Up Against It - M. J. Locke [154]
Mills had emerged from around the ship. He landed … flailed … fell … stood again. He pointed his weapon at Xuan.
“Freeze where you are, No!” Mills still mispronounced it. Infuriating.
As Mills shouted, one of the bikers stopped beside Xuan, throwing a fountain of spinning gravel up. “Care for a lift, Professor?”
Xuan thought he recognized the young man’s face through his faceplate, but he wasn’t sure. He batted the gravel aside, swung onto the bike, and grabbed hold. The other biker surged past, straight at Mills. Mills’s shots went wide, as he dodged and fell in a slow, wide arc. By the time Xuan and his driver passed Mills, he was back to his feet and shooting again—Xuan could tell from the gun’s recoil. An exploding bullet hit the bike just behind his seat, blowing a hole as big as two bunched fists. Xuan was nearly thrown off by the impact. The bike swerved. More mist spread. Xuan hoped that vacuum destroyed whatever was in those bullets. His driver got it under control—the rockets flared and the bike leaped forward—Xuan hung on for dear life.
Jesse and the first two henchmen had disentangled themselves from the net by this time and bounded back toward them, firing their guns. Chunks of bullet-struck ore scattered into the black sky.
Xuan’s rescuers reached the front of the shuttle and headed straight for the mine entrance. Xuan thought, This won’t work. They will not be able to stop the bikes, enter the code to get the doors to open, and close them again before Mills and his henchmen are on top of us. But the bikers did not slow as they zoomed past the shuttle cockpit.
“Now, Amaya!” the driver shouted.
A woman’s voice in their headset said, “Heads up on your left—there’s a tank!” As she spoke, the massive door lifted, slowly, only meters away … and Xuan thought he was hallucinating. Skeletons came pouring out—leaping, capering, rising up—tumbling over one another like demented acrobats, out of a tank in the airlock.
There were so many—they were everywhere! Xuan shielded his eyes against the impact. The skeletons burst at the slightest touch. Beads went flying like buckshot, glimmering in the rays of the sun that now rose above the horizon. Both bikers blasted through the skeletons and skidded, ducking low, into the airlock. Xuan ducked, too, to avoid being struck by the still-ascending door.
Jesse and the two remaining mercenaries stumbled, slowed, took swipes at the advancing wave of skeletons. But Mills waded right through, ignoring them as they exploded all around. He was only meters away now, and leveled his gun at Xuan. “No, step out of the airlock, or die.”
As he said die, a projectile struck him in the midsection. He went soaring backward and slammed into the shuttle’s giant tire. His gun went flying, too, and skittered across the stroid’s metallic surface. Orange goo covered Mills’s chest and faceplate, crystallizing.
Someone stood at the airlock entrance—someone named Amaya? She dropped a big pipe, picked up another.
“One of you get the door!” she said. “I’ll hold them off.”
She pointed the pipe at Jesse and fired. A big orange projectile struck Jesse’s shoulder, causing him to fall backward. The orange blob sailed up, wobbling—goo spattered the shuttle on the “Ogilvie & Sons” logo.
“I’ve got the door,” the second driver said, and sprang from his bike toward the emergency shutdown switch. Amaya picked up and fired a different pipe gun, this one smaller, at the hired hands, who ducked, while the second biker hit the switch. The door reversed itself, started closing. The girl picked up yet another small tube and fired it. Xuan could not figure out what she was shooting. Balls of putty? Chemicals? Whatever they were, the makeshift