“This isn’t shielded,” the medic groaned, slapping the cryo-chamber as arcs of fire whipped by close overhead. “One square hit, and …”
“Into the lift tube, then,” yelled Mark at him. The medic nodded, and swung the pallet around into the nearest dark opening free of Bharaputrans. The lift-tube was switched off, or the conflicting grav fields might have blown circuits on both tube and pallet. The medic scrambled aboard the cryo-chamber as if it were a horse, and began to sink from sight. Another trooper followed, hand over hand down the emergency ladder on the tube’s interior. Plasma arc fire struck Mark three times in rapid succession, as he scrambled to his feet, knocking him down again. His mirror-field shed a roar of blue crackles as he rolled toward the tube through waves of heat. He swung down the ladder after the trooper, out of the line of fire.
But not for long. A Bharaputran helmet flashed above them in the entrance, then plasma arc fire followed them downward with a glare like lightning in the tube. The trooper helped the medic yank and heave the float-pallet out of this sudden shooting gallery and through the lowest entrance, and ducked after. Mark scrambled in their wake, feeling like a human torch, netted and entwined with racketing blue incandescence. How many shots had that been? He’d lost count. How many more could his shielding take before it gave way and burned out?
The trooper took a firing stance aimed back into the lift tube, but no Bharaputran followed them. They stood in a pocket of dark and quiet, shouts and shots echoing faintly down the tube from the battle overhead. This was a much smaller foyer, with only two exits. Dim low emergency lighting along the floor gave a falsely cozy sense of warmth.
“Hell,” said the medic, staring upward. “I think we’ve just cut ourselves off.”
“Not necessarily,” said Mark. Neither the medic nor the trooper were Green Squad, but Mark’s helmet of course had Green Squad programming. He called up the holomap, found their current location, And let the helmet’s computer sketch a route. “You can get there from this level, too. It’s a bit more roundabout, but you’re less likely encounter Bharaputrans for that very reason.”
“Let me see,” demanded the medic.
Half-reluctant, half-relieved, Mark gave his helmet up to him. The medic jammed it on his head, and studied the red line snaking through the 3-D schematic grid of the medical complex, projected before his eyes. Mark risked a darting glance up the lift tube. No Bararaputrans loomed overhead, and the sounds of combat were muffled, as if growing more distant. He ducked back to find the trooper looking at him, unsettling glints of his eyes gleaming through his visor. I’m not your damned Admiral. Mores the pity, eh? The trooper probably was of the opinion that the Bharaputrans had shot the wrong short man. Mark didn’t even need words to get that message. He ached.
“Yeah,” the medic decided. His jaw tightened, behind his visor. “If you hurry, you might even get there ahead of Captain Quinn,” said Mark. He still held the medic’s helmet. There were no more sounds from overhead. Should he run after Quinn’s moving fire-fight, stay and try to help guide and guard the float-pallet? He was not sure if he was more afraid of Quinn, or of the Bharaputran fire her party drew. Either way he’d probably be safer with the cryo-chamber. He took a deep breath. “You … keep my helmet. I’ll take yours.” Th medic and the trooper were both glowering at him with disfavor, tellingly. “I’ll go after Quinn and the clones.” His clones. Would Quinn have any regard at all for their lives?
“Go, then,” said the medic. He and the trooper aimed the float-pallet out the doors, and didn’t look back. They obviously had him judged as more of a liability than an asset, and felt well-rid of him. Grimly, he climbed the ladder back up the lift tube. He peeked cautiously across the foyer floor, as it came to his eye level. A lot of property damage. A sprinkler system had added steam to the choking smoke. One brown-clad body lay prone, unmoving. The floor was wet and slippery. He swung out of the tube and darted skittishly out the corridor the Dendarii company must have taken, if they were sticking heir planned route. More plasma arc damage assured him he was the right track.
He rounded a corner, skidded to a halt, and flung himself backward, out of sight. The Bharaputrans hadn’t seen him; they’d been facing the other way. He retreated back down the corridor while awkwardly keying through the channels of the unfamiliar helmet till he made contact with Quinn.
“Captain Quinn? Uh, Mark here.”
“Where the hell are you, where’s Norwood?”
“He’s got my helmet. He’s taking the cryo-chamber through by another route. I’m behind you, but I can’t close up. There are at least four Bharaputrans in full space armor between us, coming up on your rear. Watch out.”
“Hell, now we’re outgunned. That tears it.” Quinn paused. “No. I can take care of them. Mark, get the hell away, follow Norwood. Run!”
“What are you going to do?”
“Drop the roof on those bastards. Lotta good space armor’ll do ’em then. Run!”
He ran, realizing what she was planning. At the first lift tube he came to, he took to the ladder, climbing wildly, regardless of where it led. He didn’t want to be any further underground than he had to when—
It was like an earthquake. He clung as the tube cracked and buckled, and the felt sound beat through his body. It was over in a moment, but for an echoing rumble, and he resumed his climb. Daylight ahead, reflecting silver down a tube entrance.
He came out on the ground floor of a building furnished like a fancy office. Its windows were cracked and starred. He knocked a hole in one and climbed through, and flipped up his infra-red visor. To his right, half of another building had fallen away into an enormous crater. Dust still rose in choking clouds. The Bharaputrans in their sturdy, deadly space armor were possibly still alive, under all that, but it would take an excavation crew hours to dig them out. He grinned despite his terror, panting in the daylight.
The medic’s helmet did not have nearly the eavesdropping capacity of the command headset, but he found Quinn again. “All right, Norwood, keep on going,” she was saying. “Go like hell! Framingham! Got that? Lock on Norwood. Start pulling in your perimeter people. Lift as soon as Norwood and Tonkin are aboard. Kimura! You in the air?” A pause; Mark could not get Kimura’s reply, whoever and wherever he was. But he could fill in the sense of it from Quinn’s continuation. “Well, we’ve just made you a new drop zone. It’s a bit lumpy, but it’ll do. Follow my signal, come straight down into the crater. You’ll just fit. Yes, you will too, I’ve laser-’scoped it, you do too have clearance. You can risk the shuttle now, Kimura. Come on!”
He made for the crater too, scuttling along close to the side of the building, taking advantage of overhangs till the patter of falling concrete chips made him realize that the blast-damaged balcony above his head was losing its structural integrity. Stay under and get mashed, or step out in the open and get shot? Whichever he did would prove the wrong choice, he was certain. What was that line Vorkosigan’s military textbooks were so fond of quoting? No battle in survives first contact with the enemy. Quinn’s tactics and dispositions shifted with bewildering speed. She was exploiting a quite literal new opening—the roar of a drop shuttle grew in his ears, and he sprinted out from under the balcony as the vibrations weakened it. The end gave way and fell with a crash. He kept on sprinting. Let the Bharaputran snipers try to hit a moving target… . Quinn and her group ventured into the open just as the drop shuttle, feet extended like an enormous insect, felt its way carefully into the crater. A few last Bharaputrans were in position on a roof opposite to offer harrying fire. But they had only plasma arcs, and were still being careful of the clones, though one pink-clad girl screamed, caught in the backwash of a Dendarii plasma mirror field. Light burns, painful but not fatal. She was crying and panicked, but a Dendarii trooper nevertheless caught her and aimed her at the shuttle hatch, now opening and extruding a ramp.