Survivalist - 22 - Brutal Conquest Read online

  **************************************

  Title : #22 : BRUTAL CONQUEST

  Series : Survivalist

  Author(s) : Jerry Ahern

  Location : Gillian Archives

  **************************************

  1

  A lightning bolt struck the engine of the helicopter’s main rotor, and an alarm sounded instandy. Nearly as quickly, the wailing of the Klaxon was lost beneath the screams of the just-rescued women. More lightning bolts and raw plasma energy in the form of ball lightning surrounded them, the sky ripping open in a torrent of rain. The storm was upon them*before there was time to think, time to react, or time to take any form of evasive action.

  “We are going down!” Natalia screamed, barely audible over the shrieks of the freed captives of the Land Pirates.

  John Rourke pushed to his feet, Michael a step ahead of him. Rourke shouted to Paul and Annie, “Try to keep these women calm so we can hear ourselves think. Get them into crash positions. Hurry!”

  There was a droning sound, the rush of the slipstream along the fuselage. Then another lightning strike, one of the overhead electrical panels catching fire. Michael grabbed a bulkhead-mounted extinguisher, shouting to the freed captives, “Get back! I’ve gotta put the fire out! Get back!”

  John Rourke pushed past his son, into the Eden gunship’s cockpit.

  All around them there was green-tinged blackness. “It was just here, John! A moment ago, it was clear all around us. Then we were into the storm. We still have tail rotor control, but I don’t know how much longer! We’re going to crash.”

  John Rourke reached around her, grabbing for the joystick. It moved too easily. “Damnit.” Freezing rain and hail enveloped them, one of the overhead cockpit bubble panels cracking, spider-webbing under the repeated impact from balls of ice that were nearly the size of baseballs.

  Rourke lurched into the copilot’s seat beside her, buckling in as he started hitting switches on the auxiliary control panel. His hand closed over hers on the joystick, feeling for a response from the controls. There was none.

  “I was terrain following to avoid a lightning strike, but it did not-“

  Rourke interrupted her. The snow-and ice-splotched floor of the rift valley, jagged upthrusting slabs of rock and mounds of rilled dirt everywhere, was coming up fast. “Can you still control the tail at all, Natalia?”

  “Not enough. Hold on.”

  John Rourke’s mind raced, searching for a solution, but there was none. He braced as he shouted aft, “Impact’s coming up! Brace yourselves!”

  There was a moment when all motion seemed to stop, then everything around them shook and the helicopter was skidding along the ground, starting to turn over.

  “All fuel supply systems are off,” Natalia shouted.

  Rourke braced his hands against the overhead as the helicopter flipped forward. There were screams.

  The smell of synth-fuel.

  The smell of insulation burning.

  The helicopter turned onto its side, blades from the main rotor slicing past them along the ground, shattering the chin bubble.

  There was a blur of motion, something long and black rocketing past them, a portion of the portside bulkhead peeling away, the tail rotor spinning along the ground, churning a furrow into the dirt and snow before it smashed against a rock and broke up.

  Then all motion stopped.

  John Rourke hung over the right side of the copilot’s seat, a piece of one of the main rotor blades, twisted and gnarled, punched through the chin bubble inches from his left leg.

  He looked up and to his left.

  Natalia, unmoving, hung suspended from her seat restraint.

  John Rourke reached for the quick release buckle of his harness but it was jammed. The smell of burning insulation was even stronger now. He shook his head to clear it.

  “How is it back there?” Rourke called aft.

  His daughter Annie’s voice shouted back, “Some injuries. I don’t think anyone’s dead.”

  John Rourke had the litde A.G. Russell Sting IA Black Chrome in his hand, and was using it to cut through the webbing of the seat restraint.

  He was finished with the section that passed over his left shoulder, and was starting on the piece still secured around his waist. “Natalia? Answer me! Come on! Wake up, Natalia!”

  She moved her head and shook it. “We are—”

  “—alive. This thing’s on fire and we’ve got to get out in order to stay alive. Think! Come on!”

