like a bug on a pin.
'Probable Omni approaching! Extremely high mag readings! Tacstars, xmax, laser no effect! Recommend random auto biobloc!'
Frozen with fear, I went to flame; I had no time to screw around with biobloc. We had no idea of the creature's frequency, and it was almost on us! I fired flame.
It burst out, a raging explosion of burning gas, a firestorm. Walk into that, alien. Breathe that! Burn, O!
A wave of cold rushed over us. My armor glittered with ice. My finger slipped off the trigger. Snow Leopard ceased firing. Psycho raised his Manlink, stunned and spent. Molten metal ran past our feet, smoking in the cold. A skeletal cenite wasteland of our own creation glowed all around us, a ghostly phospho green in my darksight. It burnt in the dark like the heart of Hell.
'Mag overload! Unidentified life form approaching, fire auto biobloc, Thinker!'
Sweety was insistent, but I could not comply. My heart had stopped. Icy fingers of death clutched my chest. I could hardly breathe, and a hot wave of weakness rolled through my body. I fell to my knees, dizzy and helpless, a cold knot of terror burning in my chest.
'It's here…' a strangled whisper from Warhound.
Snow Leopard was on his feet, weaving, clutching a silent E. Psycho buckled and fell to one knee, his Manlink clutched protectively to his chest, his eyes wild.
The O stepped out of smoke and fire, a towering black shadow, its image shimmering and wavering, glowing violet, not quite real. My muscles short-circuited, trembling violently. I had no control over them—no control. I gasped for breath. It had taken my breath away, my lungs burned. The O was like a mirage in superhot air, its image blurry and changing, tall and black and leathery, a deformed head, all wrong, split in two, dead wet eyes winking. Is it in armor? Terror shot through my veins; my hands trembled. I lost my grip on the E!
The O reached down for Snow Leopard in slow motion. A long twisted arm cloaked in darkness, shimmering, the O moving dreamily in a force field of glowing violet air. Snow Leopard stood paralyzed, motionless. The O's arm brushed past him lightly. Snow Leopard crashed to the deck violently, one hand clawing at the air. The O called out, a blood-chilling, reptilian croak; it was laughing at us!
'Fire full auto biobloc, Thinker!' Sweety urged me.
I could not breathe! Someone gurgled in my ears. My hands slapped at my E, but it was secured to my chest. I could not control my arms. The O moved. It came toward me, shimmering, hazy, relentless. The eyes—freezing me in place; dead alien eyes blinking slowly; my death, here like a dream; an obscene maw, rows of sharp wet needle teeth. The skeletal arm reached out to me, a leathery, slithering, scratching on the deck. Metallic fingers snapped onto my chest plate and the O jerked me off the ground like a rag doll. My body convulsed, twitching, out of control.
A flicker of movement behind me. Warhound hurled himself at the O, howling. His wrists were still tied but his armored fists clutched a cold knife. He struck. The blade slashed into the O.
Sweety shot a mag right into my heart and my fingers closed reflexively over the trigger of my plasmapak torch and squeezed. A sudden flash of energy burst from my chest, lancing straight into the O. Plasma, gas from the heart of a star. A hair-raising shriek and the O thrashed loose like a whirling demon, a cyclone, a tornado, shooting past me. I fell to the deck, helpless. I caught a glimpse of Psycho moving like a puppet, still on one knee, his Manlink suddenly functional. The air cracked and snapped—biobloc!
Sweety had never stopped talking, almost frantic now, what was she saying…'pulse firing random auto biobloc, Thinker! Get your E up! Aim it! I am firing it! Another mag! Get up, soldier! Get up! Get up!'
An explosion, shot in the heart! I screamed. I jerked to my feet, fingers still on the torch. Blue-hot plasma danced before me. The O was an icy tornado backing away from me, bouncing off Snow Leopard, who was on his knees. Snow Leopard raised his E and fired laser, right into the O. The laser ricocheted off wildly, dancing along the ceiling. The O shrieked, freezing my blood. It twirled madly, long limbs whirling, a cyclone of icy air, thrashing back through the wreckage, suddenly gone.
Gone! A whirlwind of air swirled around us in its wake—gone! And I could breathe again, gasping, great gasps of air, my lungs still burning.
'Deadman! I dropped those nukes right on its head!' Psycho gulped, exhausted.
'The damned laser bounced right off it,' Snow Leopard panted. 'That's a first!'
'Enemy still retreating,' Sweety informed me.
'Sweety saved us,' I said hoarsely.
The O was gone. All the cubicles around us were also gone, vaporized, blown to bits, now eerie metal skeletons crackling in a sea of fire, black smoke swirling all around us. Shot-up equipment dangled from the tortured ceiling in a writhing mass of snake-like cables. Warhound lay face-down on the deck, his wrists still tied, the cold knife still clutched in his armored hands.
'Warhound! Are you all right? Deadman, who tied his wrists?'
'Water. Water!' Warhound called. I put my canteen to his lips and he drank greedily. His eyes were wild.
'Get his helmet on.'
'What happened, Six?'
'It was the O,' Warhound explained slowly. 'The O. I had to kill you. I had to!'
'Explain, Six!' Snow Leopard was right beside me.
Warhound was in agony; the thoughts rushing through his mind reflected on the harsh angular features of his tortured face. 'I got out of the lake—the lava. They…called me. I couldn't resist. They took it all. There was a passage, a crack in the cliff. It was dark—I could hardly see them.'
'How many O's?'
'I don't know! It was dark…and after awhile I knew the Aliens were coming. And I had to kill you—all of you.'
'The Aliens?'
'Yes,' Warhound bit his lip. 'You were the Aliens. We…we were the Aliens. And the Aliens were evil. I had no doubts. You all had to die.'
'Persuasive creeps, aren't they?' Psycho was upset—his beloved Manlink had failed us for the first time.
'Your helmet, Warhound.' Snow Leopard handed it to me.
'Can you untie my hands?'
'Yeah, sure.' I hit the release.
'Alert! Life! Human! Legion! Beta Nine approaching!'
Adrenalin, again. I could not take much more of this. I raised my E.
'Priestess! I asked you to stay with the aircar!' Snow Leopard was furious.
'I'm sorry, One. I heard you fight with Warhound, and then the O. I couldn't stay there.' Priestess approached us through the skeletalized cubes, her E at her shoulder. Black smoke swirled around her; flames still licked along the wreckage. We kept our E's trained on her, set to vacmin.
'Lower your E, Nine!'
'It's all right, Beta—I'm fine,' she assured us, lowering the E. 'Redhawk is guarding the Systie. Is everyone all right?'
'We're all right,' Snow Leopard responded. 'Now—Thinker, Psycho, what happened? This is very important. The O retreated. Why?'
'Warhound attacked him with a cold knife,' I replied. 'And Sweety stung me, and I triggered my torch, and the plasma hit the O, at close range.'
'Negative, Thinker,' Psycho interrupted. 'It was Mother that saved us. My tacmod fired the Manlink by itself—full auto random pulse biobloc. One of the settings must have affected it.'
'I fired your E as well, Thinker,' Sweety said in my ears. 'Auto random biobloc, unaimed. It is possible one of the frequencies upset it.'
'Surely it wasn't the knife,' Snow Leopard said. 'Let me see it.'
Warhound handed it over. The blade was wet and sticky.
'Deadman, what's this?'
'I stabbed it, One,' Warhound replied. 'I stabbed the O.'
'How did you do that, Warhound? I thought it had you under mental control. Deadman! How can a knife
