Siren Song

Crouched by the bush, the bearded man glanced back at Jak, his eyes pleading. “Did the bomb go off?” he whispered. “You can’t let them—”

His words were cut short by a woman’s voice coming from upslope. “William! Will? What are you doing?”

The man—presumably William—turned back, raised his blaster and fired. The discharge sounded loud in the stillness of the woods, its thundering echo accompanied by the frightened cries of birds taking flight in its wake.

Jak ducked back, dipping behind the nearest tree and using its trunk for cover. It was a birch, and the trunk was too narrow to give adequate protection, even for Jak’s small frame. But there was no time to find better, not now that bullets were flying.

William had clearly missed his target, and he blasted again, firing another shot into the trees. Upslope, one of the figures in white moved, stepping swiftly behind a tree as the bullet struck a branch.

Jak watched the figure slip out from cover and he could discern that it was a woman—perhaps the same one who had called to William.

“Help me,” the man called, his voice raised now in panic. He glanced back to where Jak was hiding, his brow furrowing as he saw that Jak had disappeared. “Please, you know what they’ll do...”

Jak almost gasped as the white-clad figures emerged from the trees, converging on the armed man in a flurry of fluttering robes. All five were women, young and tall and svelte with long limbs and long hair styled atop their heads in some kind of elaborate braid or plait. The robes were made of a light, gauzy material, pure white like predark summer clouds, covering each woman from her neck all the way down to her ankles. There were wide pleats within the design of the robes that made the skirts and sleeves billow around them like mist, making it hard to determine where their bodies ended and the robes began. They were beautiful, angelic.

Jak watched as the women converged on the lone man. William rose from his crouch and shouted, “Die! Damn you all!” before blasting wildly at the women, again and again, shifting his aim to shoot the next and the next and the next.

Still gliding toward the man, the women moved gracefully but swiftly, sidestepping the shots with breathtaking ease. Jak watched, incredulous, as one of the women, honey-red hair piled on her head, leaped from the ground and kicked out at a tree, using it to lever herself higher as a bullet whizzed beneath her. It was an exceptional move, both in terms of speed and agility, and the timing was nothing less than perfect.

The woman landed back on the ground in a swish of billowing robes, now just three feet from the man with the blaster. He depressed the trigger again, sending another .45 slug at the woman’s face from almost point-blank range. The woman darted aside at the same time, and a combination of her speed and the man’s fear sent the bullet wide.

Then the woman grabbed the barrel of the man’s blaster in her right hand, yanking it aside as he fired again. All around them, the other figures had converged on this spot and stood just a few feet away, surrounding the two combatants as the unarmed woman overpowered her blaster-wielding foe.

Jak winced as the weapon blasted again, sending another bullet toward the woman’s shoulder. It missed her but it was close, and Jak saw the wide shoulder strap of her dress shred as the bullet breezed past, a trace of red kicking into the air as the bullet clipped her skin.

The man was shouting in nonsensical sentence fragments now. Something about stopping them... Something about love... Jak could see the man’s trigger finger squeezing again and again, but there was no ammo left in his blaster.

The white-robed women converged on him. What happened next, Jak couldn’t see. All he saw was the billowing robes circling the spot where the man had gone down, fluttering there like waves.

* * *

MILDREDAND RICKYwaited in the redoubt monitoring room as the explosion shook the walls. Dust escaped from the ceiling fixtures and a great cloud tumbled down from the bank of television screens that dominated one wall.

“You think...” Ricky began.

But Mildred was too focused on her task to respond. She was crouched beside him, her face close to the bloody mess that dominated the left side of Ricky’s shirt. “Ready?” she asked, and Ricky nodded. She lifted his shirt in a single, swift gesture and Ricky yelped in pain. “Okay,” Mildred soothed. “You’re okay.”

The blood made it look worse than it was, the way it had spread across Ricky’s skin. But it had started clotting and had dried with Ricky’s shirt, sticking flesh to material. That was why it had hurt so much when Mildred had ripped his shirt away.

Mildred prodded at the wound. You had to move quickly in the Deathlands, and field medicine like this was often the only option. Keeping the companions patched up was Mildred’s job, and she was damn good at it, too. “How does it look?” Ricky asked, breathing through clenched teeth.

