Shadow Fortress

Ryan allowed himself a brief smile. Like father, like son. “Almost through,” he said.

“Well, I checked the front blasters,” the boy said. “See if we could salvage anything. But they’re rusted solid, the barrels full with bird nests. Lots of 40 mm and 20 mm ammo shells in the ammo bunkers, but the brass is covered with corrosion.”

Mildred walked back in and tossed the briefcase back under the seats. “Krysty was right, just a cargo manifest.”

“Nothing useful, then?” Dean asked hopefully.

“No weapons or food.”

“Damn.”

“Got it,” J.B. said, the armored door to the cockpit swung aside on creaking hinges.

There was another rush of stale air, and after it passed, Ryan and J.B. stepped into the cockpit, their faces tense with anticipation. The sunlight streamed in through the leafy-edged windows, casting odd shadows. The remains of the command crew were in the same positions, but now their clothing was starting to visibly decompose at the invasion of clean air. Ryan gave the skeletons a fast glance, while J.B. took out his compass and went to the dashboard. He flipped several switches until the needle stopped jerking.

“It was their emergency beacon,” he said, tucking away the compass. “The nuke batteries were almost drained. Another couple of months and we never would have found this plane.”

Lying on the deck, Ryan was looking under the pilot’s chair. “Seals are unbroken,” he announced, running his fingertips along the undercarriage of the pilot’s seat.

“Same here,” J.B. said, doing the same to the copilot’s chair. “We might just be in luck here.”

Both men got busy with their knives, removing service panels, and then slicing through the nest of wiring inside the seats. They knew the sequence, blue, green, red, and each man did the job carefully. Ejector seats were tricky. Ryan remembered when Finn tried to take one apart too fast and it launched straight through the top of the plane, damn near taking his head along with it for a ride. And the fiery blast of the launch nearly aced the Trader.

Soon, they had the ejector rockets disassembled and toppled the seat to extract a sturdy plastic box shaped like a lopsided arch.

The boxes were sealed airtight, but J.B. made short work of the lock. Lining the inside was some form of clear plastic wrapping that knives wouldn’t cut. But Ryan found a ring tab on the side and gently pulled it along the seam, the plastic parting sluggishly to expose a layer of gray foam. Tossing away the plastic, Ryan removed the foam cushion to finally uncover an assortment of supplies, each neatly nestled in a shaped depression in the gray foam. It was the wealth of the predark world in perfect condition.

“Good stuff?” Dean asked curiously, craning his neck to see.

“The best,” his father replied.

“This is a pilot’s survival kit,” J.B. said, grinning in triumph. “An emergency pack for a crashed pilot to grab as he ran from a burning plane, just enough supplies to keep him alive for a few weeks until a rescue team could arrive.”

“Haven’t seen one in years,” Krysty said, watching the proceedings eagerly. “They are almost always taken after the crash.”

“Not this time,” Ryan said, and began laying out the contents in a neat row.

J.B. freed the copilot’s survival kit and then started defusing the navigator’s chair. Soon the five seats were in pieces and the precious kits splayed open wide.

There were five 9 mm Heckler & Koch blasters, vials of oil, fifteen empty clips, ten boxes of ammo. Survival knives with whetstones, fishing line and hooks, dye markers, Veri pistols with colored flares, signal mirrors, water-purification tabs, gold coins, MRE packs, spools of wire, bundles of rope and med kits.

J.B. called Mildred in from outside, and the physician eagerly went through the collection of pills and capsules, throwing away most of the drugs. Even sealed in an airtight container, a lot of the chemicals would lose their potency over the long decades, and a few would turn lethal. Everything else she placed in her battered shoulder bag: bandages, bug-repellent sticks, elastic bandages, methamphetamines, barbiturates, sulfur powder, antiseptic cream—as hard as a rock but reclaimable—sunscreen, toothpaste, three hypodermic needles, sutures, surgical thread, iodine tablets and silver-based antibiotics.

After taking inventory, the companions divided the supplies, each taking what he or she needed the most. Ryan and J.B. split the 9 mm ammo, the Uzi getting the lion’s share. Ryan, Krysty and Mildred each took one of the fancy two-tone H&K blasters to replace their depleted weapons. Neither woman cared for autofires, the things had a bad tendency to jam just when you needed them the most. However, fifteen shots of maybe was better than two rounds of definite.

