Something moved up ahead, a dull red glow. I sloshed forward. A horrific scene came into view. A line of corpses, bloody meat, stripped of all skin, dangling from hooks. An assembly line—a meat factory. I stopped. I did not want to see any more.
'There are no O's here, One,' I reported. 'Only bodies—lots of bodies.'
'Return, Three—fast!'
'Gladly!'
###
'Valkyrie's found something,' Psycho informed me when I crawled out of the chute. 'Let's go.' The rest of the squad was gone, the room deserted.
'What's she found?' I asked.
'A way in, we think. What's down there?'
'You don't want to know.' We stepped out the hole Psycho had blown in the outer door. The civilians stood around outside, naked, shivering, their skin turning blue. The little girl who had asked about her mommy stepped past me into the room. I managed to grab onto her arm.
'Hold it! Where do you think you're going?' I hauled her back into the corridor.
'We're going to see our mommy,' she said gravely. She was so cold her teeth were chattering.
'Excuse us,' another civilian said. It was the man I had talked with earlier, now stepping into the doorway. Psycho pulled him back roughly.
'What's the holdup, Psycho?' Snow Leopard asked on the tacnet. He was getting impatient.
'Stop! Everybody stop! You can't go in there! You'll all die in there!'
'We have to go in,' the man responded. There were nods of agreement from the rest of the civilians.
'The inner door's open,' Psycho said, 'and it won't close!'
'Deadman! Snow Leopard, we've got a problem!' I suddenly realized that the corridor was filling with civilians—they were coming along the corridor from Processing, where Valkyrie had cleared the room. Men, women and children—with only one thought in their fully-psyched minds.
Priestess suddenly appeared, running up the corridor past the civilians. She knew something was wrong.
'Thinker! Where are they going?'
'They're going to die if they go into this room.' The civilians were trying to push their way past us. I swung a left at one particularly aggressive fellow, and my armored fist crushed his nose and hurled him across the corridor. It made no difference. They were frantic to get in, clawing at our A-suits.
'Stop it! Stop it! Go back! Go back!' Twister called out, frantic, recognizing the problem immediately, running back and throwing herself into the crowd. She hurled bodies left and right to clear them away from the door.
'We've got to get that ship, guys!' Snow Leopard told us on the tacnet. 'Get back here now!'
'The ship is not important!' Twister cried out. 'We have to save these people!'
'She's right, One,' Priestess added. 'The ship is not important! These people are important! They're human beings—and they're going to die if we don't help them!'
'Get in here, Twister!' I said. 'Get that inner door closed! Then laser it shut!'
'I'm on it!' She scrambled past me.
'Priestess—get out of the corridor! In here!' She forced her way in, past the frantically struggling civilians. Psycho blocked the doorway.
'Psycho,' I said. 'Do a low-power stunstar in the corridor.'
'You're right!' Psycho said. 'It worked on that Systie! It'll scramble the psych programming!'
'Three, Five, Thirteen, Nine, rejoin the squad immediately!'
'We're on the way, One!' I responded.
'Attention! One-two-three Systies in armor, in the corridor, near Holding.'
'How did they do that?'
'The children!' Priestess called out.
'Heads down!' Psycho fired the stunstar. It was the thunder of the Gods, a great fist from the sky, flattening everyone in the corridor. The echoes rolled away. When the dust cleared the civilians were all out cold, sprawled everywhere.
'The psyching will be gone when they regain consciousness. Have you got that door yet?'
'It's done!' The inner door snapped shut, closing off the slide to Hell.
'One, we're attacking the Systies!' Psycho said, stepping out the door with his Manlink raised.
'We're on the way, Psycho! Clear the corridor!'
'Can you see anything?' I burst out the door and rolled over to the far side of the corridor, snapping the safety off my E. My tacmod was trash. The corridor was full of unconscious civilians. Our psybloc units were flashing—it was bad news all around.
'I don't have to—tacstar!' Psycho aimed the Manlink. Then the world exploded, a dazzling supersonic crack and a titanic boom, and my armored fingers clawed at the air. My faceplate lit up with warning lights and the corridor walls and ceiling were suddenly shredded and smoking. A quick glimpse of Priestess and Twister standing in the center of the corridor wreathed in smoke, E's at their shoulders, firing auto xmax almost as if they were on the range back at Basic. Then my hearing came back and the noise overwhelmed me.
'Give me that Manlink!' Dragon snatched Five's weapon and snapped it up to his shoulder. He fired immediately and the tacstar ripped open the universe. It exploded with a merciless crack down corridor, lighting everything up with an eerie incandescent glow. I couldn't figure out why Dragon was firing Psycho's weapon.
'Psycho, lay down a suppressing fire with the Manlink,' Snow Leopard ordered. 'Beta, on me. We disengage—we've got a mission! We've got to find that ship!'
'Thinker, are you hurt? Thinker!' Valkyrie clawed at my armor. Tacstars shrieked and exploded down corridor. The rest of the squad let loose with auto xmax and lasers—the Systies would be keeping their heads down.
'I think I'm all right. Deadman! What happened?'
'The Systies fired a tacstar—you're lucky! Get up! Disengage! Beta, disengage!'
'Five! Oh no!'
'Psycho's hit!'
'Priestess, we've got a casualty!'
I struggled to my feet. My E was at my chest and an SG still dangled from one shoulder. Something was wrong with one leg of my A-suit. I was having trouble moving the joint. Then I saw that my armor was riddled with hits, pitted with smoking holes.
Psycho was on his back, his armor smoking. One leg was gone, blown away above the knee, his blood squirting all over Tara's armored fingers as she struggled to get a field dressing on it. I could hardly comprehend it. Psycho, the invincible, was down. Psycho, who had emerged unscathed from Andrion 2 and 3, from Coldmark, from Mongera—Psycho was down.
'Attention! Legion squad approaching the Mound!'
'Damn! Now what?'
'That's got to be Blue Gold!'
'Psycho! Psycho! Can you hear me?' I bent over his helmet. Priestess was suddenly there, dropping her E, taking over from Tara, working on Psycho's wound. I snapped open his visor. He was in shock, pale and twitching. His lips moved.
'Bastards got me…' he gasped.
'No, they didn't, Psycho!' I insisted. 'It's a God-damned scratch! Don't be such a pussy!'
'I'm finished…' I could barely hear him.
'You can't die, you jerk! You owe me a hundred credits! Quit whining—Priestess is patching you up right now!'
'Psycho, your wound is not fatal,' Priestess reported. 'Your right leg has been damaged. The Legion will build you a new one, trooper—no worries! Try and relax!'
'Relax! Scut, how are my balls? Tell me the truth!'
'Your balls are fine, Psycho,' Priestess replied. She was almost laughing.
'You've got it cracked, Psycho!' I said. 'You're off to the body shop—you're a damned hero, those little nurses will be fighting to see who gives you the sponge bath. Stay awake, Psycho!'
