the landing wall above me. “I’m having a great time keeping our friend off the second deck.”
Freeman did not respond.
“I think I’ll take my new friend for a tour of the bottom deck,” I said.
Freeman did not answer.
My job was to keep the Marine off the second deck so Freeman could search. No problem. The trap I had in mind could only be sprung on the bottom deck.
Trying not to offer myself as a target, I spun and fired a couple of shots to let the bastard know which way I was going.
Having survived being shot in the face multiple times, the Marine had come to realize that I could not harm him. Now he stormed the hall like a bull in a china shop, firing badly aimed flechettes that skimmed the walls and the ceiling.
I leaped over dead sailors lying in frozen heaps along the floor. When we had blown holes in the hull, we exposed these men to space, with its vacuum conditions and true-zero temperatures. They froze in a flash, dying too quickly to suffocate ; but as the spy ship’s atmosphere leaked, bodies broke open from their own internal pressure.
The hall before me was long and straight, with no place for me to hide. If the Marine had had better training, he would have drilled those flechettes into my back.
“How are you doing?” I asked Freeman. Only a minute had passed since the last time I asked.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Peachy,” I said.
He did not respond.
The first of the landing bays was just a few yards up the corridor. The door slid open, revealing ten thousand square feet of empty hangar floor without paper, furniture, or bodies. Everything had been sucked out through the jagged thirtyfoot wound in the far wall.
The area was full of shadows, but my night-for-day lenses let me see through the darkness. There was no other way out than the hatch I had just used, so I hid in a corner, squeezed in as best I could, and hoped I could sneak out of the dead end.
The hatch opened, and the glow of shielded armor spilled in. Seconds passed. Then the bastard walked into the landing bay without so much as a glance to the side, marching right past me. If this was what passed as a Marine in the Unified Authority these days, I was glad the clones revolted. No selfrespecting clone Marine would make such a foolish mistake.
He walked straight to the far wall and examined the gaping hole that looked like a mural of open space. If I’d thrown a grenade, the percussion might have knocked the bastard through the gap, and he could have floated to the next galaxy for all I cared. I couldn’t risk it, though. I waited a second, then dashed toward the hatch.
This time his flechettes barely missed me. I saw holes appear on the wall ahead of me and laughed. He was toying with me. He thought he was a cat playing with a mouse, but he was mistaken. Sure, he had the protective armor, and that made him confident, but I controlled this fight. Unless he got very lucky, his time in the U.A. Marines was about to end.
“Any luck finding your computer?” I asked as I sprinted down the hall.
“Yes,” Freeman said. “These guys were at Olympus Kri.” Olympus Kri was another planet that the Avatari had burned.
“Sounds like they had a disaster fetish,” I said.
“You safe?” asked Freeman.
“I have an angry Unified Authority Marine in shielded combat armor chasing me down a dead end,” I said.
Freeman did not say anything. He knew the situation.
I said, “I’ve got things under control.”
The next landing bay was almost right across the hall. I ran to the hatch, but it did not open. As I pushed off and started for the last landing bay, a trio of flechette holes appeared in the wall near my head. The bastard’s aim kept improving.
I streaked down the hall in a balls-out race. Cocky or not, this guy would win the fight if the next hatch did not open. Hell, he might get lucky even if it did.
I hurled myself at the hatch, and the door slid open. Bolting through as fast as I could, I tripped over a dead sailor, barely managed to catch my feet, and ran toward the transport that sat with its hatch open. I jumped over the frozen corpse of a dead tech lying on the ramp, entered the kettle, and hit the button to close the doors at the rear of the ship. Then I climbed the ladder that led to the cockpit three rungs at a time.
As I reached the top, I looked back over my shoulder. I could not see the doors at the bottom of the ramp, but I knew how slowly they moved. They were eighteen inches thick and made of metal. It would take them twenty seconds to close.
The man in the armor made it through the doors and up the ramp. I could not see him, but I saw the glow that his shields cast on the wall as he strolled up the ramp. He moved slowly, casually, probably keeping a wary eye for more grenades.
I slipped from the ladder to the catwalk that led to the cockpit. Then I knelt low against the metal walkway and watched the bastard as he reached the top of the ramp.
“I have the computer,” Freeman said over the interLink.
Hidden and protected by a thick steel wall of transport construction, I lay on my back and laughed.
Freeman must have mistaken my laughter for combat strain. He asked, “Harris, where are you?”
“I’m fine,” I said.
“What is the situation?” Freeman asked.
“I’m in a transport in the third landing bay.”
“Where is the Marine?”
“You call this shithead a Marine?” I asked, still laughing. “I’ll tell you what—the Unifieds are scraping the bottom of the barrel. The only thing this guy’s trained for is KP duty or maybe scrubbing the head.” As I said this, the doors at the back of the transport clanged shut. I was trapped in the transport with an enemy wearing shielded armor, and I could not have been happier about it.
“Harris, hang on. I’m on my way.”
“Take your time, Ray,” I said. “There’s no rush.”
The U.A. Marine knew enough about his armor to switch to heat vision. He either used heat vision or possibly radar. One way or another, he spotted me on the catwalk and fired. His flechettes hit the iron walls and dropped to the floor. This bird was made to withstand missiles and particle beams, depleted uranium flechettes could barely scratch it.
Tracking the guy with my heat vision, I sat with my S9 pistol ready and watched as the poor bastard wasted his endless supply of flechettes. I laughed. “You can’t hit me, asshole. Not from down there,” I yelled. He didn’t hear me. I was talking to myself.
Down on the deck, the guy kept firing flechettes in my direction. I switched from interLink to external speaker on the off chance he might be listening. I yelled, “Hey, shit for brains, you’re wasting ammunition.”
In response, the bastard shot five more flechettes, then yelled, “Get specked.” The term, “speck,” was sometimes used as a noun referring to bodily fluids and sometimes used as a verb referring to the transmission of those fluids. On the hierarchy of modern profanities, “speck” was as bad as a word could get.
“Have it your way,” I called back. “You’ve been chasing me for about ten minutes now. That leaves you with about half an hour before the battery powering your shields runs out.”
He answered with a flurry of needles. Some struck the ledge below me, some flew over the catwalk. Nothing came close to hitting me.
When he came to his senses, the bastard would realize that he had two choices—he could climb the ladder to come after me, or he could open the rear hatch and escape. Either way, he would need to lower his shields. The shields would prevent him from wrapping his hands around the ladder, and they would short out the circuits if he tried to work the hatch.
Using heat-vision lenses, I watched as he worked out his options. Hoping to keep me honest, he fired sporadic fusillades of flechettes in my direction. After a minute or two, he started toward the ladder. The bastard must have
