Desert Kings

“A little of both, and so much more,” the cyborg said excitedly. “Now stay close and follow my lead!”

Turning sideways, Delphi managed to squeeze through the slim opening and held the lantern high. There was another long corridor ahead of him, but this one was spotlessly clean, without any dust, vines or mold. There was a breeze coming from behind Delphi carrying the rank smells of the jungle, mixed with the tang of ages-old dust. But the air past the doors was flat and sterile, tasting rather similar to that of a redoubt. Sterile and clean. Simply amazing, he marveled. The installation seemed to be intact. The seals had to have held for a full century! And if that was true…

Unable to restrain himself further, Delphi ran forward past numerous doors marked only with project codenames—Broken Thunder, Delta Dawn, Maelstrom and the like—until reaching a plain door marked simply as Coldfire.

Eureka! Breathlessly the cyborg tapped an entry code onto the keypad and there was no response, which was not very surprising. Even the vaunted nuke batteries had limits.

Glancing behind to make sure the others coming through the doors were not close yet, the cyborg pushed up a sleeve and opened a small service panel in his arm. Pulling out a power cord, he attached it to the port of the keypad and tried again. This time a green light came on, there was a click and the door swung open wide. But before Delphi could move, there came the sound of running boots. Quickly he reclaimed the power cord just as Bellany, Davenport and the others arrived.

“Don’t like you going off by yourself, Chief,” the bald trooper growled, peering suspiciously into the open doorway. “What if you found a stickie, or a greenie, hiding in here?”

“I was in no danger,” Delphi replied tolerantly, pulling down his sleeve. “Now I want the rest of you to stay here in the hallway. I must do the next part alone.”

“Sir, I just said—” Bellany started, but was cut off by a curt hand gesture from the cyborg.

“Oh, I’ll be fine,” Delphi reiterated, unable to look away from the darkness. Everything he wanted, everything he needed, could be only feet away in the Stygian gloom. “Besides—”

“No.”

The word startled the cyborg and he slowly turned. “What was that you just said?” he demanded.

“I said no,” Bellany repeated gruffly. “Where you go, so do we, Chief. End of discussion.”

Impatiently, Delphi started to rally cogent arguments, but then saw the grim determination in the trooper’s face and accepted the situation. The only way to stop the man from following would be to kill him. Delphi had no real problem with that, but there were too many others that would also have to be killed, and in the ensuing fight, some of their bullets might damage the delicate equipment inside the predark lab, ruining the whole reason for coming here in the first place.

“All right, we stay together,” Delphi said, artfully masking his annoyance. “However—”

“I’m on point,” Bellany said, stepping in front of the cyborg and walking boldly into the blackness. Holding their blasters at the ready, the other troopers stayed close to Delphi.

The floor was bare concrete, thick power cables crisscrossing the expanse in a manner shockingly similar to the jungle outside. A huge supercomputer stood mute along a cinder-block wall, the huge tanks of liquid nitrogen used to cool the machine standing in a neat row inside a chained corral.

Mountains of machinery rose and fell around the group, the shadows cast by their alcohol lanterns making the equipment seem oddly animated.

“So what are we looking for?” Cotton asked, tightening her grip on the Kalashnikov.

Pausing in thought, Delphi debated how much to tell them when one of the troopers snorted in disgust.

“Blind Norad, it really stinks in here,” he said behind the mask covering his mouth. “Kinda reminds me of a latrine.”

Pursing his lips, Delphi started to mock the fellow. After all how could there be the smell of feces inside a lab that had been sealed for a hundred years? Then he smelled it, too. Fresh dung. But how was that possible unless…

“Muties!” Delphi shouted, smashing the hurricane lantern on the floor.

The glass reservoir crashed and the supply of shine ignited, creating a rush of light that caught something large and dark just outside the nimbus of illumination.

“Go back-to-back!” Bellany shouted, raising the AK-47. “Form a circle!”

“No, don’t shoot!’ Delphi cried, but then the shadows moved again and a trooper shrieked as his arm was torn off at the shoulder, taking his blaster with it.

As the others rushed to his aid, Cotton spun and triggered her rapid-fire. The muzzle-flash strobed in the darkness almost revealing something darting between the huge predark machines. The 7.62 mm rounds ricocheted off the hulking equipment, throwing off sprays.

“Damn it, that was an order!” Delphi raged, shaking his Kalashnikov at the norm. “I said no—”

But the sec woman fired again, a longer burst, just as Bellany fired his weapon in the opposite direction.

“Shitfire, there’s two of ’em!” a trooper snarled, pulling a gren.

