Ghost Book Two: The Death Machines

– Chapter Three –

He was big enough, and was carrying a big enough axe — that it looked to me like the only way we’d get past him was if we stuffed sticks of TNT in every nook and cranny of that armor, lit him up, and did laundry before the blood stains could set, but Vargas just stepped around one of the half–buried skeletons and gave the guy a friendly little salute.

“Howdy, amigo,” he said. “We were actually wondering if we could have a pow–wow with the boss man — or woman, as the case may be. We wanna ask ‘em about the keys to the—”

“YOU HAVE CROSSED THE LINE OF DEATH! YOU MUST DIE!”

“Uh, okay, then. What if I just step back out and ask again? Would that be—”

“DEATH TO THE OUTSIDERS!”

Goliath swung his axe at Vargas’s head like he was looking to chop it off and send it flying all the way to Ranger Center, but Vargas ducked back and swung his AK–97 off his back in one smooth motion, then raised it to fire. So did everybody else.

“No.” Thrasher was stepping forward and unlimbering his rebar billy–club. “The guardians won’t talk to us if we kill him. Let me.”

I blinked. That was more than all the other words than I’d ever heard Thrasher say combined.

Vargas laughed but lowered his gun. “You think they’re gonna like it any better if you beat their guard dog senseless?”

Thrasher shrugged. “Mercy begets mercy. Sometimes.”

Begets? Jesus.

He motioned to the black–armored behemoth, who had gone into a defensive posture when he’d seen all the guns. “You and me. Come on.”

Goliath waved him forward. It wasn’t until I saw them standing toe to toe that I realized just how big the guy was. Thrasher was as big as any man I’d ever met. Bigger by a head than those muscle–head raiders we’d tangled with back at White Mesa, but Goliath was a head taller than that, and wider too. Some of that was the armor, sure, but not much.

He swung his axe down at Thrasher like he wanted to end it in one shot. Thrasher sidestepped, then spun in, billy–club blurring. The first two hits made Goliath’s chest armor ring like a dinner bell. The third cracked his motorcycle helmet across the face. It starred and he staggered back, but he didn’t go down.

“OUCH!”

As Thrasher came in for the follow–up, Goliath swung the axe up from the ground and caught him in the side. The pseudo–chitin armor stopped the blade from chopping through Thrasher’s ribs, but massive as he was, the force of the blow still launched him halfway across the narrow canyon and slammed him into the rock wall.

Thrasher pitched forward, groaning, but before Goliath could close, he turned it into a roll and came up into a crouch. I’m not sure if it was bravado or sheer willpower, but he didn’t even rub the spot where the club had hit. He just grunted and advanced, billy–club swaying like an iron snake, as stone–faced as ever.

Goliath tried another monster swing, but Thrasher wasn’t going to get caught again. He danced away with a lot more grace than I expected, then came in on the big man’s off side and rained hits down on him like he was playing a drum solo.

Before, he’d tried to crack Goliath’s armor; this time he targeted the gaps and joints. A thwack at the neckline popped the monster’s gorget off and exposed his throat. His off hand came up to protect it. Thrasher saw the opening and bashed his side full force just below the edge of his breastplate. I could hear ribs snapping.

The Guardian staggered sideways, clutching at himself and bellowing in pain. He spread his legs, trying not to go down, then held up a gauntleted hand. It was shaking.

“I YIELD! I YIELD! YOU HAVE BESTED ME!”

Vargas stepped forward and cracked him in the helmet with the butt of his rifle. “Yeah yeah, yield quieter. Sheesh.”

“You go ahead,” said Athalia as Goliath toppled backwards onto the stony ground. “I’ll disarm him in case he comes to again.”

She heaved the big man’s big axe up into the rocks of the canyon wall like it was a broomstick, then knelt beside him and started searching him. The others started ahead, but I hung back to wait for her. She pocketed his side arm and a knife, then tugged a neck chain out of his collar. It had something long and narrow dangling from it. She yanked it free and pocketed it too.

“Hey, what was that?” I asked. It looked familiar.

“Hmmm?” she said. “Some kind of amulet or something?”

“No, wait. Let me see it.”

She shrugged and pulled it out of her robe again. I stared.

“That’s one of the self–destruct keys!”

She frowned at it. “Is it? I didn’t get a good look when Angie showed us.”

“It is! Let me have it.”

She handed it over and I ran after the others. “Angie! Vargas!”

They turned and I held out the key. “Athalia found it. The big bastard had it around his neck.”

Angie stared. “That’s the Pulsar key!”

“Why the hell would the gorilla at the front door be wearing something like that?” asked Vargas.

Angie raised an eyebrow. “Maybe they thought he couldn’t be beat?”

“Or maybe they don’t know what it is,” I said. “Maybe he thought it was just some kind of religious amulet.”

“Whatever,” said Ace. “At least we got us some kind of bargaining chip now.”

“No,” said Hell Razor, shaking his head. “Don’t let ‘em know you have it. If they think you’ve got one of their sacred doo–dads, they’ll throw everything they got at us to get it back.” He snorted. “Chances are slim to none that this parlay business’ll work in the first place, but if you show ‘em that, it’ll bring the odds down to less than fuck–all. I guarantee it.”

