"Fair point. I dunno about you, but I don"t want to get this far, then f.u.c.k up because of some stupid blaster," she said, dropping it to the floor and offering a cue to the other Amazons, who had been eying the laser blasters with interest.
"Okay." Jak grinned. "One thing sure. Know we here now. Keep frosty, stay together." He stopped and raised his head like a wolf on the hunt as the sounds of another firefight caught his ears. He located it, then turned to this party. "More trouble- mebbe need our help. C"mon..."
THE WAR PARTY LED by Krysty and Tammy was now out in the open and making rapid progress. It had been a simple matter for them to outblast a sec defense party that was slow and unimaginative. A simple two-p.r.o.nged pincer movement on the sec force when the soldiers were too slow to position themselves defensively meant that the Amazons were in among them before they had a chance to position themselves for a blast at the attackers. Swinging wildly in several directions, and with no one to lead, the sec force managed to chill one of the Amazons by accident, catching her in the side with a laser blast that seared through and fried her intestines. But in the process they also chilled two of their own number by the same expedient.
For in-close fighting, where the laser blasters became unwieldy by their size, it was a simple matter for the Amazons to use their blades to carve up the sec men, preserving ammo and using the sharpened pangas and machetes to slice through material, flesh and bone with ease, leaving the soldiers to perish in a river of blood, agony and cries of pain.
Krysty joined them, using the blade she had been given by Margia. She swung the cutting edge through the air in short, jagged arcs that cut quickly and painfully, causing incapacity rather than instant chilling, but softening up the opposition so that it was easy to chill them without the risk of injury being returned.
Finally the Amazons stood in pools of blood and mangled flesh and bone.
"One group down, bring on the next," Tammy breathed heavily, her eyes glittering with the light of battle.
"That"s okay," Krysty said carefully, "but we should still go triple red."
The auburn-curled Amazon looked askance at Krysty. She could see the woman"s t.i.tian hair was curled close to her head, and knew what that meant.
"Hey, is that just because we"re in combat, or is there something serious just around the corner?" Tammy asked in a softer tone.
Krysty licked her upper lip, listening to the rhythms and feelings inside her before answering. "Mebbe a bit of both, but more because we"re going to run into some trouble soon. An ambush, mebbe."
"Sound advice. I"ll listen to you any day, girl," Tammy said, trusting Krysty"s mutie sense. "Guess the best thing to do is search it out before it finds us, take the f.u.c.kers by storm. So which way does your feelie sense say it"s lurking for us?"
Krysty allowed herself a smile. "It tells me that it"s around that corner," she said, indicating the junction at the farthest end of the corridor from where they now stood.
"Well, I guess it"d make more sense to head the other direction, but h.e.l.lfire and d.a.m.nation, we"ve got to get rid of these f.u.c.kers if they"re gonna be hanging around trying to chill us. So better now than later, right?"
Without pausing, she whistled a series of commands to the warriors with her. Krysty looked puzzled for a second, then figured that it was better for Tammy to do it this way, in case they could be overheard by whoever was waiting.
Following the auburn warrior, and trusting her instincts to help her take her cue, Krysty followed the party as it spread down the corridor toward the junction. They moved swiftly, flitting in pairs from covering pillar to pillar, their pet.i.te frames using the concrete supports to the maximum as cover from any opposition fire.
Tammy was in the lead, and when she reached the last pillar she looked back at Krysty. Her eyes flickered from side to side, mutely asking which direction the danger was waiting. Krysty indicated to the left, and Tammy nodded her understanding.
The auburn-haired Amazon paused for a moment, weighing her options. The corridor ended as a T-junction, as did so many in the design of the redoubt. Across from Tammy stood another pillar. It would provide cover if she could bridge the gap swiftly enough. But the cover would only be valid if she landed on the right side, the one sheltered from enemy attack.
Krysty closed her eyes for a moment and breathed deeply. She concentrated her senses. If she made the wrong call here, she was almost certainly condemning Tammy to be chilled.
Opening her eyes wide, suddenly getting the answer she was searching for, she locked her gaze on to the auburn-haired Amazon"s and flicked her eyes to the left. With the briefest of nods, Tammy turned away and flung herself across the gap so that she would land on the right-hand side of the pillar, sheltered from possible attack.
It was a beautifully executed dive and tumble that propelled the woman across the s.p.a.ce. To the rest of the attack party it seemed to take place in slow motion. Tammy hanging in the air for an interminable moment. In truth, it was over in a fraction of a second as she sailed, then hit the ground, shoulder dipped to take the impact and roll her frame up against the far wall.
