Matador - The Omega Cage Part 22

"This is Stark. Has anybody seen anything?"

Scanner slowed the cart slightly as he listened to the dialog.

"Copy, Warden. One of our teams found a broken-down cart about thirty

kilometers south of the camp."

Scanner allowed the vehicle to slow to a halt. Dain said, "Well. It looks as if Sandoz's choice was a bit premature."

"Give me the coordinates. I am on my way."

That brought a sudden chill to Juete's neck.

"Ah, that might be inadvisable, Warden. It seems our men got careless when

they were examining the cart. We have two dead on the ground and their weapons are gone. The cycles were coded, so they're still there, but the handguns weren't ID keyed. The escapees are armed."

"It doesn't matter," Stark's voice came back. "So am I."

"Go," Dain said to Scanner. "Maybe Sandoz and Chameleon can keep them busy long enough for us to get away."

Scanner throttled the cart up.

The guards at the small clearing in the woods where the cart had been found looked appropriately surprised and startled to see the Juggernaut settle to earth. The foot pads on the exoframe sank a couple of centimeters into the soft earth, but each had enough surface area to keep the thousand or so kilograms of the machine distributed enough not to cause problems. Some of Kamaaj's men were there, and they backed away. Good, Stark thought. He had no use for those troopers.

Stark's amplified voice boomed out at the men. "What have you got?"

The search team leader wiped his mouth with the back of one hand, looking up at Stark's face behind the plasteel plate. "Just like we said, Warden. Two dead, two pulse pistols gone. The tracks lead off that way. They can't be more than ten minutes ahead of us, we figure."

"Fine. Stay here. I'll get them."

He could have flown, but he wanted to use the machine to impress the troops. He turned in the direction of the escapees' travel and started to walk.

The brush hindered the hydraulic muscles of the Juggernaut no more than weeds would a man. Small trees fell under his mechanical feet; larger ones he shoved aside. He was able to move as fast as a running man, despite his great size, taking strides two meters at a step.

It took him less than ten minutes to catch up to them. He only saw two; Sandoz the a.s.sa.s.sin and the mue called Chameleon. They heard him coming; the metamorph cut to the left and ran, snapping wild shots from the pulse pistol at the Juggernaut.

Almost idly. Stark raised his left arm and triggered a blast from his flamethrower. A thin line of fire jetted forth and covered Chameleon with oily flame. There was a scream. The man ran in a small circle and then collapsed into a bonfire that moved feebly.

Sandoz snapped his weapon up and began firing. He was good. Five for five hit Stark, starting at the belly of the Juggernaut and walking up to the faceplate. The last shot clouded the clear metal slightly to the left, but did no real damage. Stark aimed his pulse finger at Sandoz, but then decided not to use it. He moved ponderously toward the man, who kept firing until his weapon ran dry.

Sandoz was fast. He dodged as Stark reached for him. It took five minutes for the warden to run the prisoner down, and it was over that quickly only due to a lucky fluke: Sandoz tripped over a root and sprawled, and Stark caught him before he could scramble to his feet. The Juggernaut's mighty arms lifted the struggling man up so that their faces were level. Stark grinned at him.

"There's only one escape from the Omega Cage, Sandoz," he said. And squeezed.

Too fast and too hard-he didn't have the delicacy of touch of a trained operator. Bones cracked and Sandoz's chest collapsed. Blood gouted from the man's mouth and ears and he died instantly.

Stark dropped the body. d.a.m.n. He had wanted him to suffer more.

Scanner would. And Maro. Especially Maro.

He sprang into the air, repellors working, and climbed to three hundred meters. He put his sensors into full scan. His miniature holoproj heads-up display showed the troopers where he had left them, along with Chameleon's burning corpse and that of the crushed Sandoz. Several other animal lifeforms registered, but nothing that gave off the signature of a human. So. The others weren't here. They had split up.

It didn't matter. He would find them. There weren't too many directions in which they could run.

"Two of the prisoners died while resisting capture," he said. "Come in and pick up the bodies."

A hundred and seventy-eight kilometers away, Stark's casual message reached the ears of the three remaining escapees. They looked at each other grimly, but no one spoke. The same thought was going through each of their minds: How could Stark take Chameleon and Sandoz- Sandoz!-alone?

