“Hold it,” I said. Priestess had already stopped. We paused at the entrance to the chamber. Ancient metal rings, coated with rust, studded the walls.
An empty chamber. “I don’t like it,” I said. “What do you suppose this is?”
“It could have been anything.”
“I don’t like it,” I repeated.
We scanned the chamber carefully. Sweety noted mold, tiny parasites, slugs, worms, and billions of airborne microorganisms. It looked all right, but it did not feel all right.
Suddenly our tacnet exploded and we could hear autovac, shattering the dark, echoing through the corridors.
Snow Leopard screamed, “Fire! Fire! Fire!…Stop! Cease Fire! Freeze!”
Priestess and I froze as well, listening to the transmissions.
“I got him!”
“Don’t move!”
“He went down!”
“Don’t move!”
“Where is he?”
“Cease fire! Cease fire.”
“He moved!”
“Tenners, cease fire!”
Priestess and I leaned against the wall, side by side, our E’s pointed into the darkened chamber.
“Sounds like they got him,” I commented.
“That’s good,” Priestess said. “Good.”
“Element, up! Lifies up! On me!” Snow Leopard ordered. Evidently they were securing the Scaler.
“Thinker, Priestess, remain in place.” Snow Leopard never stopped thinking. He didn’t need us. I let myself slide down the corridor wall to a sitting position, my muscles relaxing. Priestess did the same. I felt good, despite that awful tunnel. This empty chamber was creepy, but there was plenty of room so I could breathe. We weren’t going to be meeting the Systies after all-at least not today! It was wonderful, sitting there looking at Priestess. I felt the blood pumping through my veins. I had never been so alive.
Snow Leopard was in his element. “Careful, zap him if he moves. Medic up!”
Priestess’s arms twitched, a reflex to the call for a medic. The life team leader called his own medic, the other man on the capture team. Priestess started giggling. I put my arm around her shoulders and squeezed. I just wanted to hold her, to look into her eyes. Even with the faceplate and the mud, even with the green glow and the dark, she was youth and beauty and life. We embraced, silently, awkwardly, and I swear I could hear her heartbeat. I never wanted to leave her.
I felt a faint shudder in the floor and we tensed, the moment of tenderness evaporated. Suddenly, the chamber floor erupted before us with a tremendous crack. Rock shrapnel ricocheted wildly in all directions, peppering us with jagged flecks of stone. Dust and earth filled the air. A scream echoed in my ears, and we were airborne. I landed on my back, breathless. I raised my head. Dust swirled all around me.
A new sound consumed the room, a metallic chittering, harsh and bone-chilling. I raised my E. The dust cleared. A grotesque, massive exoseg head appeared, covered with coarse black bristles, jerking from side to side in super-fast motion, giant bulging compound eyes glittering black. Long, nasty antennae probed and snapped like great whips. A hideous wet mouth emerged, pincers open, front legs brushing the rubble aside as the creature rose up out of the hole.
“Exoseg Gigantic Soldier…” Sweety warned me.
Too late, Sweety!
I stared stupidly at the impossible apparition. My comtop shrieked with alarms and Sweety relayed information to me in a rapid-fire staccato. I could not believe how calm she sounded.
The creature seized Priestess bodily in its two front legs, raising her in the air. She screamed a nightmare scream, arms pinned, her E still strapped to her chest. The creature opened its maw. It was going to eat her headfirst!
I came out of my shock at the last possible instant. My E had been aimed at the exoseg but I had been unable to use it. Now it was all instinct. I hit the trigger just as my thumb snapped the setting from v-min to xmin. I did not even think about it. There simply was no time. I aimed for the creature’s eye, just past Priestess’s struggling form.
The explosive round burst inside the creature and shattered half its head. The flash lit up the hideous scene briefly. The giant exoseg’s two front legs jerked apart, and Priestess fell to the floor. Ricocheting shrapnel peppered my faceplate.
That bone-chilling chittering-shrieking, freezing my blood. It was still alive! Something smashed against the back of my head, and I hit the floor face-first, stunned and bleeding. My faceplate was scarred and Sweety flashed me a warning. The darksight faded quickly. I groveled in the rubble, blind and helpless.
“Priestess! Priestess!” No response. Shrapnel had penetrated the darksight layer in my faceplate, but I still had my E. An icy fury convulsed me. We will die, but I will take that thing with me. I pointed my E into the smoking darkness and activated the light.
A nightmare scene. The sudden glare of my E’s white light, a chamber full of dust, the great grotesque exoseg snapping back and forth wildly above me in convulsions, its movements faster than the eye could follow, leathery chitin, gore and foam spraying through the air like a shower of meteorites. It was only halfway out of the hole in the floor.
“…exoseg still functioning…” Sweety told me that and a great deal more, but I was not listening.
“Thinkerrrr!” Priestess was trapped underneath one of the creatures black legs, crumpled in the smoking rubble at the lip of the crater in the floor-alive! Covered with blood and gore, she lifted her arms, reaching out to me.
I raised the E and aimed carefully again at the exoseg’s shattered head. I set it on auto xmin and fired. Multiple detonations annihilated the remainder of the creature’s head and brought down much of the ceiling as well. A white-hot pain burned into my left cheek. My litesuit was riddled with hits and the whole world shook. But still the exo did not die.
Headless, it groped wildly about with the pincers on its long front legs. Green pus spattered all over me. I screamed, overcome with horror. I held the E with both hands, the stock tight against my shoulder. My flash tore loose from my suit and triggered itself, bouncing around at my feet, casting giant obscene shadows that danced from wall to ceiling to wall.
I aimed for its thorax and fired again. Glaring white-hot flashes from multiple hits illuminated the creature as though it were exploding in slow motion, splattering all over the chamber, an ugly hot sticky sickening death, gobs of green and yellow pus bursting off the walls, wet leathery chunks of exoskeleton tumbling wildly through the air, stiff spiky exoseg legs twitching in spastic death throes, a fountain of gore erupting from the abdomen, all illuminated harshly by the flash.
Movement. Priestess crawled slowly away from the exoseg. I kept my E trained on the creature’s abdomen. It slumped back into the hole and disappeared.
I jumped over debris and exo-parts and grabbed her elbow. She screamed and wrenched herself out of my grip. Then she turned back, looked at the hole in the floor and threw herself in my arms, shaking violently.
“It’s all right, it’s dead. It’s dead, and we’re alive. It’s all right.” I held her in my arms. We both shook in horror. We were alive. We would return together after all.
“I wet my pants,” she confessed weakly.
“It’s all right,” I responded hoarsely. “It’s all right.” I was not about to admit that I had done the same.
Chapter 4: Slave of the Future
Whenever I opened my eyes in the body shop, Priestess was by my side. We had been admitted the same day, evak’d to Atom to treat our wounds. Her wounds were minor but she stayed on to look after me. I had a few broken bones from where the exo had whacked me, and several nasty shrapnel wounds. Nothing that couldn’t be repaired in a few days. Priestess the seductress, in hospital whites. When I awoke, she reached out and touched my hand. Who could ask for more? She had survived. I thanked the Gods of War.