Harris fired his weapon and dropped "Blake" in his tracks, but even as he did so, a swarm of Lilliputians equipped with floater paks came rising up out of the briefcase.
"Jesus Christ," Harris said, grabbing for his communicator. "He's got a chronoplate in there! Donnelly, Kruger! Fire! Fire!"
As the two men laid down a crossfire in the hospital corridor, Harris shouted into the communicator.
"Mayday! Mayday! Assault in progress at Post 1!"
The lift tube doors revolved around and a group of hospital staff members stepped out right into the line of fire. Three of them were killed instantly, the rest dispersed, screaming and beating at their flaming clothing or clutching at themselves
Where a dozen miniature lasers had sliced through bone and sinew as easily as if it were warm butter.
The Lilliputians swarmed into the lift tube and more kept on coming from the briefcase. Four security men came running down the hall and two of them went down at once. Donnelly, trying to get around the screaming wounded, caught several laser beams in his head and upper torso. He fell to the floor without a sound.
"Harris, this is Steiger. What's going on down there?" "It's a goddamn invasion!"
Harris shouted into the communicator as reinforcements from the other hospital entrances started to arrive upon the scene. "We're got casualties down here! I've got several men down! They're coming through a temporal transit field, Lilliputians, hundreds of them! I can't get to it! They've gotten to a lift tube and they're headed up your way!"
"Damn it!" Steiger swore. "How the hell did they get through? Destroy that field, Harris! Cut 'em off, right now, no matter what it takes!"
"Right," said Harris, gritting his teeth. He dropped the communicator and took out his plasma sidearm. "My goddamn fault. My own, stupid, goddamn fault…"
He held his plasma pistol out before him, took a deep breath and starting running down the hall, right into the line of fire. He screamed, "Get down! Get down!" and fired as he ran, his pistol cycling rapidly. The Lilliputians returned his fire, but he kept on coming, right into the deadly web of laser beams, aiming at the briefcase that a small band of Lilliputians was frantically trying to shove into an open lift tube. Harris kept on coming, screaming as he charged them, firing into their midst, incinerating them as they swarmed up out of the temporal transit field and destroying the skirmish line they'd quickly set up in the lobby, pinning his men down. He was within fifteen feet of the lift tubes when his plasma pistol cycled through, the charge pak exhausted.
With a roar of rage, he flung it at them and made a flying dive over their heads, crushing a half a dozen of them beneath him as he fell. Smashing at the Lilliputians with his fists and sweeping them out of the way, he scrambled for the briefcase, reaching inside and with his last breath, fumbling for the controls. He didn't make it. He died before he could shut down the field.
Steiger was running flat out down the hall, shouting instructions as he went.
"They're on their way up! Cover the stairs and fire exits! Cordon off the area around all access points to this corridor! Nobody gets through! Heads up, people!
Here they come!"
The first tube came up and the chime rang softly as the door revolved. Steiger's men fired as it slid open. The interior of the lift tube was slagged with plasma, but not before some of the Lilliputians managed to get out, some coming out low, on foot, firing as they ran, while others came out high, swarming out in their floater paks and rapidly dispersing, firing down at the men in the corridor below them.
At the same time, a cry went up from down the hall. A squad of airborne
Lilliputians was coming up the fire stairs. The men covering the stairs immediately opened fire as Steiger ran from one point of conflict to the other. A filament-thin laser beam lanced past his left temple, missing his head by a quarter of an inch. He threw himself to one side, struck the corridor wall, and spun around. A Lilliputian in a floater pak came down at him from just below the ceiling, like a fighter on a strafing run, his tiny autopulser cycling rapidly. Steiger fired and the Lilliputian burst into flame, then exploded as the tanks on his tiny floater pak went up. Steiger shielded his face as little bits of burning shrapnel rained down on him.
Behind him, down the hall, the corridor was in flames. The Lilliputians were outgunned, but the same plasma weapons that enabled Steiger's men to shoot down such small and rapidly moving targets were also setting the hospital on fire. The sprinklers had gone off, but they were not sufficient to the task and Steiger couldn't risk sending in the fire brigade until the battle was all over. It wasn't simply a question of defeating the tiny invaders; they had to do it within the next few minutes or else the fire would endanger the patients on the lower floors.
He rushed to the stairwell. Several of his men were dead, some killed by the tiny commandos, but at least two were killed by fire from their own men, trying to shoot down airborne Lilliputians who were darting among them like angry wasps.
The walls and stairs were blackened and burning as Steiger came through the door, but none of the Lilliputians had gotten past his men. There was a pitched battle in the stairwell as the tiny invaders were being driven back.
And then another cry went up. They were coming out of a second lift tube. Steiger and his men ran out into the hall. Perhaps two dozen Lilliputians were in full flight, hurtling towards them down the corridor. Steiger's men and the Lilliputians opened fire simultaneously. The man on Steiger's right screamed briefly as a laser burned through his brain and
he fell dead on the floor. Half a dozen Lilliputians went up in a blast of plasma, several of them spinning end over end, in flames and out of control, exploding as they hit the corridor walls and their propellant tanks went up.
A few of them got past Steiger and he winced with pain as a laser burned his shoulder, then he was turning and sprinting after them. They were headed down the corridor, straight for Forrester’s room. Several of them hovered around the door lock, providing covering fire while two of them aimed their lasers at the lockwork.
They burned through the door in a matter of seconds. Steiger and his men ran directly into the deadly laser fire, firing into the beams with their plasma weapons to break up their collimation.
Steiger couldn't believe it. The Lilliputians seemed to have no regard whatsoever for their own survival. Like miniature kamikazes, they flew right at him and his men, corkscrewing in erratic loop-de-loops with their jets on full power. It was like trying to shoot down a flight of crazed hummingbirds. The man on Steiger's left fell. Steiger bent down and wrenched the plasma rifle out of the dead man's grasp, but there wasn't even enough time to slap a fresh charge paclass="underline" into it. He brought up the rifle stock sharply, smacking a Lilliputian in full flight. The Lilliputian caromed off the rifle stock like a baseball and tumbled end over end, his jets damaged and out of control. He slammed into another tiny commando and they exploded in mid air, the shrapnel from the floater paks lacerating Steiger's face. He didn't even feel it. He bolted straight for Forrester's room, but the Lilliputians had already flown inside. They swooped down over the bed, their lasers playing over the shape beneath the covers. As Steiger burst into the room, he heard someone yell, "GET
BACK!" and he recoiled as the blue mist of Cherenkov radiation flooded the room.
The awesome weapon's transponder lapped directly into the energy field of a neutron star by means of an internal chronocircuitry link with an Einstein-Rosen Generator in outer space. The result was a limitless supply of "ammunition" in the form of energy leached through a time warp from a star. The magnetic field generated around the muzzle formed an invisible forcing cone that allowed selective fire-a stream of neutrons fired on either a tight beam or a wide dispersal