"Omni one level down!" Sweety snapped. She flashed us a location—there, moving fast, closing on us!
"On me!" We ran for our lives, splashing through the mess away from that glowing phospho dot on our tacmaps. I sloshed to a sudden stop under an open ceiling hatch—cenite steps, leading up. An access ladder, for O's.
"Up!" Tara and Gildron scrambled up into the hatch. Twister was next. I snapped a contac grenade off my u-belt.
"Movement! The Omni is on our level!" I set the grenade to 30 fracs and hurled it into the dark. I snatched another grenade and set it. Twister disappeared up the hatchway.
The world exploded, a blinding ball of fire booming down the tunnel, raw flames flashing past me, enveloping me, and suddenly I was burning like charcoal, a great roaring, my faceplate lit up with warning lights. I was dancing in flames as Sweety shrieked in my ears, maximum volume. "TOLERANCES EXCEEDED! YOUR ARMOR IS FUSING! THE LADDER, THINKER—NOW!" I dropped the grenade and groped blindly for the hatchway. My fingers closed on the bottom rung of the ladder. I raced the flames up the ladder, exploding upwards in a volcanic blast of fire, climbing right up between Twister's legs and not pausing for an instant. If we had not both been in armor, it would have been very embarrassing. We erupted out the top in flames, with Gildron snatching at our limbs. I collapsed, my armor glowing and spitting sparks.
"Deadman! That was the O!"
"Thinker, are you…"
"Damn! If there's a galactic record for ladder climbing, I just broke it!" A sharp explosion sounded below us.
"What happened?"
"That's my contac grenade," I said. "The O is after us; he knows those flames work on us—let's move it!"
"WARNING! Your armor has been breached! I have three penetrations! Recommend…"
"Fuse it, Sweety!" We were in a narrow filthy alley, a floor slick with grease between oily cenite walls. Gildron paused, straddling the hatchway, firing his E straight down the ladder, auto canister. A berserk shrieking. Another blast sounded below, my second grenade.
"O RISING!"
"Run!" We ran again in a blind panic. Smoke poured off my armor. How could we fight the starmass? We could not counter it! The O's hadn't used it on Andrion 3 or Mongera, and the techs had no defense.
"Wester!" It was Tara, a shriek of horror. I slid into her. Gildron and Twister had just run up against a wall of cenite bars blocking all further progress along our alley. Beyond the bars, a solid cenite wall. We could burn our way out, but it would take time—and we did not have any time left. I turned, frantic.
"The enemy has reached our level! The enemy is approaching! Mag levels rising!" Sweety had it spotted now—a phospho dot on my faceplate coming at us, coming right at us like a dragon from the stars, drawing in its unholy breath, ready to blast us to fiery cinders.
"We stand and fight," I said. I don't know why, but I was suddenly completely calm. A warm wave rushed over my flesh and I heard the music of the stars in the background. I raised my E and set it to canister. Gildron stood beside me, a massive presence, bristling, his E at his shoulder. Tara and Twister huddled against the walls, their E's up and tracking.
"O approaching! Mags off the scale!" Our psybloc helmet units flashed wildly, the light glancing eerily off the filthy, oozing walls. A dirty place to die, I thought. But suddenly I was overwhelmed with a hot rush of emotion. No, I thought, it's a fine place to die. A holy place to die, for justice, for mankind.
"Fire canister when it flames us, guys," I said. "We die like soldiers! One, Three! We're trapped and done for! It's all up to you! Death!" I was just throwing it out for the record. The last thing I expected was that One would actually hear it. But he did.
"It's them, Valkyrie," Snow Leopard said clearly. "Get that O!"
"I'm on it, One!" Valkyrie responded. "Goodbye and God bless you!" I knew she was hurling herself blindly right at the O somewhere down that hopeless alley, a magnificent suicide for us all. I wondered briefly if any of us would survive. And then the alley erupted and a glittering blast of superhot burning gas hit us like the fist of a mighty god, and I fired, auto canister, right into Hell.
