“Your craft, although large, is much too small,” Amanda said, moving toward the open door. It promptly closed. “And where is the blaster with the light that kills?”
“We don’t have one,” Ryan replied gruffly. “Be nice if we did.”
The cicadas stooped singing.
“Infrared shows ten incoming,” Krysty called over the PA system.
Everybody turned and lifted their blasters a split second before the roar of engines. Then the front line of trucks shook as a wave of motorcycles bounded over them in tight formation. The bikes hit the ground hard, but the leather clad riders stayed on, yelling a battle cry and revving the engines to full throttle.
“Yee-haw!” screamed a bearded man, a blaster in his free hand, long hair flying in the wind. “Found them!”
“Run them down!” cried a tall man with a gap-toothed smile.
“Don’t kill the slut!” added another, wielding an
“Kill everybody!” a bald giant corrected.
Dean tossed the blonde her MAC-b, as he turned and fired twice with the Mossberg. He hit nothing, the reports only causing a flurry of return fire from the cavorting bikes.
Putting his back to Leviathan, J.B. cut loose with the Uzi, chasing the wild bikers. “Damn bikers are harder to hit than bees!”
“J.B.!” Ryan snapped, quickly exchanging the Steyr for the Armorer’s M-4000 shotgun. “Fix the tranny!”
“In the middle of a fight?”
“We may have to evac!”
Accepting the logic, J.B. slung his machine gun and crawled under Leviathan, dragging the canteen of precious hydraulic fluid after him. A shot zinged off the concrete near his boots, nearly puncturing the canteen, and he was gone from sight.
“Look at that! They’re running away!” a biker cried, swinging around for another pass. “Hiding like babies!”
“Let’s make them dance!” yelled a snaggletoothed rider, shooting a sawed-off shotgun. The left barrel failed to discharge, but the right boomed, showering pellets into the ground near Ryan, who neither flinched nor paused as he loaded his own crowd sweeper. As the biker roared by, the one eyed man fired, blowing off the man’s arm at the elbow. Howling in agony, the rider went down, blood gushing from the ragged stump.
Drawing his .357 Magnum Colt Python, Jak assumed a firing stance. Holding the big bore blaster steady with two hands, he tracked a target and fired once. A biker’s helmet exploded off his head leaving the man stunned but undamaged.
“I got the mutie!” a fat redheaded man shouted, brandishing a Thompson submachine gun with a huge cheesewheel clip, and he hosed a stream of bullets at the pale teenager. Jak’s pantleg fluttered as a slug came lethally close. The albino teen fired again, and the man’s face was removed in chunks. The riderless bike raced off, hit the severed arm, bounced and flipped into the air to crash resoundingly on the dirty concrete.
Bypassing the white-haired killer, the rest of the bikers concentrated on the open hatchway of Leviathan. A round slammed into an ammo locker next to Krysty at the starboard Remington. Her hair flattening in response, the redhead spun and fanned her Ruger at the motorcycle riders rushing straight toward her.
“They’re trying to get in!” Mildred yelled, her .38 banging away, the rounds hitting with surgical precision. The bikers recoiled from the impacts, but didn’t fall. “Some of them have flak jackets!”
“Then consider me Baldar on the bridge!” Doc said. He shoved Mildred inside, slamming shut the door while firing his LeMat from the hip. “None shall pass!”
Splitting apart, the pack swerved away the closed hull, darting between the individual defenders. A biker made a pass at Doc with a length of chain that smashed onto the hull with sledgehammer force. The elderly man nimbly ducked and the LeMat boomed, the muzzle-flame almost reaching the laughing biker. The motorcycle kept going, but the rider flew off and crashed through the window of a rusty car.
Segmented into slices, Mildred’s angry face appeared in the louvered slots of a blasterport. “Baldar, my ass! This isn’t Asgard, you old coot! Get inside! I’ll give cover with the Remington!”
“Can’t risk them getting in,” Krysty said as the military diesels started. “And if one gren bounces into the ammo bin, this tin can is history!” Then she killed the engine when a squawk of pain came from J.B. under the floor.