“Well,” said Unaha-Closp’s voice, “that sounds like a lot of fun. And what if things go badly?”
“That’s too negative an attitude to battle, Aviger.” Dorolow’s high-pitched voice broke in, “You have to be positive. Contest is formative; battle is a testing, war a part of life and the evolutionary process. In its extremity, we find ourselves.”
“…Usually in the shit,” Yalson said. Horza grinned.
“Yalson,” Dorolow began, “even if you don’t be—”
“Hold it,” Horza said suddenly. The screen near his cheek had flickered. “Wait there. I’m picking up some sound from ahead.” He stopped, sat still in mid-air and put the sound from outside through the helmet speakers.
A low noise, deep and boomy, like heavy surf from a long way off, or a thunderstorm in distant mountains.
“Well, there’s something making a noise up there,” Horza said.
“How far to the next station?” Yalson said.
“About two kilometres.”
“Think it’s them?” Neisin sounded nervous.
“Probably,” Horza said. “OK. I’m going ahead. Yalson, put Balveda in the restrainer harness. Everybody check weapons. No noise. Wubslin, Neisin, go forward slowly. Stop as soon as you can see the station. I’m going to try talking to these guys.”
The noise boomed vaguely on, making him think of a rockslide, heard from a mine deep inside a mountain.
He approached the station. A blast door came into view round a corner. The station would be only another hundred metres beyond. He heard some heavy clunking noises; they came down the dark tunnel, deep and resonant, hardly muffled by the distance, sounding like huge switches being closed, massive chains being fastened. The suit registered organic molecules in the air — Idiran scent. He passed the edge of the blast door and saw the station.
There was light in station six, dim and yellow, as though from a weak torch. He waited for Wubslin and Neisin to tell him they could see the station from their tunnels, then he went closer.
A Command System train stood in station six, its rotund bulk three storeys tall and three hundred metres long, half filling the cylindrical cavern. The light came from the train’s far end, high at the front, where the control deck was. The sounds came from the train, too. He moved across the foot tunnel so he could see the rest of the station.
At the far end of the platform floated the Mind.
He stared at it for a moment, then magnified the image to make sure. It looked genuine; an ellipsoid, maybe fifteen metres long and three in diameter, silvery yellow in the weak light spilling from the train’s control cabin, and floating in the stale air like a dead fish on the surface of a still pond. He checked the suit’s mass sensor. It registered the fuzzy signal of the train’s reactor, but nothing else.
“Yalson,” he said, whispering even though he knew it was unnecessary, “anything on that mass sensor?”
“Just a weak trace; a reactor, I guess.”
“Wubslin,” Horza said, “I can see what looks like the Mind in the station, floating at the far end. But it’s not showing on either sensor. Would its AG make it invisible to the sensors?”
“Shouldn’t,” Wubslin’s puzzled voice came back. “Might fool a passive gravity sensor, but not—”
A loud, metallic breaking noise came from the train. Horza’s suit registered an abrupt increase in local radiation. “Holy shit!” he said.
“What’s happening?” Yalson said. More clicking, snapping noises echoed through the station, and another weak, yellow light appeared, from beneath the reactor car in the middle of the train.
“They’re fucking about with the reactor carriage, that’s what’s happening,” Horza said.
“God,” Wubslin said. “Don’t they know how old all this stuff is?”
“What are they doing that for?” Aviger said.
“Could be trying to get the train to run under its own power,” Horza said. “Crazy bastards.”
“Maybe they’re too lazy to push their prize back to the surface,” the drone suggested.
“These… nuclear reactors, they can’t explode, can they?” Aviger said, just as a blinding blue light burst from under the centre of the train. Horza flinched, his eyes closed. He heard Wubslin shout something. He waited for the blast, the noise, death.
He looked up. The light still flashed and sparkled, under the reactor car. He heard an erratic hissing noise, like static.
“Horza!” Yalson shouted.
“God’s balls!” Wubslin said. “I nearly filled my pants.”
“It’s OK,” Horza said. “I thought they’d blown the damn thing up. What is that, Wubslin?”
“Welding, I think,” Wubslin said. “Electric arc.”
“Right,” Horza said. “Let’s stop these crazies before they blow us all away. Yalson, join me. Dorolow, meet up with Wubslin. Aviger, stay with Balveda.”
It took a few minutes for the others to arrange themselves. Horza watched the bright, flickering blue light as it sizzled away under the centre of the train. Then it stopped. The station was lit only by the two weak lights from the control deck and reactor car. Yalson floated down the foot tunnel and landed gently at Horza’s side.
“Ready,” Dorolow said over the intercom. Then a screen in Horza’s helmet flashed; a speaker beeped in his ear. Something had transmitted a signal near by; not one of their suits, or the drone.
“What was that?” Wubslin said. Then: “Look, there. On the ground. Looks like a communicator.” Horza and Yalson looked at each other. “Horza,” Wubslin said, “there’s a communicator on the floor of the tunnel here; I think it’s on. It must have picked up the noise of Dorolow setting down beside me. That was what transmitted; they’re using it as a bug.”
“Sorry,” Dorolow said.
“Well, don’t touch the thing,” Yalson said quickly. “Could be boobied.”
“So. Now they know we’re here,” Aviger said.
“They were going to know soon anyway,” Horza said. “I’ll try hailing them; everybody ready, in case they don’t want to talk.”
Horza cut his AG and walked to the end of the tunnel, almost onto the level platform of the station. Another communicator lying there transmitted its single pulse. Horza looked at the great, dark train and switched on his suit PA. He drew a breath, ready to speak in Idiran.
Something flashed from a slit-like window near the rear of the train. His head was knocked back inside the helmet, and he fell, stunned, his ears ringing. The noise of the shot echoed through the station. The suit alarm beeped frantically at him. Horza rolled over against the tunnel wall; more shots slammed down on him, flaring against the suit helmet and body.
Yalson ducked and ran. She skidded to the lip of the tunnel and raked fire over the window the shots were coming from, then swivelled, grabbed Horza by one arm and pulled him further into the tunnel. Plasma bolts crashed into the wall he’d been lying against. “Horza?” she shouted, shaking him.
“Command override, level zero,” a small voice chirped in Horza’s buzzing ears. “This suit has sustained system-fatal damage automatically voiding all warranties from this point; immediate total overhaul required. Further use at wearer’s risk. Powering down.”
Horza tried to tell Yalson he was all right, but the communicator was dead. He pointed to his head, to make her understand this. Then more shots, from the nose of the train, came bursting into the foot tunnel. Yalson dived to the floor and started firing back. “Fire!” she yelled to the others. “Get those bastards!”
Horza watched Yalson shooting at the far end of the train. Laser trails flicked out from the left side of their tunnel, tracer shells from the right, as the others joined in. The station filled with a spastic, blazing light; shadows leapt and danced across the walls and ceiling. He lay there, stunned, dull-headed, listening to the muffled cacophony of sound breaking against his suit like surf. He fumbled with his laser rifle, trying to remember how to fire it. He really had to help the others fight the Idirans. His head hurt.