We’ll set up six of these in the barracks itself. That combined with the natural gas these zhee are producing in their sleep—I hear one of them rip and then quietly bray before rolling over—and this place should go up in an epic inferno.
I turn to verify that Easy has his first charge set. He gives me a thumbs up and then points to the ground. I look down and see a big part of the reason for the stink in this room. Other than the antechamber, this room has no partitions. No sinks, no showers… and no toilets, because instead the donks have four-inch diameter open holes that must sit atop a nasty cistern of filth below. The tile floor around the one at my feet is splattered with sticky piss and shards of whatever these zhee last ate.
Nasty.
And a tripping hazard, which is why Easy pointed it out. He motions that there are more throughout the room and for me to be careful. I give him the OK sign and check to see how Lana and Winters are faring. I see her at the end of the room as planned. Her PDW ready, she’s motioning for me to look amid the barracks.
I see the kid in the middle of plunging his blade into the neck of a snoring donk. I don’t know if the zhee was waking up or what, but it’s dying now. I involuntarily hold my breath, wanting to be quiet. Not wanting the donk to sound the alarm because Winters performed the knifework wrong. Not that he isn’t capable, just that I don’t know.
I trust myself to do it right. Lashley. Maybe Easy. Maybe.
But there’s no noise escaping from the zhee. Nor is there a struggle. Either Winters knew what he was doing or he took Lash’s advice to heart. Good result. We’re still clear.
I watch Winters creep back to the center of the room, a row of bunks lining the walls on either side. Easy and I move toward him, Lash standing in the open doorway behind us, his SAB ready. But as I take a step, I see that two of the donks on the bottom bunks are dead. Throats cut deep, blood pooling in their straw and pillows.
I throw up a hand and Easy stops. No way all these donks stirred. Maybe Winters is thinking insurance policy but I see it as an unnecessary risk. I motion the kid over, not wanting to speak but wanting to make it crystal clear that he needs to keep the stabbing to a minimum moving forward.
Winters stalks over while Easy takes a knee, watching the still slumbering bunk room with vigilance. I’m thinking of how to express the butt-kicking that’s waiting for Winters if he doesn’t cut back on the serial killer stuff without yelling when I hear a boom sound from the opposite end of the compound.
The walls and floor shake. Strands of straw rustle down from the donks’ bedding. My first thought in the continuous reel of activity in my mind is that we took too long and Hopper is having Alpha team assault their next target. But he would have gotten on comms to alert me.
All the other thoughts go out the window, because the blast woke the zhee up. The donks sit up in their bunks, their speed no doubt varying depending on just how drunk they were when they went to sleep.
And then Lash yells from the back of the room. “Get down!”
14
Easy drops at the sound of Lashley’s deep voice. But Winters sort of freezes. He makes a target for a semi-alert zhee who hops down from the top of his bunk wielding a vicious, curved kankari knife. I pull my shotgun from my back and intercept the would-be assassin with a boom so loud it’s sure to wake up any stragglers.
The zhee is caught off-balance and slams into the post of a nearby bunk before pirouetting down dead on the tile.
“Down!” Lash yells again, and I can hear the whine of his SAB as it spools up.
I drop, reaching out and grabbing the kid by his armored shoulder and pulling him down onto the tile. As I land, my elbow scrapes the edge of one of those shit-holes, breaking the skin.
Sket. That’s gonna be a whole series of shots from the medbot.
No sooner do I hit floor than Lashley’s SAB begins to cut its way through the room, sweeping across the bottom level of the bunks and sending smoking pieces of splintered wood and zhee flying in every direction. Lash has his charge set to full, and those caught in its fire are paying for it.
Zhee, awakened from their drunken stupors by adrenaline, begin jumping out of their beds, seeking what concealment they can find between the bunks.
I swing my rifle out in front of me and begin shooting at any zhee I can sight in the open space beneath the raised bunks, shooting along the floor and striking donks as they lay, or dropping them with blaster bolts to their legs as they attempt to crawl away or return fire on Lash from behind their beds.
“Easy! Sweep bottom! Winters! Mid-level!” I shout into the comm, hoping to be heard above the unyielding roar of Lashley’s SAB. That should free the big man from taking care of ground level so he can focus on the donks that haven’t jumped off of their top bunks.
I’m about to call out a donk who is rising from an upper bunk at the end of the room with a slug-throwing rifle when Lana sends up a burst from her PDW, riddling the zhee’s back with blaster bolts and sending him careening off the bunk, clipping his jaw on the bedframe next to him before the eight foot or so drop to the ground.
Lash sees what we’re doing and focuses on spraying the upper
