my fingers in the cold. The front of the building was smoking, disintegrating, phospho white and yellow starbursts flashing wildly, streaks of glowing shrapnel cutting through the skies and a sharp, violent crackling, all around us.
Psycho leapt over a small wall and landed next to me, firing full auto xmax. A mighty shock wave burst over us from above and an ear-shattering bang rolled through the mountains. Up in the snowy sky, a burning, flickering, disintegrating mass showered down from the heavens, a brilliant, flaming rain of death.
“Enemy aircars here. Where’s Atcon? Where’s Topcat?” Redhawk sounded busy.
“There’s two more, Beta!”
“I got ‘em! I got ‘em!”
“Topcat approaching your zero. We’ll clean your sky, guys.” The extraction team was with us!
Dragon appeared. He fired auto xmax right into the main doors of the palace and they blew apart, debris ricocheting everywhere.
The three of us cautiously approached the entrance. Coldmarker bodies sprawled over the terrace, several of them in a tangled pile before the doors, torn to bloody shreds. Systie SGs were scattered around, pitted and smoking. Not your typical religious sanctuary. Another aircar flashed overhead.
“…it’s ours!”
Two more darted past from the opposite direction, wheeling into the clouds for another pass. Psycho fired immediately, auto tacstar, flashing up into the snowy sky.
“Ha! They’re here!” He crouched, Manlink at his shoulder, furious, looking up into the sky, pink snow falling softly all around him.
A tooth-rattling howl as the air glittered with laser bursts flashing down in a beautiful, horrible arc from the sky, laser rain, slicing an irresistible path through the terrace, everything in its path disintegrating, exploding into dust. Psycho ducked. I couldn’t get any closer to the ground because of my clothing.
“Systies are strafing. Psycho, hold ‘em! Air cover! We need smoke! Beta, Gamma, on me!” Snow Leopard rounded the corner, joining us, and stepped into the flaming ruins of the open doorway. I followed, anxious to get out of the courtyard. A series of sonic booms shattered the sky. Four, five, six. All right! That had to be Topcat, the extraction force, with Legion fighters. About time! They’d give us the air!
Inside we faced a great hall lined with benches, the walls covered with heavy tapestries, with a raised platform at the far end and a nightmare red goblin carved into the wall behind the platform. He didn’t look too friendly. Perhaps that explained the SG’s.
Smoking incense, flickering candles, and a sudden silence. Doorways. Two stone staircases, either side of the platform, leading up to the second floor. Warhound kicked open one of the doors. A library, deserted. Dragon did another. Musty, empty cells, desks and paper.
“V-min, v-min, gang, she’s here. Upstairs! They live upstairs!” We picked our way carefully around the benches. Nothing stirred. Snow Leopard and Boudicca each took a staircase. Aircars shrieked past outside, and sonic booms rattled the building. We could hear tacstars howling on full auto. Could it be Psycho? I found myself behind Boudicca, hustling up the stairs. Scrapper and Sassin followed me. Sassin was the Cyrillian merc who carried Gamma’s Manlink. Of course, we called him Sassin the Assassin.
We gained the second floor behind a barrage of v-min auto. We found a body in the corridor, a Coldmarker male. I caught a glimpse of Snow Leopard, Dragon, Merlin and Priestess, coming up the other staircase, firing v-min auto into their corridor.
It was a long rectangular building and the corridor ran around the building, giving access to all the rooms. A great explosion shattered the sky outside. We did not have much time! The corridor was lined with closed wooden doors. I blew away the first one, and Sassin went for the opposite door. Boudicca joined me, stepping into the smoking dust, her E at her shoulder. A Coldmarker priest stood against the wall, clothed in a dark robe. “We’re unarmed,” he said shakily in Inter. “We’re a servant of God.”
Boudicca pointed her E right at his head. “Drop the robe, holy man.”
