could actually feel that emotion. He considered it, and infatuation, and even sexual attraction to be snares. As he had used it to snare that silly little chocolate heiress in Switzerland There! A head popped back up for a moment. Someone was climbing the ladder. Shotz counted three and then pressed the wireless detonator. A sharp explosion and a shower of sparks from the ladder. A scream, and the climber tumbled down out of sight.
Shotz was scanning for their communications frequency, but so far had picked up nothing. Communications along a private, hidden frequency? Possibly.
He shifted position until he could see the shattered ladder and the three men clustered at the bottom, one still apparently stunned.
This was the moment. He raised his hand, motioning for Frost and Fujita to follow his lead. He aimed the air gun carefully, and pulled the trigger.
Piering heard the scream as the first explosion rocked the dome over around to his left, and a second howl of dismay a moment later, elongated as someone plunged a long distance, to a solid impact. Then… his external mike picked up a short, sharp explosion, and another scream.
Damn! Lee and Hazel had been discovered. “Get back,” he screamed. They would try from the second ladder! If he failed, there were still his A team down on level F… if any of them had survived that first explosion. If he could even keep these bastards busy, that might be enough to give his compatriots a chance. The makeshift weapons put everyone on a more equal footing. These men were experts. Perhaps trained killers, but certainly willing to use violence. In comparison his own people, however well intended, were mere amateurs.
Moving farther left around the catwalk, he and Chambers reached a second ladder. Helmet infrared showed no one lurking around the edges, and visual failed to detect anything dangerous. Still, his heart thundered as he began to climb.
Piering got halfway up, then motioned the ex-cop to follow.
He reached the next level and crouched as much as the suit would allow him, cradling his nail gun, scanning the shadows. Nothing. Perhaps he could circle back around and help Lee and her people. “Lee?” he asked into the helmet. “What’s happening over there?”
“Hazel is down,” she said. “An arrow stuck in the suit, didn’t rupture, thank God. But the explosion knocked out her visuals, damaged her faceplate.”
“Stay where you are,” he said. “But make noise. Make them think you’re still an active threat.”
He duck-walked into a shadow, pressed himself against the bulk of a compressor, peering around the corner trying to pierce the shadows.
Then… the second ladder exploded. A wall of light and air, followed a moment later by a high-pitched scream from Chambers. He knew what had happened: Their enemies had outthought them, split their forces rather than simply destroy access to the next level. Now he was stranded on C level, with the wounded Chambers isolated on F. Smart.
“Chambers. Are you all right?”
“Damn! My faceplate cracked, and the sealant is clouding my vision. The explosion screwed up my suit balance somehow. I’m having trouble getting up.”
He was being watched, and somehow the watchers had avoided his scans. With a ping! something struck his air cylinders, and swung him around. Damn! If those cylinders were damaged, he was completely A quick check of his indicators suggested that no such disaster had taken place. The pencil-thin red beam of a laser lanced through the murk.
“Damn it!” Chambers swore. “Bastards!”
“What?”
“Ah, fall like that should have killed me. Tweaked my knee, too.”
“Stay where you are. Snipe if you get the chance. Let’s see-”
Another explosion, short and viciously sharp, and his suit doppler fixed it at a hundred meters distant. That would be his first team. “Gypsy!” he called. “What’s the situation?”
“We have snipers. Boss, we didn’t blind ’em. They knew what we were doing. What do we do?”
“Can you see any of them?”
“May have blinded one. Not sure.”
“All right. That’s something. All right. I think that time is on our side. Take it easy-we’ll have reinforcements, I hope. And meanwhile, our guests are safe.”
Safe, perhaps, but not secure. The eight gamers were clustered in a bubble on G level. The ugly thrum-thrum of dual detonations echoed through the bubble’s floor.
“What’s happening?” Maud asked, clutching Mickey’s hand. She seemed very frail.
“That’s the cavalry,” Mickey said.
“He might be right,” Scotty said. “Assuming that Kendra took action-”
“Who is Kendra?” Sharmela asked.
“Chief of Operations of Heinlein. And… my ex.”
Wayne cocked an eyebrow. “Family that plays together.”
There was another sharp explosive thrum. Angelique sidled up to him. “Scotty. Where did our rescuers enter the dome?”
He shrugged. “Darla?”
“One of the ground-level entrances, I reckon.”
“Could they have brought a vehicle with them? Is there any chance at all that we can exit the way they came in?”
“Maybe. If we had pressure suits we could just walk home. Unless the entrances are covered.”
“What do you mean?”
“These people. The Moresnot pirates. They ain’t even partial stupid. They’ll have entrances covered.”
“Can they cover all of them? They don’t have enough people.”
“Not all. But maybe enough.”
“What can we do? Isn’t there some way we can help?” Wayne asked.
“Stay out of their way,” Scotty said, his voice brimming with a confidence he did not feel. “And let the professionals work.”
We’re the professionals, Shotz snarled to himself, ducking back as a bolt from some kind of air gun splattered against the wall next to him. It was off target, and even if it had hit, the wall was barely chipped by the impact. While it was certainly true that the pressure suits acted as elementary armor, his opponents weren’t in a much better position.
There was a potential upside to the situation, which even now could hardly be considered a standoff. The positive possibility was that the gamers, in a misguided attempt to aid their rescuers or even escape, would reveal themselves. If the assaulting team were in contact with their prey (and he had a very real instinct that they were), then they might have entered the dome at their quarry’s level, or above. Below? Perhaps, but Shotz and his people had searched levels A through F thoroughly, and found nothing. He was going to make a bet: their quarry was somewhere on G, planning to make their way down to the pool for an exit. Well, there was no exit there, and so long as he kept these incompetent fools bottled up, or sent them packing, all was well.
“Shotz!” a voice barked in his ear. It was Carlyle, covering the dome’s northeast side. “We have action here. The ladder is down, but they managed to hit Bai Long with a laser, I think. Half-blinded him, dammit!”
“Pull him back. Don’t expose yourself if you don’t have to, and-”
And then, there was another explosion. Deeper this time, shaking the very flooring below him, followed by the frenzied shriek of an alarm. He had heard that alarm before, but this time, he didn’t think it was a bluff.
“Piering?” Klaus Gruber whispered. Gruber was in Food Handling, but in a former life had been a sergeant in the European Union. Piering knew him a little. Once, Gruber and Lee had gotten into a friendly karaoke duel about “49th,” the notorious ballad about the Second Canadian War. The thing about “49th” wasn’t that it was particularly obscene. No worse than “Eskimo Nell,” in all probability. But there were two entirely different sets of lyrics, one from each side of the border. And it was always dicey whether such duels would stay friendly or end with someone