  She shook her head again. “I … uhh …”

  Rourke had cut through the other section of seat restraint, putting his knife in his teeth as he twisted out of the seat and reached up toward Natalia. Her seat restraint release buckle worked, and as he activated it, she fell from the pilot’s seat and into his arms.

  Rourke held her for an instant. He loved her. He always would. But he loved his wife. Natalia was Michael’s woman now. And although he would never stop loving her, he was happy for them … for both of them.

  Natalia’s eyelids fluttered as he set her down against the side of the copilot’s seat. As he sheathed his litde knife, he gazed at the incredible blueness of her eyes. “Can you walk?” Rourke asked.

  “Yes. I—” She shook her head and closed her eyes. “I am all right. Help the others.”

  Rourke pulled her to her feet and she swayed against him, then he pushed her aft, ducking her head down for her as she turned sideways to get through.

  There was smoke here, dense and acrid smelling. Michael, his head bleeding, was handing some of the injured women out of the main compartment and up to Paul and Annie, who hung down through where the portside fuselage door had been, now a jagged tear.

  There was a hole in the overhead, now to Rourke’s left because the craft was turned on its side, where the main rotor assembly had been sheared away.

  Martin, the neo-Nazi leader of Eden, the son taken from John and Sarah in the instant of birth, pushed past one of the injured women and started to clamber up toward the opening where Paul and Annie were. John Rourke straight-armed Martin in the chest, spinning him around. “Help with these people. Now, damnit!”

  “Let them all die! They will anyway.”

  John Rourke grabbed Martin by the front of his shirt. “Help them or you’ll die.” He pushed Martin away.

  Martin reached down to one of the women. She visibly recoiled from him. But he grabbed her up, starting to hand her out to Paul and Annie.

  Rourke’s eyes scanned the cabin. Despite the smoke, the recurrent lightning flashes allowed him to see clearly enough. And red panic lights glowed from some of the bulkhead and overhead receptacles, others blown out or shattered.

  There was a woman with a piece of shrapnel sticking through her left arm. Rourke pushed away debris, dropped to his knees, and quickly set to work. He had to free her arm from the shrapnel—a piece of the fuselage body twisted inward—before he could carry her out.

  The smoke was getting thicker. As he braced his left knee against her left shoulder, then grasped her arm to raise it off the metal spike, he told her, “I’m a doctor. You’ll be all right.”

  He only hoped he was right.

  “Tell me your blood type, in case you pass out.”

  “Blood type. Come on. O, AB, what?”

  “O positive, I think.”

  “Good girl. Don’t be afraid to scream. Itll help.” He took a glove from his pocket and put it between her teeth. “Bite. Now!”

  He pulled.

  She screamed, but the scream died in her throat as the pain put her into unconsciousness. But he had her free. He reached to his snow smock, ripping away the left sleeve at the shoulder, then turning it inside out and twisting it, binding it above her wound as a tourniquet.

  “I’ve got the medical kit they had in here. All our stuffs out,” Michael was shouting.

  “Get Martin out of here and tell Annie to keep an eye on him. If he runs, kneecap him.”

  “Right.”

  “Get Natalia out. Get her to sit down someplace. Might be concussion. What about the rest of the women?” “All of them out. No dead.”

  “This one will need a transfusion. Find somebody with O positive and see if you can scrounge up some fuel line or something for the transfusion.”

  “Right.”

  “How’s your head?” John Rourke had the woman bandaged and was staunching the flow of blood.

  “Just a scratch, but it’s bleeding a lot. I’m fine.”

  “Head wounds can be serious. Ill take a look in a minute.” Rourke looked back over his shoulder. Martin was scrambling out, and Michael was helping Natalia into Paul’s hands. He pulled her up and she was out.

  Then Michael dropped to one knee beside John Rourke and the injured woman. “I’ll give you a hand.”

  “All right. Take that side. Watch her arm.” They lifted her between them, John Rourke shouting to Paul, “Give us a hand.”

