Chapter 7:
Death's Cold Road
Get up! Get up! Get up! Deadman, get up, Three!"
Urgent commands in my ears. It was One, it was Sweety, it was Five. I was burning—burning to ashes. My blood was on fire, my bones all shattered, my muscles shredded, my brain split wide open.
"Get up, Thinker! Alert! Alert! Situation Violet! Enemy approaching! Alert! Alert!" Shot in the heart, I came back to life, crawling up out of the dark. It was pitch black—I could see nothing! No, a glimmer of light—a lolite! My helmet was off, someone leaning over me. It was Snow Leopard, a quick glance at me, his E flashing past my face.
"Three's back. Get up, Thinker, they're coming." Snow Leopard was maddeningly calm. The lolite was suddenly gone and darkness rushed over me. I tried to get up. Pain shot through my body. My helmet was slammed into place and locked on—darksight, green phospho magic with me, Sweety in my ears, chill futures, the tacmap flashing to life.
"Prep for tacstar, Five."
"It's a ten, One. They're dead—the walking dead." Psycho was cold as ice.
"Unidentified life form approaching! Probable Omni! Life form masked by mag field!"
Adrenalin shot through my system. I struggled to my feet, raising my E. Unidentified life form—Deadman, save us! It was the O, coming right at us.
"Unidentified energy probe—high mags—off the scale."
Sweety's words were like daggers. Warhound was lying on the deck in a pile of smashed-up O equipment, his helmet off, his armored wrists tied together in front of him. He was staring sightlessly into the dark, sweat beading his forehead.
"Deadman! What happened?" I blurted out, setting my E to xmax.
"Warhound tried to kill us," Snow Leopard responded quietly. "Don't know why. Psycho got you both with a stunstar."
"God! Is Warhound all right?"
"Beta…Beta!" Warhound gasped, words from a dark pit of terror. "Fight them! Fight them! Fight them!"
"Unidentified life form on screen! Single target now in range. Probable O—recommend multiple tacstars." A phospho red dot pulsed on my faceplate, readouts flashing over the screen.
"Blast 'em, Five!"
Five leaped forward to Snow Leopard's command, an obscene black metal spider, faceplate glowing red, Manlink up to his shoulder. The universe split wide open in a lightning flash, ripping audibly like a hot knife in rotten silk, screeching like wounded metal, rising in intensity, freezing my flesh. Tacstars, flashing straight to the target; multiple cenite walls disintegrating like jelly, again, again, again, lighting us up, bursting, a nuclear flash; my faceplate dead black; sudden brilliant holy white glare; glittering flowers of death. The shock wave hit us, knocking me flat. Psycho fired full auto tacstar, micronukes bursting to life, poison toadstools of power, Legion stars, rocking the entire base. I scrambled to my feet and rushed forward screaming hoarsely, firing full auto xmax. Snow Leopard rose up, his E flashing—full auto x. I held my finger down on the trigger. The noise was shattering; I could hear only a single, high screeching note, overriding everything else. The xmax burst everywhere and hits from our own shrapnel riddled my armor. My faceplate suddenly glowed faintly with a wild white webbing of tracks and I could feel the hits pinging onto my A-suit. I continued firing. Tacstars flashed wildly over my head and micronukes detonated to life again, again, again, burning white-hot in my eyes. The walls disintegrated, riddled, melted, ripped and torn and shot full of holes, supersonic slivers of death—my finger was frozen on the trigger. Xmax, xmax, xmax, ripping forth from my E, my holy E, death to all our foes. We stood in a wilderness of smoking metal, a shredded, twisted ceiling overhead, a junkyard of glowing metal all around us.
"Unidentified life form approaching!"
"Ahhh, scut!"
"Five, tacstars! Three, lasers!" Snow Leopard was on it.
I switched to lasers. More tacstars flashed overhead with that horrible ripping as micronukes exploded right on top of the O, brilliant flashes, shock waves rocking us back on our boot-heels. I could see the O on my tacmap—still there!
What the hell! One and I fired lasers simultaneously. Energy from the face of a star at the speed of light, flashing, dancing, lancing through alien metal like an axe through paper, relentless, merciless. We speared the O like a bug on a pin.
"Probable Omni approaching! Extremely high mag readings! Tacstars, xmax, laser no effect! Recommend random auto biobloc!"
Frozen with fear, I went to flame; I had no time to screw around with biobloc. We had no idea of the creature's frequency, and it was almost on us! I fired flame.
It burst out, a raging explosion of burning gas, a firestorm. Walk into that, alien. Breathe that! Burn, O!
A wave of cold rushed over us. My armor glittered with ice. My finger slipped off the trigger. Snow Leopard ceased firing. Psycho raised his Manlink, stunned and spent. Molten metal ran past our feet, smoking in the cold. A skeletal cenite wasteland of our own creation glowed all around us, a ghostly phospho green in my darksight. It burnt in the dark like the heart of Hell.
"Mag overload! Unidentified life form approaching, fire auto biobloc, Thinker!"
Sweety was insistent, but I could not comply. My heart had stopped. Icy fingers of death clutched my chest. I could hardly breathe, and a hot wave of weakness rolled through my body. I fell to my knees, dizzy and helpless, a cold knot of terror burning in my chest.
"It's here…" a strangled whisper from Warhound.
Snow Leopard was on his feet, weaving, clutching a silent E. Psycho buckled and fell to one knee, his Manlink clutched protectively to his chest, his eyes wild.
The O stepped out of smoke and fire, a towering black shadow, its image shimmering and wavering, glowing violet, not quite real. My muscles short-circuited, trembling violently. I had no control over them—no control. I gasped for breath. It had taken my breath away, my lungs burned. The O was like a mirage in superhot air, its image blurry and changing, tall and black and leathery, a deformed head, all wrong, split in two, dead wet eyes winking. Is it in armor? Terror shot through my veins; my hands trembled. I lost my grip on the E!
The O reached down for Snow Leopard in slow motion. A long twisted arm cloaked in darkness, shimmering, the O moving dreamily in a force field of glowing violet air. Snow Leopard stood paralyzed, motionless. The O's arm brushed past him lightly. Snow Leopard crashed to the deck violently, one hand clawing at the air. The O called out, a blood-chilling, reptilian croak; it was laughing at us!
"Fire full auto biobloc, Thinker!" Sweety urged me.
I could not breathe! Someone gurgled in my ears. My hands slapped at my E, but it was secured to my chest. I could not control my arms. The O moved. It came toward me, shimmering, hazy, relentless. The eyes—freezing me in place; dead alien eyes blinking slowly; my death, here like a dream; an obscene maw, rows of sharp wet needle teeth. The skeletal arm reached out to me, a leathery, slithering, scratching on the deck. Metallic fingers snapped onto my chest plate and the O jerked me off the ground like a rag doll. My body convulsed, twitching, out of control.
A flicker of movement behind me. Warhound hurled himself at the O, howling. His wrists were still tied but his armored fists clutched a cold knife. He struck. The blade slashed into the O.
Sweety shot a mag right into my heart and my fingers closed reflexively over the trigger of my plasmapak torch and squeezed. A sudden flash of energy burst from my chest, lancing straight into the O. Plasma, gas from the heart of a star. A hair-raising shriek and the O thrashed loose like a whirling demon, a cyclone, a tornado, shooting past me. I fell to the deck, helpless. I caught a glimpse of Psycho moving like a puppet, still on one knee, his Manlink suddenly functional. The air cracked and snapped—biobloc!