"That's our part done," Inshiri was saying. "You agreed you'd take on the risk for this next step. You clear out the Home Guard and dispose of Remoran, and then we dial Candesce to the mutually agreed-upon level."
"Something like that," said Holon.
"Then why aren't you on about it? We don't have much time."
"If we wait until Remoran's done, then we won't have to attack them with these primitive weapons," said Holon, gesturing at the guns Inshiri's bodyguards were carrying. Their carbines, Antaea now saw, had silencers on them.
"What do you mean?" asked Inshiri.
"Candesce will shift through several stable emulations of Newtonian physics and normal electrodynamics while Remoran dials it down. We don't know how that process works, but we do know, from tests we conducted right at the edge of the field, which technologies will work at the dialed-down level."
"So? What of it?"
"We've brought weapons that will work at that level," he said.
Inshiri nodded. "Yes, that was exactly what I thought. Lads?"
Her men opened fire, and now it was clear that their guns had some sort of silencing mechanism; the shots were barely audible. Holon and the other outsiders twitched under the onslaught, then, propelled by the residual momentum of the bullets in their bodies, drifted to the far wall.
"Looks like the wetwork's up to us after all," sighed Inshiri. She unfolded herself from the couch and unholstered her intricately carved little pistol. Her men, meanwhile, were forming up into three squads.
An odd crick-cracking sound reached Antaea's ears. She saw Inshiri and her men turn; one of the bodyguards swore. Antaea shifted her position to make out what was happening.
Holon's body was convulsing. Its thrashing limbs were bending in ways they shouldn't, and it was the sound of bones breaking that Antaea had heard. "Shoot it, shoot it!" Inshiri screamed--just as the other three outsiders' corpses began to twitch as well.
By the time Holon's body tore itself apart to reveal the thing underneath, they'd put a couple dozen rounds apiece into it. It showed no signs of having noticed.
* * *
REMORAN WHIRLED AT the shouting. "What's going--" His men unslung their machine guns, and two leaped to perch on the edge of the opening where the virtuals had gone. One was immediately flung backward. He hit the far wall and bounced off, clutching at his neck as blood sprayed into the chamber.
Jacoby blinked at the dying man. Of all the things he'd worried about happening in here, a simple gunfight had never crossed his mind.
Then they were all firing as Remoran twisted in midair, trying to find purchase on something--anything--for freefall leverage. He grabbed Venera and doubled up, putting his feet against her flank. The general secretary was about to use her mass to launch himself to safety, and the recoil would take Venera into the line of fire.
She grabbed his ankle. As he cursed and kicked at her, she adroitly spun around and kicked him in the head. Then she made the leap he'd been about to, and grabbed the edge of the wall next to Jacoby. "Hi," she said.
Shouts of alarm distracted Jacoby, and so he turned in time to see something gray and multi-limbed clamber over the far wall. Inshiri's soldiers and Remoran's guardsmen were peppering it with gunfire, but it didn't slow down. "What the hell is that?" shouted Jacoby.
"That would be our boy Holon," said Venera. "I believe he's shed his skin." Another of the spiderlike things was coming over the wall behind the first one.
"Come on." He pawed at her with his good arm, and when she pulled away he pointed at the empty chamber on the other side of the wall. "Time to go."
He looked back for just a second, and beheld a nightmarish scene: long jointed threads had snaked from the sides of the bark-colored thing, and they were stabbing the soldiers. One twisted itself around Remoran's throat, and another was darting at Inshiri Ferance. She kicked off from the nearest wall and sailed over to land next to Jacoby and Venera.
A gray whip coiled around her ankle and she shrieked in surprise. "Cousin!" She lunged for Jacoby, hand outstretched.
"Good-bye, Inshiri." He kicked away into the next room.
"Jacoby! Jacobyyyyy!" She gripped the edge of the wall for a second, then let go and disappeared.
"The entrance!" barked Venera. She took his good hand and they leaped for the next wall. Just as they landed on it a silhouette reared up above it and Jacoby raised his pistol, then cursed.
"Took you long enough," he snapped at Antaea. She shook her head silently, then gestured with her pistol.
"--Not going back there!" Venera protested.
"I shot one of them." Antaea raised her weapon, turning it in the cool light. "This works, but we need to keep them distracted. They haven't figured out where the shot came from yet, but--"
Jacoby nodded. "Glad you thought to bring that. Remoran was a fool--and so was Inshiri. They thought they could rely on Virgan technology and Holon's word of honor to keep his boys in line. I did my best in case they were wrong, but--" He flipped over, preparing to jump back to the room where just a few sporadic shots and screams now sounded.
Venera slapped his shoulder and he nearly blacked out. "--see?" she was saying when he regained his breath. "You're in no shape. Give me the gun, old man."
He handed her his pistol. "You'll pay for that."
"What, hitting you?"
"No, calling me old."
She and Antaea hopped away, and he flipped over the wall. If he got lucky he might make it to the entrance before the monsters finished with those two.
26
HOLON HAD REGAINED something of his original form; at least, Antaea assumed that the dark, man-shaped thing hunched in front of the control mirror was him. She edged backward, finding the right opening for her shot. Holon was busy, so he was a natural target; but because he was busy, she could probably afford to ignore him for now.
She nodded to Venera, who took a deep breath and then popped up over the top of the wall. "Bastaaaards!" she screamed as she fired off several indiscriminate rounds into the corpse-filled room. Then she kicked backward, sailing toward the opposite wall of her own empty room.
One of the three remaining monsters whistled and disappeared out of Antaea's point of view, but she knew where it was going. It appeared over the top of the control room's wall just as Venera disappeared over the next one.
She shot it.
As it tumbled into the air, Antaea shook her head in surprise. "Damn, this is too easy."
"Is it now?" Suddenly she was seeing stars as something had lashed her in the face. Before she knew it she was tumbling somewhere, blazing pain in her eyes, her arms, her belly. She tried to shoot, but where was the gun? She couldn't feel anything in her right hand.
Something had her--was carrying her. She hit a wall and bounced back, hit something softer. A body. Gasping, she tried to clear her vision, found that her eyes and nose were soaking wet.
"Now how would she have gotten a weapon like this?" The questioner sounded like Holon; was he asking her?
"I don't know, I don't, please don't, I swear I--" It was Inshiri Ferance, hysterical and begging.
"You really don't know, do you?"
"I swear!"
"Then I don't need you for now. --Don't worry, I'll resurrect you later."
Antaea heard a horrible choking sound. She rubbed again at her eyes, was rewarded by a sliver of red-soaked vision. She seemed to be bleeding freely into the air. She was also missing two fingers from her right hand, and long black tendrils draped through the air to somewhere below Antaea's chin, from the monster that was killing Ferance.
She couldn't move, but he knew she was still alive, because when he had finished with Inshiri he turned to her. The vaguely head-shaped thing atop his torso tilted as if looking at her. "It took us centuries to evolve these bodies so they'd work inside Virga," he said. "This bioform is related to the one we hid inside your sister. Like what you see?" he said.