Sooner Dead (Gamma World) - Mel Odom [121]
“It is all right. I have hacked the sensors in our area.” Ocastya stood in the middle of the hallway. “They will not see us.”
When the machine gun didn’t fire and the sensor continued its sweep without pause, Hella let out a sigh of relief.
“Well, that’s handy.” Stampede took the lead again. “You didn’t mention anything about the security systems.”
“I did not think I had to.”
Stampede held up only a moment at the door leading to a stairwell. “Was that a joke?”
“I believe so.” Ocastya looked confused. “My mate indicated that you and Hella prefer levity when situations appear grim.”
“It’s not exactly something we look for.”
“Oh. I have erred?”
“No. It’s fine. I just didn’t expect it.”
“Does humor still work if you expect it? That does not seem possible or logical.”
Stampede growled. “Not a time for a discussion about rhetoric.”
Despite the situation, Hella couldn’t help grinning at Stampede’s discomfiture. “We can talk about this at another time.”
“I look forward to that.”
Stampede’s ears twitched. “Can you do the same thing to the sensors in the stairwell?”
“It is already done. The building’s security will not know we are here.”
Hella hoped that was true. In the meantime, Trazall and the building’s security had their hands full dealing with Riley and his forces mounting a full-scale attack along the perimeter. Explosions echoed through the great halls, and the shrill warning klaxons pierced them like surgical steel.
They went down the stairwells in rapid fashion. Stampede went first and Hella kept him covered till he reached the landing; then she hurried to catch up and repeated the process. When the mil-plex had first been constructed, there would have been more guards. And they would have had the sensor array intact.
In less than a minute, they reached the fourth-floor landing. A wide, steel door barred the way. Bullet-resistant glass filled a small window that offered a view of a narrow, lit hallway lined with doors. Plaques beside the door indicated the presence of medical equipment and operating rooms.
Ocastya held a hand out, and a trid presentation took shape above her palm. Although the image was less than half a meter wide and tall, the details stood out sharply edged. The view evidently was from one of the sensors at the front of the mil-plex. “Pardot’s team has breached the outer wall.”
In the image the hardshells waded through Trazall’s mercenaries. Bombs and rockets knocked down walls and splintered furniture. Bodies and pieces of bodies spun through the air. Out in the wilderness, Trazall’s mercenaries stood a better chance, but in the urban combat arena, Riley’s forces ripped through them.
Jack Hart gestured at a group of hardshells, and purple-black spots clustered on them. In the next instant, they plummeted to the floor under their increased weight. Bullets caught in the gravity shield around Hart dropped at his feet.
Then Riley, his hardshell distinctive enough for Hella to recognize it, sprang out of the shadows. Riley launched himself into the air a moment before purple-black spots started swarming over him. As he fell, he thrust his right fist forward in a savage punch toward Jack Hart’s head. An instant before the fist ripped through the gravity shield, a long blade snapped out of the forearm armor.
Hart tried to evade the knife strike, but there wasn’t time. Even as he dodged, Riley’s blade pierced his right eye and broke through the back of his skull. In the same instant, bullets hammered past the gravity shield, and Hart’s body jerked with the impacts.
On his knees, Riley yanked his blade free and snapped it back into his forearm. He picked up his rifle and stood then got hit with a twisting mass of flames as Silence breathed on him. Riley staggered back under the onslaught, and the image winked out of existence.
The suit will protect him. Even