He carefully loosened the cloth belt and the robe slid to the floor. He was pale and fat and almost naked, trembling like jelly, clad only in a dirty loincloth. No weapons.
“We want the girl,” Boudicca said, “the Legion girl with the golden hair.” Her voice was a hoarse whisper. It raised the hairs on the back of my neck. She didn’t have to voice any threats. He understood.
“Next cell!” He responded immediately, gesturing up the corridor. He trembled violently.
“The Legion thanks you,” she said. Then she switched to xmin and shot him in the chest. The explosion blew him apart, spraying us with gore, splattering the entire room with blood. I was stunned for an instant, frozen in horror. She had been almost sane when I knew her in Hell.
Laser light flickered and cracked in the corridor, and V bolts banged away on auto. Gamma and Beta were kicking in doors and firing on v-min.
Boudicca stood before the door to the next room. Sassin raised his Manlink and fired and the door crashed right into the room. Boudicca and I stepped into the dark, E’s on v-min. A narrow slit in the cold stone wall high above admitted a sliver of daylight, revealing a fireplace with a few dying red embers. Valkyrie stood in the middle of the room facing us. She wore a Coldmarker cloak with the hood back and her golden hair shone in the dark. She appeared calm and detached. She stood over another girl, icy pale skin, black hair, heavy lids. A Mocain! The Mocain was on her knees, almost naked, shivering, facing us, her wrists and ankles tied behind her. Valkyrie stood over her, and she had the Mocain’s hair in one hand and a cold knife in the other.
“Millina, meet the Legion,” she said. “Legion, Millina. Hello, Thinker! Hello, Boudicca! Good to see you! Millina, I wanted you to see the Legion, before your death.”
The Mocain spoke. She tried to turn her head to face Valkyrie, but Valkyrie would not let go of her hair. “Legion…” the Mocain gasped, “We never killed you, Legion.”
Valkyrie leaned over and hissed in her ear. “Your mistake!” She brought the knife down and slashed the Mocain’s throat from ear to ear. The Mocain convulsed and a scream started but it was abruptly cut off as a cascade of bright red blood spurted freely out from her neck. Valkyrie kicked her in the back, and the Mocain fell face-first to the floor. I could only watch, stunned.
“Die, you sub!” Valkyrie appeared to be consumed by an ice-cold fury.
“Are you all right?” Boudicca asked.
“I’m fine! Give me an E!”
I handed her my mini in slow motion, still in shock from what she had just done. I reached out and touched her. It was wonderful to see her. I tried to say something, but I could only stare at the dying Mocain.
She snarled, “I want to kill every one of these filthy priests! Every one!” I’d never seen her like this, not even in her fighting fury when we almost died on Hell.
Boudicca turned and called it in, “Mission accomplished! Request extraction now!” The noise level rose outside, a continual banshee shriek of auto laser and the ripping, popping bursts of auto xmax and the horrible, unearthly supersonic blasts of the tacstars. As we hustled out into the corridor, I became suddenly conscious of the events that had been going on all around us. I had been too busy to absorb the transmissions, but I was getting them now.
“Systies on the ground! Moving in! Fully armored!”
“Get ‘em! Get ‘em! Get ‘em!”
“I’m hit! Oh, God!”
“Take out that bunch!”
“Topcat on the ZA!”
“We’re taking fire!”
“They’ve got the target!”
“There’s two of them over there. Get ‘em both!”
“I’m strafing them. Legion, get down!” There it was again, laser rain, ripping down all around us, burning holes in the stone walls of the monastery, ripping through the courtyards like the fingers of the gods. My skin crawled. It always crawled when I heard the lasers.
It was getting ugly. I led the way, “Down the stairs!”
We went charging down, and came sliding to a sudden stop halfway down the stairwell. Two fully armored Systie troopers, armed with SGs, stepped into the main doorway in a gust of red smoke swirling in from outside, like great robot genies in some wild drug-induced nightmare.