“Nasty,” Mildred told him, taking an inch-high bottle of ammonia from her supplies. “You’ve lost a lot of skin, but we’ll clean that out and get you bandaged up. You’ll live.”

Ricky winced, holding back the tears. “Hurts bastard bad,” he said as Mildred knelt to clean the wound.

The physician arched a brow. “Boy, you listen too closely to J.B. and Ryan’s turns of phrase.”

* * *

DEBRISLITTEREDTHEfloor of the corridor and a coating of dust covered the two figures that lay inside the door.

Ryan moved first, pulling himself up to a sitting position and brushing plaster dust from his dark hair. Beside him, J.B. stirred and flinched at the movement, turning to Ryan with a coating of dust on the lenses of his spectacles.

Ryan looked at him and smiled. “You still alive?” he said.

“Hundred percent,” J.B. confirmed, rubbing at one ear to stop the ringing. “Let’s go check on the damage.”

Warily, the two men entered corridor. It was a mess, but just surface mess—nothing a dustpan and brush couldn’t smarten up in a few minutes. There was a hairline crack running up the wall beside the door to the control room, as thin as a spider’s web. Ryan gestured to it as he passed. “Could have been your skull,” he said.

J.B. laughed and rapped his knuckles on the wall. “Nah, my skull’s thicker than this,” he responded.

Moving quietly, Ryan and J.B. returned to the control room and surveyed the damage. The control area itself had barely sustained any damage other than a coating of plaster dust, but the mat-trans chamber was billowing with dark smoke and two-thirds of the toughened-glass walls that surrounded it had shattered, leaving a carpet of twinkling shards that spread out from the chamber like projectile vomit.

The chamber’s fans were whirring loudly as they worked to clear the smoke while ancient, ceiling-mounted water sprinklers made a hissing, fizzing sound though nothing came out of their pipes. Presumably, in the hundred years since this facility had been built, the contents of their supply tanks had either leaked or evaporated, leaving just the sound of the taps as they opened and closed, opened and closed.

When Ryan and J.B. entered the anteroom, they could see fire within the hexagonal chamber of the mat-trans itself, spots of flame licking at what was left of the walls and burning in patches on the tiled floor. Black smoke poured from the smeared remains of the crate-like device that had once abutted the back wall, but almost nothing remained of the device itself other than the basic shape of the box that had held it, now seared into the floor in a black rectangle.

Ryan shook his head, waving smoke out of his eye. “We won’t be using this again in a hurry,” he said grimly.

J.B. nodded solemnly. He left the anteroom and peered around the control room before spying the fire extinguishers. He strode over to them and reached for the boxy cabinet that clung to the wall above them, removing the fire blanket that was strapped there. The fire blanket had waited a century for someone to use it, and it smelled of mildew.

The Armorer strode back to the mat-trans and shook the blanket, throwing it across the flaming scar of the explosive, his feet tramping in the shattered armaglass. “Could be our only way out,” he reminded Ryan as they watched the blanket smother the flames. “Best do what we can to contain the damage.”

Ryan eyed the damaged floor tiles and the missing armaglass with concern. “You think this is repairable?”

“If it has to be,” J.B. told him. “Mebbe it won’t come to that.”

They waited a moment for the flames to stop burning and watched the smoke ease to a wispy trail in the air like a squirrel’s tail.

Ryan watched the smoke dissipate, voicing the question that neither of them could answer. “Who did this and why?”

J.B. just shook his head. “For now, I guess we should be grateful we didn’t arrive three minutes after we did,” he said dourly.

* * *

ONTHESLOPEoutside the redoubt, the white-clad women stepped away from the figure they had surrounded and Jak saw that the man was dead. His neck had been snapped and his head was poised at an awkward angle as he lay on the dirt, his eyes wide-open and staring into nothingness.

As one, the women turned at a noise. Jak heard it, too. It was coming from the redoubt.

Still in his hiding place, Jak saw Krysty and Doc emerging through the doors, their blasters held loosely in their hands. Krysty looked more able to stand on her own now, which was something.

As they stepped out onto the path, the women in the white robes moved through the trees toward them. Jak stepped out from cover, holding his blaster loosely, pointed straight up to the sky. “Wait,” he said. “Mean no harm.”

The women stopped, their white robes fluttering around them as they caught the breeze.

