Cloye, shielded by the air car, had been spared the brunt of the blast. As five crickets skittered in with lumo-blasters, she sprang out of her daze, surprising them. She fought like a demon, slashing out with her combat knife, then jabbed another in the throat. Yellow fluid jetted over her space kevlar suit. Lifting her rifle, she grabbed at the sagging corpse, using it as a shield to shoot around it. Her muzzle sprayed mortal fire, felling locusts. More came. On she staggered, roaring a kamikaze curse, using the puppet locust as a battered shield, nailing locusts right, left and center. She left the street littered with Mentera bodies.
Stunned human onlookers gaped in awe from the sidelines by the grimed, ruined shops as Cloye dealt death and a squat spaceman with a killer E1 scrabbled to a military crouch and lay mayhem at anything that moved.
Cloye scrambled over to Yul’s side. He shook his head, mouth opened in a gasping yawn to clear the cobwebs from his ears. “Fuck, that hurt.”
“You alright?”
“Not really…but good work,” he rasped.
“Get up.” Now it was her turn to help him. “Run!” She covered him, kneeling, spraying fire, while he pegged hostiles coming in from behind.
They hobbled on, ducked into a twelve-foot wide, gaping culvert sighted from before. Shadows crossed both ends, puddles of brackish water massing in stagnant pools. The two advanced, but warily. Yul felt some blood coming back into his brain; though each step was slow, the next was slightly longer and more self-assured. Already a bad feeling brewed. But where to go? Green flashes of Mentera fire spurted behind them. Amplified echoes of Mentera blasts sounded from back in the square.
Rat-like creatures skittered underfoot, squeaking through tapered, whiskered snouts. Yul winced. They were about fifty feet in, making good progress at the half way point when he jerked back, bringing Cloye to a standstill. A brisk movement startled him in the blue-shadowed gloom. Accompanied by a furtive sound that was not their boots sloshing through dirty puddles.
“Yul! Behind you.” Cloye loosed a line of fire, clipped one stalker between the eyes. But two more were on her, wrenching at her gun arm. Her last wild shot ricocheted near a reaching figure and buzzed the head of another.
One of the skinheads behind Yul roared, “Hold up! Put the gun down.”
A set of eight skulkers scuttled forth, four on either end of the culvert, trapping them in the middle. They gripped improvised clubs and cleavers. The same crew of skulkers who they’d recently liberated, offering covering fire. “Son of a bitch!” croaked Yul.
He spat fire that sprayed up water at their feet as they dove out of the way.
Skinhead roared, “Drop the gun or pay the penalty!”
Street gang? Two skinheads, three long-haired thugs, black-haired, two blond. One woman amongst them, bleach blond with sides of her head shaved and long tail at the back. All had black and red bandannas over their heads.
“Hand over the weapon, spaceman!” blurted Skinhead from the place where the culvert shadows ran deepest. “Or girlie gets a face full of metal.” They’d wrenched the gun from Cloye and held her in a stranglehold. “Spike and Marv are in need of such items.”
The gang members sauntered up confidently as if they owned the whole sludge pile of this inner city.
Yul cursed himself for being taken so easily. He let his blaster fall.
“That’s it, smart man.” Skinhead kneed Cloye forward. He waved his sawed-off blaster. Why he’d used a cleaver earlier to kill the locust was beyond Yul. Aside from the skinny ruffian who gripped Cloye’s weapon, the headman was the only one who held a gun: some short bully with an eyepatch and small rooster cob of brown hair up the middle of his egg-white skull.
“Kick the weapon over here where I can see it. Don’t get cute.”
Yul complied. The echo of his E1 clattered in the puddle-soaked dinginess, painful to his ears.
“The other one too.”
Yul grimaced. He pulled the compact from his belt with reluctance and tossed it in the same place.
Cloye hissed at him. “You dumb shit! You should have wasted these scum and let me die.”
Yul shook his head.
“You! Spaceman. Pzt.” Skinhead jerked a thumb at Yul. “Park yourself over here.” He motioned to a place between slant-eyed Marv and rake-thin Spike.
Yul hesitated, took a step closer. “Way I see it, we all have to cooperate here, chief, if we’re going to survive. Last time I checked, a swarm of locusts were coming down to toss all our asses in tanks.”
Smacky spat out a wad of phlegm. “Maybe. But one step at a time.” He shouldered Marv ahead, glancing nervously back at a flicker of green fire that flared from somewhere out in the square.
Yul scanned his enemies. Nine of them in sour moods, with itchy fingers on weapons, wearing blood-spattered denims and synthetic leathers, ready to kill and run, get some payback for their losses. The dog-eared crew clutched a combo of kitchen knives, meat cleavers and wooden clubs, hand-crafted, and bits of twisted metal.
“This how you repay someone trying to save your skins?” jeered Yul.
Smacky smoothed out his