Aghast, Delphi pointed the rapid-fire at the man and was about to shoot when there was movement above the group and a large black creature landed in the middle of them, right on top of the smashed lantern. The blue flames rose around the mutie, apparently doing no harm to it whatsoever, but revealing every feature. It was a huge catlike creature, almost the size of a pony. The smooth fur was dead-black, the mouth a crimson slash, the long fangs dripping blood from the recent kill, and the eyes were solid yellow. Then a writhing nest of tentacles rose from the back.

“Nuke me, it’s a hellhound!” a trooper screamed, backing away in terror. Then he convulsed and toppled over, revealing a second mutie retreating into the gloom with most of his spine dangling from its horrid jaws.

Dropping his AK-47, Bellany spun in a crouch, drew the Webley and fired. The booming muzzle-flame actually touched the hellhound, scoring a long bloody furrow along its side. Snarling insanely, the big cat charged through the crowd of troopers, bowling them over as it escaped into darkness.

As the gutted body hit the ground, the troopers began firing their weapons in every direction, the discharges illuminating the predark lab. Delicate machinery exploded into pieces as the two hellhounds circled the group, going in different directions, constantly moving.

“Sons of bitches are trying to confuse us!” Cotton bellowed, squeezing off a short burst from the Kalashnikov. “How fragging smart are these muties?”

The light from the smashed lantern was beginning to flicker and die, and as the illumination diminished, the hellhounds came ever closer. Oddly, the monstrous cats seemed unconcerned about the other lanterns.

“It’s not the light!” Cotton realized, shouting over her chattering longblaster. “They don’t like fire!”

“Chief, is there anything in here we can burn?” Bellany demanded, working the bolt to free a bent shell caught in the ejector port. He got it loose and the bent casing flew away.

“I have no idea!” Delphi replied, feeling both of his hearts pound in his chest.

Suddenly one of the creatures leaped on top of a comp, only to jump off again immediately. The jar sent the big machine tilting and men scrambled away as it crashed on the floor with a deafening noise, smashing one of the lanterns. As the light vanished, a scream from the other side of the group told of another chilling.

“The eyes!” Delphi shouted. “Aim for the eyes or the ears! Those are the only weak points!”

Kicking spent brass out of their way, the troopers shuffled closer together for protection.

“You heard the man!” Cotton shouted at the top of her lungs. “Eyes and ears, boys! Send it to hell!”

Dropping back, Delphi sprayed an entire clip of rounds at the hellhounds, then dropped the exhausted weapon and pulled a pistol from his gunbelt. At the grasp of his hand, the weapon audibly charged and an indicator light on top registered in the red. The battery inside the H&K needler was fully charged.

“Everybody out!” Delphi commanded, leveling the Kalashnikov and his pistol. “I can handle this alone!”

“No nuking way. We stand together!” Bellany snarled, snapping off shots with the Webley. Then the hammer clicked on a spent shell. Ducking, the bald trooper cracked the weapon to drop the empties and hastily thumb in fresh rounds. One live cartridge fell and rolled away under a wooden desk—and a hellhound jumped over the desk to land on top of Bellany.

Shrieking obscenities, the man went down, firing the handcannon point-blank into the chest of the thing. A single swipe of the powerful claws removed his throat, while the tentacles lanced outward, spearing two other troopers, scoring minor wounds. Their rapid-fires dropped with a clatter, firing off a few rounds before stopping.

Recoiling, Delphi paused for only a second, then aimed both of his weapons and fired them simultaneously. The chattering of the assault rifle completely masked the soft hiss of the H&K coil gun. The 7.62 mm bullets bounced off the body of the beast, but the 2.5 mm depleted uranium slivers punched clean through the sleek, muscular body.

Pumping out piss-yellow blood, the hellhound snarled over a shoulder, and all of its tentacles stabbed for the cyborg. He ducked, and they missed by less than an inch. Staying in a crouch, he fired again and again, scoring hits both times.

Now the others trained their blasters on the wounded beast, hammering it with lead and steel.

Gushing sticky golden fluids, the creature sprang for the cyborg and missed, but knocked the Kalashnikov out of his hands, the rapid-fire taking the needler along with it. But as the animal landed on the desk, Davenport shoved her Ruger .357 into one of its ears and fired. The backblast threw the woman down, but the head of the beast cracked open, yellow blood erupting from the mouth and exploding the eyes. Weaving drunkenly on its legs for a long moment, the beast went still and gently laid down as if it was merely going to sleep. As the head listed sideways, the life fluids ceased to flow from the ghastly wounds and the big hellhound went still.