But the question was when?
The time passed with no way of knowing how long they had been there. The cold inside the chamber, the damp from the soaking they had received, ate into their bones, making them shiver and feel that they were stuck in limbo.
So the sudden violence of the gren explosion did far more than give them hope—it jolted them out of a stupor caused by inertia and cold that threatened to lull them into hypothermia.
“Gaia! It’s Ryan!” Gloria yelled. Her heart leaped when she saw the companions appear in the hole left by the shattered armaglass. Dean then disappeared to one side, while Ryan shouted down to them.
“The main man is chilled. Mildred and Doc are in search of the cure. We’re gonna open the doors, then we move. Clean the place out, quickly as possible.”
“I hear you, honey!” Gloria yelled in reply. And with a whoop, she turned to the fighters around her. “Check your blasters and check your brains—we’re gonna roll.”
Up in the ob port, Dean had picked his way over the blood splattered corpses in the bay, and was examining the smashed comp terminals. There had been three people in the area, and the shrapnel grenade had ripped them to pieces. It had also ripped into the terminals, and Dean was examining the smashed metal to try and make sense of the fiber optics that lay loose across the floor.
Krysty came across to him. “Think it can be fixed?”
“Don’t know.”
The younger Cawdor crossed fiber optics, and the lights came on in the chamber below.
“It’s a start,” he commented, before crossing another two.
In the chamber below, the main sec door began to rise.
“Come on, let’s get down and join them before the sec arrive,” Ryan said quickly. The others assented and dropped down the dozen or so feet to arrive on the floor of the chamber. It was an easy descent compared to many, and they were soon with Gloria and Tammy, ready to begin the assault.
Gloria embraced Jak, holding him close. “C’mon, sugar, let’s get this tidied up and get you sorted.”
Jon made his way through the throng of people and handed the companions their blasters, holding back Doc’s LeMat and Mildred’s Czech-made ZKR. “I’ll keep these for when we catch up with them,” he said laconically. “You’d better check—but I’ve given them a thorough clean and check already.”
“You’re a good man,” J.B. said simply, noting that the Uzi and the M-4000 were ready to fire. Jon smiled. From J. B. Dix, that was the highest of praise.
The companions took their weapons, and Gloria watched them. They were ready now for a firefight, and for the Gate to move forward in their destiny.
Despite what had happened, the Gate queen still believed that part of the legend of their tribe could be fulfilled by this battle.
The woman turned to her people, checking Ryan’s expression. He gave her an imperceptible nod, and she yelled, “Let’s go get those scum fuckers!”
THE BATTLE WAS SWIFT and violent. The Gate and Crossroads fighters spilled out of the opened sec door with speed, their enforced idleness now cleansed in the expectation of battle and of vengeance.
“Take the corridors—split into groups and root out the scum,” Gloria yelled. “Tammy, split them like before.”
“You know your task—you know how you were split. Take out the corridors one by one!”
“Will we be able to open those doors?” Yardie yelled, his dreadlocks plastered to his head, panting heavily, his dark skin gray with the cold and exertions to which his fat frame was ill used.
“Yeah, the main comp is off, I guess,” Dean replied. “Once we were locked up, there was no need to secure the redoubt, and there’s no one to operate the comp now. Key in the sec codes.”
Yardie read the code from the scratch plate and keyed it in. The door began to rise.
He yelled, then screamed, “We’ve got the bastards!”
Following his lead, other war party leaders keyed in codes and the doors began to rise along the corridor. The army split into parties that began to traverse the corridors.