“This is insane,” Nara said. “What are those assholes at Mitsuki thinking of? This is going to start another Global shooting war.”
“Take a closer look, Captain,” Thrill Bill said. “That’s not Mitsuki down there. It’s FIVE. And they want their boy toy back. The first place they’re going to come looking is right here. They know where I live. It would be best if we beat feet before the ground troops start piling out of those APCs. Help yourself to ordinance, as much as you can run with. We won’t be coming back for more.”
Ryan slung the submachine gun over one shoulder and grabbed a nylon rucksack. It looked to him like all the conventional weapons fired the same round a rimmed, .40-caliber full-metal jacket. He stuffed his pack with extra stick mags for the subgun and power packs for the laser rifle. In an open crate were more of the disk-shaped AP mines. He took a big handful. He also took a half dozen grens. Some were frags, some flash-stun. By the time he picked up one of the laser rifles from the floor, he was seriously weighed down.
Thrill Bill waited while Damm and Nara struggled into the straps of their own overstuffed rucksacks. The warlord wasn’t taking anything extra, just a pulse rifle. “Got my own pack mules outside,” he said.
They pushed out into the chaos of the hallway. A sheet of flame had crept up the walls and was licking across the ceiling. The thick smoke made it very hard to see what or who was underfoot. There were many dead, and their bodies had been ruptured by the intense heat.
Thrill Bill shouted for his sec men. A half dozen stumbled forward, dazed, drenched with blood that wasn’t their own. “We’re evacuating the building,” he told them. “I’ll break trail for us.”
Ryan fell into step behind the warlord. As they ran down the corridor, the throng of confused and frightened people flattened against the walls, giving them room to pass. Over the tramp of heavy boots, Ryan heard the sounds of battle raging out in the street. It was growing even more intense.
“How long can your people hold out?” Ryan called to the back of the warlord’s head.
“Until the last man falls,” Thrill Bill said. “They know that surrender isn’t an option. It’s suicide.”
The hallway was jolted by a terrific blast that sent the warlord and Ryan crashing to the floor. As they pushed up to their feet, there was another grinding roar.
“They’ve hit the main armory,” Thrill Bill said. “We’ve got less time than I thought.”
Before he followed, Ryan looked down the hall the way they’d come. All the civilians packed along its walls were falling in behind the last of Bill’s sec men, a crush of people running for their lives.
The hallway before them ended in a T. Thrill Bill went left. There were open doors on either side of the corridor. Between the heads of the people standing in the hallway, Ryan could see inside the rooms. Mobs of pale, frightened faces stared back at him.
About fifty yards ahead, the hallway they were in was crossed by another. As the crowd melted back to the walls and they approached the juncture, from around the corner, to the right, Ryan caught flashes of bright green light, and over a multitude of screams from that direction, what sounded like bacon sizzling.
Thrill Bill slowed, then stopped well short of the intersection. He waved over a sec man carrying a heavy backpack, reached inside and took out a big handful of slap charges. “Out of the corridor,” the warlord said. “On the double!”
The commands were meant to apply only to his own crew. No way could all the folks standing along the walls fit into the adjoining rooms, which were already full.
The civilians watched, as did Ryan, while Thrill Bill chucked the explosives down the middle of the hall, scattering them all the way to the crossing.
“Move!” Thrill Bill cried.
Ryan, Damm and Nara forced their way through one of the open doorways. As the one-eyed man wedged himself into the packed room, the unlucky souls in the hall behind him realized that their cause was lost and took off in a panic, running ahead of the advancing troops. Ryan looked down at the face of a little boy held by a woman, probably his mother. The kid’s rosy cheeks were crusted with dirt and sores. He smiled up at Ryan.