The female was passing tools down to the male as Tack, moving cautiously, spied them around a bend in the corridor. He pulled back and observed them covertly for a second while he decided what to do. After a minute, carefully aiming his carbine, he waited until the male stuck his head above the floor plates, then fired once. The man’s head split with a crack and a flare of greasy flame, steam and brains blasting up into the woman’s face. As the man then collapsed back into the floor spaces, the woman forward-rolled, and came up groping for something on her belt. Tack’s next two shots exploded first her biceps then her knee, and she went down with a yell. In an instant he was standing over her, holstering his carbine as she groped for the laser cutter on her belt. With his handgun he blew apart the elbow of her undamaged arm, snatched away the cutter, then jammed one of his ration packs into her mouth as a gag. Crushing down on her chest with one knee, he pressed the silencer into her eye and paused to scan up and down the corridor. No sign of action. After a moment he dragged the wounded female into one of the side rooms and, behind the insulated cowling of a generator, subjected her to interrogation techniques that owed as much to his prior U-gov training as his subsequent education by the Heliothane. When he had finished, he dumped what was left of her under the floor with her dead companion, kicking their tools in after them and sliding the grating back into place. Then he set off to find the central control sphere, about which she had told him as much as she could possibly bring to mind.
The whole place was packed with service floors and ducts, and it seemed that much rebuilding was in progress. The next man Tack came upon was supervising two spider-like robots welding plates over a long gap in the pipe running down one side of a corridor. This was the main corridor leading to Tack’s destination, and by trying to circumvent him Tack knew he could get lost in this warren. With handgun levelled, he approached.
The man did not even look round, but said, ‘It is going to take two hours—no less, no more.’
Tack shot him through the back of the head, then picked him up and shoved him into the gap remaining in the pipe. The robots proceeded to plate over the corpse regardless. But such luck could not continue.
Another male umbrathant, driving a small vehicle towing a trailer stacked with struts made of vorpal glass, came around a bend, suddenly catching Tack with no place to hide. Tack hit him with a fusillade of pulses, throwing the man backwards out of his seat. The vehicle swerved into the wall, then skidded along to crash into a pillar, the trailer shedding its load in a racket of clanging glass. Tack spotted no one ahead, but behind him three Umbrathane came rushing out of a side tunnel.
Then it really started.
Tack tossed a handful of mini-grenades behind him as he ran. Spots glowed on the wall of the turning ahead, and he felt the superconducting mesh of his suit absorb rapid heating. He dropped, rolled aside in the stink of burning plastic, fired back. The first of them came over the grenades as they blew, flinging him up into the air along with some floor panels. Tack next pulled one of the larger grenades, already set for proximity detonation, pressed it against the wall low down, and ran around the corner. Now, because he might not find another chance, he yanked up a floor panel and dropped the second tactical below — its setting again for one hour. Ahead of him, more Umbrathane. He fired at them with both carbine and handgun, seeing one turned into a jerking bloody rag while the other rolled away for cover. Into a side corridor, running as the big grenade went off, blowing a wall of fire towards his back. Then he found himself where he wanted to be: out on a platform, with the inner face of the citadel curving in below him towards the central sphere, which was supported between four cylindrical pillars, each nearly as wide as it, with tangles of broad pipes spreading out like a web from its underside.
Tack dropped onto the curving slope below him and slid down it. A figure appeared to his left on another platform. Tack flung himself sideways as shattered metal erupted in a line along the slope, flung himself forwards, then side-rolled again. Again that eruption. Then he reached one of the pipes and swung himself round it. More Umbrathane emerging on platforms. As they dropped down after him, he slapped a catalyser against the incline, set for full dispersement, and had the satisfaction of seeing them unable to stop their descent as the fire-rimmed hole spread up towards them. But no time to gloat: he hit the pillar with another catalyser, stepped behind a pipe for cover, firing at any movement he could see, while the device did its work.
Shots were coming now from all directions, slamming into the pipe and hammering the metal floor behind him, metal splinters whickering and hissing past him. He was now pinned down, but only briefly. Tossing down a field generator, he dived for the growing gap in the pillar just as the generator flung up its electrostatic wall. He dropped inside it, caught at a briefly glimpsed rail, and hauled himself up an access stair before the fusillade followed him inside. Hearing movement below, he dropped the last of his mini-grenades then set another proximity device against the wall to take out any pursuers. He continued climbing fast, entering a corridor that accessed the sphere. Here on the wall he set another grenade, this one for proximity with timed delay. Then into the sphere, where huge machines loomed in darkness, walkways spiralling around its interior wall, others reaching in towards the machines.
A dark figure was standing perfectly still on the floor below.
Cowl.
Tack felt a sudden stab of some unfamiliar emotion, which it took him a moment to identify as fear. He opened up with both weapons, turning the entire vicinity of the motionless figure into a chaos of explosions and smoking metal. But the figure just stood there, striations of rainbow light running all around it. Then a large, sharp-fingered black hand reached over Tack’s shoulder and snatched away his carbine.
Tack dived to one side, came up firing his handgun. Cowl?
But then his attacker was gone and Tack was firing only into the falling wreckage of the carbine. Glancing over, he saw that the dark figure was still standing below. Doppelganger, was his first thought, then it hit him like lead: time travel. Why hadn’t they prepared him for this? But there was no time now for questions.
Movement underneath the walkway, a beetle head coming up beside him. He fired at it and it disappeared. He slapped down a grenade as he leapt away in the opposite direction. But Cowl was suddenly coming over the rail ahead of him before the grenade exploded behind Tack. Shooting again, the new arrival going up the wall and along it above him, fast. While tracking it with fire, he glimpsed the one on the floor below him disappearing. Then a hand hard as iron slammed into his back, driving him over the rail.
Tack knew then that he was dead. Cowl had supreme control in this place—possessing enough energy here to short-jump and avoid a short-circuit paradox. Tack spun around and fired as he fell, noticed the amber warning light on his gun but kept on firing until it flicked to red as it emptied.
Over a rail further below, a hand reached out and caught him, pulled him in and flung him down on the walkway floor. Cowl walking towards him. Tack flung a shield generator out as he back-flipped to his feet and turned to flee. He drew his seeker gun and emptied its magazine, firing ahead. A second Cowl came over the rail ahead, while the other one was somehow walking round the shields behind Tack. Seeker bullets were homing in like a swarm of bees on the second figure. There followed a blurring motion of hands, and bullets were thwacking to the walkway, where they detonated. But one, just one, missile exploded on black carapace.