wreckage.
One of the survivors pulled a pistol and fired at the charging elf. Her aim wasn't too good, but her shot had effect anyway. The bullet took Ryan in the gut as he stepped out of the Airstar. The stupid kid had opened up his armor vest for the chopper ride and hadn't sealed it before debarking. He sat down hard and looked stupidly at his bleeding gut. The catboy took a round, too, and tumbled backward, blood-lessly; his armor saved him.
Ratstomper screamed and opened up on full auto, nearly nailing Glasgian. The elf dove to one side, taking cover in a doorway. Things got confused real quick, as another goon started firing and the orks shot back. It was short and sharp, and the outcome wasn't any real surprise. The goons were still rattled from the crash, and Kham, Rabo, and The Weeze had done this sort of thing plenty of times before. They moved smoothly, spreading out and keeping up a good volume of fire. Even with Ratstomper mostly wasting scenery, the firefight went thirty seconds, max. before it was all over. There were no more survivors of the wreck.
Ratstomper ran to Ryan as soon as she could, dragged him off the street, and leaned him up against an abandoned car. The rest of the guys gathered around. The kid was their only serious casualty. Not bad, considering the open area in which the firefight had taken place, but not good enough for Kham.
'Rabo,' he bawled. 'Bring the first aid kit from the chopper.''
The rigger was fast, but that didn't matter; the kid's wounds were too serious. Kham could see that even though they had done all they could for him, it was not enough. The orks gathered around, watching helplessly as the life bled out of their comrade. With Ryan already unconscious, Kham was spared having to decide whether or not to end the kid's pain. He knew what most of his guys wanted in a situation like this, but there had never been time to ask the kid.
A triumphant laugh sounded from the direction of the overturned truck. Glasgian's laugh. Kham turned to look and saw brilliant rays of emerald light leaking from the sprung doors. The light grew in intensity, and Kham had a sudden suspicion. 'Cover!' he yelled.
The guys ducked low, trusting his reaction. He hoped the bulk of the abandoned car would shield them. He also hoped he was being overly cautious and would look stupid soon. It was not to be.
With a rending shriek the armor panels of the truck bulged and burst apart like an overstretched balloon. Angry hornets of metal buzzed through the air, spang-ing off everything in a thirty-meter radius. Glasgian, standing on the padded collar and clinging to the crystal still strapped into that collar, rose from the ruins of the truck. He glowed with power.
The elf laughed as he rose higher into the sky. Experimentally, Kham fired off a shot and was not surprised when it had no effect. The elf never even stopped laughing.
'Guess he's got his own ride home,' Neko said dryly.
Tracer rounds stitched up the pavement and into the remains of the truck. Its fuel ignited and burst into flames. Huddled behind the abandoned car, the crew was safe for the moment, but those tracers and the moan accompanying them were familiar: the hellions had found them. How, Kham didn't know; it didn't matter. Once more they were facing long odds with the dice loaded against them.
He looked into the sky. The retreating elf was a mere speck, leaving them to face the hellions alone. And Glasgian probably knew he was doing it, too. There was no point in cursing the bastard; Kham had known the elf might do just such a thing when he'd agreed to help the weedeater recover the crystal from the dragon's goons. Kham had believed that the need to keep the magic away from the dragon made taking the chance necessary. He'd hoped to be able to keep the crystal from the elf as well. He should have known better. Another good ork life spent, with nothing to show for it.
Bullets chewed at the metal that shielded them. Ratstomper looked up from the body she cradled in her arms. 'What do we do now, Kham?'
He wished he knew. There didn't seem to be a lot of options. The Airstar's armament could take out the hellions, but they were too far from the chopper; Rabo would get wasted trying to make it across the street. Without the chopper, their own firepower wasn't going to be enough against the hellions.
'It's not worth dying for an empty truck,' Neko pointed out.
Kham wondered if it would have been worth dying if the truck were still full of what they had come after. This eternity magic, if that's what it was, was getting awfully expensive.
