Copyright 1998. All rights reserved.

CJ could just barely make out Akira, moving slowly forward in the distance. They'd built the armor frames to have the same sandstone texture and color as Shiva's halls, and the camouflage worked pretty well, at least for human eyes. She felt less confidence about how well it worked against the eyes of Shiva.

Straining to see, a motion close to Akira startled her. Then she realized it was Roni. Once again she wondered how Roni did that, disappearing in the middle of the damn hall. Well, that was why he was recon, not somebody else.

Akira jumped catlike to Roni's shoulders and went to work on the ceiling. Then Roni muttered, "Shit. They see us."

CJ shouted to Lars and Axel, "Move!" She dialed her suit to full amplification and started loping down the hall, keeping up with Lars and Axel quite nicely even though they rode bikes.

CJ heard Roni grunt with effort as he pushed Akira closer to the ceiling. She could see Akira's hands now as a blur of speed, laying out the lattice of duodec.

Morgan’s voice murmured in her head with the analysis. "Eighteen Mark II minitanks in the first squadron." Eighteen of them! Christ! She could see them beyond Roni and Akira, moving as fast as she was, a swarm of monstrous beetles that covered the floor of the hall. It was going to be too close a race.

CJ wanted to tell Lars to open fire with the monster gun, but she knew she couldn’t do that quite yet. They needed that weapon to kill the Destroyers they would surely encounter on the center-level, and they didn’t know they would really find ammo in the storeroom yet; they didn’t even really know that the reloading system would work. Even if it meant spending blood and lives, they dared not spend the ammo.

CJ snapped, "Axel, when we get there, get that damn storeroom open, I wanna see if we've got ammo or not. I don't care what else is happening, you get that room open."

"Check, Boss Lady."

She wasn’t going to make it in time. The lead minitank swung its sword back, preparatory to cutting Roni in half. CJ fired a burst from her pellet gun, not to kill the tank—the angle was wrong—but to slow it down. And for half a second, the minitank hesitated.

Roni fell away from the tank as Akira jumped forward, off Roni's shoulders, into a spin that brought him down with a crashing kick to the minitank's swordarm. The sword snapped off. The three minitanks right behind leaped on Akira. The ceiling exploded. Huge chunks of roof rained down on the minitanks. CJ, Lars, and Roni fired at the exposed bowels of six more minitanks trying to scurry over the debris. Axel slewed his bike in a three-sixty, stopping with grace and precision adjacent to the storeroom lock. His hand snapped out, his electronic lock picker slapped down, covering the lock. A thousand experts on Earth joined Axel in his private assault on the lock.

The muffled sound of a pellet gun came from the bottom of the pile of debris. Akira still lived, buried under the minitanks.

Another minitank made it across the wreckage unharmed, grabbing Axel. Roni hooked the minitank with his spike and heaved. Armor plate cracked as the minitank’s sword struck Axel in the abdomen. Axel jerked but did not collapse in two pieces; the minitank’s blow had been twisted to an off-angle by Roni’s efforts. Axel continued to work the lock.

Roni swung his spike up into the minitank. It jerked to a stop.

CJ slid under an overhanging ledge of ceramic debris, feet first, like a baseball player sliding into second base. A minitank, seeing her so helpless, started climbing down from its perch to get her. The tank didn’t realize that this had been CJ’s hope, to entice the minitank to expose its belly. CJ fired, blowing the tank’s undercarriage apart. More minitanks approached her. They were all easy targets from her new vantage, but there were too many of them. She killed three more. A fourth grabbed her arm, smashing the pellet gun against the rock.

The storeroom door popped open. Axel whistled. "All the ammo you can eat."

Lars dropped his pellet gun. The arm of CJ's frame fractured into a dozen pieces. A minitank swept an arm underneath Roni's legs, flipping him onto his back.

Lars and his monster gun fired. Trails of ceramic dust followed the stream of bullets from his weapon, and the raging sound echoed down the hall. Confident he could reload with the ammo Axel had just found, he kept shooting till he was dry.

Silence filled the room.

A voice spoke over the radio, "Is anybody left out there, or do I have to deliver the football all by myself?" It was Akira.

CJ shouted with joy. "Akira!" She pulled herself out from under her ledge, by which time Lars and Roni had already dug halfway through the pile.

They reached Akira half a minute later. CJ asked, "You OK?"

Akira smiled. "I am much better than the three minitanks you just removed." Blood bubbled from his mouth. He coughed. "Perhaps not that much better, however," he conceded.

Lars and Roni lifted him gently from the rubble. He tried to sit up, sank back down. Roni spoke to him sternly. "Damn it Akira, you can't die on us yet. The recon guy is always the first one to get killed. Don't you dare try to hog my spotlight."

CJ felt a moment's burst of anger. She barked at Akira, "Why'd you jump on those tanks like that? Did you feel the need to commit suicide?"

"They were about to strike Roni. You need Roni to fire the second monster gun."

CJ didn’t let go. "Roni can take care of himself. Where'd you get the idea you should sacrifice yourself for him?"

"MacBride told me."

CJ rocked back on her heels like she’d been hit in the face. How did Morgan dare think of ranking the value of each individual team member, and discarding the lesser ones?

Of course, he was right. Damn him anyway.

Back to scenes