His imagination was gibbering with images of the pursuit Sam and Octal were putting together behind him. Bubbling up from that strange core of conviction was the knowledge that he didn’t have time to wriggle about looking for a wider gap. This was it, his one chance.
He levered himself back down to the widest part of the gash, and wedged himself securely between the puckered furrows of ice, then took the thermal inducer from his belt. It was a dark orange cylinder, twenty centimetres long, sculpted to fit neatly into his gauntleted hand. All scavengers used one: with its adjustable induction field it was a perfect tool for liberating items frozen into ice, or vacuum-welded to shell sections.
Joshua could feel his heart racing as he datavised the field profile he wanted into the inducer’s processor, and ordered his neural nanonics to override his pacemaker, nulling the adrenalin’s effect. He lined the thermal inducer up on the centre of the gap, took a deep breath, tensed his muscles, and initiated the program he’d loaded in his neural nanonics.
His armour suit’s lights flooded the little glaciated valley with an intense white glare. He could see dark formless phantoms lurking within the murky ice. Pressure ridges that formed sheer planes refracted rainbow fans of light back at the collar sensors. A gash that sank deep into the shell section’s interior, a depth hidden beyond even that intrusive light’s ability to expose.
The thermal inducer switched on simultaneously with the lights, fluorescing a metre-wide shaft of ice into a hazy red tube. At the power level he used it turned from solid to liquid to gas in less than two seconds. A thick pillar of steam howled past him, blasting lumps of solid matter out into the Ruin Ring. He fought to keep his hold on the ice as the edge of the stream grazed the armour suit.
“See you, Joshua,” Sam’s datavise echoed round his brain, laughing derisively.
The thermal inducer snapped off. A second later the rush of steam had abated enough to show him the tunnel it had cut, slick walls reflecting the suit’s light like rippled chrome. It ended ten metres down in a polyp cave. Joshua spun round his centre of gravity, fists hammering into the still bubbling ice, clawing desperately for traction on the slippery surface as he dived head-first down the tunnel.
Madeeir ’s laser struck the ice as his boots disappeared below the floor. Stalagmites blew apart instantly under the violent energy input, ice vaporized across an area three metres wide. A mushroom cloud of livid steam boiled up into space, carrying with it a wavefront of semi-solid debris. The laser shone like a shaft of red sunlight at its centre.
“Got the little shit!” Sam Neeves’ triumphant exclamation rang in the ether.
The laser blinked out. Slush splattered against the spaceplane’s foam-encased fuselage. A second later it reached the Madeeir , pattering weakly against the alithium struts. Reaction-control thrusters flamed momentarily, holding its position steady.
Once the storm of vapour had dwindled away, Madeeir refocused its sensor suite on the vibrating shell section. There was no ice left among the building’s foundations, the scouring had plucked the tiles free as well, even some of the low-lying walls had been razed by the blast-wave of steam. A roughly circular patch of the polyp floor glowed a dull vermilion. The sheer power of the laser saved Joshua. The soles of his armour suit had been caught in the initial blaze of photons, melting the mono-bonded-carbon boots, boring into the tough black membrane of the SII suit underneath. Even the miraculous Lunar technology couldn’t withstand that assault. His skin had charred, broiling the meat, singeing bone.
But the steam which had erupted so violently absorbed a great deal of the laser’s power. The seething gas also distorted the beam, and it didn’t just surge outwards, it also slammed down through the tunnel, punching at any blockage.
Joshua hurtled out of the gash in the polyp cave’s roof, cannoning into the floor, bouncing, arms flailing helplessly. He was almost unconscious from the pain in his feet, the analgesic block his neural nanonics had erected in his cortex was faltering under the nerve impulse overload. Blood was spraying out of his soles from the arteries which hadn’t been cauterized by the heat. The SII suit redistributed its molecules, flowing around the roasted feet, sealing the broken blood vessels. He hit the cave roof, recoiling. His neural nanonic circuits were visualizing a physiological schematic of his body, an écorché figure with feet flashing urgent red. Neatly tabulated information that was neither sound nor vision was pulsing into his consciousness, telling him the extent of the wounds. He really didn’t want to know, the gruesome details were acting like an emetic.
Steam was still gushing into the cave, building in pressure. He could actually hear the gale screeching its affliction. Caustic probes of red light stabbed down through the gash in the ceiling, fluctuating erratically. He hit the polyp again, jarring his arm. The knocks and spinning and pain were too much; he vomited. The SII suit immediately vented the acidic fluid as his stomach spasmed. He cried out in anguish as the sour juices sloshed round in his mouth, rationality fading away. His neural nanonics recognized what was happening and damped down all external nerve inputs, ordered the suit processor to feed him a draught of cool, clear oxygen, then fired the manoeuvring pack jets at full power to stop his madcap oscillations.
The suspension couldn’t have lasted more than ten seconds. When he took notice of the sensor visualization again the red light illuminating the cave had been extinguished, and the steam was rushing back out of the gap, currents tugging him gently back up towards it again. He reached out an arm to steady himself against the ceiling. His fingers closed automatically around a metal conduit pinned to the polyp.
Joshua did a fast double take, then began to scan the suit collar sensors round the cave. There were no ends in sight. It wasn’t a cave, it was a passage, slightly curved. The conduit was one of twenty running along the ceiling. They had all broken open below the gash, a familiar feathery fan of ragged photonic cables protruded.
His neural nanonics were clamouring for attention, medical data insistent against his synapses. He reviewed it quickly, quashing the return of the nausea. His soles had burnt down to the bone. There were several options stored in the neural nanonics’ medical program. He chose the simplest: shut-off for nerves below the knees, infusing a dose of antibiotics from the armour’s emergency pack, and shunting a mild tranquillizer program into primary mode to calm his inflamed thoughts.
While he waited for the drugs to start working he took a more measured assessment of the passage. The polyp had ruptured in several places, water and a syrupy fluid had spouted in, freezing over the walls in long streaks, turning the passage into a winterland grotto. They were boiling now, crusty surface temporarily turned back to a liquid by the retreating steam, frothing like bad beer. When he shone the suit’s lights into the rents he could see tubes running parallel to the passage; water ducts, nutrient arteries, sewage ducts—whatever, they were the habitat’s utilities. Edenist habitats were riddled with similar channels.
He summoned up the inertial guidance display, and integrated the passage into the data construct of the shell section. If the curve was reasonably constant, one end would emerge from the section’s edge after thirty metres. He started to move up the other way, watching the conduits. He didn’t have anywhere else to go.
The passage branched, then branched again. One junction had five passages. Ice clogged a lot of the walls, bulging outward in smooth mounds. In several places it was virtually impassable. Once he had to use the thermal inducer again. The conduits were often buried under frosted waves. The destruction had been as great down here as it had everywhere else in the habitat. That should have warned him.