object slammed directly into a condor and violently detonated, the concussion rocking the rope basket with savage force.

“Firebird!” Ryan growled, firing his weapon blindly down into the dimly seen distance. It had to be Mitchum. He had to make the sec man duck for cover, or else they’d be blown out of the sky!

“More coming,” Jak said, coolly aiming his .357 Magnum blaster at the fiery exhaust of the rockets and carefully squeezing off shots. If they hit, there was no reaction.

Dropping her revolver, Krysty yanked out the Veri pistol, thanking the forces of the universe that she had reloaded. Holding the signal device in a two-handed grip, she held her breath and forced everything else from her mind but the approaching Firebird. The trajectory was impossible; the Firebird was arching up from the ground, the balloon rising and drifting away, plus the wind was blowing in gusts, not a steady breeze. There had never been worse conditions for a shot, and they had only a half-dozen flares.

Gently, she squeezed the trigger, and the colorful blue flare streaked toward an empty patch of sky. A split second later, the Firebird rose to meet the wad of burning magnesium and violently detonated.

A couple of .50 cal machine guns began to chatter from the darkness, then another Firebird launched. The fiery back-blast silhouetted the sec men and Hummers parked on the approaching cliff in stark clarity.

While the others maintained a steady fusillade at the war wags, Dean took Krysty’s empty weapon and passed her the second flare gun, loaded and ready. Sweat trickling down her face, Krysty shot at the second rocket and made a hit. But then three Firebirds rose from the cliff, with two more close behind.

J.B. triggered the Uzi on full-auto, throwing flame at the receding sec men. As her H&K blaster clicked empty, Mildred grabbed a reloaded Veri pistol from Dean and shot off a flare. The sizzling green round punched through the leading rocket, making it explode, the blast damaging the Firebird alongside and throwing the rocket wildly out to sea.

Slamming in his last clip for the Steyr, Ryan fired as fast as he could work the bolt. Another Firebird altered course and shot straight upward to disappear into the stormy clouds. But despite the amount of copper-jacketed lead going their way, the last two rockets bore straight in at the companions.

Her hair a wild corona, Krysty released a green flare, but the windsheer threw it away from the incoming missiles. As J.B. slapped in a fresh clip, Ryan fired again and a rocket tore itself apart. As he worked the bolt, the spent shell jammed in the breech. Dropping the blaster to the plastic floor, Ryan drew his SIG-Sauer and started banging away. Meanwhile, Mildred and Krysty sent off a double charge of flares from the painfully hot Veri pistols. The signaling devices weren’t meant to be weapons and were over-heating from the constant use. The flares were sticking to the barrel from the accumulated heat, along with the women’s burned fingers.

In a gorgeous mix of colors, the flares curved toward the incoming missile when one abruptly died in midflight. The other erupted in a blinding purple flash, and the missile shot right through the display completely undamaged.

The companions concentrated their attention on the last rocket, but it was horribly close. J.B. abandoned the Uzi and used the last few shells in the shotgun to send off a hellstorm of fléchettes. Incredibly, the companions could see the damage it inflicted as the missile appeared to be slowing, and for several breathless seconds it seemed to hang motionless in the sky behind them. Then the flame of its rear exhaust sputtered away and died, the reserve of black-powder fuel gone. Rendered powerless, the lethal Firebird fell away and disappeared into the night.

As the companions relaxed, a salvo of rockets was launched from the Hummers on top of the jagged cliff. But the passengers of the Pegasus withheld shooting and merely watched as the swarm of deadly missiles climbed ever higher into the dark sky, only to slow as their tail flames weakened and died, the dreaded Firebirds tumbling helplessly into the cold sea.

“Finally out of range,” Ryan said, flicking the dead brass from the Steyr over the ropes. As if in reply, thunder rumbled from the clouds so very close overhead.

“Sons of bitches want us bad,” J.B. added, clearing the breech of the empty shotgun.

“Hopefully, that is the last we see of them,” Krysty said, flexing her singed gun hand.

Glancing at the floor, Mildred saw the ejected brass had fallen through the holes in the plastic pallet and couldn’t be gathered for repacking. Great, they were low on ammo, attacked constantly from every direction and riding a makeshift helium balloon mostly held together by spit and baling wire. The situation could only make the physician snort a bitter laugh.

