"They don't need wheels, or a strip," Cy Aliotta observed wryly. "For them, a crater is as comfortable as granny's featherbed."
The air inside the habitat had a sharp metallic tang, but the oxygen was way up, and the humidifiers would function again with some tinkering. Their big win was getting the habitat's ancient—and small—zero-point generator running. Peter knew that Sahan-Grusa could quickly replicate protein and carbohydrates in vat quantities, once they chose to reveal its presence.
The more immediate problem was the presence of an armed Sophia Gorganis just beyond a low rise to the south.
"She'll run out of air pretty soon. Those landers don't hold much," one of the sicarii opined. "We can wait her out."
Peter stood, and shook his head. "She won't suffocate. And she won't starve. Sophia Gorganis has the Minimus Rex nanodevice in her bloodstream. It can concentrate oxygen from the atmosphere an order of magnitude better than biological absorption. Hell, it can break down body fat and release the oxygen from the fat into her blood. She could hold her breath for hours. And the bugs in her stomach can probably digest wood and leather—not that her fat wouldn't keep her alive for awhile."
Oystein Kylander, Snitzius' weapons expert, was obviously growing impatient with the discussion. "I say we surround her lander, put a few rounds through it, and shred her when she comes out with her launcher. She may get a couple of us, but I'm willing to risk…"
Filer stood, and shook his head. "There's another thing," he said. "Geyl's with her. When I last saw Geyl she was wearing a suit that turned one of Nutmeg's point-blank rounds and shot poison darts, at very least."
Nutmeg crossed the room and poked one of the two IAR men in the temple with her automatic rifle. "I saw the darts work first hand. Filer says there's bigger things that could be pocket missiles. As long as she's in it I'm gonna be careful. What else can that suit do?"
The man was visibly trembling. "I…don't know. Geyl was still out cold and in the suit when we left them. The Missus wants it. That's all we can tell. She's tryin' to get it off, but the suit don't want to let go."
"Umm…miss?" said a quiet voice from the far corner of the room. "I know what the suit can do." The crowd of Ralpha Dogs that had gathered around Nutmeg pulled back and let Magic Mikey approach. "I also know how to get it off." The boy threw back his long, tangled blond hair. "I'm sure Geyl doesn't know it, but my player helped me design it."
Minimus Rex remained silent, but hints from his player pounded at the back of Mikey's mind as he stood before Nutmeg and listened, not meeting her fierce eyes. <
Like almost all communication with the players, it was a sequence of emerging words in silence, symbols experienced whole. That could sometime be a problem (especially with technical information) but here it was nothing that he didn't already know. The woman was even shorter than he, fast, and forceful. She held a weapon of some sort in her hand almost all the time, and he especially feared the one that shot neurostimulants. He thought that Minimus Rex could neutralize them, but his nervous system was very sensitive and pain didn't sit well with him. He would prefer not to put it to the test.
"OK," Nutmeg said. "One more time. You're going to go over the ridge with your hands up and surrender. Get Geyl out of the suit and shut it off. Tell me one more time all the things it can do."
<
Mikey nodded. "It shoots poison needles, explosive pencil missiles, and simple steel slugs. It has self-sharpening claws. Its fingertips can exude nanodisrupters that can cut through anything. Oh…and it's an exo."
"An exo?"
"Exoskeleton. It amplifies the strength of its wearer. It inserted position sensors beneath Geyl's skin when it assembled itself, and those sensors allow it to replicate every motion she makes, with great strength and precision."
Mikey watched Nutmeg's eyes roll up and to the right, as though listening to someone. |She looks like she's consulting nano. Can you smell it?|
No, said Minimus Rex. But I would assume it is the Sangruse Device, Version 7, like the others. Sangruse 7 is third generation. Touch her and I will sample her skin for carbamates.
|I don't think so.|
Nutmeg clucked. "OK. That won't help her if she ain't in it. Can it do anything else dangerous?"
Mikey shook his head. "That's plenty, isn't it?"
