Doomsday Warrior 14 - American Death Orbit by Ryder Stacy Read Free Book Online Page A

from their research posts around the Soviet Union. I can give you their exact locations and the times at which they will be there. They must be brought up here unharmed—especially their heads. If you must wound them, do it in a lower part of the body! Their minds are what we need. Now I see that your construction of the Wheel’s frame is proceeding at an admirable pace,” Killov said, taking control of the conversation. For he knew how to manipulate men from the tips of their noses down to the very bases of their souls. He was the master. These two, as tough as they were, with all their Nazi swill, were going to be easy pickings for Killov. But he would never let them know it, until it was too late. All was slow, subtle. There was no need for rushing. He could pick the bones clean, at leisure. They tasted better that way.
    “Yes the frame is not the problem for us,” Heinrick said, stroking his thin brown moustache, his blue eyes surrounded by dark puffs of skin, looking proudly out the great bay window that ran all along one wall of the Führer’s chamber.
    All of space before them, the stars spread out like a trillion diamonds across the chest of night, Killov thought, half-mesmerized himself. A man could feel either mighty insignificant—or mighty powerful to be up here among the gods’ twinkling eyes. But Killov felt not just equal—but superior to the gods. Perhaps some day he would subjugate even those white flames in the night.
    “We are demons at construction work,” Heindricks said. “The Nazi spirit has always been most industrious. And we have had many years to work it all out. It’s the Wheel’s weapons systems—actually making them work —that is why we need your expertise, Colonel.”
    “Yes, I see. A synthesis of perfect needs—you and I.” He smiled grimly at them and popped two pills before their eyes. “Well, I’ll run your show for you all right. Just get me those scientists I named. Bring them to me—let me bring them into the Wheel—and we will soon make her the mightiest weapon over the face of the earth.” His voice changed to an emotion-charged whisper: “Yes, to blacken the face of the earth, to turn it red with fire, and dark, charred coals, with burnt husks of men and buildings.”
    The Nazis’ eyes grew bright as Killov wove his hypnotic web of destruction before them. Already they were falling under his dark spell. Already his visions of hell were entrancing them with bloody possibility, superseding their own blood lust with a greater vision of dark power.

Eight
    I t was slow going for Rock and the Dynasoar expeditionary force. The same gray wetness and low clouds that seemed to fly just overhead were both a blessing to the Freefighters in that it made them virtually invisible to prying eyes—and a curse in that it was cold, damn freezing cold. And even the sturdy ’brids had a hard time on the ice-sheened rocks and slippery slopes of the northern Rockies. They came out of the higher mountains and down into foothills only eight or nine thousand feet tall. The lower lands to the east were too dangerous even for such a well-armed force, filled with mutations that made the worm-thing they’d seen back there look like a mosquito.
    But the all-terrain vehicles—the “bikes”—which the field equipment science boys had been so proud of when they putted them around the test course a thousand feet below ground, were not quite behaving the same way out here in the wilds. Rock had set half the force on ’brids, half on the high tech bikes, figuring whichever way the odds went, at least they’d come out fifty percent. And already the bikes were having some major problems. Two of them conked out completely after only eighteen hours on the road. The motors couldn’t take the cold and the driving ice rain. The bikes clearly hadn’t been insulated enough for the outer world, it being nice and dry down in C.C.’s subterranean testing grounds.
    Maybe next time.
    He had the