The Nuclear Druid Read online

  Table of Contents

  Copyright Page

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  CHAPTER 56

  CHAPTER 57

  CHAPTER 58

  CHAPTER 59

  CHAPTER 60

  CHAPTER 61

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  DISCOVER THE ADVENTUROUS WORLDS OF FELIX R. SAVAGE

  EARTH’S LAST GAMBIT | A Quartet of Present-Day Science Fiction Technothrillers

  SOL SYSTEM RENEGADES | Near-Future Hard Science Fiction

  THE RELUCTANT ADVENTURES OF FLETCHER CONNOLLY ON THE INTERSTELLAR RAILROAD | Near-Future Non-Hard Science Fiction

  THE NUCLEAR DRUID

  EXTINCTION PROTOCOL

  BOOK 2

  ––––––––

  FELIX R. SAVAGE

  ––––––––

  Copyright © 2017 by Felix R. Savage

  The right to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by Felix R. Savage. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher or author.

  First published in the United States of America in 2017 by Knights Hill Publishing.

  Subscribe to Felix R. Savage’s mailing list to receive FREE books, news and updates, and other exclusive content. Choose your first free book now: http://felixrsavage.com/subscribe

  CHAPTER 1

  A COVERED CART JOLTED through the forest. It was night, but a pale light seeped through the snow clouds. The wind dislodged snow from overhanging boughs, slopping it on the shoulders of the infantry walking behind the cart, and on the cloaked riders ahead of it.

  One of the riders slumped in his saddle. He was tied to the pommel. Another rider led his horse on a short rein. His hands—bound in front of him—looked clumsy, elephantine. They had put high-potential gauntlets on him, rubber on the inside, leather on the outside, stretching up past his elbows, so he couldn’t try anything.

  His name was Dhjerga Lizp. He had deserted from the Earth front. They had caught him just twenty miles from home. He’d been an idiot to make for home, he knew. At least he hadn’t gone straight home, so the twins could plausibly claim to know nothing about it.

  The horses’ harness jingled. For an instant, Dhjerga heard another sound. A high, metallic clattering, keeping time with the jingling of the harness. He glanced up, but saw nothing.

  *

  Inside the covered cart, a sentry kept watch over the horse-powered generator. This machine consisted of a cast sulphur globe mounted on a horizontal spindle, which was connected to the front axle of the cart. As the cart moved, the globe whirred around. The friction device, a large piece of burnished leather, hung in its mounting at a distance of two feet from the globe. The generator was not presently in operation. The sentry had nothing to do except keep an eye on the storage jar, a six-foot aluminium-coated cylinder decorated with the raised seal of the Magistocracy—a two-headed eagle. A metal sphere stuck up from the jar’s lid.

  The sentry didn’t notice at first that it was getting warmer in the back of the cart. He tugged at the collar of his shapeless khaki uniform, without understanding why. His function was to understand nothing except the orders he had been given. And the Magistrates hadn’t said anything about warmth. They wouldn’t like it, doubtless; they never liked anyone to be comfortable. The sentry had just enough self-awareness to think—Screw them. Seated against the side of the cart, with his rifle beside him, he dozed off.

  In the moments after the sentry fell asleep, it got darker and darker inside the cart.

  Blue brambles of electricity wriggled from the sides of the storage jar, and from the steel ball on top. They shot off spikes that humped and writhed into the corner behind the device.

  In that corner, the shadows clumped as dark and dense as a living thing. They heaved and shimmered and coagulated into a man.

  Naked as the day he was born, at first. Six feet, pasty-skinned, broad-shouldered, with the pale trace of a removed tattoo on one bicep—it had depicted a big-bottomed girl wrapped in a Scottish flag—and a ginger buzz-cut.

  Half-stunned, he toppled onto his knees. Something fell from his right hand with a clatter.

  By the time he hit the floor he was wearing a blue dress uniform. The Navy blue, and his soft-soled gray and orange boots, designed for spaceship decks, clashed with the gentle tones of leather and wood around him. He seemed to give off an unnatural light of his own, actinic, blue-tinted. Within seconds it faded.

  The thump woke the sleeping sentry.

  The two men stared at each other across the dark interior of the cart.

  Colm saw the sentry’s khaki uniform.

  Oh, Jesus. He’s a Ghost—

  —and he’s got a gun.

  As the sentry reached for his rifle, Colm lunged. He grabbed the rifle and wrenched it out of reach, while slamming the heel of his other hand into the sentry’s nose. In a panic, he brought the butt of the rifle down on the man’s head. The sentry slumped. Blood trickled out of his nose. A loud snore rattled from his mouth. Colm knelt over him, poised to hit him again, until he was sure that the man was still breathing, but wouldn’t be waking up for a while.

  Colm had killed hundreds of Ghosts over the years, but almost always from the metal cocoon of his cockpit. Now, as the adrenaline wore off, he realized he couldn’t kill this one. It was partly squeamishness—he was not a man who enjoyed killing, certainly not with his bare hands—and partly doubt. Did the guy deserve to die? Colm didn’t know who was an enemy and who was a friend anymore. He didn’t even know where he was.

