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Axler, James - Deathlands 16 - Moon Fate
Ryan was now waist-deep, drawing the heavy panga in his right hand and hefting
it, though he knew it would be like waving a piece of straw at a charging
stickie.
"Come on," he urged, beckoning it deeper, closer.
The water had risen to what would have been the android's groin.
And there it stopped.
Ryan took an instant chance. Instead of moving farther away, toward the
possible safety of the lake's center, he chose to go forward, closing the gap
be-tween himself and the hunter-killer robot.
Holding out the long panga, he growled, "Lost your balls, have you?"
The droid extended its arms and swung them both toward him, but it was just
too far away. Ryan waved the steel blade, bringing the creature a cautious
half step toward him.
He needed to have it at least chest-deep for there to be a chance of the water
soaking through into its main control unit.
A small part of his brain wondered if the original inventors had taken the
precaution of sealing the comp unit and making it waterproof.
If they had, then Ryan could look forward to about ten seconds more of life.
Judging it to perfection, he offered the panga again, bringing the robot
another foot closer. Now the dark lake was lapping at the bottom of the
droid's round, fluted chest unit.
The sec hunter was making a strange chittering sound, as though a flock of
tiny metallic birds were fluttering inside its controls.
It stopped, head fixed toward its prey, arms re-tracted and froze, both
pointing in
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Axler, James - Deathlands 16 - Moon Fate
Ryan's direction. For twenty, thirty seconds, nothing happened.
Ryan watched it, hawklike, waiting for the next move in the murderous game.
A minute. Two minutes.
"Think it's fucked, Dad?"
"No. Eye's lit. Can hear it still whirring away in its guts."
But the droid wouldn't move deeper.
"Fireblast!" Ryan yelled, the anger that was al-ways present suddenly breaking
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out.
He dived beneath the surface of the dark pool, kicking hard with his legs as
he drove straight at the waiting robot.
His groping hand felt the rigid struts of the leg sup-ports, and he grabbed at
them, swinging and pushing himself off the bottom of the pool.
The droid responded quickly, pumping its arms be-low the frothing spray. Ryan
felt a savage blow on his right shoulder, but he hung on. The steel of the
panga clashed against the robot's other arm, blocking the slicing cutters.
It was stumbling, struggling to keep its balance, the free leg shuffling, the
other pulling against Ryan's grip.
With a titanic effort, Ryan managed to get the leg out of the mud. He braced
himself and heaved, lift-ing the heavy android, tipping it.
The droid smashed another blow into the small of Ryan's back with its hammer
hand, but it was done.
The breath exploded from Ryan as he surged out of the chill water, seeing the
sec
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Axler, James - Deathlands 16 - Moon Fate hunter disappearing, only its arms
remaining above the pool.
There was a bright flame beneath the surface, like flaring phosphorus. Ryan
let go and splashed his way quickly to the shore, looking back over his
shoulder, nearly falling into the bloody bones of the mangled deer.
The android was going into appalling convulsions, as if it were suffering a
high-
tech fit. Sparks showered from its open mouth, and a trickle of molten metal
burst through the dead eye.
Its right arm bent backward at an impossible angle and snapped off, the jagged
stump revolving like a sickle harvester.
It fell again, and rose for a second time, mud and water streaming from its
surface.
Dean moved to stand by his father, the Browning dangling, forgotten, from his
hand.
The red eye blinked, and the android started to move toward Ryan on dancing,
jerking legs. But the lines were going inexorably down, and it fell a third
time, rising more slowly. Then the eye went dark.
Its good arm rose above its head in what looked al-most like a macabre salute.
Then it vanished forever beneath the dark waters. The pool became placid once
more.
Chapter Ten
The rabbit was burned, though they managed to break open the charred outer
surface and pick off some dried meat that wasn't too scorched. Dean scuffed at
the
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Axler, James - Deathlands 16 - Moon Fate shattered remains of the young deer,
but the flesh was spoiled with hundreds of fragments of splintered bones, all
tainted with the pulped and ruptured intes-tines.
"Soon get us something else to eat," Ryan prom-ised, sitting stripped off by
the fire, drying himself and his clothes.
His shoulder and back showed two deep bruises, purplish black, red around the
edges, where the sec hunter had come close to chilling him.
But he'd bathed them in the cold lake, taking great care to pick a section a
good distance away from where the android had gone down for the third and
final time.
Now the warmth of the sun and the heat of the fire were drawing out the pain
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and tenderness.
"We going on soon, Dad?"
"Hell, why not?"
After the horrific early morning, the rest of the day unwound with a serene,
untroubled beauty. They followed the river endlessly northward, along a valley
with sides that grew ever more steep.
Birds flew around them, dipping the tips of their beaks into the fast-running
water.
Their wings and breasts shone with a dazzling range of iridescent greens, reds
and golds.
Across the far side of the valley Ryan spotted a dozen or more curve-horned
goats, picking their way along a high, invisible trail.
The sun was just past its zenith and they were tak-ing a brief rest. The
cliffs had closed right in on either side, the water flowing with muted
thunder over shelves of glistening boulders.
"Look," Dean said, pointing at a steep drop of eight or ten feet, the river
tumbling
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Axler, James - Deathlands 16 - Moon Fate like a solid cur-tain of dark green.
"Fish. Salmon? Trout? Not very good on names of things I'm going to eat."
"Can I go and try to catch us one?"
Ryan nodded lazily. "Sure. They look good and big. But watch you don't go in
off the top there. Be dou-ble slippery."
He watched the sight that had attracted his son's eyes flashes of bright
silver scales, gleaming like rainbows among the rushing falls. The river
seemed to be teeming with fish, all of them battling their way upstream,
presumably propelled by some atavistic spawning urge.
The boy scrambled down the side of the ravine, picking his way with a
surefooted ease. His father lay back in the warm sunshine, feeling a paternal
pride in his son's skill and courage.
It was a good moment in a Deathlands afternoon.
Dean showed his extraordinary speed and hand-eye coordination by using his
small turquoise-hilted knife to catch a large fish. He waited patiently, lying
flat on his stomach, his head and chest overhanging the wa-terfall.
Again and again there was the dazzling display as the fish made their leaps,
and
Dean lay and stared, working out where most of them were going, where the
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