Athalia rejoined us as we turned toward the gate again.

“All right,” said Vargas. “Here goes nothing.”

“Stop right there, interlopers!”

A woman’s voice came from the top of the perimeter walls, but it was dark, so we couldn’t see anybody.

We stopped and Vargas saluted into the night. “Heya, amigos. Not here to start anything. We come in peace.”

“Oh?” said the voice. “Then what happened to Brother Goliath?”

Goliath? Ha! I’d got his name right and didn’t even know it.

“He’s, uh, resting,” said Vargas. “He said we should talk to you.”

“The Guardians do not talk to outsiders. They have nothing to teach us.”

Behind his trademark shades, Vargas rolled his eyes, but he kept any sarcasm out of his voice. “You’re absolutely right. That’s why we’ve come. We were hoping you could teach us something.”

The voice sounded slightly more agreeable. “Were you? And what is it that you wished to know?”

Vargas cleared his throat. “Uh, well, as I’m sure you already know, there’s been an army of killer robots coming out of the north recently, from a place called Base Cochise. Apparently the computer there wants to use ‘em to kill everybody and take over the world, but we recently learned that you Guardians might have a way to stop this computer and… well, we were wondering if that was true.”

There was a long pause, then the voice came back. “And what way is it that you think we have?”

“Um,” Vargas looked around at us, unsure, then continued. “Apparently Base Cochise is equipped with a self–destruct system, but we found records that said the four keys that activate it were kept in the Citadel Launch Facility, which, as you know, is the original name of your, uh, club house.”

Another pause, then, “How did you learn this information?”

I snorted. “For a gang who knows everything, they sure ask a lot of questions.”

“Shhh,” said Angie.

“We learned about the psycho computer in Darwin Village,” said Vargas. “We learned about the four keys in Sleeper One.”

“You… you have been to Darwin Village?” asked the voice.

“Yep,” said Vargas.

“Does… does this mean that Irwin Finster is dead?”

Vargas looked back at us again. “What do you think? What do they want to hear?”

“Tell them you killed him,” said Athalia. “They do not like Finster.”

“Thanks.”

I glanced back at Athalia. How did she know that? And why was she standing behind Thrasher, completely in his shadow?

Vargas spoke up again. “Yeah, we killed him. Finster is dead. And so are his mutants.”

The voice was getting excited. “And does the fact that you were inside Sleeper One mean that you have recovered the Pseudo–Chitin armor?”

“That one we probably shouldn’t tell ‘em,” murmured Hell Razor. “They’ll wanna come out and take it off our bodies.”

Vargas nodded. “Sorry, we don’t know anything about any armor. What about the self–destruct keys? Can you help us with those?”

There was no answer from the wall, but I thought I could see people scurrying around up there.

“Get ready to scatter,” I said.

Vargas grunted and tried again. “Listen, I know you folks are mighty protective of your property, and you ain’t comfortable lettin’ strangers borrow historical relics, but you gotta see that this is a problem that affects you as much as it does us. Those robots are coming for all of us. Doesn’t matter whether you’re Rangers or Guardians or gangsters from Las Vegas, as long as you’re human, those tin–hat tyrants are out to kill you. So maybe, just this once, you could let us take those keys up to Base Cochise and blow that crazy computer to kingdom come. Or, hell, if that don’t work for you, let’s team up. Assemble a squad of your best and we’ll go up there together — a joint Ranger/Guardian task force to finish this thing off once and for all. Whaddaya say?”

There was another long pause — so long I thought they weren’t going to answer at all, but finally the voice came back.

“So,” it said. “You are proposing that we, the Guardians of the Old Order, the chosen custodians of all the technological wonders and all the wisdom of the ancients, charged with protecting all that was good and great and pure from the world that came before the apocalypse, should join forces with the Desert Rangers, a group of Neanderthal thugs unfit to touch the merest paperclip from those halcyon days, so that together we can destroy the most incredible marvel of the age? The world’s only self–aware computer? The artificial super–intelligence that has devised the only viable plan for taking mankind forward into the future and making him the god that he was always intended to be?”

It sounded like a rhetorical question to me, but Vargas answered it anyway.

“Uh, yes?”

The voice sputtered. “Fools! Kill them, brothers and sisters! For Cochise! For the future!”

We were all diving for cover before she’d finished shrieking, so the first salvo missed us by yards, but their aim got better mighty quick.

“She coulda just said no,” said Angie, crouching behind a broken brick wall as bullets battered the front of it.

Vargas was looking around from behind a boulder. “Looks like we’re gonna have to fight our way in after all. Angie, Athalia, stay back and pick off those shooters. Ghost, Thrasher and Hell Razor will go forward and see if they can light up the walls with flares. Ace and me will use the rockets to…” He trailed off. “Wait a minute. Where the hell is Athalia?”

I looked around, squinting into the darkness behind the rocks and walls. Was she still hiding behind Thrasher? Had she been shot? Was she lying there, bleeding, and I hadn’t even noticed?

No.

She was nowhere.

Athalia was gone.