Sky Raider. James Axler

cold in here.”

      “Mebbe everybody died leaving the air conditioner on,” Ryan said in a touch of rare humor as he went to the wall and placed a hand on the vent.

      “No, it’s working,” he reported, thoughtfully straightening the patch covering the ruin of his left eye. “And it’s warm, too.”

      “Warm?” Jak said, frowning as he tucked away the Colt Python. “Colder than doomie’s tit in here.” Shivering slightly, the teenager zipped up the front of his jacket. The garment was covered with bits of metal and mirrors, as well as razor blades. Razor blades also lined the collar. If anybody was foolish enough to try to grab the teen around the throat, the person might lose a few fingers.

      His combat instincts instantly alert, Ryan pulled out his SiG-Sauer and racked the slide to chamber a round.

      “J.B., check the door,” he ordered brusquely. “Everybody else, back into the mat-trans unit!”

      Quickly the others did as ordered.

      Gingerly touching the door, J.B. hissed with shock and pulled his hand back to suck on his fingertips.

      “Dark night! The bastard thing is freezing!” he mumbled around the fingers.

      Rotating the cylinder of her Czech ZKR .38 revolver as a prelude to possible battle, Mildred snapped her head around at that comment. “Impossible,” she said, starting forward. “The reactors in the basement of a redoubt should keep the base warm even if it was at the North Pole! And the only thing colder than that would be…” Her eyes went wide. “Ryan, check for a draft!”

      Frowning darkly, Ryan paused, then holstered his blaster. Walking over to join his friend, he pulled out a candle, and very carefully lit the wick with a predark butane lighter. Manufactured by the millions before skydark destroyed the world, the lighters were now worth more than a man’s life in trade. The only thing more valuable was a loaded blaster. The friends had found several in the past.

      As Ryan moved the candle along the frame of the oval doorway, J.B. reached into the munitions bag at his side and unearthed a bit of a candle and a butane lighter from the array of homemade explosives and predark grens.

      Slowly, the two men moved the flickering flames along the edge of the jam of the burnished steel door. The flames stayed steady until nearing the concealed hinges of the portal, then both wavered and went out.

      “Fireblast, there are holes in the seal,” Ryan said, tucking the spent candle away. “Some sort of draft sucking out all the warm air.”

      Doing the same with his candle, J.B. glowered at the door as if it were a ticking mine. “Gotta be one hell of vacuum on the other side,” he said, pushing back his hat. “Think we’re in space again?”

      “Mebbe,” Ryan returned. The companions had once found themselves in a “redoubt” that was orbiting the moon. They had been forced to leave almost immediately, but that redoubt had been safe and warm. If this one was in orbit and leaking air, then their wisest move would be to leave.

      “Let’s go,” Ryan stated, turning for the mat-trans unit. “No way we’re going to chance opening the door.”

      Hunching his shoulders, Jak muttered a curse. Another jump so soon wasn’t something any of them wanted to do.

      Going to join the others, Krysty moved past the vent and paused. The breeze was gone. Spinning, she placed a hand on the disguised vent and said a quick prayer to Gaia when she felt warm air, just a lot weaker than before. The life support of the redoubt had to have started working once they arrived, but was now running out of power. Soon, there might not be enough to operate the mat-trans!

      “Into the unit!” Krysty commanded, starting to run across the chamber. “Now! We jump right fucking now!”

      Not wasting a second, the rest of the companions jammed into the small chamber and as Krysty squeezed in with them, Ryan hit the LD button.

      Nothing happened.

      Fireblast! he raged silently. They had to have been here too long! The Last Destination option lasted for only thirty minutes! The LD button was no longer active and couldn’t send them back to the Arizona redoubt they had just left.

      With no other choice, Ryan hit the jump buttons hoping he’d randomly key a sequence that would take them somewhere. Almost instantly a new chill seeped into their living bones that had nothing to do with the vacuum of space. A swirling white mist rose from the solid floor and ceiling to fill the chamber, then lighting crackled in silent fury and the floor seemed to disappear as they all began falling into the artificial void that stretched from unit to unit across the planet, and beyond…

      RISING STIFFLY from his throne, the old baron limped across the dais in front of the blockhouse.

      The entire population of the ville filled the courtyard, as Baron Hugh Tregart hobbled down a short flight of stairs and headed for the pyre.

      Reaching twice the height of a man, the stack of wood was bound together with strong rope that had been carefully dampened to prevent it from burning through too quickly and disturbing the pyre, and its sole occupant. Wrapped in stiff canvas, the body lay on top of the flammable mound, a few relics from childhood placed alongside the trophies of manhood. The hide of the first griz bear he had ever killed, his gunbelt. Only the precious blaster was missing.

      Accepting a crackling torch from a sec man, the baron shuffled closer and blinked away some tears as he touched the pyre as if bestowing a benediction. Soaked with shine, oil, grease and even a few precious ounces of condensed fuel, the wood caught instantly, and the flames made a low roar as they spread over the pyre, meeting on the other side and then rising to the crest to engulf the still body of his son.

      A dark plume of roiling smoke soon rose to hide the corpse of Edmund Tregart, and all across the courtyard people began to openly weep or to bow their heads and mutter prayers as the flames began to consume the young man.

      “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” Baron Tregart said in a loud, clear voice, tossing the torch onto the growing bonfire. Tears were on his cheeks, but his face was as impassive as stone. Only the whiteness of his hand grasping the walking stick showed his inner emotions.

      “It is done,” the baron said, turning to face the crowd of ville folk and sec men. “My son is gone. Now, bring forth the killers!”

      There was a commotion at the rear of the crowd, and the people angrily parted to allow a group of grim sec men through with their two prisoners. Wrapped in chains, the captives were wearing only bloody rags, their exposed skin covered with red welts from endless whippings. One man had a badly broken nose, the other had an eye swollen shut and bulging with contained fluids.

      The ville folk cursed at the prisoners as they passed, several spit at the men, and a few raised sharp pieces of stone to throw. But the sec men got in the way, and the stones were reluctantly dropped to the dusty yard.

      In the background, armed guards walked along the top of the wall around Thunder ville, and while the men desperately wanted to watch the coming execution, they forced themselves to face outward. Funerals, weddings, births, any major event involving the baron was a good time for enemies to attack. The sec men clenched their fists in frustration and kept watch on the desert river outside the ville. The muddy waters of the Ohi helped to keep the ville alive, but the river also brought outlanders from the distant mountains, and those were always trouble.

      Returning to his throne, Baron Tregart sat heavily and cast a furtive gaze at the chair alongside. His wife, Hannah, was dying of the black cough, and now this. For a moment the old man thought his heart would break from the weight of his sorrow, then he inhaled slow and sat upright. A baron could never show weakness to his people, his father had always warned. Nor grant favors to an enemy. If he followed those two rules, his ville would prosper.

      But it had been a lie. Thunder ville was dying. Food was so scarce that the women couldn’t produce enough milk for their babies, and many of them “accidentally” dropped newborn infants on to stones to save the poor things from the endless