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That only took five minutes or so and when she was done Wendy and Shari still hadn't turned up. She wasn't worried, the situation was a simple binary solution set. If Shari and Wendy turned up before she got overrun holding the door, they would all leave together. If not she'd die here. She didn't like the children very much and she could take or leave Shari. But Wendy was the only friend she had; if she left her she would be all alone, without memories and without a purpose. There wouldn't be much point in leaving. Besides, she knew Wendy would do the same for her.
She watched the door calmly for a few minutes, considering her options, then decided that it was not a good use of her time. Keeping one eye on the door she started going through the open lockers, looking for anything useful.
She found a few candy bars and snacks, a few small tools that might or might not come in handy and, most importantly, a physical map of the hydroponics section. She wasn't sure that sprites would work in the area; they tended to stay to the main routes rather than the back ways the group was going to prefer.
At the end of the lockers along the right hand wall was a box of hazardous material suits and three cases of general respirators. She took one of the suits and filled it with the smallest respirators she could find and a selection of the hazardous waste suits; if they were available to perso
Elgars walked back to the front, dropped her acquisitions, peeked back out the door and frowned. There still wasn't anyone around. She wasn't impatient, exactly, just well aware of the need for speed. As she started to duck back into the room she heard a racket of railgun fire down the cross-corridor; the Posleen had arrived first.
She knelt in the doorway and trained the AIW towards the opening of the cross-corridor. As the first Posleen came into sight, she heard a splintering sound to her right. Sparing a brief glance in that direction she saw a portion of the wall shatter and Wendy step into the main corridor.
* * *
Wendy spotted Elgars just as the grenade launcher of the AIW chugged. She cursed and pulled Billy through the hole in the wall.
"Go!" she said, pointing at the entrance where Elgars kneeled.
The boy nodded his head and sprinted across the corridor, carefully keeping to the crossing points of the tram-track, but not slowing or stopping at all.
"What's going on?" Shari asked, pushing children through the opening.
"What do you think?" the younger woman snapped. "Elgars took care of the first scouts, but we have to move."
"Get over there," Shari said. "I'll push them through. You go get a gun or something."
* * *
Elgars nodded to the boy as he skidded through the doorway. "Left wall," she said, with a gesture of her chin. "Grab the smallest pistol and the three boxes of ammunition by it then line up against the wall. Make sure the other kids line up with you."
Billy picked himself up off the floor and darted to the table, grabbing the Glock and the boxes of .45 ammunition.
Elgars directed the next three children to the side of the room then ducked out of the way as Wendy ran through the door. "About time."
"Sorry," Wendy said. "I was hanging around."
She had been carefully pla
"Grab the MP-5," the captain said as another child came through the door. "They're going to be back here in a second."
"Nobody has a sense of humor around here," Wendy said with a shrug, picking up the submachine gun and racking in a round. "It's worse than dealing with Danes."
"What are you talking about?" Elgars snarled.
"Never mind," Wendy answered, kneeling on the opposite side of the door as the first Posleen came around the corner. "It's a human thing," she added, hitting the shotgun-toting normal in the chest with a three-round burst.
Behind that one, however, there were four more. The first stumbled over one of the bodies in the corridor and was easy meat for Elgars, but two of the others simply jumped the blockage, landing in the middle of the intersection.
Wendy fired at one of them in the air, spreading the fire like shooting at skeet, and hit it on the flank. The damage from the relatively small rounds was not fatal, however, and the normal spun in place and fired its railgun down the main corridor.
The last child, Kelly, was crossing as the normal fired. Most of the rounds flew wide, but one slashed through the back of the child's calf in a bloody mess.
The girl slid to a stop on the hydroponics side of the tram-track, lying on her stomach and screaming.
Wendy emptied the rest of her magazine into the centauroid with a shriek of primordial anger as Elgars neatly dispatched the last survivor.
"Motherfuckers!" Wendy shouted, her nostrils flaring. "I hate the fucking Posties!"
"Give me a hand," Shari gasped, dragging her daughter through the opening.
Elgars ripped the knife out of the juncture of the door and sealed it, coding the lock to indicate a biochem emergency on the inside; it wasn't going to open without heavy explosives or a supervisor's codes.
Wendy pulled out her first aid kit and first numbed the wound then wrapped it tight, cutting the flow of blood down to a trickle.
"It missed the artery," she said, tightening the bandage. "It hit the veins, but they'll keep. It's going to be hard to walk on, though."
Shari rocked her daughter, who was still wailing like a lost soul. "It's okay, Kelly. Shhh."
Elgars suddenly leaned forward and struck the child across the face with an open hand slap. "Quiet."
"God damn you!" Shari shouted leaning towards the captain. She suddenly found a pistol socketed in between her nose and her cheekbone.
"We don't have time," Elgars said coldly. "We have zero time. She has to get up and move. And she has to do it without shrieking. Or we all die." She pulled the pistol back and holstered it. "Now go pick up your rifle and harness; we need to go. Now."
Shari nodded after a moment and stood the now quietly weeping Kelly on her feet. "Can you walk on it?"
"It doesn't hurt," Kelly said quietly. "I think so."
"Then let's get out of here," Wendy said, putting the MP-5 on safe with a distinctive "click."
Elgars suddenly realized the younger woman had been standing directly behind her. She turned around and looked at her, but Wendy just returned her appraisal coldly.
Wendy walked over to the table and looked at the remaining weapons and ammo. "Shari, come over here."
Shari took the combat harness from the younger woman and threw it over her shoulders and accepted the Steyr bullpup assault rifle.
"You arm it by pulling back on the charging handle," Wendy said, pointing to the device. "And here's the safety."
"Got it," Shari said nervously. "I've fired before, but not much."
"That's why I want you to take the nitrogen," Wendy added, pulling off the pack. "You've seen how I do it. You open the doors, we'll cover and do the entry on them. I'm also going to pile you with anything that the kids can't carry; that means I can move faster."
"Okay," Shari said.
"Billy," Elgars said. "You're going to have to carry more ammo."
"He's just a boy," Shari protested quietly. "He's carrying enough."
"He can carry more," Elgars pointed out. "Can't you?"
The boy nodded and took the additional boxes of ammunition and a harness.
"You know the different kind of magazines?" Elgars asked. "If you do, when we're ru