“What funny?” Jak asked, startled at the noise.

“Remember the condors?” Mildred replied, holstering her piece. “Those were an endangered species in my time.”

“So?”

The salty wind blowing her beaded hair, Mildred turned to face the featureless horizon of the east.

“Now we are,” she finished somberly.

HOBBLING TO the edge of the crumbling cliff, Mitch-um roared defiantly as he emptied his blaster at the departing airship.

“No! Not again!” Mitchum raged, cocking the hammer and dry firing the spent weapon several times. As his fury ebbed, the man turned toward the line of Hummers parked nearby.

“You there!” he shouted, pointing. “Launch another Bird!”

“Belay that shit,” Glassman stated grumpily, stepping out from behind the rocket pod. His face and clothes were streaked with black from the multiple launches, and he angrily tossed aside the glowing piece of oakum he had used to light the fuses. Privately, the former healer wondered what the hell had the outlanders used to stop the Firebirds.

“We failed, Colonel,” Glassman continued, pulling a rag from a pocket to wipe his face and hands. “They’re gone.”

“The hell they are. We’re going back to Cascade,” Mitchum snapped. Limping to the wag, the sec man climbed behind the steering wheel and started the engine.

“Get in!” he ordered brusquely. “We can race after them in the PT boats. Those are a lot faster than that floating soap bubble! If we use the coal-oil fuel instead of wood, we can easily get them back into range again and finish the bastard job once and forever!”

Reluctantly, Glassman had to admire the sec man’s blind determination. It was either that or his lust for revenge had driven the man mad.

“Sergeant Campbell,” Glassman said, going to the lead Hummer, “any more Firebirds on the boats?”

“Yes, sir,” the sailor replied with a salute. “Sixteen more in the arms trunk of each petey.”

“See?” Mitchum retorted, gunning the engine. “More than enough for another attack!”

“Only if we don’t encounter any Deepers on the journey back home,” Glassman countered, taking a seat in the war wag.

“Tomorrow’s problem,” the sec chief growled as he spun the steering wheel, driving the Hummer back and forth as he hurriedly turned on the narrow crag. A rear tire went over the cliff, but the wag didn’t tilt and he fought it back onto firm ground. Time was against them. Every minute put Ryan that much further out of his grasp.

“We’ll need to leave the Hummers behind,” Mitchum said, leading the convoy of wags along the narrow trail of the peninsula to the island. There was a sheer drop into the sea on both sides, but the predark headlights gave enough illumination to keep him from driving into the abyss. “Dropping the weight will give us better speed.”

Holding on to the door and windshield, Glassman scowled before answering. He was sick of this man’s private blood feud, and the baron’s threat against his family was lessening with every hour he was away from them.

“Too risky,” he decided. “That leaves us on foot if they go inland somewhere.”

“We’ll take that chance.”

“No, you will,” Glassman stated coldly, bouncing in his seat as the racing wag bounded over the rippled surface of the lava flow. “Because if we lose the outlanders again, I’ll personally bring you alive to the lord baron as payment for costing him so many men and weps!”

“Yeah?” Mitchum snarled, a hand going for his flintlock. Only the weapon wasn’t in its holster, and the cold barrel of a blaster was pressed to his neck from behind.

“Do as the captain says,” Campbell growled hatefully. “Or I’ll be delighted to pull the trigger. Your call, lubber.”

Furious at being trapped for the moment, Mitchum started driving faster. Suddenly, more than just mere revenge depended on his success in chilling the accursed outlanders.

Chapter Five

As the Pegasus floated away on the evening breeze, the companions shifted their backpacks to make some room and settled in for their flight. With no way to calculate airspeed, they didn’t have any idea how long the journey to Forbidden Island would take. Maybe only a few hours, but it could be much longer.

Time passed slowly, the moon traveling across the starry sky while the companions took turns catching short naps. There was little room in the rope basket, but they had lived in cramped quarters before and knew how to make do.

After the weapons had been cleaned and checked, the MRE envelopes were carefully ripped open, and the chow eaten cold. It was edible, but no more than that. Mildred tried to make coffee in a tin cup, and while the brown crystals dissolved satisfactorily, neither the sugar nor the powder cream would. She experimented with her butane lighter to no success and in the end poured the sodden mess overboard.

