As they became Illuminated Ones, the wag radio crackled into life again.
“I’ll be damned. You actually managed to find your way home before sunup—and without the comp,” came the distorted voice that had spoken once before. Ryan frowned as he heard it. Was there a subtle difference in the tone of that voice? He glanced around unthinkingly to check with Krysty, but found himself staring at the empty visage of a black visor.
Damn and fireblast. He’d have to trust his own instincts, which were screaming at him to be triple red right now, and hope that the others would catch the inflection of the voice.
Because—and he didn’t know how—something seemed to have gone wrong.
There was no more time for reflection, or for any kind of consultation, as the outer sec door began to open. The light from inside the redoubt—a fluorescent strip that was garish in the outer, predawn atmosphere—spread across the wag and the surrounding ground. Ryan had to squint as the light penetrated the windshield of the wag, and for a moment he was unable to see clearly into the tunnel of the redoubt. He blinked quickly, willing himself to be able to see into the tunnel.
The sec door opened to its full extent, and the light from within lit the area, extending to the edges of the cover where the Gate and Crossroads warriors waited. J.B. cursed the extent of the light, as he was sure that there would be sec cameras scanning the immediate area, and the light would make them more visible than he would have wished. But the Gate were experts at making the most of any cover given, and as he glanced around, he felt sure that their security had been maintained.
In the wag, Ryan’s eyes adjusted to the light, and he could see that the corridor ahead was clear. There was no welcoming party, hostile or otherwise, and the empty corridor extended for a couple of hundred yards before coming to a close at the next set of sec doors.
Thinking rapidly, Ryan considered it likely that this would be a regular precaution: to not open up the rest of the base until the outer doors had been secured. But something still didn’t seem right. He was distracted by a tap on his arm and turned to face Dean, who was gesturing toward the radio speaker.
Ryan listened. The distorted voice was hard to understand, even though the earpieces on the helmets did allow outside sound to filter through, amplifying it to allow for the layer of metal and insulation between the hearer and the outside world. The problem was, they seemed to be individually adjustable, and there hadn’t been enough time to set the level as each of the companions in the wag would have wished. Ryan had to strain to hear.
“Evan? What the hell is wrong with you people? Am I supposed to keep the doors open all damn day? Get your asses in here!”
Unable to voice his feelings or canvas opinion, Ryan swore softly and put the wag into gear and advanced into the corridor of the redoubt.
STILL OUTSIDE, watching the wag enter and the outer sec door close, bringing the darkness of predawn down upon them once more, Yardie turned in his hiding place to face Doc and Nita, who were waiting with him.
“Shit, what do we do now?” he asked.
“We wait until they get the door up again, and then we fight,” the blond Gate warrior replied.
“But what if they don’t?” the fat Crossroads sec chief asked.
Doc smiled slowly and without humor. “Then, my dear sir, we have a conundrum to which we have to find a solution within a very small time frame.”
“Eh?” An uncomprehending Yardie looked pleadingly at Nita.
“I think he means we have to move triple fast and work it out as we go along,” the blonde replied.
“Succinctly put, my dear,” Doc said with serenity. “Now let us keep watch, so that we may not miss any opportunity.”
PULLING UP just inside the main sec door, Ryan kept the engine ticking over and waited. He felt the need to keep the wag near the main sec door so that one of them would be able to key in the sec-door code and open it up as quickly as possible. He also had a knot of tension in the pit of his stomach that told him not to get too close to the menacing blankness of the next sec door. He had a feeling that his battle plan was about to throw a loop. His instincts were telling him that the Illuminated Ones had tumbled to their true identity, though he couldn’t work out quite how they had given themselves away.