Caliskan readied the gun again and delivered another lancing beam to the merged form of the silver figures. But now their armour resisted his attack: swelling in size, shimmering brightly, but not dissipating. Floyd wondered when they were going to retaliate, instead of just lapping it up. He had no sooner thought this than light scythed from the hovering ship, piercing Caliskan’s head.
He slumped to the ground next to his ship, the gun slipping from his fingers.
Floyd guessed that answered his doubts about the man.
The six men had only sustained one injury. While the first party stepped over Caliskan’s body and examined his ship, the other three worked their way along the side of the platform until they reached Cassandra, her body still draped limply over the railings.
Auger tapped Floyd’s elbow and gestured “down.” Floyd motioned for her to wait, torn between fear and an urgent need to know what the men were interested in. They knew Cassandra was dead. Why did her corpse concern them so much?
The brightest explosion yet tore the horizon open. Floyd jammed his eyes shut, but still saw everything in negative as the glare tore through the metalwork. A few seconds later, he felt that same freight-train shudder as the entire tower rattled.
“Getting closer,” Auger said. Her hand was on the melted form of the weapon Caliskan had given her, but she had not yet removed it from her belt.
He risked another glance across the observation deck. The three figures had convened around Cassandra’s splayed form. Their silver armour had merged and was now pushing from its chest region a thick, splayed tentacle, as wide across as a thigh. With a vile questing motion, the tentacle touched Cassandra in different places, gently, methodically, as if trying to elicit some last twitch of life.
“What are they looking for?” he asked queasily.
“I don’t know,” Auger replied.
The three figures stepped back as one. The silver tentacle suddenly gathered strength, whipping back before plunging into Cassandra’s chest. The ensemble took a further step back, and as they did so they peeled the impaled body from the railings. Then the tentacle made a flicking motion too fast to follow and the speared body flew apart in five or six pieces.
The bloody tentacle crept back into the linked body. The three men remained merged together for a moment or two longer, and then the armour began to divide, separating them into individual entities once more. They looked around, stepped away from each other and once again began to search the deck.
“Whatever they’re about, they’re not done yet,” Auger said. She drew the melted gun and pressed it to her chest, ready for use.
Floyd looked down. She must have already realised that the stairwell offered no escape. It ended less than a dozen steps below them, hanging uselessly above empty space. It was at least thirty metres down to the second-stage observation deck, and the only possible routes to it were via the elevator shaft (assuming that wasn’t severed as well) or the girders forming the legs of the tower itself.
They weren’t going anywhere.
Floyd looked back to Caliskan’s ship. Two of the figures had gone aboard while one waited outside. Floyd tapped Auger’s shoulder, alerting her to what was happening just as one of the men emerged with a box. A moment later, the second man brought out the other two boxes of artefacts.
Floyd glanced back to the other three. They had left Cassandra’s remains where they had fallen: whatever they were looking for, they had obviously not found it on or inside her body.
He returned his attention to the others, feeling Auger resettling herself, raising the silver gun a little higher. Two men stood outside with the three boxes, while the third had gone back in again.
“Careful,” he hissed to Auger.
Then he noticed something new nearby: a metallic smudge in the air, like a thousand twinkling bees, which somehow moved towards the tower against the force of the wind. He flinched, thinking it had to be something to do with the men who had killed Cassandra and Caliskan. But the smudge was approaching them in a series of furtive darts and feints, suggesting that it was just as eager as they were to avoid the attention of the search party. Close to Floyd and Auger now, it settled over them, concealing itself in the same hiding place. The twinkling mass flexed and flowed, forming brief patterns and shapes.
Floyd touched Auger gently on the shoulder and directed her attention to the dancing form. She flinched as well—she hadn’t seen it until then—and snapped the gun towards it. The smudge pulled away nervously, but didn’t retreat beyond the sanctuary of the stairwell. The gun trembled in Auger’s hand, but she held back from firing. Then, very slowly, she let the barrel fall until it was no longer aimed at the smudge.
For four or five seconds, nothing happened.
Then the smudge darted for her, wrapping itself around her helmet. Auger thrashed at the halo of twinkling stars, trying to swat them away. She cried out in terror or pain, and was abruptly silenced. Horrified, Floyd watched the cloud of twinkling things shrink in size as one by one they found a way into her helmet.
Then Auger was suddenly very still.
The stairwell shook, loosening rusted bolts free into the endless space below them. Tons of metal went crashing down through rusted spots in the observation deck, tumbling down to dash against the lower limits of the tower. Squeals and groans of agonised metal bellowed through the night.
Something snapped inside Floyd. Before Auger could react, he pried open the stiff fingers of her hand and removed the gun. The gun seemed eager to oblige, squirming from her grip to his almost as if alive. In his own gloved hand, it felt as fragile as something made from aluminium foil.
Auger showed no reaction. She was perfectly still now, a constellation of twinkling lights swarming behind the glass of her helmet.
So they’d got her, after all. Soon, he presumed, they would do the same thing to him. There was no way off this tower, and the three searchers would soon be upon them. If he waited, there might be no time for even a gesture of defiance, however futile it might be.
Sometimes, a gesture was all you were allowed.
He pointed the gun at the nearest silver figure and squeezed the teatlike nub that he hoped was its trigger.
The gun quickened in his hand, writhing like an eel and spitting out a blast of something. The figure’s strange armour came apart like ash on the wind. Floyd fired again, blowing a chunk out of the exposed Slasher. He fell to the deck, lost amidst the tangle of broken and buckled metal.
Now the other five were joining forces. The three near Caliskan’s ship walked close enough to each other for their armour to merge, while the other pair combined their own armour and began to approach the trio. Floyd levelled the gun again, aiming it at the larger group. Again it shifted in his hands, and again the silver armour dissipated, blowing away in twinkling flurries. But this time the damage was much less significant, the combined armour having formed some kind of reinforcing shield.
Beside him, Auger finally moved. “Give me the gun,” she said.
She took it from him before waiting for his answer. She made quick adjustments to the settings, then sprang out of their hiding place and fired the gun with inhuman speed and accuracy, squeezing off burst after burst until the barrel was as bright as molten iron. Her shots were only intermittently aimed at the advancing party. She had gone mostly for the ship itself, shooting at its gunports.
She fell back into shelter. “I’ve bought us a little time. I hope it’s enough.”
“Is is safe to talk?”
“For now. My reinforcements are jamming their communications and sensor activities.”