away. “Speck!” he said, “I didn’t see that thing until it was almost on you.”
“They camouflage themselves,” I said. I stared at the monster lying on its back and realized how close I had come. “Thank you …shit, that was close.”
“Don’t mention it,” Burton said.
“Lieutenant, you’ve got two more heading your way at nine o’clock,” Thomer called in over the interLink.
I turned, saw two spider-things working their way through a deep groove in the ground, and realized they were drones. They moved past us and continued on their way.
“Those are workers,” I said. I watched them scurry away, both harmless and deadly. They could not attack because attacking was not in their programming, just as graffiti and lawlessness were not in the programming of the clones who had defaced the Hotel Valhalla, just like wanting to kill a superior officer was not in Thomer’s programming.
I wanted to warn Freeman to watch the drones …maybe the aliens could change their programming. If the thousands of drones in this cavern suddenly rose and attacked …
“Freeman?” I called over the interLink. “Freeman?”
He did not respond.
“Thomer, where are Freeman and Sweetwater?”
A moment passed. “They’re almost down the slope. The little bastard looks like he’s burning up,” Thomer said.
“Freeman,” I said, creating a direct link. I heard the rasp of his breathing and realized that he had not responded because he could not respond. He must have inhaled some of the air when he removed his helmet. If he’d breathed even a trace of this gas, his throat would be seared.
I could see Freeman and Sweetwater threading their way toward me. In the blue-white world of night-for-day vision, they looked like a formation of shadows against chalky ground.
“We have to get Sweetwater out of here,” Thomer said, naturally inclined to protect the people around him.
“He has a job to do, Thomer; just like everyone else,” I said as I turned back to have a look at Sweetwater. I did not know what we could do for him, but we needed to keep him alive long enough to place the nukes, though I could not imagine how we could accomplish it.
Sweetwater’s swollen face had puffed up badly. It was covered with blisters, and the skin was abnormally dark. His eyes had a glazed look. He might have been going into shock or he might have simply been dazed from pain. His ears, already covered with blisters, had a spongelike texture. Liquid glistened on all of his exposed skin. At first I thought it was sweat, but I now realized it was fluid oozing out of the open sores.
“We’ve gotta keep moving,” Herrington said over an open line. “There’s a whole lot of company coming our way.”
“Spiders or Avatari?” I asked.
“Spiders.”
“Hold them off,” I said. We could keep the guardian spiders at bay well enough with our guns as long as we did not allow them to get too close to us. The Avatari soldiers were another story, with those damned light-bolt rifles. They could pick us off, but they seemed scarce, just a guard or two. Perhaps the Avatari sent a small detachment to help guard this hellhole.
I signaled for Thomer to come.
“Freeman, they’re closing in ahead of us. I need you up here.” He did not answer, probably could not answer. I wondered how well he could breathe. As he and Thomer came to join me at the front of the party, I told Freeman, “I’m going to assign Sergeant Thomer to guard Sweetwater.”
I heard a dry, painful sigh over the interLink, as Freeman brought down the particle-beam cannon he kept slung over his shoulder. He made an exaggerated nod and stood ready.
“Dr. Sweetwater,” I said. I knelt beside him so that our eyes were nearly level. “Can you hear me?”
He looked at me and nodded. The sharpness returned to his eyes.
“Are we close enough to set off the bombs?” I asked, knowing the answer already.
He took a moment to consider this, then he opened his satchel and pointed to six metal tubes. “Need to take reading of the gas,” he said in a whisper while shaking his head. The wet shreds of burst blister stretched the entire length of his throat. I wanted to shoot the little son of a bitch just to end his suffering.
“Can I run ahead and throw them in?” I asked.
He shook his head and held out that T-shaped meter of his.
“You need to run tests,” I guessed, my heart sinking. We still had a mile-long hike ahead of us if we wanted to reach the gas.
A light bolt soared over us, striking a large boulder and boring through it as swiftly as it flew through the air. Then the storm broke. The darkness took on a strobe effect as dozens of bolts struck all around us. We had stayed in one place too long, and the Avatari had homed in on us.
Freeman scooped Sweetwater up with one arm, his particle-beam cannon extended from the other, and ran for cover behind a boulder. Thomer ran behind them, shooting blind fire at the aliens to give Freeman cover.
“Major, close ranks around Sweetwater and the nukes …” I told Burton.
A few feet away from me, a man hid behind a boulder. Three bolts seared through the rock, all of them missing him; but he panicked and jumped out from behind the cover. Bolts hit him in the leg, head, and chest, passing through him as cleanly as they had passed through the rock a moment earlier.
“Burton!” I yelled.
“On my way,” Burton said.
To my left, a grenadier stood to fire a rocket. The bolt that killed him traveled straight up his extended arm and out through his shoulder, leaving only a shred of hollow armor behind. Had it been a bullet or even a laser, the man would have lived. He collapsed in convulsions, flopping around on the ground like a fish on a dock. I ended his suffering, firing a quick green burst from my cannon that exploded his helmet in a splash of blood and shreds of armor.
Sweetwater stared at me, a frantic mixture of shock and fear in his eyes.
“Looks like this is as far as we’re going to get,” Burton warned as he slid in beside me.
“Bullshit,” I said. “Freeman, if this doesn’t work, grab Sweetwater and make a run for the spheres.” I rose to my feet, then spun so that my back was against a massive rock wall. I needed to clear a hole, just enough of a lane for us to get past this trap. If push came to shove, we’d detonate the nukes before reaching the gas, but only as a last resort. Prematurely detonating the nukes might not charge the gas, but it would do more than giving up and dying.
There were too many Avatari for us to fight our way through, and time was running out. In another five minutes, Sweetwater would die whether we got him close enough to calibrate the nuke or not.
Just when I thought we would never waltz out of the trap, I peered around the rock and saw something promising—aliens of a feather were flocking together. There may have been as many as a hundred Avatari soldiers out there, but they grouped together in a cluster. It might have been because they were not designed for underground combat, or it could have been because the aliens controlling those avatars were not used to this sort of firefight, but the soldiers massed in one small area were forcing the guardian spiders to handle the legwork.
“Boll, you got any more thermite tips?” I asked.
“Only legal loads from here on out,” he answered.
“Shit,” I said.
“I got one,” Herrington said.
“You said I was insane for—” Boll said.
“You wanna point fingers or win this?” Herrington snapped. Then, in a calmer voice, he said, “Lieutenant, I have a thermite load to fire.”
“Herrington, I’m placing a virtual beacon on the spot I need you to hit. Then I am going to break left and draw fire,” I said. “Wait until you get a clear shot, then you light those bastards.”
“Once you get clear of them?” Herrington asked.
“The moment you have the shot, you specking take it!” I said. As I said this, a barrage of light bolts splattered the ground around us. Two guardian spiders marched over a rock off in the distance. Freeman picked them
