When Eigil would have finished off the man whose hand lay beside him on the concrete, Skeeter rushed in. “Wait! I want one of ‘em alive!”
The man on the floor was pleading for mercy, promising anything, if only they would let him live, if only they’d bring medical help to reattach his hand . . . Rushing footfalls from behind brought Skeeter around in a crouch. But it wasn’t an enemy, it was more down-timers, six of them, and the enraged construction foreman, whose face was bruised and scabbed with dried blood.
“How can I help?” Riyad snarled.
“Find out what that bastard knows about the Ansar Majlis. Their leaders arrived through Primary today. I want to know everything he knows about the Ansar Majlis and their plans to invade the station!”
“With pleasure! Get a tourniquet on that arm!” Then he switched to Arabic and Skeeter switched his attention to the rest of his war party.
“Kynan, Eigil, Alfonzo, get moving! Frontal assault. Corydon, Molly, Chenzira, back them up! And somebody get Security down here! Hashim, you’re with me!” He scooped up a heavy concrete trowel from one of the dead men. With a blade like a hoe, one which stuck straight out from the handle, rather than bending down at an angle, its edge had been sharpened wickedly. It made a conveniently lethal weapon to back up his claw hammer.
Skeeter sent his troops into the open bay warehouse. He put Molly in the lead, since she had the only pistol, with Corydon and Chenzira Umi backing her up with the other two projectile weapons. Skeeter charged past the open bay’s door and raced down the corridor toward the unfinished section of wall where Bergitta lay bound to the uprights. Hashim, too, had confiscated an abandoned weapon: a sharpened screwdriver. They crept past the last of the drywall, then crouched low to peer into the warehouse beyond.