sudden traffic. The Incast facility was not without protection or resources, and was fighting back as best as its automatics knew how against the effector onslaught from outside and inside its walls. That the other side had such powerful assets in place so quickly was not a good sign though, the avatar knew.
~We’ll need to protect Ms Cossont physically now, from above, Berdle told Parinherm, double- and then treble-checking the state of the missile’s anti-matter battery before — to the missile — sending the signal,~At 35 per cent AM yield; prepare, confirm.
~Copy 35 per cent AM yield.
~Enact.
The knife missile blew itself up.
Cossont felt herself go utterly limp, from the outside in, somehow. Had she had the time, she’d have worried about her bowels relaxing, but instead she was fascinated to find that she now had no control whatsoever over any of her major muscles, which, having been lost to her, now seemed to have developed minds of their own and taken the decision to roll her up into a foetal ball, while Parinherm and Berdle, perhaps similarly afflicted, were arching over the top of her. If she’d seen this done on stage, she thought, it might have looked quite an elegant ballet move.
“Blast-from-above-coming-apologies,” Berdle said in her earbud, talking very fast and clipped.
There was an almighty crack of sound, she felt briefly weightless, though still held down by the two bodies spread over her, and then the floor came smacking up towards her, slapping her feet, creaking her bones and making her insides feel bruised. Her chin, on her tight-together knees, tried to bury itself between her calves. The shoulder bag with the cube in it pressed painfully into her back. It all went very dark. She expected to find her ears ringing but they weren’t. Something cracked above her, making the whole lift shudder.
“Okay?” Berdle asked her, as the avatar and the android pulled up away from her and her suit started bringing her quickly to her feet. Standing, she suddenly found she had control of her body again. There was a haze of dust in the car, and the centre of the roof had caved in to the extent that the three of them had to stand back near the walls.
“Yeah,” she said. “What was—?”
“Knife missile self-destructing directly above us,” Berdle said. “Excuse me.” The avatar squatted, his hands seemed to sink into the surface of the soft plastic floor, and then he pulled back. There was the sound of tearing, protesting metal, and Berdle’s feet sank deep enough into the plastic tiles to cause ripples round the soles of his shoes, which themselves seemed to be deforming. Parinherm jerked suddenly, seemed to stagger.
Cossont stared at it. “You okay?”
~I just tried activating some AG, Parinherm sent to Berdle. ~I think I got targeted; non-viable. “Fine!” it told Cossont brightly, at the same time.
~Our adversaries are able to manipulate the topography of the local gravitational environment, when we give them a target, Berdle told the android.
Parinherm thought about this. ~Neat, he sent.
~The other Displaced components are experiencing the same problems, Berdle told the android, ~only the knife missiles are unaffected. AG is a little subtle for their purposes; they just use naked force fields.
Pulled by the avatar, a giant flap of metal and plastic came peeling and screeching back from the floor, showing the shaft underneath, sinking away into darkness several hundred metres below.
Berdle dropped head-first into it, his feet remaining hooked onto the floor.
~Parinherm, the avatar sent, along with a simple diagram of what it wanted the android to do. ~If you would.
~Certainly, Parinherm replied, and dropped through the hole too, also head-first, feeling Berdle catch his ankles as he fell past and then cooperating in a swinging motion that within two oscillations allowed his hands to reach the upper edge of an open doorway where a tiny missile the size of a human thumb was floating, two delicate-looking outstretched field components fending off the twin doors, which were sliding back and forth continually, trying to close.
“Vyr,” Berdle shouted. “Make sure the cube is secure within your bag, then climb down my body. Lie on my back and hold on very tightly. The suit will help.”
“
“Climb down me first,” Berdle said reasonably. “We’ll tackle the rest as we go.”
Quaking, Cossont checked the shoulder bag was fastened, then lowered herself down the body of the avatar, feet first, holding on to his legs, then turned round on her knees on the slope of Berdle’s back. She had never been more thankful for having four arms. Also, the suit did seem to be helping, but not as much as she’d have liked. She lowered herself to lie on his back, shaking, blood pounding in her ears. The bag slid round her shoulder, hitting Berdle on the head. Her hand was shaking as she went to grab it.
“Sorry!” she yelled.
“No, I’m sorry,” Berdle said. “Are you afraid of heights?”
“No,” she said through clenched teeth, “just of dying generally.” She put the bag over her shoulder again and hugged the avatar from behind, so hard that had he been human she’d have worried about cracking his ribs.
~Okay? Berdle sent to Parinherm.
~Ready.
The little missile floating between the doors on its gyre of fields withdrew, letting the doors start to close as Parinherm let go of the top lip of the doorway and immediately flicked his hands around to grasp the edges of the closing doors.
~Secure hold, the android sent as the doors pressed into his fingers.
“Really tight now, Vyr,” Berdle said quietly, then brought his feet together, letting him and Cossont fall from the under-surface of the elevator car. They pendulumed in the air, their combined mass sending them both swinging thudding into the shaft wall. The avatar took most of the impact and the suit’s gloves protected Cossont’s hands, but it still hurt.
Parinherm, fingers jammed, now had his own weight and that of the two people clinging to him on his arms, hands and fingers, which were being forced to slide down the narrow gap between the almost fully closed doors. Even in a fairly optimistic, human-flattering virtuality, Parinherm thought, a real human would be screaming head- over-heels down the shaft at this point, the bloody stumps of their fingers still trapped between the doors.
~Climbing, Berdle sent, and quickly hauled himself up the android’s body, hand over hand, taking Cossont with him. He stood braced on the lower lip of the doorway and swept the doors open — Parinherm dropped a metre but held on to the lower lip easily enough — stepped forward and turned to let Cossont jump off his back and then stooped to grasp the android’s hand just as, with a creak and a sudden rush of air, the elevator car dropped down the shaft in front of the open doors, hit and severed Parinherm’s fingers and then shuddered on downwards to sweep the rest of his body away.
~Damn, the android sent. ~I was enjoying that!
Cossont caught her breath, started forward towards the open shaft, looking down at the fast-retreating roof of the battered lift as air sucked out all around her.
Berdle reached, pulled her backwards, away from the shaft. “You know,” the avatar said, stepping round her and looking out from the alcove where the lift doors were set, then taking another step out into the gently bowed corridor, “Parinherm will probably be okay, but we have to—”
Something seemed to strike the avatar full in the upper abdomen; Berdle was jerked backwards as a blinding light burst out all around him and something exploded further down the broad curve of corridor; Cossont was sent flying back towards the open doors and the shaft, staggering and skidding right to the edge, all four arms windmilling desperately as she stood teetering, heels-on to the drop. Her eyes were going crazy, reacting mostly too late to the star-burst of light that had erupted from the avatar, filling her vision with black dots. Berdle still seemed to be there, in front of her, his body shuddering, wrapped in flames.
She felt herself start to tip backwards, into the void.
“Oh, fuck,” she heard herself say, and thought what pathetic words those were. And not even remotely