Pulling out a plastic safety razor, Jak dry shaved while standing guard duty, the scrape of the twin blades becoming fainter as he successfully removed his snowy beard.

Hoping nobody was watching, Dean rubbed a palm along his own chin but found only smooth skin. Nothing yet. Standing guard, Ryan caught the furtive motion and held back a grin. He remembered his first shave, and the bushy mustache he sported for a while as a teen.

Just then, something in the darkness caught Ryan’s attention. He studied the open sky until he caught the reflection of moonlight off leathery wings. The soft flapping grew steadily louder, and when Ryan was sure the creature was coming their way, he waited until the clouds parted, catching it in plain sight, and snapped off a shot with the SIG-Sauer. The blaster coughed, and the flying creature gave a piercing squeal, promptly identifying it as a bat. Gushing blood, the mutie spiraled down out of control to splash into the smooth expanse of the shimmering sea.

The discharge of the blaster made Dean stand and draw his own weapon. “What was that?” he demanded.

“Just a bat,” Ryan said calmly, holstering his piece. “Already aced. Everything’s green.”

A bat? Curiously, Dean looked over the rope sides of the makeshift basket and watched the dying creature flounder in the water, sharp fins already circling the bloody carcass. Then huge white figures rose from beneath the waves and began tearing the wiggling corpse apart.

“Those sharks?” Dean asked as the balloon drifted over the struggling creatures.

“Great whites, yes, indeed. But not those,” Doc said, gesturing with a waggling finger. “See the difference in the dorsal fins? Those are dolphins come for the kill.”

“Dolphins eat sharks?” Dean asked, shocked. The dolphins were so much smaller than the great whites it was hard to believe.

“No, they eat fish,” Mildred replied, looking at the moon. There had been too much death already today; she had no interest in watching the aquatic battle. “Dolphins kill sharks on sight. The two species hate each other.”

“Ace, no eat?” Jak said with a frown, running a whetstone along the blade of a knife in slow strokes. “Triple stupe.”

“Not if you’re in the water with sharks coming after your ass and a bunch of dolphins show up,” Ryan said, unwrapping a foil envelope to expose cherry-nut cake. Fireblast, was this the only dessert the Army ever fed its troops? He broke off a corner with his teeth and found it dissolved easily. Okay, not bad.

“They’re one of the few good muties that are friendly to norms,” he finished with a full mouth.

“Not a mutation, my dear Mr. Cawdor,” Doc rumbled. “Since time immemorial, dolphins have been the friends of humanity. Although God alone knows why. We have certainly treated them poorly enough.”

“How chill?” Jak asked, mildly interested. The dangers of the deep were important things to know.

“A dolphin will ram a shark in the belly with its nose,” Doc explained, watching the event occur. “See? They die almost instantly.”

“Hot pipe.” Dean sighed. “Dad, didn’t you say it’s possible to chill a man that way, too?”

“Requires a hell of a kick,” his father said, tossing away the wrapper. “But it can be done.”

“Smack in the belly?”

“Just under the rib cage,” Ryan said, moving a hand to the spot on his chest. “Right here, and slightly upward.”

The boy nodded studiously, filing away the info for future use.

“Enough of that, land ho!” Mildred cried out, breaking into a smile. “There she is, people! Forbidden Island!”

Majestically rising over the horizon like a green dawn was a wide island of hills, cliffs, mountains and volcanoes, everything covered with a lush growth of tropical plants. Silly thought, but to Krysty the place almost looked like two or three islands rammed together.

The Pegasus started to accelerate toward the island as a fresh wind blew over the companions, forcing the balloon onward. The twin volcanoes rumbled softly, sounding like distant thunder, their ragged tops lit from internal fires, wisps of yellow sulfur fumes rising to the sky. The firelight actually reflected off the thick layer of storm clouds. Two volcanoes so close to each other seemed unlikely to Mildred, and she postulated they were simply the planet trying to-clean itself from deadly residue of multiple nuke hits.

“Found them,” J.B. announced, holding the brass telescope to his face. In a valley set between the volcanoes were the ruins of a large predark metropolis sitting on top of a short mesa. The buildings were only silhouettes in the ambient light, black shadows as still and dead as the ferro-cement from which they’d been built.