With what was he armed?

Chapter Twenty-Six.

Stark's radio buzzed with queries, mostly from Karnaaj; he ignored the calls and continued his flight pattern. He worked a spiral away from where he had killed Sandoz and Chameleon, his sensors turned to full gain. The Juggernaut's equipment was sensitive enough to tell a man from a large animal, were the operator of the exoframe properly skilled, but Stark was not an expert. Several times he dropped from the skies, only to find himself covering schweinhunds or sand cats. The last time, in frustration, he flamed the animals into cinders.

He flew over the desert, radar and doppler tracking the sand, looking for his prey. He would find them, no doubt, and when he did, they would die. Except for Juete, of course. She would hurt, but that would be later, when he had her safely off-planet. It would be a long time before she forgot this incident, and he looked forward to making her beg for his forgiveness.

Below, a sand cat started at the sound of the Juggernaut and loped off across the trackless waste, its big feet throwing up small showers of dry sand as it ran. He didn't bother to fry this one. That had been a loss of control before, and he did not want to let that happen again. He wanted to be calm when he found the last escapees. Filled with righteous anger, but calm. So that he could savor it.

"The lava plain is just ahead."

"How long will we be on it?" Juete asked.

Scanner said, "Most of the way. Fingers of it run almost to the edge of the mining port. It won't be as fast to stay on the plain, but it'll be a lot safer."

Maro stared at the plumes of smoke ahead, and caught the scent of burning sulphur, that characteristic rotten-egg smell.

"A couple of the volcanoes are still active," Scanner continued. "Nothing explosive, but some pretty good lava flows, according to the Cage's computer. And there are fumaroles bubbling all over the plain, especially close to the new flows." Scanner chuckled.

"Something funny?" Maro asked.

The circuit-rider glanced at him, then back at the plain. "Well, I guess it depends on your sense of humor. There was a little historical note in the computer on the early exploration of this planet. Seems the world was largely settled by gentlemen of fortune-mostly Confed ex-military-and there used to be a race held each year on the plain. Lot of h.e.l.l-bent heroes would crank up some of the old hydrogen-powered land cruisers and tear across the hardened lava, to see who could get to the other side first. The last year it was held, sixteen of the seventeen cars disappeared. Sank in pits or got covered by a new eruption, it was figured. The only guy to finish came in first-and last."

"I don't think that's particularly funny," Juete said.

"Like I said, it depends on your sense of humor."

The surface of the plain seemed to be mostly black and bubbly looking rock, and it was quickly apparent that running it on wheels would pound them into jelly. Scanner switched to the GE mode and the ride smoothed.

"People used to race across this," Maro said. "Amazing."

"I think they had shock absorbers."

The pillowlike formations made for slow going-the repellors did not allow the cart much alt.i.tude-and the path had to be picked out carefully to avoid the larger hummocks. Maro's amazement that somebody would do this for fun was tempered by respect for the langlaufers' skill at being able to do it at top speed.

After an hour on the plain, they came to their first major obstacle. Along a gully like path that had made for the easiest travel so far on the plain, they suddenly found themselves rounding a hill and facing a fifty-meter-wide pit of bubbling liquid rock. A blast of hot wind smote them, even though they were at least a hundred meters away.

Scanner touched a control and dropped back into wheel mode. He braked the cart to a halt.

"I knew this road was too good to be true," he said.

"Is that lava?" Juete asked.

"I would say so, yes. And we're going to have to turn back and find a way around it. I don't want to be cooked trying to cross it, thank you."

"You want me to drive for a while?" Maro asked.

"Not yet. When I get so tired I can't stay awake, then you can drive. Otherwise, I might as well do it myself."

They turned the car and began to retrace their path.

Stark flew his pattern, trying to stay calm, but growing irritated despite himself. d.a.m.n, where were they? If they had gone the same way as Sandoz and Chameleon, he would have found them hours ago. Therefore, the group had split up. Which way would they have gone?

Logically, he figured, they would have headed toward the closest starport, that being northeast of the Granite Girdle where the old mine was. But such a path would put them on the desert, and Stark didn't think they were that stupid-not after how canny they had been so far.

