~Well enough.
~You know, I think I am going to—
~My name is Berdle, Colonel Agansu. Interesting to make your acquaintance.
~Likewise, Berdle.
~I did ask, earlier, to what we might owe such destructive attention, if you recall?
~Indeed you did, Agansu sent. ~Well then, Berdle, the answer would be: to Ms Cossont, and possibly the device which the facility’s records show she recovered a few minutes ago. As I said earlier, I would like to talk to Ms Cossont. Face to face; human to human. Also, I think it might be germane if I were to be allowed to inspect the device she retrieved. I strongly suspect you will have to accede to my requests in time, Berdle. We do rather have you at a disadvantage, wouldn’t you say? There was a pause, and then the colonel sent, ~I certainly would.
Berdle looked at Cossont, glanced at the ceiling and said quietly, “The person in full battle gear — who I’m assuming is Colonel Agansu — is now almost overhead, possibly ready to make ingress here, either down the shaft behind you or straight through the floor. The tour party near the combat arbite’s position is still not quite clear of the likely destruction volume, were I to let the two knife missiles off the leash. Excuse me; I must let Colonel Agansu talk at me some more.”
~You might benefit from being a little more cautious, Colonel, Berdle sent. ~We are less at a loss than you appear to imagine.
~Are you really? The colonel sounded amused.
~We are. We are currently mustering and preparing our forces, Colonel. You have my word.
~I’m sure I do, Agansu said, with mock seriousness. ~And that it is worth everything in the current situation, I feel certain. Nevertheless, the fact remains that you do not benefit from the presence of a friendly ship nearby, whereas I do. As well as, as you may have noticed, a very capable combat arbite.
~Yes. I trust the combat arbite is not in any way… precious to you, Colonel?
Berdle heard the colonel laugh. ~Ah, dear. How fine the line is between acceptably defiant bravado and hopelessly delusional boasting. You were doing so terribly well up until that point.
~I am sorry to be such a disappointment to you, Colonel Agansu.
Berdle glanced at Cossont again. “The tour party near the combat arbite’s position is now clear of the likely destruction volume and the knife missiles are cleared to fire,” the avatar told her. “Due to the nature of the munitions being used, the corridor is about to become extremely bright. We are trying to keep damage to a minimum, but — ah; here we go…”
The air in the corridor seemed to fill and streak with fanned white light, intensely bright; it almost looked like the smoke-hazed air was being lit by lasers, but something about the quality of the light itself and the way the smoke in the corridor was tugged after whatever it was that was making its way down the corridor argued against this. Cossont had never paid all the attention she might have in weaponry identification or whatever they’d called it back in military academy.
It really was astoundingly bright; it was as though part of the surface of a blue-white sun had suddenly appeared in the corridor, searing, bleaching everything. The light cut off; what had seemed like a brightly lit space in front of them suddenly looked dull.
An instant later a series of colossal, still greater outbursts of light — just barely distinguishable as being made up of hundreds of small, searingly bright flares rather than being a single massive eruption — made a white sun of the end of the corridor to their right. In the instant between the light and the trailing sound of the fusillade, what probably was laser light came flicking through the hazed air, filling the patch of corridor Cossont could see with sparkling bars of cerise light.
Explosions shook and battered her from both sides. She put her head down, wondering if she’d have had any hearing left without the suit.
Something touched her on one ear and Berdle said, “We have only one knife missile remaining to our left now. The person above us is either waiting or hesitating. I have instructed the remaining knife missile to mount a frontal attack; it will fly past us at just under ceiling height in approximately six seconds and fire over us and through the lift-shaft doorway. The munitions being used, though tiny, are both powered by and payloaded with anti-matter, so some radiation exposure at such close quarters is inescapable. Immediately after the missile has passed, you must stand and grasp me as you did before, from behind, arms round my body. Preferably legs wrapped round mine over my shins, too. Keep the bag with the mind-state device in it at your side, not over your back, do you understand?”
She nodded. More bars of pink light filled the air in front of the alcove, creating a screaming, tearing noise as the laser light impacted the swirling smoke and dust particles. Her mouth had gone very dry.
There was a further furious burst of cerise light and then the impression of almost invisibly quick motion high up, as though the corridor ceiling itself was rippling. Then the eSuit just turned the lights off; everything went completely dark while sound and blast-fronts seemed to detonate everywhere, pummelling her body from every side.
“Up!” Berdle shouted through her earbud. The suit helped her stand, she gripped the avatar from behind with three arms, brought her legs round his at the knee, made sure the shoulder bag was at her hip with her remaining hand and then put that round the avatar’s body too. She could see again. The corridor was full of light, both white and pink.
Then something seemed to erupt from Berdle’s chest and they were both flung away from the corridor and through the shallow alcove and into the lift shaft.
Cossont experienced what felt like the start of her head getting ripped off, then somebody slammed a sledge-hammer the size of a ship into her back and she blacked out.
Awake again; sore-headed, sore-backed, aching all over. She seemed to be still on Berdle’s back, looking over his shoulder through a ragged, dusty gap across the elevator shaft to the doorway on the far side. Through the smoke and dust there, a thing lumbered like a bad dream of a man; massive, reverse-kneed, arms thick with weapon clusters, saucer-headed, it stood, straightening a little, seemingly looking straight at them. If the little knife missile’s frontal attack had caused it any damage, it wasn’t visible. Cossont didn’t recognise the model; frankly it looked retro. Something rotated on its chest.
Then — silently, because her hearing didn’t seem to be working properly — another explosion seemed to go off just above the part of the shaft she could see, and debris rained down, falling past and showering into the depths. A man in a bulky glittering suit and holding a large gun, also seemingly made of mirror stuff, came floating down, as though sitting in an invisible chair. He looked very relaxed.
Cossont looked around. She and Berdle seemed to have been blown through a wall and into a storage area; everywhere she looked in the dusty gloom she saw towering stacks of shelves full of pale boxes similar to the one that had held the glittering grey cube with QiRia’s mind-state inside. They had ended up crumpled together in the remains of a set of shelves, half lying, half held standing by the twisted debris around them.
A couple of the pale, half-metre cube boxes came tumbling from somewhere overhead, bouncing and clattering down to join the jumble of debris already covering the floor. The combat arbite illuminated each of the falling boxes in turn with a thin beam of laser light from its weapon clusters, but let each fall and bounce without firing at them.
Cossont looked idly, groggily down at her hip. The shoulder bag wasn’t there. It must have been ripped away.
Shit, she thought.
The man in the glittering suit was floating, stationary, in the middle of the elevator shaft, looking in at them. He tipped his head to one side, as though wondering what to make of them. The combat arbite shuffled to one side, to keep a clear field of fire.