The two sec who hadn’t been attacked had a few moments more in which to galvanize themselves to action. One of the women—the one who had been vicious to Mildred—raised her blaster, once more picking the plaited woman as her target. But she had reckoned without Doc. Assuming that he was a frail old man, she had ignored him leaning on his cane. But as she looked away, Doc unsheathed the Toledo steel blade within the cane and brought the finely tempered metal slicing through the air, chopping it down onto the sec woman’s arms as they cradled the laser blaster. The blade cut through her flesh, severing nerves, as well as causing her hands to become slippery with her own blood. The blaster dropped from nerveless fingers, and she squealed in pain.
Doc completed the sweep of the blade, bringing it back up so that he could thrust the fine tip at her exposed and uncovered heart, the thin material of her uniform proving no defense against the steel. She stopped squealing as her ruptured and pierced heart jolted to a halt.
Three down, but the last one was armed, and the two companions facing him weren’t.
Krysty and Dean unconsciously separated, making the distance between them such that he couldn’t fire on both without changing his stance. Unsure of whom to aim for, he vacillated with dire consequences. Dean kicked out, his boot catching the man on the side of the knee. He gasped in shock and pain as the joint gave way, making him fall sideways. As he fell, Krysty was on him. The blaster was pointing downward, and her knee pinned it harmlessly to the ground, while her knuckles sought the soft area around his temple. Finding it with a short jab, she drew back her arm and smashed the vulnerable section of his skull with one blow, sending splinters of bone into his brain, and causing the vital organ to begin shutting down.
The companions were now alone in the room, surrounded by five corpses. With Taschen chilled, the Illuminated Ones were now just disparate groups of dwindling people waiting for orders that would never come. The important thing now was to find the cultures of disease and destroy them, synthesize the antidote and mop up the remnants of the base.
Arming themselves with the laser blasters from the chilled sec squad, they headed for the door.
“Let’s get Gloria and the Gate out of that chamber and get down to business,” Ryan said brusquely.
The chron was now almost at zero. The ticking had stopped.
It was now or never.
Chapter Sixteen
Gathered by the door leading from Taschen’s quarters, the companions readied themselves for the trip back to the mat-trans hangar and the Gate.
“Everyone triple frosty?” Ryan asked calmly, gathering a series of nods from his people. “We follow the usual formation, but keep it tighter. We need to move quick and get through the redoubt without being spotted, or at least without raising an alarm. Anyone sees us, we chill them on the spot. First priority is to get the Gate out of that chamber. Then we hit them hard, and go for the med lab.”
“Why don’t we free the Gate from here, so they can get moving and we can devote ourselves to getting to the lab?” Dean queried. “It won’t take me and Mildred more than a few seconds to crack the comp on the fat man’s desk…and then they can start to wipe out the Illuminated Ones while we get to the lab.”
The one-eyed man shook his head. “Nice idea, son, but there are problems. We don’t know if the Gate have had their weapons taken away, and if the sec doors on the chamber start to move, the sec on guard will have the advantage—”
“—and they’ll come and check here,” Mildred added. “The longer fat boy buying the farm is kept quiet, the better.”
Dean thought about that, then nodded. “Yeah, I see what you mean. Guess we’d better get going, then.”
The group now had four laser blasters, taken from the sec squad. As Jak, J.B. and Ryan all had blades, the other four had taken the blasters, meaning that Mildred, Doc, Krysty and Dean were now equipped to face any danger head on. They clustered in the doorway of the room, casting a glance back at the mayhem behind them.