  They pushed the woman up as Paul extended his hands, grabbing her left side, holding her as Michael eased himself up and out through the opening. John Rourke pushed upward on the woman’s body, and Paul and Michael had her.

  Rourke took a quick glance around the cabin.

  “Michael! Paul!”

  “Yeah?” It was Paul’s voice.

  “Sure you have everything?”

  “Everything, Dad,” Michael called down.

  John Rourke nodded, coughing as he inhaled
too deeply and swallowed too much smoke.

  He reached up, grabbed a handhold, and started to wrestle himself clear, Michael’s and Paul’s hands on his shoulders and upper arms, pulling him up.

  Rourke jumped down into the snow.

  The rain still fell, icy sleet, hailstones pelting the ground, striking his face. He pulled up the hood of his parka.

  The women, Martin Zimmer, Natalia, and Annie were already about thirty yards from the craft.

  Michael and Paul jumped down, and together the three of them started away from the helicopter as quickly as they could. There was no telling if or when it would explode, and the fact that it hadn’t as of yet was no guarantee it wouldn’t in the next second.

  “What’U we do now, John?” Paul shouted over the keening of the wind and the hammering of the rain.

  “Remember the old joke? ‘What you mean we, paleface?’ Well, I don’t know yet. We need shelter. Was there a survival kit-“

  And then the roar started, John Rourke grabbing his son and his friend, pushing them down into the snow as he threw himself between them.

  The helicopter.

  The noise of the explosion was painfully loud. There was a rush of heat. Rourke covered his head and neck with his forearms, trying to shelter his bare hands. Debris rained down around them, some of it burning.

  Michael’s parka caught fire. John Rourke rolled his son over, shouting, “Your coat!” Michael smothered the fire and got to his knees.

  John Rourke stood up, looking back.

  All that remained of the gunship now was a skeleton. Its missile pods were still in place, but the wiring was fused. Fortunately, none of the missiles detonated.

  His ears still rang a little from the explosion as Paul, standing beside him, said, “In answer to your question, yes.”

  John Rourke looked at him.

  “A survival kit. Probably has some sort of shelter in it, but can’t be much.”

  The rain was starting to slacken, and overhead the electrical activity was subsiding, the sky lightening.

  Michael stood at his father’s side. “They’re going to be coming, Dad.”

  John Rourke just nodded.

  Mentally, he began making a list of what had to be done, in order of importance.

  The woman with the blood loss from the wounded arm. And the other injured had to be tended to. The shelter, if there was one, could be erected to protect the more seriously injured. Meanwhile, there was the question of exposure.

  “Shit,” John Rourke almost whispered.

  Paul Rubenstein clapped him on the shoulder, saying, “Took the word right off the tip of my tongue, John. What the hell are we going to do with these people? I mean, where do we take them?”

  “Find a cave … something. No time to talk, gentlemen.” John Rourke turned away from the wreckage and started jogging through the rocks and snow and slush.

  2

  Paul had scavenged a fuel line, and after cleaning and disinfecting it, Rourke transfused litde more than a pint of blood from three women among the group rescued from the stronghold of the Land Pirates, not wishing to weaken any of the donors seriously enough to affect survivability under the extreme conditions surrounding them.

  As long as Martin Zimmer was a prisoner, there would not be an outright attack by the Land Pirates or the Eden armed forces, but it was inevitable that some of the massive mobile fortresses were coming through the rift valley even now, in pursuit. Their radar might have sufficient range to have detected the crash, which meant they would be coming all the faster.

  Natalia had been airborne for roughly thirty minutes. Rourke calculated that they had covered perhaps fifty miles, maybe as many as sixty.

  Maximum speed for the fortresses—multi-treaded massive armored vehicles with main decks Paul estimated to be nearly the size of a football field—could be no more than thirty miles per hour flat out over good terrain, unless Rourke seriously misjudged their capabilities. In the rift valley, half that speed for vehicles of that size would be hard to maintain. But at fifteen miles per hour, considering flight time and the time already spent tending the injured, the first of the fortresses would be coming into sight in two to three hours.

