'Gildron, come here.' Gildron towered over Tara. She pulled gently at his arms, and he squatted down to face her. She took his massive head in her hands and gently kissed him on the forehead. He moaned. 'Gildron,' she said, 'You must kill those two V. The V in the hot room. You must shoot them with the E. Auto canister x, Gildron. If the door doesn't open, use the contac. Press it against the door, activate, stand back under cover, and after the explosion, switch on the E, toss in two psybloc grenades, go in firing, kill two V. Two of them! Do it quickly, Gildron! Can we depend on you?'
'Keer V,' Gildron said. 'Hot loom, gordoc, pless, broom! Zybloc, keer do V. Keer V!'
'Auto canister x, Gildron!'
'Arider gariderex! Keer V!'
'Yes, Gildron, that's right,' Tara said sadly. 'He'll do it, Wester. He'll do it if it can be done. We can depend on Gildron.'
'Don't touch that!' I said. The kid had been about to pick up a brick of contac. He pulled his fingers away as if scorched. We had visited the room where they had stored our weapons and done a quick recon. The door opened when we touched the panel, and it was all there—all our weapons. We took all the contac and timers, but left the E's. We did not want to tempt fate, and it looked as if the weapons would be there when we needed them. But I needed the contac first. There had been no reaction from the O's. I had gambled that they might not recognize the contac as weaponry. They appeared to be ignoring us—we were simply not important. We were no longer a factor in their planning. We were under control.
Well, we'd see about that.
'Say it again, Tara,' I said.
'Out the door, up the corridor to the weapons room,' she recited, 'techprobe if it doesn't open, but it should open. Pick up the E's and grenades. You detach the psybloc unit from your helmet. Gildron to the stardrive, you and I to the bridge. Up the corridor, approach the bridge, you activate the psybloc, I set off the timers, all hell breaks loose, all weapons on, in the door, contac if it doesn't open, auto canister x until there's no movement. And that's it.'
'Nothing to it,' I added.
'Nothing to it,' Tara repeated.
'Nartsing doit,' Gildron said.
Tara turned to Willard. He blinked his big brown eyes at her, his face completely serious. He was a doll—a living doll.
'Willard, if we don't come back, there's something you must do.'
'We want it to come back.'
'I know, honey. We're going to try and come back. But if we don't—if the V come back first—it has to take this.' Tara pressed something into the boy's hand.
'When the door opens, have this in your hand. If it's the V, pop this into your mouth and swallow it. Fast.'
'Is it medicine?'
'Yes, Willard. But do not take it unless the V come in this door. That's very, very important. Can it remember that?'
'Yes.'
'What is that stuff?' I asked Tara.
'Cyro,' she said quietly.
'Good idea,' I replied. Cyro was a life-saver for catastrophic injuries, but a full dose would kill you quickly if there was nothing wrong with you. And that was vastly preferable to living in the power of the O's.
###
'Damn it! It's stuck!' I was sweating buckets, my heart was hammering and I could taste the adrenalin. We were in the weapons room and I was struggling to remove the psybloc unit from the blackened, pitted helmet of my A-suit. I had not thought it would be a problem. The links were all open but it wouldn't move. And if the O's were paying any attention, it would not take them long to determine that we were up to no good.
'It's probably fused!' I was frantic. We were dead without the psybloc—the whole op would fail. Tara had an armful of weapons. She tossed an ampak of grenades to Gildron, then turned to me.
'Gildron! Let Gildron try!' She urged me. Gildron lunged at the helmet and wrapped one massive finger around the release handle. He pulled, and showed his teeth, growling way back in his throat. For an instant nothing happened. Then it gave with a sharp crack. Gildron smiled, and handed me the device.
'Deadman. Thanks, Gildron! Let's go!' I ordered. Tara slammed an E into my arms, and dropped an ampak over my shoulder. Her skin was icy pale. I was all set—E, tacmod, psybloc, ampak, contac, psybloc grenades, contac grenades, hot knife, cold knife, medpak, what else, what else? I raised the E. She was scarred and burnt, an evil black bitch from the bowels of Hell. I could feel her obscene power rushing through me. I loved her with all my heart, and I knew she was all mine and I was all hers.
'Move it, soldier!' Tara was getting impatient. We burst into the corridor. All quiet. It looked as if all was well in the O ship. But all was not well at all. The lab animals were out of their cages, and hungry for blood.
'Death!' We struck fists, all three of us. We were launched, and there was no turning back.
'Gildron—go to the stardrive and kill the V!' Tara commanded him, and he snarled and took off, heading down the corridor toward the stardrive, a giant, hauling an E and an ampak of contac and psybloc grenades. We had walked Gildron all the way earlier, right up to the stardrive door. He knew exactly where he was going. I didn't know what was going to happen but I knew sure as hell I didn't want to be anywhere near that stardrive when Gildron kicked in the door.
Tara and I hurried along the circular corridor toward the bridge. I could see Gildron on the tacmod heading straight for the stardrive.
'Psybloc ready?' Tara asked.
'Ready. Timers ready?'
'Ready!' Closer and closer, the door to the bridge right up ahead, and all was quiet. Icy sweat beaded my temples.
Closer! A perfectly circular door. All we had to do was approach it, and it should snap open. And throw ourselves into the future, whatever it was to be, victory or defeat, life or death.
'All right,' I said. 'Timers! I'm switching on the psybloc!'
'Timers!' Tara activated the detonator. We had walked the ship unhindered with contac and timers and set the explosives in the corridors, up against the walls of everything that looked even vaguely important.
'Psybloc on! Activate weapons!' The psybloc flashed and crackled at my waist as I activated the E. We ran, hurling ourselves at the door to the bridge.
The contac detonated simultaneously throughout the ship, a deafening crack, the concussion booming up the corridor. The lights flickered. The grav cut out and I was suddenly dancing in air, weightless.
'Whoa!' We had somehow damaged the ship's grav center. This was not in the plan. Tara clawed at the air, desperately trying to get close to a wall or a ceiling to get some leverage. I got one foot on a corridor wall and pushed off, rocketing through the air right to the bridge door. It snapped open like the mouth of a hungry beast, drawing me right in. The psybloc was flashing and I hurtled into a swirling montage of light and color and movement. O's were all around me and they were moving faster than I'd ever seen before.
I fired auto canister x, slashing the line of fire in a wild arc. The bridge erupted, shrieking white-hot phospho x bursting everywhere, sizzling tracers ricocheting wildly, a burning, dazzling, flashing tracery of death, an awful, sudden, horrendous catastrophe. The noise knifed into my eardrums. The recoil of the E shot me across the bridge, a wild ride. My shoulders hit something behind me. I was upside down on the ceiling like a lizard, still firing, my fingers frozen on the trigger, canister x booming everywhere, total hell, the entire bridge exploding, how can anyone survive, shrapnel snapping onto my litesuit. I was cutting the O's in two with the x but they were still there, calmly standing upside down like trees growing out of the deck, totally unaffected by the x. I suddenly realized these were the holos—the real O's would be struggling with the loss of gravity. Where were they!
I caught a glimpse of Tara twisting in the air, firing auto canister x calmly, deliberately hosing down the bridge. The concussion from the blasts and the recoil from the E were buffeting her through the air like a butterfly in a typhoon.
Movement—an O came at me, clawing through the air like a great alien torpedo. It opened its awful mouth
