It was as they were checking their own blasters that the voice came to them, blaring and distorted over a loudspeaker from beyond the opening inner sec door.
“Whoever you are, come out without your weapons and you won’t be harmed. We have no wish to chill you, only to expel you from our base.”
“Yeah, right,” Mildred muttered, “maybe you do, but only when you’ve dosed us with your foul pox so that we can spread it.”
“I’d rather go out fighting than let them do that,” Tammy agreed. “They’ve tried that shit on us already.”
Ryan looked at the warriors gathered around him. His face was set and grim. Were they ready? He turned to look out of the windshield at what they would encounter. The inner sec door was now almost fully raised, and he could see that there were twelve Illuminated soldiers lined up against them, with the center of the corridor taken up by a motorized blaster that was on wheels because of its sheer size. Like a laser cannon, it stood imposingly dead center, manned by two Illuminated Ones, making a total of fourteen adversaries that the companions on the wag were facing.
Ryan was aware of a presence at his side and inclined his head to see that he had been joined by Jon. The young Armorer was appraising the laser cannon, and although he had been silent up to this point, he now felt on territory where he had a right to comment.
“See that giant bastard?” he asked rhetorically. “If that has power in relation to size like these—” he patted the laser blaster he was holding “—then we are in deep shit if we stay in here.”
“Even with the strength this wag has?” Ryan queried.
Jon nodded curtly. “I’ve tried and tested these fuckers to see what they can do, and if that works on the same principle, with it being that size, it’ll either cut through us like a panga through mud, or it’ll heat the metal so much that we’ll fry in here.”
“Not much of a fireblasted option either way,” Ryan gritted. “There’s only one thing that we can do.”
“Sweets, I think we’ve all gathered that,” Gloria said. There was a resignation in her tone that was belied by the flush on her cheeks as she turned and kicked open the back of the wag. “When there’s no chance, honey, then there’s nothing to lose,” she yelled as she jumped out of the back of the wag and dived for cover behind one of the reinforced concrete buttresses that held up the roof of the redoubt. They were positioned every few yards, and had often been of use as cover in a firefight.
Never more so than now. The Gate queen was in position before the Illuminated Ones had a chance to register her action, and she moved from cover long enough to loose off a couple of laser blasts in their direction.
There was no time for her to take aim, but the Illuminated soldiers were so densely clustered on either side of the laser cannon that it was inevitable that a double blast in the general area would do some damage. One soldier was chilled as he was taken unaware by a blast that hit him directly in the middle of the chest, burning a hole in his uniform and flesh that caused a plume of smoke to rise from him as he fell, his scream high and anguished. Inside the redoubt, although still in the one piece uniforms, the Illuminated soldiers were without the protective helmets they wore on the outside, and so it was easier to see which were male and which female.
It was a woman who escaped a little more lightly with the second burst of fire. Realizing that Gloria’s aim was restricted, and therefore more likely to be in the same area each time, the other Illuminated Ones who were clustered on her side of the laser cannon began to seek cover, either falling flat or running to dive behind a concrete pillar. It was while attempting to find this cover that the Illuminated woman was injured. Tall and heavily built, with long blond hair that was tied back in a tight ponytail, she was slightly slower than her companions, and as she dived for the cover of the concrete, she twisted awkwardly in the air. Although that didn’t save her from great pain and injury, it did possibly save her life, as Gloria’s second laser blast cut through the air and scorched across the woman’s shoulder as she twisted. If her passage had remained straight, it would have burned through her ribs and barbecued her internal organs. As it was, her scream and subsequent sobs as she hit the floor told of an injury that was painful, but not fatal.