They’d hold out here. Their backs to the windows.
If there were marines in that inbound HK closing in on this location, then chances were they knew she was here. All she’d have to do was buy enough time for them to storm the building.
She leaned out the apartment door despite the return fire and managed a shot on one of those coming for her and Lopez. She dropped him onto his back, his legs doing the kickin’ chicken. His buddies were crouching and moving forward, using each other as cover to take her. No one too excited about the prospect.
But in the end, that they were close enough for her to even take a shot meant she was at risk of getting shot herself. And there were more coming, stacking farther down the hall, waiting to come in if these failed. Hoping they didn’t. Hoping to be one of the living on the other side of all this.
In short, there were too many of them to even buy a minute more, not even with all the charge packs in the universe. She was just one against the galaxy, it seemed. And sometimes… one isn’t enough.
She fell back inside the room knowing that she was done in the next few seconds. They wouldn’t bother with her. Lopez they’d keep alive if they could. At least for a little while longer.
The legionnaire was on the floor where she’d left him.
“Sorry…” she said, pointing her blaster at the door. “I did my best to get you outta here.”
She heard their captors surging down the hall like a spooked herd. They’d shoot her down first and then take Lopez. The legionnaire was the real prize.
Fine. That’s what she’d wanted all along.
And she would buy him just a little more time—by dying in the next few seconds.
Okay… she told herself, not ready for this at all. Make ’em pay for every second, Amanda.
Maybe in the big picture that is the galaxy, seconds add up to something important for someone somewhere.
Life.
The first one appeared, and she had to use two shots to put him down. He refused to go down with the first and insisted on pointing his blaster at her. The second shot blew off his head, painting the wall beyond with smoking gray matter.
She shot another one.
Maybe a third.
Then someone bounced a banger in and it went off instantly.
Blind and feeling suddenly sick to her stomach, unable to hear… she just squeezed off everything she had left, hoping she was still aiming the blaster at the doorway. Not thinking about anything that had ever come before this moment or would ever come after it.
Everything ends. For you, Manda… it ends here.
Fine, she told herself again, determined to kill to the last.
In her mind she saw the door and knew they’d come in as one. Everyone she shot down buying Lopez one more second of freedom.
She fired until the blaster was dry. No kick. Just the soft tremble in the grip letting her know it was out.
Finished. Done. Empty.
Good going, Manda. Proud of you, girl.
That’s the last shot, she said to herself as she began to see double. Double and then cloudy with vibrations over every surface and angle. Everything tilted on its axis. She felt proud that she still had blaster sights on the doorway despite being flashbanged. Proud that she’d heard her dad at the last.
They were there. The red-and-black demons.
You can only kill so many. Can’t kill everyone, Manda. Galaxy weren’t made that way.
But they weren’t facing her. Their bodies were… but their heads were swiveling to face the end of the hallway to their right. And… and blaster fire was tearing them apart. From the direction of the big dirty window she’d seen at the end of the hall. The one that faced out into the big dirty city that looked like it needed a hundred years of rain and a fresh start to be free of its own self.
Don’t we all, Manda Panda?
Red-and-black demons, her and Lopez’s tormentors and captors, were being cut down in a fusillade of streaking needle-sized blaster bolts. High volume. Bodies were ripped to shreds, men and women flung back, their masks torn away to reveal terror and fear. And hate. Like some avenging angel, or some rival demon from the nether, had become all too real to them.
Her hearing was coming back. She forced herself to her feet. She’d fallen when the flashbang went off. She could hear the howl of jump jets fading, or maybe that was just an effect of the ringing in her ears. Felt a warm blast of air come into the room and rush past her.
Then an armored figure in what looked like the most ancient of Legion armors, the old Mark I from the early days of heroic legend when the Legion fought the Savages and saved the galaxy, stepped into view.
The man in the Mark I armor slapped a fresh charge pack into a Jackknife blaster and then poured more fire down the hall at the others who’d been sent to recapture her and Sergeant Lopez.
Lopez pushed himself up from the floor as the armored figure stepped into the room. Return fire filling the hall behind him.
60
Tyrus Rechs moved quickly to Lopez, shrugged off his tactical bag, then pressed the Jackknife blaster into the hands of the marine. She dropped her own spent blaster and took the weapon from the bounty hunter.
“Sergeant Amanda Almond?” Rechs asked, more to bring her around to reality than verify what he already knew.
Her small mouth worked up and down in a tiny ‘O’. Trying to form words she couldn’t make. Or believe.
In the end she just nodded.
“Cover the door,” Rechs ordered tersely. He handed her a few extra charge packs.
She
