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Axler, James - Outlanders 02 - Destiny Run that reaction?"
Kane held his left hand out. A high-ex gren rested in his palm.
"Again with the grens. Or gren," rumbled Grant. "Even if that one itty-bitty
gren can do damage, it doesn't have a timer on it. We'd get fried, too."
Kane grinned, dipped his right hand inside of his coat and brought out four
paper-
wrapped cylinders. Each one was about a foot long, and they were bound
together by black tape. A coil of primer cord dangled from the center of the
cylinder cluster. Both Grant and Brigid looked at him in surprise.
"Where'd you find that?" Grant demanded.
"In a crate over there, along with some other excavating materials. When they
unearthed and cleared the city, I figured they had to use demolition charges.
Sverdlovosk wouldn't supply them with anything too expensive or complicated,
not when cheap, old-fashioned dynamite would do the trick."
Grant laughed. "Leave it to you to sniff out anything that goes boom."
Kane angled an eyebrow at Brigid. "What about you, Baptiste? No objections to
destroying a historical site or priceless artifacts?"
Her emerald eyes glinted with fury, with loathing. "Blow it to hell so no one
can ever find it again, not even the Archons."
There was no need of further discussion. Grant and Brigid went to the stone-
clogged stairway. She paused briefly beside Sverdlovosk's corpse and shook her
file:///J|/sci-fi/Nieuwe%20map/James%20Axler%20-%20Outlanders%2002%20-%20Desti
ny%20Run.html (363 of 368)16-2-2006 16:57:49
Axler, James - Outlanders 02 - Destiny Run head sadly.
Grant snorted. "Don't shed any tears for him."
"I won't. He met his destiny."
Though the first three step levels were cluttered with fallen blocks and rock
debris, the passageway beyond was clear. Grant called the information out to
Kane, who waited beside the base of the generator.
He placed the bound sticks of dynamite in the right angle where the lower tier
disappeared into the deck plates and balanced the gren atop them. He hoped
that when the dynamite detonated, it would set off the fulminate of mercury
primer in the gren and quadruple the destructive power of the explosion.
Still, the black cubes were made of an unknown metal, and he wished he had a
canister of nitro-
starch to spread around, as well.
Backing away, he played out the fuse, stretching it out straight. He set it
afire with his lighter, a simple steel-flint device that he normally only used
to light cigars. The end of the fuse sputtered, smoked and sparked. He turned
and ran.
He calculated that the yard-long cord had a burn time of approximately three
minutes, a minute a foot. By his reckoning it had taken him and Grant at least
that long to descend the stairs. Ascending them was a different matter
Page 172
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
altogether, considering their physical condition.
In the passageway they moved swiftly, though painfully, bounding from step
level to step level, over and past the corpses of the Mongols, kicking loose
stones from their path.
file:///J|/sci-fi/Nieuwe%20map/James%20Axler%20-%20Outlanders%2002%20-%20Desti
ny%20Run.html (364 of 368)16-2-2006 16:57:49
Axler, James - Outlanders 02 - Destiny Run
The three of them carried fully loaded blasters, since they had no idea of
whom or how many they might meet on their way up.
Kane labored for breath, sweat cutting runnels in the dried blood on his face.
He ached in every bone and he coughed once, his mouth filling with blood-laced
bile. The gnawing pain from the plasma-bolt discharge worked its way through
his back and into his chest cavity. It steadily became unbearable. Every
breath he took was an agony.
Still, he ran, shoulder to shoulder with Baptiste, for once allowing Grant to
take the point. Their run-leap-run movements were like a mechanically
repetitive ballet, danced out in the depths of a dead city.
Brigid stumbled, but Kane didn't give her the opportunity to fall. He clawed
out at her hands, caught them and pulled her along with him. She looked at him
once, and in the amber glow of his microlight, he saw in her eyes a pain so
intense as to dwarf his own.
The darkness suddenly moved around them, the steps shifting beneath their
feet.
A tremendous explosion cannonaded up from the blackness behind them. A
brutal column of concussive force rushed up the stairwell, slamming into them
like an invisible tsunami, buffeting them up and off their feet A black glob
of smoke flung itself from the throat of the stairwell like a boulder launched
from a catapult.