Sure, they could wander around on the planet for a while, but they had to know that he could find them easily if he kicked in search modes on the spy sat system. No, they had to get off world fast, just as he would have to do were he to survive.

How? What was the best way?

The exoframe computer was bright, for what it was. Tactics and strategy were its strong points. He asked it.

"Computer, plot the three most likely routes for a land vehicle to travel from coordinates 56-69-074 east to 57-23-112 west."

The computer's mechanical voice said, "Define parameters of likely."

"Routes that would be the safest for a small guerrilla force seeking to escape detection from air, land and spysat search."

"Capabilities of land vehicle?"

"Three-person surface quadcycle with supplementary low-alt.i.tude repellors."

The air in front of Stark's faceplate lit with the heads-up display. Holographic maps shimmered in the air. The three images each had a different route of travel marked by a glowing blue line. The maps were numbered, with one being the most likely path and three being the least.

The line on the first map led across the gigantic lava fields to the north.

Of course. All the piezoelectrical static a.s.sociated with volcanic activity and rock movement would play h.e.l.l with sensor gear. It might be dangerous on the surface, but the only way they'd be spotted would be by direct visual, which gave them a big advantage.

As much as he hated them, Stark had to give them credit. So far, the escapees had moved very cleverly.

Not cleverly enough, however. They hadn't known about his Juggernaut. He had figured out which way they went, he was sure of it. They'd make the smart move. Only this time, he wouldn't be a step behind.

He checked his position. He was on the southern arm of his spiral, unfortunately, and it would take more than an hour to reach the plain. By then, it would be dark. But that didn't matter. He would put the Juggernaut down and rest. In the morning, he would have plenty of daylight in which to find them. It was only a matter of when.

He gave the computer the coordinates, turned, and roared across the twilight skies.

Juete's b.u.t.tocks were sore from the hard seat in the cart, and she rubbed them as they stepped from the vehicle. Dain had been driving for the last two hours, and the dark had finally forced them to stop. They did not want to use the lights; besides, they were exhausted.

Scanner pulled the heat tabs on three cans, and the scent of the warming food wafted to her. It might be bland by the Cage's standards, but nothing had ever smelled quite so good to Juete.

"How far have we come?" Dain said.

Scanner took a bite of what looked to be a reddish bean paste, swallowed and said, "About two hundred and fifty kilometers."

Dain offered a canteen to Juete. She took it and drank. "Not too good," he said.

Scanner shrugged. "Best we can do, considering the terrain. Thirty klicks an hour means we can make it to the port by dark tomorrow. If..."

"If what?" Juete said.

"If the repellors hold up."

"You think they won't?" Dain asked.

Scanner swallowed another mouthful of bean paste. He pointed at the canteen, and Juete pa.s.sed it to him. He drank. "I don't know. They ran hot for the last couple of hours. We can drop to the ground, but given the topography, we'd be lucky to do ten klicks an hour."

Juete leaned back against the relatively smooth chunk of black stone. She was exhausted; so much had happened in the last few days. She hoped they would make it, hoped they would be able to escape from Omega, but if they didn't, if they were tracked down, she knew she was not going to return to the Cage and Stark's perverted sense of love. She would die first. And somehow, that did not seem as terrible as it once had been. The albino Exotics had a highly-supported sense of self-preservation-another legacy from their creators. One did not wish to lose such a valuable possession through suicide, after all. But there came a time when death was preferable to life, perhaps. Or, at least, a time when the quality of life might not be worth the struggle. Suicide, no. But fighting to preserve her freedom and others', even to death, yes.

That had been Raze's decision, after all. She could do no less.

Next to her, Dain slipped his arm over her shoulders, as if suddenly sensing her mood. She snuggled closer to him, looked at his face, then glanced over at Scanner. Dain would not mind, she knew, if she invited Scanner to huddle with them. It was the three of them against the world, after all, and what comfort they could take together, they should.

But before she could speak. Scanner said, "I'm going to sit in the cart for a while." He stood, stretched, and walked the ten meters to the cart.

Juete glanced at Dain.

He said softly, "He's going to link to the cart's computer. It isn't much, but he gets something from it."

She nodded. She could understand that.

After a while, without speaking further, she fell asleep against Dain.