James Axler – Keepers of the Sun

Mashashige nodded, taking in a slow breath. “I see. This is good. Let us go then and defeat my hen-shit brother.”

“Chicken-shit, Shogun,” Ryan corrected. “You mean chicken-shit.”

“Thank you, Cawdor-san. Go and do what you can. I will rally my people. May our gods go with us.”

RYAN’S IDEA HAD BEEN to try to reach a point where they could either ambush the invading ronin or launch a counterattack against them, somewhere near the main entrance.

But it was impossible.

The ville was such a rambling complex, now poorly lighted, with smoke already showing where fires were taking hold, that there was no way to find their way through or to locate any position to commence a firefight.

And there was the constant ebb and flow of humanity, with no hope of determining who was for good and who for evil. Jak very nearly shot Issie through the face as she suddenly jumped on him from a side room, weeping, her makeup so smudged she looked like a heartbroken panda. She begged to be allowed to stay with them, as she feared for her life.

“All do,” Jak muttered.

THE RONIN HAD ALREADY spread out through the fortress.

Ryan spotted several of them gathered in a side room, where they were handing out ammo to three or four of the turncoat sec men.

“Still got your grens?” he asked J.B. and Jak. “Give them a couple of implodes.”

The light was very poor in the corridor where they all waited, but both the Armorer and the teenager fumbled in pockets and pulled out a pair of grens with two-step firing mechanisms.

“Now!” J.B. called, arming his, then lobbing it across and through the paper walls, the dark shape followed immediately by Jak’s implode gren.

Ryan turned away, putting his hands over his ears, opening his mouth to minimize the effects of the shock.

There was the familiar, oddly inverted sound of the implode going off, sucking all matter into it like a reverse explosion. But the second gren made a different sound, louder, accompanied by a flash of vivid yellow-and-orange fire.

“Shit,” Jak hissed. “Mine was flamer. Couldn’t see colors in dark.”

The two grens together had done their lethal work, killing or maiming every man in the room, sending a couple of them staggering away, screaming, burning. The fiery grens contained a highly concentrated form of napalm that splattered everywhere and stuck and burned.

And burned.

Ryan squinted at the dazzling inferno, seeing that gobbets of flame had burst onto adjoining walls, starting fresh fires. “Whole place could go unless someone starts fighting it,” he said. “Wood’s like tinder.”

“Reckon the shogun’s goin’ to be too busy trying to save his life to worry about the fire,” J.B. replied. “And we sure don’t have the time.”

“Best try and get to the center. See if we can hold there.”

Doc clapped his hands. “Well said, good Master Cawdor! For if the center cannot hold, then what hope can there be for the rest?”

THEY KILLED THREE MORE of the ronin, or their treacherous allies among the sec men of the castle, as they struggled to find their way through the dark, reeking maze toward the courtyard at the heart of the building.

Behind them they were aware of the roar of the fire as it gathered momentum, fanned by a rising northerly wind that drove the hungry flames deeper into the ville.

“Not going to be anything left to rescue, lover,” Krysty panted.

Ryan stopped, struck by the thought that they could end up trapped in the heart of the fortress, with the holocaust swallowing them as it raged by.

“Mebbe we should head for the outside and get into the water,” he said.

“The open courts should act as some kind of a break,” Mildred stated. “Like they cut spaces in a forest fire. Might slow it down some.”

“Yeah. Could be. But if I yell for us to get out, then follow on tight. You’re responsible for the girl, Jak.”

“Sure.”

THEY WERE IN AN ARCADE of oipachinko machines, running past them when someone opened up with an automatic rifle, sending them diving for cover on the floor. Whoever it was had no skill as a marksman and fired high, ripping through the chrome and glass and bright colors of the games, scattering thousands of the tiny metal balls across the floor.