Mike Stackpole and Nathan Long
WASTELAND: RANGERS & RAIDERS
GHOST BOOK TWO
– THE DEATH MACHINES –
– Chapter One –
I woke up to Athalia watching me.
We had taken to sleeping a little apart from the others on our three–day trip to Sleeper One, at first just laying our bedrolls side by side and talking in low voices after dark, then holding hands until we fell asleep, but last night… well, even though we’d found ourselves a little alcove in the cave where we’d all camped, and even though we’d tried to keep it quiet, we’d probably kept the others awake.
Now she was sitting naked, back against the cave wall, her knees tucked up to her chin. In the dim light from the other chamber she looked sad and faraway.
“Shit,” I said. “I wasn’t that bad, was I?”
A smile slowly crinkled the lean lines of her face. “For a ghost? Not bad at all.”
I sat up and looked around for my pants. “So why so glum?”
“Did I look glum?” She started dressing while I stole looks at her hard, tattooed slimness. “Not really awake yet. Guess I was just staring into space.”
Well, if she didn’t want to tell me, I wasn’t going to push it. Never liked it when anybody pushed me about that kind of stuff.
It came out a minute later when we were picking up our gear to join the others.
“Ghost, do you… do you ever think about not being a ranger?”
I chuckled. “You know I do. You stopped me from putting a bullet in my head, remember?”
“I didn’t mean that. I meant… doing something else. Going somewhere else.”
“With someone else?”
She flushed and shouldered her pack. “Well… why not?”
Yeah.
Why not.
I stood there for a moment, thinking about it. I wasn’t the same guy I’d been back when I was a ranger — literally. I was that guy’s clone. No. Not even that, I was the clone of that guy’s clone. And every day I seemed to have less and less connection with the people I — or rather he — had known. On the other hand…
On the other hand, there was still some unfinished business to take care of.
“Maybe after this,” I said. “When it’s all over.”
“Sure,” she said, but it didn’t look like she meant it.
We walked out into a storm of razzing and cat calls and slaps on the back as Angie, Vargas, Hell Razor, and Thrasher let us know that they had heard us during the night.
Ace just looked relieved.
It wasn’t easy walking back into the Sleeper Base. Not like it was a battle or anything. There was nobody left to fight. The mutants Athalia and I had killed the last time we were there were still dead and weren’t any trouble except for the smell. It was the other bodies that hurt.
I showed the others the corpses of my old squad — Franny, Brockleman, and old Spider — all shot to pieces by robots the first time I’d come to the base, and they mourned them just like I had — harder, probably. They had full memories of them. My memories were as full of holes as my old squad,, which hurt in different ways. Standing around listening to Angie, Vargas, and Hell Razor reminisce about my squaddies, telling stories about how Brockleman had pranked me with a dead gila monitor, and how Franny had won Spider’s boots in a drinking contest and wouldn’t give ‘em back even though they didn’t fit her, and not being able to remember even half of it just drove it home all over again that I wasn’t actually the guy who had led that squad, or had a gila monitor fall out of my locker on me so that I’d pissed myself. I felt like I didn’t have the right to any of his memories — like I was trespassing in his life.
I also showed them the corpse of the clone I’d been cloned from. Poor guy was looking even worse than he had the last time. He’d already been shot, stabbed, and had his head caved in by a blunt object, and a week’s worth of decay hadn’t done him any favors. Nobody mourned him, though. They’d already mourned the original back in Darwin. This guy just seemed to make everybody queasy.
“Huh. Another one,” said Hell Razor, who never had been the most tactful of men.
“Can’t believe he made it all the way from Darwin like that,” said Vargas.
Angie shook her head. “So weird.”
Ace looked from the corpse to me, and for the first time his attitude toward me seemed to be something other than suspicion. Of course, pity wasn’t much better.
After a long, awkward minute, Hell Razor broke the spell by stepping over the body and pressing his nose to the glass door of the cloning chamber which lay behind it.
“Hmmm,” he said. “Maybe we should all clone ourselves, just to be on the safe side. Goin’ against all those killer robots, might be good to have spares lyin’ around.”
I grunted. “You don’t wanna do that. Trust me. Nobody knows what to do with the leftovers — not even the leftovers.”
“He’s right.” Angie shivered. “There’s some shit the ancients did that should have stayed buried. Who’s got a hand grenade?”
Athalia looked shocked. “You’re going to blow it up? But the technology! It’ll be lost.”
Angie gave her a look. “Ask your boyfriend what he wants to do with it.”
Athalia looked to me.
I shrugged. “Sorry, I’m with Angie on this one. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone. It’s as weird and wrong in its own way as what Finster was doing.”
Athalia sighed. “I… Okay. I guess I understand.”
Thrasher dug in his pack and pulled out a hand grenade, then tossed it to Hell Razor, who waved us back.
“Better get around the corner. This is gonna be loud.”
We all backed into the main chamber and a few seconds later we heard Razor shout, “Fire in the hole!” He came running out like his hair was on fire.
The whole base shook with the explosion and smoke billowed out of the hallway like it was exhaling on a cold day.
“Alright,” said Vargas, when we could all hear again, “Let’s go find that armor.”
We all held our breath when Vargas pressed the sec pass against the card reader by the frosted glass door. What if it didn’t work? What if all the madness we’d been through in Darwin had been for nothing?
But it did work. The light on the card reader flashed green, the door slid down into the floor as smoothly as butter and a row of armor stands awaited for us in the room beyond, all lined up in ranks and standing at attention like they were on parade while beyond them was a weapons rack with a few LAW rockets and a big–ass energy weapon of some kind.
“Jackpot!” said Hell Razor.
Vargas agreed. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”
“Wait,” said Thrasher, and before anybody knew what he was doing, he drew and fired his side arm into the chest of the closest set of armor.
The armor rocked back and toppled against the others so that it looked like a drunk being held up by his buddies, but the armor didn’t have a scratch on it.
Without a moment’s hesitation, Angie, Vargas, Thrasher, and Hell Razor stepped forward, tugging off their boots and shucking down to their skivvies as they went, then started pulling the armor off the stands to try it on. Ace, Athalia and I were a little slower and a little shyer, but inspired by the others’ example we stripped down too. I suppose when your squad shares a locker room, little things like modesty go by the wayside pretty quick, but I couldn’t remember for sure. My memories of that time were fragmented to begin with and seemed to be fading faster with every passing day. I was on the outside now, with the rest of the tagalongs.
I stepped up to one of the stands and took a closer look at the armor. I’d seen ceramic armor before — big, bulky stuff bolted onto heavy–duty leather — but this stuff was something else. The overlapping plates were as thin as window glass and bonded to what felt like a slim Kevlar suit as fine as spider silk. It seemed impossible that something so light and supple could protect like the heavier stuff, but Thrasher’s bullets had proved that looks could be deceiving, so I was willing to give it a try.