They flew up and out into cold, clean air, rolling painfully over the
flagstoned ground. A series of consecutive hammering blasts thundered up. The
colonnade around the stairwell shook and trembled. The walls showed cracks,
and rifts split the ground. Rocks and mortar, shaken loose from the ancient
walls overhead,
file:///J|/sci-fi/Nieuwe%20map/James%20Axler%20-%20Outlanders%2002%20-%20Desti
ny%20Run.html (365 of 368)16-2-2006 16:57:49
Axler, James - Outlanders 02 - Destiny Run sifted down. The ground heaved and
shuddered. A fissure opened up around the mouth of the stairwell with a clash
of rending rock and a distant shriek of rupturing metal. Cornices and basalt
blocks toppled down, one crashing into and knocking over the colonnade. They
staggered to their feet and reeled, doing their best to maintain their balance
and footing on the convulsing earth. All of them shared the same fear that the
chain reaction ignited by the explosives was atomic in nature. Sverdlovosk's
story of the Tunguska disaster evoked visions of a miles-high mushroom cloud
swallowing all of the Black Gobi.
The three of them dodged, ducked and ran, heading for the open courtyard.
Blocks of stone dropped like bombs from the walls around them. A huge cube
tumbled down from overhead, driving up jets of dust. Pillars that had been
rooted in the same spot for millennia snapped off at the base like flower
stems.
Over the cataclysmic cacophony came screams of terror, pain and panic.
Skirting a low, quaking wall that shivered itself to rubble, Brigid, Kane and
Grant found themselves dashing across the courtyard to the rear of the palace
ruins. The walls collapsed, crashing inward, block after block, crash after
crash.
With a roar like a hundred mingled waterfalls, the fortress of Khara Bator,
the
Page 173
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
Black Hero, seemed to rise into the air, then collapse and scatter in
exploding fragments. A reverberating, extended thunderclap rolled as the ruin
imploded, walls folding in on themselves, roof arches breaking and cascading
down in a contained avalanche.
They made for the city walls, slowing their mad pace only a trifle. Brigid
cast a feverish glance over a shoulder, toward the vicinity of the well. The
yurt that had covered it lay aflame on the ground, and plumes of
black-and-yellow smoke,
file:///J|/sci-fi/Nieuwe%20map/James%20Axler%20-%20Outlanders%2002%20-%20Desti [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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start
file:///J|/sci-fi/Nieuwe%20map/James%20Axler%20-%20Outlanders%2002%20-%20Desti
ny%20Run.html (362 of 368)16-2-2006 16:57:49
Axler, James - Outlanders 02 - Destiny Run that reaction?"
Kane held his left hand out. A high-ex gren rested in his palm.
"Again with the grens. Or gren," rumbled Grant. "Even if that one itty-bitty
gren can do damage, it doesn't have a timer on it. We'd get fried, too."
Kane grinned, dipped his right hand inside of his coat and brought out four
paper-
wrapped cylinders. Each one was about a foot long, and they were bound
together by black tape. A coil of primer cord dangled from the center of the
cylinder cluster. Both Grant and Brigid looked at him in surprise.
"Where'd you find that?" Grant demanded.
"In a crate over there, along with some other excavating materials. When they
unearthed and cleared the city, I figured they had to use demolition charges.
Sverdlovosk wouldn't supply them with anything too expensive or complicated,
not when cheap, old-fashioned dynamite would do the trick."
Grant laughed. "Leave it to you to sniff out anything that goes boom."
Kane angled an eyebrow at Brigid. "What about you, Baptiste? No objections to
destroying a historical site or priceless artifacts?"
Her emerald eyes glinted with fury, with loathing. "Blow it to hell so no one
can ever find it again, not even the Archons."
There was no need of further discussion. Grant and Brigid went to the stone-
clogged stairway. She paused briefly beside Sverdlovosk's corpse and shook her
file:///J|/sci-fi/Nieuwe%20map/James%20Axler%20-%20Outlanders%2002%20-%20Desti
ny%20Run.html (363 of 368)16-2-2006 16:57:49
Axler, James - Outlanders 02 - Destiny Run head sadly.
Grant snorted. "Don't shed any tears for him."
"I won't. He met his destiny."
Though the first three step levels were cluttered with fallen blocks and rock
debris, the passageway beyond was clear. Grant called the information out to
Kane, who waited beside the base of the generator.
He placed the bound sticks of dynamite in the right angle where the lower tier
disappeared into the deck plates and balanced the gren atop them. He hoped
that when the dynamite detonated, it would set off the fulminate of mercury
primer in the gren and quadruple the destructive power of the explosion.
