Exodus, page 65
Gyvoy tossed the empty launcher out of the opening. “Dylan, ask Koa to take us back to the Silver Cloudspear.”
“Absolutely, boss.”
The Ovar banked again and headed through the glowing double hole the slowbombs had created. Finn was half expecting the surviving Ghosts to open fire, but the ones closest to the holes had become motionless.
Gyvoy grunted dismissively as they passed through and slammed another fresh magazine into his suit. “Uemi?”
“I’m here.”
“Tell Jazon to prep the Silver Cloudspear for maximum speed. Whatever those compressor jet redlines are, ignore them. We’re on our way out.”
“Okay, but the three pirates haven’t reappeared yet. They’re still in the factory’s radar shadow.”
“Three?” a startled Finn said.
“Yeah,” Ellie said. “Uemi caught the radar return separating just before they ducked down behind the factory.”
“You want to mention anything else that happened while I was connected? I mean, you know, did a Mara Yama fleet turn up or something?”
“No sign of them,” she said grimly. “Yet.”
“The pirates will have armor suits at the very least,” Gyvoy said. “But they won’t be a match for ours.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Trouble,” Dave said.
“Crap, what are the Ghosts doing now?”
“Not Ghosts.”
Finn accessed Dave’s feed again. The Ovar had already reached the middle Archimedes Engine, with the slowbomb hole a distant glow far behind them. Something was moving in the darkness amid the gantry columns. Dave swung his twin spotlights round to illuminate the new hazard.
Finn squinted at the image, puzzled by the long twisters of what he assumed was black smoke coiling around the gantries in a very odd fashion. There was certainly no wind blowing in here that could cause such sharp turns. The tips of the smoke plumes were stretching out in pursuit of the Ovar. Dave scaled up the magnification, revealing how grainy the smoke was—more a collection of dark particles. Another leap in magnification—
“Oh, shit,” Finn blurted.
“What are those?” Ellie asked.
Gyvoy’s voice became utterly humorless as he said: “I think we’re about to meet the nightweid.”
The feed wobbled over the lead figure flapping urgently through the air after the Ovar. It was shorter than a human, with hairless gray skin stretched tight over its skeleton, revealing long cords of muscle bunching and contracting along its back. They powered leathery wings rooted between its shoulder blades. At first Finn thought it was screaming in unending anger as it chased them, before realizing its mouth was a permanently open circle, with a ring of fangs jabbing over puckered lips. The nose was just a vertical slit, almost lost between bulging multifaceted insect eyes. Fingers with long, sharp talons gripped some kind of energy beam pistol. As the image swung about, he saw some of the nightweid were carrying blades that glowed a venomous purple.
“There’s hundreds of them,” Ellie said weakly.
“Thousands,” Dave corrected.
“No problem, fellas,” Koa said. “We can fly faster than them.”
“You sure?” Finn asked, instantly ashamed, but he really wanted reassuring.
“Oh, yes sireee.”
“More,” Dave said.
A couple of kilometers away, another huge flock of nightweid were pouring out through the vaulting archways at the base of a gantry. They began to curve around to follow the Ovar.
“Sweet Asteria.”
“We’re ahead of them, fellas,” Koa said in a voice that’d taken on a brittle edge. “A goodly distance, and you bet your inner sweetness that’s the way it’s gonna stay.”
The Ovar raced along the assembly line, dodging around the gantry columns, sometimes looping at random. Anything to build distance from the swarm and keep them guessing the exact route they were taking. Two more flocks emerged from within the factory, merging with the original mass of pursuers. In the feed from both Daves, it was like a night sky was crashing down toward the Ovar, obliterating everything in its path. It even twinkled with its own malign stars as the glow of legacy blades cast faint auroras.
But Koa was right, the Ovar could fly faster. Finn almost didn’t believe it as they progressively increased the distance between themselves and the apocalyptic horde chasing them. Finally, something going our way. They passed the unfinished framework of the first Archimedes Engine, and the Ovar banked sharply, heading toward the tunnel they’d emerged from so long ago.