"You lie to me and you're gonna suffer. We assume her missile launcher's pointing this way. We're going to get around behind her, so distract her if you can. When we get there, lay down flat and don't move. If we're lucky we won't waste bullets on anybody—even you. Got that?"
Mikey nodded, looking at the ground.
"One more thing that's been bothering me. Miz Fatso General can't fit inside that suit once it's off Geyl, can she?"
<
"No way," Mikey lied.
The Missus had one hand on her hip and another on an automatic sidearm as Mikey approached her, his hands above his head. Beside the heat-scorched lander was the missile launcher, gleaming and skeletal, aimed in the direction from which he had come.
Lying on the ground in front of the lander was Geyl, still in the suit.
"If you're a trap, Mikey, I'm going to skin you with my fingernails. What are those monsters up to?"
Mikey shivered. He was used to thinking of the Missus as a big, warm, enclosing presence on his waterbed. His hands were trembling, and he realized his eyes were filling.
"Don't hurt me, Miz. They put guns in my back and made me go to you."
Her eyes were hard, her face unreadable, but readably unfriendly. "Snitzius and his gang don't believe in freebies. Spill the mission."
He passed one grubby sleeve over his brimming eyes. "They're afraid of Geyl in the suit. They want me to get her out of it and turn it off."
"How much did you tell them about the suit?"
"Just what it shoots. That's what they asked about."
She nodded, and a hint of a smile came to her lips. "Did you tell them that I..."
He shook his head vigorously, the tears shaken loose falling on his arms. "If I did they wouldn't have let me go. Please hold me."
"Later. They're up to something. We're still in mighty deep shit. Get Geyl out of the suit for me. I'll feel a lot safer when it's on me and not her."
"Will you hold me then?"
"I'll hold you when I'm sure you're not helping them come for my scalp. Get that goddam thing off Geyl first and quit blubbering."
Mikey nodded, his tears flowing freely. She had never refused him before, and now she thought he was a traitor too!
<
Abandoned, indeed. His player had a keen grasp of nothing if not the obvious. He stooped beside Geyl, got down to his knees, sobbing quietly. He put one of his fingers in his mouth for a moment, subvocalizing the commands to Minimus Rex to synthesize a specific and complex aromatic compound. The finger emerged glistening. He carefully waved the finger over the secret olfactory sensor spots on the outer surface of the suit's yellow helmet. With a tiny sighing hiss, the suit's faceplate pivoted upward over the top of the helmet.
<
The strong smell of woman came to him out of the helmet. Ally? It was an odd thing for his player to say. Had his player's alliance with the Missus' player been broken?
Geyl's face was peaceful and pale, her shallow breaths a quiet tickle on the back of his hand as he made sure she was still alive. Minimus Rex knew the drug on her breath. The suit had injected it through her skin on Sophia Gorganis' command. Mikey's player had helped him create it.
<
|My player says to wake her up.|
The drug is easy to reverse. But there may be consequences, Minimus Rex reminded him, needlessly.
W
as Geyl really an ally? The suit itself had betrayed her. If she knew that Mikey was behind its design, Geyl would hurt him. Had the Missus ever told her?
Beside him, the Missus was tearing off her dirt-smudged clothes. There were no good choices. If he helped her don the deadly suit, she might hold off the Ralpha Dogs for a day or two, and kill many of them. But if he helped her don the suit within sight of the Ralpha Dogs and she failed to protect him, the vicious little woman Nutmeg would shoot him with the pain gun, not once but again and again.
|Are you sure you can neutralize any neurostimulant?|
I will not know until I fail.
The pressure in the back of his mind redoubled. His player had never shown such interest before in the here-and-now. It was always the game as it was played elsewhere, off where the Missus did her player's bidding, in the great battle against the other players. The game had been underway for thousands of years. One agent or the other rarely mattered—in time they would all be put away and the board cleared.
<
Trembling, Mikey put his two index fingers in his mouth and keyed them with two different molecules. He reached both index fingers into the suit's helmet, and held them beside secret spots near Geyl's ghost-white cheeks. A sigh of air rushed into the helmet as the suit began to expand away from Geyl's body.
