Page 135 of Throwing Fire

They quickly shift the barricade and file out into the hallway, stepping around the two dead Ojos and the one that’s collapsed against a wall, clutching his thigh and whimpering.

“We got separated and they pinned us down,” one of the rats tells me. “Captain Match was trying to get into the control room where they’re holding Acker.”

I tip my chin down the corridor. “That way?”

The rats nod.

“Any of you injured?”

“Pech is,” one of the rats says, looking at the third who has been silent.

Pech hunches his shoulders. “I’m okay. I can fight.”

“Stay here and guard our six,” I tell the injured rat. “Makesure that one doesn’t decide to become a martyr.” I hook my thumb at the still-breathing Ojos.

“Sir,” Pech protests.

I shake my head to shut him up. “I don’t have time to argue. Let’s go.”

I retrieve my kukri and head toward the control room.

Two more corridors and we find the same battle in reverse. A dozen rats cluster in the hallway around a set of double doors. Match and another rat with a flamethrower are working on burning their way through.

“Match!” I roar over the fire and milling bodies.

Match breaks off and steps back. “Snow?”

“Here,” I say, raising my good arm with its bloody kukri, in case he doesn’t recognize me with the breather on. The crowd parts and Match, his fur singed and smoking, strides toward me. We clasp forearms. “You incinerate the controls?”

He shakes his head. “Left them in case um came.”

“I’m here. Lemme at ‘em.”

The rats shuffle away from one wall, where there’s a blackened, cracked control panel.

I don’t believe in God. Helas. Any divine power. They abandoned me in the bowels of Tol Seng. But I’ll sacrifice at every altar on the planet for the rest of my days if my face still opens this fucking door.

I position myself in front of the scanner and pull off my breather, holding my breath. For good measure, I press my thumb against the bottom of the screen.

The screen scrolls.Voice authority?

Remembering who these fuckers have been impersonating, I say, “Halemano Hauser.”

The door opens.

Match and Exeter step through together. Match immediately lights up his flamethrower and screams fill the hallway along with fresh billows of black smoke.

I pull my breather back on and step into the control chamber.

There are too many bodies, too much motion, in too small a space. The control room is long but narrow. The bank of windows overlooking the deck is five meters from the door. The room’s broken into two tiers with consoles and seats closest to the windows, compressing all of us into an even narrower space.

Then I turn my head and see what got Match lighting his flamethrower.

Acker and Kez hang side-by-side at the far end of room, pinned to the wall’s high-end padding through their wrists. Acker’s muzzle is a mask of blood. His eye sockets are empty.

I roar and push my way toward them.

“Snow! Snow!” Exeter shouts as I behead an Ojos without taking my eyes off Kez’s hanging form.