Sooner Dead (Gamma World) - Mel Odom [122]
Ocastya shifted her hand. “We don’t have much time.”
Another image shimmered into view above her palm. It showed a medical lab. Computers filled the walls, and lights flashed in syncopation. Scatter lay strapped to a chair with a dozen computer leads attached to him. A skullcap covered the top of his head.
Colleen Trammell stood next to a hospital bed, where a small girl lay on the starched white sheets. The girl looked pained and drugged at the same time.
Stampede’s ears twitched. “Who is the kid?”
“Alice.” Hella gave the name instantly.
“Who is she?”
“Colleen’s daughter. She has a disease. She’s dying.”
A hurt look pulled at Ocastya’s silver eyes. “She’s only a child. That is horrible.”
Hella silently agreed.
Stampede shook his head. “There’s nothing we can do about that. What’s she doing here?”
“I don’t know.”
Colleen held her daughter’s unresponsive hand for a moment then settled another skullcap onto her head. The wires led to a computer bank that shared the leads from Scatter.
“But it has something to do with Scatter.”
The image winked out of sight as Ocastya closed her hand. “We must go.”
Stampede tried the door. A palm print scanner lit on the wall next to the door, and a retina scanner slid out. He glared at the technological security. “Well, that’s not gonna happen.” He raised a leg and smashed a hoof into the door.
Pummeled by the energy he commanded, the door shrieked as it tore free of its hinges and flew into the hallway beyond. Before the door hit the floor, a half dozen gunners from Trazall’s group stepped into the hallway from nearby rooms and lifted their assault rifles.
Stampede ducked behind the door frame just before a fusillade of bullets struck the wall and ripped through the open doorway. His ears flattened as he hunkered down. “Could have done without that.” He drew his pistols.
Hella gauged the hallway. To her there was plenty of room to maneuver, but Stampede was so large that he’d have a hard time moving or finding cover. He’d become an instant target. She morphed her hands into weapons.
“I need a quake.”
Stampede snorted and the ring in his nose stood out briefly. “You step out there, they’re gonna put holes in you.”
“We stay here, somebody’s going to think of lobbing a grenade in after us, or Riley and his people will shoot us from above. Or maybe Trazall’s retreating crew will do it when they hit the stairwell.” Hella sucked in a quick breath. “Make it a big quake.”
“Stay to the sides. I’m gonna fill the hallway with lead so they don’t forget about me.”
Hella nodded and held her hands up at her sides.
Stampede swiveled around the door and stomped a hoof on the floor. The metal floor quivered, lifting and falling a few centimeters, but it didn’t shatter.
In motion at once, Hella whipped around the doorway with her hands before her. She fired, filling the air with a buzz saw of lethal projectiles that skittered from the walls.
True to his word, Stampede filled the open doorway with his bulk and fired his massive revolvers. They sounded like cannons in the enclosed space, and Hella went temporarily deaf before the comm link could compensate.
One man peeled away from a doorway and sprawled, hit by her bullets or Stampede’s, Hella wasn’t certain. She ran two steps up the wall, finding just enough purchase to manage that, knowing that Stampede’s revolvers would empty quickly.
Two more men spilled into the hallway by the time gravity started to take over. She kicked against the wall hard and hoped that Stampede’s weapons were empty. She flipped through the air, burning through bullets to knock down a fourth man then a fifth. Landing on her feet, she stayed low and took deliberate aim at the sixth man.
“Reloading!” Even with the comm link, Stampede sounded a million klicks away because of all the noise filling the hallway.
Surging up, Hella opened fire on the sixth man. Bullets burned by her head, and she felt a sharp nip at her right earlobe. As the last gunman