“Who are you?” the closest woman demanded. She had blond hair so pale it was almost white, and her eyes were a luminous green.

“Jak Lauren,” Jak said before indicating the redoubt entrance with an incline of his head. “Friends. Not hurting.”

Behind the blonde, another woman, this one with dark skin like Mildred’s, smiled tentatively as she spoke. “He speaks like a child,” she said. “It’s sweet.”

“His blaster isn’t sweet,” the blonde replied, her emerald eyes fixed on the weapon in Jak’s hand.

Jak took his cue and, holding out his empty hand in a placating gesture, he lowered himself to place his Colt Python on the ground. Jak didn’t like being weaponless—well, he was hardly that, as every sleeve and pocket contained a leaf-bladed throwing knife, though these strangers were not to know that—but he saw the necessity to act peaceably while the lives of his friends were at stake.

“Jak?” Doc’s voice carried up the slope. “Where are you, lad?”

The blonde fixed Jak with a look. “You had better reply, Jak,” she said. “Tell them to put down their blasters if, truly, they and you mean us no harm.”

Jak did just that, raising his voice and explaining the situation in his clipped manner. “Put away blasters, no danger,” he called back to Doc. “Five new friends here.” He was careful to state the number, so that Doc and Krysty would know how many they faced should it come to a firefight.

Down by the redoubt entrance, Doc and Krysty reluctantly placed their blasters in their holsters. The white-robed women watched, and the blonde—their leader? Jak wondered—nodded agreeably.

“Now,” said the blonde, “tell them to wait there.”

Jak did, and a few seconds later he was being led by the group back to the redoubt entrance.

“Well, well,” Doc said, appreciably eyeing the long-limbed beauties who accompanied Jak. “I see you have made some charming new acquaintances.”

Then Doc bent at the waist in a slight bow. “My name is Dr. Theophilus Tanner,” he introduced himself, “and my companion here is Krysty Wroth. You’ve already met young Jak here.” Doc made no mention of their other companions, still inside the redoubt. It didn’t do to reveal all your cards too early in the game.

“Doctor,” the blond spokeswoman said, the hint of a smile crossing her thin lips. “This is private territory. Would you care to explain how you came to be here?”

Doc fingered the handle of his sword cane for a moment as he thought. “We...um...arrived via a miraculous machine.”

“The mat-trans,” a brunette said from the back of the group. “You worked it?”

Krysty gasped at her casual comment.

Doc had not intended to be quite so transparent in his explanation, but caught unawares all he could do was reply truthfully. “Yes, the mat-trans,” he said. “We ran into a spot of bother out—” he gestured vaguely “—yonder and made the jump here, wherever here is. I am afraid it was all rather rushed.”

The women stepped forward, concern on their features. “And how is the mat-trans?” the dark-skinned woman asked.

“They survived the jump,” the brunette pointed out before Doc could reply. “Obviously, it’s operational.”

“Ah, no,” Doc replied before the women could continue. “There was an explosive device inside the unit that...”

“Exploded,” Krysty suggested, seeing Doc struggling.

“Quite, yes,” Doc acknowledged.

“William placed a bomb?” the honey-haired woman said in alarm.

“Deirdre thought as much,” the blonde confirmed before turning back to Doc.

Jak listened to all of this in silence, piecing together the story in his mind. William was the man he had come across in the woods, who had engaged in the firefight with these mysterious women before being chilled by them. William had said something to Jak before that fight began, something that might have been important. Jak thought back, recalling that the man had asked about the bomb. “You can’t let them...” was all he had said. Can’t let them...what?

“We should go check,” the dark-skinned woman said and the others agreed.

“Darn it, if William has blown up the mat-trans...” the brunette said, bitterly shaking her head.

“And it had to be now,” the honey-haired woman agreed, “right when these travelers could have...”

The blonde hushed them both with a look. “Melissas.”

“Melissas,” the honey-blonde replied, lowering her head, and her companion did the same.

The five women ushered Doc, Krysty and Jak back inside the redoubt. Doc wondered when would be the most appropriate time to mention that they had more companions waiting within.

Chapter Four

“I don’t like losing the mat-trans,” J.B. stated as he and Ryan moved through the redoubt. “Makes me edgy.”

