“Turn us over,” he called to Freeman, sounding like a sick child.
Freeman carefully rolled him onto his stomach and stretched his arms out so that he looked like a soldier lying in wait. During their time alone in the cockpit, Sweetwater and Freeman must have discussed how the scientist wanted to die.
Herrington looked back over the scene, and said, “Good luck, Doc,” on an open channel that everyone but Sweetwater could hear. “It’s too bad they don’t clone natural-borns; we could use an entire battalion of men like you.”
As I started to slide the nuke into its sleeve, I saw Freeman gently pat Sweetwater on the back. The little pistol fell from his hand, and I knew William Sweetwater had died.
“Okay, boys, I’m going to start the timer. On my mark, start running and shooting, and don’t stop till you’ve reached the transport,” I said.
I heard a round of aye-ayes.
For a brief moment, it seemed like everything would work out, then the world around us suddenly became brighter. I turned and saw that the long line of spheres had begun to dilate; and worse, I saw the yellow outlines of Avatari soldiers inside each sphere.
Half-convinced the bomb would explode the moment I reassembled it, I shoved the inner mechanism back into its sleeve. The window on the outside of the outer cylinder showed that the clock had begun to count down the moment the innards snapped into place. I noted the time in my visor and sprang to my feet.
“Go!” I yelled.
Behind me, Avatari energy forms began marching out of the spheres. There must have been thousands of them, and there might have been tens of thousands more waiting to emerge. They were behind us, not between us and our way back to the transport, and they were slow. If we ran quickly, I thought we might still make it out.
Grabbing the handles on either end of the nuke, I hefted it off the ground, but I was weak from the march down here. I had trouble lifting the damn thing, and I had to wrestle it toward the gas. Less than a hundred feet away from me, more glowing yellow soldiers took form and emerged from the spheres—an army of creatures made of nothing but energy. Seeing the Avatari step into the knee-deep carpet of gas that surrounded the spheres, I had a moment’s hope that the gas would dissolve them.
“Run!” I shouted, and dropped the armed nuke into the gas.
There were only four of us now. Grubb led the way, scrambling up the side of the ridge that led back across the cavern. Herrington followed, his pistol ready in case anything stepped in his way.
In the dark confines of the cavern, thousands of glowing beings poured out of the spheres behind us. They strolled across the layer of gas like a phosphorous tide, the light from their bodies spreading its glow through the gloom.
At the top of the ridge, Herrington stopped and turned to look back. “Harris, you better get moving. The whole specking Mudder Army’s behind you.”
A few yards ahead of me, Ray Freeman ran like an injured man, his back curled, his shoulders hunched and tight. He struggled to climb the loose slag along the ridge until I came up behind him and rammed him forward. It was a struggle—the man weighed at least 350 pounds, and he was weak, but we managed to reach the top together.
I hazarded a look back. Avatari soldiers continued pouring out of the spheres. They walked across the gas and moved in our direction, apparently unaware of the nuclear device I had left. In another minute or two, their rifles would become solid enough to shoot. We could outrun the Avatari but not their light bolts.
Herrington jogged back in my direction carrying a grenade launcher. He said something about slowing the bastards down, and I yelled, “Go! Just go!” At this stage, with their bodies still made of energy, a rocket would not hurt the Avatari, but it might damage the nuclear device.
I had only run a short way before I looked back and saw something that made the hormone-warmed blood freeze in my veins—the glowing front line of the Avatari had reached the spot where William Sweetwater’s body lay on the ground as still as a rock. The light emanating from their bodies gave the ground around his corpse a golden glow.
I did not have time to process the images I had just seen; I could either push Freeman ahead or leave him behind. Left on his own, Freeman stumbled along as if he did not know where he was. The ground beneath us was loose and uneven, and the path was narrow and covered with rocks and slag. If he fell, I might not be able to get him up again, but I knew one thing—I would not leave this man behind.
Private Grubb lost his footing as he ran ahead of us. He tripped and flew face-first, but managed to land on the ridge. As he climbed to his feet, his right leg folded beneath him. He’d probably broken an ankle when he tripped. He stumbled, then rolled down the side of the rise, vanishing into a spider-thing’s hole.
I fired a few blasts of particle beam in his general direction, but I could not wait to see if he made it out. Stopping for Grubb would mean sacrificing Freeman.
Freeman stumbled along at little better than a drunk man’s run.
Herrington pulled ahead of us by twenty, maybe even thirty, yards. Every few seconds, he’d pause, run in place for just a moment, and check back on us. When he reached the carcass of a guardian spider that we killed along the ridge, he stopped and lowered his gun. I thought he was waiting for us.
“Hey, asshole, get moving,” I said.
Herrington fired his pistol into the darkness along the rise. Grabbing one of the dead guardian cablelike legs to keep himself up, he reached down the side of the slope, extending himself as far as he could. When he came back up the rise, Sergeant Thomer came with him.
By this time, Freeman and I were on his heels.
“Nice of you to join us,” I told Thomer.
The other shoe dropped. The Avatari infantry began shooting.
We always knew that the Avatari’s guns took on form more quickly than the avatars of the troopers. Silver- white bolts flew past us, sliding through the darkness at speeds just visible to the eye. Their aim was well wide of us, as if either their guns or their vision had not finished forming; but the message was clear—time had run out.
Still unaware of us, spiderlike drones toiled in their holes along our path. A guardian climbed on to the ridge ahead of us. Shooting his pistol as he ran, Herrington shot the thing so many times he dismembered it.
Had they been more fleet, the Avatari would have overtaken us, but speed had never figured into their battle plans. They won wars by attrition. Behind us, light flooded the cavern, not the silvery light of the ion curtain but the yellow glow of the on-rushing tide of Avatari. Bolts flew through the air, ethereal dashes that flashed past us in a millisecond and vanished into the darkness. In the distance, more guardian spiders headed in our direction, but they were too far away to reach us.
Prodding Freeman from behind, I followed Thomer and Herrington to the final slope—the rise that would lead us out of the caverns. Only nine minutes had passed, nine minutes down and eleven minutes to go until the bomb performed whatever destructive magic Sweetwater had programmed into it. I hoped his magic would be strong enough.
The bolts were getting closer, striking the ground around us. A hailstorm struck just ahead of Herrington. He jumped back to avoid it, lost his balance, and slid back down on his stomach. Thomer made it to the top of the ridge, then dropped to the ground and began shooting to give us cover.
The next storm of bolts came so close that Thomer, Freeman, and I had to drop for cover. While we waited for a momentary hiccup in the steady stream of bolts, my eye flicked across the timer in my visor and I saw we now had only ten minutes to get away.
“Got any rockets left?” I asked Herrington.
“Nothing with a thermite tip,” he said.
“The hell with thermite, give me anything that makes a specking bang,” I shouted.
Herrington held up a grenade launcher. “It’s all I’ve got left. I can—”
“Give it here,” I said.
He did.
