'NOVA WARNING! Exterior temperature has passed acceptable tolerances for cenite armor! Your armor is melting! Recommend immediate retreat!' I scrambled up from the deck, frantic, enveloped in flames. My armor was already white-hot.
'Get out! Get out!' Snow Leopard ordered. 'Back the way we came! Keep firing!' I fired into the flames, auto canister X, walking backwards in roaring sheets of flaming gas.
'Tacstar, Five—I want everything in there to die!' We made it back to the door somehow and Psycho raised his Manlink and the tacstar ripped its way through the holocaust and exploded, a nuclear flower, annihilating it all, blowing a wild storm of debris through the doorway. The door slid shut, sealing us off from the flames.
'Is everybody here? Five, Three, Cinta, Gildron, Thirteen, all here.' One sounded shaken. Our A-suits were burning and smoking.
'Did you see that brain?' Psycho asked.
'We're just lab animals to them,' Snow Leopard said. 'The only way out of here is to kill O's!'
'What the hell was that weapon?' I asked.
'That was starmass—they used it in the Plague War,' Snow Leopard responded.
'Look at your armor! Do you know what temperature it takes to affect A-suit armor? That was like being in a star!' My armor was burnt grey, scarred and pitted, smoking freely.
'Did we get the O?' Twister asked.
'No way of knowing—not in that mess,' I answered.
'I think we upset it,' Psycho said.
'No! What makes you think that?'
'I can tell when somebody's upset. It didn't like the canister.' Our helmet units were still spitting psybloc so we knew the O's were in the area. Gildron snarled and raised his E, covering the ceiling.
'Continuous psyprobing,' Tara reported. 'We've got their attention!'
'Eleven, report!' Snow Leopard demanded. The response came at once.
'One, Eleven. We killed five Systies. We have possession of Processing. There's more of them downstairs, but they've split up. Probably looking for an alternate way to get to us. Do you want us to pursue them?'
'Damn! Negative, Valkyrie. Re-mine the room and rejoin the squad, now. Priestess, get back here.'
'I can't, One.' Priestess replied wearily. 'I can't! I have to look after the babies, the children—they're dying, they're all dying, I have to keep them alive.'
'Deadman. All right, Nine, keep alert! Follow me, gang. We've got a mission!'
Chapter 10
Blue Jade
'It won't open,' Dragon reported. The door had a Systie message sprayed on it—DISPOSAL. The squad was together again except for Priestess, who was still watching over the children. Dragon took his hand off the tab. The doors were no longer working. Things were starting to get tense. The O's were using deceptors and our tacmods were close to useless.
'They've sealed all doors,' Snow Leopard said. 'They know there's some new people here. Psycho, open it. Valkyrie, take your element and move up corridor—I want to know what's up there. Watch out for the Systies.'
'Tenners. Twelve, Four, Eight, let's go.'
We huddled under cover as Psycho opened the door. A tacstar isn't subtle, even on minimum power, but it always works. When the echoes ceased, we walked in past the glowing edges of the massive hole Psycho had punched in the cenite door. We found a room with a scattering of shocked, twitching civilians. They had been at the far end of the room and had escaped death but they were in bad shape from the blast. They were all completely naked, males and females, huddled against the wall, shivering. It was dark and cold. The ceiling was full of those damned escape hatches. It made us nervous.
'Psycho, you've got the ceiling.'
'Thanks. I appreciate that.'
There was another sealed door at the far end of the room and a message: PACKS ONLY.
A little naked girl came out of the shadows and looked up at Snow Leopard, completely unafraid. 'Our mommy went in there,' she said. 'Can we open it?'
'Aw scut,' Psycho said.
'Thirteen, on me,' Snow Leopard ordered. 'You've got the techprobe Mark 2? Can you open this door for us?'
'I can open it, One,' Psycho said cheerily.
'I know, Five. I was thinking about something a little less noisy this time.'
'I'll try, One.' Twister went to work on the activator with the techprobe.
'Heavy and continuing deceptor activity,' Sweety announced. 'This may precede an Omni attack!'
I approached the nearest adult civilian, a male. They had all struggled to their feet and were standing patiently, as if waiting for an airbus.
'What goes on here?' I asked. 'What's beyond that door? Do you know?'
'That's where we're going, Cit,' the man responded, 'in there. We have to go in there.' He looked into my eyes, dead serious.
'But what's in there?'
'We don't know, Cit. But that's where we have to go.' He seemed totally convinced. 'We hope it can open the door for us.'
'They're psyched,' Tara cut in, 'totally psyched. Going into that doorway is all that's in their minds. The O's don't even have to be here. They use the Systies to divide up the civilians the way they want, then they psych the different groups to go where they're supposed to go. I hope we get a chance to kill some O's while we're here. I think that would make me feel very good.'
'I believe you're going to get your wish.'
###
'Bring us back a souvenir, Thinker!' I was backing down the drop on the end of my climbing cable and my boots were sliding freely over the oily surface. The door had revealed a steep slide, falling down to an invisible room far below.
'Just don't let go!' I pleaded.
'Can I have Priestess if you don't come back?' Psycho asked. He was on the other end of the line. I was sweating ice, and in no mood for humor. My boots shot out from under me and I landed on one hip.
'Damn! I can't even stand up here!'
'Can you see anything below?'
'It's hot down there—there's steam rising!'
'I think it's time to re-negotiate that hundred credits you claim I owe you. What say, Thinker?'
I landed almost waist-deep in a pool of sticky, viscous liquid. My darksight was on. It was almost pitch dark except for the flashing from my psybloc, which cut through it all like lightning. Things were moving slowly all around me. It was some kind of awful mechanism.
'No life,' Sweety reported. But it was all moving. I eased forward, sloshing through the mess. Something flashed out of the dark and banged off my armor, raising sparks, sending me to my knees. It whirled and circled back. A mechanical device. I avoided it the second time—it hissed harmlessly past me. Something brushed up against me in the water. I glanced down. A body, swollen and putrefied, half submerged. My skin crawled. I pushed it away.
