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.
– Chapter Four –
There was no time to worry about where Athalia had gone. I mean, I worried anyway. I worried plenty, but those bullets were zipping in like a sideways hailstorm, so I worried while running. Hell Razor, Thrasher, and I darted forward from boulder to broken wall to flagpole while Ace, Angie, and Vargas kept the Guardians occupied with return fire.
Finally we were flat against the Citadel’s outer wall under the shadow of their battlements.
“Okay, Thrasher,” said Hell Razor. “On yer way.”
Thrasher grunted and sidled sideways along the wall toward the main gate. It was so dark he disappeared into the night after five steps, but after a minute the quick flick of a lighter told us he was in position.
Hell Razor flicked his in response, then opened his pack and pulled out two flares. “Okay, Casper. Get ready.”
I put my assault rifle to my shoulder and aimed straight up. Hell Razor stepped out from the wall, cracked the first flare and pitched it high. It hissed as it climbed, then blazed as it arced over the battlements and landed on the top of the wall. Shots cracked from Angie and Vargas as the light exposed the Guardians there, and there were screams and confused shouts above us.