Mikey glanced upward to the Missus, and saw she was scanning the northern horizon, watching for attack. He paused, in terror of the cusp on which he hung. His player seemed to be implementing a radical change in strategies. The Missus had accused him of treason, and now his player was directing him to betray. What new direction was the game taking? It was almost as though he now had a new player, his old player shoved aside and novel gambits brought to the fore.
<
The game was cosmic. He was but an agent. How dare he refuse?
<
Quickly, he tucked his right index finger in his mouth, then brought it to Geyl's lips, peeled her lower lip down, and rubbed the viscous coating against her gums.
The suit now stood out like a barrel around Geyl, the helmet expanding fantastically until its opening was half a meter in diameter. The Missus was watching him now, and he gently reached in and tugged Geyl's arms from the suit's arms and drew her back toward him and out of the suit entirely. He laid her naked form on the ground and stood, trembling. The Missus did not look pleased.
"Hey, I'm not going to fit into that. Expand it some more."
"Before I do, could you hold me…for just a second? I…"
Sophia Gorganis drew her hand back and slapped him hard across one cheek. "Kid, listen up: When I say jump, you jump! They're out there somewhere and I need to be in that suit. Open it up!"
<
Mikey nodded, weeping freely. He knelt beside the suit, and carefully placed each of his index fingers in his mouth again, taking more time than he needed to.
"Hurry up, dammit!"
Mikey placed his fingers inside the greatly expanded helmet and touched them to its inner surface. Almost instantly, the suit contracted to its former size and shape, as when Geyl had been inside it.
"What! I said open it up! Are you crazy? Open it!"
<
Familiar or not, his player had spoken. Mikey took a deep breath, and with the heel of one hand slapped the visor down. He stood, and faced the Missus.
"No."
The Governor General shrieked, and kicked him hard in the solar plexus. Mikey screamed and fell back, gasping for breath. He tripped over Geyl's prone form and sprawled in deep shadow beneath the lander, choking and sobbing.
From somewhere behind the lander came the staccato crack of automatic gunfire, and then the dull multiple concussion of bullets burying themselves in the lander's foam coating. He heard the Missus curse, and then, as he tried to bury himself in the scrubby grass beneath the lander, felt Geyl's hand touch his and squeeze twice.
Peter Novilio threw himself to one side and rolled over as the thumb-thick missile shrieked past him. It struck the ground twenty meters back and exploded, throwing up a fireball clotted with soil and choking brown dust. He heard someone yell, and up ahead, gunfire.
The missile launcher was not a hand-held. That cut both ways; the missiles were larger and more damaging, but they were harder to aim and slower to fire. He flattened himself against the ground and listened. Another missile hissed into flight, this time in a different direction. The explosion was answered with more gunfire.
Kestrel 268, Sahan-Grusa observed. The standard cylinder contains sixteen.
|So she's got plenty more.|
And she seems very good with them. I'd advise caution.
|You sound a lot like my old alternate. |
Similar challenges suggest similar advice.
Peter crabwalked to the right, trying to put the bulk of the lander between him and the missile launcher. He could see Magic Mikey cowering under the lander's rear fin, close beside Geyl's still unconscious form. Another missile lanced out, and in the chaos of the explosion Peter heard two men scream. One of them was Oystein Kylander. The other was Filer Fitzgerald.
I smell something odd.
|The explosive? The propellant?|
No. Something metallic.
Peter rose to a tall crouch just long enough to see Sophia Gorganis swing the little launcher around to the south. The mechanism, with its lazy susan bearing, struts, and missile cylinder, was broadside to him, and her body was mostly obscured by the lander. Peter leapt forward several meters, fell to the ground, and fired a long burst at the missile launcher. If he could get at least one of the missiles in the cylinder to explode, that would be the end of the Governor General. He had a fair shot at her hands and one arm, but with nanotech inside her, she might be able to suppress the pain long enough to spin the launcher and fire back.
