'Mommy's with us, kiddies. Don't be scared!' Psycho was having the time of his life. But if it got any deeper the little runt was going to be underwater.
'Prepare to fire, gang,' Snow Leopard ordered calmly. 'Laser or xmax. Psycho, up to you. It's coming, and we can't hide any more.' Snow Leopard stopped moving and shouldered his E. I did the same, and set it to auto xmax. I was right next to a huge black cenite column. A twisted coil of ceiling was right overhead. The water was up to my armpits. Whatever it was would come in fast and low. Psycho sloshed forward to get in position to cover us both. My heart was pounding. I wanted nothing better than to let loose with a long burst of xmax. It was all a ghastly green glow, all around us.
'Energy point approaching,' Sweety called out, 'as marked.' A white-hot dot on my faceplate. Another. Another! 'Multiple targets,' Sweety corrected, 'approaching. Four, six targets—fire xmax auto!' I squeezed the trigger and held it down.
We ripped open the world. Shrieking, awful catastrophe, auto xmax shattering our ears, dazzling our eyes, exploding wildly, flashing off the columns and the roof, filling the air with supersonic slivers of glowing shrapnel, white phospo starbursts, the flowers of the Legion. My blood froze in awe. Psycho's Manlink spoke once, Tacstar Goddess, and reality parted briefly with a terrible ripping crack as a micronuke sun erupted before us, crackling and spitting, our own sun, right on my darkened faceplate, melting the ceiling, evaporating tons of water. My flesh crawled. Psycho whimpered in ecstasy. Something large and dark flashed past me. I whipped around to fire after it. An explosion of water. Psycho fired laser with his Manlink, right into the water. A black delta-shaped wing popped up steaming from underwater. I hit laser and joined Psycho in zapping it. The laser shrieked and popped and the device shuddered and burst open, spitting sparks.
'More of them!' Snow Leopard fired his E on auto xmax. 'Keep firing!' I caught a fleeting glimpse of a dart- shaped probe flashing past the columns, circling around for another go at us, a ghostly track flickering on my faceplate. I fired auto xmax, filling the air with death. Sweety was shrieking at me—another! The world exploded in my face, red phospho starburst, the shock hammering me underwater. I rose with my head ringing, tracks all over my faceplate, my vision all blurry. Snow Leopard was chest-deep in the water, his back against a column, firing auto xmax nonstop. The probes flashed past us like birds and the water erupted in their wake, hissing and steaming. The columns rang with hits, white-hot holes, suddenly there. The laser flickered like lightning all around us. One of the probes exploded in the air, rolling along the ceiling in a fiery trail of destruction, showering us with wreckage. I spotted another one and nailed it with a laser burst. It kept on going, then exploded with a brilliant flash against one of the columns. Psycho let loose with a long burst of xmax. Sweety was filling my ears with data, but it was not getting through to my brain. I crouched almost neck-deep in the water, my head whirling.
'Enemy probes eliminated,' Sweety remarked calmly. There was no more movement on the tacmap. A cold darkness enveloped us again. I slowly straightened up out of my crouch, my E at the ready.
'Everybody all right?'
'Tenners.'
'Ten.' I could hardly believe I was still in one piece.
'Nasty little critters, huh?' Psycho commented.
'Those weren't Systie probes—they were from the Omnis,' Snow Leopard informed us. 'Firing laser.'
'Nice to see we could kill them,' Psycho replied.
'Move it, gang—we're gone.' Snow Leopard wasn't wasting any time. He began sloshing vigorously through the scummy water. We followed, quickly. We passed a downed probe, a large wing jutting out of the water, riddled with xmax and laser, glowing pale green in my darksight.
'Look at that—nobody's ever seen anything like that before,' Snow Leopard remarked. One was a student of history, and he always felt he was a direct participant in momentous events.
'I'd just as soon have passed on the honor, thanks,' I responded.