'Enterich said he'd call the hellions off,' Kham began.
'If we stayed out of it,' Ratstomper reminded him needlessly.
'Suit's your chummer, catboy. He good for his word?'
'Again, he's not my chummer. As for his word, we would seem to have broken the pact ourselves. However, we would have little chance if we fight. Perhaps they will be lenient if we can claim that the elf forced us.'
'If they let us talk,' Ratstomper said gloomily.
There was a lull in the firing, and Kham could hear a car approaching.
'Only one way to find out,' he said, but before he could act, Neko had jumped up, tossed away his submachine gun, and stepped around the car's fender. The catboy walked forward, hands in the air. 'News,' he shouted. 'We have news for Enterich.'
Kham half-expected to see the little Jap kid sliced and diced by the hungry red tracers, but it didn't happen. A car rolled out of the gathering darkness. Its doors had been ripped off to accommodate the huge cyberguys: one hellion was crammed into the driver's seat and the other clung to the passenger side, his tri-barrel pointing in their direction. The car squealed as if protesting mistreatment as it slowed to a halt. Unsurprisingly, the tribarrel never wavered from its target.
Kham tossed his own weapon away and stood, shouting, 'Don't shoot. We got news for your boss.'
For a long, sweaty moment, he thought they weren't going to buy it. Then, the muzzles of the tribarrel dropped, and the hellion made what sounded like an exasperated sigh. The hellions emerged from the car, its springs sighing in relief at the removal of their burdensome weight. One hellion monitored the disarming of the orks while the other checked over the wreckage of the truck. If they cared whether their colleagues were wounded or dead, they never gave a sign. Satisfied that the crystal was gone, they herded the orks and Neko into the Airstar. Once more they took to the air in the commandeered chopper, but this time Rabo wasn't driving.
'It is unfortunate that you did not heed my advice,' Mr. Enterich said, his voice sad, but his face expressionless. The suit stared at them from the video screen for several minutes without saying anything else. En- j terich was only an image on a screen, but still Kham ' felt discomfited by the man's eyes. Their look of disapproval was too much like what he usually saw in Harry's eyes, the slight hint of distaste too much like that in Lissa's.
What did they all want of him anyway? He tried to do what he thought was right. Was it his fault there was always another player with a bigger stake or better cards? He was just a street ork. What more could they
expect?
Enterich shook his head slightly. 'I had hoped that this matter was closed.'
One by one, the suit questioned them closely about their brief alliance with Glasgian. He started with Neko and was working his way through the team to Kham.
While The Weeze was giving her version, Kham looked around the room where they were being kept. The walls were bare and featureless, bland in the dull fluorescent light from the overhead panels. The way it was fitted out with chairs and low tables made it seem like a doctor's waiting room; there were even stacks of magazines on the tables. Bored with the constant repetition, Rabo had found a tech journal to stick his nose into. The hellions hadn't let them see where they'd been taken. They'd blanked out the Airstar's windows for the ride, then hustled the team out into a darkened hangar and through darkened halls. Kham and his runners could have been anywhere, but everything was all straight and real clean, so it had to be corporate property.
The catboy was the only one who seemed relaxed, like maybe he'd been here before. Maybe he had; especially if his real loyalties did lie with Enterich and his dragon master. Still, Neko had been disarmed and incarcerated in the cabin of the Airstar with them, lending some credence to his protests that he was not one of Enterich's agents. Of course that might all be part of the scam to make it seem that Neko was an independent, just like the questioning.
In his turn, Kham gave the same story of Glasgian's arrival as everyone else had, but he put a special emphasis on the elf's insistence that they not leave the crystal in Enterich's possession. As Kham was confirming for the fifth time that Glasgian had said Enterich worked for Saeder-Krupp, the picture on the video screen changed. The suit's image was reduced, remaining only in a small inset box in the upper-left corner. The rest of the screen was black. But only for a moment. A new image appeared, a golden dragon's head. The screen was
