“Back! Out of the corridor!” Lasers snapped all around us through heavy smoke. I crawled into a doorway, flames roaring up from the floor. Someone screamed. Sassin appeared beside me.
“It’s Merlin,” he shouted. “Your Four’s hit!”
Merlin sprawled in the doorway, still halfway in the corridor, clawing at my foot. Both his legs were shredded, raw meat, hissing and spitting flame. He screamed in agony.
“Cover me, Sassin!” I dragged Merlin into the room. Auto xmax tore through the corridor, spraying us with shrapnel. I yanked loose the medkit from the coldcoat and ripped it open. A ripple of movement behind us, inside the room.
“Don’t shoot us! Please! We’re…” Sassin whipped around and fired, laser, slicing them in half. It was just two boys, now burning body parts, blood splattered all over the walls. I did not even have time to react. A tacstar thundered in the corridor, phospho white contrails cracking right into our room. I stabbed a biotic charger into Merlin’s arm right through his coldcoat. His moans continued.
“Priestess, Gravelight, stay put! Don’t go into the corridor!” Lowdrop ordered. “Sassin, Thinker, Merlin, report!” We were alone in the room, just Sassin and Merlin and me and the two dead Coldmarker boys. We’d backed into the wrong room; Priestess and Gravelight were alone with the Mocain girl!
“Beta, Thinker! I’m with Sassin and Merlin. Merlin’s hit bad!” Xmax shattered my words. Sassin leaned out the door, firing down the corridor.
“Snow Leopard, Priestess!” She sounded tense. “The Systies are right outside our room!”
“Sassin!” I shouted, “I think this is the room next to them! Blow a hole in the wall with your Manlink!”
“Deadman, Thinker, it’s solid stone!” Sassin’s black face was grey with fatigue and steamed with sweat behind his faceplate.
“Can’t you do it? Use xmax!”
“I can do it, but we might kill them!”
“If we don’t do it, they die anyway! Do it! Priestess, Gravelight, heads down! We’re taking out your wall!” I wanted to scream. My blistered hands were roasting and the outside of my coldcoat was melting.
A tremendous concussion deafened us. Swirling dust, a dull buzzing in my ear. Sassin had fired. Merlin still had a death grip on one of my legs, begging me to kill him. Sassin turned to cover the door with his Manlink.
Movement in the dust. We had done it! Gravelight came scrambling through the hole headfirst. A deafening cacophony of auto xmax and the crackling of lasers followed her from the other room. I fell into the hole, poking my E through. Gravelight clawed at my arm.
“The Mocain!” she shrieked. “Priestess! Pass her through!” Priestess and the Mocain were right next to the hole. Priestess fired her E. I fired on laser into her open doorway. Then an A-suited Systie stepped in, firing an SG on laser. The burst missed Priestess by mils, but my laser caught the Systie right on the chest, screeching and popping, white-hot death. He shuddered and collapsed.
I released my E and reached through the hole in the wall and seized Priestess and dragged her through. She resisted all the way, kicking and screaming.
“The Mocain! My patient! She’s dying. Let me bring her!”
Gravelight frantically tried to push us aside and crawl back through the hole to the Mocain. A horrific blast shattered the Mocain’s room, ending the argument and pitting my faceplate with frags. The building shuddered.
“Xmax! No! She’s dead!”
“Sassin, will you hold this crazy psycher?” I was trying to stop a hysterical Gravelight from crawling back to her death. Priestess sobbed, writhing in my arms. Merlin moaned in agony. But Sassin did not take time to worry about Gravelight. He fired into the corridor nonstop. Deafening tacstars shook the rooftop above us.
“More Systies! Legion, we’re coming into the corridor! Thinker, let’s go! Bring Merlin! I’ll cover the corridor!” Sassin knelt by the door, Manlink to his shoulder. “Legion in the corridor! Legion in the corridor! We need an evac!” We burst out the door and backed down the corridor to where we thought the others were, Priestess and I dragging Merlin by his arms, Gravelight firing her E from the waist, screaming something incomprehensible. I fired my E with one hand, auto xmax into the smoke.
