One of the platform’s severed steel ropes dangled from the ceiling nearby. Opal threw herself forward, grabbed on to the cable’s edge and swung out over the abyss, grasping with tight-knuckled force on which her life depended, her peripheral vision showing the huge drop below, the screaming creatures down there. Her body spun and she slipped a few centimetres as she swung out, centrifugal forces pulling at her; one hand came free of the steel support line, the other was right on the edge. She just gritted her teeth as she reached the apex of her swinging arc, she wouldn’t let go; and the suit helped her, strengthening her one-handed grip as she followed the semicircular path from which there could be no deviation apart from the involuntary drop of death, and damned if she’d let that happen.
She was now flying back towards a different area of the platform, the even more precarious middle bits with fewer cables after Xandrie had deflected flechettes through them. Opal landed with a hard clang, skidding to a halt just short of falling off the other side. The platform swung in a worrying fashion, held up by only a few cables, many of the bolts that had connected it to adjacent walkways now torn loose from the twisting motions. Opal took laboured breaths in this moment of respite as Xandrie ran towards her, rattling the walkway even further.
They’d reversed positions. Now if Opal retreated she would be heading towards the sealed doorway Xandrie had entered from, and the welding gun. It was the direction Opal wanted to go in, but she didn’t have enough headway to unmelt the door before being killed.
Xandrie was back on the offensive. Opal did her best to block but at least one heavy strike reached her flesh. Even though the power suit did its best to repair the damage and seal up again, it was being drained by each breach, in the same way Opal’s body was drained by each wound, blood and energy sapped as injuries were cauterised inside the suit’s inner layers. The blades on Xandrie’s wrists must be at least as sharp and charged as Opal’s to slice armour so easily. It would be death by a thousand cuts if they carried on this way. She already felt like collapsing, and it was only her stubbornness that kept her upright.
“Maximise deflection shields,” Opal told the suit. “Shut down anything else: scanners, healing, internal monitoring, whatever – I need to stop her being able to hit me!”
The HUD dimmed, some peripheral screens winked out, and Opal noticed the shift immediately. The ground felt slippy beneath her feet as the suit pushed to deflect anything metallic away. But it worked. Xandrie’s blows stopped puncturing, deflected just enough to become inconsequential surface scratches. She’d have to put a lot more effort in to strikes if she wanted to connect as easily as before, and that might leave her vulnerable. She’d also have a job repeating the trick of catching a nanoblade: now, if she tried to trap Opal’s weapons, they would feel like they were coated with grease.
But she’d soon realise what was happening. Opal had to act quickly. Xandrie’s shield was too good at blocking strikes. But Opal remembered her first escape from Xandrie, sliding down a chute on full field repulsion. She remembered that you need to go around defences when you can’t go through. And she sure as hell remembered trickery. She had her own experiences of dirty tricks learnt in rough places.
Opal slashed wide, missing Xandrie on purpose but making her flinch. Instead of following it up with another attack Opal jumped back, still cutting the air with the nanoblades to preserve the gap. She had to get a few paces away, had to make sure she had one of the few sturdy cables in the right place for a jump. She moved to the edge of the platform and it worked: the walkway tilted precariously, throwing Xandrie to the side. Opal sprinted back towards her, head turned to the steel cable that would provide a launching point to leap up high, to strike Xandrie from above. It had worked earlier, was obviously worth trying again. Opal’s foot touched the cable and she bent her legs. Xandrie raised her shield and wrist blades in preparation.
But Opal didn’t leap. Instead she slid to her knees in a smooth movement, skidding under Xandrie’s guard, the suit’s repulsion turning the floor to ice so that when Opal stabbed up, her long blade punctured through the armour with grinding sparks, straight into Xandrie’s leg. The blade came out, red with fresh blood. Maybe she’d hit the femoral artery.