“I don’t like it any more than you do,” Ryan agreed. “The mat-trans have been our little secret for a long time, and I don’t revel in losing our escape hatch like this if we are in a hostile place. Otherwise, it means a hike overland to wherever the next redoubt is.”

As the two men trotted past the monitoring room, Mildred’s head poked out, calling them back.

“Hey, guys!” They joined Mildred in the monitoring room, where Ricky was just fixing his shirt over the bandage that Mildred had affixed around his belly and ribs. J.B. touched Mildred’s face briefly, leaving what he wanted to say unvoiced.

“What happened?” Ricky asked, looking from Ryan to J.B.

“Bomb went off,” Ryan said, “ruining the mat-trans.”

“Damn,” Ricky cursed.

J.B. made a show of looking at the youth’s bloody shirt. “How are you feeling? You okay, kid?” he asked.

Ricky shrugged. “De nada. I’ve had worse in Nuestra Señora.”

He was bluffing, J.B. knew. That musket shell had scored blood and had to have hurt like hell, but the kid was proud and he didn’t like to show weakness in front of the companions.

“I only heard one explosion,” Mildred was saying as she put her extra bandage in her medical satchel.

Ryan nodded. “We were lucky,” he agreed. “There were no other bombs. A military base like this could’ve been stuffed full of ordnance that might have been rigged remotely to go off when the bomb went off.”

“You said the mat-trans was wrecked,” Mildred said, phrasing it like a question.

“Yeah, for now anyway,” J.B. confirmed. “We might be able to do something with it, given time, but we’d be better off finding another mat-trans if we need one.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” Mildred said, “but, assuming it does, how far would we have to go?”

J.B. shrugged. “Till we know where we are, I won’t have clue one, Millie,” he said.

“Then I guess we’d better start figuring out where we are,” Mildred said, and Ryan agreed.

Checking that Ricky was okay to move—he was—Ryan led the way back out into the corridor and the foursome headed toward the outside door.

* * *

DOCLOOKEDSURREPTITIOUSLYat the five angelic women who accompanied them as he, Krysty and Jak were led back through the redoubt they had just exited. Each of these women was young with flawless skin. Doc guessed not one of them was over twenty-one. The blonde led the way confidently, and she seemed to know which paths to take. Doc guessed that she was leading them to the mat-trans chamber to survey the damage that the bomb had wrought, and he wondered if Ryan and the others had survived the blast.

“So,” Doc began uncertainly, “Melissa, is it? You seem to know your way around this...facility.”

The blonde looked at Doc after a moment, confusion turning to understanding as she realized that he was addressing her. She smiled then, indulging him. “It’s not Melissa,” she said, “and yes, we’ve been here many times before.”

“Ah,” Doc said. “Please accept my apologies, I thought I heard your companions call you Melissa. I must have become muddled.”

“They did,” the blonde replied as she led them down a stairwell with concrete steps and reinforced-glass banisters dividing each level. “But that’s not my name, it’s a designation. We’re all Melissas.”

“I see,” Doc said, though he didn’t.

“I’m Phyllida. This is Linda, Nancy, Charm and Adele,” she said, indicating the others.

“All pretty names,” Doc said. “So you say you have been in here on other occasions?” Doc added, raising his voice a little in the hope Ryan would hear—if he was still here.

The Melissa called Phyllida looked back at him and smiled, her teeth white and flawless, much like Doc’s own. “The mat-trans you came in was damaged a long time ago in the quake,” she explained. “We’ve been examining its workings, trying to repair it.”

“Our engineers,” the dark-skinned Melissa, who was called Adele, elaborated.

“We noticed some quake damage when we came in,” Krysty said from within the huddle.

“The unit’s only been operational—what?—two days,” the brunette called Linda said.

“Not even that long,” Phyllida said. “They were still testing it yesterday evening.”

“Then it seems we arrived bang on time,” Doc said, wincing at his rather unfortunate choice of words. “Forgive the unintentional pun.”

“Yes, you—”

“Nobody make a sudden move!” Ryan said, stepping from the cover of an open doorway with his SIG Sauer raised in a two-handed grip. “Hands in the air.”

J.B. and Mildred stepped out of the shadows behind Ryan, their own weapons raised to target the group of robed women. Behind them both, Ricky waited in the shadow of the doorway, his De Lisle carbine clutched in both hands, the pain of his patched flank making him stand a little hunched over.