“We’ve found the pirates,” Uemi-Jubalee said. “Bad news, they’ve surrounded the entrance of the tunnel you went in, holding in place a couple of kilometers out.”
“So they’re waiting for us?” Elsbeth said.
“I’m afraid so.”
“We’re going to have to come out fighting, then,” Gyvoy said. “I’m not expecting them to use missiles against the Ovar. They believe we’re here to salvage something physical, so they’re not going to risk blowing it up.”
“We’ll be facing assault from armor suits, then,” Elsbeth said. “They’ll try to disable the Ovar so they can swoop in and finish us off.”
“Disable us?” Koa squeaked.
“It’s what I’d do.”
“That’s their weakness,” Gyvoy said. “When we pass the rim of the entrance, all of us launch into a protective formation around Koa and Kaizen and go straight into full blitz-rage barrage. We prioritize their armor suits, then go for the airboats. That’s if they stick around once they see what we’re capable of.”
“Promise?” Koa asked timidly.
“Yeah, you’ll be safe.”
Finn didn’t detect any irony in Gyvoy’s voice. The Ovar were built for combat zones; they’d be okay if it was just a short clash at the tunnel exit. Once again, he checked his suit status. Everything green.
* * *
—
The two Ovar kept the pace up along the tunnels, which made Finn wonder just how long they could fly at such speed. But by the second junction they’d lost sight of the nightweid swarm. The cannon spotlights showed the clumps of airkombu on the wall were getting larger and more frequent.
When their inertial navigation said they were five kilometers from the end of the tunnel, the Daves switched their spotlights off, giving the pirates less chance of seeing them. Certainly there were no sensor pulses being fired down the tunnel.
“They must be using infrared,” Bensath said.
“They will be, but it’s not as accurate as an active scan,” Finn said. “And as soon as they do go active, we can get a target lock.”
Finally, the end of the tunnel became visible up ahead—a dim gray patch coming from a world abandoned by sunlight.
“Open up,” Gyvoy told Koa.
The segments at the back of the passenger cavity parted.
“Okay, people, as soon as we’re outside, deploy. When we hit open air: constant suppression fire.”
“Ready,” Finn said. It was stupid, but he was relieved he was going to take some part in the fight.
“Looks clear,” Dave said.
“We’ll be out in a minute,” Koa said. “I’m going to—”
The front section of the passenger cavity slammed into Finn. Hard. His knee thumped into Dylan’s prone form, and the pilot let out a muffled scream of pain. Then Finn and Ellie and Gyvoy were all rebounding fast, cartwheeling through the confined cavity to smack into one another in an uncontrolled tumble. Their equipment and ammunition cases slammed about violently.
“What?” Finn yelped.
“High-gee deceleration,” the suit manager told him. “All velocity canceled. You are now at rest.”
The passenger cavity rotated dizzyingly around him, and his leg knocked against another suit. “No, I’m fucking not.”
“We hit something,” Gyvoy grunted. “Koa, what’s out there?”
The Ovar started a high-pitched wailing, her chitin face a crazed commotion of random impulses. “Help help help.”
Finn grabbed one of the uvula to stabilize himself. His motion slowed, but the flaccid flesh ripped badly, with dark fluid oozing from the tear.
“What happened?” Elsbeth demanded.
“Did Kaizen hit something, too?”
“Yeah. Crap, my helmet rammed a power cell. It hurts.”
“They’re coming,” Koa whimpered. “They’re coming, I can see them. Help me, please. Please! I don’t want to die like this.”
“Daves, talk to me!” Gyvoy said.
“Big trouble.”
“No shit? Everyone out. Now.”
Finn’s jetpack spun him around, and he took off for the opening—and came to an abrupt halt just as he was about to emerge. “What the hell?”
“Finn?” Ellie asked.
He could hear the whine of his jetpack compressor motors spinning up, but he didn’t budge. When he tried to move his arms, he couldn’t. “Don’t come near me!” For a nasty second he was entombed in xeefoam again. Transparent this time. And that did not end well last time. “Something’s got me.”
“They’re coming!” Koa screeched in terror.