Despite her exhaustion, Opal clambered to her feet, expecting a weakened retaliation. But Xandrie didn’t strike at Opal’s body. Instead, she stumbled backwards, unable to put weight on the wounded leg, and swiped at one of the supporting cables during her retreat, then another, severing them with whiplash cracks. And suddenly half of the walkway wasn’t supported any more. The floor fell away.
Feinting
< 16 >
IT WAS THE CABLES ALONG one of the walkway’s long sides that had snapped, causing it to fall down like the flap over an air vent once the air stops pumping, pivoting on the remaining cables which acted like a hinge. Opal dived for the upper edge but was too late and she missed, was now sliding down.
“Full magnetism!” she yelled, and the suit stopped sliding, ground to a halt against the swinging vertical metallic surface. Nothing below her but a death drop. No way to scramble up the vertical plate to a handhold. As it swung crazily about she slid down another few centimetres. Already near the bottom of the plate. She couldn’t stay here forever. All her suit’s resources were being used to power the electromagnetic systems barely holding her against the side of a sheet of metal like an insect squashed to a swatter.
Opal assumed Xandrie fell too, that it was a last-ditch kill attempt that would sacrifice both of them. But then she saw the assassin up above. She’d stepped over the broken rivets to an adjacent walkway panel as she cut the last cable.
Opal was a static target with nowhere to go.
Unless ... the mobile platform with the dangling tools of butchery and manipulation was on this side of the panel. It had been out of range even when Opal was on the walkway. If only she still had a grapple gun, she could have reached it easily.
She should have brought two.
Back and forth in slowing arcs she swung, sliding, trying not to look down at what waited her below, crying and mewling. So she looked up again.
Xandrie was squirting a jet of fluorescent purple goo from a spray canister – this time it splatted against the top of the platform Opal stuck to. Near the cable points. She was going to blow the whole thing.
“I need to get off here in the next few seconds,” Opal told the suit in a hurry. “Is there any way you can take over and somehow jump me to that mobile platform?”
“It’s nearly eleven metres away. If we had a running start then it would be well within parameters, as you know from earlier.” The suit spoke as quickly as Opal. “But from a static position ... Mmm. What if I timed it with the next swing of the platform? We’d still fall short. Full suit repulsion and a leap, turn to full magnetic attraction near it? No. What if I transferred all power to the suit’s muscle fibres? ... No, still not possible!”
Xandrie clicked her fingers and some kind of flame hovered above her palm.
“I’m going to die anyway,” said Opal. “I’ve run out of options. I trust you.”
“Taking full control now.”
The display shut off. No internal lights, only a hi-tech prison for her body. She just had to relax, to know that she couldn’t affect the outcome, have faith that she was in safe hands.
Damn, how she hated leaving things up to someone else.
The broken walkway swung back towards the mobile platform. This would be it. Opal couldn’t even move the helmet to look in another direction, all control taken from her. At the edge of her vision up above, she could see an ethereal burning spark, floating through the air in surreal slow motion, a small ignition for a big explosion, but forget that, stay calm, take deep breaths. The complexity of what was about to happen was beyond human minds, could only be controlled to split-second precision and perfect application of timed force by something more than human.
The nanoblades retracted with a smooth snick. Suddenly she wa
s disconnected from the metal wall to her side by the suit kicking away, using all the power and repulsion it could for a perfectly-angled launch, probably using variable forces so that the legs were the last bits to switch from attraction to repulsion, enabling them to grip against something for the kick-off launch through the air, then repulsive force adding to their strength once committed.
And Opal was weightless, disconnected, tightly streamlined like a bullet to help cross the distance. She faced down, had no say in the matter, looked onto the squirming suffering below, knew that artificial gravity wanted her to go that way, make a captive of her too.
Sharp hissing sounds, just audible, seemed to erupt from the lower side of Opal’s body, but she didn’t have time to ponder it before the goo detonated in a flash of light and a roar of force and heat and expanding pressure. Deadly fragments of metal flew past her, some pinging from the suit, and somehow secondary blasts from below.
The mobile platform was just ahead, like a squarish octopod with all those industrial tools dangling on thick segmented cables. She was too low.
