James Axler Deathlands 060 Destiny's Truth

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"I'm thinking of tossing a shrapnel gren up the stairwell into the ob port.
I'd prefer a nerve gren, but I don't have one. It's just the comp damage& "
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"What about the walls?" Krysty asked. "We don't want to bring down the redoubt
around us."
The Armorer shook his head. "The armaglass will give way, and the blast'll be
directed out into the hangar. The only worry is that the people below will
pick up some superficial injuries. But they should be able to take some kind
of cover," he added.
"We'll risk it. It's virtually asking to buy the farm if we do it any other
way," Ryan decided.
The Armorer nodded and pulled a gren from his omnipresent canvas bag. "I'll do
it," he said calmly.
Without a word, Ryan punched in the sec code on the door, and it opened. The
Armorer looked up the twisting staircase that
led to the ob port. He had hoped that he would only have to toss the gren up
the stairwell, but the angle at which it twisted dictated that he had to take
another course. He figured that if he was quick enough, he could take a couple
of the steps, then toss the grenade around the angle of the stairwell and pull
back before it detonated. The thing he didn't want was for any of the
Illuminated Ones keeping watch from the ob port to suddenly descend the
stairwell as he was on the way up.
Taking a deep breath and counting inside his head, J.B. took the stairs two at
a time. Four stairs, two steps, pull the pin& count one, two, three, four& He
tossed the grenade around the angle of the stairs and leaped back down to the
corridor as the gren went off with a roar that shook the walls around.
"Hot pipe! If that didn't do it, nothing will," Dean exclaimed.
"WHAT THE FUCK is going on?" Tammy yelled as the armaglass above the heads of
the huddled army exploded in an explosion of light and sound.
The Gate and the Crossroads dwellers had been kept in semidarkness and silence
since the companions had been taken from them. Once Ryan and his people had
been removed, the
Illuminated Ones seemed to have lost interest and had merely maintained a
watch. There had been no further communication, and the people in the ob port
had dimmed their light so they couldn't be seen. In truth, the people below
had no way of knowing whether they were still being observed.
There had been no more attacks with the water, and the
Illuminated sec hadn't entered the chamber to collect the discarded weapons.
After a period, Gloria had directed her warriors to pick up their weapons and
clean them off, checking them so that they could be used despite the film of
water across the floor. She had no idea if they would be able to use them, but
hoped that the companions would find a way to release them and fulfill the
mission. Jon traveled around, checking weaponry, and was able to report back
to Gloria that the force would be ready, if and when necessary, to begin the
fight.
But the question was when?
The time passed with no way of knowing how long they had been there. The cold
inside the chamber, the damp from the soaking they had received, ate into
their bones, making them shiver and feel that they were stuck in limbo.
So the sudden violence of the gren explosion did far more than give them
hope it jolted them out of a stupor caused by inertia and cold that threatened
to lull them into hypothermia.
"Gaia! It's Ryan!" Gloria yelled. Her heart leaped when she saw the companions
appear in the hole left by the shattered armaglass. Dean then disappeared to
one side, while Ryan shouted down to them.
"The main man is chilled. Mildred and Doc are in search of the cure. We're
gonna open the doors, then we move. Clean the place out, quickly as possible."
"I hear you, honey!" Gloria yelled in reply. And with a whoop, she turned to
the fighters around her. "Check your blasters and check your brains we're
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gonna roll."
Up in the ob port, Dean had picked his way over the blood splattered corpses
in the bay, and was examining the smashed comp terminals. There had been three
people in the area, and the shrapnel grenade had ripped them to pieces. It had
also ripped into the terminals, and Dean was examining the smashed metal to
try and make sense of the fiber optics that lay loose across the floor.
Krysty came across to him. "Think it can be fixed?"
"Don't know."
The younger Cawdor crossed fiber optics, and the lights came on in the chamber
below.
"It's a start," he commented, before crossing another two.
In the chamber below, the main sec door began to rise.
"Come on, let's get down and join them before the sec arrive,"
Ryan said quickly. The others assented and dropped down the dozen or so feet
to arrive on the floor of the chamber. It was an easy descent compared to
many, and they were soon with Gloria and Tammy, ready to begin the assault.
Gloria embraced Jak, holding him close. "C'mon, sugar, let's get this tidied
up and get you sorted."
Jon made his way through the throng of people and handed the companions their
blasters, holding back Doc's LeMat and
Mildred's Czech-made ZKR. "I'll keep these for when we catch up with them," he
said laconically. "You'd better check but I've given them a thorough clean and
check already."
"You're a good man," J.B. said simply, noting that the Uzi and the M-4000 were
ready to fire. Jon smiled. From J. B. Dix, that was the highest of praise.
The companions took their weapons, and Gloria watched them. They were ready
now for a firefight, and for the Gate to move forward in their destiny.
Despite what had happened, the Gate queen still believed that part of the
legend of their tribe could be fulfilled by this battle.
The woman turned to her people, checking Ryan's expression.
He gave her an imperceptible nod, and she yelled, "Let's go get those scum
fuckers!"
THE BATTLE WAS SWIFT and violent. The Gate and
Crossroads fighters spilled out of the opened sec door with speed, their
enforced idleness now cleansed in the expectation of battle and of vengeance. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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