'They're not unbeatable, Thinker—we shot down their probes!' Psycho insisted. 'I'll bet some O probe jockey is catching hell right now from his One.'
'Look at this.' Snow Leopard paused before an open doorway. It was a very odd doorway, narrow and high —about twice the height of a man. A corridor, flooded with filthy water, the walls glistening with slime. One had one hand out, almost as if he was feeling the air.
'We go in.' No explanation. Never an explanation, from Beta One. Just an order, and we move. In, we go in. He was just as crazy as Psycho.
Into the unknown, again. A cold sweating corridor as black as death, sloshing through chest-deep water, our shoulders almost touching the walls. Into the Camp of the O's. I knew we were crazy—all of us, totally insane.
We were so far gone there was simply no reason left.
A terrible grinding noise shook the walls, and the starport trembled. We stopped as the walls moved around us and the water shivered. Vibrations, in our bones. The base was tearing itself apart.
###
Nobody said a word. I think we were all stunned into silence by the sight. We were in a tall, lightless, ice-cold room, the walls covered with slime. The room was full of corpses, pale blue naked human corpses lying on slabs, rubbery plastic tubing glistening with black blood running from cold pale arms up to an overhead rack.
'Life, life, life!' Sweety's reaction was more human than our own. 'They are alive, Thinker. All of them—still alive!'
We followed the tubing to an auto device where the tubing spit the blood into a mechanism which eventually squirted it into an endless line of pale plastic bottles.
Bottles of blood, for the O's. Strange. I picked up one of the bottles and slipped it into a pouch on my U- belt.
Snow Leopard turned back to the living dead. It was pitch black to the Systies. They glowed green in our darksight. Sightless open eyes, glazed dead eyes. One of them blinked. A female, hovering before the gates of death, cold and skeletal and wasted. She could see nothing. Perhaps she sensed movement. Her mouth opened, a silent scream before the gates. She could feel the cold. She thought we were the O.
I gently pulled the tubing from her arm—it was attached with a regulator of some sort. I slapped on a patch. She began trembling violently. What could we do? They were only alive because the air in this section of the base was still breathable. How could we take them with us? It would be a procession of the dead and the doomed, sleepwalking through the Realm of the Ghouls. I did not even dare to voice my questions.
'Come on you, slimy subs! Mommy's ready!' Psycho was going berserk. 'I'll roast you alive! Crawl out of your holes, subs! Try Legion blood, you worms! I'll stick this link right up your ass!' Psycho was whirling his Manlink around wildly, ready to fire, his eyes flashing behind his faceplate.
'Calm down, Five!' Snow Leopard ordered. 'I have some news for you.'
'News? News? Scut! I got news for you—we're not leaving here until every last, stinking O is dead!'
'Warhound is here,' Snow Leopard said calmly.
'What? Where?'
'Close. He's close. He's getting closer. Follow me.'
We were shocked into silence by Snow Leopard's statement. And now he was moving again, into another open, dark doorway.
Follow me. No explanations, from our One. How could he know where Warhound was, when even Sweety did not know? What would happen to the Systies? We followed. What the hell else could we do?
We followed.
###
'Six on scope,' Sweety announced calmly. A chill shot through my veins. This was not a good place. It was a seemingly endless series of tall cubicles, cloaked in total darkness, strange grilled glassy walls, a mushroom-shaped column rising from the center of each cubicle, as tall as a man. Alien devices hung from the ceiling, and many of them had fallen to the floor, blocking the cubicles. Each cubicle was open where the walls would have met, four separate exits leading to eight adjoining cubicles. It was a twisted maze, and it was buckling and breaking up.
The dying starport shuddered and groaned. Tortured metal shrieked and moaned. Vibrations rattled our bones.
The floor shifted under me. A dull boom echoed in my ears.
The roof cracked and rippled. The lava was getting closer. I checked out the tacmap. Snow Leopard was in an adjoining cubicle just ahead of me. Psycho was in a cubicle just behind me.
