"We are in the vicinity of the starport. Search the shoreline and the cliffs for an entrance."
"It's good advice. Priestess?" I turned to her.
"What about Redhawk?" she asked me.
"Can you walk, Redhawk?"
"I can fly, Thinker. As high as the sky. But I can't walk. Not any more." He sighed, and looked up at the dark sky.
"I have to stay with him, Thinker," Priestess informed me.
"Tenners, Nine," I replied. "I'm going to recon the shore. Sweety's right, we've got to get under cover. Stay there in the rocks and don't move. I'll be back, I promise—I'll be back!" I reached out and touched her, hand to hand, one last time, and then I turned and crunched away along the pumice shoreline. It was hard to leave her behind like that.
###
I could see it from the beach and it turned my blood cold. I waded out into the molten lava and got a grip on a jagged shard of metal and pulled it to shore. There was no mistaking it—it was cenite planking from the deck of the Beyond. I had found a tiny fragment of our raft. It had been ripped and torn by tremendous forces. I released my grip and let it fall to the black sands. It was an evil omen, I knew.
"Alert! Lifeform! Muffled signals! Legion camfax! Beta One and Five ahead!" Sweety was on top of it this time. She highlighted their location on my faceplate.
"One! It's Three," I whispered. "Hold your fire!" I scrambled off the narrow beach and up a steep slope of loose rocks. Snow Leopard and Psycho were barely visible, two lumpy volcanic rocks, blending in perfectly with their surroundings. The A-suit camfax is excellent. A lightning flash lit up their faceplates. There was lunacy in Psycho's eyes and a raging fire in Snow Leopard's.
"Go to ground, Trooper," Snow Leopard ordered. "Don't move." I dropped, and froze.
"Good to see you, guys!" I ventured.
"Likewise," Snow Leopard replied. "Report!"
"Nine and Ten survived. They're hiding on the shore, waiting for my return. Ten can't walk."
"What about Six?" Snow Leopard demanded. I could see his face behind the faceplate—deathly pale flesh, a lock of white-blond hair, and hot pink eyes that glowed like coals.
"I haven't seen him."
"Damn. Neither have we. Any equipment saved from the boat?"
"I found a torn-up piece of the deck—that's all."
"We've located a way out. It may be an entrance to the base," Snow Leopard said. "It may be undefended. We've got to get in there quick."
"You have! What about Six?"
"Yeah. What direction did you come from?"
"Uhh…Northeast from here, along the shoreline; the lavafall is back there."
"No sign of Warhound?"
"Nothing from the falls to here."
"I'm not leaving Warhound." It was Psycho. He had been silent up to that point. I don't know why, but his voice brought a chill to my flesh. Psycho was a little guy, but he carried a great big gun. He had short blond hair and pale blue eyes that never seemed to be quite with us.
"You'll do what you're told," Snow Leopard replied. "Nobody's leaving anybody. Three, we've been two K up the shore to the southwest—he's not there."
"Deadman." I tried to deal with the thought. Beta Six—Warhound—was dead. I could hardly comprehend it. He had been with us so long, he was a part of us.
"I'm not leaving Warhound." Psycho just sat there, a child of chaos, clutching his Manlink. I was glad I did not have to deal with Psycho—he was Beta One's headache. A sharp triple explosion boomed overhead. Dark volcanic skies, blotting out the sun.
"Aircraft," Sweety informed me. "Readings unclear."
"Death," Psycho commented. It was so instinctive he probably did not even realize he had said it.
"All right, Thinker," Snow Leopard said. "Let's get Priestess and Redhawk over here."
"I'll need some help with Redhawk."
"We go together. Psycho, get off your ass. Maybe we can spot Warhound on the way. Let's go."
Chapter 3:
In the Camp of the O's
Lunchtime on Andrion 3. Try it sometime; you're not likely to forget it. Somebody said it's always lunchtime on Andrion 3, and the trick is to be the diner, and not the dinner. That was Psycho, of course. He was having a good time, on Andrion 3. But he was a homicidal maniac. Frankly, the place bothered me. Psycho said it was because I was a pussy.
Lunchtime! No, you won't find this place in any Galactic Guide to Fine Dining. It was bitterly cold and as black as the back of my soul. The only light was what we brought along, and we were not advertising. We were in the O's unholy world, so close I thought I could hear them breathing, all around us. We were freezing, but not from the cold. I was having a lot of trouble with my body parts. We were all terrified and exhausted. I really believe even Psycho was scared.
Priestess and I lay close together, blocking one end of the corridor. The Omnis had made this place; it was part of their starport, burrowed into the heart of a massive volcano in the tortured primeval terrain of Andrion 3. We had said our initial hello with a barrage of antimats, right on the starport, and it upset the O's. I can tell you the O's get very cranky when they're upset.
Snow Leopard ordered a food break. We hadn't eaten since the drop. I didn't care much for food, but my body did. We were in armor, eating cold comrats from the rat tubes in the helmets. It was an awkward procedure. I saw Nine through her faceplate by the cold muted lolite of my flash. She was a pale angel, stricken with some terrible, mortal malady. She trembled in the cold and the dark, eyes glazed, lips wet from the food. The lolite glimmered dully off her black armor. We were all in bad shape. I felt we were inside the beast that was the O. Its metal coils wrapped around us like cenite intestines; dark wet alien metal, a corridor for fools, our own death's road, and I thought it was everything we deserved.
"Deadman!" A hoarse whisper from Psycho. "This is the second best thing I've ever tasted!"
"Blackout!" Snow Leopard whispered back. We were all a little tense. One did not want any noise, so nobody asked Beta Five the obvious question. I already knew the answer: "Your sister!"
Deadman, it was cold! The base was in the heart of a volcano—how could it be so damned cold? My faceplate kept melting the frost. This corridor had once been pressurized and breathable, for both the O's and us, but we had vaporized a good deal of the base, and Andrion 3's poisonous atmosphere was seeping into what was left through shattered walls and airlocks. The corridor we were following burrowed into the rim of the lava lake that sheltered the Omni starport.
A faint light flickered to one side. Black armor, a red faceplate, a pale ghostly face, piercing red eyes, a loose lock of white-blond hair. It was Beta One—Snow Leopard.
"How's the food?" he whispered.
I paused briefly. "It's fine! Haven't you eaten?"
"Not yet. Somebody's got to stay on guard." He cradled his E in his arms, and his helmet continued to track from side to side as he spoke. His faceplate was pitted with scars; we had caught it good when we decarred. I swear, our One was so good he was hardly human.
"I'll take the watch," I said. "Get some eats!"
"Appreciate it," Snow Leopard responded. "Keep scanning, all over. We won't have much warning if it's the O's."
I snapped on max alert, and the screens glowed to life on my faceplate. I knew we would not have much warning if it was the O's. I knew that, for sure. There wouldn't even be time to say our prayers. I cradled my E and slipped off the safeties and set it to xmax. My mouth was all wet and sticky from the food. My body, inside the A-suit, stunk like a corpse. I sipped some water from the helmet tube and focused on Priestess.
She had stopped eating. Her E lay across her legs, and she was using her fieldpak as a cushion for her head. I was exhausted and stunned; and the whole world seemed to focus in on Priestess at that moment. I was overwhelmed with longing and gratitude and regrets when I thought of Priestess. She didn't have to be here at all; she didn't even have to be in the Legion. She had told me about her world, Korkush, a Legion world; it was hard to believe she had ever left such a place. Now she was here, at the very end of Atom's Road, a child of the Legion, clutching an E instead of a doll, worrying about casualties instead of boyfriends.