Have Tech, Will Travel (SCE Books 1-4) - Keith R. A. DeCandido_. [et al.] [27]
Clearly, Dr. Lense had been right about the point when they could stop eating.
Another movement caught Geordi’s attention, and he fired on instinct, cutting down a bug as it tried to circle behind them.
“We’re running out of time here!” Gomez shouted.
Geordi agreed, but if the Bynars didn’t buy them the thirty seconds they needed to get to and up that lift, it wouldn’t matter how soon they made a run for it.
Corsi fired, then Vale.
Two more bugs exploded on contact with the phaser beam. The smell of burning chitin filled the area, choking them and making him cough.
Both Bynars turned from the panel at the same instant. They were done.
“Now,” Geordi shouted.
“Everyone to the lift!” Gomez ordered.
But getting to the lift wasn’t going to be easy.
Around them, hell suddenly crawled out of the shadows.
The smell was awful, a cross between a rotted corpse and a sewage treatment area. Geordi cut four, then five bugs down to the right, while Vale covered the left, firing almost constantly.
The two Bynars were firing together, first right, then left, bringing down two bugs at a time.
Gomez and Corsi and Pattie were trying to keep the path clear to the lift.
As a unit they moved, firing and making their way closer and closer to that lift door.
But to Geordi, each second seemed like an eternity.
The bugs just kept coming and coming. Geordi had never seen anything like it. Every step they got closer to the lift brought more bugs at them.
When Corsi and Pattie were within twenty paces of the lift, at least a dozen bugs bunched up right in front of them, seeming to not care if they were cut down.
At that point, Geordi and Vale and the two Bynars were almost on top of Gomez and Corsi and Pattie, forming a circle of defense and firing in all directions at the sea of wasp-crab insects. But Geordi knew that if they got stopped for even a few seconds in one spot, they’d never make that lift. These bugs would think nothing of simply overwhelming them with numbers.
“We have to get through this last group!” Gomez shouted between shots, clearly thinking along the same lines he was.
But the creatures seemed to be pouring in faster than the team could kill them. And there was a pile of dead insectoids forming in front of them, blocking their way to the lift. Going around or over was going to be hard, if not impossible.
The smell of burning insectoids was choking Geordi. If he lived through this, he would never get the smell out of his mind and off his skin.
“Corsi—maneuver 14!” Pattie shouted to Corsi.
“That’s a zero-g move!” Corsi shouted.
“It will work!” Pattie said.
“Cover them!” Gomez shouted.
Pattie flipped into the air, holding two phasers in her top hands, and came down curled into a hard-shelled ball, all six of her legs out of sight.
Almost in the same movement, Corsi had her with both hands and, with a mighty heave, rolled her at the pile of bugs and bug-parts between them and the lift.
Pattie’s hard shell smashed through the bugs like they were tissue paper, sending wasp-like crabs flying everywhere and drilling a path straight to the lift.
As Pattie hit the wall, she uncurled and came up firing, clearing away any bug that was near her.
Geordi and Vale and Gomez covered their flank as the two Bynars and Corsi laid down a constant fire, keeping the bugs back in the cross fire between them and Pattie.
The lift door opened and Pattie blocked it that way with her body, staying low and firing constantly with two phasers.
Geordi figured they just might make it when, suddenly, one of the bugs opened white wings that were under its shell, flapped them for an instant, and then flew at them.
Geordi hit it in flight, but one of its crab-like claws cut Vale across the back, smashing her into the ground.
She was up again almost instantly, but clearly hurt. Even though blood was pouring off her back,