But it would be close.
And then her arms reached out, and the attractive force must have kicked in on overdrive because she made a connection with one of the dangling grabbers, slammed into it with enough force to knock the air out of her lungs, and the suit gripped on as she was clanged around; then it scrambled up in quick inhuman-yet-efficient motions that took her onto the stable surface of the platform.
The HUD bloomed into life. She could move again. She was alive.
“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you!”
“I’m happy it worked,” said the suit, with tones that replicated those spoken from a smiling face. “Athene will be proud of me. I expelled most of your air from manoeuvring jets for another metre’s reach, and used your last grenades in directed charge airbursts below, which only caused me minor damage. Wonderfully, even the explosive force behind us actually helped.”
The suit had nothing left in the reserves: air, jets, grenades, repair gels. But Opal was still alive.
“I’m so proud of you,” she said, between breaths that tasted sweet despite exhaustion. Like the suit, Opal’s reserves were depleted too. Even raising her head was an effort, but she did it. Just in time to see Xandrie climbing up one of the support cables towards the ceiling.
She never gave up. They could’ve been sisters.
Opal stood with a groan and examined the platform’s control systems. Maybe she could use some of the tools which hung below, turn them into weapons. She inserted her gauntlets into the hand manipulators but they were lifeless. No lights on the control panel. She identified a curved rectangular section with a slightly different sheen to it from the surrounding panel. She punched it, denting the middle, then got the suit’s fingertips under a lifted corner and tore the panel off. A mess of electronics inside. The cabled-circuits were like a mass of limp noodles.
“Can you hack this? Gain use of the implements on the platform, or move us further from Xandrie?”
“Maybe – hold your hand towards it.”
Xandrie was now near the ceiling and moving hand over hand along one of the pieces of framework that the mobile platform could transit along.
Opal aimed the gummed-gun arm at the electronics. A squirt of slender wires flew from her fingertips and attached to the control cables, puncturing them and feeling around for other targets like some kind of super-thin annelid parasites. With her other arm Opal extended the gun barrels, ready to shoot Xandrie while she couldn’t use her shield to deflect, couldn’t dodge.
Too late. Xandrie swung her body and let go, flying down from her high vantage point, a perfect angle, speeding like a battering ram. Opal spun away, forced to disconnect the hacking threads as Xandrie slammed with crushing force where Opal had stood just a second before, wrist blade and shield already active. The platform was too small for manoeuvre. Short weapons would win the day.
“Extend the nanoblades to only half their length,” said Opal, parrying the first strike with her forearm. The blades slid out partly, more like daggers – faster, better for close-range, still deadly.
This had to be the end.
She laid into Xandrie, scored a few hits that ripped into her armour like stiletto daggers; in turn she took strikes from the assassin’s jagged blades, which punched into skin but not as deeply as Opal’s narrow points. She wanted to stop, to curl up and cry, but that was the same as giving in, and that was the same as dying. She wouldn’t. She couldn’t.
Stay on your feet. Strike. Block. Fight.
But it was no good. Xandrie seemed tireless. A foot lashed out, knocking Opal back, but there wasn’t enough room to recover her balance and her feet got tangled. She smacked into the platform’s low barrier – too low for someone as tall as Opal in a powersuit, so it connected below her hips and she flipped backwards over it, a half somersault before she got her hands on the platform, gripped on as her body fell and swung underneath her.
But she didn’t fall. She was hanging on by fingernails, but she didn’t fall.
Xandrie approached to deliver the killing blow to Opal’s vulnerable head. She’d punch through the faceplate with those jagged wrist blades. It would all be over.
One of Opal’s hands slipped off. She looked even more vulnerable, the battle’s end a foregone conclusion. Opal used her core strength to lift her legs, despite the pain in her stomach from the injuries, the stabs, the encysted bullet still lodged there.
