James Axler – Keepers of the Sun

“Don’t know difference now,” Jak said.

“Should be moving,” Ryan told them, taking a couple of steps toward the main sec-door control, stopping at a strange noise from behind him.

Every head swung around.

“It’s the gateway,” Krysty said. “Someone’s operating the gateway and making an incoming jump.”

Just for a moment in the control room, there was something that was definitely confusion and could almost have trembled on the edge of panic.

Doc started for the green lever, intending to lift the ponderous sec doors so that they could get out into the rest of the redoubt; Jak immediately dropped to his knees behind one of the desks, drawing his .357 magnum Colt Python; J.B. unslung the Uzi and looked around for a good defensive fire position; Mildred, for reasons best known to herself, started moving toward the actual door to the gateway, revolver tight in her right hand; Krysty and Ryan stood where they were, looking at each other in shock.

The air inside the actual gateway chamber had become clouded, with the mist circling thicker at the top, near the metal disks recessed into the flaming orange armaglass. There was a faint humming sound, and the lights in the comp-control area dimmed visibly, indicating the prodigious amounts of power that the mat-trans jump drew on.

Doc’s gnarled hand was on the green lever before Ryan called out for him to stop.

“Hold it. Could be jumping out of the burning ship into the shark’s mouth.”

“Frying pan into fire,” Mildred muttered, standing in the doorway to the anteroom, staring fixedly at what was happening inside the armaglass walls.

“We could ambush them as they step out,” J.B. suggested. “Chill them all, easy as winking. They won’t expect that. What do you reckon, bro?”

Ryan considered all the options.

Three options.

The Trader always used to say that almost any situation you were likely to encounter offered three basic choices. You could run or fight or hide.

To run meant opening the sec doors, which always took a little time, and involved risking who or what lay outside.

To fight meant taking on an unknown force as they emerged from the chamber. J.B. was right that it could hardly fail to be a successful ambush. But there was almost a good possibility that whoever was making the jump might not be actively hostile. In fact, whoever lay behind the sec door might be prepared to be fairly friendly.

One way of turning friends into enemies was to chill a few of them.

“Hide,” he said. “Doc, leave the door where it is. Mildred, come away from the gateway before anyone spots you moving out here. Rest of you, get behind the comp desks at the far end there. Triple red.”

“If they see us?” Jak asked.

“Then we’ll have about one-hundredth of a second to decide whether they’re hostile. But they could easy walk on through and out the doors and never look too careful. Seems the best idea at the moment.”

“Think the jumps nearly done,” J.B. said. “Fog’s clearing.”

“Quick.” Ryan led the way between the desks, crouching out of sight at the far end of the room, the SIG-Sauer cleared and cocked in his right hand.

Everyone joined him, moving with reasonable speed and silence, except for Doc and the pistol-shot explosions from his kneejoints.

“Doc, shut it up!” Ryan hissed.

“My dear fellow, I can hardly be held responsible for the conditions of the cartilage and tendons and bony tissue at the center of my knees, can I? It seems most unfair that”

He stopped suddenly as J.B. dug him hard in the ribs with the muzzle of the Uzi.

“Door’s opening,” whispered Krysty, who probably had the best hearing of them all.

Ryan closed his eye for a quiet moment, controlling his breathing, calming himself, ready for what might be sudden, explosive movement.

There was the click of the gateway door opening, followed by someone groaning, as though they had a fearful headache. Ryan found himself almost grinning sympathetically, knowing only too well the feeling of coming around from a jump.

He waited for the sound of talking, which would give them a clue as to where they might have landed. But all he could hear was someone groaning and someone getting to his or her feet, then a sharp metallic sound as though something had scraped against the armaglass wall, and footsteps.