Still, the black cubes were made of an unknown metal, and he wished he had a
canister of nitro-
starch to spread around, as well.
Backing away, he played out the fuse, stretching it out straight. He set it
afire with his lighter, a simple steel-flint device that he normally only used
to light cigars. The end of the fuse sputtered, smoked and sparked. He turned
and ran.
He calculated that the yard-long cord had a burn time of approximately three
minutes, a minute a foot. By his reckoning it had taken him and Grant at least
that long to descend the stairs. Ascending them was a different matter
Page 172
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
altogether, considering their physical condition.
In the passageway they moved swiftly, though painfully, bounding from step
level to step level, over and past the corpses of the Mongols, kicking loose
stones from their path.
file:///J|/sci-fi/Nieuwe%20map/James%20Axler%20-%20Outlanders%2002%20-%20Desti
ny%20Run.html (364 of 368)16-2-2006 16:57:49
Axler, James - Outlanders 02 - Destiny Run
The three of them carried fully loaded blasters, since they had no idea of
whom or how many they might meet on their way up.
Kane labored for breath, sweat cutting runnels in the dried blood on his face.
He ached in every bone and he coughed once, his mouth filling with blood-laced
bile. The gnawing pain from the plasma-bolt discharge worked its way through
his back and into his chest cavity. It steadily became unbearable. Every
breath he took was an agony.
Still, he ran, shoulder to shoulder with Baptiste, for once allowing Grant to
take the point. Their run-leap-run movements were like a mechanically
repetitive ballet, danced out in the depths of a dead city.
Brigid stumbled, but Kane didn't give her the opportunity to fall. He clawed
out at her hands, caught them and pulled her along with him. She looked at him
once, and in the amber glow of his microlight, he saw in her eyes a pain so
intense as to dwarf his own.
The darkness suddenly moved around them, the steps shifting beneath their
feet.
A tremendous explosion cannonaded up from the blackness behind them. A
brutal column of concussive force rushed up the stairwell, slamming into them
like an invisible tsunami, buffeting them up and off their feet A black glob
of smoke flung itself from the throat of the stairwell like a boulder launched
from a catapult.
They flew up and out into cold, clean air, rolling painfully over the
flagstoned ground. A series of consecutive hammering blasts thundered up. The
colonnade around the stairwell shook and trembled. The walls showed cracks,
and rifts split the ground. Rocks and mortar, shaken loose from the ancient
walls overhead,
file:///J|/sci-fi/Nieuwe%20map/James%20Axler%20-%20Outlanders%2002%20-%20Desti
ny%20Run.html (365 of 368)16-2-2006 16:57:49
Axler, James - Outlanders 02 - Destiny Run sifted down. The ground heaved and
shuddered. A fissure opened up around the mouth of the stairwell with a clash
of rending rock and a distant shriek of rupturing metal. Cornices and basalt
blocks toppled down, one crashing into and knocking over the colonnade. They
staggered to their feet and reeled, doing their best to maintain their balance
and footing on the convulsing earth. All of them shared the same fear that the
chain reaction ignited by the explosives was atomic in nature. Sverdlovosk's
story of the Tunguska disaster evoked visions of a miles-high mushroom cloud
swallowing all of the Black Gobi.
The three of them dodged, ducked and ran, heading for the open courtyard.
Blocks of stone dropped like bombs from the walls around them. A huge cube
tumbled down from overhead, driving up jets of dust. Pillars that had been
rooted in the same spot for millennia snapped off at the base like flower
stems.
Over the cataclysmic cacophony came screams of terror, pain and panic.
Skirting a low, quaking wall that shivered itself to rubble, Brigid, Kane and
Grant found themselves dashing across the courtyard to the rear of the palace
ruins. The walls collapsed, crashing inward, block after block, crash after
crash.
With a roar like a hundred mingled waterfalls, the fortress of Khara Bator,
the
Page 173
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
Black Hero, seemed to rise into the air, then collapse and scatter in
exploding fragments. A reverberating, extended thunderclap rolled as the ruin
imploded, walls folding in on themselves, roof arches breaking and cascading
down in a contained avalanche.
They made for the city walls, slowing their mad pace only a trifle. Brigid
cast a feverish glance over a shoulder, toward the vicinity of the well. The
yurt that had covered it lay aflame on the ground, and plumes of
black-and-yellow smoke,
file:///J|/sci-fi/Nieuwe%20map/James%20Axler%20-%20Outlanders%2002%20-%20Desti [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]