“Wait,” Gyvoy said cautiously.
Finn started struggling. He did have some movement; his limbs could move a few centimeters. “What the hell is this?”
His helmet sensors showed Gyvoy gliding up behind him, a power blade telescoping out of his right arm to shine like red dwarf sunlight. He swiped it down parallel to Finn’s left leg. Finn could suddenly kick with full movement restored.
“Some kind of web,” Gyvoy said in shock. “Everyone switch your helmet lights to ultraviolet.”
As he did, Finn heard the sound of heavy-duty kinetic cannon outside open up. Multiple explosions erupted, and the airkombu-covered tunnel walls were illuminated by strobing light.
“They’re armored,” Dave said.
“Heavy-duty,” the other Dave replied.
Finn stopped kicking. The ultraviolet light from the helmets revealed glowing threads curtaining the opening at the back of Koa’s passenger cavity. They were beaded with saffron droplets.
“These weren’t here when we came in,” he said in a shaky voice.
Gyvoy kept slashing at the threads, cutting him free.
“Stop them,” Koa sobbed. “Somebody stop them.”
Finn, Gyvoy, and Ellie hung in the opening, shining their lights beyond the Ovar. Apart from the severed threads flapping loosely in zero gee, the air in the tunnel was clear.
“Out,” Gyvoy said. “Come on, now. Dylan, move.”
“I will not leave my Koa,” the pilot’s muffled voice insisted.
The Ovar began another petrified keening.
“Oh, for crap’s sake. Okay, everyone else, same procedure as before. Now! Take out the suits then the airboats.”
“No,” Dave said. “Bad critters first.”
“Oh, sweet fucking Asteria: What?” Finn muttered.
“Heard of these,” the other Dave said. “Grozlamia.”
“That’s not possible,” Gyvoy grunted. “Grozlamia were Devar synthoids, deviant Awakened. They died out ten thousand years ago.”
“Not all of them.”
Finn’s jetpack flew him out of Koa’s cavity and back several meters into the tunnel, then he turned around and hovered. Ultraviolet helmet beams illuminated the huge web strung across the tunnel. It was woven in haphazard patterns yoked together, with every centimeter of thread covered in the organic adhesive that had been secreted by—
Seven Grozlamia were creeping their way across the web toward the terrified, immobilized Ovar. They clearly had some kind of spider DNA in whatever hellish genetic mashup the Devar had put together. But these distorted arachnids were the size of elephants, and wearing dark, heavy armor. As he watched, the Dave in Kaizen’s mandibles opened fire again. The kinetic projectiles mostly ricocheted off the approaching monster, but some managed to spear a joint and sever the lower portion of a leg. The Grozlamia reared up, its remaining legs waving in distress, and Finn could make out the shape of an armored humanoid hunkered down just behind its head. The Grozlamia’s bizarre polygonal helmet had four curving artificial fangs two meters long protruding from its underside. They glowed emerald and dripped some kind of treacly liquid from their tips.
“Suits are riding them,” Finn shouted in warning. “Everyone, shoot behind the heads.” He opened fire.
Kinetics and energy beams flared wildly in the tunnel, stitching lurid lines of light through the air as the two sides engaged. Suit tactical routines interlocked and gave everyone a specific Grozlamia and rider to target. Finn zoomed forward, trying to move into a position where the Grozlamia’s excessive bulk made it difficult for the rider to get a clean line of sight on him. He fired a barrage of micro-missiles. A flight of grenades came hurtling back. His tactical routine fired defensive laser pulses, detonating them in midair. The last one was only five meters away when it exploded. Blast waves shunted Finn sideways across the tunnel, almost into the fluttering ribbons of airkombu.
