Point Apocalypse (36 page)

Rubbing my aching chest, I went towa
rd the gasometer's entrance.

"Where are you going?"

"Down," I ducked into the opening and hurried toward the stairs hearing Lars wheezing behind me.

The stench of Fritz's thermobaric round
still hung thick in the hallway. I hauled the jetpack onto my shoulder and covered my face with one hand. As I walked down the steps, I nearly ran into two burly bearded men.

"Who are you?" one of them asked suspiciously raising his carbine.

"Let him through," Lars ordered. The loggers stepped aside.

Wladas and Kathy waited for me by the portal machine.

"How is it?" the girl asked and then shook her head, unbelieving. I must have looked a sight.

"
Fine," I turned around. "Where are the cybers' bodies?"

"We've
put them in the room where they kept us," Wladas explained.

"
Get in there, quick! Take a uniform off one of them and his gear. Hurry it up."

He
blinked, confused.

"Didn't you hear?" Lars boomed as he stood next to us.

'Kathy," I said, "help him. It'll be quicker with two people."

"Right,"
she nodded and motioned to Wladas. The pair of them disappeared down the hallway.

"I need a pulse gun and some ammo," I told Lars as I walked towa
rd the pedestal with the semisphere on it. "A knife and a handgun, as well."

I put the jetpack down and glanced at the rods
vibrant with lightning.

"
Mind if I ask where you're off to?" Lars asked once he'd given the orders to his men.

"I don't
know yet," I wiped the sweat off my forehead and unbuttoned the jacket. "Either to New Pang bay or to your tollgate. Which one is closest to the town?"

He coughed. "Are you serious," he nodded at the pedestal, "about using this thing to teleport
yourself to one of the beacons?"

"I am," I turned to him. "So which one can take me to town faster?"

Lars thought stroking his beard.

"Depends where in town you want
to be."

"McLean's farm
s."

"Then it's definitely the bay beacon. But they'll see you."

"That's my problem. I absolutely have to send a message to the Fort. And..."

I didn't finish. I
couldn't start telling him about Mira and our daughter. Or about my father.

Kathy and Wladas returned bringing
a uniform, a harness, a pair of boots and a tactical helmet. I took the jacket from Wladas and glanced at the name tag over the breast pocket. The uniform had belonged to Badry. I started to undress.

"
Mark," Kathy said.

She stepped to
ward me but had to give way to Lars' men who'd just come back with a pulse gun, seven rounds of ammo, a knife and a handgun. They put their goodies down next to the jetpack while one of them was reporting to Lars about the combat vehicles approaching the site.

"They're about to attack," the man's voice
quaked with excitement.

"I'll be up there," Lars dropped before leaving the hall.

"Mark," Kathy started again. "Can you take me with you?"

"You'd better stay here," I put on the harness, adjusted the straps and took the helmet from her hands.

"Why?"

"Because I've no idea if
I can teleport myself alone. What if the machine," I pointed at it with the helmet, "kills you or me, or both?"

Kathy glanced at the semi
sphere and looked up. I went on, "Let's not take unnecessary risks. I know Blank. I know how many of them are there and I know what tactics they use. I think I can do it."

I put on the helmet and connected my memory chip to its in
terface, then checked the work of the information terminal and its interaction with all the harness and weapons modules. Everything was in perfect working order.

"Stand aside," I
said to Kathy and Wladas as I heaved the jetpack onto my back. "Even better, go out into the hallway."

They exchanged glances and walked out of the hall. I waited for a moment watching them leave. Then
I buckled up and stepped toward the pedestal.

"Mark!" the girl called out. "
Just in case, the radio is with Philippe, my brother. First house downtown from McLean's. The one with the red roof. It's in a stash under the bedroom floor. If you move the bed and lift the floorboards, it's all there."

"Thanks!" I turned back to the sphere, touched its surface and closed my eyes seeing dozens of shimmering little dots.

Chapter Five

Point Apocalypse

M
y mind plummeted into a void. The dots had scattered in the dark which grew until it filled the universe, the corridor between Earth and Pangea blindingly bright just out of range of my vision. Below me stretched a grid of crimson threads with the five beacons pulsating on their edges. I was in its center and the beacons made the five points of a star inscribed into the grid. The beacons sent their signals to the glowing corridor not letting it snap and disconnect the two worlds preventing the universe from collapsing.

All this I realized when the beacons' power
had entered me. Now I was part of their system - a speck of light capable of channeling energies and restructuring connections.

It felt weird. In the
outer world I was a soldier, a master specialist who knew how to fight and kill. Bound by the most elementary parameters, I could predict a situation's outcome by using my knowledge of the enemy's combat potential and measure it in standard units. But here... Here I held sway of the powers of the Gods who had created Pangea. To lord it over the worlds is far too much temptation to resist. The corridor could disappear at my first whim cutting Earth off from the portals and excluding it from the net, just like the Forecomers had done to their unwanted guests cutting them out like an abscess whose toxic remains still rotted away in the swamps.

But I wouldn't do that. Not until I'd rescued Mira and our daughter.

The grid, the beacons, the handfuls of bright dots all lit up together and then went out. I shook my head in confusion and closed my eyes to get used to the darkness. When I opened them again, I realized that I had teleported from the hall with the portal machine...

Teleported
where?