She was fast, but almost not fast enough. The mode of attack was one that even Krysty couldn"t have suspected. For, as Tammy rolled, she was almost clipped by the wheels of a motorcycle that suddenly roared into life and leaped across the gap. A lone rider, clad in a black one-piece suit and with a laser blaster across her back, traversed the gap too quickly for any of the stunned Gate to take a shot at her.
"What the f.u.c.k!" Tammy grated as she flattened against the wall. The problem was that she was now on the wrong side of the pillar to provide any defense, as the rider had crossed over. For a split second, the two faced each other. Tammy could see the fear and hate in the light blue eyes of the long haired blond rider. She was a large woman with a hooked nose and a strong, prominent jaw, probably a good hand-to-hand fighter. But there was no chance of her engaging in a battle of that kind, as she would waste too much time dismounting the motorcycle. Neither could she fire on Tammy, as the laser rifle was too far out of reach.
The only thing she could do was charge again. She throttled the engine, and the powerful bike rose, front wheel in the air, as the back tire screeched on the concrete and the engine noise filled the confined s.p.a.ce almost to the point of pain.
Tammy"s brain raced and came up with something. If she was to be squashed against the wall, then the rider would also be chilled as she would ride full speed into the pillar. So Tammy would have to break into the open and run for it. That was obviously what the rider wanted, figuring that Tammy"s fear and surprise would make her run.
The auburn-haired warrior was made of sterner stuff than that. As the bike started to race toward her, she knew instinctively that the rider would have to veer off at the last moment to avoid her own chilling. That sudden knowledge spread ice into Tammy"s veins, and she stayed her ground, leveling her blaster as the bike neared. She knew she wouldn"t have time to snap off a shot as the bike approached, but on the turn...
As she had thought, the rider had to veer away at the last moment, and Tammy followed the line of the turn as her blaster came up. At the point of the turn, where the rider was still for the merest fraction of a second, Tammy"s blaster was at the optimum height.
The auburn-haired Amazon snapped off a shot that caught the blonde on the right temple, boring a small hole just above her hairline. The exit wound on the other side of her head was larger and messier, spreading bone, blood and brain across the corridor. As her grip loosened on the throttle, the engine of the bike stalled, and a sudden silence hit the air, broken only by the clatter of machine and rider as they tumbled sideways and bit the concrete floor.
Krysty and the rest of the attack party were already in the corridor, checking the direction in which the rider had originally come. It was empty.
"She must have been a lone scout," Tammy said, joining them and breathing slowly and deeply to calm her racing pulse. "A brave warrior. I hope her chilling was quick."
"Seems so," Krysty replied. She glanced up and down the corridor, and could feel her hair relax around her nape. "Guess that"s the immediate danger dealt with."
"Good," Tammy said decisively. "We need to get on, try to link up with the others. If they"re doing as we are, then the objective should be in sight."
"Let"s hope so," Krysty said, experience lending her a note of caution.
It wasn"t over until it was over.
MILDRED"S PARTY HAD MADE its way down the service stairs and out into the corridor beyond. Tapping in the sec code to open the door, Mildred was uneasy at how quiet the descent had been. Leaving cover to survey and take up defensive positions in the corridor beyond, her unease had grown to a kind of jumpiness.
"What the h.e.l.l are they doing?" one of her companions whispered. "They must know we"re here."
"Playing the waiting game," Mildred said simply. "They lay right off us, drawing us farther and farther into the open and into their territory. We get more and more tense until the point where we make mistakes and then we become easy meat."
"s.h.i.t, but we can"t just stay here."
Mildred smiled, a grimace with no humor. "That"s why it"s such a good plan, girl."
The party began to advance, their light footfalls sounding hollow in the empty s.p.a.ce of the concrete tunnel. The walls were painted white, and the harsh fluorescent lighting up above seemed to do nothing more than starkly highlight them against the emptiness of the s.p.a.ce.
Mildred hoped that something would happen soon.
Her nerves were stretched taut, and the adrenaline coursing through her veins made her guts churn with the need for release.
There was a T-junction a few hundred feet ahead. An Amazon looked back at Mildred and gestured with her blaster at each side of the junction, indicating her belief that any ambush would lay beyond.
It seemed reasonable. Mildred moved forward until she was beside the woman.
"We need to see if there"s anyone there, and on which side, to draw their fire," Mildred whispered. "No way can we recce without losing whoever"s fool enough to volunteer."
The Amazon, a small black woman with plaited hair like Mildred"s, nodded her affirmation. "Question is, how do we draw that fire?"
Mildred didn"t answer at first, but rummaged around in the pockets of her jacket. Despite its apparent clumsiness in a firefight, she had opted to keep it with her because it contained-besides her spare ammo-some of the medical supplies she carried with her and a few things J.B. had given her.
