Deathstalker 02 - Deathstalker Rebellion

you saying you don't believe in the Cause anymore?"
    "Of course I still believe in the Cause! I'm here, aren't I? I'm just saying it's time for someone else to carry the banner. Someone younger, who doesn't feel the cold in his bones or wake up coughing his lungs up every morning. We've done our bit. And I'm too old to die on a strange world beside strange people, fighting to free a few clones from a factory."
    "You'll get your second wind soon," said Random lamely. "You'll feel better then."
    "Don't bloody patronize me, Random," said Storm, and they strode along in silence after that.
    Until the Reject in the lead came to a sudden halt and raised a hand to stop those behind him. Everyone stood quietly together in the pool of the lanterns'
    light, staring into the gloom ahead of them, listening carefully. Storm looked anxiously about him, but Random and Specter Alice were too busy listening to pay
    him any attention. Random frowned, concentrating, reaching out with his altered senses. He could just make out a low, regular thudding, overlapping itself again and again, coming from somewhere up ahead in the tunnel.
    "What is it?" he asked quietly. "What's coming?"
    "Wolfe tunnel rats," said Specter Alice. "They have devices for detecting movement in nearby tunnels. They're close now. Brace yourselves."
    And as suddenly as that, everyone had a weapon of some sort in their hands.
    Mostly, swords and axes, with the occasional length of spiked chain. Random and Ruby moved automatically to stand together, swords at the ready, leaving Storm to fend for himself. He glared at their unresponsive backs and hefted his own sword uncertainly. The steady thudding grew nearer and nearer. Random's free hand hovered over the disrupter on his belt, but he didn't draw it. He didn't like to think what a ricocheting energy beam would do in these close quarters.
    He just hoped the Wolfe fighters had had the same thought. The wall to his right cracked apart suddenly, torn from floor to ceiling, and men in armored battle suits lurched out into the tunnel. They moved surprisingly quickly amid the whine of supporting servomechanisms and tore into the massed group of rebels with massive axes and long swords that only powered armor could have wielded.
    The two sides clashed together, the rebels darting around and among the slower armored men, searching out their blind spots and weak points with flashing swords and axes. There wasn't much room for maneuver in the confined space.
    Instead, there was an endlessly shifting, boiling mass of bodies packed together, taking a stand just long enough for a solid blow before slipping away again. The slower and the unlucky cried out, and blood spurted in the thick air, and those who fell to be trampled underfoot rarely rose to fight again. Swords
    and axes bounced harmlessly away from the solid plates of the Wolfe armor, but there were weaker, vulnerable spots at joints and junctures, for those who knew where to look for them. But the armored men could take a dozen hits and press on unharmed, while a blow powered by their servomotors could cut clean through a Reject's body. And there were far more armored men than Rejects.
    One by one the rebels fell, pushed farther and farther back down the tunnel.
    Three armored men were down, dispatched by blows to neck or eyes, but only three out of many. Still the Rejects fought on, determined and far from desperate.
    Their long adaptation to Technos III's extremes had made them somewhat more than human, and they were much more used to the fighting conditions underground. They swarmed around the armored men, ducking and dodging blows with almost impossible speed, never letting up in their attack. And slowly, step-by-step, their retreat stopped.
    Right in the thick of it all, Ruby Journey braced herself and swung her sword with both hands. The blade powered around in a tight arc and sheared clean through a soldier's armored neck. The helmeted head bounced away across the sea of heaving shoulders before finally falling to the floor, the look of astonishment still clear on the bloody face. Random laughed and roared his approval. He brought his sword around in an arc, only to see the blade bounce harmlessly back from a suddenly raised armored arm. The impact jarred the sword right out of his hand, and it fell to disappear in the mess of heaving bodies.
    The Wolfe mercenary grinned and drew back his sword for a killing thrust. Ruby saw and cried out, but she was too far away