Skydark: Book Summary
At the beginning of the novel the group are in a gateway, waiting for the jump to begin. They are unusually apprehensive about the jump. They all suffer from jump nightmares in which they think that they are Stickies.
When they awaken, they find that they are also in the gateway with Stickies. They fight for their lives, killing the muties. They leave the chamber and go to explore the redoubt. It’s huge, five levels all levels are massive. Throughout the redoubt they encounter more stickies and kill huge numbers of them.
They go straight to the redoubt armory and load up on both ammo and weapons. They take three G-12’s. They then find a Mitsuki fighting vehicle and decide to take it to make their travels easier.
Before leaving the redoubt, the wag breaks down and they are forced to abandon it. When they go outside they soon discover that they are in the Carolina’s, several hours travel from Willie Ville.
It’s after dark when they finally come across the ruins a razed ville. The destruction has all the earmarks of a Stickie attack. They meet the only survivors, a man and a woman with their child. They find out that for certain that it was a Stickie attack. They then leave some rounds of ammunition for the family and continue the twenty one miles to Willie Ville.
The next day they continue in on. Hours later they catch up to Kaa’s Stickie army. They can see well over five thousand muties practically worshipping the ground the mutant Kaa walks on. Ryan tries to take the leader out with his Styre, but is unable to do to the way he’s moving and the range of the shot.
They are forced to circumvent the army and continue on the road to Willie ville so that they can warn the people and try to save lives.
A man named Johnson Lester is on duty when they arrive. The sec men take ten percent of everything that the travellers are carrying. If they can’t pay they become slaves. When Ryan and the band arrive they force the group to lower their weapons and surrender. Lester then recognizes Ryan from his days as a part of the Baron’s army in the second mutant wars. He knows that he is going to get rewarded for the capture.
They are taken to the Freedom city motel and ride the slave driven elevator up to the twenty fifth floor. The baron is eating and is not to be disturbed, but when Lester shows his captives, the baron’s meal is interrupted by the men.
Ryan meets his old boss. The man is fat and disgusting and has his three Grand-daughter wives as well as their daughters. Lester claims that Ryan tried to sneak past, but Ryan uses logic to prove that it wasn’t the point.
Despite believing the story, Baron Willie still plans to kill Ryan for his desertion so many years before and orders both Jak and Krysty to be placed in his zoo. But he intends to inspect Krysty very closely. He orders the others to be taken down to the cooler.
Before they are taken down to the cooler, the baron discovers Doc Tanner’s sword cane. Because of the oversite on Lester’s part, he is forced to take a turn at the wheel the next day.
They are placed in the cooler. The cell is partially filled with shit and pissed filled water, as well as a rotting corpse. The smell is horrible and they have no choice but to try and put up with it. They come up with a plan to get the ankle chains off the corpse that they share the cell with. JB picks the lock and then they sharpen the chains into crude weapons.
Jak is placed inside a cell containing a huge mutant cougar. The cougar attacks him and they fight. Neither can win and they fight themselves into exhaustion and fall asleep.
At the same time Baron Willie has Krysty stripped naked and he goes over every inch of her body, noticing how her hair causes her pain when it’s cut. She then claims that she is a doomie and sees a bright future for him and his grand daughter wives, with lots and lots of girl children. When he’s done, he has her placed in the zoo.
During the night Kaa is watching over the city and his three sec men that he caught tortured to death, to help prepare his forces for the upcoming invasion.
As the sun rises the next day Willie didn’t sleep at all, constantly waiting to hear the sounds of the invading mutant army. After relieving himself over the edge of his balcony he goes to see his subjects. Due to the fact that there were no attack he doubles the tithes. He then goes to his library and goes through the books to find a way to kill Ryan, after sending Lester down to the elevator control for his punishment.
Ryan and the others are taken out of the cooler and are hosed off. Ryan is taken up to see the baron and the others are sent to the field to work. The crude weapons they created are discovered and taken away.
When they are taken to the field Doc Mildred and JB are shackled and put to work. JB promptly unlocks the shackles and they escape.
Willie explains how he is going to kill Ryan. It’s using the old Bungee cord method, but the rope is not flexable. Eventually as he his tossed off the ledge his leg will be ripped from it’s socket.
As Willie is having Ryan tossed off the building, the Stickies are beginning their attack, coming through tunnels they dug the night before. They get right into the sec stations in the walls and kill the guards, clearing the way for the rest of the army to enter and destroy the ville.
The mutants enter the compound and kill everything in site. They fight right to the hotel and enter it.
Kaa lets his army wipe out the sec forces and he heads straight for the zoo to release the mutants held captive there. He takes a special interest in Krysty, believing that she is his Angela, the woman he has kept himself pure for all these years. He wants her to marry him and bear his children.
Doc, Mildred and JB make their way into the city through the basement. Explosives go off, wiping out a group of the stickies, and nearly killing them as well. But they are able to go straight into the sub basement of the hotel and prevent even more mutants from killing the slaves at the wheel.
Kaa’s army enters the hotel and are climbing the floors, killing everything they encounter. Ryan is able to climb back up the rope and get away from the mutants that are trying to reach him. He finally makes it all the way to the top where he climbs back onto the balcony. He finds that two of Willies Grand Daughter wives were killed by Kaa when the big mutant shot at the balcony with his M60 Machine gun. He convinces Willie to let him get his weapon and help fight off the mutants.
JB fills the elevator with flammables and gets the slaves to take it to the top of the building. When it reaches the top he opens up with his blaster, igniting the fuel and starting a chain reaction which starts the floor on fire, wiping out the mutant army.
At the same time, the Mutants entered the penthouse floor and they are fighting desperatly. Willies surviving wife demands that he kills her and her daughter to save them from dying at the hands of the mutants. Willie can’t do it, so she grabs a blaster and kills him, then she jumps off the ledge and plummets to her death.
With the mutants still coming and the building now on fire, Ryan has no choice but to climb down the rope and use it to escape. He has to slide down, nearly out of control to knock off the mutants that are climbing up the rope. When he reaches the ground, he meets up with Mildred, Doc and JB. They also see that Kaa looted the library that he used to control for Willie. They also discover that Krysty and Jak are with Kaa and are heading out towards the redoubt. They are quite a way’s behind, but still plan to follow.
On the way to the redoubt Kaa attracts several surviving mutants and spreads the library out between the new comers. When they arrive at the redoubt, he has the mutants place the bags of books into the gateway and then he, Krysty and Jak jump out.
The jump seems to clear Krysty and Jak’s head and they come to their senses. Krysty still goes through the ceremony and marries the mutant, and when he goes to have sex with her, she tells him to go wash up.
At the same time Ryan and the others fight their way through the redoubt, wiping out the mutants that still remain. The mutant cougar that befriended Jak escapes and leaves the redoubt. JB breaks into the mini nuke vault in the redoubt and they steal the small nuclear weapon. They hit the gateway and jump, using the LD button to follow Kaa and Krysty. They arrive and meet up with Jak and Krysty. Kaa is right behind.
They re-enter the gateway and JB sets the nuke to detonate in five minutes then they jump out. When Kaa arrives, the nuke will detonate in less than a minute. He then has the mutants place the bags of books in the gateway and goes to jump out. But, the nuke goes off at the same time the jump occurs and he is caught in the non space between jumps.
Ryan and the group escape, and everyone is returned to normal after the strange encounter.
End of Skydark