As they continued closer, details came into view, a huge waterfall rushing off a tall cliff to their left, the smashed wreckage of a Navy yard to the right, the buildings and rusted hulks of warships partly swamped in a bay full of violently swirling water. The whirlpool made more noise than the waterfall, as it raged out of control.

Something large winged across the dark ruins, and Doc rubbed his eyes to see clearly, but the apparition was already gone. Tightening his lips, the time traveler wondered if he had just actually seen a pterodactyl, a winged lizard from the Jurassic period. No, quite impossible.

“May I be so bold as to strongly suggest that if we encounter anything exceptionally large,” Doc said, checking the load in his LeMat, “shoot only for its head? Nowhere else.”

“See something?” Krysty asked in concern, staring at the approaching land. Seemed rugged and wild, but ordinary enough.

“I do not know for sure, dear lady,” Doc muttered, frowning. “And that is what quite worries me.”

“Rad pits coming,” Ryan announced as the ebony night thinned about the island showing reddish-green glows dotting the landscape, and completely covering the Navy base. Quickly, Ryan checked his rad counter and saw the readings steadily climb toward the danger zone.

“Fireblast! It’s hotter than Washington Hole,” he stated, shifting his arm about. The clicks of the device seemed slower to the left, toward the valley that cut through the mountain range. That was the location of the mesa. But this was no place to make a guess.

“J.B., check my readings,” Ryan said urgently.

“Yeah, valley seems okay,” J.B. added, his own rad counter out and sweeping for danger. The sides of the mesa were sheer vertical stone. A bitch of a climb to make, but no problem to reach from the air.

“Okay, start wetting those blankets and try angling us toward the mesa,” Ryan directed, sliding on his backpack.

“No need,” Mildred replied. “The wind has shifted again, and we’re heading straight for it.”

“The volcanoes are making a current for us,” Krysty said, frowning slightly. “Taking us right there.”

Tucking away his sharpened knives, Jak scowled. “Somethin’ wrong.”

Mildred shuffled around the rope basket and checked the weight bags. Each was tied firmly in place.

“Millie?” J.B. asked.

“We appear to be rising,” she answered slowly. “Nothing serious yet, but we better let out some helium.”

“My job,” Doc said, pulling the sword from his stick. Reaching high, he stabbed the lowest weather balloon and it noisily deflated in a blubbery rush. But the Pegasus didn’t lose any height. Puzzled, Doc stabbed another, then another, and incredibly the airship began to rise.

“How’s this possible?” J.B. demanded, trying to see above the makeshift craft. Did something have a hold of them and was dragging the balloons skyward?

“Goddamn it, we’re caught in an updraft from those cross currents!” Mildred said, drawing her blaster and blowing away the largest balloon. It burst as the hot round tore through, but their speed didn’t slow.

Steadily the Pegasus streaked for the storm clouds overhead, and Ryan briefly considered dropping all of their excess weight to get above the clouds. Unfortunately, the sheet lightning filled the sky and they would be fried rising through the wild storm—if the rads and chems didn’t ace them first. But if they shot out too many balloons, they would plummet from the sky and crash on the rocks below. They had passed the ocean several minutes ago and were now moving over bare soil studded with boulders and rusty predark junk. The companions would be torn to pieces even if they survived the brutal landing.

As they rose still higher, Krysty cried out in pain, then the rest rubbed their arms and faces, skin prick-ling from the deadly proximity to the heavily polluted clouds. Just then, both of the rad counters began to wildly click ever faster.

“If we enter those clouds,” Doc warned in a stentorian tone, his eyes painfully tearing, “none of us shall ever leave it alive!”

With no other choice, Ryan drew his blaster and started firing, the spent brass kicking over the side of the basket. Fireblast, he thought, the problem with balloon wags was supposed to be keeping them afloat, not getting them to come down. Just one solution for that. The red-hot rounds from the SIG-Sauer easily punched through the tough polymer sheeting, deflating balloons far out of the sword’s reach, and the craft instantly slowed. Then it began to descend, and soon the itchy crawling feeling of radiation was fading away. Only now the island was rushing toward them with nightmare speed as the Pegasus descended out of control.

