In Enemy Territory - Shannon West Page 0,64
was a sudden, mad rush for the door. Still, there were some twenty men left in the hall when Pax slammed and barricaded the door from the inside.
His relief was short-lived, however, as he heard the noise beginning to filter in from outside. The other guards were clamoring to get in and beginning to hammer on the door with their fists and shout curses and threats he couldn’t understand anyway. They pounded and yelled and made an awful racket. One phrase was repeated over and over again.
“Rasc, Setin! What are they saying?” he shouted over at them. He had to shout to be heard because the guards outside were so raucous and loud.
“What do you think? They’re saying they’re going to kill us,” Rasc yelled back. “They sound like they mean it too.”
“Fuck that,” Kylon muttered to himself and pulled the old server to their feet, hauling them over to where Rasc and Setin stood beside one of the barricaded windows. He held a disruptor to the server’s head and told Setin to pull the table slowly back and open the covering, leaving only the bars.
There was an immediate uproar when the guards spotted the open window until Kylon aimed straight into the crowd with the disruptor set on stun. He fired several times and watched the nearest guards fall to the ground, while the others scattered and fell back.
“Try that shit again and the servers all die!” he yelled at them in Earthan, knowing they could understand him very well. They’d been in the Alliance after all, and Earthan was the accepted way to communicate for many years. He stepped back, dragging the server with him, so Setin could cover the window again.
Rasc stood up in front of him and blocked his way. “I hope you’re bluffing. I’m not killing these innocent servers, and I won’t let you do it either.”
Kylon grinned at him. “How unexpectedly noble of you. No, I’m not killing anyone, unless they give me good reason—does that suit you?”
“Yes,” he said, still sounding bad tempered. “I just didn’t expect those guards to react that way. So violently. You’re gonna get us all killed.”
He leaned over and kissed Rasc’s lips, which made Setin do a double take and Rasc rub it off. “Stop that,” he growled.
Kylon laughed. “Don’t worry so much. This has been fun so far.”
“Fun?” Rasc turned around, muttering about crazy-ass Tygerian bastards. Kylon was still chuckling as he met Pax in the middle of the hall.
“That didn’t go too badly, hmm?”
“Could have been worse,” Kylon agreed.
Pax nodded toward the outside. “What’s their next move, you think?”
“I’m not sure,” Kylon answered. “I think we’ll be hearing from the commandant next, but it might take a while yet. Setin talked to one of those guards. He said the commandant had been away for a few days on some kind of vacation at his place on the island. They had to call him back, and he’s not happy about it. The guard said it will go badly for us because of it.”
Pax shrugged and grinned. “We’ll see.”
Kylon clapped him on the back. “That’s right. The guard also told Setin that the new ambassador wants a meeting with the commandant. He’s demanding it in fact. Another reason he’ll be in a foul mood, but it will help us to have the ambassador present when we talk to the commandant.”
Kylon gazed around at the few windows and doors. “I say let’s barricade those up a bit better and secure the guards. Tie them if we can find some rope.”
“None in here, but we can tear up their robes and make strips of cloth and that should hold them,” Pax replied.
Looking over at the guards, Kylon saw that a few were waking up. “I’ll take care of them. You handle the windows and doors. Then we figure something out about the servers in that storage area. There may not be enough air in there for so many of them for much longer.”
He turned and went back over to where Rasc, Setin, and Egam had the guards lined up against the wall. “We need to separate them. Spread them out along the wall so they can’t communicate with each other. Tell them no talking at all. We don’t want them plotting together. Setin, tear some strips off each of their robes and tie them up. Egam and Rasc, you cover him.”
He stayed to watch the first one to make sure Setin was doing it right, and listened for a moment