James Axler – Keepers of the Sun

Ryan whistled softly between his teeth. “I never knew that we were involved in brotherly hate.”

The shogun came close to smiling. “Do you know anything of brothers, Cawdor-san?”

Ryan touched the eye patch. “Brother did this to me,” he said. “Oh, yeah, I know all there is to know about how brothers can treat each other.”

Mashashige gestured at the room filled with men. “It is great stupid thinking from Ryuku. He has less than half the number of warriors, though we have been sorely wounded by the tsunami slaying some of our best samurai. Such men are not easily replaced by me.”

The moonlight was filtered through the steel shutters over all the windows. Here and there men were snoring. A few were awake, propped up on their elbows to watch their lord and the gaijin . The main door of the ballroom closed softly.

Ryan heard the faint sound of a bolt sliding across and a lock clicking into action.

“What?” He turned.

Mashashige also heard it and swung around, his sword miraculously appearing in his right hand. “We have been locked in,” he said quietly.

“Man who was messing with the bolts when we came in,” Krysty stated. “Got a bad feeling from him.”

“You were right.” The shogun looked around the room. “Does this mean they hope to hold us trapped here while traitors open the gates to my brother and the ronin who wait?” He shook his head. “No, they would not pass the guards without a warning.”

Ryan was like a caged panther constantly moving, head darting from side to side, trying to see what the threat could be and how it would be delivered.

Other than the main door and the windows, the only other way in or out of the ballroom would be through the rectangular air vents in the ceiling. But they weren’t big enough for access.

One of the sec men in the far corner of the huge room, directly below one of the vents, suddenly began to cough.

Ryan spun, seeing that two more of the sec soldiers, close in the corner, had also awakened, stricken with coughing and sneezing fits. He looked up at the big air vents, a sudden dreadful suspicion filling his mind.

Krysty did the same, grabbing him by the arm as still more of the army jerked from sleep, spluttering, choking and rubbing at their eyes.

It was Mashashige who voiced the danger, seeing a faint white mist billowing down from the ceiling. “It is an attack with gas,” he said with an almost insane calm. “The ronin have trapped us like foxes in their den and will kill us with poison gas.”

Chapter Twenty

The doors were reinforced with sec steel, and Ryan saw immediately that there was no way he could shoot out the locks. It would take four ounces of ex-plas or a couple of implode grens to break them down.

“Windows,” Krysty said.

“Shutters are sec steel, as well.”

Now it seemed as if everyone in the room was waking to a choking fog of swirling poisonous gas. Near the entrance doors, Ryan, Krysty and the shogun were farthest from the attack, which had started in a distant corner.

Ryan caught the first sniff of it and immediately found his eye watering, the back of his throat prickling as though someone had sprayed pepper in his face.

Krysty had pulled out a kerchief and pressed it against her nose and mouth, standing still with her eyes shut. “Gaia! What is it?”

Mashashige replied, “Sarin gas, I think. There was a supply left after terrorist actions in last predark months. It kills.”

Ryan wondered whether the gas was heavier or lighter than air. But he decided immediately that it didn’t matter, since the panicking men were running around and stirring it up all around the ballroom.

“We cannot block the vents,” Mashashige said. “There is not a hope. I regret that you will die with me in a fight not of your making.”

“No rad-blasted fight, is it?” Ryan coughed so hard it felt as though he was going to bring up his guts, sickened by the realization that time was racing away and the last train to the coast was already pulling out of the station.