Unaha-Closp caught her neatly in mid-air before she hit the floor and floated her out of the platform area, through the first set of side doors it found, leading towards the control rooms and accommodation section.
Balveda started to come round in the fresh air, before they had gone more than ten metres along the tunnel. Explosions boomed behind them, and the air moved in pulses along the gallery like beats of a huge erratic heart. The lights flickered; water started to drip, then pour from the tunnel roof.
Just as well I don’t rust, Unaha-Closp said to itself, as it floated along the tube to the control room, the woman stirring in its force-field grip. It heard the noise of firing: laser fire, but it couldn’t tell whereabouts the firing was because the noise came from ahead and behind and above, through ventilation outlets.
“See… I’m fine…” Balveda muttered. The drone let her move; they were nearly at the control room, and the air was still fresh, the radiation level decreasing. More explosions rocked the station; Balveda’s hair, and the fur on her jacket, moved in the air current, releasing flakes of foam. Water streamed down, pattering and splashing.
The drone moved through the doors into the control room; the room’s lights did not flicker, and the air was clear. No water flowed from the ceiling, and only the woman’s body and its own casing dripped on the plastic-covered floor. “That’s better,” Unaha-Closp said. It laid the woman down on a chair. More muffled detonations shuddered through the rock and the air.
Lights flickered and flashed throughout the room, from every console and panel.
The drone sat the Culture woman up, then gently shoved her head down between her knees and fanned her face. The explosions boomed, shaking the atmosphere in the room like… like… like stamping feet!
Dum-drum-dum. Dum-drum-dum.
Unaha-Closp hauled Balveda’s head up, and was about to scoop her from the chair when the footsteps from beyond the far door, no longer masked by the sound of explosions from the station itself, suddenly swelled in volume; the doors were kicked open. Xoxarle, wounded, limping as he ran, water streaming from his body, cannoned into the room; he saw Balveda and the drone and headed straight for them.
Unaha-Closp rammed forward, right at the Idiran’s head. Xoxarle caught the machine in one hand and slammed it into a control console, smashing screens and light panels in a fury of sparks and acrid smoke. Unaha-Closp stayed there, jammed halfway into the fused and spluttering switch assembly, smoke pouring out around it.
Balveda opened her eyes, stared round, her face bloodied and wild and frightened; she saw Xoxarle and started forward towards him, opening her mouth but only coughing. Xoxarle grabbed her, pinning her arms to her side. He looked round, to the doors he had smashed through, pausing for a second to draw breath. He was weakening, he knew. His keratinous back plates were almost burnt through where the Changer had shot him, and his leg was hit, too, slowing him all the time. The human would catch him soon… He looked into the face of the female he held and decided not to kill her immediately.
“Perhaps you’ll stay the little one’s trigger finger…” Xoxarle breathed, holding Balveda over his back with one arm and hobbling quickly to the door leading to the dormitories and accommodation section and then to the repair area. He kneed the doors open and let them close behind him. “…But I doubt it,” he added, and hobbled down the short tunnel, then through the first dormitory, under the swaying nets, in a flickering, uncertain light, as the sprinklers started to come on above.
In the control room, Unaha-Closp pulled itself free, its casing covered in burning pieces of plastic wire covering. “Filthy bastard,” it said groggily, wavering through the air away from the smoking console, “you walking cell-menagerie…” Unaha-Closp turned unsteadily through the smoke and made for the doors Xoxarle had come through. It hesitated there, then with a sort of shaking, shrugging motion moved away down the tunnel, gathering speed.
Horza had lost the Idiran. He had followed him down the tunnel, then through some broken doors. There was a choice then: left, right or ahead; three short corridors, lights flickering, water showering from the roof, smoke crawling under the ceiling in lazy waves.
Horza had gone right, the way the Idiran would have gone if he was heading for the transit tubes, and if he had worked out the right direction, and if he didn’t have some other plan.
But he’d chosen the wrong way.
He held the gun tight in his hands. His face ran with the false tears of the showering water. The gun hummed through his gloves; a swollen ball of pain rose from his belly, filling his throat and his eyes and souring his mouth, weighing in his hands, clamping his teeth. He stopped at another junction, near the dormitories, in an agony of indecision, looking from one direction to another while the water fell and the smoke crept and the lights guttered. He heard a scream, and set off that way.
The woman struggled. She was strong, but still powerless, even in his weakened grasp. Xoxarle limped along the corridor, towards the great cavern.
Balveda screamed, tried to wriggle her way free, then use her legs to kick at the Idiran’s thighs and knees. But she was held too tightly, too high on Xoxarle’s back. Her arms were pinned at her sides; her legs could only beat against the keratin plate which curved out from the Idiran’s rump. Behind her, the sleep-nets of the Command System’s builders swayed gently in the tides of air which swept through the long dormitory with each fresh explosion from the platform area and the wrecked trains.
She heard firing from somewhere behind them, and doors at the far end of the long room blew out. The Idiran heard the noise, too; just before they crashed through the exit from the dormitory his head turned to glance back in the direction the noise had come from. Then they were in the short corridor and out onto the terrace which ran round the deep cavern of the repair and maintenance area.
On one side of the huge cavern, a fallen, tangled heap of smashed carriages and wrecked machinery blazed. The train Wubslin had started moving had been rammed into the rear of the train already in the long scooped-out alcove which hung over the cavern floor. Parts of both the front trains had scattered like toys; down to the cavern floor, piled against the walls, crushed into the roof. The foam fell through the cavern, sizzling on the hot debris of the wreck, where flames spilled up from crumpled carriages, and sparks flashed.
Xoxarle slipped on the terrace, and for one second Balveda thought they would both skid off its surface, over the guard rails and down to the jumble of machinery and equipment on the cold, hard floor below. But the Idiran steadied himself, turned and pounded along the broad walkway towards the metal catwalk which crossed the breadth of the cavern and led over the far edge of the terrace into another tunnel — the tunnel which led to the transit tubes.
She heard the Idiran breathe. Her ringing ears caught the crackle of flames, the hiss of foam and the laboured wheeze of Xoxarle’s breath. He held her easily, as though she weighed nothing. She cried out in frustration, heaved her body with all her strength, trying to break his grip or even just get an arm free, struggling weakly.
They came to the suspended catwalk, and again the Idiran almost slipped, then again caught himself in time and steadied. He started along the narrow gantry, his limping, unsteady tread shaking it, making it sound like a metal drum. Her back hurt as she strained; Xoxarle’s grip stayed firm.
Then he skidded to a halt, brought her round in front of his huge, saddle-face. He held her by both shoulders for a moment, then took her right arm by the elbow with one hand, keeping hold of her right shoulder with the other fist.