  Without shelter, he’d start losing some of the women to exposure in half that time. The women, having been kidnapped by the Land Pirates from communities throughout the Wildlands, were already malnourished, and were dressed in litde better than rags, ill suited for survival in the sub-freezing temperatures.

  John Rourke’s parka, along with those of the others, was already gone, as were the Eden uniform parts worn by Paul and Annie and Natalia. The snow pants were given over to be used as best they could for jackets.

  The last of the serious wounds attended to, John Rourke stepped out of the four-man shelter and into the blast, only a heavy military-style sweater over his ordinary clothing.

  It was late morning, the sky grey and threatening, but the storm that had almost literally shot them out of the sky was gone.

  Rourke rubbed his hands over his upper arms for circulation.

  Annie, back in her own clothes but minus her parka, stood shivering, holding a gun on Martin Zimmer.

  Martin Zimmer. John Rourke took one of the thin, dark tobacco cigars from a pocket beneath his sweater, the end already cut off, then clamped it between his teeth. He walked toward Michael and Paul, who were sorting the gear from the aircraft into relatively equal loads. They even had the door gun and two boxes of link belt cartridges. He joined them, his son and his best friend. Martin Zimmer. It was clear now that Deitrich Zimmer, the brilliant micro-surgeon and geneticist, had planned very well, up to and including faking his own death as well as that of the newborn child he had kidnapped.

  Zimmer had a brother Jurgen, a confirmed neo-Nazi like Deitrich himself, dedicated to establishing a new world order. However dedicated Jurgen Zimmer had been, though, John Rourke seriously doubted the man had volunteered himself as a corpse to substitute for Deitrich. But it had to have been Jurgen Zimmer’s body that, along with a look-alike for Commander Dodd, had

  been discovered in the wreckage of a helicopter crash.

  Unlike Dodd, Commander of the Eden Project shutde fleet, who was born in the Twentieth Century before the process really progressed out of the experimental stage, there was a genetic fingerprint of Deitrich Zimmer. Genetic identification could not be rigged, but the genetic print between close members of the same family was identical.

  But it wasn’t that simple. There was also the question of retina prints to be resolved. Yet, for someone ruthless enough to murder his own brother and skilled enough as a surgeon, that was easily rectified, just as it was for someone dedicated enough to sacrifice an eye.

  It seemed clear that what Deitrich Zimmer had done was to have his own left eye surgically removed, then transplanted into the socket of his brother. His brother would have had to have been alive, of course, for the process to be done convincingly, and John Rourke did not want to consider the ramifications that that suggested.

  But what had Deitrich Zimmer done to the baby he kidnapped?

  Deitrich Zimmer had actually stolen two children, the newborn son of Lieutenant Martha Larrimore, born in the morning, and the newborn child Rourke’s wife Sarah had delivered, probably only moments before Deitrich shot Sarah in the head.

  Deitrich Zimmer kept the child of Martha Larrimore alive specifically for the purpose of killing it, to make everyone believe he had murdered the Rourke baby instead.

  Then Zimmer arranged to fake his own death and that of Dodd; arranged for the abortive attempt at destroying the cryogenic chambers in which John Rourke and the rest of his family slept; arranged for the successful assassination of Akiro Kurinami, first elected president of Eden, and Akiro’s wife, Elaine Halversen.

  Then Dodd miraculously returned, claiming leadership of Eden, saying he himself was the victim of a neo-Nazi plot, exposing the body that was attributed to be his as that of a Nazi sympathizer in league with Deitrich Zimmer, who had really died.

  But, clearly, Deitrich Zimmer did not die.

  What had he done to this man now called Martin, who was born of Sarah and himself? Rourke wondered.

  Psychologists had perennially batded oyer the effects of environment versus heredity, but could the environment Deitrich Zimmer provided have wrought so much? Martin was clearly evil, not just misguided.