###
The relentless river of starmass faltered, briefly. I spotted a glimmer of flickering white light and hurled myself at it, frantic to escape the certain death that enveloped us. I fell in a tangle of A-suited bodies on a massive smoking hunk of cenite that dropped out from the wall. Twister had lasered a section of the alley wall and Gildron had kicked it out. We were out of the alley, wreathed in smoke and flames, our A-suits glowing white-hot. Gildron, Tara, Twister—all there.
"I can't move!" Twister, on her back. Gildron fired canister back into the flaming hell from which we had just escaped. We were bathed in white light. I looked up. A ceiling of glassy vertical tubes dangling from above, swirling madly in the hot air rushing up from our position.
"Critical A-suit failures!" Sweety informed me. "Major hydraulics failure, total right leg movement lock, total darksight failure, weapons systems guidance disintegrating, tacmod failing, tacnet failing, numerous penetrations, surface resistance down by half, damage to forty-six percent of all systems, I cannot guarantee the continued functioning of your A-suit, Thinker!"
Tinkling—those glass tubes above us, tinkling, an eerie crystal sea up on the ceiling. Twister screamed. Tara pulled her away from that jagged, flaming hole.
"Don't fail me, Sweety! Do what you can!"
"The enemy is approaching!"
"Oh scut!" The tacmap was a glowing, swirling mess—worthless. I snatched at a psybloc grenade and tossed it toward the hole as we retreated. Sweety was right—my right leg was frozen. I could not move it. I crawled backwards like a crab, firing canister into the hole. I caught a glimpse of Gildron standing over Tara like a great metal god, firing auto canister. Tara was dragging a helpless Twister along the floor. I had no idea where we were—thick smoke swirled all around us, and all I could see was that unearthly ceiling, writhing like an undersea forest.
"Leave me, guys," Twister choked out. "I'm done for, but I can still fire. Leave me! Get the ship!"
"Screw the ship!" I snapped. "We're staying! Tara…" I was against a wall. I backed into a little alcove—I'd be able to cover the others from there. And suddenly the floor spun and a door snapped shut, and I was rising—rising! An elevator! I had backed into an elevator! I leaned against one wall, raising my E. One side of the elevator was transparent—it shot upwards and the O's glassy city was outside, burning brightly from our attack. My skin crawled, but nobody appeared to notice me. I was in one of those vertical tubes running up the outside of a column building—on my way to the top! The elevator filled with smoke from my A-suit.
"Tara, it's an elevator!" I exclaimed. "I'm going up! Take the elevator! Do you hear me, acknowledge!"
Silence. The door snapped open suddenly. An O stood there, right in the doorway.
For one horrifying frozen fraction of time I stared at it, and it stared at me. And in that fleeting instant its image was burnt onto my retina and my brain for all time, and wild fragments of thought darted through my mind. The O loomed over me like a living monolith—no mags, only naked greenish-black flesh, slightly moist, long skeletal arms with joints in strange places, a huge concave chest, and the face—split in two, a ridged skull with cold wet eyes. A wide mouth, opening in agonizing fractions of time, needle teeth, one spotted hand coming up slowly, spidery jointed fingers—no mags!
I fired auto canister just as the blast of its psypower hit me. At that range, my psybloc was not effective, and I took it full on.
The O exploded, splattering me with its awful gore. I collapsed inside the elevator, twitching and screaming. The O's psypower scrambled my brain. My E lay on the floor, smoking. The O squirmed outside in its death throes. The canister and x had worked—the creature was not in armor and did not have its mags up. Without the mag force field, it was doomed. I struggled to recover my wits. My muscles were all shaking. I picked up the E and crawled out of the elevator into that awful mess, right into the dying O. It raised one arm, and the skeletal fingers twitched. I pulled a psybloc grenade from the half-melted pack at my waist and tossed it blindly to one side. It exploded. I was going to run out of grenades soon.