Hellbenders

The dormitory was a large space with beds running in rows, small lockers between each bed. The beds themselves were high, with narrow metal shafts for legs that gave plenty of room underneath for any enemy to use as a crawl space. The room was rectangular, with no other nooks or crannies for anyone to secret themselves.

From his position, Dean was able to take in the room at a glance. It seemed to be empty, and where the open door let a shaft of light pour into the room, there was an illumination that aided him immensely, casting a light over any enemy position while keeping him still in shadow.

Though it seemed empty, there were still a few pools of shadow where the light had failed to penetrate. These would have to be dealt with.

Dean left his position and dropped to his belly, the Browning Hi-Power blaster held in front of him. Using his feet, he pushed off from the wall and started to crawl under the beds, using his shadow cover to surprise anyone he might come across. Despite every sense telling him that the dorm was empty, he had to make certain.

It was a swift process. Dean moved through the shadows and light with ease, encountering no obstacles. The dorm, like the shower room, was empty.

As Dean reached the last of the beds, he rose fluidly to his feet and slipped out of the room, staying close to the wall as he moved back to where J.B., Doc and Mildred were waiting.

“It’s empty,” he breathed as he moved back into cover behind the pillar and indicated the same to his father, standing opposite, with a gesture.

The one-eyed man nodded curtly. It was time to put his plan into action. Gesturing to J.B., he indicated that they should move out from behind the pillar and take the empty rooms to establish a base of operations. And there was little time. The approaching enemy was now audible to all the companions, not just Jak. The advancing force seemed to be small, and was moving slowly. It wasn’t hard to guess that they were taking the corridor section by section, as well, not underestimating how difficult and smart their enemy may be. This gave the companions enough time to move, but suggested to them that they may be in for a small war of attrition rather than a straightforward firefight.

Looking ahead, both Ryan and J.B. could see that the corridor was clear at present, but about a hundred yards ahead of the sec door was a sharp bend that presented them with a blind spot. The sec door itself was about twenty yards distant, giving them a total of about 120 yards between themselves and any enemy sighting.

It wasn’t a lot of distance, and it didn’t buy them a lot of time.

Ryan and J.B. swung out from their cover in unison, J.B. clutching the M-4000 and Ryan holding the Steyr SSG-70. They would provide covering fire as Jak and Dean, followed by Mildred and Krysty, and finally Doc moved around them and into the empty rooms. Jak and Dean provided cover while Ryan and J.B. moved forward to join them.

The unseen enemy force was stealthy, but was gaining ground. The first group tentatively rounded the bend, risking the blind corner.

J.B. raised the M-4000 and fired into the middle of the group of three. They consisted of two men and a woman, all of whom were moving low, trying to present as small a target as possible. Two of them had blasters that looked from this distance to be Heckler & Koch G-12 caseless rifles, of the type that were sometimes found in the redoubts. The woman was carrying a 12-gauge, double-barreled shotgun. The Armorer took it in at a glance and wondered, at the back of his mind, how she had come across what appeared to be a Purdey, a rare and beautiful thing to J.B., and something that he had thought never to see, though he had read of them.

This thought stayed in his mind as the approaching enemy raised their blasters. He let fly with a cartridge from the M-4000, the explosion of the scattergun sounding large off the low ceiling of the redoubt tunnel. The air was filled with the heat and smell of the charge, and the load of barbed metal flechettes found its target with ease, spreading out over the hundred or so yards to the target.

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