It could have been worse for them, but not by much. The defense post was situated behind a support pillar, like any of those that were built into the corridors of a standard redoubt to support the circular structure of the tunnels. It wasn’t wide enough to shelter the full complement of the party, and so a makeshift barrier against standard blasterfire had been built up from old sandbags that were usually used to shore up those parts of the redoubt that hadn’t been properly finished before the nukecaust and so were prone to leakage from the earth beyond the walls. The material encasing the sand was porous and fibrous, and the shower of hot metal set fire to the thin covering. Although the sand underneath would rapidly extinguish the fire, it wouldn’t do it quickly enough to stop the spread of the flames onto the one-piece uniforms of the sec crew.
Originally all the suits worn by the Illuminated Ones had been coated with a fire-resistant chemical that was a safety measure. Unfortunately for the sec force right there and then, the coating had worn over the years, leaving the artificial fibers of the suits prone to catch fire at the slightest spark.
The cries of the sec men hit by the molten shrapnel, or suddenly finding themselves on fire, acted as the spur Ryan needed.
“Now!” the one-eyed warrior roared before stepping into the middle of the elevator car, Steyr raised and finger flexed on the trigger. It was then that he exclaimed as he saw the devastation outside.
The triumphant Gate warriors didn’t stop to question the poor tactics and spontaneous idiocy that had led to the sec force ruining their own sec post. They rushed past the startled Ryan, leaving him—for once—lagging a split second in the wake of his fellow warriors as they blasted those Illuminated Ones who were still able to raise their laser blasters.
It crossed Ryan’s mind that if it was to be this easy, there had to be a catch somewhere. Fate never made anything this simple without some kind of payback.
THE DIMLY LIT STAIRWELL was empty, and echoed even to the soft footfalls of the attacking party.
“They have to be beyond the lower level door,” J.B. murmured as quietly as he could to those behind him. “The one way to do this is to trigger the sec door and then fan out two at a time, heads down, with those at the rear providing covering fire.”
There was a general murmur of agreement from those behind him, and the Armorer continued down, a step at a time, until he reached the final bend before the first-level sec door. The lights below had been either shot out or had burned out over the years—all of them. Something twitched inside J.B.’s gut, and he stopped the party’s progress with an outstretched arm. For all the lights to be gone at such a crucial spot was a little too much of a coincidence for his liking, a growing suspicion that was enhanced when, after everyone had stopped, the sudden lack of footfalls in the shaft made whoever was waiting get a little too daring.
To the Armorer’s amazement, the glint of a laser blaster cut through the darkness, the leaking light from the upper level of the stairwell catching on the metal of the barrel for a fraction of a second.
They were actually waiting on the stairwell, at a point where they would have to come into the open to attack, and from below. It crossed the Armorer’s mind that the rad-blasted children of pox-ridden gaudies would have had more sense than that, but he wasn’t about to let a golden opportunity to get the enemy pass him by.
J.B. raised his Uzi and without a word of warning to the Gate people behind him let fly with a stream of blasterfire that raked the darkness below. Because of the bend in the stairwell, he judged that it would be harder for the sec force below to fire back from seclusion than it would be for his attackers. J.B. could rake a wide field of fire with the Uzi, and also use the concrete walls to ricochet shells into the angle beyond the line of fire. He couldn’t shoot with accuracy, but that wasn’t necessary. It would cause confusion and retreat, and that was enough at this stage. For the one thing that immediately sprang to his steel trap of a mind was this: the laser blasters could only fire straight, and if they hit the concrete walls surrounding his party, then they would score the walls with their laser heat, but they couldn’t ricochet. As long as his people stayed back and out of direct line, there was nothing the sec force could do except step out directly into the line of fire to get at them.