Then Ryan looked into a room on the right and saw a trooper bent over something that might have been a comp. When he stopped in the doorway, the trooper looked back through a cleared visor. He was bent over a black cube on little wheels. Not a comp. The trooper stared at the dewdrops on Ryan’s visor, puzzled for a second.
Ryan could see the guy put two and two together.
His expression changed. His hand reached up for his throat mike.
The one-eyed man launched himself through the doorway. He hit the trooper with his shoulder as the guy rose from the crouch. Ryan bowled him over the cube backward, and they both crashed against the wall.
J.B. was right on their heels. He pulled the door shut behind him.
“Get his hands!” Ryan said.
J.B. caught the gauntlets by the wrists and the two of them controlled the guy with brute force, making him fight their combined body weight until he had exhausted himself, which didn’t take long. When J.B. screwed off the guy’s helmet, the trooper’s eyes got big with fear. He had an angry rash across the top of his nearly shaved head. It was peppered with sores that oozed pus. The ochre-colored discharge smelled sweet and rank.
“Who are—?” the trooper started to say.
Before he could finish, Ryan slapped him across the face. “I’ll ask the questions.” Their he showed the trooper the bone blade. “Where’s the comp that controls the cuffs?”
When the soldier didn’t answer, he held the serrated edge of the bone blade up under his chin. “Did you say something? I didn’t hear it.”
“Down this hall,” the trooper told him, “take the first fork to the left, stay left.”
“Do you think he’s telling us the truth?” J.B. asked. “Came back kind of quick with the info if you ask me.”
“I’m going to give you a chance to change your story,” Ryan said. “If it turns out you’re lying, we’re coming back to finish you.”
“I’m not lying.”
Ryan punched him hard on the point of the chin. The back of his head hit the wall with a thud, then his eyes fluttered shut.
The door to the room opened as J.B. straightened. Two troopers, one armed with a laser rifle, stepped in. The newcomers were clearly stunned to see an unconscious man in battlesuit and two guys with air holes punched in the backs of their helmets leaning over him.
Before either of the troopers could react, J.B. grabbed hold of the tribarrel’s flash-hider and used the rifle like a lever across the man’s chest, forcing him from the doorway and into the corner. The trooper couldn’t let go of his weapon to go for the com link.
The other trooper jumped on J.B.’s back to try to pull him off.
That was a mistake.
Ryan lunged up from the floor, throwing an arm around the second guy’s helmet from behind, blocking his access to the throat mike. With his other hand, Ryan slipped the point of the bone blade under the armor just below the man’s right shoulder blade. Feeling the angle of the slot between the overlapping plates, he pushed the dagger home.
It sank in to the hilt.
The trooper went rigid against him as the blade skewered his lung and heart. Then the man sagged, his legs buckling. Ryan let him topple over onto his side.
J.B. in the meantime had his hands full. He seesawed back and forth with the pulse rifle, trying to get the advantage on his adversary. He managed to work the guy’s back against the wall, but they were too evenly matched strengthwise; he couldn’t get control of the weapon. The Armorer timed the flip perfectly. He caught the trooper off balance, pulling as the man pushed. He let himself fall to his butt on the floor and, using the guy’s forward momentum, sent him whipping over onto his back across the top of the cube.
As the trooper crashed down, he let go of the pulse rifle.
Ryan hit the helmet release and, fighting off the trooper’s hands, unscrewed it.
J.B. put the muzzle of the tribarrel against the guy’s forehead and dropped the safety.