That was about as effective as it sounded, although I did manage to drop several arach warriors on the heads of their companions—but that was all, before they were on us, and the blasters were no good anymore. I moved my head enough to avoid one fist, but caught a second blow across the face. Mack gave up trying to shoot, and started using his blaster as a club.
I didn’t have enough space to do even that. I guess there were some advantages to being cave-man large.
“Hey!”
I felt the Blazer ripped out of my hands, and then a hardened forelimb pierced the bandages on my shoulder, and my arm went numb. A second strike caught me dead-center in the chest and I was sucking wind, glad it had been a fist, and not another bladed claw. I caught a flash of silver as my legs were taken out from under me, but put it down to wishful thinking.
“I’m sorry, Askavor,” because I couldn’t protect him, and he was facing a fate just as bad as the rest of us.
Which was when the first arach head exploded above me. All I wanted to do was to curl up on the floor, and avoid the firefight, but Askavor didn’t have to die. The other spiders? Sure. They needed to be killed, but bad. Askavor didn’t.
I tried to reach him, but someone stepped on my calf, and kicked me in the thigh—and then an arach fell on top me.
I yelped, and panicked, fighting to pull myself out from under it, pushing its head away from me, like that had any hope of stopping me from getting bitten. This would have worked better, if I could have moved both arms. It would have worked better, if one of my legs hadn’t just quit on me, too. Didn’t. Stop. Me. Fighting.
I had to get to Askavor.
Don’t shoot this spider. Don’t shoot this spider. Don’t shoot this spider, ran through my head like a mantra, as I pictured him where I’d seen him last, so deep in the system, I’m not sure he’d registered the arach breaking through. Don’t shoot—
“It’s okay, Cutter. We won’t shoot your Stars-be-damned spider,” and the arach body above me moved.
I screamed and lashed out with the one good fist I had, connecting hard with the face that appeared above me as the arach corpse was rolled away. My second swing was caught in a swift, strong grip, and I caught a backhand to the head.
“Calm the fuck down, shit-for-brains!”
I stopped yelling.
“Delight?”
She slapped me once more for good measure—twice, and my head started ringing—but at least I wasn’t panicking any more. I was hurting, instead.
“Where’s Askavor?”
She reached down, and hauled my arm over her shoulder so she could haul me to my feet. Fire flared out of my shoulder and down into my chest, and she nearly dropped me again.
“What the fuck did you do to yourself, this time?”
I had to avoid answering that, or I wasn’t going to be any good to anybody.
“Where the fuck is Askavor?”
14—Rescuing Askavor
Askavor had locked himself in the system, and wouldn’t come out.
“You need to see if you can get him to come out,” Tens told me, “otherwise the only way I’m going to get to him is to tear apart the coding brick by brick—and I don’t know how much of his mind is attached to it.”
Delight had maneuvered me so we stood in front of the big spider’s still form. We both looked at him, and I sighed.
“Don’t move me,” I said. “You do, and I’ll probably pass out, and we need him back on-line.”
She snorted.
“Whatever you say, kid. Just hurry up, or Doc will kill me for letting you bleed out.”
“Shutit.”
Last thing I needed was to be reminded why I wasn’t feeling so good, right now. I leant on Delight, as much to take the weight off my arm and leg, as to stay upright as I slid into the system. Askavor hadn’t gone very far… so to speak.
He’d walled himself off in the center of Tens’ security system, cutting all access to the door locks, the pod locks, and the security feeds. As a tactical maneuver, it was pretty damned clever. I eyed the construct he’d built around himself, and my heart sank.
Its soaring wall was a heavy-duty firewall, and counter-intrusion measures swam beneath their surface. I had no doubt the damn things could strike out through the code protecting them—and they looked savage. Maybe there was a door.
Like, something I could knock on?
Because arach wouldn’t bother knocking, right? They’d just try to barge right in. Maybe if I knocked, I’d be okay.
I walked the base of the wall, until I found one end of the security system. No door. Damn.
I turned back and walked the other way, until I hit the other end. Still no door. Well, double the damn.
Delight came to join me, and we stood, contemplating the barrier between us and Askavor’s mind.
“Doc says we need to get you to a tank, soon. You need to hurry it up.”
Doc? I wondered which one, and then decided it had to be THE Doc, since Tovy probably didn’t know about the tank.
“Yeah, and I need my eyes back.”
Tens had appeared on my other side.
“Well, fuck me!”
Huh, looked like Mack had come to join the party, too. Unlike the rest of us, he didn’t give a damn about the counter-intrusion software swimming around in the wall. He just marched right up to the damn thing, and hammered on the outer surface.
“Hey, Askavor. You need to get your ass out here before Cutter bleeds to death trying to save you!”
The reaction was instantaneous. Half a dozen thick tendrils leapt out of the wall, and wrapped themselves around him, dragging him beneath the wall’s surface and out of sight—and that’s when I realized that the lurking programs were an illusion. The wall stayed firmly in place, but the programs swimming beneath its surface kept swimming.
