away. For the last minutes, the pool had expanded to enormous dimensions, and with the sensation of solid ground beneath their feet, the pirates had grown too confident.
Too much pool was exactly the same as seeing no pool at all. They misjudged their distance, and fell in, yelling obscenities-briefly. Then their cries were swallowed by water.
The pirates were infinitely better prepared for combat upon the land. Even in water, they outclassed gamers by a wide margin. But the combination of visual and auditory effects and strange water behavior confused them just for a moment.
And then it got worse. Robotic seahorses rose up from the water, gliding straight for the bewildered pirates. Nosed up against them in what should have been a friendly fashion, but the pirates reacted by shooting and stabbing, losing focus… and the gamers attacked them from behind.
Driven to extremes and knowing that this was their very last chance, even Maud jumped howling from the edge of the pool, holding a damaged air tank in her hands, bringing it down hard on Gallop’s head.
He glimpsed the blow a moment before it landed, and managed to roll so that the metal cylinder scraped down his ear and glanced from his shoulder.
Then he had his hands on her. Maud screamed, as if suddenly remembering that this wasn’t merely a game at all, that she may have made a critical mistake…
And Sharmela raised her arms, screaming: “Ouroboros! Serpent of light! Hear my call and join the fight!” A glowing band of light grew out of the water, coiling around the pirate’s face, obscuring his eyes and vision. He panicked, thrashing, and released Maud.
“I’ll ’ave you, asshole!” Mickey screamed, suddenly grabbing the man’s throat from behind.
Another pirate grabbed Mickey from behind, and it turned into a four-way tussle, the special effects blinking as the computer tried to keep up with the constantly shifting holo-targets.
To call the results “chaotic” would have been a massive understatement. Pirates dove to get away from the grinning, attacking seahorses, and came up with water sliding in slow sheets from their faces, choking them. And right into the swinging fists of gamers who, while hardly professional, were certainly enthusiastic.
In water, there is little balance, and no traction to push against. Much of a professional punch or chop is a matter of gripping the ground or twisting the hips, and all of that was taken away from them, their aquatic environment more of a leveler than they might have thought.
Not enough, though. Mickey’s nose was broken almost immediately, and he barely evaded choking by biting a slippery wet arm seeking his throat.
Darla burst half out of the pool, sweeping water from her face so she could gasp. Fair enough. Now get to shore before All about her were gamers and pirates locked in mortal combat. She had to reach shore before-but the blond demon was still on land, aiming a crossbow directly at her face. Darla let the water pull her under.
Elsewhere in the pool, Wayne struggled with a pirate who seemed half eel. Only the fact that robotic seahorses kept slamming into him from the sides kept the contest even vaguely even. Then Wayne screamed as the pirate’s knife slashed his side, and he kicked away, trying to put distance between them.
The pirate, grinning, outswam him, and retracted his arm to strike And suddenly the world exploded.
In the history of the universe, there may never have been an explosion quite like this: industrial blasting-putty funneled through a fifty-meter tunnel into a natural aquifer in a low-gravity environment.
Under ordinary circumstances the shock wave would have been harsh. In this very special world it felt as if half the water rose out of the pool in a savage pulse. Water, gamers, pirates and robot seahorses all fountained into the air. Friends and foes alike, confused and confounded, screamed like frightened children as they flew toward the ceiling.
Up until the last moments before the explosion, the pirates had been swinging the tide of battle their way. Angelique had not taken to the water, preferring to remain on the land, waiting to make use of her last bolt. And then, perhaps, sell her life dearly.
Rivers of fire, assaults of monsters, wind and lightning… even an invisible man had merely slowed them down.
Now Angelique heard another scream, and it was her own. A blow to her head from behind, and she realized, sickened, that one of the Moresnot bastards had snuck up behind her. One of the pirates stood over her, drawing a bead with his air gun. Double vision told her that the ringing in her head was concussion.
Then the man grunted and went down sideways, knocked back by a flying dark body whose limbs were a cat-quick blur of action.
Ali to the rescue! The man rolled, punched, and Ali’s head snapped back, blood rushing from his nose.
Angelique dove forward, and managed to grab one of the pirate’s limbs, before his booted heel caught Ali under the chin, driving him back and up into the air, landing with a woof!
Then the pirate tied her into a knot. “Quiet, bitch, if you know what’s good for you-”
Scotty saw his opportunity, and dove at Celeste. If he could stop her, it might put an end to all of this. But the instant he hit her she collapsed beneath his weight, went down with reflexes so fast it was like bouncing a ball off a wall. And his entire world was full of crazy woman.
She was strong, almost as strong as him, and to his alarm, quicker and more skilled, in some art he had never before encountered. It wasn’t a blind brawl: Rather some kind of grappling art that was all head-butts and knees driving for his groin at the same time she was seeking crippling locks on his wrists and fingers. It was like being dropped into a sack with a rabid weasel.
Damn!
She tried to bite his right eye! Scotty jerked his head sideways, realizing to his dismay that she was winning. In combination with his wounds and fatigue, Celeste was just too much for him to handle. The world was spinning.
And then… the Moon pool exploded.
Water shot up in the air like a waterspout, a thunderclap that smashed against the ceiling and showered back down with a Moon-shaking ker-whoom! The shock wave forced Celeste to slacken her grip on him, as her eyes widened in surprise. Perhaps she’d thought it was just another special effect!
The heart went out of him. He knew what that explosion meant. It meant that Darla had failed, that she was blown to jelly, and it was over.
Something went black and red behind his eyes. No matter what happens to me, this bitch is dead!
He got two hands full of hair, and even as she sank her teeth in his forearm, rolled Celeste over and into the pool.
Scotty managed to drive his fist into her gut the moment before she hit, so that the air gushed out of her mouth even as he gulped a breath. In the water she panicked, struck out for the surface, but with all the strength remaining to him he rolled her under. Wiggled around her and clamped his legs around her waist as she pried at him, struggled… and then finally, blessedly, went limp.
Gasping, Scotty hauled her back up, in time to look directly into another gas-powered dart gun as the pirate triggered the bolt***
The shock wave lifted Darla out of the pool and into the air, almost gently, like an avalanche of foam. The combination of fatigue, oxygen debt and shock made the entire experience surreal. She watched men, women and molded plastic automatons flying through the air with the greatest of ease, saw it all in a kind of slow-motion tumble, rising, rising…
The water pushed her firmly into a wall, stunned but not really dazed. She held onto a rock projection that had missed her head by inches. Beneath her, a big Japanese man was about to step on Ali’s neck. She dropped down, landing on him, and while he was twice her size, tumbled him back into the Moon pool.
Ali dragged himself to the edge of the pool and jumped in with her, and the three struggled and wheeled through the water, alternately gulping air as their heads broke the surface, and thrashing each other with fists and feet.
Finally, improbably, they both ended up on top, their feet pushing against the big man’s shoulders. She felt his hands on her leg, saw the flash of a blade and realized he had had time to clear his mind and draw a knife, knew