“This way, Legion!”
“We’ve got you, guys!”
“Heads down, Legion!” A glittering tapestry of golden laser bursts streamed and snapped just above our heads. Lowdrop and Boudicca were firing. Friendly lasers, only I knew there was no such thing as friendly lasers.
Suddenly Snow Leopard appeared, stepping out of the smoke like a phantom, firing one-handed down the corridor just like on the range, seizing me by one arm to guide us into another room. A tremendous crack from up above. “Legion on the roof. We’ve got the roof! Fight your way out, guys! More Systies on the way!”
“Where’s the Mocain?” Lowdrop looked around wildly. Merlin screamed. Priestess bent over him, frantically working on his legs.
“The Systies have her!” I replied, stepping up to confront him. “It was Gravelight and Priestess alive, or all three of them dead! Don’t you understand? We’ve lost her!”
He turned from me. “Gravelight, did you get anything?”
“I don’t know!” she moaned. “It was a bloody mess! I don’t know!”
“All right, evac! Unit evac! Lowdrop calling…”
Sassin blew a massive hole in the roof, showering us all with debris. He didn’t need any further invitation. Boudicca crouched in the doorway, firing auto xmax down the corridor. An aircar hovered right overhead, firing chainlink laser. More debris came raining down. An A-suited Legionnaire appeared in the hole in the ceiling, covering us all with his Manlink. Evac lines came shooting down, crashing onto the floor, steaming. The smoke was so thick I could hardly see, even with the darksight.
“Out! Out! Evac!” The A-suit boomed. “Snap on and pull!” We got Merlin tied on immediately. Priestess went up with him, shooting up through the rafters abruptly. The Legionnaire in the A-suit came crashing down to the floor and took up a position by the door, firing a Manlink. Boudicca abandoned the doorway and seized one of the evac lines. I pulled and went shooting up into the rafters, beams crashing into my comtop, flames whooshing past me.
I shot into the aircar’s open assault door like a rag doll, landing breathlessly on top of Sassin. Two A-suited troopers from CAT 21 worked the extractors, hauling us in like fish. The car had been stripped for evac duty. Lasers flicked past the outside, smoke filling the cabin, and I could hear xmax peppering the skin. Boudicca and Snow Leopard came hurtling in, slamming against each other. Then Lowdrop cartwheeled right into me.
“Two’s free!” the aircar’s pilot spit out as he shot away from the building, hauling the A-suited trooper along behind on the evac line, dangling in the air, a wild ride through bleeding skies. The snow had stopped.
“Opscon to Downside. Recall! Recall! All units evac Coldmark. Immediate recall, all units evac. Recall! Recall! Quit fooling around and get outta there!”
A flaming aircar went hurtling past us, disintegrating. The crew reeled in their Two and he crashed in and the assault door snapped shut immediately. We arced into a power climb.
Snow Leopard wrenched off his comtop and threw it angrily to the floor. Her hands scarlet, Priestess desperately worked on Merlin. His lower legs had been shredded. She was covered with blood.
“Save him!” Lowdrop and I tried to help her with Merlin, but my fingers did not work.
“Did Warhound get out of the aircar?” Snow Leopard demanded.
“I didn’t see Warhound or Dragon,” I answered.
“Coolhand made it,” Priestess responded. “How about Redhawk? How about Psycho?”
“Redhawk got out,” I replied. “Psycho was in the courtyard when the Systies strafed it with their lasers.”
“Deto!” Snow Leopard almost bit the curse in two. “How is Merlin?”
Gravelight furiously confronted me, face ashen, eyes wet and swollen. “We could have had the Mocain!”
“Shut down, you raving lunatic! You and Priestess would both be dead if it wasn’t for me! I don’t give a damn for your Mocain!” I was in no mood for this nonsense.
“You ignorant fool! You have no idea how important she is!” Gravelight trembled with rage and frustration.
“I know how important Priestess is! The Systies were in the doorway, psycher! I killed one just as he shot at
