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kitten."
"It nearly did more to you than that," Mildred replied. "So it was you who
walloped me like that? I thought I'd been run down by a truck."
"The lane was mined. Didn't see it until it was too late. I just reacted, I
guess.
Sorry, Mildred."
"You don't have to apologize for saving my life. We've got to move, now. Can
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you walk by yourself?"
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"I think so."
THEY CAUGHT UP with the others behind a heap of boulders at the foot of the
ridge, near the spot where they'd made their descent.
"Until Dean looked back and saw you coming," J.B. told them, "we thought you
were dead." He held a bloody handkerchief to the side of his face.
"Nearly were," Krysty said.
"We never even got a shot off," Mildred confessed. "Did you do any damage?"
"Don't know for sure," J.B. answered, as he let Mildred take a look at the
slash high on his cheek. "We didn't stick around to tally up the score. But I
think we must've hit something vital or they'd already be on top of us."
"Either that," Doc said, as he completed the laborious reloading of his
revolver's cylinder, "or our best efforts made no impression on them at all,
and they simply cannot be bothered hunting down such insignificant
annoyances."
"Well, one thing's for sure. We can't tell beans from down here," J.B. said.
"Got to climb back up the ridge if we want to recce. Better hurry up before it
gets too dark to see."
By the time they regained the summit and were back in position overlooking the
main street, the visibility had dropped in a big way. A world of vibrant color
had been reduced to harsh black and shades of gray. By the light of the stars
and a three-quarter moon, they could just make out shadowy figures moving in
the darkness around the rocket and gantry. The black-armored strangers
apparently could do their work by the available light, and they did so in
silence.
When J.B. had seen enough, he signaled for a retreat from the edge of the
cliff.
Back behind the ridge-top pinnacles, with the others gathered around him, he
said, "They could just be prepping the missile for launch. No way to tell
whether we hit
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it, or if we did, if we hurt it any."
"Back to square one, then," Mildred said.
"Square zero," J.B. corrected her. "We've got no options left. We just proved
that we can't blackmail them into giving us Ryan back. We can't hurt them, but
they can chill us whenever the mood strikes. Because they won't give ground
down there, we can't force our way close to where that hole appeared and try
to go in after Ryan. It doesn't look good for him."
"There's got to be a way," Krysty said. "My Gaia power worked against those
bastards' machines. Mebbe I could use it to take them out, too."
"You've already used yourself up," Mildred reminded her. "You try that again,
and all you'll succeed in doing is killing yourself. And that won't help Ryan
out of the trouble he's in."
From the deep shadows of the canyon below, two engines started up. One, they
all recognized. It belonged to the black aircraft.
"We might be on the verge of some trouble, ourselves," J.B. stated.
Chapter Eighteen
Major Oswaldo Lujan slithered over mounded heaps of bacterial slunk, and under
the trailing edge of a massive slime curtain that hung suspended from a
ceiling lost in pendulous greenery. For Lujan, the oppressive environment and
the biohazard battlesuit he wore brought back memories of his early years as a
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soldier.
Not unpleasant memories, either. Though he had been trained for infantry
combat in the Slime Zone, he'd never gotten a chance to use the skills. The
Consumer
Rebellion, which was the only war he had ever served in, had been quashed long
before it could move onto this slick horror of a battlefield.
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The Slime Zone was a living desert; instead of sand, there was bacteria. Most
soldiers couldn't handle the bleakness, the smothering dark and the
ever-present threat of death. But Lujan appreciated the quiet and the
emptiness, the peace there was nothing like it left above condensation level.
Between the galleries of slime that filled former city streets, with the aid
of a suitable, high-
intensity light source, a person could see for blocks and blocks, and best of
all as far as the major was concerned, not see another single person.
After Lujan crawled into position opposite the rear end of the semi-trailer,
he stopped and panned the scene through his helmet visor. The battlesuit's
infrared sensor showed four lemon-yellow figures beside the hulking box on
wheels. All were wearing rain slickers and boots, and antiphage bubbles. If
they had body armor, it wasn't artificially intelligent. All of them carried
the laser weapons that
Mitsuki had provided.
He unslung his own pulse rifle, which was already umbilicaled to his suit.
When he powered up the weapon's optics, the sights and range finder appeared
in his visor, and the view behind them shifted as he swung the barrel onto the
trailer and lined up the cross wires.
The distance to his targets was seventy-five yards. A piece of cake. One of
the joys of sniper work with the tribarrel was that gravity wasn't a
complicating factor. Because there was no bullet drop to compensate for, he
could have just as easily hit the sentries in the eye from ten times as far
away. Lujan picked his kill order, working from left to right.
That done, he turned up the gain on his external microphone, snuggled into the
bed of slime and lined up the first shot.
Lujan wasn't by nature a trusting soul. As commander of the Mitsuki Tactical
Unit, he had objected strenuously when his Global CEOs told him they were
going to turn the abduction of the man from Shadow World over to a band of
mercenaries led by a former Marine Corps sergeant. There were good reasons why
Lujan himself couldn't be directly involved in the kidnapping. If Mitsuki were
linked to the operation, it would bring down the united wrath of the other
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