“Whatever that means,” said Albany. “Ruiz, we’re fairly safe now. I don’t want to fiddle with the tanglefoot; it would take a lot of my remaining firepower to burn the stuff off. So if you don’t mind, we’ll all just be careful.”
The tanglefoot was a mat that ran around the perimeter of the tram, just outside the razor rails. An incautious foot descending on the mat caused the tanglefoot to fire barbed wires into the foot. Even armor wasn’t entirely proof against a mat; some wires would penetrate, enough to discourage lifting the foot. Ruiz had once stepped on tanglefoot, even now he could remember the awful sensations of pulling loose — the barbs ripping through flesh and tendon, the little wet pops as they came through the skin.
“We’ll be careful,” he said.
The tram rode steadily up the rail, and Ruiz stationed himself at the control panel, ready to press the Dirm’s elbow into the scanner cup, should a request come through the short-range communit built into the panel. But the comm’s activity light remained dark, and nothing disturbed their progress.
After a while Ruiz relaxed enough to look out at the walls of the pit, which at this height were even more wormy with interrupted tunnels. From the mouths of some of these openings came signs of life within, soft noises, an occasional flicker of movement, the nose-tingling smells of unfamiliar alien cookery. Ruiz wondered what sort of creatures made their home here so far below the human levels of the stack. According to the data Publius had provided, they were still a long way beneath the lowest levels of Yubere’s dungeons.
When humans had arrived on Sook, the planet was populated by a diversity of alien races. Some, reduced to devolved remnants, had been there for eons; others had been more recently marooned.
When the humans had succeeded to domination on Sook, some of those aliens had retreated into the roots of SeaStack.
In any case, none of the pit’s inhabitants came to the tunnel mouths to look at them, and Ruiz surmised that the Dirms had entertained themselves by potshotting at the dwellers, a theory that gained credibility when he noticed the recent scars of energy weapons across several of the openings.
The dark roof of the pit drew closer, until Ruiz could see that it was a rough dome, built of scrap alloy beams, chinked with unpolished meltstone. Apparently some titanic weapon had punched a vast hole through the stack in some long-forgotten battle — and then someone had hurriedly repaired the damage. How long ago had that been?
Now he could see the terminus of the tram rail — it passed behind a curved monomol barricade just below the dome’s foundation buttresses. The barricade, like the tram, seemed shiny and new compared to its surroundings.
“Let’s get set,” said Ruiz. “I’ll sit one chair, Huxley the other. Albany and Durban on the pallets with Yubere between them. We don’t know what to expect, but whatever we find, be quick, get off the tram as fast as you can — and then get behind something hard. Make sure your armor is tight, check your weapons, loosen your muscles.”
“Yes, Momma,” said Albany.
Ruiz ignored him. “We want to create as little fuss as possible; Huxley, you keep your eye on your sensors, unless you absolutely have to stop to do someone. We need to know right away, the instant word goes up to the target that weasels are in his chickenhouse.”
“I’m getting something now,” said Huxley. “Not much; looks like it might be the spill-off radiation from a Konda class graser. If so, someone up there is carrying a big gun.”
Albany looked at Ruiz and shivered elaborately. “Oooh,” he whispered. “Getting interesting now, boss. Who do we know can tote a Konda?”
Ruiz shook his head, but suddenly he was assailed by a memory of Corean’s big Moc, bounding gracefully through the air, firing its ice gun.
“Have any of you ever danced with a Mocrassar?” he asked.
Albany’s eyes widened theatrically. He patted his chest-plate tentatively. “No… no. I seem to be alive, so I guess not.”
Huxley looked thoughtful. “That might be it, though I don’t want to believe it. A Moc, with one big well-shielded graser — hard to beat something like that, if your enemy can afford it. Let’s hope it’s just a killmech, with sensory pickups too cute for me to detect.”
“Four well-prepared humans can sometimes kill a Moc, given a similar tech level,” said Ruiz. “We’ll probably take casualties, but there’s hope.”
“Thank you for that inspirational speech, Ruiz Aw,” said Albany, still smiling, but looking somewhat pale behind his visor.
The terminal barricade approached rapidly, and Ruiz checked over his weapons one last time. The tram slowed, just as it passed through an automatic blast door that folded shut behind them.
The tram ground to a stop at a platform, empty except for a corridor-car, apparently waiting to take the passengers back to Yubere’s stronghold. A long peaceful moment passed, as they started to rise from their various positions. Nothing happened, and Ruiz was starting to hope that they had, miraculously, penetrated Yubere’s stronghold without further conflict.
Then the Moc stepped from the mouth of the dark opening at the back of the platform.
In the frozen instant that passed before the Moc understood that it faced enemies, and before his slayers could react to the creature’s presence, Ruiz’s eyes recorded a number of irrelevant details.
This Moc was somewhat shorter than Corean’s, and the paint that decorated it formed less complex patterns, indicating its inferior lineage. It wore no clothing, and its six-limbed body gleamed with fresh healthy chitin. Ruiz noticed no cyborged weapons, such as the energy tubes built into the midlimbs of Corean’s Moc — but Yubere’s Moc didn’t need any such enhancements. This one’s midlimbs were fully occupied with a huge graser; ready lights burned green on the weapon’s receiver.
The scene erupted into violent movement. The Moc leaped sideways and whipped the graser up.
Ruiz was ready for the Moc’s evasive leap, and from the manner in which the Moc held its weapon had guessed correctly at the direction… and so he had a chance at survival. He was bounding from his tram chair as he fired his splinter gun, and the shuddering recoil of the weapon spun him onto his back. He managed to maintain his aim through that impromptu tumble, and the hail of spinning wire sleeted against the creature’s insectoid head. Most of the wire bounced harmlessly from chitin, but the Moc’s great faceted eyes were ruined, reduced to yellow-slimed holes.
It opened its maw and shrieked, a high penetrating sound that carried over the crash of the others’ weapons. Ruiz landed awkwardly on the platform and felt something pop in his right shoulder. He ignored the injury and continued to fire, hoping a splinter might ricochet through the Moc’s maw into some other sensory channel — even blinded, the thing could fight on effectively, using smell and sound. He rolled, in case the creature decided to fire at the thump he’d made when he landed, and just as he vacated the spot, the big graser turned it into a puddle of molten alloy.
All this took less than a second, and then Albany’s graser found the Moc’s head and took it off in a puff of evil-smelling smoke. The Moc danced back, its movements almost too quick to follow, the graser firing in a continuous stream, burning holes through the barricade, melting streams of metal from the doorway from which it had emerged.
Finally Albany hit the Moc’s graser, and it fell apart in a shower of pink sparks. The Moc flung the smoking pieces aside and continued to whirl about the platform in a random pattern, stamping with its huge lower limbs, slashing with its midlimbs, feeling delicately with its tiny forelimbs at its neck hole, as if looking for its missing head.
“Knees,” Ruiz shouted, and concentrated his fire on the Moc’s lower limbs.