He missed the cylinder, but several rounds struck the struts and knocked the lightweight device on its side. He fired another burst through the base, the bullets tearing at the metal and doubtless rendering it almost useless. Then the clip emptied and the rifle gleeped its warning. Peter cursed, slapping his belt for a fresh clip.
Howling with fury, the naked woman charged in Peter's direction, firing several rounds from an automatic handgun. Peter leapt to one side just as the Governor General stepped over Geyl's motionless body—
—and then saw Geyl leap straight up, jabbing her stiffened hand into Sophia's side. Peter blinked. The now-empty suit had duplicated the motion, leaping up and jabbing empty air with its right glove.
Sahan-Grusa understood. The suit is an exoskeleton. Geyl's body still contains the position sensors.
Sophia Gorganis screamed, and the weapon fell from her hand. She lunged for the weapon, but Geyl caught her arm and pulled back hard. The two women fell to the ground with the handgun behind them. Geyl ducked her opponent's blows, trying to vault over Sophia's side to retrieve the weapon. Two meters behind them, the suit was writhing and flailing against the ground, duplicating Geyl's every move.
Peter saw Nutmeg running up the rise from the south, dirt on her face and blood oozing from a slash on her forehead.
"Bitch! Traitor!" Geyl was screaming. Sophia struck hard at Geyl's shoulder, and Geyl fell back—a little too easily, Peter thought. Geyl jittered away from the Governor General on her hands and knees, obviously looking beyond her opponent to where the handgun lay on the grass. Geyl's right hand danced against the ground for a moment as Sophia Gorganis threw herself back to retrieve the handgun.
The suit!
The suit, still on all fours on the grass, now had the gun in the grip of its empty right glove.
Geyl leapt to her feet. The suit leapt to its feet, weapon in hand. Sophia Gorganis lunged at the suit. Geyl spun around like a dancer on the grass, lancing out with her right foot in a sharp kick to empty air.
The suit spun less elegantly but much more forcefully, and k
icked Sophia Gorganis in the abdomen, hard enough to send the large woman tumbling back and to the ground. Geyl swung her right arm away from the other woman. The suit swung its right arm in the same direction, now pointing the pistol squarely at Sophia Gorganis' back.
Nutmeg dropped to a marksman's crouch several meters away. Peter heard two of the other sicarii running up from behind the lander.
Metal. Heavy metal. Its reek is everywhere!
At several points around and between them, the ground exploded upward without heat or shock. Broad blades of gleaming metal with a cold molten sheen stabbed up from the soil so quickly that the eye could barely follow. One had erupted from the soil at Peter's feet, and the column of metal now flowed around the muzzle of Peter's still-empty rifle, blocking and holding it. Peter let go of the rifle, which stood in the air in the grip of the metal pillar. A similar pillar had stabbed upward to grip at Nutmeg's rifle, as well as the automatic handgun gripped in the glove of the nanosuit.
While all present watched, the weapons were drawn in and absorbed by the columns of metal until nothing was left of any of them. Peter watched the remains of the missile launcher sink into a puddle of liquid metal that had risen from the soil around it.
When all weapons carried by the combatants had been absorbed, the columns too withdrew into the soil as quickly as they had risen. Peter and everyone else stood shocked, motionless, for many seconds.
On the hillside not far from the lander, a single and much larger column of molten metal rose from the soil until it stood three meters high. Its mirror-bright surface reflected the deep blue of the sky, the yellowed grass and brown soil, and all their puzzled faces. Then it spoke.
"This pointless battle will end now. One of your number has died, and another is dying. I should have intervened sooner."
Peter saw motion from the corner of his eye, and turned to see a strange sight: An oblong puddle of molten metal perhaps two meters long and a meter wide flowing up the hillside, its edges rippling and reflecting distorted views of the scene around them. It flowed to the pillar's base and paused. Peter gasped when he saw a human face, much bloodied, barely protruding from the puddle's surface. The metal flowed back into the soil, leaving Oystein Kylander's explosion-savaged corpse lying flat on its back.
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