The Melissas tensed, moving automatically back so that they were close to the concrete walls.

Doc found himself front and center of the sudden negotiation.

“What’s the state of play, Doc?” Ryan growled, his weapon fixed on blond-haired Phyllida where she stood behind the old man.

Doc took a deep, steadying breath, his hands surreptitiously twisting the silver lion’s-head grip of his swordstick to release the blade within. “These people are unarmed, Ryan,” he stated, “and they have shown no inclination to harm us. It is my understanding that their sole interest is in the mat-trans, which they have been working on for some time.”

“Did they plant the bomb?” J.B. asked, running the shotgun over the group in warning.

“No,” Doc explained. “I am led to understand that they opposed the individual who did that, and that they had hoped to stop it.”

He turned to Phyllida. “Is this correct?”

Phyllida nodded. “Yes. You didn’t mention that there were more of you,” she said.

Doc raised his eyebrows. “You did not ask.”

Phyllida looked from Doc to Ryan and the others who had their drawn blasters pointed at them. “Your friend is quite correct,” she said at last. “We won’t hurt you.”

“My name is Phyllida,” the blond-haired woman continued. “We of the Trai have a strict ‘no blasters’ policy, and we would be grateful if you would adhere to that while on our property.”

She waited while Ryan watched her, his lone eye scanning carefully over her companions as he weighed them up. Finally he said, “And your people are unarmed?”

“Precisely so,” Phyllida confirmed.

Ryan searched Doc’s face for some sign of deceit and saw none. It paid to be cautious in the Deathlands, but a standoff had to be resolved, one way or the other, and Ricky couldn’t keep fighting without recovering. Slowly, Ryan brought his SIG Sauer down and holstered it, and his people did the same. Ryan knew just what J.B. was thinking as the Armorer slung his shotgun—it was the same thing that they were all thinking. Can these people be trusted?

“I’m Ryan,” the one-eyed man said, though he made no move to meet Phyllida.

Instead she came to him, her pure-white robes fluttering behind her like mist, one delicate, pale hand outstretched in greeting. “Pleased to meet you, Ryan.”

Ryan took the woman’s hand. Her grip was firm, stronger than he would expect for her build. He released her hand after a moment.

“I guess you weren’t inside when the bomb hit,” Ryan said.

“What makes you say that?” Phyllida asked.

“Your clothes,” Ryan said. “They’re clean.”

“You’re right,” Phyllida replied. “We were outside this structure, tracking down the violator who planted the device. I understand it went off.”

“Yeah,” Ryan said.

“Then I’m sorry we didn’t get here sooner,” Phyllida told him. She sounded genuine, her voice tinged with regret.

J.B. spoke up from behind Ryan’s shoulder, his eyes watching the strangely garbed women carefully. “You use the mat-trans often?” he asked.

“No, never,” Phyllida told him. “But we had hoped to, as stories had been passed down for generations regarding its purpose. As I was telling your companion here, the device was out of commission for a very long time. Our people only achieved functionality again barely a day ago.”

“Then someone blew it up,” J.B. said drily. “That’s mighty inconvenient.”

One of the other Melissas spoke up, the honey-haired one called Charm. “William was a fool.” She spit. “He should have been driven out of Heaven months ago.”

“Heaven?” Doc asked with obvious surprise. These women dressed like angels, but surely...

Phyllida turned back to him and smiled. “Heaven Falls,” she said. “Where we live. We’ll show you, if you like, once we’ve assessed the damage to the mat-trans. It won’t take long.”

“Heaven Falls.” Doc rolled the name around in his mind. “It sounds, well... It sounds heavenly. Does it not, Ryan?”

The one-eyed man looked from Doc to Krysty and the others, judging their expressions. When he met with Mildred’s chocolate-brown eyes he saw her nod subtly. She wanted somewhere to check Ricky over more fully. A ville could be it.

“I think we’d like that,” Ryan said finally.

Together, the group made its way back through the redoubt to its heart, where the operations room and the mat-trans waited in their state of disarray.

“The bomb was set here,” Ryan said. “My friend tried to disarm it, but we ran out of time.”

“Placed the fire blanket over it to douse the flames,” J.B. said, as if in consolation.