Instead, she contented herself with matching Doc’s gaze steadily. “Sweetie, anyone gets in the way of this, they’re going to wish they’d run in the other direction,” she told Doc, raising the blade slightly in the crowded elevator car. There was a manic gleam of blood lust in her eyes, but it wasn’t the panga that was causing Doc any worry. Rather, it was the captured laser blaster that lay across her shoulders, hanging easily on its strap. The blonde had insisted on bringing it along, despite the attempts of J.B. and Doc to dissuade her. Indeed, if anything, their imprecations had the opposite effect, making her more determined.
Margia may have been hyped up for battle, but this only made her more observant, and she noticed the direction of Doc’s gaze.
“Yeah, babe, and if they get too far away for a nice piece of honed steel, then it may be a nice idea to just cook ’em up some. Yeah?” she questioned with a cackle.
Doc looked away, not wishing to answer. Margia’s laughter, still tinged with the edge of madness, rang in his ears.
As the elevator hit the first level and stopped smoothly, it crossed Doc’s mind that this was going to be interesting.
THE SHAFT WAS narrow and dark. There was enough room for Jak to move his elbows fairly straight and use them to help himself slither along, but not enough that he didn’t, from time to time, scrape them on the metal walls. It was only the thickness of his camou jacket that stopped them bruising and grazing, and it flittered briefly across his mind that the Gate women behind him needed to be careful. They didn’t have the protection on their arms that he had, and to dull their reflexes with stiffened muscles and tendons at this time could be disastrous.
But he said nothing. It wasn’t his place. Besides which, this was a tribe of warriors whose instincts were honed and trained from birth and by experience, much like his own. He trusted that they would think the same as himself and take precautions immediately. The fact that there were no cries of suppressed pain from behind him bore mute testimony to that.
They had entered the shaft from a corridor on the ground level of the building, shooting out cameras along the way. In order to deflect attention from the point at which they actually entered, Jak had led the group through another two junctions, shooting the sec cameras along the way, before doubling back to the point where the access to the shaft lay. It was a simple matter to pull away the grille that was set low in the wall. The screws had succumbed to rust, the threads being nothing more than oxide that crumbled under the slightest pressure. Once the grille was removed, Jak took the lead and was the first to slither into the darkness.
Head and shoulders into the opening, he paused momentarily to define the best direction to take. He relied on the currents of air that still moved through the shafts to work out which direction would lead down. The air was being sucked gently into the cleansing and purifying plant that lay somewhere below and serviced the redoubt. To follow the current would take them downward to a point where they could break through to the service ducts for the redoubt.
Jak’s red eyes shone in the darkness, adjusting to the slightest source of light. There was nowhere he had ever been that was totally dark. It was just a matter of adjusting to how little light there may actually be. Yes, if he went to the right, that should lead to a downward shaft, as the air would be to the rear of them, moving past. Jak slid the rest of his lithe frame through the narrow hatch.
Setting off without a word, he began to propel himself forward. He trusted the abilities of the Gate warriors to follow, even at the speed he was setting for them.
The first drop had to come soon. The light was so poor that even with his eyes adjusted to the almost total blackness, picking out more than normally pigmented eyes would be capable of, Jak found it hard to see where the darkness of the cold concrete floor became the darkness of an empty space.