The grille crashed to the floor, and Jak propelled himself forward and out onto the corridor floor, snaking upright with a grace and ease that made of it one sinuous movement. The Gate warriors in his party followed, each of them displaying the same grace and ease of movement, belying the strain of being cramped in the shafts for so long.
“Sec from down there,” Jak said tersely, indicating the corridor leading off to a T-junction on the left. “We take these pillars as cover. Sound like just running—hit fuckers hard.”
With only the briefest of acknowledgments and the maximum of speed, the Amazons joined the albino in taking cover behind the pillars, the same tactic used by the sec force itself in the detachment that, at that moment, was being decimated by Ryan and Gloria’s war party.
“This too easy,” Jak breathed, almost to himself. It was part triumph and part disbelief, a sense that something had to surely go wrong. If not in battle, then in their ultimate aim. For a split second, the mat-trans dream that had seemed to spark off this whole sequence of events went through his head. His friends chilled, and Gloria walking off in another direction. Could that have some meaning, some hidden truth? Jak was a simple man in that way. He didn’t deal in symbols. But nonetheless, something could screw up, now that they were so close to what both parties wanted so badly.
He shook his head to clear it and focused instead on the sound of running feet as they came toward him. He could even hear the heavy breathing of the running sec force, unused to such exertion.
In a flash, he could see that was their problem: no real combat, probably in their lifetime. No wonder progress was so easy. He smiled, lips drawn back over his sharp white teeth, his hunting and predatory instincts taking the foreground.
“Ready to chill,” he whispered to the Amazons. He could feel them around him, their instincts also heightened. The air was full of the scent of the hunter, discernible only to those who were born to chill.
He raised his Colt Python, clicked back the hammer, his finger taut on the trigger, ready to apply pressure at just the right time. He was hidden from the junction by the pillar, and as the sec force rounded the corner, he let them advance a few yards into the corridor, so that the rear of the party, which, at a quick head count, revealed twelve in a loose formation of threes, was around the angle of the junction and unable to duck back easily. Without even bothering to give instruction, he knew that the Amazons would also sense the best tactic and hold their fire until the last sec man was clear.
Jak cleared the pillar enough to raise and sight his blaster. A scream of pent up fury escaped his lips and rent the air as the first shot boomed from the Magnum blaster. It hit the middle sec man in the front row full in the chest, leaving a bloodied and ribboned mess of flesh and bone where an orange one-piece suit had once been. The man jerked back, his own forward, running momentum countered by the superior momentum and force of the slug.
Around the albino the sound of fire from the Amazon’s handblasters rent the air, a volley of continuous explosions that filled the air with the bitter smell of cordite.
It was over in a matter of seconds. The entire sec party was wiped out without a returned shot of any kind. Like pins in a bowling alley knocked out by a ball of infinitely greater force than they could imagine, the sec team had been taken by surprise and their reaction time found wanting.
And this was no exercise.
Jak skipped over the chilled bodies, checking that none was alive, and also to see if any had a conventional blaster that he could use to augment the Gate’s own weaponry.
There were only the laser blasters, and Jak gave a sharp glare at one of the Amazons who followed him and picked up one of the rifles.