He somersaulted midair and streaked back into the firefight. Chaff and micropulsars erupted from his silos, surrounding him in a miasma of dazzling multichromatic light and sensor-killing impulses. Some of the riders were flying free of their grotesque mounts now. From their size and the odd-shaped armor covering their legs, he judged they had to be Icarians. He brought five targeting icons around to focus on one and opened fire, his arms held rigidly forward, diving toward them at full speed. The Icarian might have normally been graceful and fast in flight, but wearing an armor suit limited him to the slower, inertia-damped maneuvers the suit could achieve. Finn could see his munitions breaking the Icarian’s armor apart as he streaked in relentlessly. Kinetics were striking him in return, pummeling him about, but the jetpack compensated, sending him snaking back on course. Talons with superheated tips jabbed out of the top of Finn’s gauntlets a second before impact. He strongly suspected the Icarian was dead by then anyway; tatters of flesh were trailing out of the armor’s jagged rents. But he rammed the talons into him anyway, burning through the armor into the body, the two of them careering across the tunnel. His augmented muscles allowed him to rip massive gaping wounds into his opponent. He spun around and disengaged, the talons sinking back into their scabbards. The dead Icarian sailed away, flipping end over end, with sprays of blood trailing after.
Finn powered around and headed back for the web and the firefight raging above it. Most of the Grozlamias were riderless now. And they were still hurrying across their web toward the Ovar. Finn pulled a long power blade from his leg sheath and landed hard on the back of one. The ups on his boot soles locked him on. The creature’s head twisted from side to side searching for the danger. Its long legs lifted and scrabbled around, trying to swipe him away. Finn brought the blade down on the armor, slowly piercing through it and into the body it protected. In his head it would be a death blow; then he realized that barely half a meter of the blade had actually stabbed into the body. He was simply inflicting a sting, not a fatal strike. And through it all, the hideous thing kept going for Koa.
“Crap!”
He strained hard to move the blade sideways, sawing through the thick armor. His suit’s augmented muscles managed to move it sluggishly, curving around in a small circle. The Grozlamia began to shake about, its legs flexing, urgently trying to dislodge him. But the ups didn’t budge.
Finn completed the circle. They were only thirty meters from Koa now. He tugged the blade out and pulled the plug of armor free. Thick yellow blood began to well up out of the hole. Finn fired a missile into it. A couple of seconds later, a jet of blood twice his height fountained out, splattering across his suit. And still the horror kept skittering on toward Koa. He fired another missile into the obscene bulk. The gross yellow blood fountain was higher this time, and contained globs of fatty tissue. As it happened, the Grozlamia raised its head, its front legs lifting, ready to pounce on Koa. Finn shoved the nozzle of his forearm mag-rifle into the hole and yelled wordlessly as it discharged the entire magazine into the creature’s guts.
The Grozlamia’s front legs folded back, pulling its mass down on top of Koa. Finn braced himself, but it didn’t move again. He triggered the jetpack and flew around the head. That was when he saw the armor’s macabre fangs had impaled the Ovar.
He let out a furious scream.
The armor-suited riders had all been taken out, except for a firefight playing out over by the tunnel wall. Gyvoy and Elsbeth were pummeling at the Icarian armor suit, overloading its defenses. Ellie, Iarik, and Bensath were each taking on a Grozlamia, using a variant of Finn’s attack, employing the blind spot on its back to attack it. The Daves had torn through the joints at the base of another Grozlamia’s helmet, and between them the radiant figures wrenched the monster’s head clean off.
The last living Grozlamia had killed Kaizen. It remained on top of the broken Ovar, as if it was guarding the corpse. Finn flew toward it, and it shuffled around to face him. Gyvoy was now directly above it, descending fast. He activated his forearm blade, which telescoped out to four meters in length and blazed into life. It stabbed through the top of the helmet; seconds later the tip punctured the bottom, protruding for twenty centimeters before Gyvoy withdrew it.
“Motherfucker,” Gyvoy spat.
“They got both the Ovar,” Ellie said miserably. “Both of them!”
“Any of their riders left?” Finn asked.
“No,” Elsbeth reported.
The Daves took off from the headless Grozlamia. “Incoming,” one of them said.
Finn looked back down the tunnel. It could have been imagination, or maybe his suit sensors were sharp enough to pick it up, but a curtain of darkness was approaching. He almost let out a whimper; he’d completely forgotten about the diabolical horde of nightweid.