  The floor jolted rhythmically. He was in a moving vehicle.

  He found a chink where the canvas roof met the side wall, and peeked out, gripping the Ghost’s rifle in one hand.

  It was night, but the snow caking the trees gave an eerie visibility. Cold wind brought tears to his eyes. He saw horses, kitted out with colorful saddle-cloths and tasselled bridles. Their riders sat erect, swathed in black hooded cloaks with a red symbol on the back, which resembled a stylized two-headed eagle.

  All except one, who slumped, his hood down around his shoulders, as if he didn’t care about the icy wind and the flurrying snow.

  Dhjerga!

&nbs
p; Dhjerga Lizp was the Ghost who’d helped him liberate Juradis from the sentrienza. Then he’d left. Colm had followed him here—wherever here was.

  Colm drew breath to shout Dhjerga’s name. In the nick of time, he saw that Dhjerga’s hands, muffled in huge gloves, were tied together with a chain that looped around the front bit of his saddle.

  He was a prisoner.

  Colm glanced back at the sentry—still out cold.

  Well, it stood to reason, didn’t it? Dhjerga had deserted from the Ghost army.

  And deserters generally get caught.

  As the reality that he was surrounded by enemies sank in, Colm miserably dropped onto his haunches. Five minutes ago he’d been on the weather deck of the Unsinkable, the old supercarrier where he had served as a pilot, playing the spoons, while Gilliam Tripsilion Nulth the queazel held the door. Now he was—where?

  And where were his spoons?

  He felt around on the floor until he found them. They were just coffee spoons, borrowed from the office of Admiral Hyland, a.k.a. the Rat, the commander of the Unsinkable. Colm’s father used to play soup spoons, ugly tarnished things he’d inherited from his grandfather. It was a pity the old bastard had never told Colm exactly what the trick was. Colm pocketed the spoons and glanced up at the weird contraption that occupied most of the space inside the cart.

  A spinning globe, with a sort of a broom suspended where it would brush one side of the globe. That end of the broom sprouted long wires. The other end terminated in a metal ball, a few inches from a similar ball atop an embossed jar taller than Colm.

  The arrangement rang a faint bell, although he couldn’t put his finger on it. It looked strikingly old-fashioned. Every component had clearly been made by hand and painstakingly ornamented. The bolt-action rifle in Colm’s hand, with its carved wooden stock, exuded the same primitive ethos. This cart was drawn by horses, for God’s sake.

  Feeling desperate, he peered out of the chink again. It was getting on for evening. Snowflakes twirled in the wind. The riders had their heads lowered, their faces muffled. Dhjerga sagged over his horse’s neck. The possibility that he was injured struck Colm.

  He had to get out of here, and get Dhjerga out of here, too.

  With what?

  This sodding antique rifle?

  Well, Ghosts had used identical rifles to mow down humans across eighteen colony systems. But it only had a 10-cartridge magazine, and there were six riders, which meant he’d have to make every bullet count. In the snow. With dusk coming on.

  He scrambled to the back of the cart and made another chink by working the canvas loose from the tailboard. He immediately binned the idea of opening fire like some sort of berserk commando. A company of Ghost infantry trudged in the cart’s ruts, shapeless in sodden cloaks, snow-epauleted. There had to be fifty of them.

  He turned back to the contraption in the middle of the cart. He could scarcely see it in the gloom. But he suddenly realized that he could feel it.

  He had an esthesia implant. It enabled him to fly a spaceship by feel, processing real-time information from the ship’s systems in the form of sensory feedback. For example, he would experience the electrical output from a ship’s reactor as a sensation of pulsating warmth in his lower belly …

  … and that was exactly what he could feel now. A warm throb. Very faint, compared to the output of a typical ship’s reactor. But definitely there.

  He edged closer to the ornate jar. That’s where the warmth was coming from.

  The pieces of the device clicked into place in his mind.

  Spinning globe.

  That leather thing applies friction.

  The broom’s the collector.

  And this is …

  A freaking Leyden jar.

  He reached out a hand towards it—and then drew back.

  You can do better than that, Mackenzie.

  He dug the spoons out of his pocket and cast around for something to use as a string.

  *

  The convoy stopped. Colm had finished what he was doing. He knelt at the chink, watching the riders dismount and order the footsoldiers around. Build a fire. Put up the tents. See to the horses. He could understand everything they said, which seemed odd, because wherever this was, it wasn’t Earth.

  Snow was now falling steadily. The infantry got a fire going in a clearing among the trees. The cart stayed on the road—that is, the unpaved, snow-covered track.

  Dhjerga was roughly hauled off his horse and dumped in front of the fire. He sat motionless, his heavy gloves resting on his knees, staring into the flames that licked over the soggy wood.

  At last one of the footsoldiers plodded towards the cart. Colm tensed in dismay. It wouldn’t do him any good to nail a single grunt! He picked up the rifle and darted to the tailgate. When he heard a bolt being drawn back, he fired a shot through it.

