“Bastard! Which way?” Ryan swore as they reached a junction.
“We came from down there,” J.B. said, indicating the corridor that led to the small sec door under the viewing bay. “But we sure as hell don’t want to go back like that,” he added.
Ryan shook his head. “We want to get up to the level above, take out the coldhearts overlooking the Gate. Need the comps to open the doors safely and take out any kind of alarm.”
Dean looked around. “It’s not going to be a level up in the redoubt, so there must be an elevator or stairwell leading off one of these corridors.”
Ryan agreed. “Quick recce. We take each of them, splitting up. Meet back here as soon as possible. Triple fast, triple frosty, people.”
They separated into three—Dean and Jak took one corridor, Ryan and Krysty another, while J.B. traversed the third on his own. Within a minute they had gathered once more. Ryan shook his head and took an acknowledgment from Dean, but J.B. had more to say.
“Sec door halfway down the corridor, closed where the others aren’t. From the lay of the land, it can’t do anything but lead up a stairwell.”
“That’s got to be it,” Ryan said firmly. “But it’s going to have to be a full assault. There’s no other way we can handle it. Just the one entrance.”
“Dean, if the comps are down, could we open the main sec door to the chamber from any other way?” J.B. asked.
The younger Cawdor considered that for a second. “Depends. I reckon we could still rewire and bypass any damaged terminals.”
“I’m thinking of tossing a shrapnel gren up the stairwell into the ob port. I’d prefer a nerve gren, but I don’t have one. It’s just the comp damage…”
“What about the walls?” Krysty asked. “We don’t want to bring down the redoubt around us.”
The Armorer shook his head. “The armaglass will give way, and the blast’ll be directed out into the hangar. The only worry is that the people below will pick up some superficial injuries. But they should be able to take some kind of cover,” he added.
“We’ll risk it. It’s virtually asking to buy the farm if we do it any other way,” Ryan decided.
The Armorer nodded and pulled a gren from his omnipresent canvas bag. “I’ll do it,” he said calmly.
Without a word, Ryan punched in the sec code on the door, and it opened. The Armorer looked up the twisting staircase that led to the ob port. He had hoped that he would only have to toss the gren up the stairwell, but the angle at which it twisted dictated that he had to take another course. He figured that if he was quick enough, he could take a couple of the steps, then toss the grenade around the angle of the stairwell and pull back before it detonated. The thing he didn’t want was for any of the Illuminated Ones keeping watch from the ob port to suddenly descend the stairwell as he was on the way up.
Taking a deep breath and counting inside his head, J.B. took the stairs two at a time. Four stairs, two steps, pull the pin…count one, two, three, four… He tossed the grenade around the angle of the stairs and leaped back down to the corridor as the gren went off with a roar that shook the walls around.
“Hot pipe! If that didn’t do it, nothing will,” Dean exclaimed.
“WHAT THE FUCK is going on?” Tammy yelled as the armaglass above the heads of the huddled army exploded in an explosion of light and sound.
The Gate and the Crossroads dwellers had been kept in semidarkness and silence since the companions had been taken from them. Once Ryan and his people had been removed, the Illuminated Ones seemed to have lost interest and had merely maintained a watch. There had been no further communication, and the people in the ob port had dimmed their light so they couldn’t be seen. In truth, the people below had no way of knowing whether they were still being observed.
There had been no more attacks with the water, and the Illuminated sec hadn’t entered the chamber to collect the discarded weapons. After a period, Gloria had directed her warriors to pick up their weapons and clean them off, checking them so that they could be used despite the film of water across the floor. She had no idea if they would be able to use them, but hoped that the companions would find a way to release them and fulfill the mission. Jon traveled around, checking weaponry, and was able to report back to Gloria that the force would be ready, if and when necessary, to begin the fight.