Moonfeast

“I was looking forward to a shower,” Krysty said, stroking her flexing hair. “But we might as well jump, and then wash at the next redoubt.”

“Sounds good to me,” Ryan stated gruffly, rubbing his stomach. “Mildred, what’s the food situation?”

“Nine cans of stew, one self-heat of hash, four assorted MRE packs and a couple of smoked gophers that should be good for another week or so,” she replied, without even glancing into her backpack. “I was expecting to purchase more food at Hobart, but after seeing their slaughterhouse…” She gave a shiver and didn’t bother to finish the sentence.

“Gopher.” Jak frowned, putting a wealth of meaning into the single word.

“Agreed, my young friend. If our choices are gopher for dinner, or risk a jump, then suddenly a journey through the mat-trans sounds like an exceptionally fine idea,” Doc declared, casting a sad glance at a soda machine standing mute in the corner. Just like the fuel pumps, it still worked, but the hoppers were empty. “I always did like the odd taste of Dr Pepper,” he said unexpectedly.

“Me, too,” Mildred said in surprise. “Good Lord, we actually agree on something?”

He shrugged. “It had to happen eventually, mad am.”

“Not had,” Jak replied, dropping his backpack onto the floor in front of the elevator. “Taste like shine or caf?”

The man and woman exchanged glances, each completely unable to even vaguely explain the amazingly complex mixture of flavors of the delicious predark soda.

Tapping for the call button, Ryan was pleased when the elevator doors opened immediately, the cage having waited there patiently for them for the past few weeks. It was another good indication that the redoubt was totally deserted. Some of the underground bases had devices that provided protection from unauthorized intruders, and the companions were as unauthorized as they could possibly be. More than once they had encountered a sec hunter droid, a robotic guardian. The machines came in several different types, each more lethal than the next, and were hard to chill. True, J.B. had a stash of pipe bombs, but it was highly doubtful those homemade bombs would be powerful enough to stop one of the deadly machines. Running away was usually the best tactic. Except that this time, the companions had nowhere to run but another redoubt.

Stepping over the threshold, Ryan waited until the rest of the companions had hurried inside before hitting the button for the middle level. The ride down was smooth, silent and uneventful.

Leaving the elevator, they proceeded down a long corridor lined with doors and entered a room full of comps. On the other side was another door. Stepping through the doorway, the companions closed the portal behind them and walked across a small antechamber to the mat-trans unit.

“Okay, this time we each take a drink before leaving,” Mildred directed, holding aloft a canteen.

The battered container sloshed as she removed the cap. There came a strong smell of coffee, shine and something sweet. For some time now Mildred had been working on a remedy for the jump sickness that always hit some of the companions after arriving at their destination. So far, the physician had achieved scant success, but she still tried.

“What is this, coffee and…honey?” Krysty asked, taking a sniff.

“Close enough. The best results I ever had against jump sickness was with a crude form of Irish coffee,” Mildred said apologetically. “I figure the relaxing effects of the shine, combined with the mental stimulant of the caffeine in the coffee, is what does the trick. But since I don’t know how these damn things work, it’s just a guess.” She gave a wan smile. “For all I know it could be the water content that keeps us from getting dehydrated, and the sugar.”

“Credo qua ab, sur dom est!” Doc announced dramatically.

Mentally, the physician translated the garbled Latin into, “I believe you, because the idea is absurd.” She wanted to snap back at the time traveler, but sadly, he was right.

One at a time, the companions took a drink, then stepped into the hexagonal chamber and found a spot to sit. There was an alphanumeric keypad set into the wall where a person could tap in the code for their next destination, but since they had never found a directory, Ryan, the last person in, closed the gateway door, which would automatically trigger a random jump.

White mist flooded the chamber, swirling around the companions, faster and faster. A powerful hum started to build as tiny sparks appeared inside the mist like a billion imprisoned stars, then the floor seemed to vanish and the companions dropped through infinity, accelerating beyond logic and reason. Each of them had related that it sometimes felt as if their skin pulled away from the bones, and that knives shot painfully through their bodies, piercing every organ. Other times there was no pain, but the companions experienced vivid jump “nightmares.”

Slowly, the noise faded, and there was only the sound of the friends’ harsh breathing. But a few minutes later a warm breeze started to blow from the wall vents, the sterilized air helping considerably to revive them.

“Eas…easy…jump.” Ryan coughed, then stopped talking as his stomach roiled, its contents threatening to leave.

Concentrating on his breathing, Ryan managed to ride out the usual wave of nausea and carefully sat up to inspect the others. Everybody else seemed fine, just limp and exhausted, but that was how they always arrived. Except for Doc and Jak. For some reason the jumps hit them harder than the others, and Doc was sprawled on the floor, clearly unconscious.

“At least…not bad sick,” Jak panted, wiping some drool off his face. “New juice helped.”