  The report deafened him. Wood splinters flew. As his hearing returned, he heard a commotion outside—“What the hell?! Lanke!” That must be the name of the sentry, who Colm had had to knock out for a second time. He probably should’ve just killed the guy. Scruples wouldn’t get him out of here alive.

  The tailgate fell open.

  Outside, someone held up a lantern.

  One of the riders leapt in, pointing a handgun into the gloom.

  He didn’t see Colm crouching behind the ornate Leyden jar.

  He saw the unconscious sentry.

  “Lanke’s down,” he shouted. He had an indefinable foreign accent. “His weapon’s missing. Gimme some light in here.”

  The lantern-bearer climbed into the cart. Several more people pressed into the circle of shuddering yellow light behind him.

  One of them saw Colm. He yelled in shock and levelled his gun.

  CHAPTER 2

  COLM SWUNG THE SENTRY’S rifle up, holding it awkwardly, because he was wearing his boots on his hands.

  He’d picked their velcro loose and used it to fasten the coffee spoons to two of the wires from the collector—three feet long, nice and stiff. He’d used the sentry’s belt to tie the wires to the barrel of the rifle.

  One of the spoons touched the first rider who’d entered the cart.

  The other rider fired at Colm. The round carved a furrow through his hair.

  The second spoon touched the ball on top of the Leyden jar.

  That’s what it was called on Earth, anyway. It had been invented at the University of Leyden in the 18th century. It was probably called something else here. But it worked the same way.

  It stored the electricity produced by the electrostatic generator. With an apparatus this big, the charge probably amounted to hundreds of kilovolts.

  Colm had improvised a discharge pole.

  The spoons and the wire created a path from the jar to the astonished Ghost. A mighty spark leapt along the path, lighting up the inside of the cart like a strobe, emitting a noise like a gunshot.

  The rider’s scream ripped through Colm’s head. The shock threw the man backwards against his companion, who collided with the lantern-bearer and knocked him out of the cart. The lantern went out.

  Colm still had the rifle. He flattened himself against the side of the cart and sprayed bullets out of the tailgate, shooting from the hip, not caring if he hit anything or not. When the weapon was empty, he threw it down. He would have liked to take one of the riders’ pistols, but it was far too dangerous to touch the bodies. He could smell the porky odor of charring.

  Silver conducts electricity nicely.

  Sorry about the spoons, Admiral.

  The boots on Colm’s hands had been extra insurance. Wood is a poor conductor, but the stock of the rifle had felt a bit damp. Had he held it in his bare hands, he could’ve been electrocuted, too. He was still alive, so it had worked.

  Carrying the boots, he circled the bodies, very carefully, in the darkness, and jumped out of the cart. Confused yells and running steps approached. Another lantern bobbled across the snow.

  Colm ran he
adlong towards the fire, in his sock feet, crashing into people running the other way.

  Dhjerga was still sitting by the fire. Everyone else had rushed towards the cart, drawn by the havoc Colm had created.

  Recognition lit up Dhjerga’s eyes. “How the hell—?”

  Colm hauled him to his feet. “Let’s get out of here.” His feet were wet and stinging. He hopped on one leg, putting on a velcro-less boot, although there wasn’t really time for that.

  “Help me get these fucking gloves off,” Dhjerga said urgently.

  The gloves were joined together by a chain that ran around the back of Dhjerga’s neck. Colm yanked it up and over Dhjerga’s head, taking off the top layer of his scalp in the process. They stumbled away from the fire. Dhjerga hurled the gloves into the trees. “Next stop, home,” he said, grabbing Colm’s arm. Then he released it. “No. Wait. I’m going to dead a few of these fuckers first. What’d you do to them?”

  Colm looked back at the cart. Chaos reigned around it as the riders pushed their minions to tend to the casualties. There probably wasn’t any charge left in the bodies, as it would have dissipated when they touched the ground. “Electrocuted them,” he said.

  “What?” Dhjerga said irritably, as if he didn’t understand.

  A footsoldier clumped towards them, carrying his rifle.

  Dhjerga raised a hand, palm out. “Give me that,” he said.

  The solder hesitated.

  “I command you!”

  The soldier mutely handed the weapon over.

  “Thanks,” Dhjerga said. He shot the soldier.

  The soldiers around the cart turned towards the noise.

  The lantern light turned them into highly visible targets. Dhjerga fired rapidly and accurately from the shoulder, darting sideways between shots, so that return fire aimed at his muzzle flash went astray. Ghost after Ghost fell. When Dhjerga had emptied the rifle he looked around for Colm. who was crouching in the snow, trying to stay un-shot. “Out of ammo. Well, at least I got a few of them. Let’s go.”

  Colm heaved himself upright. He knew that Ghosts like Dhjerga treated their ‘copies’ with extreme callousness. The footsoldiers were not men who had once been children: they were some sort of clones, created by an unknown energy-to-mass conversion process, which the Ghosts called magic. But they were made of flesh and blood, and they breathed, and ate and drank, and died. Colm swallowed a cold, queasy knot. The warmth of esthesia feedback in his stomach had gone. They crashed around the tents to where the horses were tethered under a large tree.