Nor any mortal man…”
He stood right above me and raised the E like a club, as if to bludgeon me to death. I thought briefly that it would be preferable to burning. Something snapped, and a neat little pinhole suddenly appeared on his forehead. He stiffened, and a thin stream of bright red blood squirted out of the hole. The Scaler leader shuddered and collapsed, falling face-first onto the grate.
The crowd stood motionless, shocked. I raised my head, trying to look around. Priestess clanked her chains, trying to see behind her. For an instant, it was quiet.
The crowd exploded, V bolts burst among them like the fist of a mighty God, earsplitting explosions shattered the silence, filled the great hall. Someone had a Manlink on V-min auto, working the mob over slowly, systematically, from one end to the other. The V bolts blasted the Scalers right off their feet, arms and legs flailing, explosions of filth and dirt, bodies tumbling wildly, multiple blasts hammering into the mob relentlessly. The Scalers screamed in a wild panic, clawing and trampling each other to get away. But there was no escape. V bolts, again and again and again, seeking out the Scalers, cracking white-hot in the dark as Scaler torches flew through the air, trailing hot sparks. The hall darkened as the torches went out. Now there were only the eerie lightning flashes of the V bolts and the glow of the fire pit.
The grate burnt painfully into my flesh. “Come on, guys, whoever you are! Cut us loose,” I shouted.
The Scalers were a frantic tangled mass of bodies in the shallow water covering the stone floor, now trying to rise, to crawl, to get away. But the V did not stop. Bolts of searing hot energy burst among the survivors, knocking them head-over-heels. No mercy! V swept the hall, chasing after fleeing groups of Scalers, tumbling them down as they ran. In a frac, an angry, determined mob had been turned into fleeing rabble.
Psycho suddenly appeared and knelt over Priestess, his Manlink glowing. “Hi, Honey. You still hanging around with these two losers?” He aimed again, and fired into the darkness.
Psycho! Psycho the Maniac, Psycho the Avenging Angel, covered with dirt, armored and armed and as cool as could be. Through his faceplate, I saw his happy grin. He sliced through Priestess’s bindings with his hot knife. A stone bounced off his armor. He ripped off another burst into the dark. “If they keep that up, they’re going to upset me, and I’ll switch to xmax,” he informed us.
“Cut us loose, Psycho!” Merlin demanded.
“What do you think, Priestess?” Psycho inquired calmly. “Why don’t we just leave them here. Who needs ‘em? They’ll just get you into trouble again.”
Priestess didn’t waste any time. “Give me your mini!”
Psycho fired again, a long burst. Priestess sliced my chains off with a laser burst from the handgun and then freed Merlin. Rocks ricocheted harshly off the metal grate. Regrouped, the Scalers had started to fight back.
Psycho fired on xmax and a tremendous blast lit up a far corner of the chamber. He peered into the dark, surveying his handiwork, shaking his head. “I leave you clowns alone for a couple of fracs and come back to find the Scalers having you for lunch. Can’t you do anything right without me?” He was in his element. He was magnificent under stress. When there was no stress, he generated it, just to annoy us.
“Where are the others, Psycho?” Merlin looked around wildly, an eternal optimist, completely detached from reality.
“Others?” he laughed madly. “Come on, we can handle this bunch. I just dug my way out of the cave-in. There aren’t any others!”
I snatched up Priestess’s E from where the Scaler had dropped it and let loose a long burst on v-min into the dark. It got darker fast. Scaler torches sputtered weakly here and there where they had fallen and piles of twitching Scaler bodies could be seen in the gloom. Only Psycho could see properly. The rest of us were all but blind in this underground world. The fire pit illuminated us nicely for the Scalers.
“You’ve got a beautiful ass, Priestess.” Psycho always said exactly what he thought.
“Thanks for rescuing us and keep your hands off!” she replied hotly.
“Can you please concentrate on the Scalers, Psycho?” I suggested. “Let’s get away from the fire.”
