James Axler – The Mars Arena

“Know where?”

“Feeling I’m getting from him, I can track it.”

“Dean there?”

“Him, too.” She didn’t even try to figure out what was going to happen between father and son out on the killing ground.

“Where?”

“I don’t know, Jak. I just know they’re close.”

“Confusing in dark. Could be trouble seeing the other.”

“I know. Dammit, I know.” She inserted the last detonator, then walked back to the nearest empty wag.

Jak followed her. “Sorry. Stupe of me. You’d already thought that.”

Krysty studied the wag. In the past someone had taken the engine and transmission, stripping other parts out of the inside. The windshield was cracked, two holes knocked into it big enough for her to fit her hand through. The tires were flat, but at least they were there.

“Give me a hand,” she told Jak, “and let’s see if we can move it.” She grabbed the steering wheel while the teenager slipped in behind the wag.

The vehicle creaked and popped in protest, then grudgingly started to move. It took a lot of work to put the wag in front of the area they’d mined with the plas ex. Once they had it there, Krysty looked at the space, figuring it would only take one more wag and at most two more to block the brunt of the blasts against the wall. That way the explosion would be concentrated, hopefully opening up the wall. If it didn’t, escape would be even more difficult.

RYAN REACHED DOWN and gave J.B. a hand up into the window on the second floor of the Mirage. Mildred and the others were already behind him, lined up on both sides of the door.

The room had once been a storage area of some type. Racks that held barren clothes hangers shared space with cabinets, display counters and shelves.

Moosh Wandell, Thompson and Owen guarded the door, anxiously peering into the darkened hallway. The echoes of the explosion had died away less than two minutes earlier.

J.B. slithered in over the sill. “Saw a green light a minute ago.”

“One of the boys is dead,” Mildred commented.

The Armorer nodded. “Looks that way.”

Ryan scratched his stubbled chin, thinking about it. “All the green team was inside the building. Means they’ve got a way of seeing through the walls.”

“Unless they’ve got the windows staked out,” Mildred said. “Maybe a sec man just looked in and saw the boy down.”

“And confirmed him dead?” Ryan shook his head. “They’ve got buildings open all over the pit. Hadn’t thought about it before, but they’d probably want a way to check on anybody inside them.”

“Haven’t seen any vid equipment,” J.B. said. “Starlight scopes would take away the night, but they wouldn’t allow the sec guards to see through the walls. Something else might, though.”

Ryan looked at his friend.

“Thermographic sights,” J.B. said. “They register body heat if things between them aren’t too dense, or don’t carry too much of a heat signature themselves. A barn would have to have serious jack to afford that kind of equipment. Hard to find.”

Ryan didn’t like the idea of the sec guards being able to spy on them at any time. “What about a heat signature?”

“Man,” Owen whispered harshly, “we’re sitting ducks standing in one place like this. That explosion, you know those green-team guys aren’t going to stay put. They’ll be moving. And with them moving, they’re liable to run smack into us.”

“With us moving,” Mildred argued, “there’s no less risk.”

The man shifted nervously. “Moving around some would just feel better.”

“When the time comes to move,” Ryan said in a hard voice, “I’ll let you know.”

Owen’s gaze burned for just a moment, then he looked back into the hallway.

“Heat signature of the human body is 98.6,” the Armorer said. “Nothing else around us burns that hot.”

“What about the neon lights?” Ryan asked.

“No.”

“But if we got a good blaze going somewhere ”

J.B. nodded. “It’d blind the sec men’s sights for a while, but when we moved from the fire, they’d find us again.”

“It would buy us some time, though.”

“Sure.”

Ryan shouldered the Steyr. “Good to know. There’ll come a time we may need to buy a few minutes.” Drawing the SIG-Sauer, he started for the hallway. The skin across his neck and shoulders was tight. It wasn’t pleasant thinking about the boys roaming around inside the building with them. But they were killers; they’d proved their ability. If it came to it, he’d put them down and walk over their bodies without a second thought if it would put him one step closer to his freedom.