James Axler – The Mars Arena

“Plas ex?” Krysty asked.

“Yeah.” Jak took out one of the small packages, juggling it easily in his hand. “Got detonators, too. Some timers, some distance. Batteries look okay.”

“Help me put this stuff into the bags,” Krysty said, kneeling quickly and beginning to shove it into her backpack. “Ryan and the others are going to need a back door. With this, I think we can make it.”

Chapter Thirty-Three

Ryan took up a position behind an overturned truck nearly a hundred yards from the Mirage. Over the years trees had thrust insistent branches, trunks and roots through the wag’s body, anchoring it to the ground while at the same time pushing it inches upward.

The Mirage was incredible. Small falls, probably less impressive than they were before the nukecaust had claimed the ville, jetted from the fifth floor, pouring into cracked basins that held some kind of return system that was only partially working. Lit by sporadic underwater neon lights, the white frothing overflow leaked out into the jungle.

It had taken the group long minutes to cover the distance. In that time they’d had three encounters and had lost Clingdon to a slimy, tentacled creature that had been wrapped up on a spit of land trailing from a broad pond on the east side of Las Vegas Boulevard. Fielding had died during an ambush by members of the blue team coming up from behind and to the side. The companions had dropped three enemy gunners before they’d managed an escape.

“How do you want to handle this?” J.B. asked. He slipped off his wire-rimmed glasses and cleaned them quickly on a handkerchief that looked miraculously dry.

Ryan mopped sweat from his brow and looked back over his ragtag army. Mildred, like the Armorer, was calm and collected, but the three remaining men appeared shaken, on the verge of spooking at every sound around them.

“Front door looks inviting,” Ryan said, taking his binoculars from his gear, “but there’re already some takers on it.”

J.B. lifted an eyebrow. “Missed them. Damn, they must be good.”

“Lots of other entertainment going on,” Ryan commented dryly. “Missing them is understandable. And they are good.”

Turning to face the building, J.B. put his glasses back on. “How good?”

“Good enough that I’ve only managed to lock on to their shadows a couple times.”

“What’s their color?”

“Green. Mebbe. They’ve made themselves hard to see.”

“If they’re green,” J.B. said, “they’ve got no casualties that I’ve noticed.”

Ryan nodded. The Armorer had been the first to notice the different-colored lenses used by the sec men on top of the wall. When they’d left the dead Thompson twin behind, a harsh, bright light had shone onto the area a few minutes later, splashing the corpse. Shortly after that, J.B. had pointed out the sec man waving the flash with the red lens, aiming the beam back at the big window in Bally’s where the barons watched the game.

J.B. had been keeping count automatically. By his count, the purple team had taken the most damage with seven people gone. With four of their teammates dead, Ryan’s red team was running a close second in casualties.

“Mebbe they’re better than I was thinking.” Ryan focused the binoculars and got a chance to watch the last three green-team members race into the Mirage. “They’re boys.”

“Boys?” J.B. echoed.

Ryan nodded. “From the looks of them. Saw some faces that time. Young. Mebbe early twenties, but I’m putting my jack on them being teens. No later.”

“What are boys doing out here?” Mildred asked. “The blue team had some young among them, but they were all men.”

“Don’t know.” Ryan kept careful watch over the entrance, but didn’t see any of the green team again. “But they move like a unit. Solid. Working point, wings and slack, everybody keeping covering fire over everybody else.”

“Just like Trader set up his operations,” J.B. stated. “One of his commandments on War Wag One. ‘Thou shalt cover thy neighbor’s ass.'”

“Sec squad?” Mildred asked.

“From the look of them,” Ryan answered.

“Don’t see them as volunteers,” Mildred replied. “Unless they got some kind of special arrangement that’s going to get them out of here.”