James Axler – Stoneface

The blast of the detonating gren echoed across the canyon and back like a thunderclap. A fireball bloomed, and tongues of flame curled in all directions. Everyone below felt the slamming concussion. As the echoes of the explosion still reverberated, clattering rock fragments and screams of agony added to the noise.

Shielding his eyes from the falling rock chips, Jak looked up and said with a grin, “Flash-fried ’em.”

A pair of automatic rifles began chattering from the opposite wall, striking and ricocheting from the outcropping. J.B. hitched over, saw the men on the facing edge of the canyon and fired the Steyr at them. After one man fell, arms windmilling, and the other dived for cover, J.B. said, “Time to move. I’ll lay down a covering fire.”

As the friends broke from their granite hiding place, J.B. propped his Uzi atop the boulder and depressed its trigger, sending a steady stream of bullets to chew up the topmost edge of the opposite wall. He kept the sec man up there pinned down, afraid to raise his head, until the five people had reached the bottom few feet of the stone staircase.

J.B. grabbed his sack and scrabbled out on the ledge, climbing, crawling and sliding. He heard voices shouting from the mouth of the canyon, and he recognized one of them as Hellstrom’s. Evidently he had sent a scout force ahead, holding back the remainder of the sec squad.

Fleur, Krysty, Doc and Jak had taken cover behind rock tumbles beside the cave entrance the moment they’d jumped from the stone staircase. J.B. slid down to join them, hopping from ledge to ledge. Although the exchange of gunfire and the gren explosion had happened in a very short span of time, he feared that whoever or whatever lurked inside the cave had been alerted. He expected a swarm of beetles to swoop from it immediately. At the very least, he expected Hellstrom and his sec men to charge down the canyon, weapons blazing.

J.B. managed to join his friends behind the rocks on the right side of the cave opening before either one happened. He didn’t have to wait long before six shaven-headed, X-scarred men raced down the canyon, blasters flaming, heading straight for them. They fanned out and took cover without hesitation. The sec men kept up a cone-shaped firing pattern. Bullets whined from their stone shelter and exploded against the rocky wall over their heads, sprinkling them with dust and gravel.

“As long we stay down, we’re safe,” Krysty said. “But if we try to make a run for the cave, we’ll make excellent targets.”

A bullet dug a gouge in a rock very close to Doc’s head. The shot had come from above, and Jak returned the fire with a double blast from his Colt Python.

Krysty and J.B. exchanged hard-eyed, knowing looks. It was only a matter of time before the sec men got in position to lob grens at them, or the sniper above would pick them off.

Doc chuckled mirthlessly, peering out between the open spaces in the rocks at the men shooting at them. “This reminds of the time I took my daughters to see Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show.”

Fleur stared at him as if the white-haired man had suddenly decided to turn senile, but Doc continued. “The climax of the performance was a stirring scene of settlers beset by bloodthirsty Indians. When events looked their darkest, the gallant Colonel Cody led the U.S. Cavalry in a charge to rout the savages and set things aright.”

No one responded to Doc’s story. J.B. had only the vaguest idea of who Buffalo Bill Cody had been, and at the moment he wasn’t inclined to solicit Doc for further information about him.

A movement on the canyon rim caught his eye. The head of the Helskel sniper was silhouetted against the blue of the sky, and sunlight gleamed dully off the gun barrel as he brought it into firing position.

As J.B. raised his Uzi, the sec man’s head suddenly acquired a new and different shape, and the automatic rifle in his hands tumbled down the face of the cliff. The crack of the rifle shot was lost in the echoes of the gunfire from the men on the canyon floor, but the Armorer definitely heard the volley of shots that followed it.