“How’s it coming, Dr.?” he said, calmly. Didn’t want to spook the guy, not with that thing in his hands.
Miller was lying behind the bulk of the dead Petty Officer Ryan’s suit, using it for cover from the fire from above and the road. It was not so much that he was a coward, although anyone would be a bit anxious in this situation, but if one of the plasma rounds hit the ardune, it was going to detonate on Earth. Which would be bad.
He’d initially ended up on the side with the box down. After rolling over he’d fumbled the metal container open and pulled out the ardune. He fumbled it around to where he could see it through the armored glass in the chest of the suit and cursed under his breath. It was night; he couldn’t see it. He shoved it up to where it was visible from his low-light circuit and cut to light enhancement. The symbols on the front still weren’t visible; the vision just wasn’t detailed enough.
“Miller,” he said, as calmly as he could. “Does anyone have a flashlight?” He’d argued for some sort of a light on the suits, but the military didn’t want them. Not white light, which was what he needed. The symbols were purple on violet; red light wouldn’t help one damned bit.
“Shit,” Miller muttered. He stopped firing for a moment and fumbled in a container, finally extracting something and arming it. He threw it to the side of the gate where it flashed into white heat.
“What the hell is that?” Bill asked. The late Ryan’s suit left the box in shadow so he tilted it up to where there was light enough to see. It was damned near as bright as day.
“Thermite grenade,” the SEAL said. “And I just lit our position so get a fucking move on.”
“You’re carrying thermite grenades?” Bill asked, starting to key the symbols. One, two, three…
“You never know when they’re going to come in handy,” the SEAL said. Plasma was falling all around their position now that the Mreee on the ridgeline could see them clearly. There was another cut off scream as a SEAL suit was hit.
Four… Bill was struck in the side, the box knocked out of his hands, as a Nitch coming out of the gate caught him with one of its front legs. He grabbed the leg and with half hysterical strength, aided by the suit, ripped it off. As the Nitch, pouring some sort of goop out of the hole, stumbled downward, he struck upwards and punched it in the thorax. The blow was unthinking, a Wah-Lum ground fighting move backed by all the power of the suit. His arm sunk into the thing’s thorax up to his elbow.
“They’re coming through the gate!” Bill yelled, rolling to where the box had fallen. “Shit, shit, shit, shit!” He picked it up in one hand and pointed the .50 caliber at the gate, hosing rounds in the hope that he could hold off the forces on the other side.
“What?” Miller yelled.
“Besides the fact that we’re surrounded and about to get overrun?” Bill laughed, hysterically. “I had the damned thing half keyed! I don’t know if I can start over or what!” He fumbled the box around to where he could see it, again, but the light from the thermite grenade had been extinguished. “Aaaaagh! No light!”
“Stay cool!” Miller yelled. He turned around and started throwing things through the gate. One of them blew up before it went through and threw shrapnel all over Bill’s suit.
“Don’t hit the ardune!” Bill yelled, desperately. “I need light!”
One of the SEALs stood up with a plasma gun in his hand and started firing upwards. On the second shot he managed to nail the crown of a large oak that overhung the gate area. It had, miraculously, escaped fire to this point. But at the impact of the plasma round the crown burst into immediate flame. The SEAL was hit before he could even drop the weapon. The smoking legs of the mecha were thrown in two directions but they were all that was left of the suit.
“You got light,” Miller rasped.
Bill thought, frantically, about his instructions. He hadn’t asked what happened if the code entry was interrupted. Better to try finishing it. He hit the last symbol and was rewarded by a blinking light. He started pressing the counter.
“How long?” he yelled.
“Not very,” Miller replied, looking around. There were only two SEALs still firing besides himself.
Bill pressed five increments on the counter, about seven seconds, thought about having to key the second code, and pressed five more. Then he keyed the code, took the box in both hands and threw it through the gate as hard as he could.
It entered the gate and he started to get up but it bounced back and landed behind him. Immediately following it was a centipede tank.
“Fuck!” Bill shouted. “IT’S LIVE, ARDUNE IS LIVE, CENTIPEDE!”
Miller turned around and pulled out his last thermite grenade. He had noticed that the centipedes seemed to have some sort of mouth or breathing organ on their front. It was heavily armored and turned down, impossible to hit with a round, but he wasn’t planning on shooting it. He pulled the pin on the grenade, took two steps and shoved it up the opening as hard as he could, leaning the mecha into the face of the tank and pushing back, trying to keep it from extruding all the way out of the gate. His feet started sliding back as he counted.
“Three, two, one,” he muttered, wondering what hell was like. Probably pretty similar to Leavenworth, but longer.
Bill got one hand on the box and turned around. The centipede more than half filled the gate opening but he took two steps and leapt onto it, directly between two of the hornlike plasma generators. Taking the box in both hands he threw it towards the gate again, as hard as he could.
Bill never was sure what he saw in that moment. For just a second he thought that stars appeared in the gate as it turned black and lights flashed in it. But they seemed to be moving lights, moving in some complex pattern that defied explanation. The image was there for only a moment but it seared itself on his soul. He knew, in his heart, that they were not just stars, not burning bits of gas, but souls, entities. Perhaps even fuzzy children’s toys, waving a farewell salute. He felt, in that brief instant, that he truly knew what it meant to touch the face of God.
Then the world went white.
Miller saw the gate go black for a moment, then disappear, leaving the rest of the centipede, and Dr. Weaver’s suit arms, either on the other side or in some nowhere place. And then he felt the thermite grenade pop.
The explosion was not a plasma explosion. More like a very large transformer blowing up. Very large. Miller felt himself picked up and thrown through the air. It was a vaguely peaceful feeling, much better than the desperate combat he had been involved in a moment earlier. Right up until he hit the burning oak tree.
“Dr. Weaver?”
Pain. All-enveloping pain. Lots of it.
Weaver got one eye opened and groaned, or tried to; it came out as a croak. He swore that if God made the pain go away he’d live a good life and never, ever, do anything even slightly risky again. Wah-Lum? Hah, no chance. Mountain biking? And risk road rash? He’d buy a house on one level, never climb stairs again, never run, just walk. Nothing that could cause so much as a scrape. Blunt knives in the house. Put rubber on all the corners. His nerves felt jangled. Please, God, just let the pain go away.