The flashlight in my helmet
lit up. A rod protruded out of a vaulted ceiling. The beacons must have all had the same design. In order to find out where I was, I had to go outside. I stepped forward sensing a slight resistance in the air, as if I'd walked through a gossamer film. It reminded me of the moment when I'd stormed the optical membrane back in the gasometer, only then everything had happened much faster and firmer - more vividly.

Light po
ured in. The sea wafted brine in my face. Waves splashed against the rocks at the cliff's base. I looked around. The large round dome glinted like steel, the twisted rod in its center boring into the sky. The dome stood on top of the cliff, bound by the ocean to its left and the rocky shore to my right. Further on, soft sunlight poured through the drifting clouds where McLean's estate stood on the bay.

I took a cautious step down onto the wet rocks
. Facing the beacon, I made my way around the cliff's base toward the water and looked south.

The Fort loomed black on the horizon.
A barge was approaching it at full steam, smoke belching from the funnel over the wheelhouse. I raised the rifle and looked through the sights. A rusty container took up all of the barge's deck - the very same one that had been mounted on the trailer in the clones' camp.

Too late.
I hadn't made it. Blank and McLean had already shipped their cargo to the Fort. Why was I so sure Mira and the baby were still alive? The captain could have killed them and left for the gasometers to join his reserve squad which was fighting the settlers even as I stood here.

After a while, I dismissed
my premonitions and began preparing for the flight. Most likely, Blank would rather temporarily cede control of the portal machine than lose the hostages and with them, the possibility to manipulate me. While the captain didn't know that I'd reached New Pang, I still had a chance to rescue Mira and the baby. And this chance was by a surprise attack from the sea from which they weren't expecting us.

Standing firmly on a flat rock,
I estimated the wind's direction and strength and took off. But not as successfully as the last time: one of the thrusters was retarded, spinning me around in the air. I had to maneuver the handles in order to straighten myself up and avoid falling into the water.

Fighting for
my life, I flew far from the shore which I'd planned to follow in order to penetrate McLean's estate. Now there was little left to do: if Blank (and I didn't doubt that he was at the estate) wasn't monitoring the area with his armored vehicle's radar, they would detect me within a minute or a minute and a half at best. But if things were like I thought, then...

Two small figures appeared in the air over the bay:
two cyber troopers in Centurion suits had launched from the roof of McLean's place. Too bad. The element of surprise was now lost. They might shoot me down as I approached and I'd lose speed and be unable to free the hostages in time.

What is a minute of
dogfighting to an observer? He wouldn't have time to understand anything. Amid the flashes of firing and the swift maneuvers, a rookie wouldn't be able to follow who was attacking and who was defending. But a trained soldier always acts concisely and by the book: he knows the enemy's combat potential and follows the situation, applying procedures already refined in training. Only now the two cybers were about to face a master specialist. Despite the makeshift jetpack on my back and the absence of a combat suit, these two who were now flying toward me had lost too much time. They should have taken off earlier.

Just as I expected, they split up. This was a standard trick: one of them flew above me while the second
one tried to flank me in a wide arc from the shore leaving me an open space over the sea to maneuver. This was a mistake: the cybers lost out on speed.

I banked in
to a sharp turn to scan the bay. Data on the enemy flooded onto the helmet's monitor. One of the buggies took up a position on the pier while the other raced along the edge of the cliff toward the tip of the cape. They wanted to prevent me from landing there. The memory chip detected several more targets: a group of soldiers in McLean's courtyard. Carrying digital gear, they were in intense radio communication with the armored vehicle whose radar had locked on to me. Its operator could at any moment have launched a guided missile at me. But for some reason, he hadn't done it yet.

A second later, I got all the answers.
Blank sent me a message via an open channel requiring me to land and surrender before they shot me down. He hovered in the air high above me mercilessly burning his fuel - apparently sure that I wouldn't dare challenge him. This was why the operator in the armored vehicle hadn't shot at me: they needed me alive. Oh well. The captain had just freed my hands.

The cyber who had flanked me from the shore realized his
mistake too late and was tardy to turn around. I fell in behind him and shot him just once from close range with my pulse gun.

His jetpack exploded in a fountain
of sparks, flames shooting in all directions. I zoomed up. The soldier, enveloped in flames, tumbled into the sea. I didn't look any further. I straightened out and headed for McLean's estate paying no attention to Blank's attempts to intercept me.

While I was dealing with the cyber, the captain had time
to descend and was now heading toward me at the same altitude intending to head me off. The distance between us decreased. The memory chip sent new calculations to the monitor: we would collide some two meters away from McLean's verandah on the cliff.

I swerved trying to reduce the distance to Blank and fired a long burst sending the
pulse downward. The captain soared up avoiding the shots. Not quite what I'd had in mind.

The sensor in my helmet bleeped as a
missile shot up above the estate and headed toward me trailing smoke.

I turned and went after Blank trying to catch
up with him. Having lost me, he had nothing else left to do but to shoot me down. The only safe place now was next to the captain. The flames from the nozzles of his jetpack kept oscillating as he tried to save fuel and make it to the shore.

Blank flew a
sine wave pattern and I had nearly caught up with him when all thrust disappeared behind my back.

Extending my body, I reached in
front of me trying to grab Blank's ankles. Our speed leveled out: on the armored car's radar screen we must have looked like one dot.

I had guessed it right. A bang came from behind me. The operator
had activated the missile at the last moment - most likely, on orders from Blank himself who was afraid to die with me.