"Now, this may just do the trick." She smiled, producing a small canister that she held out, cradled in the palm of her hand.
"What the f.u.c.k is that?" the woman asked.
"It"s a distress flare. It came from one of the redoubts we were in a long time back. It"s not as big as the usual outdoor distress flares, and what the h.e.l.l use it is if you"re stuck somewhere I don"t know, but that"s not why it"s going to be useful right now, is it?"
A slow smile spread over the Amazon"s face. "I guess it isn"t," she said, suppressing the urge to laugh. "So which way do we send it?"
Mildred considered that for a second. "Send it to the right. It"ll either draw fire from the left or take them by surprise and make them give themselves away. Or maybe show that there"s no one there and that they"re making us sweat even more than we could have thought."
"Don"t even suggest that," the Amazon murmured. "So, will you or shall I?" And she gestured at the flare.
"Let me," Mildred said. With which she left the Amazon behind the concrete pillar and edged forward to the point where the junction began. Pulling the pin on the flare, she tossed it to the right, a deft flick of the wrist taking the flare on a spinning course that described a wide arc in the air. A laser blast, aimed at the object, missed and hit a point where a concrete support met the ceiling of the corridor, flaking the white paint and blackening the surface.
"Well, well, what do you know?" Mildred murmured, looking back to the rest of the party, who had all moved forward. "Now we know where they are. All we"ve got to do is get them."
"But how?" asked the plaited Amazon, more as a question to herself than to the others.
Mildred was about to make a suggestion when she was distracted by handblaster fire from beyond the ambush party. "What the h.e.l.l is going on now?" she asked no one in particular, baffled.
WHAT WAS GOING ON was simply the arrival of Dean and his party of Amazons into the fray.
Having made their way through into the service ducts with ease, it was then difficult to find a service grille through which they could get out and into the redoubt itself. Dean figured that they were extraordinarily lucky to get as far as they had so quickly, and with little in the way of obstacles. That luck came to an end. The service duct was tight and dark, and seemed to stretch on into infinity, a twisting, winding maze that showed no light ahead from a grille leading out into the redoubt.
Dean led his party onward, his muscles aching and cramped from the constriction of the service duct. He fought against the growing sense of claustrophobia, and hoped that the Amazons to the rear of him weren"t suffering from the same problem.
"Hot pipe, how come there isn"t an exit anywhere in sight?" he muttered to himself as he came to a point where two ducts crossed. Stopping, he looked ahead and to each side. There, to the left, was a filtered ray of light. It looked to be a good five minutes away, and there was no way of knowing where it would bring them out, but it was all they had.
Taking a deep, decisive breath, Dean headed off toward the light, knowing that the rest of the party would be following to the rear. It was a trip that seemed all the slower and more tortuous because there was now an end in sight, but eventually they made it to the grille.
"Oh, great. This is just what we need," Dean murmured as he looked through the grille. About twenty yards to the left of the opening was a group of sec men ensconced behind a barrier of metal-and-plastic strips that had obviously been constructed for such a defensive purpose. Their attention was focused ahead of them, so they hadn"t heard or seen what was going on behind the grille. In the light coming through from the outside, Dean could see that the grille would be easy to dislodge. But would they all be able to clear it before the sec force had a chance to turn and attack?
Dean"s question was answered for him when the flare lit up the corridor outside and drew some fire from the soldiers. In the intense light, Dean cast a quick glance back at the Amazons behind him. Their faces, hungry for battle, told him all he needed to know.
While the enemy"s attention was distracted, Dean twisted his body and kicked at the grille. It gave way and clattered onto the concrete floor. Before it even hit, Dean tumbled out, followed by the Amazons.
Their reactions were sharper than those of the Illuminated Ones. They began firing before some of the enemy even began to move.
It was then that Dean saw Mildred, over the top of the barrier, come charging around a blind corner at the head of a party of Amazons.
DOC"S WAR WAS as he had expected. Hard, and a war of attrition rather than swift movement. Once out of the elevator, the party he was attached to dug into the corridor beyond, and were as firmly entrenched as their enemies. Blasts of laser fire and stray shots were exchanged, but a stalemate had been reached.
Doc was secreted behind a pillar on the opposite side of the corridor to Margia, and he looked across at her.
"My dear lady, I fear this will continue in stalemate unless someone finds a way to break the deadlock. I regret to say that I am bereft of both ideas and weaponry for this, but perhaps you are carrying something. A gren, mayhap, would scatter the enemy to the winds, and make them easier to deal with."
Doc"s attention was focused on the bag of ammo, flares and grens that the blond armorer carried on her back, strapped to her shoulders. However, he realized from the sly grin that spread across her face that her mind had traveled along another track.