“Th-thanks. B-but I h-have no f-fragging idea if it h-helped or not…” Mildred wheezed, laying on her back to stare at the ceiling. She knew the unit was motionless, but it felt like it was spinning around and around, and standing at that moment was completely impossible.

It was often this way after a jump, and it took the companions several minutes to recover, during which they were almost completely unable to defend themselves. As a physician, Mildred thought this was a purely natural reaction, merely random synapses firing in their brains from being reduced to their component molecules being disassembled. Doc philosophically considered it merely a side effect of their disintegrated bodies being without a soul for a little while until it found them again at the new destination. Mildred considered that total nonsense, of course. However, as a scientist, she was forced to honestly admit there really was no way of knowing for sure which answer was correct. Or if the truth was somewhere in the middle, a sublime combination of both answers, with maybe another element unknown to either science or religion.

With a low groan, Ryan forced himself to stand, one scarred hand pressed to the smooth wall to help him remain upright. In a sheer effort of will, the one-eyed man took a shuffling step forward, then collapsed inadvertently on the lever that opened the door to the mat-trans unit. The portal opened, spilling Ryan into the antechamber. Blinking hard to clear his vision, he looked up to see that the armaglass walls of the mat-trans were colored a pale flesh tone with a diagonal black stripe. The theory was that each mat-trans was different so that a traveler instantly knew where he or she had arrived, but that was only a guess. The redoubts were as jammed full of the mysterious as they were advanced technology.

“Peach and black,” Ryan muttered, brushing back his damp hair. “We’ve never been here before.” A quick look showed no one lying in wait, but oddly the door leading to the control room was a closed oval hatch.

Sluggishly joining his friend, J.B. removed his glasses from the shirt pocket where he always put them for safekeeping during a jump.

“Yeah, this is a new redoubt,” he said, a gloved hand resting on top of the Uzi machine pistol. The man wasn’t sure if he had the strength to control the bucking 9 mm Israeli blaster, but it was better to have a blaster ready and not need it than the other way around.

Surreptitiously, Mildred made a note of the colors in her journal. Someday the information might come in handy.

“Something’s wrong here,” Krysty said with a scowl, a hand going to the blaster at her side. The woman seemed perfectly normal, but then she had always recovered faster than anybody else.

“Yeah, I feel, too,” Jak said, a knife dropping into his palm from a sleeve as his other hand drew the .357 Magnum Colt Python. “Sound wrong.”

“Then let us…” Doc began but broke into a ragged cough that drove the old man back to his knees. “Proceed…with care…” he whispered, using both hands to draw the huge LeMat and clumsily cock back the trigger.

“Better stay in the mat-trans,” Ryan decided, feeling the strength returning to his body. “If we come back with a droid on our ass, I want a backup here.”

“C-consider me…Balador on the…rainbow bridge…” Doc wheezed, then managed a smile. “None shall…pass.”

“Crazy old coot,” Mildred snorted, then passed the man the canteen again. “Here, finish it off, the coffee will do you a world of good.”

Nodding his gratitude, Doc holstered his weapon and accepted the canteen to start sipping at the contents with obvious pleasure. Slowly, some color began to return to his pale face.

Turning away, Ryan saw that J.B. was already at the oval door hatch, checking for traps.

“Clear,” he reported.

“Okay, friends. Triple red.”

Pulling out his SIG-Sauer, Ryan pressed down the lever that operated the oval door and it silently swung aside. Then with a snarl, the man instantly stepped backward, dropping into a crouch.

In the next room several big men in U.S. Navy uniforms operated the controls of the humming comps, M-16 assault rifles slung across their backs.

Chapter Four

Ryan swung up his longblaster, but before he could fire, the sailors at the work stations began to sag, then shrivel, their bodies wasting away in moments until there was nothing left of them but some grinning skeletons in perfectly preserved uniforms.

Giving a low whistle, Ryan waited until J.B. took a position behind him, his Uzi at the ready. Moving slowly forward, Ryan eased into the control room, his eye sweeping the interior for anything suspicious. But everything was as it was supposed to be, aside from the uniformed skeletons.

While the air vents sucked away the swirling cloud of dust, Ryan studied the comp. He had no idea what the twinkling lights on the console meant, but after so many jumps, he could tell when they took on a new pattern, which always meant trouble. Thankfully, it was the standard sequence.

Going to the opposite door, Ryan listened for any movement in the corridor. Hearing none, he tapped the standard code into the keypad. The door slid open and he sneaked a peek outside. Dozens of corpses wearing Navy uniforms were on the floor, each in the process of crumbling from the infusion of fresh air coming from the vents.

Ryan then turned to find the rest of his companions already in the control room. Krysty and Jak were standing guard, while Mildred and J.B. checked the clothing and blasters.

“This man…excuse me, this woman, was a lieutenant in Navy Intelligence,” Mildred said, fingering the rank insignia. “While this fellow was a corporal in the Navy SEALs and the other man was a pilot in the Navy Air Corps.”