Maybe the eyes. Maybe he could at least damage this toyofPelter's?
Stanton nicked the Tenkian ring round with his thumb. He felt the tug at his trouser leg as the dagger came out dirough the rip it had made before. Forest light glittered off the yellow chainglass blade and the handle slapped into his hand. He swung at Crane's eyes, and the android's other hand snapped up and caught his wrist. The point of the blade was a hand's breaddi from those black eyes. Crane blinked and did nothing while Stanton choked. Abrupdy, he released Stanton's throat. Stanton yelled as all his weight came down on his right shoulder. Crane pulled the blade from Stanton's hand and then, in a moment, just discarded him.
The lights in the Tenkian were flickering as it no doubt tried to give Mr Crane a shock. Crane was oblivious to the electrical charge, but not oblivious to the pretty lights and the beauty of the weapon. He held it between his two forefingers and studied it for a long time. Stanton just lay there, recovering his breath. His right shoulder felt like it was dislocated, and he'd definitely cracked a few ribs. There was no point in running now. He just waited for the inevitable.
Crane finished his long study of the Tenkian dagger, then slipped it into the pocket of his coat. He glanced at Stanton, lifted a forefinger up to his metal mouth, held it there for a moment, before stepping over him and walking off into the forest.
Her left leg hurt like hell, and felt warm and sticky inside the suit. In a way she wished that the sealant layer sandwiched between the armour and the inner suit had not done its job so well. Had it not, she would not face the prospect of suffocating in about twenty minutes from now. The Lyric was gone, John was either dead or soon would be, Pelter would see to that, and the safety lock on her suit even precluded her opening the helmet to vacuum. Jarvellis hung in space over Viridian and watched pieces of her ship flaring in atmosphere below her - when she could see through her tears.
The old ring station was perhaps a few hundred metres away behind her. Straining round she could see a light deep inside it, behind exposed structural members. That option wa§ closed to her as well. She had used up all the fuel in the suit's impellers in order to escape the blast. 'Get out,' John had said. She had heard him clear, even as she had blown the airlock door and fired-up the impellers. The disc of fire had cut below her, then the debris cloud riding the blastwave had slammed into her back and tumbled her over and over. No doubt the piece of the Lyric that had punched into her thigh had been a fragment of chainglass. It had been one of many hits she had felt, and nothing else could have penetrated the ceramal armour.
Eventually her tears dried and Jarvellis tried her comunit again. Again she just got silence. The EM pulse from the explosion must have burnt out the suit's radio. Planar explosives had been used, and they did not produce such a pulse. It had come from one of the secondary explosions, either when the pile went or when the disc cut the underspace engine in half. There would be recovery ships up from Viridian in time, but they would come too late for her. Rescue was not an option, and only two others remained: either she died slowly in the suit or… Jarvellis reached down and undipped the solid-state laser clipped to the suit's utility belt. It wouldn't work through the helmet, as the chainglass would automatically polarize. She needed to hold it over her heart. She estimated it would take about a minute to penetrate the suit.
No more grief now. Everything was gone and now there was just her. Then… then she remembered the other life starting inside her, and that only made everything seem worse. She looked down at the laser in her heavy glove. It was just a matt cylinder with a button on one end.
Oh, John…
She put the business end of the laser against her chest and pressed the button. Red light ignited at the point of contact and vaporized ceramal flared away in an orange fog. Any moment now she would be through. There would be sudden pain, then quick death. The laser broke through, but there was no expected pain. The explosion slammed at her chest and flung her hand away. As she hurtled back, she saw the laser tumbling through space on a trail of glittering fragments.
'Oh, fuck you. Fuck you!'
Fifteen minutes of air left, and the display was still heading down. She had achieved the end she required, though not by the expected method. She knew exactly what had happened. The sealant had hardened on exposure to vacuum. The laser had cut through it and then it had broken under the air pressure in her suit. But it went further than that, which was the reason these old suits had been replaced. The epoxy-based sealant, once hardened, lost its flame-retardant properties. Under the blast of air, white-hot epoxy had exploded.
'Goodbye, John,' Jarvellis said, and thought that perhaps the shadows she was seeing at the edges of her vision were due to the sudden drop in air pressure.
Abruptly she realized this was not so, she was seeing a framework of structural members silhouetted against Viridian, a second before she slammed into a wall inside the ring station. As the counter dropped to zero, and she gasped on nothing, she had enough humour left to appreciate the irony of it all.
21
Antiphoton Weapon (APW): In this case the term 'antiphoton' is a misnomer attributable to the propaganda core of the Jovian Separatists (either that or hopeful thinking). The beam projected from this weapon is a proton beam, the protons having been field-accelerated to near-light speed. The distinctive purple flash or beam, is not, as some fictional sources would have us believe, the fabled 'darklight'. It is fluorescence caused by proton collision with air molecules. In pure vacuum the beam is invisible. The aforesaid fictional sources would also do well to remember that the firing of a proton weapon is a serious matter, the usual result of which is isotope contamination. The bad guys don't just disappear in an elegant purple flash.
From How It Is by Gordon
Mika was watching a screen showing a view down the shaft towards the artefact. In the picture Cormac recognized the rear view of Cam, Cormac himself, Gant and Cento. The guardian creature was coming up the shaft. 'Jesus!' yelled Gant.
Cormac waited for his shouted instruction for them to 'Hit it'. Mika froze the picture at the point when the creature was in fullest view. Cormac's recorded shout was stillborn.
'I downloaded this copy from Aiden's memory,' said Mika, widiout turning.
'What do you make of it?'
'Terrifying, fascinating.'
'All of diat,' said Cormac dryly.
She turned to him. 'If I hadn't known the shaft had been made by melting and rock-compression, I would have said that creature hollowed it out somehow; that it was its natural home before the temperature dropped. The shaft is perfectly designed to accommodate it. But for the ice, it would have moved up much faster.'
'And you are saying?'
'The reverse: the creature was specially designed for the shaft. It was a guardian created for that place.'
She walked past him to a bench on which were laid the pieces of the creature which Thorn had brought back. She picked up the end of one silvered leg.