J.B. placed an ear to the wood and held his breath. Nobody spoke.
Approaching the man, Ryan placed his mouth near his old friend’s ear. “People? Sec droid?” he asked softly, easing the off safety of the Steyr. He was down to only a few rounds, but the heavy-caliber bullets would do far more damage to both man or machine than his pistol.
“Clear,” J.B. announced, stepping away. “There’re no traps I can find, and nothing is moving on the other side.”
Mildred grunted. “Then open it.”
“Check.” Expertly running his hands over the wood, the Armorer knocked experimentally, then scratched here and there.
“Blast hole?” Jak asked, rummaging in his fatigues and withdrawing a half stick of dynamite.
Resting the rifle on his shoulder, Ryan snorted in contempt “We can kick our way through.”
“Not necessary,” J.B. replied, probing the edges of the alloy doorframe. “Ah. here we are. Found the catch.” The wood slid aside, exposing darkness.
Instantly, everybody moved away from the open doorway, weapons at the ready. For several minutes they stood motionless, patiently waiting, listening hard. When nothing happened, Ryan took the point, moving in low and fast, the pitted barrel of his Steyr sweeping the room, searching for targets. He was flanked by Jak and Krysty, with J.B. and Doc staying as backup at the open door, ready to block it with their bodies if need be. Dean stood off to the side with Mildred, ready to cover the two men should it be necessary.
It took a moment for Ryan’s eye to adjust to the dim light. That wasn’t good. Usually, the overhead lights came on automatically. Then he saw the ceiling fixtures were completely smashed, every single bulb systematically destroyed.
“But not the tiles alongside,” Krysty noted.
“Somebody wanted it dark,” Ryan agreed, keeping his blind side toward his companions.
There was a sigh of steel on leather as Jak eased a knife from its sheath. “Ambush?”
“Most likely.”
Carefully, the three moved through the mixture of litter that covered the floor of the anteroom. Next, instead of the usual control room, they discovered an office. The furniture was broken, the pieces scattered randomly with broken plastic and glass underfoot everywhere. Bullet holes stitched a wall at chest height. Ryan checked, and sure enough the opposite wall was the same. A firefight had occurred. Over in a corner was the remains of an executive bar. mirror and bottles reduced to glistening shards from a small explosion.
“Plastique,” Ryan stated. “Homemade, weak stuff.”
“No shrap,” Jak added, kicking away some unidentifiable wreckage. “Diversion.”
The hairs on the back of Ryan’s neck were starting to rise, and he loosened the 9 mm pistol in its belt holster. “Yeah, but a diversion for who? There’s nobody here.”
“And no bodies.”
“Found them,” Krysty called out, holstering her pistol and looking at something on the back side of an overturned couch. Jak and Ryan quickly joined her.
There on the dirty floor, locked in each other’s arms were two corpses. Human, male, and both long dead. The skin was drum tight over their bones, teeth exposed in the rictus of death. Their hands were locked around each other’s throat, fingers buried in the mottled flesh. A pair of knives lay nearby, as did a rusty U.S. Army Colt .45, the slide kicked back showing it was out of ammo. At the base of the wall was a badly rusted Browning Automatic Rifle, its bolt action open and showing it too was out of bullets. The men were dressed in the usual scavenged rags of a dozen different styles, only their boots and the holsters in decent shape. Two bandoliers of empty cartridge loops crisscrossed the chest of the blond man on top’ while the bald man on the bottom wore a vest made entirely of rectangular pockets to hold ammo clips for an autofire blaster.
Satisfied, Ryan whistled sharply through his teeth, once long, then short, and the others cautiously walked into the ancient battle room.
“Died killing each other,” Mildred said, studying the desiccated corpses. “Been dead four, maybe five weeks. Air system has kept down the smell.”
“But not removed it entirely,” Doc admonished, sniffing delicately. “I must say, this locale is getting decidedly most pungent.”