“Magnetise the legs only, attach them if you can,” she told the suit. Her legs clamped against the underside of the platform. How strong was the contact? No time to find out. She let her gripping hand slip a bit. Xandrie would need to crouch to stab her face, or to pry her fingers loose.
Or she might just kick Opal’s hand away and not even do her the honour of looking her in the eye.
Oh well, too late to take that into account. And luckily Xandrie did come close enough. Last chance. Every trick had been used up. Almost every bit of strength. Just this one thing.
Opal let go with her hand. But instead of dropping to her doom, the contact from her legs held, sticking her to the platform. The suit must be pumping all the energy reserves into supercharging the pull in that area. And now that Opal’s hands were free she snatched Xandrie’s ankles and yanked with all her might, taking Xandrie by surprise and throwing her onto her back with a crash, then out under the support barrier and off the edge. That was as far as Opal could reach.
Xandrie twisted and grabbed hold at the last moment, but Opal was already scrambling up Xandrie’s back and shoulders, onto the platform again, the suit altering its magnetic properties in each part to help her. Opal didn’t hesitate, rolled onto her back and kicked at Xandrie’s opaque faceplate as it came up, kicked and kicked and knocked her back so she was now the one holding on by only one hand while dangling over a pit of screaming monstrosities.
Opal crawled to the edge and looked down. She could stab into that visor if she wanted. Stab and stab at that hidden face. Finish off this threat forever.
“It’s over, Xandrie,” said Opal, switching to loudspeaker. “I’ve won. Please stop. Give in. It doesn’t have to go down this way; doesn’t have to follow our training. I’d rather have your help than kill you.”
Xandrie swung precariously below. Opal tried not to look past her at the blurred creatures beyond. There was so much horror. Opal needed something to counteract it. Hope.
And suddenly the partly-burnt visor on Xandrie’s helmet cleared, revealing her ghost-pale face. There were specks of blood on the skin inside the helmet; bruising around the eyes; the sweat of effort on her cheeks. Strands of blue hair were visible from under the compression layers of the stealth suit. And Xandrie’s eyes were the brightest blue, the cold blue light of a reflection nebula, glowing. Eyes that were locked onto Opal’s. A connection there. Consideration.
Xandrie’s hand slipped a bit more. More sweat breaking out on her face from the effort. She did
n’t seem able to raise the other arm. Or maybe she’d given up.
“If you tell me you surrender, then you can take my arm,” said Opal, holding out a hand. “One chance.”
And Xandrie opened her mouth. Just for a second. Not long enough for Opal to take in the detail – the lack of teeth, the missing tongue – only enough to see the dark overlapping something within there, cables and circuitry maybe, or perhaps insectile. Had the Lost Ship done that to her? Or was this done earlier, by the UFS?
“Oh,” said Opal. But she refused to show repulsion, refused to back away. “But ... maybe there’s a way back. VigMAX was freed. You can be too. Whatever they’ve done to you, maybe it can be undone. We have to believe that. If we bend all our will to it, if we have AIs to help ... I have to believe that we can succeed. Or die trying.”
And those blue eyes, lagoons of fresh water that you could fall into, blinked. They looked wet. And Opal knew what would happen at the same time as Xandrie swung her wrist blades, so that Opal flinched her head back and parried the weapon on reflex, knocking Xandrie loose so that she fell, tumbling down without a scream, even though she might be screaming inside. Xandrie smashed into the creatures far below, disappearing beneath the mass and leaving some broken, mewling and roaring louder, thrashing at the injuries and further pain brought on by this thing that fell from above.
But the alien chattle were huge. And those where Xandrie had fallen seemed to extend their bulky mouths and begin to bite down – on each other, and on something below them. There were screams, and blood, from the chattle which tore into each other with the buzz-saw mouths. Anything below them would be trapped beneath their crushing weight, even if it fought back ... and the suit’s detectors picked up faint crunching sounds. Even hardened armour would be destroyed by those powerful mouths in the hysterical, squirming mass, so that the blood frothing up around them now was probably not their own.
Chasing Solace Page 21