‘Are you ready, my sister?!’ a familiar voice enquired from behind.
She turned and saw Zakaria jogging through the darkness in his gothic armour, the reflections of the emergency lights gleaming like daubs of fluorescent paint on the burnished steel. His two-handed sword was sheathed on his back, and in his arms he carried an M-60 machine gun with a large steel appendage attached to it, along with two full belts of ammunition that were slung over his shoulders and across his chest. An Uzi submachine gun was strapped to each hip, and the firearms and ammo combined with the medieval armour gave him an intimidating if curiously anachronistic look. Trailing along the floor behind him came a spider-drone, scuttling frenetically with its eight metal legs across the carpeted floor.
Njinga nodded in response, although ready was the absolute last thing she felt.
‘Where’s the girl?’ he asked.
‘She’s not with you?’
‘No.’
‘Then … I don’t know.’
‘We have no time to wonder or worry about her now,’ Zakaria muttered. ‘She should have been here by now, but she isn’t; all we can do is proceed without her.’
‘I know,’ Njinga murmured, Chloe’s absence only intensifying her sense of worry and fear.
‘Before we do this, let’s see what’s waiting for us around the corner,’ Zakaria said as he directed the little robot to the corner, around which it peeked a sneak glance with its night-vision camera.
‘Wonderful,’ he rasped sarcastically. ‘Twelve guards armed with M-16 rifles. They’ve got night vision goggles too. Two of us versus twelve of them. Still, I’ve faced worst odds before, my friend!’
Njinga shook her head, wondering with a madly-hammering heart how Zakaria could sound so optimistic in the face of overwhelming odds.
‘Why the hell are there so many of ‘em?’ she asked. ‘It’s almost like they were expecting us.’
‘Some of the most powerful people in the world are meeting behind those doors tonight,’ Zakaria answered. ‘I was expecting more soldiers, to be honest. We can handle these ones, trust me.
‘Okay man … if you say so. I still think it’s weird that so many of ‘em assembled in such a short time … but we gotta do what we gotta do, I guess.’
Zakaria could sense her apprehension, despite not being able to see her face behind the helmet.
‘Relax, old friend,’ he said, unclipping a device that looked like a large flashlight, and attaching it onto one of Njinga’s shoulder pauldrons. ‘When those bastards get hit with fifteen thousand lumens of light, especially with those goggles of theirs on, they’re going to be blind for long enough for us to pick them off one by one.’
He then opened up the metal contraption attached to his M-60, which turned out to be, after it had all been unfolded and locked into place, a number of thick steel panels that made up a shield that was five feet tall and three feet wide. This served as a bulletproof barrier that covered most of his body. Once it was set up, he glanced at his digital wristwatch.
‘It’s time,’ he grunted grimly. ‘I know it’s terrifying to have to step out there, directly into their line of fire, but the light and your armour will protect you, as will I, and the power of the Five Flames and the Great Mother. Stay close to the walls, but keep moving, and remember, your combat shotgun is loaded with alternating armour-piercing slugs, incendiary rounds, buckshot and exploding rounds; in short, my friend, you’re a walking tank. Pick your targets, but not too carefully; speed and intensity of fire is what we are after. I’m going to be going all out with this M-60, with the idea being that we’re going to make it a “mad minute”, just as we discussed. We step out there and we don’t stop firing until all our ammunition is spent. And remember, amid all the fury and the chaos, what it is we’re fighting for. Always remember that.’
Njinga nodded, but inside her suit her limbs had started to tremble with a terrible violence. She felt an irresistible urge to empty both her bladder and her bowels all of a sudden, while pulses of icy cold alternating with searing heat kept on washing through her every vein and artery. However, there was neither time to hesitate nor to doubt; Zakaria whispered a quick prayer and then closed the visor of his beautifully ornate helmet, which was fashioned in the baroque style of a lion’s face, and then he cocked the M-60. He slipped a pair of high-tech wraparound sunglasses, which would shield his eyes from the incapacitating light, over the eyeholes of his helmet.
‘The battle begins when I say “one”,’ he growled. ‘Is your shotgun ready?’
Sweating profusely inside the suit and trembling with an almost crippling apprehension, Njinga flicked the safety catch of the combat shotgun off.
‘Ready,’ she whispered hoarsely, the word forcing its way through a barrier of chattering teeth.
Zakaria gripped the machine gun loosely in his armoured hands and stood with his feet planted and wide apart.
‘Three … two … ONE!’
With both fear and dark excitement blitzing like veins of lightning through her nervous system, Njinga sprang out into the corridor, where just twenty metres away the amassed Huntsmen troops were waiting. Before she even stabilised herself or took aim she started firing madly at the wall of soldiers, who were crouched behind improvised shields like sofas and overturned tables and desks.
‘Light cannon on!’ Zakaria shouted in the lost language of the Kingdom of Alwa as he too burst out into the open.
At the very moment that the Huntsmen troops opened up with a withering barrage of counterfire, the voice-activated light cannon turned on, and entire area was lit up with what could only be described as the light of an exploding
