James Axler Deathlands 049 Shadow World

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microcrystalline computer. If the mercs inside the semi had protection from
the hostile environment, it would have to be primitive at best simple
pressurized polymer suits to keep out the spores. Lujan was sure they had no
real defense against lasers.
So killing them all wasn't going to present much of a problem.
The hard part was going to be getting the visitor out alive, if possible,
which was what Lujan had been ordered to do. If it looked like the one-eyed
man was going to escape and fall into the hands of FIVE or one of the other
Globals, as a last resort, he was to be terminated with prejudice, and the
kidnapping laid at the feet of the dead Damm and his crew, as had been
originally planned.
The ideal scenario was a live recovery of the information source, with no one
the wiser. With what the one-eyed man held in his mind, Mitsuki could maneuver
to acquire the choicest pieces of Shadow World real estate, the richest
deposits of natural resources, prime arable land, and even more important, it
could gain control of strategic routes that would strangle the efforts of the
other Globals.
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All of the economic superpowers had paid dearly for the opportunity to move
their operations off-world. It had taken most of the Globals' remaining
material resources to construct and energize the transfer pathway. In order to
finance this last desperate gamble, FIVE had been forced to tell Earth's one
hundred billion at least part of the truth about the Totality Concept and its
hope for human survival.
This pacification was necessary because when the power was diverted from food
processing, from water and air purification, millions of people had died
millions who weren't missed by the CEOs and who were replaced in a matter of
hours by screaming, hungry newborns. Millions upon millions more had died
when, at the peak of the drain, the power grids browned out, and the populace
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had gone mad.
Recent history had taught them to be afraid of the dark. When the lights went
out, bad things happened. Whole neighborhoods got walled in, the trapped
multitudes were left to starve or to commit suicide by inhaling carniphages.
Lujan suspected that once the transfer of population began, all the gloves
would come off. The treaties that held the FIVE together would be broken. A
war would ensue on both sides of the reality passageway for control of the
human future. No matter who won, one outcome was certain: society on Earth,
which had been on the verge of consuming itself for decades, would take the
final, irreversible plunge to extinction.
In his visor, the major saw yellow figures slowly unrolling plastic sheeting
along both sides the trailer. When that job was complete, the members of his
tactical unit used telescoping rods to reach high on the sides of the box and
place limpet mines under the slime, on its metal skin. The precisely set
charges would blow off the trailer's roof and peel back its walls to the
floor.
As the demolition crew hurried back to the cover of their APCs, Lujan
unclipped the remote detonator from his breastplate.
Damm would get no warning. Only shock, shock and more shock. Lujan was about
to take his opponents from a place of relative safety and light into the
deadliest of darks. A few moments of panic would give him the chance to pull
the visitor to safety.
He enabled the detonator and put his thumb on the boom button.
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Chapter Nineteen
In the glare of the trailer's overhead lights, the taller of the two female
mercies hunkered down cross-legged on the floor and, right under Ryan's nose,
started to fieldstrip her weapon. He couldn't help but notice the pair of
tattoos on her pale wiry forearms. The one on her left arm said Buy or Die!
2034th MLAB. The one on her right, though it wasn't easy to read, said FIVE
Forever. Her skin was blurred with furrows of waxy scar tissue; it looked to
Ryan as if she had tried to scrape off the green, red and purple design with a
serrated knife.
The mercie reached to the rear of the stock and dropped the wide, curving
magazine into the palm of her hand. When she set it to one side on the floor,
Ryan got a better look at its top. He saw nothing familiar there. No stacked
rounds visible. Just a trio of silver stubs sticking up out of an upraised
ring, which made him wonder if the thing wasn't a mag, after all.
She detached the entire trigger assembly by pulling a pair of small pins on
either side of the pistol grip. After putting this encased unit aside, with a
hard half twist she unscrewed the tribarrel and fore-stock, which also came
away as a single unit.
The removal of two more pins on the receiver below what appeared to be the
fire control indicators allowed her to take off the protective housing that
sat atop the buttstock.
Inside were many mysteries.
The female mercie lifted out a foot-long, flat-black cylindrical container
that necked down at the end where it joined the barrels. It was connected to
and rested upon a nest of thick, insulated cables. When this unit was out of
the receiver, and hanging off to one side, it exposed a clear glass or
crystalline block that had fibrous material laced all through it. After
detaching the block from the interior of the receiver, she set it in her lap
and with clips and wires hooked it up to a palm-
sized LCD readout. Satisfied by what she saw, she wiped the ends of the
crystal with a swab dipped in a tiny vial of some kind of solvent. She was
careful not to touch the areas after she'd cleaned them.
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Then the mercie snapped the weapon back together even more quickly than she'd
stripped it. Her precise, seemingly automatic movements told Ryan she could
have repeated the procedure blindfolded.
Damm noted Ryan's interest in the procedure and said, "Nothing like that on
your world, huh?"
"Just the ones Nara and her friends brought with them," Ryan said. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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