The Systie was torn to shreds, a bloody hunk of meat. He had not been in armor. We had still not heard from Valkyrie about the new squad of Systies. They were in armor, and ready for a fight.
"What the hell is this?" Psycho asked. I suddenly realized that the entire room was ankle-deep in discarded clothing. I picked up one item with the tip of my SG—a child's pink sweater. I let it fall back to the floor. How many hopes and dreams died in this room, I wondered. How many families, delivered up to the O's by the System?
"Look," Snow Leopard said. He stood before a sealed cenite door. The Systies had sprayed another message, on the surface: LAB—PACKS ONLY.
"I detect faint life readings within," Sweety reported. "Humans, unarmored."
There were only six of us now—Snow Leopard and Psycho and the new girl, Twister, Tara and Gildron and myself. Valkyrie was still at the ambush site with her buddy Scrapper and Merlin and Dragon. Priestess was off by herself, nursing the babies.
"Attention! I have a reading from Reception!" Sweety said. "The main door has been breached! Repeat, the main door to Reception has been breached! No further readings!"
"Deto," Psycho said. "It's the Systies." The new Systie squad had just blown its way into the Mound.
"Packs only," Snow Leopard said, ignoring Sweety's report. "The Systies don't go in here. This is the interior. We're going in."
We're going in—Beta One was always able to get our attention. He didn't even have to raise his voice. Only a few words, we're going in, and there was so much adrenalin in my system I swear I could taste it in my mouth. Snow Leopard reached for the door panel and pressed it.
A wave of icy air rolled out slowly as the door slid open—the armored skin on my A-suit was suddenly wet. We moved in like jungle cats. It was a large darkened hall full of glass, tall gleaming glassy columns and cubicles wreathed with mist, reaching up to a dark ceiling. A spidery framework of metal wiring ran around the crystal columns.
"Life…" Sweety said. "Thirteen…the count is unclear. From ten to seventeen humans. Suggest further investigation."
An icy metal catwalk, a glassy translucent column. Something inside, a lazy movement. I brushed away a coating of frost. There was a body within, a naked human female body, floating in liquid—a headless body. A mass of tubing led from the neck up to the top of the cylinder and I knew instinctively that the body was still alive. I hardly dared look but I could see there were two large glassy globes atop the cylinder. Two heads, my God! The first one, a male, blue-grey skin, clearly dead. The second head, a female—eyes open, staring at me. Below, the arms suddenly moved.
I backed out quickly, terrified, my heart thumping wildly. Our psybloc units cracked on, spitting light.
"Alien life-form readings one level up."
Snow Leopard tossed a psybloc grenade out ahead of us. It lit up the cylinders until we could see what was in them. There—a man with no limbs. Gasping, helpless, a trunk with a head, floating in his own filth. The bastards were experimenting with us, playing with us!
"Thinker…look at this." Psycho pointed out something with his Manlink. A grey mass in a frosty globe of bloody liquid. A human brain. I knew it was alive.
"That O was moving fast," Snow Leopard said. "Stand by!" Our tacmods suddenly filled with chaff—totally unreadable.
"Enemy deceptors—I have no further readings," Sweety said. "Warning! An Omni attack is likely!"
I hurled another psybloc grenade into the dark. It exploded white-hot, burning like a star. The O was using deceptors—we were blind.
"It's got us zeroed," Snow Leopard said. "Weapons on canister X. We make our stand here." A faint shudder ran over our armor. Then a distant, rumbling explosion.
"Element attack!" Valkyrie hissed, springing her ambush on the Systie squad. The mines had gone off.
"Deceptors," Snow Leopard commanded. Psycho shot them off, and they cracked to life. Now the O would be blind as well—we hoped. There was no way of knowing for sure.
"Movement!" Sweety reported. Our tacmods flashed phospho red to pinpoint the source, at the far end of that nightmare hall. I snapped my E up to my shoulder and fired auto canister X. We all fired, and the darkness erupted, a swirling, dazzling white-hot fireball, spitting hundreds of tracks of glowing hissing shrapnel, the blast and the sound rocking us simultaneously, the air suddenly full of sparkling glassy debris.
The room exploded, a titanic flash and boom and I was down, groveling on my back like an armored bug. I was in the core of a star, blue hot flames consuming me utterly, the skin on my A-suit suddenly glowing cherry-red. The warning indicators on my faceplate lit up like fireworks.
"NOVA WARNING! Exterior temperature has passed acceptable tolerances for cenite armor! Your armor is melting! Recommend immediate retreat!" I scrambled up from the deck, frantic, enveloped in flames. My armor was already white-hot.
"Get out! Get out!" Snow Leopard ordered. "Back the way we came! Keep firing!" I fired into the flames, auto canister X, walking backwards in roaring sheets of flaming gas.
"Tacstar, Five—I want everything in there to die!" We made it back to the door somehow and Psycho raised his Manlink and the tacstar ripped its way through the holocaust and exploded, a nuclear flower, annihilating it all, blowing a wild storm of debris through the doorway. The door slid shut, sealing us off from the flames.
"Is everybody here? Five, Three, Cinta, Gildron, Thirteen, all here." One sounded shaken. Our A-suits were burning and smoking.
"Did you see that brain?" Psycho asked.
"We're just lab animals to them," Snow Leopard said. "The only way out of here is to kill O's!"
"What the hell was that weapon?" I asked.
"That was starmass—they used it in the Plague War," Snow Leopard responded.
"Look at your armor! Do you know what temperature it takes to affect A-suit armor? That was like being in a star!" My armor was burnt grey, scarred and pitted, smoking freely.
"Did we get the O?" Twister asked.
"No way of knowing—not in that mess," I answered.
"I think we upset it," Psycho said.
"No! What makes you think that?"
"I can tell when somebody's upset. It didn't like the canister." Our helmet units were still spitting psybloc so we knew the O's were in the area. Gildron snarled and raised his E, covering the ceiling.
"Continuous psyprobing," Tara reported. "We've got their attention!"
"Eleven, report!" Snow Leopard demanded. The response came at once.
"One, Eleven. We killed five Systies. We have possession of Processing. There's more of them downstairs, but they've split up. Probably looking for an alternate way to get to us. Do you want us to pursue them?"
"Damn! Negative, Valkyrie. Re-mine the room and rejoin the squad, now. Priestess, get back here."
"I can't, One." Priestess replied wearily. "I can't! I have to look after the babies, the children—they're dying, they're all dying, I have to keep them alive."
"Deadman. All right, Nine, keep alert! Follow me, gang. We've got a mission!"
Chapter 10
Blue Jade
"It won't open," Dragon reported. The door had a Systie message sprayed on it—DISPOSAL. The squad was together again except for Priestess, who was still watching over the children. Dragon took his hand off the tab. The doors were no longer working. Things were starting to get tense. The O's were using deceptors and our tacmods were close to useless.
"They've sealed all doors," Snow Leopard said. "They know there's some new people here. Psycho, open it. Valkyrie, take your element and move up corridor—I want to know what's up there. Watch out for the Systies."