~Ready.
The little missile floating between the doors on its gyre of fields withdrew, letting the doors start to close as Parinherm let go of the top lip of the doorway and immediately flicked his hands around to grasp the edges of the closing doors.
~Secure hold, the android sent as the doors pressed into his fingers.
“Really tight now, Vyr,” Berdle said quietly, then brought his feet together, letting him and Cossont fall from the under-surface of the elevator car. They pendulumed in the air, their combined mass sending them both swinging thudding into the shaft wall. The avatar took most of the impact and the suit’s gloves protected Cossont’s hands, but it still hurt.
Parinherm, fingers jammed, now had his own weight and that of the two people clinging to him on his arms, hands and fingers, which were being forced to slide down the narrow gap between the almost fully closed doors. Even in a fairly optimistic, human-flattering virtuality, Parinherm thought, a real human would be screaming head-over-heels down the shaft at this point, the bloody stumps of their fingers still trapped between the doors.
Happily, I am not human, Parinherm thought, and this is only a simulation.
~Climbing, Berdle sent, and quickly hauled himself up the android’s body, hand over hand, taking Cossont with him. He stood braced on the lower lip of the doorway and swept the doors open — Parinherm dropped a metre but held on to the lower lip easily enough — stepped forward and turned to let Cossont jump off his back and then stooped to grasp the android’s hand just as, with a creak and a sudden rush of air, the elevator car dropped down the shaft in front of the open doors, hit and severed Parinherm’s fingers and then shuddered on downwards to sweep the rest of his body away.
~Damn, the android sent. ~I was enjoying that!
Cossont caught her breath, started forward towards the open shaft, looking down at the fast-retreating roof of the battered lift as air sucked out all around her.
Berdle reached, pulled her backwards, away from the shaft. “You know,” the avatar said, stepping round her and looking out from the alcove where the lift doors were set, then taking another step out into the gently bowed corridor, “Parinherm will probably be okay, but we have to—”
Something seemed to strike the avatar full in the upper abdomen; Berdle was jerked backwards as a blinding light burst out all around him and something exploded further down the broad curve of corridor; Cossont was sent flying back towards the open doors and the shaft, staggering and skidding right to the edge, all four arms windmilling desperately as she stood teetering, heels-on to the drop. Her eyes were going crazy, reacting mostly too late to the star-burst of light that had erupted from the avatar, filling her vision with black dots. Berdle still seemed to be there, in front of her, his body shuddering, wrapped in flames.
She felt herself start to tip backwards, into the void.
“Oh, fuck,” she heard herself say, and thought what pathetic words those were. And not even remotely original and unique, she thought, as she canted backwards, arms still hopelessly wheeling.
Berdle, enveloped in fire, stepped forward and caught the strap of her shoulder bag one-handed. He stopped her, held her, then grabbed her round the waist with his other hand and pulled her forward, back into the alcove.
“Best get down,” he said, kneeling within the alcove. She dropped to her haunches, taking cover behind the metre of wall between the jammed-opened doors and the corridor. Berdle stripped the remains of his burning clothes off and threw them down the elevator shaft. His skin had gone silvery. There was no mark on his back at all; she’d have expected an exit wound. Actually, she’d have expected him to be blown in half.
“What the fuck?” she asked. She was trying hard not to shriek.
“Didn’t quite see that coming in time,” Berdle said, turning and grinning at her. “Managed to…” a hole appeared, instantly, in his back; she could see straight through his body to his silvery thighs. The hole was big enough for her to have put her fist in. The smooth hole closed up again, just as quickly. “… but not quite fast enough; caught some round the edges. Sorry about that.” He nodded at the floor. “Lost the scout missile.” Cossont looked at the floor, where half of the little scout missile that had been holding the doors open earlier lay, gently smoking.
The avatar put one finger to the edge of the alcove, flicked it out and brought it back just as another bright beam came lancing past where his finger had been an instant earlier. The edge of wall flared and a heavy detonation came from somewhere past them down the corridor; a blast of light followed by a body-shaking tremble beneath their feet and a pulse of blast, forcing Cossont to lower her head briefly. Grey smoke was drifting along the ceiling and a whole spectrum of alarms went squawking, warbling and howling all around them.
Then there was a dull, seemingly very distant thud, almost infra-sound deep. The ribbon of dark smoke in the lift shaft, extending from the burning clothes Berdle had discarded, trembled in the column of air.
~Oof! Hit bottom, Parinherm sent. ~95 per cent disabled, but still alive! End-run, I’m guessing. Nice working with you. Powering dow—
“Parinherm is still alive,” Berdle told Cossont. “We are being fired at by some sort of military arbite stationed just at the line-of-sight curve-limit of the corridor to the right. To the left, eighty metres away, one corridor higher, advancing this way at jogging speed, is a Gzilt person in a full battle suit armed with a laser assault rifle. This may be the Colonel Agansu person who contacted us earlier. I have two knife missiles to the left, within this corridor. They are holding fire while Gzilt civilians on a tour are evac— Wait. I’m being contacted. Excuse me.”
~Android/avatar entity, this is Colonel Agansu. Do you read? Come in.
“Colonel Agansu wishes to talk,” Berdle told Cossont. “Given our situation and the time we have to wait for the ship to return, I believe keeping him talking is to be preferred to having him or his adjuncts shooting at us.”
“The ship,” Cossont said. Her teeth wanted to chatter. She tried to stop them. “How long? It was still two-thirds of an hour away—”
“It is returning a little faster now,” the avatar said. “Though we still need to stall the Colonel. I intend, therefore, to engage him in conversation.”
“You engage away,” she told him.
~Android/avatar entity, in the corridor, this is Colonel Agansu. Do you read? Come in.
~Colonel Agansu, Berdle sent. ~To what do we owe such destructive attention?
~Ah. And who might I have the pleasure of addressing?
~You knowing my name; is that really necessary, Colonel?
~My knowing it is strictly speaking unnecessary, I’ll grant, Agansu sent. ~However, purely for form’s sake, we might as well exchange names; sobriquets, at least.
~I fail to see how this will make any material difference to our exchanges, of information or fire.
~I don’t mean to imply we are at all likely to become friends, sir. But a degree of civilised politeness should not prevent us discharging our duties.
~Or our weapons.
~Of which you seem to possess rather few, following the destruction of your knife missile, not to mention the demise of your fellow at the bottom of the elevator shaft. I am somewhat tempted to send the arbite up the corridor towards you, just to see what you are able to put in its way to stop it; however, I am aware that Ms Cossont is relatively vulnerable compared to your good self, and may come to some harm in any resulting fire-fight, even while you might remain quite hale and hearty. The arbite is already in a state of some confusion following what it thought was a centre-body 100 per cent kill-shot which you seem, nevertheless, to have survived. Is Ms Cossont well?