The entryway opens up into a small antechamber lined with rifles and other gear—the stuff the zhee warriors sleeping inside would grab on their way out the door we just breached. Some of the rifle slots are empty though, which means they either belong to the guards or maybe that a few of the zhee are like me and won’t go to sleep unless they’re within arm’s reach of a weapon.
I thought that was just a leej habit. My wife hates it.
There’s a round wooden table just big enough for one positioned in a corner by the door leading inside the barracks itself. Its lone occupant is laying his head on its surface, tongue out and a puddle of drool slowly inching toward joining a brackish puddle spilt from an overturned glass of krippa, that foul zhee liquor guaranteed to give any non-zhee the feeling of a hangover on the first sip. One last round that the zhee in question couldn’t quite finish before passing out.
Only maybe he was smart not to finish it off, because his ears twitch and he lazily lifts his head from the table, smacking his equine lips and bringing up the back of his hairy wrist to wipe his face. I see those ears swivel, like he thinks he can hear something in the near total dark room.
Like he hears us.
I send two blaster bolts into the donk’s chest, the double wick sound filling the small room for the briefest of seconds and then giving way to the noise of the donk spilling from his chair.
Winters moves past me to the door leading into the next room. It’s made from rough, unfinished wood and has a glass square at eye level. The kid peers through, checking to see if anyone is inside and—if they are—whether they’re stirring from the noise.
“Looks good,” he whispers into his comm. Much too quiet for me to hear unless I was being fed his voice in my ear.
“How many?” I ask.
“A lot. Maybe, thirty or forty asleep in bunks. Twenty stacks, two beds per.”
I grit my teeth. That’s a lot of donks in one room. And if any of them are armed, we can get ourselves into some trouble real quick.
“Maybe we string some det-cord over all the bunks while they sleep,” suggests Winters. “Then blow it and kill ’em all at once.”
I smile inwardly. The kid has imagination.
“That might work,” I say, shaking my head. “But it’s too easy to muck up. One guy feels a tickle and we’re hosed. No, we’re getting our hands a little dirty, I’m afraid.”
I pull my knife, a powder-coated black blade carbon forged from impervisteel salvaged from the Chiasm itself. Or at least that’s what the koob who sold it to me said. But koobs made good blades, regardless of the source. Any history is just a bonus.
“Roger,” Winters says, letting his rifle hang on its sling before fastening it to his side and pulling a koob knife of his own—practically a machete.
I can see the kid is ready for action with no hesitation, and no questioning the wisdom of what I’m saying. He seems… eager to do work that a lot of operators I’ve been around have been loath to perform. Killing is hard enough. Doing it up close and personal… not everyone is cut out for it. And there’s a fine line for the ones who can do the job as a job and do the job because it’s what they’d do anyway so they may as well be paid for it. I ran into a few guys like that in my time in the Legion and it always gave me the creeps. Still, I was glad they were on our side.
“No big swings,” Lash cautions from the back of the room. “Quick cuts. Sever the spinal cord so they can’t thrash around. This is gonna take too long.”
I look back at the big legionnaire. “I don’t disagree. We’re not going to kill every single one in their sleep. C’mon, man.”
“So what’s the plan?” Easy whispers.
“We move through the room and set some det-charges and incendiaries. Knives for any light sleepers. Lock the doors on our way out. Once we reach BT3 and go live, we blow the charges and let the donks cook. That way they don’t come after us. Ooah?”
The team acknowledges that they understand, though none of them say “Ooah” back to me. Even Lash. Makes me second-guess my theory about where he served.
“Lash,” I say, “you hang back with that SAB. Things go sideways and we drop and let him clear the room. Lana, you move ahead and get us ready to move from here to the temple proper—schematics showed a hall leading right to where we want to be from here. Winters, you cover her from center and watch for any zhee who might wake up. Easy, we set the charges and stay quiet, and then cover Lash while big man moves through to the other side. Questions?”
I’m met with silence.
“Go.”
I creep through the wooden door leading into the barracks. The first thing that hits me is the stink. I’d say it smells like a barn, but that doesn’t do it justice. More like a hog pen built atop an open sewer. I’ve smelled worse, but not by much. The room is musty and humid—stifling. Too many bodies, too much gas, too much funk.
I move to the nearest corner as Easy does the same on the opposite side of the room. I pull a charge from my satchel and affix it to the wall at chest-height, trigger-chaining a thermal fragger to it. Just before this thing blows, it’ll send a detonation sequence to the fragger’s thumb-switch interface causing it to cook down. And then the blast will push the blossoming
