“Mildred! Get cover!” Dean yelled, darting out from his position behind a buttress and grabbing her by her free arm, tugging her with him as he made cover once more. “Good shooting, by the way,” he added as they hit the wall, Mildred gasping for breath and the younger Cawdor turning his head to view the open sec door once again.
“Is Dette chilled?” Tammy yelled from the rear of the line. The Gate second in command had rushed forward on hearing the exchange of fire and the screams of the brown skinned warrior; she was now close to the rest of the group, and could see her woman lying in the middle of the corridor, only a few yards from where the Illuminated soldiers chilled by Mildred also lay.
“She’s still moving,” Kass called. She was small and compact with long, tawny hair and oval eyes that gave her a dangerous feline air. Next to her, standing with her back to the wall and her blaster poised for the slightest movement, Jan was a more slender, slightly taller presence, lithe and willowy, with her shoulder length dark brown hair pulled back severely into a ponytail, her eyes large, dark and focused.
“We could try to retrieve,” the taller woman whispered, her voice deep and strong even though she tried to keep it low. “You cover, we run. Figure if we take a leg each we can still have one hand on our blasters.”
“Good call,” Tammy replied. If there was a chance Dette was still in this world, she didn’t want to leave her. The Gate were fiercely loyal to their own, and to leave a fellow warrior to slowly buy the farm would be dishonorable. “On the count of three, take her. We’ll cover.”
She didn’t bother to wait for assent from the two women. Instead, she trained her eyes on the open sec door, watching for any sign of life. Were the chilled Illuminated soldiers the only ones involved in the ambush, or were there others, biding their time, waiting for the assault group to make the first move?
“One, two, three, four!” she yelled, judging that the moment had been stretched enough to make as sure of safety as possible, yet not so far as to overpitch the nerves of the warriors who would make the run.
All those left in cover trained their blasters on the open door, ready to fire at the slightest sign of life. The only worry was that any Illuminated soldiers who may be in the corridor beyond would be able to find an angle of fire from beyond cover, and so blast Kass and Jan as they advanced.
Keeping low, and with one eye on the open sec door, Kass and Jan broke cover and ran the few yards to where Dette lay. As they closed on her, they could hear her whimpering, barely conscious but feeling agony with every drawn breath. The laser burn down her back, ugly and raw, appeared to have avoided ripping through to any major organs. Her major problems seemed to be dehydration from the burn, shock and the damage caused by the searing heat.
Squatting, both women took hold of Dette by the ankles, one each, and began to back toward cover on the double, keeping their eyes firmly on the open door.
They attained cover with no further fire, and while Jan kept her eyes on the open sec door, Kass turned over the barely conscious Dette and pulled up her eyelids. Her eyeballs were turned into her skull, but the whites were flickering where her eyes rotated in the sockets.
“Bad burns, looks like shock. We need to get her back soonest, or she’ll buy the farm,” Kass said, loud enough for it to carry down the line to Tammy.
“Shit,” cursed the Gate number two. In this advanced position, she could ill afford to be a warrior down, let alone two or three. Nita hadn’t yet returned from her runner’s mission, so to send Dette to the main party on the back of another warrior would lose her valuable numbers.
“Let me take a look at her. I may be able to do something,” Mildred said softly, snaking out of cover to move around the buttress and toward the area of cover where the two women had the injured Dette.