Terror, raw terror. I cried, and my limbs shook wildly. Doomed, we were doomed! The bridge was burning and I floated above it like a corpse. An eerie quiet came over the scene. There was only the crackling of the flames and the electronic snapping of the instruments as they self-destructed.
The grav returned suddenly. I crashed to the deck, exhausted and helpless. I lay in a heap, whimpering in agony. My blood was like water and my heart was a knot of icy fear. My entire body was shaking. I could not move—I could hardly breathe. The O had us in its awful grip. It was all over—we had failed. We were dead. I could feel only terror, terror to glaze my eyes, terror to stop my heart.
Movement. It was the O—the one we missed. I watched it, horrified. It staggered forward, partially obscured by the smoke. It leaned over and picked up something from the deck. Tara—it had Tara in its hands. She collapsed, helpless in its mighty grip.
The O picked her up bodily, hissing like a snake. And the hiss became a furious shriek as it hurled Tara head over heels through the air just like a rag doll. She hit right on top of me, bouncing off to land sprawled on her back beside me.
The O stood over us, its concave chest heaving. It was peppered with shrapnel wounds, but I knew it did not matter—it was all over for us. Tara whimpered beside me. The creature had us with its awesome psypower. We were worms, writhing before it, awaiting an awful death.
The creature reached down with one hand and seized Tara by the neck. It lifted her up bodily, holding her there in the air by the neck, squeezing her throat. Tara gurgled, twitching, her feet dangling, helpless. The O was going to choke her to death with one hand. It looked into Tara's face, snarling an evil laugh. The creature drooled, a thin stream of spittle dribbling from its savage mouth. I was terrified—I know there was nothing at all I could do, except watch Tara die.
The O exploded, a white-hot burst shattering our ears, splattering us with greenish gore. A split head, the eyes glazing over, the mouth snapping open, needle teeth, then it collapsed, right on top of us.
I could only lie there shaking, twitching in the mess. Tara had landed next to me, again. She coughed and gasped—alive! My limbs trembled, but I had control again. The terror had been replaced by shock. I had no idea what had happened. I struggled to sit up. I brushed one of the O's arms off my body—it was still moving.
"Tara—are you all right? Answer!" I could hardly breathe. Tara was pale and gasping, on her back, still helpless. Her eyes blinked. She raised one hand, and I grasped it.
"What…what happened?" Tara gasped.
I stared stupidly at the tacmod. It showed Gildron was still at the other end of the ship, and he undoubtedly had his own problems. I looked around the bridge, panting. Black smoke was rapidly filling the room—we'd have to get those fires out. And then I saw him.
Willard. Willard, our own little boy, standing there in the doorway holding Tara's glowing E, and it was almost as big as he was. I gaped at him, totally astonished. He gazed back at me, his tiny little face quivering with anxiety.
"Is it going to be angry with us?" he asked fearfully. I was so amazed that I could not even answer.
"Willard!" Tara called out hoarsely. "Willard!" He dropped the E and ran into her arms.
"Do we have to take the medicine now?" Willard still had the cyro clutched in one grubby hand.
"Give me that!" Tara snatched it from his grasp. She was close to collapse, trembling and exhausted. "We won't leave you again, Willard," she vowed. "Never again! I promise!"
I struggled shakily to my feet, fighting a growing panic. "We'd better see about Gildron," I said. "There's two more O's down there! Where the hell is my E?"
Chapter 15
Black Stars
"Aah! Take it easy, will you?" Tara was working on my wounds. I was on my back on a little ledge under a bank of alien instruments, stripped to my waist and glistening with medgel again. We had set up shop on the bridge. I was covered with wounds and flying on mags. Tara was badly dinged up as well.
We had not had to worry about the two O's in the stardrive. Gildron had butchered them both with his E. The O's, who were so formidable downside in armor and mag shields, proved strangely vulnerable in their own ship. Not a single mag force field had gone up during the entire operation. I could hardly believe it—the ship was ours.
I was in no shape to appreciate it.
"You'll be all right, trooper," Tara said. "I'd recommend a few years' sick leave."
"Well, the way things are going, we may have more than a few years. How're your ribs?" I was dizzy and light-headed.
I did not want to move.
"Two of them—clean breaks. I'm topping out on mags." Her face wrinkled in pain.
"You avoid any sudden moves, Tara. You be careful. What did the medprobe say, now? About those devices—I was in agony when you were telling me."
"Dissolved, both of them. The devices had released high concentrations of a substance that countered the neurotransmitters which contract our voluntary muscles."
"Huh?"
"According to the medprobe, it causes almost instantaneous loss of voluntary muscle control throughout the body when introduced into the bloodstream. I don't recognize the substance but it interfered with the strands of actin and myosin in our muscles, effectively paralyzing us."
"Clever! So that's what happened to us during our attack on the O's."
"That and the O's psypower. Insurance, maybe. Something triggered the destruction of the devices and the release of the material into our bloodstreams. Lucky for us the stuff isn't fatal, and only has a temporary effect."
A huge O materialized on the bridge, flickered momentarily, and vanished. Adrenalin shot through my system.
"Damn!" I exclaimed. "This place gives me the creeps! Can't you turn that thing off?" The holos had been appearing and disappearing at random, flickering on and off. We had done a job on the bridge. Most of the instrumentation appeared to be damaged. Smoke still hung in the air. Sparks snapped out of some of the displays, and things darted through the air, then flashed away to nothingness. A dull red glow flashed on and off, monotonously. Gildron bristled, holding his E at the ready.
"It's all right, Gildron," Tara said. "Those V are not real. Not real, understand?"
"Rot reer," Gildron rumbled, evidently unconvinced. I sat up. Every muscle ached and my skin was burning.
"You sure we don't have to worry about that stuff in our bloodstreams anymore?"
"Not according to the medprobe."
"And Gildron never had it?"
"No."
"Because he was recognized as a superior being."
"Presumably."
"Who are they?" Willard asked. He was by my side clutching a Systie ratpak, examining the faces of the dead burnt onto my knuckles.
"Those are ghosts, Willard," I said. "Friends of mine."
"Ghosts?" He laughed, delighted. "What's that?" He traced a finger over the dark tattoo on my left arm.
"That's the Legion cross, kid. That's the Legion."
"Is that a number?"
"Those are numbers, underneath. That's a twelve. And that's a twenty-two. Twelfth of the Twenty-Second, that's us. That's who we are. Don't you know your numbers?"
"No."
"Well, I tell you what, Willard. I'm going to give you a Legion cross just like mine, on your left arm. And it will say Twelve/Twenty-Two, just like mine. You've earned it, kid. You're the first kid in Blue Bear Playschool with a confirmed kill." And suddenly I flashed back to the Mound, to that brave, nameless little girl defying a whole squad of armored killers. Children, I thought—they're the future of the universe.