“Too fast!” Jak stated, slashing through the ropes. The heavy bags fell, and the Pegasus continued to drop.

“Shitfire, we’ve slipped out of the thermal!” Mildred warned. “Now we’re too heavy. Toss everything overboard!”

The companions slid off their backpacks and heaved them away, but the reduction in weight made no real difference. Too many of the balloons had been destroyed in their efforts to avoid the death clouds. But the airship was also still moving inland. The moonlight heralding their way, the terrain became grasslands, then a forest with a stone arch extended across the valley, connecting one mountainside to the other. A natural limestone bridge flew by.

“Get ready to jump,” Ryan ordered, climbing the ropes.

The others copied his actions, but the Pegasus swung past the bridge moving way too fast, the bottom of the plastic pallet scraping across the limestone for the briefest instant before they were past the obstruction and over the trees again.

“Fireblast!” Ryan spit, falling back into the rope basket.

Incredibly, from somewhere below an alarm bell began to ring, and blasters crackled from the dark trees as cannons roared from hidden bunkers on the shadowy mountainsides, their discharges throwing tongues of flame that illuminated the valley.

“It’s another ville!” J.B. snarled as a cannonball rushed by, buffeting them with the wind of its passing.

“Water!” Krysty shouted, pointing ahead.

There was a wide break in the stygian forest, where a calm river traversed the valley floor. Unfortunately, the river was narrow, with sharp rocks lining both shores, with more trees returning on the far bank. Their target was a slim area of flat mud between the rocks, impossible to hit at their current speed.

“That is our best chance!” Ryan shouted, slashing away the side ropes, open air directly before the man. “Wait for it…Now!”

In unison the companions dived from the pallet, and a split second later the Pegasus rammed into the trees and was torn apart by a thousand sharp branches.

Only the babbling of the shallow river disturbed the heavy silence of the muddy banks. Then swatches of light bobbed through the darkness, and armed men stepped from the rushes along the riverbank to stealthily approach the deathly still figures sprawled in the bloody mud.

THEIR BLACK PLUMES trailing across the starry sky, the four PT boats steamed across the ocean, their engines thumping loudly.

A number of dolphins swam alongside the lead petey, occasionally lifting their bottle-nose heads to give a stuttering squeal. With both of his wounds stiff and aching, Mitchum slid the longblaster off his shoulder, pulled back the heavy hammer and shot one. The creature moved sideways from the impact of the .75 miniball, human-red blood spraying from the gaping wound. The entire pack dived out of sight instantly, and as the chugging fleet left them behind, the dolphins returned to circle the dying mammal, gently nudging it with their stubby noses. Then a female gave a long howl as if in mourning as the gut-shot male rolled onto its back to expose its pale belly to the air. The rest of the pack circled their dead friend once more, then swam away, leaving the lifeless meat to the endless scavengers. But more than one of the dolphins turned to stare at the noisy dead thing that thundered over the water, watching the two-legs with intelligent eyes full of raw hatred.

“What was that?” Glassman demanded, lowering his plate of beans and dried fish.

“Some kind of baby shark,” Mitchum said, purging the longblaster before refilling it with powder, lead and cloth wad, then carefully tramping down the fresh charge with a blunt nimrod. “Who cares? Just a fish. Ain’t got no brains or human feelings.”

With a shrug, Glassman returned to his meal.

“Ahoy, the captain!” a sailor called out from an aft PT boat, a hand pointing to the sky. “Two o’clock high!”

“It’s them!” Mitchum snarled, lifting his long-blaster, but withheld firing. The weird air wag was bobbing along in the sky without a care in the world. The sec chief trembled with the urge to kill, and had to mentally force his hands to lower the flintlock.

“Well, don’t stand there gawking like virgins in a gaudy house!” Mitchum snarled, stalking along the deck. “They’re getting away! Load the .50 cals! Ready the Firebirds!” Nobody moved to obey the command. The sec chief fumed in his impotence, and bit back words he knew would only get him aced.

“Land ho!” another called in warning. “Breakers at our noon!”

A corporal backed away from the sight. “That’s Forbidden Island!”

“What?” a sec man gasped, spinning in shock.

On the horizon was a long landmass with two live volcanoes. There could be no doubt as to which island that was.