“On me,” Psycho said simply. He knew the way out. A rock exploded off Psycho’s plasmapak. He whipped around and fired again on xmax. A searing detonation illuminated shattered Scaler bodies flying through the air, and a sudden horde of fierce-looking dirtmen off to one side, whirling their slings in the air, coming right at us.
“Damn! Where did they come from?” A hail of rocks ricocheted all around us. A heavy metal trident flashed past my face.
“Lights! Psycho, give us lights!” Merlin had armed himself with an axe. He snatched the flash from Psycho’s waist and snapped it on, right at the dirtmen.
The sudden light was dazzling, silent nova, bursting to life, glaring and sizzling right at the dirtmen. It stopped them like a wall, just for a moment.
“V-min,” I said. “Auto.” We were really not supposed to be killing them.
“Always thinking,” Psycho retorted. “What a pain.”
He and Priestess and I stood shoulder to shoulder while Merlin held the light. We opened up with V bolts on straight auto. We cut down the dirtmen with thunder and lightning, with V bolts from another world, and the underground shook with the earsplitting din of the battle. The dirtmen just kept coming, right at us, chanting their death songs. Lord, they were good!
“The other side.” Rocks pelted us from behind. We formed a fighting circle, back to back, surrounded.
“Flares.” Merlin could only cover part of the chamber with his flash so we fired flares out into the darkness and they burst into brilliant light, glaring and spitting from the far corners of the great hall. Now we could see it all, many, many Scaler bodies, and women and children huddled in terrified clumps on the watery floor, playing dead. Warriors, leaping from behind those great columns, launching stones and evil spiked metal balls through the air to whistle past our ears. Shadows leaping from wall to wall, hundreds and hundreds of Scalers all around us, swarming in blind panic and terror and hatred and courage and bloody suicidal sacrifice. I felt for those Scalers, I really did.
“Deadman!” Psycho exclaimed. “I haven’t had this much fun since Planet Hell!”
“I love you, Thinker! I love you!” Priestess could not hold it in.
“What is this, confession time?” Psycho was outraged. “I save her ass, and she loves you? Wait’ll I tell Valkyrie!”
“Look out!” A spear flashed past my cheek and bounced off the stone floor. A rock hit me square in the chest, leaving me breathless.
A low wailing arose from the Scalers. Hysterical screaming, urgent shouting, someone barking out commands. The rain of stones slowed, and ceased. An evil silence fell on the great chamber. Scaler women and children ran frantically along one wall, illuminated by a flare. Grimfaced warriors with heavy metal tridents stood fast in the human flood, facing the direction from which the civilians were fleeing.
“It’s the Legion!” Merlin exclaimed.
Psycho glanced at his tacmod. “Negative. There’s nobody here.”
“Deadman,” I whispered. I could see something, in the inky black of a far corner of the chamber, behind the columns, hidden from the flares. I could see what the Scalers feared, what had drawn their attention from us.
“What is it?” Priestess demanded.
Something big, in the dark. Something dark and evil, writhing in the shadows. Something from Andrion 3, to break your bones and drink your blood.
“Death,” I said. “It’s death!” I was not too coherent, right then. I did not know if I could face another exoseg.
Two of them emerged from the shadows, illuminated harshly by the glittering light of our flares. Two grim, terrible, giant killing machines, heads snapping back and forth, antennas cracking out like whips, front legs probing ahead of them, awful empty black eyes reflecting only death. Another great exoseg appeared out of the shadows, behind them. And another. Their chittering filled the chamber, the only sound. It chilled my blood. I felt the hair rising on my scalp.
“To the death,” Merlin whispered reverently.
“My, my!” Psycho exclaimed. “Just look at that!”
“I can’t do this again, Thinker,” Priestess said quietly. “I don’t want this. Not again.”
“Lasers,” I said. We faced the exosegs. “Zap ‘em with the light, Merlin. Maybe it will help. All right, let’s do it.” I could not tear my eyes away from those giant, obscene beasts. Merlin flooded the creatures with light. My skin