Margia unshouldered the laser blaster she had been cradling so lovingly since they entered the elevator some time before.
"Well, honey, if you think this is the right time," she said in a teasing tone of voice to Doc.
He shook his head urgently. "No, that was not what I meant at all. I do not think -"
But he was cut off from any further comment as Margia swung herself out into the middle of the corridor, leveling the laser blaster and firing a beam into the heart of the opposing forces. She swept the laser rifle in an arc that covered the width of the corridor, the beam tracing from one side to the other, spreading a line of heat death.
She caught three of the defending party by surprise, searing into limbs and torsos, causing them to fall writhing to the floor in agony.
The confusion caused by the sudden appearance of one of their own weapons among the opposition caused the sec force to cease firing. Those who hadn"t been chilled or injured scattered, heading for the nearest junction and a chance to regroup and plan.
Watching them run, Margia cackled wildly before turning to her party. "Come on, sweeties, this is going to be p.i.s.s easy," she yelled before whooping triumphantly.
"I wish I could share such sentiments," Doc muttered to himself worriedly.
THE MAIN QUORUM watched on monitors as their forces were ravaged by the attacking Gate war parties.
The main vid rooms on the highest level of the redoubt had long since been rendered useless, and were now past the area captured by the Gate. But on each level there were rooms where the ruling elite of the Illuminated Ones-whoever may be in that office at the given time-could observe an overall picture of the redoubt from a series of smaller screens that were in constant action. Many of these, representing the higher levels of the redoubt, were now blank, the casualties of war.
Simon Rack still stood with Jorgensen, acting as trained observer to point out anything the sec chief might miss. It pained him that the only things he could point out were disasters for the sec chiefs troops.
"What are we going to do, Al?" Rack asked, not wanting to point out another setback as the party led by Gloria and Ryan advanced farther into the redoubt.
Jorgensen shrugged. "What we should have done all along-immediate evac. I doubt if they could follow us through the mat-trans, especially if we use the fail-safe program. Should have done it straightaway," he added softly, a note of sadness in his voice. Turning to the quorum, he said, "That"s my suggestion. Immediate evac. There"s no way we can beat them now. All we can hope to do is hold them back until evac is complete. I"m sorry."
"Don"t be, Al," said one of the quorum. "You did your best. That"s all we can ask. h.e.l.l, we"ve all been secluded here too long. At least we can learn that from this debacle. Well, you"re in charge in a situation like this, Al, so I guess it"s up to you to give the order."
Jorgensen nodded sadly and left the room. To think that it had come to this made him want to give up now. But at least he could insure that the contents of the redoubt, and those people his so-called leadership hadn"t chilled, could evac to another location.
Down in the main comp room, he relayed his orders and keyed in the code that would alert the receiving mat-trans. When the last figure had been entered, he heaved a sigh of relief. No turning back now.
The evacuation began.
Procedures were centered around the area that was the object of the attack-the gateway of which the ancient tribal doc.u.ments spoke. This lay at the lowest level of the redoubt and consisted of three large mat-trans chambers, large enough to accommodate two six-wheel wags full of people and objects.
The idea of the evacuation was to clear the redoubt of anything that might provide some information to the opposition, and also to preserve the treasures that were part of the reason for the Illuminated Ones" existence. To this end, the first wags to go through the mat-trans and be transported to their new location were full of old books, videos, recordings and floppy disks of information and culture from before the final war. This material had educated those born into the Illuminated Ones" society, and reminded them of their reason for existence. It was the raw material from which they would build the new world when they emerged from beneath the ground.
Also in the wags was as much of the tech as could be dismantled and packed away quickly. This included weaponry and everyday objects and electronics. The quorum had always felt it important to keep as much of their tech as possible out of outside hands. Whoever gained it might not be able to understand it, but even the slightest glimmering of understanding could be dangerous to the great plan. That which couldn"t be dismantled was to be smashed.
It was a race against time for Jorgensen, and one that he was aware he was losing. Even more so when Simon Rack joined him on the mat-trans level.
"Al, I hate to tell you this, but they"re only two levels away."
"s.h.i.t!" Jorgensen"s jaw was set in a grim line. "We may just about do it. f.u.c.k. I hope we get the chance to cross them again, when we"ve learned what we can from this. I feel like our whole lives have been f.u.c.ked over by them."
"Maybe, Al, but we can worry about that later. Unless we can defend this area, we won"t even have lives to be f.u.c.ked over."
Al nodded. "Yeah, you"re right. I"m sorry, Simon. I shouldn"t be so self-pitying. Let"s nail these f.u.c.kers to a tree while we get ourselves straightened out."