Phit! PHIT phit PH-ph-PHIT!
Samantha clapped her hands over her ears and screamed. Max could see that Andrew and Ryan were only a step behind her.
It felt like an ambush-foot soldiers to the front, heavy artillery at the rear. But why waste men? Max wondered. They could just set off a couple of grenades and block us in without exposure.
Phit PHIT PHITPHITPHITPHIT-
The deepscan holos sizzled and disappeared under the continuing assault. The bridge was little more than a hollow shell now-and one that was starting to crack under the relentless hail of bullets.
“What’s going on?” screamed Samantha as Simon threw himself from his seat and jumped half the length of the cabin to throw his arms around her. He had never felt so helpless: caught between the menacing machines in one direction, a barrage of gunfire in another, a thousand feet below the killing ice.
Death-the real, imminent, tangible specter of Death-flashed before his eyes as he tried to comfort her. Hayden, doubled over in the tiny space below the tech console, bellowed through the noise of the thunderous bullets as the last of the Spector’s emergency lights blinked out. “They hit the main electric panel!”
But the Spector kept moving. Just as Max had directed, it staggered in reverse, away from the gunfire, back toward the robots, foot after stubborn foot-
— until it smashed into something huge, immovable, and utterly invisible, just beyond the buckling metal hull.
The team was thrown across the darkened cabin as the vehicle shuddered to an instant halt. The pounding bullets didn’t even pause; if anything, the rattling tattoo of the attack grew even louder, more angry, as the soldiers approached and redoubled their fire.
The next few seconds felt like an eternity as Max scrambled to find his pistol. Simon asked Samantha in a quiet whisper, “You all right?”
“I’m not dead yet,” she whispered fiercely. “At least I don’t think I am.”
“Down, guys!” Max shouted from the floor. “Unbuckle, get down!” He frog-marched to Andrew and helped him with the complex arrangement of belts. The left side of the bridge exploded in a shower of sparks. A new vibration, deep and almost subsonic, rumbled through the vessel. It seemed as though it was coming from the outside and getting stronger with every second. It was accompanied by a low hissing noise that sounded like an approaching eighteen-wheeler.
Max grabbed Simon’s shoulder and said, “It’s zero time.” He saw Simon struggle with the words for a second; then a look of realization dawned on him. It was a bit of slang from their childhood, back when they only played at being spies and adventurers. It meant “now or never,” “do or die.” But it meant something more, too. It was a phrase only they used, and only with each other. It was part of a secret language that had made them more than friends from an early age.
It meant, “Brothers forever.” It meant, “I will always have your back.”
He grinned in spite of everything, and was surprised to feel burning tears in his eyes. “Zero time,” he said.
Phit-PHIT! Ph-ph-ph-ph-PHIT!
The subterranean vibration grew deeper, stronger. They could feel something approaching, like an army of horses stampeding straight for them.
PHITPHITPHITPHITPHIT
“We’re trapped!” screamed Hayden. “We can’t open the airlock without power!” And without power, they all knew, the heaters had stopped working, too. With every passing second, the temperature of the vessel was dropping, and with the seals still locked in place, the air was growing thin as well.
The end? Simon asked himself. Cowering under a metal console, suffocating as he started to freeze? Not yet, he prayed, thinking of the people who had trusted him, thinking of his father. Not yet…
And the gunfire stopped.
In an instant; all at once. It didn’t trail off, or sputter to a halt, or simply pause and begin again. It stopped.
The five-second silence that followed was absolutely deafening.
Then, suddenly, inexplicably, a bank of harsh lights in the Spector’s ceiling blinked on, died, then blinked again and stayed on. The first thing Simon’s eyes fell on was an astonished Hayden, gaping at the ceiling from his hiding place.
“Son of a bitch,” the inventor said into the cavernous silence. “Emergency back-ups. Completely forgot about those.”
Even the smartskin flickered back to life, but only in bits and pieces. Simon found himself peering through transparent foot-square patches randomly scattered across at the front and side of the ships, into a craggy darkness illuminated by the skittering beams of the approaching robotic Spiders and the blue-green luminosity of the foot soldiers’ weapons, still glowing even as they approached the Spector.
The rumbling grew louder. The vibration from below them shook the entire crippled vessel like a toy.
Then a giant cycle-like vehicle with a large single wheel roared down the passageway, behind the foot soldiers. They ignored it as they moved forward, weapons still raised, but the bullets had stopped flying.
The front lights of the large cycle were blinding; it made it hard to estimate distance or size. Andrew turned away momentarily from the brilliant light and saw Nastasia bent over almost doubled, sifting through her nutrition case again.
She looked up at Simon, and he saw she was holding her inhaler in one hand and what seemed to be a pre-packed powder in the other. “I just…because of my condition I can’t live without this.” As he watched she pushed the inhaler into the kit, forced the lid shut and snapped it tight, then put it aside.
They both turned and stood as the huge cycles accelerated toward them, skidding to a halt in unison almost a hundred yards away.
Several figures, dressed in heavy gear to protect themselves from the bitter cold, started running toward the Spector. They were holding rifles, coming at the crippled vehicle like a SWAT team with laser-guided instrumentation. It was hard for Max to see them; the light source from the rifles themselves was shooting straight toward the Spector.
Simon and Max had already moved to the door, prepared to protect the others if they had to. Max gestured with his pistol, waving toward the ready room and shouting at the rest of the crew. “Move toward the back.”
Simon stood with his back pressed firmly against one side of the door, opposite Max. He looked across the bridge to Andrew, who was sitting in the crooked, half-broken pilot’s seat.
“Shut her down,” he whispered.
Max watched the approaching figures with every ounce of his concentration, calculating, gambling. His gut told him these men were somehow not connected to the menacing robots. He knew all too well how trained mercenaries would move, and these men with the rifles clearly did not move that way at all. They weren’t professional soldiers; he would bet his life on that.
One man, face fully covered by a cloth and plastic mask, was ten steps ahead of the others. He was holding an unusual weapon, a rifle unlike any Max had ever seen, its stock pressed tightly against his chin. He was using the light on the weapon as a flashlight, trying to study the unusual surface of the Spector.
More men started approaching the vehicle, and Simon tried to count them. It looked as though there were eight or ten-it was hard to tell in the blinding, dancing lights.
“Lay down,” whispered Max, as the team watched the scene unfold on the half-blind wall panels.
Simon had reached the same conclusion. “Max, these guys don’t seem like they’re after us. They seem as scared as we are.” He couldn’t help but notice how the men were studying the Spector’s exterior in amazement. Not like soldiers at all. More like…
“Let’s open the door,” he said impulsively.
Samantha almost choked in fear as she tried to express herself. “I don’t want to die.”
“Don’t think that will be the case,” Max said. “Just relax and lay down.”
There was a sudden thud toward the front of the vehicle as one of the men smashed his rifle against the thick armor of the Spector. Inside, the team only heard a faint sound, but could clearly see the man trying to smash the exterior.