Since his Browning had a full clip, Dean took the Veri pistol and studied the single-shot blaster until figuring out how the 30 mm breechloader worked. The catch was very simple. Satisfied, he tucked away the blaster and filled his pockets with the flares. The stubby gun could throw a flare three hundred feet into the air, where it would detonate into brilliant colors to help searchers find a lost crew member. But the device could also fire horizontally and punch a sizzling flare straight through a man at fifty feet.

Nodding in approval, Krysty took the other Veri pistol and the rest of the signal flares.

“Be right back,” Mildred said, checking the elastic strength of the bandage. “I’m going to wrap Jak again. This will get him back on his feet.”

“Good. Give him this, too,” Ryan said, tossing her an extra H&K pistol. “No spare ammo, but it’s something.”

“Right.” She made the catch and disappeared down the ramp to the broad wing.

“Here’s your share, Doc,” J.B. said, placing a pile of food packs, soap, razor blades and other assorted small items next to the man sitting on the ramp. Amid the salvage was the last of the H&K pistols.

“Thank you,” Doc said solemnly, reluctantly lifting the blaster for examination. The LeMat was on its last reload. Nine shots and he was defenseless.

Awkwardly, Doc worked the slide of the blaster, chambering a round, and experimented dropping the clip, then inserting it again.

“Think he’ll take it?” Dean mumbled around a mouthful of cherry-nut cake, the other envelopes scattered on the floor around his boots. He had been starving, but then he was constantly starving these days.

Weighing the weapon in a palm, Doc made his decision and clicked on the safety of the sleek blaster to tuck it away in his frock coat.

Just then, Mildred rushed into view. “Great news,” she said, clambering into the airship.

“Jak can walk now?” Ryan said as a question. “Good.”

“Better than that,” she said excitedly. “Remember those cargo manifests I was looking at? Couldn’t read them at all, until Jak smeared the paper with gun oil. Damned if that didn’t bring the words out nice and clear.”

“What were they carrying?” Krysty asked, glancing at the six huge canvas lumps on their stout pallets. “Hovercrafts?”

“Weather-sensing equipment,” she said in a rush. “Balloons to carry computerized pods high into the sky to check on the pollution levels from the old nukes. See if the air was any better.”

“Stop using the nukes,” Dean said bluntly, wiping his face with a moist towelette. “Then the air would get better.”

“Amen,” Doc agreed roughly.

“Weather balloons,” Ryan repeated slowly, then stood and walked over to the first pallet. It was the triple-craziest idea he had ever heard. “Big ones?”

“Thirty feet across.”

“How many?”

“Hundreds,” Mildred said eagerly. “A year’s supply for the testing station. Don’t know the lift-to-drag ratio. So we just make it as large as possible. Always best to err on the side of power.”

“We’d need something for a basket,” Ryan said, nudging the shipping pallet with his boot. The honeycomb plastic was a good foot thick, and more than ten feet wide on each side. Designed to airdrop supplies to troops in the field, the pallets would make perfect bottoms. “These should work fine. They’re light and very strong. Just no sides.”

“We can tie extra ropes around support ropes,” Krysty said quickly. She finally realized what they were discussing. “Weave a basket around the pallet. And we can use the ropes lashing down the canvas to hold it all together. The cargo netting is plastic and should certainly be strong enough.”

“You folks firing blanks?” J.B. asked skeptically, thumbing the last round into a clip, then easing the magazine into the Uzi. He worked the bolt, chambering a round, and slung the weapon over his shoulder. “We’re going to fly to Forbidden Island?”

Standing, Doc wet a finger and held it outside. “The wind is blowing in the correct direction,” he announced. “Well done, madam. An exemplary idea! There is no way Mitchum could follow us aloft.”

“Fly the Hercules?” Dean asked, frowning. “Hot pipe, this thing will never eat clouds again. It’s completely aced.”

“We’re not going to use the plane,” Mildred told him, crossing the deck to the first canvas mound. She ran a hand over the rough expanse of material. “We’ll fly the cargo.”