have a full out confrontation in this vent, and the insect-like robot was going to have the advantage.
He scrambled out from under it as it fell into the same vent tube he was in. Suddenly he saw more appearing behind it, coming from the way he and Orin had already been. The robotic beasts had multiple legs on each side of their slender cylindrical bodies. Several red eyes were spaced across the slender heads that contained small compressed air jets.
As the creatures took up pursuit, scurrying along the vents, they began to fire small spikes from the air jets. The spikes were clattering along the metal sides of the vents as they tried to move as fast as they could through the curves of the system.
The spikes imbedded into the metal where they hit, injecting acid cores, causing the walls to sizzle as the acid burned into them. At this point, they didn't know if they were on track for the outside or not, but the robot insects were gaining on them. If they tried to blast the mechanical creatures kinetically they might shatter the entire vent tube and drop themselves right into the middle of an army of Horva.
The tube that had previously provided many twists and turns to help them avoid the spikes now opened up into a long straightaway. Orin almost paused, but there was no time to find another route. He picked up the pace as fast as he could, but the creatures were quick and the spikes they were firing were even faster. With a straight shot at them the creatures would no doubt hit them multiple times.
Orin could hear Tiet behind him, dogging his heels. The smaller man definitely had the advantage running in these tubes. Suddenly the shaft closed ahead of them. A security door had come down in front of them and the only outlet was a connecting tube from above. Orin came to a halt below it and turned to see if he could hold the creatures off while allowing Tiet to go up first.
The moment he turned to fight, the entire ventilation tube between themselves and the approaching robots, collapsed inward as though a giant hand had grasped it from without and crunched it. They couldn't believe what had just happened in their favor and had no explanation for it. The integrity of the tube seemed to be intact. They could hear the robots on the other side of the collapsed tube clattering against the crumpled metal trying to get at them, but to no avail.
Without wasting anymore precious time, they shot up the outlet tube using their kinesis to propel them. The tube appeared to keep going and it looked like they might even reach the roof again by way of it. But how had the Horva known their location in the vent system to close that door in front of them?
Orin wondered if the robots had been transmitting images and navigational information back to the Horva once they had happened upon them. He couldn't come up with anything else. The Barudii cloaks had been working when he got into the facility; he had no reason to believe they had failed to hide them now.
But if the Horva were looking at their own schematics of the system, they might well know where this tube was taking them and be waiting. Still, they had no choice but to try and exit the facility or be potentially caught in a battle they couldn't win; if more Horva were waiting they would have to deal with the problem then.
The pair continued upward at a high rate of speed as the end of the tunnel came quickly into view. Orin blasted the vent cap with a kinetic burst. The power rippled the air causing odd refractions of the available light, like a wave of heat rising off a hot road.
The vent cap shot off the tube as they flipped out of the vent and landed with weapons ready on the roof. Orin's suspicions had come to fruition.
Several hundred Horva warriors were closing from all directions, but the automatic gun turrets still had not picked up on their life signatures. The cloaks were working but nothing was going to hide them now; the Horva were closing fast and beginning to fire their pulse weapons.
The pair blocked several shots with their ignited blades and each one began to send out kinetic blasts in various directions, trying not to hit each other in the process.
Suddenly from somewhere within the Horva masses, a huge kinetic bubble erupted, sending many of the Horva over the sides of the crowded rooftop to their deaths. Tiet and Orin looked at each other in surprise, as neither had caused the incident.
From within the area a new fighter could be seen utilizing twin ignited Barudii blades; whirling with complex precision, slicing into the Horva around him. The mystery guest in this battle was taking down Horva in all directions and with a complexity and speed that captivated the tiring pair.
This fighter was moving nimbly among Horva and reaching out in all directions with ignited twin blades- blocking incoming shots as an afterthought to his own offensive attacks. It was terribly precise fighting that smacked of a highly trained Barudii; beyond even Orin or Tiet's skills.
Suddenly the auto-guns swiveled around and began to fire not at them, but at the Horva warriors. In particular, the guns were picking off Horva around the new unknown fighter almost as if they were coordinating with his sword attacks. For a brief moment Orin thought he must be controlling the guns somehow.
But surely this warrior was not so powerful as to be able to execute such precise and amazing hand-to-hand fighting along with the mental stamina required to precisely operate five or six computer controlled laser cannons all at the same time-was he?
The action had gone away from Orin and Tiet by now, but they didn't know whether to make a getaway or wait to see what or who this person was, doing all the amazing damage to the Horva. They hesitated toward the latter. Then the figure, having cleared away most of the Horva around him with swords and the auto-guns, launched high off the rooftop and came to a landing in front of Orin and Tiet, still crouched in their defensive positions.
The person was wearing a sand-colored garment that seemed oddly pedestrian for a warrior of this caliber, and he was hooded, with only glaring, penetrating eyes visible. 'Do you want to live, Barudii?' he said with a distinctly masculine voice as the Horva regrouped behind him with more reinforcements adding to their numbers.
The warrior ran to the edge of the roof and launched out away from it with such power as to completely clear the compound's energy wall three hundred feet away from the building's perimeter. Orin and Tiet barely took enough time to glance at each other as they stood and followed after the mysterious man. They each made the jump and soft landed next to the warrior.
'What about the perimeter cannons?' asked Orin as they all broke into a paced run away from the compound.
'We're all cloaked from their sensors by our garments,' said the warrior.
Well that answered one question, thought Tiet. Now who in the world was this person?
'Who are you?' asked Orin.
'There isn't time now. The Horva are already mobilizing attack fighters to come after us. We must keep moving.'
'Where are we going?' asked Tiet.
All he could see in the direction they were running was desert. Against the pale sand, the attack fighters he spoke of would easily spot them without sensors.
'Just keep moving!' urged the warrior.
As they continued on toward the open desert, the terrain began to shift from the rocky terrain where the facility was located to shifting sand and large dunes. The trio had been running for nearly fifteen minutes when they heard the sound of fighter engines coming toward them from the rear. Despite having covered approximately two miles at a high running speed, the fighters were still closing in.
The men began to enter the dunes as Tiet looked back to see at least ten aerial fighters coming into view about a mile behind them and moving fast. As they entered the dunes, the sand began to swirl around them. He wasn't sure what was going on, but kept running. The whine of fighter engines got louder and louder. Orin knew they must be within visible range by now. Only the warrior's tan attire seemed appropriate now as they ran through the whirling sand.
Then suddenly a wave of sand seemed to billow up around them all and swallow them whole. The fighters zoomed past where the men had been and kept on going on the assumption that their targets must be hiding around the dunes, or had made it further away from the compound than they had anticipated.
Tiet, Orin and the mysterious warrior now found themselves in an odd shaped underground alcove. The sand was above them without being on them. It was as though the desert had opened its mouth and swallowed them, depositing them within its bowels. The sand parted before them to reveal an underground cavern of immense size.
