Mildred crouched, ignoring the lights in front of her eyes and the swimming sensation in her head as she moved too quickly. Her own blood pressure was beginning to suffer as the pox took a firm hold, but at the moment this was as nothing. Her only concern was to check whether or not she could do anything for Dette.
Giving herself a second for the lights to clear, she looked over Dette, checking her vital signs and examining the wound with a practiced eye. Pursing her lips and hoping she was right, she started to reach into a pocket. As her hand met thin air, she realized that she was wearing a discarded Illuminated Ones uniform.
“Goddammit,” she cursed before thinking rapidly. Dette needed to be rehydrated and kept warm. The burn would also need dressing. Back where the Gate wags were waiting she’d left her coat and the backpack containing her med supplies. If Dette could be taken back there quickly, if a warrior could be spared… She whispered this urgently to Kass, who darted back to relay Mildred’s opinion to Tammy.
The Gate number two moved forward to join Mildred and Jan, leaving Kass to keep point. She cut straight to the chase. “When that triple-stupe slow bitch Nita gets back, then she can take Dette and relay your instructions. Fuck it, she should be back by now.”
From afar, it was possible to hear the beating of bare heels on the concrete, so quiet had the corridor fallen. The sound grew louder as Nita closed in.
“She’s not being triple careful,” Tammy breathed, casting a glance toward the still open sec door. There had been no sign of any activity, but…
Nita cornered and approached the warriors, who were still in cover. She, however, was still in the middle of the corridor, and would present a clear target. It now became obvious that Dette’s low opinion of her was in some way justified, as the blonde stopped dead and stared blankly at the party in cover, a puzzled expression crossing her face as she tried to add up the seeming calm with the defensive positions they had adopted, and the obviously injured Dette.
“Wha—?” she began loudly—too loudly. The very sound of the syllable seemed to fracture the calm air that had descended on the corridor, and was a signal for an unwanted interruption. As she stood, staring triple stupe at the scene before her, two more Illuminated soldiers suddenly appeared in the doorway, visible at an oblique angle as they tried to keep cover while still angling for a clean shot at the newcomer.
Mildred saw them appear and yelled, “Cover! Incoming!” toward the startled blonde.
The air crackled with a blast from the laser rifle, and the concrete floor at Nita’s feet was suddenly scored by a ray of light that made her jump back, yelling incomprehensibly.
“Shit—triple-stupe bitch,” Tammy hissed as she turned her attention to the open door, trying to sight the Illuminated soldiers and fire on them. She opted for the Smith & Wesson Airlite rather than the laser blaster, and pulled a shot so that it rang off the metal of the sec door frame.
Mildred saw immediately what the woman had intended, but Tammy hadn’t been using the blaster long enough to be at one with it, and wasn’t a natural target shot.
“Get her in, I’ll take over,” Mildred murmured, raising her voice then to call to Dean, “Aim for the frame—get a ricochet.”
“Sure thing,” the younger Cawdor replied, having made the same snap assessment of the situation as Mildred.
Nita suddenly realized what was going on and dived for cover, landing heavily behind a buttress that afforded her shelter. Her trajectory had been mapped closely by further blasts, and it was only her speed that had prevented her from being injured. However, the fact that the attention of the Illuminated soldiers was focused on the one Gate warrior meant that Mildred and Dean were able to aim carefully, and without the interference of returned fire, in order to try to achieve their aim.
Which was, quite simply, to try to put the soldiers out of action by use of a ricochet. The oblique angle of the defender’s stance left no clear shot for anyone who was to keep cover, so it was up to the sharpshooters to try to angle a deflection from the metal of the door frame and hit their targets from an even more oblique angle than the targets themselves were firing.